King Charles II (24 page)

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.
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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’.
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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
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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.
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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.