6

‘To Seek My Safety’

‘Liberty being that which in all times hath been, but especially now is the common theme and desire of all men; common reason shewes that Kings less than any should endure captivity.’

From Charles I’s letter to the Speaker of the House

of Commons,11 November 1647

On the evening of 5 November, while Londoners enjoyed a spectacular firework display at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the king was already pondering escape from Hampton Court. With his freedom to ride out already curtailed, he had been further agitated by several round-about reports of plots upon his life, and the dismissal of Ashburnham, Berkeley and other of his attendants four days earlier had only served to increase his sense of isolation. As early as 28 September, moreover, the Moderate Intelligencer was reporting Colonel Whalley’s fears that he ‘could no more keep the King (if he had a mind to goe) than a bird in a pound’. The sleep of the Princess Elizabeth had been disturbed, it seems, by the pacing of sentries in Hampton Court’s Long Gallery, and when Whalley refused to shift their position until her father had agreed to renew his ‘engagement’ not to escape, he was met with defiance. ‘To renew the engagement was a point of honour,’ the colonel was told, according to his own testimony to the Speaker of the House of Commons. ‘You had my engagement,’ the king continued, ‘I will not renew it. Keep your guards.’ And with this emphatic response, the prisoner had rendered himself a free moral agent, liberated from all promises made both by himself and others on his behalf. In consequence, even a ‘crackbrained Phanatick’ like Whalley could appreciate the threat, but his appeal to be relieved of his duties as jailer and custodian was firmly rejected by Fairfax, and he was duly left to cope with neither the resources nor the authority to impose the kind of restraint necessary for his task.

On or about Saturday, 6 November, therefore, Colonel William Legge, who had been allowed to remain in post at Hampton Court, was dispatched to Jack Ashburnham’s current residence – an inn at Thames Ditton – with news of the king’s intention to escape and instructions that the courtier was to make the necessary arrangements. Surprised by the turn of events and uncertain of his royal master’s intended destination, Ashburnham then decided to consult Sir John Berkeley, who was invited to dinner, along with Legge, the following day. But when Legge arrived on Sunday, Ashburnham was still in doubt and found little consolation after asking for Charles’ own preferences, which consisted of flight to either the Continent or Jersey. For escape overseas entailed considerable risk of capture en route, and there was the further difficulty of arranging a ship for the purpose, which applied with equal force to any journey to Jersey. Equally, the king’s departure would leave his supporters in England leaderless at the very time when friendly foreign powers were in any case far too preoccupied with their own peace negotiations to offer any hope of meaningful action on his behalf.

Nor was any further inspiration on offer from Berkeley when he arrived sometime after Legge and news of the planned escape was broached to him as all three men were about to take dinner. Though he believed that escape by sea might indeed be possible, he remained vague on details and possible destinations, and it was left instead to Ashburnham to formulate his own plan – which he did with growing enthusiasm as the meal progressed. For the king now had access to the commissioners of the Scottish Parliament – Lauderdale, Loudon and the ever candid Earl of Lanark – who had somewhat belatedly made an approach to him at Hampton Court. If these could be persuaded to meet Charles at the Lord Mayor’s house in London, Ashburnham reasoned, and a suitable agreement was forthcoming, the support of City Presbyterians might also be enlisted, at which point, a further message could be sent to the House of Lords, proposing a session in the king’s presence. Though the army, divided as it was, could be relied upon to mobilise in response, it was nevertheless likely, in Ashburnham’s opinion, to take at least ten days to do so effectively, by which time the capital would be secure, the support of the Scots guaranteed and the whole momentum of events decisively shifted in the king’s favour.

Plainly, the plan was not without its attractions, for Legge at once returned to Hampton Court, where Charles found it both persuasive and timely, since Major Huntington, one of the attendant army officers sympathetic to his plight, had been fuelling his fears of agitators and offering, by coincidence, to find a ‘secure lodging’ for him in the City. When Charles approached the Scottish commissioners as recommended, moreover, he found them generally amenable, so that by the morning of Monday, 8 November, Ashburnham and Berkeley were already visiting the army’s headquarters at Putney with the intention of laying a false trail by collecting permits enabling them to leave the country and ‘return beyond the seas’. Only when Berkeley expressed concerns on the return journey from Putney, indeed, did there seem to be any hint of failure. Suspecting that the army still remained in effective control and concluding, therefore, that bloodshed was bound to result, Berkeley had in fact reached the conclusion that any resultant violence would be blamed upon the king. His misgivings were soon infecting Ashburnham, who, in scrabbling for a new alternative, raised the prospect instead of escape to the Isle of Wight, claiming in the process that he had recently met the Governor, Colonel Robert Hammond, and detected signs that he might prove helpful.

Scarcely more enthusiastic than before, however, Berkeley then returned to the view that it might be preferable for the king to leave the country altogether, at which point Ashburnham himself demurred. Since the army was holding its rendezvous the following week, he objected, Charles would only strengthen the hands of the agitators by flight, and do so, furthermore, before precise terms had been finalised with the Scots. ‘The World would laugh at us,’ he declared, ‘if we quitted the Army before we had agreed with the Scots.’ And the fact that the Scottish commissioners were already abandoning the scheme for co-operation, even as Ashburnham spoke, could not have demonstrated his point more conclusively. For, as the two men were grappling with their apprehensions on the road from Putney, the Scottish lords at Hampton Court, anticipating a prickly reaction from their Parliament in Edinburgh, were earnestly informing Charles that while they were prepared to endorse his escape as private individuals, they could not act officially, since any action they undertook was likely to be disowned by the Church party at home.

To complicate matters further, Charles had also raised the possibility of an escape to Berwick, which met with an altogether warmer response from his Scottish audience. The Earl of Lanark, indeed, who had listened in silence until this point, now begged the king to adopt a course which from his perspective offered so many advantages. At Berwick, after all, Charles would still be residing in England and therefore untainted by claims from elements within the army that he had abandoned his kingdom. No less importantly, the town was capable of stout defence and near enough to the border, in any case, for the king to make a prudent withdrawal to Scotland, if necessary. This alone, of course, should have been enticement enough for a man bereft of options and in growing fear for his life, though Charles’ memories of previous mistreatment at Scottish hands remained as vivid as ever, and the prospect of delivering himself once more to their protection swiftly palled after Legge had visited Ashburnham on Tuesday, 9 November, and returned with further information about escape to the Isle of Wight.

Although Ashburnham remained of the opinion that Colonel Hammond was likely to be sympathetic upon their arrival, he had now reached the conclusion that Charles should first take shelter with Sir John Oglander at his house at Nunwell in the east of the island, since Oglander was not only a confirmed Royalist but also the island’s erstwhile Deputy Lieutenant. From Nunwell, the king could still maintain contact with the army’s officers through Hammond, but since the army had no units on the island itself, he would be free from the threat of extremists. As at Berwick, he would be remaining within the kingdom, thereby maintaining the morale of his supporters, and the door would also be kept conveniently ajar for future negotiations with Parliament or indeed the Scots. If, moreover, any section of the fleet were to desert his enemies, its help could easily reach him. Even the prospect of Hammond’s possible non-co-operation seemed less than disastrous, indeed, since Ashburnham was convinced an escape from the island to some safe haven abroad was unlikely to prove too formidable.

Less than forty-eight hours after its conception, therefore, the original escape plan involving the Scots had not only been abandoned but entirely replaced by a new alternative, which, while offering the king fresh hope, also no doubt stirred certain misgivings. He had, it is true, made four visits to the island in happier times and was therefore comparatively well acquainted with it, though the last occasion had been all of nineteen years ago. Likewise, though he knew that there were ardent Royalists like Sir John Oglander among the island’s inhabitants, he was no less keenly aware that the outbreak of war in 1642 had seen his support quickly submerged when surrender occurred on 24 August after no more than a single shot had been fired. Oglander indeed had noted the king’s disappointment at Oxford only a year later. When hostilities began, he observed, the king ‘had more Confidence of the Isle of Wight, that they woold have stood for him, than of any other partes of his kyngdome, but now by his experience he fownd fewe honest men there’.

Yet time was of the essence, and after Berkeley had endorsed the proposal and Legge had hurried back to Hampton Court to put it to Charles, everything hinged upon the dependability or otherwise of the island’s Governor, Robert Hammond. Still only 26 and a cousin of Cromwell, Hammond had already enjoyed a distinguished career in the service of Parliament – culminating in the command of an infantry regiment in the New Model Army – and stood as living proof that, where talent and loyalty were present in abundance, age was no bar to advancement. He was the second son of Robert Hammond of Chertsey, Surrey, and had matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, on 20 May 1636, aged 15, before leaving the university without taking a degree. Like many young men of his generation, however, the war would be his making, for in the summer of 1642 he was listed as a lieutenant in the army destined for Ireland, and on 6 July obtained a commission as captain of an infantry company of 200 men, to be levied in London and the adjoining counties. Nor was this the end of his rapid progress, for on 11 March 1643, he was appointed a captain in the Earl of Essex’s regiment of cuirassiers, after which he was singled out for special praise during the capture of Tewkesbury in June 1644.

Such were Hammond’s merits, in fact, that even an unfortunate incident in the streets of Gloucester that October did nothing to block his progress. For a quarrel involving a certain Major Grey had led not only to a duel in which Grey was killed, but a subsequent court-martial for Hammond himself. The result, however, was a unanimous acquittal on 28 November, on the grounds that the victor had acted in self-defence, and a further promotion to the rank of colonel in 1645. Thereafter, at the Battle of Naseby, Hammond’s regiment formed part of the reserve, and he was actively involved in the storming of Bristol and Dartmouth and the capture of Powderham Castle and St Michael’s Mount, as well as the Battle of Torrington, which, in February 1646, had effectively ended Royalist resistance in the West Country. Sixteen months earlier, moreover, he had experienced the other side of war after being captured during the siege of Basing House, though when Cromwell eventually subdued the garrison it was Hammond who found himself sent up to Westminster to give account of the victory and he, too, who found himself voted the sum of £200 by the House of Commons to recoup his losses as a prisoner.

Yet just as Hammond’s talents stretched well beyond the field of battle, he was likewise no mere mannequin, slavishly following orders and avoiding all contention. As Governor of Exeter in 1646, he acquired valuable administrative experience, and by 1647 had become an influential voice in the framing of army policy. When Parliament required him to serve in Ireland in March 1647, however, he proved refractory, and sided increasingly with his fellow officers during their ongoing struggle with Westminster that summer. According to Denzil Holles, in fact, he ‘stood upon his pantoufles’ in face of parliamentary pressure and ‘stipulated such Terms as no Prince or foreign State that had but given an assistance could have stood upon higher’. On 1 April, he appeared in person at the bar of the House of Commons to answer for his conduct in permitting the circulation of the army’s petition against disbandment in his regiment, only 400 of whom were subsequently willing to serve in Ireland, and he also signed the vindication of the officers presented to Parliament later that month, as well as the letter of the officers presented to the City on 10 June. During the crucial army debates at Saffron Walden church in mid-May, moreover, he experienced a well-advertised brush with Colonel Sheffield, who was in favour of accepting Parliament’s terms.

By the summer of 1647, therefore, Robert Hammond was to all appearances a hardline critic of parliamentary policy, and in this capacity became one of those appointed to treat with Parliament on behalf of the army on 1 July. But the more aggressive activity of the Levellers soon proved no less intolerable, it seems, than the machinations of MPs at Westminster, and as the summer progressed, threats of force by radical elements within the army were once again raising the colonel’s moral hackles, leading him to seek and obtain release from active military service on the grounds that ‘he found the Army resolved to break all promises to the King and he would have nothing to do with such perfidies’. Nor was it any small measure of Hammond’s residing reputation that on 3 September 1647, no less a figure than Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke, who since 1642 had been Governor of the Isle of Wight, duly announced to the House of Lords that Thomas Fairfax, by his authority as commander-in-chief, had commissioned Hammond to replace him. Offering no resistance, Herbert duly requested that the Lords accept his own resignation, and asked them to pass an ordinance appointing his successor, which was accomplished on 6 September.

According to the contemporary account of Anthony Wood, only one day before Hammond’s departure for his new appointment, he was introduced directly to the king at Hampton Court by his uncle Henry, who happened to be a royal chaplain. There, it seems, he was recommended to Charles ‘as a penitent convert … which his majesty taking well, he gave him his hand to kiss’. It was only the day after, it seems, that Ashburnham had his fateful meeting with Hammond, which convinced him too of the colonel’s potential as an ally. Encountering him ‘upon the Highway near Kingston’ shortly after he had begun the journey to take up his new post, Ashburnham found him ‘not very averse to his Majesty’. Indeed, Hammond made it clear, we are told, that ‘hee was going down to his Government, because he found the Armie was resolved to break all promises with the King, and that he would have nothing to doe with such perfidious actions’.

If so, then Hammond was hardly alone in his sentiments, for by now, of course, Cromwell and other senior figures within the army were being openly decried for visiting the king to ‘kneele and kisse and fawne upon him’, and there are other indications, too, of Hammond’s comparative moderation. ‘He is an Independent,’ reported one Venetian observer writing from London to Paris, ‘but of those who are in favour with the king, with liberty of conscience, and not of the extreme party.’ Equally, a Royalist news-sheet of the day, Mercurius Elencticus, noted, albeit grudgingly, that ‘Hammond is a Man that hath usually trod in the Circle of a Civill life, and is observ’d not to have admitted of such dangerous Principles, nor been so violent, either against the Cause or Person of the King or others of his Fraternitie’. Even Sir John Oglander, for that matter, who was hardly inclined under most circumstances to speak kindly of Roundhead officers, acknowledged Hammond to be ‘a Gentleman and olso yonger sonn to a Gentleman’.

Plainly, then, with a potentially sympathetic Governor in place, Ashburnham’s recommendation of escape to the Isle of Wight was not without appeal, though Charles remained hesitant, and as his anxiety grew, he resorted to altogether more suspect sources of counsel. In particular, he seems to have asked the ever-willing Jane Whorwood to pick her way at great danger through the crowded streets of London towards the corner house opposite Strand Bridge, where the astrologer William Lilly conducted his fashionable and lucrative practice. Certainly no Royalist, Lilly had spent the war in the capital waging battles of his own with the Oxford soldier-astrologer George Wharton, with whom he competed avidly in a sordid quest for money derived from fear, loss and uncertainty. His surviving case notes deal with loved ones missing in battle or through exile or imprisonment, requests from Royalists seeking the fate of the king, as well as consultations involving a range of health problems and everyday inconveniences, including the recovery of a mislaid cloak in Covent Garden. In all cases, Lilly consulted his charts, wove complex mathematical webs to confound his clients and, as occasion demanded, called upon other more idiosyncratic techniques of ‘philomathy’, including the counting of pock marks.

Even hard-headed souls like Thomas Fairfax were not above seeking Lilly’s advice, it seems, and though ‘he understood it not’, the astrologer would nevertheless be taken to the siege of Colchester in 1648 to bolster army morale. Hugh Peter, the radical chaplain, checked that his almanacks were ‘lawful and agreeable to God’s word’, while more moderate Puritan divines were also prepared to accept a clear distinction between what Lilly practised and the forbidden arts of magic and necromancy, since his procedures involved no ‘charms, sorceries or enchantments’. Though a certain Dorothy Osborne dismissed him in 1654 as ‘worse than an old woman that passes for a witch, a simple impostor’, Cromwell was prepared to pay him £250 for his services, while the king furnished him with at least twenty gold coins for a series of consultations with Jane Whorwood, whom the astrologer referred to in his notes as ‘Doowrohw Lady’ by reversing her surname. On 2 May 1647, she had sounded him out on an unrecorded matter, but on 3 June, Lilly noted a meeting involving ‘domina ex Oxford de amico’ (a lady from Oxford about a friend) as well as a further discussion, three days later, ‘de exercito’ (concerning the army). Equally intriguingly, there is a request, in mid-June, for Lilly to determine the likelihood of agreement between Parliament and the army, while in July, just as Charles was involved in talks with army generals, three other unnamed clients consulted the astrologer ‘de rege’ (about the king).

Even before Jane Whorwood’s final visit to his premises, then, it appears that William Lilly was doing good business from his most prestigious client’s predicament, for while Charles would later confess that ‘I do not care for him’, since ‘he hath always been against me’, he also freely acknowledged that the widely admired stargazer ‘understands astrology as well as any man in Europe’. When Lilly now peered at Whorwood through a reluctantly opened crack in the doorway of his premises on the site of what is now the abandoned Aldwych tube station, he was about to be questioned on the most delicate of all issues. In view of the astrologer’s known sympathies, it was a measure of Charles’ desperation, of course, that he had decided to consult him at all, and to do so on the matter of his impending escape involved what can only be considered a truly remarkable gamble. Yet whispers of poisoning, talk of trials and the ongoing agonies of determining a safe haven had pushed him to the point of no return, so that now, it seems, he would take any risk for peace of mind.

The interview with Whorwood which ensued is described, more-over, in Lilly’s own History of His Life and Times, which was dedicated to his patron Elias Ashmole, and to whom he refers here as ‘Esquire’:

Upon the King’s intention to escape, and with his consent, Madam Whorwood (whom you know very well, Esquire) came to receive my judgement, viz. In what quarter of this nation he might be most safe, and not to be discovered until himself pleased. When she came to my door, I told her I would not let her come in to my house, for I buried a maidservant of the plague very lately. ‘I fear not the plague, but the pox,’ quoth she; so up she went. After erection of the figure [astrological chart], I told her about twenty (or thereabout) miles from London and in Essex, I was certain he might continue undiscovered. She liked my judgement very well; and being herself of a sharp judgement, remembered a place in Essex about that distance, where was an excellent house, and all conveniences for his reception.

Undeterred not only by the threat of detection but by the direct threat of plague as well, Whorwood had, then, once again fully earned the praise heaped upon her as ‘the most loyal person to King Charles in his miseries as any woman in England’. She had sounded Lilly out, stood alongside him in his consulting chamber as he ‘erected the figure’ and identified a safe residence in Essex in accordance with the astrologer’s findings – possibly at the Elsenham manor of Alderman Thomas Adams, who had just given Whorwood £500 in gold for the king’s cause, or at Barringtons, the Chigwell home of the banker to the Royalists, Robert Abbott. Years later, Lilly would remember her earthy riposte about fearing the pox rather than the plague as a characteristically strong-willed refusal to take no for an answer when he had tried to bar her from entry. He had, after all, been house-bound by plague for seven weeks, as a result of the loss of two of his servants. But Jane Whorwood was nothing if not intrepid. Thereafter, she had risked all once more, making her way back along the river to Hampton Court, probably cloaked and hooded against the cold and no doubt haunted all the while by the possibility of her betrayal, to furnish the king with the all-important information he required.

By the time of her arrival, however, as Lilly records in the rest of his account, events had already overtaken her. ‘Away she went early next morning to Hampton Court to acquaint his Majesty,’ Lilly tells us. ‘But see the misfortune,’ he continues, for the king, ‘either guided by his own approaching hard fate, or misguided by Ashburnham, went away in the night time westward, and surrendered himself to Hammond in the Isle of Wight.’ The final straw, it seems, may well have been a mysterious letter sent to Charles on 11 November, warning him of an imminent assassination attempt and signed only ‘E.R.’ Now known almost certainly to have been written by Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Lilburne, the altogether more moderate brother of ‘Freeborn’ John the Leveller, the letter had been written on 9 November and passed on to the king by Whalley, with predictable results. For, while some of the king’s circle considered it a ruse, its contents were hardly able to be lightly ignored, particularly when it is remembered that Cromwell himself had heard similar ‘rumours abroad of some intended attempt on his Majesty’s person’, and warned his cousin Whalley to ‘have a care of your guards’, since such an assault upon the king’s life ‘would be accounted a most horrid act’.

Providing specific detail on stirrings within the army and thereby confirming all his worst suspicions, the anonymous letter that Charles now read, ran as follows:

May it please your Majesty.

In discharge of my duty I cannot omit to acquaint you that my brothers at a meeting last night with eight or nine Agitators; who in debate of the obstacle which did most hinder the speedy effecting of their design, did conclude it was your Majesty. And as long as your Majesty doth live it would be so: And therefore did resolve for the good of the Kingdom, to take your life away and that to that action they were well assured, that Mr Dell and Mr Peters, two of their preachers, would willingly bear them company, for they had often said to their Agitators, your Majesty is but a dead dog. My prayers are for your Majesty’s safety, but I do too much fear, it cannot be whilst you are in those hands.

I wish with my soul your Majesty were at my house in Broad Street, where I am confident I could keep you private till this storm were over, but beg your Majesty’s pardon, and shall not presume to offer it as an advice, it is only constant zeal to your service, who am,

Your most dutiful subject, E.R.

Whether the offer of help was genuine and whether the house in Broad Street was indeed a prospective safe haven remains unknown, but Charles by now had no need of either, since his own plans were already in place, and he had both the motive and the means to enact them. Now firmly established among the army radicals at Putney as the ‘Chief Delinquent’ and biblical ‘Man of Blood’, there was cause enough for escape even had his life not been in direct danger, as he would soon confirm in the letter he left for Whalley after his departure. Whalley’s conviction that he could not hold his prisoner, should he wish to gain his freedom, had not receded. ‘It was impossible for me to keep the king,’ he would complain later, ‘he having such liberty and such Bedchamber men about him, his ancient servants.’ Nor did the presence of the Scots at Hampton Court ease the colonel’s concerns. Ashburnham himself had complained to him that ‘no other language is spoken in the court but Scotch’, and there was general recognition that Charles’ circle was ‘so much scottifyed’ that ‘there would be workings to get the king away’.

Not even added manpower, for that matter, could set Whalley’s mind at rest, since the escape occurred, according to a contemporary Venetian source, at the very time that there were ‘foot and horse guards being set’. Always a palace rather than a prison, Hampton Court appears, in effect, to have been a honeycomb of private apartments, inter-connected chambers, anterooms, galleries, staircases, towers and turrets. While the prisoner continued to be accorded such deference and privacy by virtue of his royal rank, Whalley’s actual control would continue to remain little more than nominal. Unable to keep the king under the kind of ‘close watch’ that was necessary within his own rooms, and knowing full well that retainers like Firebrace, Maule and Murray were still on hand to assist in any escape attempt, the captor had become to all intents a passive spectator in events that he knew to be unfolding around him. There was, indeed, an almost agonising inevitability about the embarrassment awaiting Whalley as he strove in vain to impose some semblance of genuine security upon Hampton Court’s sprawling confines.

The section of the palace in which Charles was housed was demolished, in fact, during the reign of William III, and replaced by Wren’s south and east fronts, but a rough plan of the configuration of the original building has been preserved at Oxford, and its external appearance is shown in a picture painted for Samuel Pepys in 1669. At the western end stood the guardroom near the main staircase, and at the other end a backstairs leading down to a courtyard. Sentries were also posted in the Long Gallery, which ran past the back of the king’s apartments and into which a number of adjacent rooms opened. Likewise, in the grounds outside stood several towers and turrets connected by other galleries stretching in an irregular line from the palace’s south-east angle to the river, where a large building with stairs and a water gate was located. From this, the so-called ‘Water Gallery’ communicated with another building known as the ‘Great Round Arbour’, behind both of which lay ‘The King’s Long Gallery’, jutting into the park in an easterly direction at right angles to the other galleries, at the end of which was a room called ‘Paradise’, described in John Evelyn’s Diary as a ‘parterre … in which is a pretty banqueting-house set over a cave or cellar’.

Such, then, were the prison walls confining the king as he primed himself for escape on 11 November 1647. It was his custom on Mondays and Thursdays to retire to his bedchamber at the west side of the palace at about 2 p.m. for the purpose of writing letters to his relatives abroad, and to emerge for prayers between 5–6 p.m. Thereafter, he would take supper, comparatively briefly, before returning once more to his bedchamber, at which point guards took up their posts. On the afternoon of the 11th, however, Charles gave strict orders to Maule and Murray, who were on duty in the adjoining anteroom, that he should not be disturbed under any circumstances, and it was only as darkness descended, around 4 p.m., that he contacted them again, calling first for candles, and a little later for snuffers. Close by too, in a chamber next to Maule and Murray, was the king’s secretary, Nicholas Oudart, and Henry Firebrace, who was in one of the several rooms laying between the royal bedchamber and the backstairs themselves.

It was at 5 p.m., in fact, that Whalley arrived at the anteroom to escort his prisoner to prayers, only to be left waiting – ‘without mistrust’ – for a full hour before telling Maule and Murray that he ‘wondered the king was so long a writing’. Clearly lacking the free rein that might have bred an altogether more decisive reaction, he was then met with the almost insulting response that the king probably had ‘some extraordinary occasion’. More surprisingly still, when Oudart suggested that his master was writing to the Princess of Orange, Whalley appears to have taken ‘some satisfaction for the present’. Indeed, it was not until 7 p.m. that the colonel suggested to Maule that the king might be ill, and that it would be well if he entered to see. Yet Maule was adamant that he dared not disobey the orders of the king, who had in any case bolted the door from the inside.

By now ‘extreme restless in his thoughts’, Whalley was reduced, it seems, to peeking several times through the keyhole, but could see nothing. Maule, in the meantime, refused even to knock on the colonel’s behalf, for, under normal circumstances, the king’s jailer lacked even this option in his own right. Only at 8 p.m., in fact, some three hours after his initial arrival, did Whalley feel able to take the initiative, though rather than choosing the simple option of forcing entry there and then, he sought instead the assistance of William Smithsby, Keeper of the Privy Lodgings, who had attended the king at Edgehill in 1642, served as a Groom of the Privy Chamber for thirteen years before that and was now fully involved in the escape attempt himself, having been entrusted by the king with certain pictures and other articles prior to his departure.

Together with one of the king’s abettors, then, Whalley now made his way to the royal bedchamber by the back route, through the garden and up the backstairs, meeting no one, it seems, except the sentries posted in the garden, since Firebrace, who had been keeping vigil during the king’s departure, had long since withdrawn. According to Firebrace himself, moreover, the night was dark and rainy, but plainly not so dark that Whalley was unable to detect the first conclusive sign of what had transpired. For, as he moved with increasing urgency through several intervening rooms, he found the king’s cloak lying on the floor of the one next to his bedchamber. Advancing no farther, he then called for Maule, who still refused to enter until ordered to do so in the name of Parliament. In all, it had taken a further half-hour before the king’s attendant did as bid and in doing so confirmed that ‘the king was gone’.

Though Maule was at once accused of being an accessory, precise details of how the escape was effected would only emerge in news-sheets over the next week. According to an edition of A perfect Diurnall, appearing on 15 November, it had been achieved ‘by the backstairs and vault towards the waterside’, while the Moderate Intelligencer suggested it had occurred ‘by way of Paradise, a place so-called in the garden’. It seems, in fact, that as soon as it was dark enough to avoid observation, the king, accompanied perhaps by Colonel William Legge, did indeed pass down the backstairs, along the galleries leading to the waterside and then by the King’s Long Gallery to the Paradise room in the park, the door of which, being some distance away from the main building, was unguarded. In the meantime, at about 2 p.m. according to Mercurius Antipragmaticus, ‘six lusty horses, led by men in different habits’, were ferried over from Long Ditton and ‘were seen to take an hill adjacent to his Majesty’.

Whether these were employed in the escape remains unknown, but if so, it would appear that Charles and Legge may subsequently have ridden to Thames Ditton and there crossed the river. Sir Thomas Herbert’s account, however, only states that the river was crossed at Thames Ditton, which is no more than a mile from Hampton Court, and it remains possible, too, that a boat had been concealed near Paradise and that the two men rowed down to Ditton, mounting their horses there. Certainly, this was consistent with the view expressed in Major Huntington’s Narrative, which describes how the king:

caused a boat to be laid by river side, and upon the 11th of November, about the beginning of the night, went alone from the Privy-lodgings, through a door where no guard stood into the park, and so crossing the Thames, landed at Ditton, where Sir John Berkeley, John Ashburnham and Colonel William Legge (sometimes grooms of the Bed-Chamber) were placed with horses.

In this particular account, then, the king was actually unaccompanied as he left Hampton Court, meeting Legge only later, some way downstream from his starting point. But on one smaller point of detail at least there is general agreement: namely, that the king not only left behind him his cloak – probably in exchange for another less conspicuous one – but also his beloved greyhound, Gipsy. According to the Moderate Intelligencer, when the king did not ‘come forth’ from his chamber after Whalley’s arrival, ‘there were feares, which increased by the crying of a greyhound again and again within’. This was indeed the ‘grew bitch’, mentioned in Sir Philip Warwick’s Memoirs, who held such a prominent place in Charles’ affections – so much so, indeed, that he specially requested, upon his escape, that she be sent to the Duke of Richmond.

Besides his favourite dog, however, Charles also left four letters in his wake at Hampton Court – all prominently displayed on his bedchamber table for immediate inspection, and three of which were written in his own handwriting. The first was the warning letter sent by ‘E.R.’, while the second, addressed to Parliament and reproduced in full below, was intended to unburden his mind of grievances, apportion blame, restate his principles and repeat the plea to be heard with safety and respect:

Charles Rex.

Liberty being that which in all times hath been, but especially now is the common theme and desire of all men; common reason shewes, that Kings less than any should endure captivity. And yet I call God and the world to witnesse, with what patience I have endured a tedious restraint; which so long as I had any hopes that this sort of my suffering might conduce to the peace of my Kingdom, or the hindering of more effusion of blood, I did willingly undergo: But not finding by too certain proofs, that this my continued patience, would not only turn to my personal ruin, but likewise be of much more prejudice than furtherance to the public good, I thought I was bound, as well by natural as by political obligations, to seek my safety, by retiring myself for some time from the public view, both of my friends and enemies. And I appeal to all indifferent men to judge, if I have not just cause, to free myself from the hands of those who change their principles with their conditions, and who are not ashamed openly to intend the destruction of the Nobility, taking away their Negative voice, and with whom the Levellers doctrine is rather countenanced than punished: And as for their intentions to my person, their changing and putting more strict guards upon me, with the discharging most of all those servants of mine, who formerly they willingly admitted to wait upon me, does sufficiently declare. Nor would I have this my retirement misinterpreted, for I shall earnestly and uncessantly endeavour the settling of a safe and well-grounded peace wherever I am or shall be; and that (as much as may be) without the effusion of more Christian blood; for which how many times have I desired, prest to be heard, and yet no ear given to me? And can any reasonable man think, that (according to the ordinary course of affairs) there can be a setled peace without it? Or that God will bless those, who refuse to hear their King? Surely no. Nay I must further add, that (besides what concerns myself) unless all other chief interests have not only a hearing, but likewise just satisfaction given unto them (to wit, the Presbyterian, Independents, Army, those that have adhered to me, and even the Scots) I say there cannot (I speak not of miracles, it being in my opinion a sinful presumption in such cases, to expect or trust to them) be a safe or lasting peace.

Now as I cannot deny but that my personal security is the urgent cause of this my retirement; so I take God to witness that the public peace is no less before my eyes, and I can find no better way to express this my profession (I know not what a wiser may do) than by desiring and urging that all chief interests may be heard, to the end each may have just satisfaction. As for example, the Army (for the rest though necessary, yet I suppose are not difficult to content) ought (in my judgment) to enjoy the liberty of their consciences, have an Act of Oblivion or Indemnity (which should extend to the rest of my subjects) and that all their arrears should be speedily and duly paid, which I will undertake to do, so I may be heard, and that I be not heard, and I be not hindered from using such lawful and honest means as I shall choose.

To conclude, let me be heard with freedom, honour and safety, and I shall instantly break through this cloud of retirement, and show myself really to be Pater Patriae.

Hampton Court, Novemb. 11. 1647.

For the Speaker of the House of Peeres pro tempore etc.

The third of Charles’ letters, meanwhile, expressed gratitude to Lord Montague and the rest of the parliamentary commissioners for their behaviour since his arrival at Hampton Court:

Montague,

First I do hereby give you and the rest of your fellows thanks, for the civilities and the good conversation that I have had from you: Next I command you to send this my message (which you will find upon this table) to the two Houses of Parliament, and likewise to give a copy of it to the General: Likewise I desire you to send all my saddle-horses to my son, the Duke of York. As for what concerns the resolution I have taken, my declaratorie message saies so much, that I refer you to it; and so I rest,

Your assured friend, C. Rex.

The homely tone of the message, and in particular the casual reference to his saddle-horses, hardly accords, of course, with the flight of a man in desperate fear of his life, and reflects, indeed, the almost routine nature of the whole escape attempt. Nor, for that matter, is there any apparent recognition on Charles’ part of the deep provocation entailed by his actions, let alone the ensuing crisis they had spawned. On the contrary, he is calm, collected, confident and, from his own perspective, still thoroughly in command of the forces ranged against him.

Yet it was the fourth of the letters left behind by Charles that carried altogether more significance. Addressed to Whalley, it displays typical condescension on the king’s part and an equally crushing disdain for the broader consequences of his actions. Not only is the colonel’s predicament of no apparent concern, there is also a carefree assumption that he will continue to service his former prisoner’s needs without either regrets or recrimination. Acknowledging that he had been ‘civily used’ by both Whalley and Major Huntington, Charles then proceeded in his ‘parting farewel’ to ‘desire’ of his erstwhile captor that he protect ‘my household stuff and movables of all sorts, which I have left behind me in this house, etc.’. Favourite pictures, including a Van Dyck portrait of the queen, were to be carefully protected, furnishings safely stored and the king’s whimpering greyhound suitably homed in accordance with her master’s wishes.

The most intriguing section of Charles’ letter lies elsewhere, however. For in a postscript, the king mentions another mysterious message presented to him by Whalley, which, as would become clear subsequently, was not the warning letter signed ‘E.R.’, but Cromwell’s letter to ‘Dear Cousin Whalley’ that ‘there are rumours abroad of some intended attempt on his Majesty’s person’. Assuring Whalley that it was not, in fact, this letter ‘nor any advertisement of this kind’ that had prompted him to ‘take this resolution’ to escape, Charles implied nevertheless that it may well have represented something of a final straw, since he was ‘loathe to be made a prisoner under pretence of securing my life’.

That Whalley had indeed shown his prisoner Cromwell’s letter is clear from the colonel’s own testimony to Parliament in the aftermath of the escape:

And whereas, Mr Speaker, you demand of me what that letter was that I showed the King that day he went away? The letter I shall show you. But with your leave, I shall first acquaint you with the author and the ground of my shewing it to the King.

The author is Lieutenant General Cromwell. The ground of my shewing it was this. The letter shows some murderous designe, or at least fearing it, against his Majestie. When I received the letter I was much astonisht, abhorring that such a thing should be done, or so much as thought of, by any that bear the name of Christians. When I had shewn the letter to his Majestie, I told him ‘I was sent to safeguard and not to murther him’. I wisht him to be confident no such thing could be done. I would first dye at his foot in his defence. And therefore I shewed it to him that he might be assured, though menacing speeches came frequently to his eare, our general officers abhorred so bloody and villainous a fact. Another reason, that I might get a nearer admittance to his Majestie, that so I might better secure him.

Ostensibly, of course, Whalley’s explanation of his action is by no means unreasonable. But the suspicion that Cromwell may well have wished to prompt the king’s escape has a sufficiently long pedigree to merit careful consideration. Even the poet Andrew Marvell, who was more than capable of singing the general’s praises when occasion demanded, made direct reference to the episode in An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland (1650):

And Hampton shows what part

He had of wiser art,

Where, twining subtile fears with hope,

He wove a net of such a scope,

That Charles himself might chase

To Caresbrooks narrow case.

And there was no denying that Cromwell had indeed become increasingly alarmed at the possibility that radical elements within the army might ultimately become uncontrollable. As such, there was certainly good reason to remove him from the proximity of Hampton Court, while keeping him in the hands of army moderates and at a safe distance from both Parliament and the Scots. Nor was there any doubt that Charles’ eventual destination at Carisbrooke Castle upon the Isle of Wight suited this purpose admirably. For the island was within reach of London, but cordoned off by the Solent from both extremists and would-be wooers of the king. With Hammond, a trusted cousin and colleague, firmly in place there, what could be better than to lay the trap and make the king’s decision apparently his own?

No less a figure than Thomas Hobbes, indeed, would suggest in Behemoth (1679) that the ploy was staged by Cromwell as part of a blueprint for obtaining supreme power in the longer term – something that could never be achieved as long as Charles remained upon the throne:

To keep him in the Army was a trouble, to let him fall into the hands of the Presbyterians had been a stop to his hopes, to murder him privately would have made him odious without furthering his design: there was nothing better for his purpose than to let him escape from Hampton Court (where he was too near the Parliament) whither he pleased beyond sea.

However persuasive the counter-arguments, it is not difficult to see why such suspicions have remained entrenched to the present day. With hindsight, of course, it is apparent that Cromwell had not yet given up hopes of coming to terms with the king, for only the day before his escape, the Commons had put the finishing touches to a new set of peace proposals, based on the initiative of Cromwell’s own Independent allies. More significantly still, perhaps, Charles’ eventual arrival upon the Isle of Wight was entirely uncertain at the time of his actual departure. He was, after all, a notorious vacillator and the advice from his inner circle remained indecisive, since the Isle of Wight, for any apparent advantage it might offer, remained isolated and war-weary, more of a dead end than escape route and, as one commentator put it, ‘just like other parts of England, a melancholy, dejected, sad place: no company, no rents, no neighbours seeing one of the other’. Ashburnham, indeed, had only proposed it initially as a last resort, later claiming to have pressed the king to encourage Henrietta Maria to send a French ship to Southampton, through the agency of the Pitt and La Mott families of the Royalist oligarchy there.

This, according to Ashburnham’s own testimony, had actually been achieved before Charles hesitated once more and the ship was eventually dismissed, adding to the ongoing concerns of others in the king’s circle. Berkeley, for example, had remained uncertain throughout, warning the king for some time that success required ‘three or four ships in several ports’, and collaborating in the entire escapade, when the time for action finally arrived, only under his master’s unyielding demand for blind obedience. For Berkeley, more than any other, was convinced of Cromwell’s genuine concern for Charles’ welfare, ‘sometimes wishing that he, the king, was more frank and less tied to narrow maxims; sometimes complaining of his son [-in-law] Ireton’s slowness in perfecting the proposals and his not accommodating more to His Majesty’s senses’.

To suggest, then, that the escape from Hampton Court was engineered by the Roundhead general’s invisible hand presents at least two apparently intractable problems. Yet the circumstantial evidence to that effect remains stubbornly intact. Colonel Hammond’s appointment as Governor of the Isle of Wight, for instance, was certainly more than curious. Swiftly following his resignation from active military service and alleged visit, as a penitent, to the king at Hampton Court, it was a promotion not only inspired by the army but executed under obvious pressure from the army’s leadership. Governors of the Isle of Wight were normally appointed by royal patent, but with the displacement of the Royalist Earl of Portland in 1642, his successor, the Earl of Pembroke, was nominated by Parliament. After which, Pembroke ruled the island throughout the Civil War, acting mainly through his deputy, Colonel Carne.

Though he had become an outspoken critic of the New Model Army by mid-1646, moreover, Pembroke quickly changed his tune in August when the army marched into London, and he had shown no previous signs of dissatisfaction in the execution of his duties. Yet on 1 September 1647, General Fairfax wrote to the Earl of Manchester, Speaker of the House of Lords, that Pembroke had indicated ‘his satisfaction in my disposall of the Government of the Isle of Wight to Collonell Robert Hammond’, and invited the House of Lords to ratify the appointment. Two days later, furthermore, Pembroke himself announced to the Lords that Fairfax required Hammond’s appointment to the governorship, ‘he being a person looked upon by the General as a fit Person for that Trust’. Thus sponsored, an ordinance for the appointment was drafted the same day and, after a largely token amendment by the Commons bringing the process under the nominal control of Parliament, the measure went through without further difficulty, leaving Hammond to be duly initiated into his new post.

En route, of course, he had also apparently stumbled upon Jack Ashburnham and convinced him of his sympathy for the king’s predicament. By mid-September, the colonel was firmly installed in his new role, both officially and, it would seem, personally, for he was not without direct connections to the island. His aunt, Jane Dingley, for example, already lived at Wolverton Manor in the village of Shorwell, 4 miles from Carisbrooke Castle, and on 18 September he was duly ‘elected & sworne’ a burgess of Newport before being made ‘Vice-Admiral of the County of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight’ on the opening day of the following month. Twenty-four hours earlier, moreover, Pembroke had duly ‘retired’ amid widespread talk that his departure from the island was a dismissal rather than a resignation. On 19 September, indeed, an anonymous Venetian observer, remaining in London after the closure of his embassy, was in no doubt that coercion had been employed. ‘The governorship, held by the Earl of Pembroke,’ he wrote, ‘has been granted to others, and he with six others of the Upper House is accused of crimes against the state.’

Ultimately, in fact, no such charge materialised, and by July 1648 the earl had once again assumed a role of some prominence as a member of the parliamentary commission negotiating peace with the king at Newport. Yet Pembroke’s departure, and even more so Hammond’s arrival, was too striking to escape speculation from contemporaries. ‘It was observed,’ wrote Clarendon, ‘that Hammond himself left the army but two or three days before the King’s remove, and went to the Isle of Wight at a season when there was no visible occasion to draw him thither.’ Sir John Oglander, meanwhile, was even more forthright, observing how ‘Hammond was made Commander of the Isle of Wight purposely to be King Charles’ keeper’. It was wholly predictable, of course, that the coincidence between Hammond’s arrival on the island and the king’s should have been aired in the news-sheets of the day. In the Mercurius Anti-Pragmaticus, for example, it was noted that the colonel’s transfer to the island had occurred ‘as if it had been told him by revelation that his Majesty would commit himself to his protection’, and that his journey, ahead of his regiment, had taken place ‘as if by instinct he had foreseen his Majesties comming’.

At the same time, Cromwell’s own movements added further fuel to Sir Thomas Adams’ suspicion, expressed from the gloom of a prison cell in the Tower of London, that there had been more than a little ‘juggling in the king’s being found at the Isle of Wight’. Certainly, the general later explained Hammond’s resignation innocuously enough, observing how he had ‘through dissatisfaction … desired retirement from the Army, and thought of quiet in the Isle of Wight’. But Cromwell’s visit to the island between 4–12 September, just after Hammond’s promotion to the governorship, has never been explained, and Clarendon made clear that he received the news of Charles’ subsequent arrival ‘with so unusual a gaiety that all Men concluded that the king was where he wished he should be’. Nor, for that matter, did Clarendon hesitate to claim that Ashburnham himself was a confederate of Cromwell’s. Both he and Berkeley had, in fact, conducted negotiations, open and otherwise, with Cromwell and Ireton on behalf of the king, and it was Ashburnham, of course, who proposed the escape plan to Charles initially, after his encounter with Hammond near Kingston. As if this were not enough to ensure the persistence of conspiracy theories, moreover, Berkeley would be dismissed from the service of James, Duke of York in 1656, under suspicion of being in communication with Cromwell – for which there is again some circumstantial evidence.

Fears of defection and skulduggery of all and every manner were, of course, by no means confined to the Royalist side at this tense time. The army, too, was rife with rumours that there were those within its ranks whose sympathies were fickle. ‘Who knows not,’ declared the Leveller John Wildman, ‘that the forces in play will be at the King’s beck whenever he be in his throne?’ If the king’s counsel had indeed been primed from without, even this by no means confirms that the counsellors involved were acting in anything other than what they perceived at the time to be his own best interests. Even as Charles left Hampton Court, still hesitating over his intended destination, his fate was therefore ultimately his to decide, and Cromwell’s resulting gain no more, perhaps, than might have been expected. He had already, after all, been borne up by Providence throughout his meteoric rise, or so it seemed. Now, perhaps, it was only natural that ‘God’s Englishman’ should have benefited once more from his enemy’s impulsive decision to deliver himself to the Isle of Wight and the care of Colonel Hammond.