CHAPTER EIGHT

Heroical Figure

‘King Charles the Second in the Oak near Boscobel, makes as Heroical Figure as in any Part of his Reign.’

John Oldmixon, History of England, 1731

After Worcester there seemed very little hope for the survival of Charles II as a free man. As one narrative ghoulishly described the situation, ‘The ashamed sun had blushed in his setting and plunged his affrighted head into the depths of the luckless Severn, and the night, ready to stain and spot her guilty sables with loyal blood, was attiring herself for the tragedy.’¹ It seemed that the King’s fortune was at its nadir. By our judgement, he was about to enter his finest hour.

To most people ever since, the amazing tale of his escape is one that does not diminish with time, nor with constant repetition – the only exceptions were the courtiers of Charles II who grew bored with the King’s recital of his adventures. Nevertheless it is a truly extraordinary story; and the yawns of the complacent wits after the Restoration do them less honour than the King’s conduct at the time did him. ‘Read on and wonder,’ wrote Thomas Blount in his introduction to Boscobel, published in 1660, one of the most accurate of the early accounts.^fn1

It was only natural that the King himself should feel a nostalgic middle-aged affection for this ‘History of Wonders’. He was aware that in the forty days following Worcester he had been stripped of the last vestiges of his kingly prerogatives. His character, not his office, was tested in the crucible. His first dictation of the story was to Pepys on board the royal yacht as it approached the shores of England on the eve of the miraculous Restoration; later he elaborated it, so that the version in which Pepys finally handed it down to us dates from a session at Newmarket races in 1680. He also commissioned one of his favourite artists, Robert Streater, to paint two of his obscure refuges as a practical record of his experiences.

There are of course many other sources for the order and detail of events – some of them slightly contradictory, as is ever the case with synoptic accounts, from the Gospels downwards.^fn2 But Pepys had preserved the King’s own view of his tribulations. It gains importance as a unique piece of self-revelation coming from an otherwise secretive man.²

From the accounts of all the survivors, Charles emerges as a paladin. The combination of resource, intelligence and sheer courage which he showed fully justifies the verdict of John Oldmixon in his early eighteenth-century history of the Stuarts: ‘King Charles the Second in the Oak near Boscobel, makes as Heroical Figure as in any Part of his Reign.’³

As the King vanished through the northern gate of Worcester, on that tragic night of 3 September, he was attended by only a few gentlemen. But they included some of the most notable figures in his entourage – the egregious Buckingham, the powerful Earl of Derby and the Scottish Lauderdale, less recognizable in England but an equally desirable prize for the Commonwealth to capture.

In fact, the royal party soon found themselves quite lost in the darkness. They knew that they were somewhere north of Worcester – but that was about all, since the trooper who was supposed to know the district proved alarmingly ignorant. It was at this point that Lord Derby suggested that the King should continue to head north and try to hide out in the Brewood Forest. He also mentioned the name Boscobel – a name shortly to become associated above all others with the saga of the King’s escape, but up till now the highly obscure possession of the moderately obscure family of Giffard. Derby was however in a position to recommend Boscobel, since he had hidden there himself after the disastrous rout at Wigan: he knew the people living there to be kind, hospitable and, above all, loyal.

They were also Catholics. The position of Catholics in England at this date was both melancholy and irksome. Officially, their religion was forbidden: those who did not attend Church of England services were termed recusants and heavily fined. Their priests in particular were in danger of death if apprehended. During the Civil War the Catholics had suffered from the assumption that they must inevitably be supporters of the King. Over sequestration, for example, a Catholic had to prove that he was not a monarchist; whereas an ordinary citizen had to have guilt proved against him. Yet, except where a magnate such as the Marquess of Winchester acted as a focus, the Catholics were more concerned to preserve the practice of their precious religion in private than to take any part whatsoever in organized resistance.⁴ Bitter experience had taught them that they inevitably lost in such a situation.

Nevertheless, a sort of Catholic underground continued to exist, which handed the forbidden priests from hiding-place to hiding-place. It was an odd chance which brought King Charles II in touch with this underground while on the run himself. This secret world was so very different from the kind of Catholicism which Charles had known before – the foreign confessors of his mother, the French, Spanish and even Irish Catholics of the Continent. He discovered for himself that the English Catholics were then (as now) a very special breed in whom national loyalty was far from being extinct. In time he would wish to act upon this knowledge.

For the present however it was more a case of what the Catholics could do for their King. It transpired that Charles Giffard, the owner of the Boscobel estate, was actually amongst the little body of gentlemen still with the King. Giffard recommended not Boscobel itself (which was let to a Catholic family of yeoman farmers named Penderel) but another house close to it, Whiteladies, so-called because it was the site of a former Cistercian priory.^fn3 This safe house was reckoned to be about fifteen miles further. The decision was taken to press on there, and although the exact route taken is uncertain because of the general confusion of the journey, it is known that the royal party passed through Kidderminster. And they decided to speak French while passing Stourbridge, to avoid detection – a somewhat odd notion. For, if they had been overheard, the question of what a party of French soldiers were doing late at night in a remote corner of the West Midlands must inevitably have arisen.

The King reached Whiteladies at dawn. There is now little to be seen of the pleasant house of moderate size where he was welcomed except grass, ruins, and, appropriately enough, a few upturned Catholic gravestones. Even today it is difficult to find: in the seventeenth century Whiteladies was exceptionally isolated. That alone made it a welcome refuge for the exhausted Royalists. It had been a long – and appalling – twenty-four hours since the King saw the day break over Worcester.

Revived with some much-needed bread and cheese, the King quickly resolved that he needed to get rid of two things which were encumbering him. The first was his well-publicized clothing. He had taken off his George on first entering, and given it to a member of his party, Colonel Blague. (The George would enjoy adventures almost as strange as its owner’s, being buried under a heap of refuse, and finally smuggled out to France by the faithful Colonel.) Now the King emptied his pockets of gold and gave it to the servants. It was off with the buff coat and the red sash, in which he had vainly tried to rally the men at Worcester. The plan was for Charles to disguise himself in country clothes belonging to William Penderel, who was the tallest brother – a green jerkin, grey cloth breeches, leather doublet and greasy soft hat. ‘And now his majesty was à la mode the woodman.’

The King’s only remaining possessions were his socks, and those had their embroidered tops torn off. The trouble was that the new woodman – whose name was to be Will Jones – had enormous feet, to scale with his height, and even the pair of shoes found for him, torn in bits to give more room, chafed and rubbed his feet almost intolerably. On his subsequent journeys Charles’ only real moment of despair came over the agonies of his footwear.^fn4 It was much less of a sacrifice to have his famous thick black love-locks shorn. Afterwards the King instructed that all his own clothes should be flung ‘into a privy-house’ to prevent the risk of discovery.

The second potentially dangerous encumbrance of which Charles decided to rid himself was his entourage. He must survive, and he would only survive alone. He was quite clear about this in his own account to Pepys. Nor would he consider trying to join Leslie and his men, rumoured to be close at hand and making for Scotland: ‘which I thought was absolutely impossible, knowing very well that the country would all rise upon us, and that men who had deserted me when they were in good order, would never stand to me when they have been beaten’.

One of the King’s attendants was Lord Wilmot, later created Earl of Rochester (and father of that dissolute Earl who would cut a swathe through the Restoration court). Wilmot was a man of considerable style – he refused to disguise himself during the escape, saying ‘he should look frightfully in it’, a point of view which compels one’s admiration and irritation in equal parts. The only concession he eventually made was to wear a hawk on his wrist, a gentlemanly form of disguise.

Nevertheless, Wilmot, presumably because he was a much less conspicuous figure than the rest of the lords, was the only one entrusted with the King’s secret decision. He would head for London, rather than the Welsh ports or Scotland; this would be all the safer for being unexpected.

The King agreed with Wilmot on an address where they might meet there. The secrecy was made easier by the fact that the other lords, far from pressing for information, begged not to be told, ‘because they knew not what they might be forced to confess’. Indeed, very shortly afterwards nearly all the lords except Buckingham were captured. The Duke, born under a lucky star, made his way to France. But Derby was condemned to death, on the grounds that, being an Englishman, he had acted as a traitor by joining the Scots; Lauderdale, for being a foreigner and knowing no better, was let off with imprisonment.

Meanwhile the sun was up. The house was no longer safe from search. The King stole out of Whiteladies by the back door and took refuge in a nearby wood, the Spring Coppice. John Penderel went off to find a more secure hiding-place, depositing Lord Wilmot at Brinsford. Penderel’s search was fruitless, but it was on the way back, by an extremely lucky chance, that he met someone whom he recognized as the chaplain in secret attendance on another local Catholic gentleman, Thomas Whitgreave of Moseley Old Hall. This was Father John Huddleston. Penderel tested the temperature of the water. Would Whitgreave be prepared to harbour the fugitive King? The answer was encouraging, although it is an indication of the isolation of this particular piece of country that Huddleston actually thought the King had gained the day at Worcester until Penderel disillusioned him.

The King’s day in the Spring Coppice was far from tranquil. Accompanied only by Richard Penderel, he suffered from both hunger and thirst, and he also had the unpleasant experience of observing some troops on the road, evidently searching for fugitives. Only an unexpectedly heavy shower over the copse itself and nowhere else – which the King described as ‘remarkable enough’– saved him from their attentions.

While in the wood however Charles changed his mind about heading for London. Penderel could think of no ‘man of quality’ to harbour him on the way there. Besides, Charles himself knew of several ‘honest gentlemen’ in Wales. So it would be the Welsh ports after all.

Under cover of darkness the King and Penderel left the wood, and, nourished only by some more bread and cheese taken at the door of another Penderel house, set off for the Severn. They encountered several more adventures, including a miller who chased them off, shouting ‘Rogues, rogues!’ – for the ironical reason that he was harbouring a number of fugitive Royalist soldiers. Indeed, the Midlands were still in a state of chaos, with roaming soldiers of both sides, one side gradually picking off the remnants of the other. But as yet no one was quite sure exactly what had happened at Worcester, still less what had happened to the King.

This confusion contributed materially to the King’s preservation. His characteristic lolloping stride, for example, was not exactly that of a labourer. But it was not until 9 September, six days after the battle, that the first proclamation was put about seeking his capture. The day after that the reward was announced for laying hands on this ‘malicious and dangerous traitor’ – one thousand pounds, an absolutely vast sum by the standards of the time, and more than the average workman would earn in a lifetime, an unparalleled fortune to the humble people who were hiding the King. It is one of the heartening facts about the King’s escape that, in spite of all the people in the secret – it has been calculated that they numbered over sixty and ‘so many of them women!’ as a contemporary wonderingly observed – no one ever did claim this reward.⁶ Nevertheless, once the hunt was officially on for ‘Charles Stuart, son of the late Tyrant’, Charles’ danger was obviously increased. Posters were put out by Parliament seeking ‘a tall black man, over two yards high’. In view of Charles’ exceptional appearance it was lucky that so many of the English had not seen him in the flesh since boyhood, if at all.

The King spent the night of Friday, 5 September, in the barn of an old gentleman named Wolfe at Madeley, about seven miles from Whiteladies. It was then discovered that the plan of crossing the Severn was quite impractical, since a body of militia had installed themselves on the available bridges and were also guarding the boats. Mrs Wolfe’s contribution was to stain the King’s hands and face with walnut juice ‘of a reeky [smoky] colour’. The only solution was to return to the Boscobel area. They had to ford a river on the way back: Charles was a strong swimmer – it was one of the many forms of physical exercise for which he had a passion – but Richard Penderel, who could not swim at all, pronounced it to be ‘a scurvy river’. Charles remembered with pride that at least in this instance he was able to help Penderel by enabling him to cross the river safely.

They got to Boscobel at five o’clock in the morning. The house had taken its name from the Italian, bosco bello, ‘beautiful wood’, and it did indeed lie in a bosky setting, with the Forest of Brewood all about it, as early illustrations show: it had originally been built as a hunting lodge. Today the woods have receded, and the flat Midlands countryside gives a very different impression from that received by the King on the run. Boscobel’s noble past is however omnipresent, from the white stones in the cobbled garden path, commemorating his visit in Latin, to the famous oak, now standing, looking rather lonely, surrounded by a fence in a field about five hundred yards away – its covering forest having vanished long ago.^fn5

The first news which greeted the King at Boscobel was about Wilmot: he was safely stowed at Moseley Old Hall. He also learnt that a particularly gallant Royalist soldier, Major Carlis, who had stayed till the end at Worcester (‘had seen the last man killed there’), was at this very moment concealed in the thick Boscobel Wood. The Major knew that his own home nearby would undoubtedly be searched. It was thus that Carlis – or Carlos, as he has gone down to history, having changed his name later to mark his association with his sovereign – found himself in the legendary royal oak, sharing it with King Charles II.

In those days the tree was a large and particularly bushy pollard oak. It still had some space round it, however, which the King decided would give them a good view. Here the pair remained all day, the King sleeping from time to time, with his head in Carlos’ lap, on a cushion provided by the Penderels. As Charles told Pepys, ‘We see the soldiers going up and down, in the thicket of the wood, searching for persons escaped, we seeing them now and then peeping out of the wood.’ According to Hyde’s History, the King also overheard the soldiers discussing what they would do with Charles Stuart when they found him.

It was not until the evening of what must have been another very long day that the King and Carlos dared to leave their home and venture back into the house. Afterwards the Royal Oak became a cult, a symbol of royalty and romance. Medallions issued abroad before the Restoration frequently showed the King’s head on one side and the oak-tree on the obverse. After the Restoration, 29 May, Charles’s birthday, was designated Oak-Apple Day; it remained a public holiday until the 1850s, and late into the nineteenth century was celebrated in parts of England with oak-leaves in the hat and oak boughs, sometimes gilded, over the door.^fn6

The existence of a real Royal Oak has tended to obscure the fact that an oak had already long been considered to be a symbol of solid (non-revolutionary) government and establishment. It has been mentioned that in 1638, when Charles was made a Knight of the Garter, the medal struck to commemorate his installation depicted ‘the Royal Oak under a Prince’s Coronet’. A book published in 1649 (two years before the Boscobel escapade), The History of Independency, had an engraving as its preface, showing ‘The Royal Oak of Britain’, cut down by Cromwell. Another Royalist engraving of the same period shows the Royal Oak overturned, plus the prophecy ‘that it will sprout again’. The happy coincidence of this symbol and the King’s picturesque sojourn made it an easy step from here to the fertile quercine fancies of the post-Restoration years. The King prepared himself for them in exile by toying with the idea of an order of Knights of the Royal Oak.

It was at supper that night at Boscobel House that the King first heard from Humphrey Penderel of the price on his head – ‘If it were one hundred thousand pounds, it were to no more purpose,’ exclaimed the gallant Carlos instantly, and added that he would engage his soul for the reliability of all present. And it was on that same occasion that the King demonstrated how far he himself was out of touch with his putative subjects. Without thinking, he asked if he could have mutton for his supper. The Penderels had not actually tasted butcher’s meat since the christening of their eldest child: it would have attracted far too much attention to have placed a sudden lavish order. So it was left to Carlos, who, with his usual resource, went out and stuck his own dagger into a neighbour’s lamb. At least the King and Carlos both took a hand in cooking the collops: Charles ate heartily and asked ‘merrily’ afterwards who was the better cook, himself or his companion.

Yet the mutton incident was important. Like another monarch thrown out into the cold, King Lear, Charles was being forcibly exposed to ‘what wretches feel’. He had not even been shaved by a barber before, as he told William Penderel when he cut his hair. Chafing shoes, the total inability to provide a food which he had taken utterly for granted (remember the meat provided for his coronation at Scone), had their lessons for him. He had no choice but to ‘take physic, pomp’.

The night at Boscobel was spent in a priest’s hiding-place at the top of the house. Still to be inspected, if not precisely in the same seventeenth-century form, the hole is sufficiently cramped for someone of normal stature to remind one vividly how Charles was being handicapped by his height. The following day, Sunday, 7 September, was pleasanter: the King spent some of it in the garden, reading in an arbour placed on a curious ancient mound there; but although he commented favourably on the house’s ‘retiredness’, it was obviously impossible for him to rest there long. The risk of a house search only increased as the hours passed.

Charles was passed on to Moseley Old Hall, about five miles away. On his way he complained about the quality of his horse – another rude shock to one whose governor had been the great Lord Newcastle – calling it the ‘heaviest dull jade’ he had ever ridden on.

‘My liege,’ Humphrey Penderel exclaimed brightly, ‘can you blame the horse to go heavily, when he has the weight of three kingdoms on his back?’ There had been three Penderels with the King on this occasion; when the time came for them to separate, the Penderels’ duty done, the King suddenly realized that in the general need for security he had omitted to thank them properly. He called them back and said graciously, ‘My troubles make me forget myself; I thank you all.’

Once at Moseley, Charles was reunited with Wilmot, who was able to introduce him with a suitable flourish, greasy clothes notwithstanding, as ‘your master, mine, and the master of us all’. Charles’ ‘exotic’ dress had so ‘metamorphasised’ him that Wilmot would otherwise scarcely have known who he was. The King was fed. Whitgreave washed his cruelly blistered feet (Charles had stuffed the offending shoes with paper, which only made matters worse). A ‘bloody clout’ or handkerchief, with which he had staunched a nose-bleed, was carefully preserved by Father Huddleston as a relic, although Charles had made nothing of the bleeding at the time, describing such things as ‘habitual to him’. After that, Charles was cheerful or gallant enough to announce that he was ready for another march, another fight.

But his fate was not to be so public. Moseley, built in about 1600, then lay amidst its own remote agricultural estate (the conurbation of Wolverhampton has since crept up, although Moseley is still an agreeable place of historical pilgrimage). Thomas Whitgreave was a lawyer, who had fought at Naseby; he was evidently a prudent fellow, for he instantly sent away all the non-Catholics from the house. At the Restoration, in her humble petition, one Elizabeth Smith, a Catholic, referred to herself as the only servant left in the house, who had in consequence looked after both the King’s fire and his bed. And when Cromwell’s soldiers were in the town, ‘Your Majesty’s petitioner rubbed softly Your Majesty upon the feet and legs, to wake Your Majesty and warn….’ She also reminded the King that she had put sweet herbs in his privy.⁹

The upstairs bedroom, where the King was installed, had its own convenient hiding-place nearby; it was rather better situated than most, between two rooms and having a false floor with an exit door to the brew-house chimney. ‘The hole’, as Blount calls it, contained a pallet. The usual incumbent of this nook, Father John Huddleston, now enters King Charles’ story properly for the first time. Coming from a Lancashire family, and having served in the Royalist Army during the Civil War, Huddleston represented in his own person all that was best about that kind of patriotic English Catholicism which Charles was just discovering for himself.

Huddleston was outspoken, saying that the King now resembled him, being ‘liable to dangers and perils’.¹⁰ He had already shown Charles the secret chapel, ‘little but neat and decent’. Charles looked on it, crucifix, candlesticks and all, respectfully. He then observed, according to Huddleston, ‘If it please God, I come to my crown, both you and all of your persuasion shall have as much liberty as any of my subjects.’ There is no reason to doubt Huddleston’s story: Charles’ generous intention to right a wrong was certainly always there once he had encountered the sufferings – and the loyalty – of the English Catholics.

Significant also was Charles’ conversation with Huddleston on the subject of the Catholic Faith (as opposed to the problems of the recusants). Charles was encouraged to look at a Catholic catechism, probably Turbevill’s Catechism printed at Douai, and a tract called ‘A Short and Plain Way to the Faith and the Church’ by Father Huddleston’s uncle, a Benedictine monk. He described the catechism as a ‘pretty book’ and took it away with him. Of the tract, according to Huddleston, Charles spoke the memorable words: ‘I have not seen anything more plain and clear upon this subject. The arguments here drawn from succession are so conclusive, I do not see how they can be denied.’ This exchange has sometimes been cited as evidence of Charles’ early conversion to Catholicism – ignoring the public stand he kept up against it in exile. In the context, it is more plausibly regarded as evidence of Charles’ natural curiosity, coupled with politeness. He had certainly never studied the Catholic arguments before – why should he? Apart from his personal admiration for Huddleston, perhaps he was amazed to find the faith of his mother quite so reasonable.

No refuge, it was understood, would remain a safe house for very long. Besides, the net was closing in. On the Monday Boscobel was searched. The Penderels had their remaining provisions confiscated by the troops. At least Carlos escaped – it was he who would give Mary, the Princes of Orange, the first news of her brother’s safety. The next day, 9 September, the date of the first government proclamation, Whiteladies was also searched. A cornet in Cheshire had given away the secret of the King’s presence in the area. Giffard was badly man-handled, but kept his head admirably; he did not attempt to deny the visit of ‘some unknown Cavaliers’, but said that he had absolutely no idea whether the King had been amongst them.

That evening the danger was even more acute when a party of soldiers actually came to Moseley itself. The King was bundled into ‘the hole’. But Whitgreave too showed aplomb. He convinced them that his own ill-health had prevented him being involved in any of the recent Royalist dramas at Worcester and elsewhere. And the soldiers went on their way.

The next day the King and Wilmot departed for Bentley Hall, the home of a Colonel Lane. The fugitives’ desperate need was for some convincing cover story to explain their journeyings in a part of the world daily combed by inquisitive soldiery. It was discovered that Colonel Lane’s daughter, Jane, was due to visit her sister, Mrs Norton, at Abbot’s Leigh, for the birth of the latter’s impending child. If Charles went in Jane Lane’s company as a servant, he might conceivably get clean away.

Bentley lay three miles outside Walsall. Here Charles was transformed, from his somewhat improbable disguise as a woodman, up the social scale to being a servant. He was to be William Jackson, son of a neighbouring tenant, which was slightly more plausible than his previous manifestation – though only just, his gait and demeanour remaining unconvincing in either role. Besides, he did not even know how to ride on a double horse, as he was expected to do while in attendance on Jane Lane, let alone doff his hat with proper subservience.

But the little train duly clattered off on Wednesday morning (Charles used the wrong hand to hand Jane Lane up to her horse). It was on this occasion that Wilmot condescended to disguise himself with a hawk on his wrist. Otherwise they none of them presented a very romantic sight. Jane Lane’s portrait shows her to have had a full figure and a plump face, comfortable English looks rather than glamorous ones. Like another Stuart saviour, Flora Macdonald, Jane Lane possessed character and intelligence rather than haunting beauty – preferable qualities under the circumstances, except for yearners after romantic fiction.

En route between Bentley and Abbot’s Leigh, Jane Lane’s horse lost a shoe^fn7 and it was Charles’ duty to oversee its replacement. At this point the King discovered another fact for himself: the passionate loyalty of his Catholic adherents did not extend throughout England.

With characteristic bravado, Charles chatted freely to the smith as he worked, asking him, ‘What news?’

‘There is no news, except the good news of beating those rogues the Scots,’ replied the smith. This gave Charles the irresistible opportunity of asking if ‘that rogue Charles Stuart’ had been captured, who deserved to be hanged more than all the Scots for bringing them in. ‘Spoken like an honest man,’ said the smith. This too was a salutary experience.

Somewhere near Stratford the party ran into a troop of horse. Charles was all for proceeding fearlessly, as being the best defence, but Jane Lane’s brother-in-law had had previous experience of being beaten up by these roaming bands, and insisted on a detour. The King discovered how the spirits of his loyal subjects had been worn down.

At Long Marston, further on the road to Abbot’s Leigh, Charles was set by the cook to wind up the jack for roasting the meat in the fireplace. He did it clumsily, but at least he demonstrated what he had learnt at the Penderels: he explained that, being a poor tenant’s son, he seldom ate meat or used a jack.

Abbot’s Leigh, which was reached on Friday, 12 September, lay three miles beyond Bristol, and the city had to be traversed to get there – a real hazard. Jane Lane decided not even to reveal Charles’ true identity to the Nortons; she concocted a story about her servant recovering from fever and needing to be left to himself. Charles told Pepys that the tale gained plausibility from the fact that his various ordeals (including the lack of meat) had left him looking pale.

At Abbot’s Leigh the mixture of farce and danger which characterized the King’s escape continued. In the buttery Charles heard himself minutely described – except that the missing King was authoritatively pronounced to be ‘three fingers’ taller than the present Will Jackson. But when Charles discovered that one of the talkers had been in his regiment of guards, he beat a hasty retreat upstairs. He was infinitely more afraid of the fellow, now he knew him to be one of his own men, than when he had believed him to be an enemy.

Charles was correct. Later the butler of the house, one John Pope, who had been in King Charles I’s household before the Civil War, confided his suspicions privately to Jane Lane. But it turned out to be a felicitous encounter: Pope swore loyalty to the King, an oath he would keep most strictly, proving himself a resourceful and loyal servant.

*

Once again the royal party was faced with the question: whither? Pope tried in vain to find a ship at Bristol. The government would be watching the Welsh ports. Better to strike southwards, where, it will be recalled, the Western Association provided one of the few genuine Royalist networks in England, other than the Catholic underground. One of the sleepy south Dorset ports would provide the kind of inconspicuous transport to the Continent which would suit the party’s purposes. As their base, they would use Trent Manor in Somerset, home of Colonel Francis Wyndham, a founder of the Western Association and, as the brother of the former Governor of Bridgwater, a member of a family with long Royalist connections.

Of course, Jane Lane was still needed to cover the journey, and there was a distressing last-minute hitch when her sister gave birth to a still-born child; it seemed a heartless moment to be leaving her. In the end it was the King who devised the excuse: a fictitious letter from Colonel Lane, pleading illness and summoning his daughter back to his side. Wilmot wrote ahead to warn Wyndham: they all realized that he would know nothing of what had been going on ever since Worcester. It was now Tuesday, 16 September, the day on which the Council of State issued new instructions to the Committee of Examinations ‘to use the best means they can for the discovery of Charles Stuart’. That vagueness of language showed that the government too were in the dark: this imprecision would pervade their announcements for a week or two.

And it was pure bad luck that, in the event, the King could not make his escape from the Dorset coast, for the planning was good, and the geographical area was far more promising than the perilous Midlands or the conspicuous Welsh Marches. The reason for the eventual failure was the coincidental Commonwealth campaign against Charles’ old refuge, Jersey. As a result, the so-called sleepy ports of Dorset and Devon had been transformed, and there were a quite unaccustomed number of Commonwealth troops in the area.

At Trent Manor, however, lying in a lost village between high banks and steep lanes, they were not to know of this development. Trent was two or three miles north of Sherborne: it was (and is) in exceptionally deep country. You would have to know your way to find it. The manor was next to the village church: not a very fortunate locale. For when the bells began to peal unexpectedly, and Charles was sent to know the reason, he was told it was for the ‘joyful news’ of the King’s death.

In happier days he might have observed, like Mark Twain, that the news was much exaggerated: the wit was quite in keeping with his own. In fact, all the King said at the time was, ‘Alas, poor people!’ It was a pleasanter moment when he greeted Colonel Wyndham on arrival: ‘Frank, Frank, how dost thou do?’ Frantic enquiries were immediately set in hand for a boat, for it was the same problem: how long could the King remain, without word of his whereabouts getting out? Charles divided his time between yet another hidey-hole (bequeathed by the Wyndham’s Catholic ancestors, the Gerards) and the Colonel’s mother’s chamber, the most retired room in the house.

Lyme – the Regis came later, as a reward for its loyalty – was the obvious port for the getaway. It was small, but not too small, and there were plenty of boats sailing in and out of it, plying trade with the Continent. Henry Peters, the Colonel’s valet, was entrusted with the commission, and he entered into negotiations with a Captain Ellesdon for getting away a mythical party of gentlemen, one of whom was said to be fleeing from his creditors.

Some confusion surrounds Ellesdon’s subsequent behaviour: he found it necessary to rebut accusations of treachery after the Restoration. It was alleged that his wealthy Presbyterian wife had corrupted him. But Clarendon accepted Ellesdon’s innocence.¹¹ He certainly showed every initial sign of trying to help the fugitives; and the strongest proof that he did not change his mind, on discovery of the King’s identity, is the fact that Charles continued to elude capture. Ellesdon was assuredly in a position to put the finger on him most efficiently, had he wanted to do so.

Since there was a fair at Lyme, Charmouth, a nearby fishing village set in the wide bay which ends at Bridport, was selected. There, on Monday, 22 September, it was finally arranged that one Limbry, the master of a coasting vessel, would convey them to France for £60, although the tide would not let him sail until eleven o’clock that night. Peters, a practical man, immediately engaged a room in a Charmouth inn where the King and Wilmot could lurk; as a romantic, or at least a person of imagination, he explained the need for this limited late-night rendezvous by saying that he was assisting a runaway bridal couple from Devonshire.

Charles had said goodbye to Jane Lane. He arrived at Charmouth that night, riding double with another young lady, Juliana Coningsby, a Wyndham cousin. Her existence gave plausibility to the wedding story at the inn. Charles had already met Ellesdon at a lonely house in the hills behind Bridport which cut off the coastal strip. He gave him a gold coin through which he had personally bored a hole – one of the activities with which he whiled away the confined hours at Trent Manor.

With the King and Miss Coningsby in the inn at Charmouth, Wyndham, Peters and Wilmot went down to the shore and awaited the ship. Nothing happened. The tide came in, went out, and there was not a trace of Limbry. Cold, disconsolate and perplexed, they were forced in the end to return to the inn and confess failure. The reason for Limbry’s non-appearance was in fact a quite ridiculous marital escapade: his wife, aware of the government’s proclamation about Royalists, suspected Limbry as being up to no good with his nocturnal project (although she did not conceive it was the King he was helping). She followed him, and ended by locking him in his bedroom. In vain the captain raged. She would not budge.

In the absence of any explanation, however, the royal party were left with the problem of their next move. It was Charles, characteristically, who thought it the best course to head for Bridport, a much larger town, and stuffed with troops on their way to Jersey and Guernsey. There he could go ‘blundering’ among the soldiers and keep his rendezvous with Wilmot. Suiting the action to the word, he pushed his way through the concourse to the largest inn, with his horse, annoying the troops in the process. Bearing in mind that Charles had spent much time in the West Country only six years before, this must have been his moment of maximum danger, excepting only the session in the oak. He could not rely on the anonymity he had enjoyed in the Midlands. One ostler did remark that his face was strangely familiar. Charles kept cool, even when he discovered that the ostler had worked close to the house of a Mr Potter who had entertained the Royalists at Exeter during the Civil War.

‘Friend,’ he replied easily, ‘you must certainly have seen me then at Mr Potter’s for I served him above a year.’ The two ‘servants’ parted with jolly vows to drink a pot of beer together at their next meeting. In spite of all this bravado, when Wilmot, based at another inn, joined Charles, they decided that the best course was to get back to Trent Manor. There in effect they would start all over again.

In the meantime the danger of discovery had not diminished. Another ostler, that of the Charmouth inn, had become very suspicious as he pondered on the horseshoes of the royal party, those luggage labels of the past. He recognized one as having been forged in Worcestershire. A servant who had been kissed by the King was told sardonically that she was now ‘a maid of honour’. Luckily the ostler was a pious Presbyterian and took a long time at his prayers. By the time the hue and cry was raised, and the local magistrate had alerted the troops, the scent had gone cold. The soldiery set off in the direction of Dorchester – that is, to the east of Bridport.

But the King, Wyndham and Wilmot were by now about five miles north. As a matter of fact they were lost; Wyndham had to ask the name of the village where they decided to spend the night (it was Broadwindsor). Here, occupying upper rooms under false names, the King and his party got involved in a hilarious caper, since by complete coincidence a party of about forty soldiers on their way to Jersey also decided to put up in and around the same inn. One of their female followers gave birth to a baby during the night: the village was selfishly concerned that the baby should not be abandoned there, as a charge on the parish. In the hullabaloo which followed the presence of the King remained undetected.

By the next night, 24 September, the King was back at Trent Manor; here he was to remain for the next two weeks while deliberations were made for the next throw. Trent Manor was later described by Colonel Wyndham’s wife Anne in her account of the King’s escape as ‘the Ark in which God shut him up when the floods of rebellion had covered the face of his dominions’.¹² His Ark certainly kept him safe enough. The odd rumour that there was an escaped Royalist staying there was scotched by Wilmot appearing at church with Wyndham; if there was any Royalist about, it was Wilmot. In between, Wilmot was busying himself about the Salisbury area, negotiating for a boat somewhere along the south coast.

In the end, it was found necessary to go as far as Sussex for the sake of safe embarkation, the Jersey campaign having ruled out Southampton. On Tuesday, 6 October, considerably rested, the King set out yet again with Juliana Coningsby on a double horse. He was heading for Heale House, near Amesbury, the home of Mrs Amphillis Hyde, ‘a worthy discreet loyal lady’ and the widow of a cousin of Edward Hyde, as the first step on his journey. For all her discretion, Mrs Hyde created a moment of tension at dinner by pressing her attentions on the King, which was extremely tactless in view of his deliberately dingy clothing. But there was a good day spent at Stonehenge: ‘We stayed looking upon the stones for some time,’ as the antiquarian Charles told Pepys, before the royal party doubled back to Heale House.

In all, Charles was there five days, using yet another hidey-hole: it was no wonder that the King, once restored, would be a prey to claustrophobia, and that sauntering in parks at his ease would be his idea of daily recreation.

It was not until 13 October that Charles was able to set out on his adventures once again with the hope of a Sussex boat. Wilmot had contacted a useful ally, Colonel Gunter of Racton, near Chichester, one who exclaimed, ‘God be blessed!’ when told that the King was well and safe. Charles spent the night on the way with Gunter’s sister at Hambledon in Hampshire. Her husband, not being in the secret, became gravely worried by Charles’ short hair, lest it denote ‘a roundhead rogue’. On the next day Charles finally reached Brighthelmstone (as Brighton was then known) and was installed at the George Inn, on the site of the present King’s Head in West Street.

Now everything seemed to be going smoothly. Gunter had fixed up a boat with a merchant named Francis Mansell, by the simple expedient of getting him drunk: the payment was to be sixty pieces of silver. Officially, his cargo was billed as a party of illegal duellists. The master of the promised brig, Captain Tattershall, also met the King. He recognized him immediately, perhaps because Charles’ disguise had gone up in the world. From a servant he had turned into ‘something like the meaner sort of gentleman’. The Captain held his peace until they were alone, and then fell to his knees and kissed the King’s hand, declaring that he hoped to be a lord and his wife a lady when the great day came.

The rendezvous was for nearby Shoreham: Charles spent his last night in England at Bramber, a little village just to the north of it. Yet even at this stage there was danger: Charles narrowly escaped running into some Commonwealth soldiers in the area. But he did finally make the appointed hour at Shoreham harbour.^fn8

And so at last it came about. On Wednesday, 15 October, at four o’clock in the morning, King Charles II finally departed England’s shores. He had been on the run for six weeks; he had slept on pallet beds, slept in trees, crouched in innumerable hiding-places, his lanky frame doubled up in holes for recusant priests, his large body fed by the food of the poor. In all this time, his spirit never failed. Colonel Gunter, the last of his protectors, made the same point: he was amazed at the King’s unwavering courage – that he never showed the slightest sign of apprehension. The Colonel compared the King to Elisha: his eyes must surely have been opened by God, to glimpse a heavenly host all around him. Moreover, more mundanely, they had got him away in the nick of time. Only two hours after Charles left, a very different boat was searching all around – for ‘a tall black man, 6' 2" high’.

But by this time, by the mercy of Providence (and it is difficult to leave out the part of Providence in this extraordinary story of hair’s-breadth escapes and near misses) the King was at sea. The brig was named The Surprise. She headed in the first instance for the Isle of Wight, on the excuse of selling coal along the south coast: she had originated at the coal port of Pittenweem, where it will be recalled that Charles had been lauded after his Scottish coronation – was it only six months before? His identity on board seems to have been an open secret. A sailor impudently blew the smoke of his pipe in Charles’ face and, on being reproved, retorted that a cat might look at the King. Nevertheless, Tattershall was careful to cover his tracks – after all, he had a living to make under Commonwealth sway. Some of the sailors were bribed to persuade Tattershall to change his route so as to set down these so-called ‘merchants’ in France, and the Captain duly allowed himself to be publicly convinced.

The journey was a straightforward one. The wind blew from the north all night long, so that the brig merely had to run before it. Just before dawn the French coast came into sight. There was one more alarm – the look of a ship which might have been a privateer. The King and Wilmot were put into a cock-boat, manned by a Quaker named Carver, who was the brig’s mate. It was Carver who finally carried Charles ashore on his back, at Fécamp, near Rouen.^fn9

With many other good deeds, that of Carver would be remembered at the Restoration, along with the common sense and kindness of Jane Lane, the sterling worth of Huddleston and Wyndham, the enterprise of Gunter, the nobility of the Penderels, and on down the list of sixty people who knew something about the escape. Even Mansell, who had provided that Shoreham ship under the influence of alcohol, received a pension. The Surprise itself survived to be turned into a yacht and renamed the Royal Escape. One list of people to be rewarded was drawn up in the King’s own hand; it included ‘the gentleman in whose house I was first received, whose name I have forgot’ (Charles Giffard).¹⁴ But the man himself was not forgotten, nor was the experience.

Gratitude would come like a golden shower. Jane Lane’s benefits included a watch from the King himself, a jewel worth a thousand pounds (which was proposed during a debate in the House of Lords) and a yearly pension of a similar amount. The loyal Penderel brothers were introduced at Court after William had impetuously greeted the King in St James’s Park; their children were assisted; they too received pensions, granted in perpetuity.

Opportunity for that gratitude lay far ahead.

One contemporary likened the escape of King Charles to the feat of David vanquishing the Goliath Cromwell.¹⁵ The parallel was not exact. While the King had certainly escaped against enormous odds, England still lay in the grip of Goliath. But Charles could at least echo the words of David: ‘Thou hast delivered me from the violent man; therefore I will sing praises to Thy name, O Lord.’

On the very day of his embarkation, the Earl of Derby, last seen before dawn at Whiteladies, was executed. Had he been captured, Charles Stuart the younger, a tall black man over two yards high, would likely have met the same fate.

1 There have been many fictional versions of the escape, from Sir Walter Scott’s Woodstock to Georgette Heyer’s Royal Escape. None of them are more exciting than the true story.

2 There is a clear recent summary of the subject and the sources in Richard Ollard, The Escape of Charles II, 1966. The main sources are most accessibly printed in Allan Fea’s two volumes, The Flight of the King, 1897, and After Worcester Fight, 1904. In Charles II’s Escape from Worcester: A Collection of Narratives Assembled by Samuel Pepys, edited by William Matthews, 1966, Father Huddleston’s original account – A Brief Account of His Majestie’s Escape from Worcester, etc. – is printed for the first time.

3 One previous Giffard had played a part in Royal Stuart fortunes: a sixteenth-century scion of the family had acted as a double-agent in the sad story of the Babington Plot, resulting in the betrayal of Mary Queen of Scots. The seventeenth-century Giffards fully atoned for this blot on their history.

4 In exile the King became, no doubt as a result, a lavish orderer of shoes, which had to be specially made in Paris. He was also very careful about their fit. In July 1656 they were to be ‘a little bigger than last time’. He remained aware of others’ problems in that direction: in 1683 he commented on Sir John Reresby’s thin shoes and told him to get a stronger pair so as not to catch cold.⁵

5 The balance of the evidence suggests that this particular tree is actually a descendant of the royal oak, a successful sapling rather than the oak itself. Sightseers took their toll of the original tree, reported in 1660 as being of ‘a firm sound trunk … its deserved popular growth to outlast time itself’. A wall had to be built, later replaced by a palisade. Eighteenth-century accounts describe the growth of a sapling near by, as well as the dilapidation of the original tree. Later accounts describe two trees, then only one.⁷

6 The author has traced several local continuances of this pleasant practice to the present time. The Royal Stuart Society also regularly celebrates 29 May with a dinner, and the various houses of the King’s refuge hold ceremonies from time to time, associated with the descendants of his helpers. Founder’s Day at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, will be referred to later.

7 Probably not at Bromsgrove, as is generally stated, but at Longborough, according to the convincing recent research of Mr J. F. Downes in his unpublished manuscript The Strawberry Roan.

8 This extended much further east from the present haven, making the Hove Basin his most probable point of embarkation.¹³

9 In 1977, the Year of the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, a commemorative yacht race was organized between Brighton and Fécamp to celebrate the escape of King Charles II, sponsored by the Old Ship Hotel, Brighton, and the Sussex Yacht Club.