King Charles II (23 page)

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.’