To Catch a King

by Charles Spencer

  The Earl of Derby in particular wanted to stay by his master’s side, but was forced to accept that the presence of another well-known escapee alongside the king would increase the already great difficulty of smuggling Charles to safety.

  These Royalists headed off to join Leslie and his 3,000 men, recently seen at nearby Tong Castle, on their trek to Scotland. Charles’s assessment that the spirits of the Scottish cavalry had been shattered was very soon proved correct: Leslie’s force was so jittery that it was scattered by the sight of a small detachment of Parliamentary militia under the command of Colonel Benjamin Blundell. The Royalist forces’ morale was broken, and it was, from this point on, a case of every man for himself.

  Day was breaking on 4 September. It was the morning after the great defeat. The king had just said goodbye to all his familiar followers: Buckingham, who had shared his childhood; the loyal men who had followed him from the Netherlands to Scotland; and those who had joined him on the ill-fated march south. These men of note, who were his natural attendants and companions, knew they could offer him no help in his desperate situation. He would have to fend for himself for the first time in his life, relying on the area’s Roman Catholics’ expertise in concealing hunted men, and the resourcefulness and local knowledge of the humble Penderels.

  Richard Penderel led Charles out of one of Whiteladies’ secret doors. The king was weighed down by a woodman’s bill, a heavy tool for cutting branches, which he carried unsteadily as he walked. They headed into the most remote part of Spring Coppice, a wood half a mile from Whiteladies, where the king was to hide from his pursuers.

  Humphrey, George and William Penderel spread out across the neighbourhood, scouting for news so they could warn Charles and Richard of any approaching danger. The brothers were in a habitat they knew well. All of them lived in these woods, tending smallholdings, supported by grazing rights, while supplementing their subsistence farming with the chopping and guarding of timber.

  While still within view of the road, Charles saw a troop of enemy cavalry ride by, mopping up men from his broken army. But the redcoats did not enter Spring Coppice. Charles believed this was because they were put off by heavy localised rainfall over that area of the forest.

  A short time after Charles had set off, a detachment of Colonel Ashenhurst’s Parliamentary troops arrived at Whiteladies, and asked the occupants if they had seen the king or any other Royalist fugitives. People from the nearby village told them that a large body of the king’s men had ridden past three hours earlier. They said they thought Charles could well have been among them, but the Royalists had not stopped, so they could not be entirely sure. This information sent the Roundheads heading off in eager pursuit, Whiteladies soon well behind them. Everyone wanted the glory of capturing the king.

  Charles lay low in the wood for many hours that day, as thick rain fell. He used the time to pick Richard’s brains. It quickly became clear that the idea of travelling to London was going to need to be reconsidered. Richard knew of a loose network of people loyal to the Crown, but it was limited to the surrounding area, and did not extend towards the capital. If he was to escape, the king accepted, he would need to modify his plan.

  The country-dwellers protecting the king were soon under no illusion as to the softness of their royal charge. Charles would later recall that he spent the day without eating, in the wet. But others remembered that, because the rain was heavy and the king was in the open, they took special care of him.

  The Francis Yates who had guided the king to Whiteladies had galloped off with the rest of the fleeing Cavaliers earlier that morning. There remained a second Francis Yates, who like his namesake had married one of the Penderel daughters, Margaret. The couple lived near Boscobel, at Langley Lawn. Margaret Yates arrived in the coppice carrying a blanket that she placed under a tree for Charles to sit on. She also brought him a black clay cup which contained a mixture of milk, eggs and sugar, and apples.

  Margaret’s arrival was unexpected, and Charles was startled when he saw her approach. He asked her suspiciously, ‘Good woman, can you be faithful to a distressed Cavalier?’ She replied without hesitation, ‘Yes, sir, I will rather die than discover you.’ Delighted with this reply, the king used a pewter spoon to dig into the food she had brought with her. When he was full, he passed what remained to George Penderel to finish off.

  The second Francis Yates realised that the woodman’s bill was too weighty an implement for the king to lug around. He swapped it for his broom hook, a lighter option for shoulders unaccustomed to manual labour.

  Yates and the Penderels now set to work educating the king in the simple ways of the countryman: he needed to change his outward characteristics, particularly his tone and bearing, if he was to have a chance of remaining at large. He was first given the alias of ‘William Jones’, a travelling woodcutter. His protectors were pleased at the ease with which he picked up the Worcestershire accent. Charles was a good mimic, and had enjoyed trying out the various regional accents he had encountered on his march down from Scotland.

  But it was his way of walking that was the real problem. A lifetime of being on show, of parading at court, and of ingrained haughty deportment, had to be exchanged for the unassuming gait of the simplest of country-dwellers. Charles found this part of his disguise extremely tricky to master, and even harder to remember. He kept falling back into his accustomed stride, which jarred terribly with his rustic appearance. Throughout his time with them his companions gave him repeated hushed reminders to walk like a peasant, not a prince. To fail in this, in front of a perceptive enemy, would render the rest of the masquerade useless.

  Yet, despite his life depending on it, this was never a side of things that Charles could master for long – it went too much against his nature. A Royalist colonel who helped the king later in his escape attempt noted: ‘In very deed, the King had a hard task, so to carry himself in all things that he might be in nothing like himself, majesty being so natural unto him, that even when he said nothing, did nothing, his very looks (if a man observed) were enough to betray him.’7

  With the road to London closed to him, Charles considered his options. He asked Richard for details about Royalists who could be relied on. When Richard mentioned an elderly Catholic Royalist friend of his called Francis Wolfe, who lived in the Shropshire town of Madeley, a few miles to the west of where they were, Charles felt that this could be a potential escape route.

  Another twenty-five miles on from Wolfe, and they would arrive at the Welsh border. Wales had proved one of the most loyal areas to the Crown throughout the Civil Wars, providing its army with thousands of recruits. Because of his active engagement in the war, Charles had become acquainted with several influential Welshmen during the preceding turbulent decade. He hoped these men would help him if he arrived at their door in his state of dire need.

  He also felt that heading towards Wales would be such an unlikely direction for him to have chosen that it would outfox his pursuers. Surely their attention would be taken up with blocking all roads leading north to Scotland. If he could cross the River Severn and then proceed to Swansea or another busy Welsh port, his plan was to find a ship and cross to France or Spain.

  In the late afternoon of Thursday, 4 September, Charles went with Richard, Humphrey and George Penderel, and the second Francis Yates, from Whiteladies to Richard Penderel’s house at Hobbal Grange. They arrived there around five o’clock. The king delighted Richard and his wife Mary by the charming ease with which he played with their small daughter Nan (a pet name for Anne), dandling her on his knee as they prepared him a bacon and egg fricassee. After eating alone for a while, Charles again invited Richard to join him. ‘Sir, I will,’ Richard said. ‘You have a better stomach than I,’ the king teased, ‘for you have eaten five times today already.’8

  After dinner, Jane Penderel appeared. The brothers’ widowed mother was plainly mystified as to why her family had been chosen to help the king at this dark time, but she thanked
God for the great honour bestowed upon them, and gave her blessing to the distinguished guest.

  Francis Yates offered the king thirty silver shillings to help fund him while he was on the run, but Charles took just ten. The assembled family group took their leave of the king on their knees, kissing his hand, expressing loyal good wishes for his escape, and calling on God to protect him. He and Richard then set off into the fading evening light, for Wales.

  * When his father died in 1644, Wilmot succeeded to his Irish title as Viscount Wilmot of Athlone.

  † A sixth Penderel brother, Thomas, seems to have been killed at the battle of Edgehill in 1642.

  9

  The London Road

  It is thought they have some express from their young King, since the defeat at Worcester, and many of them seem to be confident that their King hath a considerable army in the Marches of Wales.

  Colonel John Jones to fellow regicide Thomas Scott, 1651

  As the posse of leading Royalists were leaving the king at Whiteladies before sunrise on 4 September, Charles had repeated to Henry, Lord Wilmot, his secret hope of getting to London. Wilmot had agreed that ‘the London Road was his likeliest way to escape’.1 The two men arranged a rendezvous, should their separate journeys succeed in getting them to the capital: they would meet at the Three Cranes inn in the Vintry, an old ward of the City of London that lay on the north bank of the Thames. Once there they would ask for Will Ashburnham, who had been a Member of Parliament until his expulsion for being a Royalist.

  The Vintry was historically associated with Dick Whittington – the most famous of all the lord mayors of London had championed public works in the ward. Of more relevance to Charles and Wilmot was its role as the point where imports from France (especially wine and garlic) were landed. The ward had also become a well-worn launching point for journeys to the Continent: it was where people embarked for pilgrimages to Santiago di Compostela in Spain. Either France or Spain would be acceptable destinations for the two fugitives.

  With the Vintry plan agreed, Charles and Wilmot parted. While Richard, William, Humphrey and George Penderel remained to serve and protect the king, their brother John was sent to guide and assist Wilmot, who was travelling with his servant Robert Swan.

  Wilmot had had a poor relationship with Charles I. The late king had never forgiven him for voting in favour of the impeachment and execution of his great favourite the Earl of Strafford, in 1641. Three years later Charles I had stripped Wilmot of all his commands, and imprisoned him, after the Royalist cavalry general was found to be engaged in secret unauthorised peace negotiations with Parliament. But Wilmot was a popular leader, and his officers, refusing to believe him a traitor, petitioned the king for clemency on his behalf. Charles had felt obliged to release Wilmot, provided he promised to live in exile overseas.

  Queen Henrietta Maria had for some years acted as Wilmot’s patron, and she welcomed him into her court in France. This was where his great friendship with the Prince of Wales had developed, and after Charles I’s execution it had blossomed further. The young would-be king appointed Wilmot one of his gentlemen of the bedchamber, a court position of great trust and familiarity.

  Wilmot had supported Charles’s alliance with the Scots, being among those who appreciated that it offered the only possible chance of retrieving the English throne at that time, and had accompanied Charles to Scotland in 1650. Despite his having fought against the Scots since the Bishops’ Wars (when he had been taken prisoner of war after a brave but ill-fated cavalry charge), and his evident taste for the high life, Wilmot had managed to ingratiate himself with his Presbyterian hosts. He was one of the very few prominent Cavaliers allowed to remain in Scotland with Charles during his unhappy stay there.

  Wilmot had therefore been with his master through the exasperation of exile in France, the humiliations and disappointments north of the border, and the crushing defeat at Worcester. That early morning at Whiteladies, Charles had remained sure of what he had decided so early in his flight from Worcester: that Wilmot was the man most likely to assist his flight to safety abroad.

  The greatest problem Wilmot faced was how very well known he was. This hero from Europe’s Thirty Years War had long been a figure of dread to the rebels. They had claimed, exactly nine years previously, in the news sheet Exceeding true and joyfull newes from Worchester, that they ‘slew Commissary Wilmot’, ‘within half a mile of Worcester’. This had been wishful thinking. The action the propagandists were referring to was Powick Bridge, but Wilmot, though wounded during the sharp cavalry engagement, was far from dead. Within a month he had recovered sufficiently to lead the Royalist left wing at the battle of Edgehill. The twelve-year-old Charles, Prince of Wales, had witnessed his dramatic charge that day with boyish admiration.

  The energetic Wilmot had gone on to have a busy Civil War. One of his successes was the battle of Tipton Green, in 1644, a victory that was achieved after he had led a force out of Worcester, marched it thirty miles north, and relieved the besieged Royalist garrison inside Dudley Castle. Wilmot knew the country around Worcester quite well from his wartime exploits. The counter to this, as he looked to get away, was that many in the area could recognise him by sight. A man of such importance (he had also been Member of Parliament for nearby Tamworth) would be very hard to hide.

  The task of keeping Wilmot at liberty was made no easier by his astonishingly inflexible attitude. While Charles was quick to blend in, was happy to masquerade as a woodman, and would be easily persuaded to strike out on foot towards the Welsh border, his aristocratic sidekick had standards that he was simply not prepared to compromise. Even though his life was at stake, Lord Wilmot resolutely refused to wear a disguise, because he thought that if he did, he would be made to look ridiculous. Equally, he declined to travel by foot, because he considered walking to be beneath his status as a gentleman.

  This made life extremely difficult for John Penderel. On the day after the battle he had been told to look after this leading Royalist, and to keep him safe at all costs. He was also instructed not to share any information about having seen the king, and not to talk to anyone who he did not already know well and trust fully.

  John set off with Wilmot and his servant Robert Swan, leading them in an arc thirty-five miles north of Worcester as he looked with increasing desperation for somewhere safe to hide them. But while the king was lurking in Spring Coppice, content to disguise himself as a woodman and to commit himself to the care of the other Penderel brothers and their wives, Wilmot was dressed as he had been during the previous day’s engagement, every inch the Royalist military notable. While the king had sent his horse off with his men when they left Whiteladies, knowing it would attract unwelcome and dangerous attention, Wilmot remained on his, which was eye-catching in its magnificence.

  Wilmot was also quick to find fault with the various hiding places that John proposed. He rejected Hunger Hill, the property of John Shores, as being too exposed. He did not like the home of John Clempson in Pattingham any better, once he learnt that the village priest was a supporter of the Commonwealth. There were other, unspecified, problems with the sanctuary offered by a man called Reynolds. But the area was teeming with Major General Harrison’s mopping-up parties, and the longer Wilmot remained out in the open, the more certain it was that he would be captured.

  The trio’s first serious brush came not with soldiers, but with civilians. Workers at Brewood Forge looked up on hearing the sound of hooves, and were astonished to see what appeared to be a caricature of a senior Cavalier officer riding past them with two companions. They mounted their horses and set off after them, only to be pulled up short by a Royalist sympathiser who insisted they were making a mistake: the man they were pursuing was none other than Colonel Thomas Crompton, a Parliamentary war hero. The workmen went back to the forge, while Wilmot, Swan and John Penderel waited in a nearby pit until they were quite sure the danger had passed. At another point the three Royalists nearly rode directly into a
Roundhead cavalry troop which was coming the other way.

  John was soon convinced that remaining at large with his difficult and demanding charge, in an area swarming with hostile forces, was going to take all his resourcefulness, as well as a lot of good fortune, if it was not going to end in disaster.

  Just outside the small village of Coven, five miles north of Wolverhampton, they had their lucky break when they bumped into William Walker, the Roman Catholic priest who lived at Whiteladies. John explained the extreme danger he and his two companions were in, and Walker ushered them to the home of John Huntbatch, a Royalist who lived nearby at Brinsford.

  While Wilmot and Swan hid, John led the party’s horses away to be concealed in stables belonging to John Evans, a neighbour. This gave Wilmot time to examine Huntbatch’s home, and to conclude that it could only be a temporary solution. It was bound to be searched soon, because of both its exposed position and its householder’s known loyalties: Huntbatch had been threatened with confiscation of all his property seven years earlier because of his attachment to the Crown. Wilmot implored John to find him ‘some asylum’ where he could feel truly safe.

  John was reluctant to leave Wilmot in such a dangerous place, but was persuaded that there was no time to lose. He rode to Wolverhampton to see what Royalist sympathisers there had to offer, but none of them felt able to help. They were demoralised by the previous day’s decisive defeat, and the town was already filled with Parliamentary soldiers, busy conducting searches for the king’s men.

  Besides, the oldest inhabitants remembered what had happened less than half a century earlier to a pair of local farmers. John Holyhead and Thomas Smart had hidden Robert Wintour and Stephen Littleton, conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot. They had planned to blow up Parliament, along with much of the royal family, but were foiled at the last moment. Wintour and Littleton managed to evade capture for two months, but their luck ran out in early 1606, and Holyhead and Smart were arrested alongside them. The sentence for any who helped someone guilty of high treason was to suffer the established punishment for that crime. They were therefore hanged, drawn and quartered. Memories of the men’s terrible screams as they were castrated and disembowelled on butchers’ blocks had echoed down the generations.