Behind the Palace Doors (16 page)

A far more significant disturbance—a violation, actually—occurred a century later when, in 1813, space was being excavated in St. George’s Chapel for the burial of King George III’s sister, Princess Augusta, Duchess of Brunswick. Workers inadvertently knocked a hole in the wall of Charles I’s adjacent crypt. Informed of the accident, King George’s eldest son, then serving as prince regent, decided for some reason that his royal ancestor’s coffin should be opened. Thus commenced the final, and perhaps most aggressive, assault on the dead king’s dignity.

The prince regent, who would soon succeed his father as King George IV, was present at the disinterment, as was his personal physician, Henry Halford, who left a vivid account of the whole unseemly process. The black velvet pall that had been covering the late king’s coffin since its original interment was stripped away. Then a square opening was cut into the upper part of the coffin to reveal the corpse wrapped in waxen cerecloth. The part of the cloth covering the king’s face was cut away.

“The complexion of the skin of it [the face] was dark and discolored,” Halford reported. “The forehead and temples had lost little or nothing of their muscular substance; the cartilage of the nose was gone; but the left eye, in the first moment of exposure, was open and full, though it vanished almost immediately: and the pointed beard, so characteristic of the period of the reign of King Charles, was perfect. The shape of the face was a long oval; many of the teeth remained; and the left ear, in the consequence of the interposition of the unctuous [oily] matter between it and the cere-cloth, was found entire.”

The identification of the late king for the historical record was the ostensible reason for the disinterment. That should have been satisfied with the inscription on the coffin that read KING CHARLES. Since that was apparently not enough evidence, the features that clearly matched those of the king might have sufficed. But no, the prince regent wanted more. So, the head was lifted out of the coffin for closer examination; Thomas Trapham’s “goose” stitches immediately unraveled. “It was quite wet, and gave a greenish red tinge to paper and linen which touched it,” wrote Halford, taking great pains not to conclude that the liquid was blood, but believing it to be.

“The back part of the scalp was entirely perfect, and had a remarkably fresh appearance,” Halford continued; “the pores of the skin being more distinct, as they usually are when soaked in moisture; and the tendons and ligaments of the neck were of
considerable substance and firmness. The hair was thick at the back part of the head, and, in appearance, nearly black. A portion of it, which has since been cleaned and dried, is of a beautiful dark brown color. That of the beard was a redder brown. On the back part of the head it was more than an inch in length, and had probably been cut so short for the convenience of the executioner, or perhaps by the piety of friends soon after death, in order to furnish memorials of the unhappy king.”

Then it was only left to examine the neck wounds to confirm that the corpse had indeed been decapitated. That, Halford wrote, “furnished the last proof wanting to identify King Charles the First.”

Having resolved this great historical question, the intrepid researchers helped themselves to mementos of their quest: part of the king’s beard, some hair from the back of his head, part of a neck vertebra, and a tooth. The coffin was then resealed and the vault closed.

Two decades later, the prince regent’s brother, King William IV, ordered an inscribed marble slab placed on the floor over the tomb to identify at last the royal personages held within. Then, in 1889, the vault was opened one last time when the future King Edward VII ceremoniously deposited a small casket containing the body parts taken from Charles I seventy-five years earlier and returned to the Prince of Wales by the heirs of Sir Henry Halford.

After two centuries, the king was finally allowed to rest, albeit in pieces.

Although Charles I was executed in 1649, the English Civil War didn’t end until 1651, when the executed king’s son, Charles II, having returned from exile to reclaim the crown, was defeated at the Battle of Worcester. Charles made a perilous escape to France after the battle and would remain in exile for another eight years
.

Hidden among the leaves and branches of a large oak, the king of England could see enemy soldiers all around him. He might be discovered any minute, which would mean certain death, but after a long, terrifying night on the run, exhaustion began to overwhelm him. Resting his head on the lap of a faithful companion, the king soon fell asleep. It was a slumber with potentially lethal consequences. Any noise he might make would surely alert the soldiers lurking all around, but rousing him was dangerous as well; the startled sound of being jolted awake would betray him just as easily.

Few British monarchs ever faced the peril, or sheer adventure, that Charles II did after his crushing defeat at the Battle of
Worcester in 1651. For six weeks he was a fugitive in his own kingdom, with a bounty on his head worth far more than most Englishmen could hope to earn in a lifetime. Yet with a combination of guile and extraordinary luck, as well as the aid of a handful of faithful subjects, Charles managed to make a remarkable escape.

It had been nearly three years since his father’s execution and Parliament’s abolishment of the monarchy when Charles, aged twenty-one, returned from exile to claim his crown. With a force consisting mostly of Scots, the king without a country met Oliver Cromwell’s army at Worcester on September 3, 1651. It was the last great clash of the English Civil War, “as stiff a contest as ever I have seen,” Cromwell later said. Charles fought fiercely. “Certainly a braver prince never lived,” one officer recalled, “having in the day of the fight hazarded his person much more than any officer of his army, riding from regiment to regiment.” Despite the king’s unwavering courage, however, it was clear by the end of the day that his cause was lost.

Charles managed to slip out the back of his headquarters just as Cromwell’s men stormed in through the front, but he was still in grave danger. With his extraordinary height (at least for the time; he was just over six feet tall), swarthy complexion, and regal gait, he was hardly inconspicuous. Furthermore, the king was accompanied by remnants of his shattered army, which made his identity all the more apparent—“and though I could not get them to stand by me against the enemy [at Worcester],” Charles later said sardonically, “I could not get rid of them, now I had a mind to do it.”

Under cover of night, the king and his companions made their way north through forest and bramble, venturing onto the main roads only when they had no alternative. At dawn they reached a home called Whiteladies, built on the ruins of a former Cistercian convent. The sympathetic owner provided the
royal refugee with food and a warm fire, while Charles had his hair cut short and donned the clothing of a woodsman. As the sun continued to rise over Whiteladies, it was deemed unsafe for the king to remain there. Cromwell’s men were thought certain to search the home, as indeed they later did.

Taking leave of his entourage, many of whom were later captured, Charles hid in a nearby wood with a local man named Richard Penderel. It was a miserable day, without food or water, during which the fugitive king was in constant danger of being captured. From his hiding place he could actually see Cromwell’s soldiers on the adjacent road. It was only “by great good fortune it rained at the time,” Charles recalled, “which hindered them, as I believe, from coming into the wood to search for men that might be fled thither.” And what the king found “remarkable enough” was to later learn that it had only rained over the copse in which he was concealed and nowhere else, “this contributing to my safety.”

By this time Charles had abandoned any hope of escaping to London, as he had originally planned, and settled instead on Wales, which was much closer—just across the Severn River. Creeping out of the woods that night, the king and Penderel started to make their way west through the countryside toward Wales. At one point they passed a mill, the owner of which suddenly appeared and demanded that they identify themselves. Rather than risk being exposed, Charles and Penderel opted to run. “Rogues! Rogues!” the miller shouted as he gave chase, running past his panting quarry who had hidden in some hedges.

Having evaded the miller, the pair made it to the home of a gentleman named Wolfe, who insisted he would not risk his neck harboring any man unless it was the king himself. After Penderel revealed Charles’s identity—“very indiscretely, and without my leave,” as the king later recounted—the stunned man fed them and put them up in his barn behind some hay,
while Mrs. Wolfe endeavored to further disguise the king by smearing his face and hands with walnut juice.

While with Mr. and Mrs. Wolfe, Charles learned that crossing the Severn into Wales would be impossible because Cromwell had all the bridges blocked. There was now no choice but to turn back. In an effort to avoid the miller who had earlier confronted them, Charles and Penderel took a detour. But along this alternative route they came upon a small river that they would have to cross. Unfortunately, Penderel couldn’t swim. Charles forded the river first and found it wasn’t too deep. “Thereupon,” he recalled with some pride, “taking Penderel by the hand, I helped him over.” It was the first small service the king could offer his invaluable companion.

The pair returned almost to where they had started, arriving near dawn at an isolated hunting lodge leased by the Penderel family called Boscobel, a name derived from the Italian
bosco bello
, or “beautiful wood.” There the most famous episode of Charles II’s flight unfolded.

The king was welcomed at Boscobel with news that one of his most faithful supporters, Colonel William Carlis, was at the moment hiding in the woods outside. Charles quickly joined him, and together they climbed a large oak that would in time become the most renowned tree in the land. It was thick and bushy enough to conceal the two men but isolated enough from the other trees to give them a good view of the surrounding area.

“We see soldiers going up and down, in the thicket of the wood, searching for persons escaped,” Charles recounted. “We seeing them now and then peeping out of the wood.” And they could hear the soldiers as well, discussing among themselves what they would do with the “malicious and dangerous traitor,” as Cromwell called Charles, once they found him.

All day long the king remained in the tree, his head resting on the lap of the faithful Carlis. Eventually he fell asleep, exhausted from the ordeal of the past few days. Carlis could
hear the soldiers coming closer but was loath to wake Charles for fear that any sound the king might make as he was startled out of his slumber would betray their hiding place. It was not until evening that they felt safe enough to climb down.

That night at Boscobel Charles first heard of the enormous one-thousand-pound bounty Cromwell had put on his head. Carlis, however, was quick to reassure him: “If it were one hundred thousand pounds, it were to no purpose.” As the Penderels tended to the king’s blistered and bloody feet—a result of all the walking he had done in woodsman’s shoes much too small for him—Charles asked for some mutton for supper. Perhaps in the warm glow of the evening he had forgotten where he was, and in what sorry state. Mutton was a luxury the Penderels could hardly afford, and even if they could, ordering such an extravagance from the butcher would certainly attract unwelcome attention. Once again, Carlis came through for his king. Stealing over to a neighboring property, he killed a sheep and brought it back. Charles helped with the preparation and jovially demanded to know who was the better cook, he or Carlis.

The king spent the night tucked into a tiny hiding place designed to shelter fugitive Catholic priests.
^*
The accommodations were hardly spacious, but at least Charles was relatively safe. Still, he couldn’t stay at Boscobel indefinitely, and despite the fact that he had been on the run for several days since the battle, he really hadn’t gotten very far. Fortunately, a new avenue of escape was about to present itself.