It was now a little before one o’clock in the morning. Charles, shaken by the miller’s pursuit, was feeling vulnerable. His main concern was the growing belief that nobody would be prepared to put up with a guest of his toxicity. He said that he would hide in a hedgerow near a great tree, while Richard made his way to Wolfe’s home in order to assure himself of his reliability.
Richard banged on Wolfe’s door. It was opened by the old man’s daughter. When Wolfe eventually appeared, Richard kept the king’s identity to himself, asking only if he might agree to hide a gentleman escapee from the battle of Worcester. Wolfe was full of regret, but said it was too risky a proposition for him: the Parliamentarians had made it plain that anyone helping fleeing Royalists would pay with their life. The only person he would risk his neck for would be the king himself. Richard went with his instinct, and told the astonished Wolfe that that was in fact the gentleman he was referring to. His composure regained, Wolfe agreed to do what he could.
As dawn on Friday, 5 September approached, Richard returned to the king and told him what had been said. Charles was appalled that Richard had revealed his identity to this stranger so easily. He realised, though, that he had no choice now but to trust Wolfe, and set off for his house, which he crept into from the back.
When Charles met Francis Wolfe, the old man’s anxiety was clear to see. Wolfe reported that Parliamentary forces had Madeley and the nearby ferry buttoned up. There were two companies of Harrison’s militia in the town, and they were eagerly looking out for Royalists on the run. There was not a single ford across the Severn that he knew of that was not being watched, and every boat along the river had been taken under military control. Added to this was the equally gloomy news that all the hiding places in Wolfe’s home had already been discovered, so they were quite useless. Indeed, they would surely be the first places the enemy would look, if and when they returned. Further, the enemy troops were being billeted on households in the locality, which would make it impossible for the king to stay under his roof for any time at all.
Charles washed quickly in the house, then Wolfe took him and Richard to hide in the hay store in his barn, returning later with cold meat for them. The pair lay up there all day, and were joined in the evening by Wolfe and his son, a freshly released Royalist prisoner of war. Over food the four men discussed the king’s options, the Wolfes both being quite adamant that there was no possibility of his getting into Wales, because the River Severn was so closely guarded. Contrary to Charles’s calculations, Major General Harrison had recognised even before the battle of Worcester had been won that this would be an attractive escape route. Harrison knew Wales and its strong Royalist leanings first hand, from his time rooting out Anglican priests there the previous year. As a result, he had closed down the Anglo–Welsh border with ruthless efficiency.
Charles accepted the Wolfes’ advice and gave up on his Welsh plan. He also followed the old man’s suggestion that he cover his bright white stockings with green yarn ones, because they stood out too much. Wolfe’s wife further refined Charles’s disguise, rubbing the juice of walnut leaves onto the backs of his hands, to darken them to something that might pass for a labourer’s skin tone.
It was time to move on, before one of Harrison’s patrols stumbled on them. The Wolfes gave the two men provisions for their journey, and a little money. They also offered them horses, but it was decided that, despite the biting pain Charles felt at every step, they would be safer on foot. That way they could cut across country, and avoid roads thick with enemy search parties.
With very few options, Charles decided to set off that night on the road back towards Richard’s home at Hobbal Grange. It was eleven o’clock on Friday, 5 September, when the king and Richard left the Wolfes, whose maid led them in the dark for the first couple of miles. Charles hoped to find out what had happened to Henry Wilmot once he had got back to Hobbal Grange. If Wilmot had found it as difficult to move on as he had, Charles intended to join with him, and resume their original plan of heading for London together.
* Nicholas Owen was canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1970.
10
Near Misses
It is not yet known of any certainty where the Scots King is. If he be not already gotten away into the Isle of Man, it’s thought he skulks in some private corners.
Another Victory in Lancashire obtained against the Scots, September 1651
After being shown the priest hole at Moseley Hall, and retiring to bed fully dressed, Wilmot had slept well that Thursday night.
In the morning his host, Thomas Whitgreave, sent the priest William Walker to Bentley Hall, four miles south-east of Moseley, and near to Walsall. Bentley’s owner, Colonel John Lane, a Royalist who had fought for the Stuarts since the English Civil War’s start in 1642, knew Walker well. Whitgreave trusted that Lane would be prepared to listen to what Walker had to say, and would help by looking after and hiding Wilmot’s striking horse.
Whitgreave hoped it could be hidden at Lane’s home, where the stables were less open to general view than were his at Moseley. Whitgreave’s house was near the road, and a neighbouring household had a clear sight of the property. If anyone spied Wilmot’s charger, they could not help but wonder where it was from, and whose it was. Bentley Hall had none of these concerns, for it stood quite alone.
What Whitgreave had not known when he sent Walker on his way was that Colonel Lane had served under Wilmot during the Civil War. Lane immediately agreed to help his former superior officer in any way he could, and told Walker to take back the message that he would come to Moseley Hall at midnight. He suggested the rendezvous with Whitgreave should take place in a close called Alport’s Leasow, which had ‘a great dry pit, covered with many trees’. He could leave his horse there without concern that it would be spotted.
Whitgreave met Lane at Alport’s Leasow at the agreed time, and brought him home to Moseley with him to see Wilmot. Lane and Wilmot greeted one another, then Lane wasted no time in revealing the plan he had formed in the few hours since he had become aware of Wilmot’s plight.
He urged Wilmot to move to Bentley Hall, which he judged to be safer than Moseley. Apart from the latter’s dangerous lack of privacy, Lane pointed out that Whitgreave was a known Catholic, who must surely be under greater suspicion of helping fleeing Royalists than most. Moseley was therefore more likely to attract sudden Parliamentary house searches than Bentley.
As well as holding out the immediate possibility of a safer haven, the colonel was also the bearer of intriguing news. His much younger sister, Jane – the colonel was forty-three, Jane was in her mid-twenties – had recently secured a pass from Captain Stone in Stafford. This document, won from a hostile but powerful figure, granted Jane and a manservant permission to travel to the home of some cousins who lived near Bristol. One of them was about to give birth, and Jane had persuaded Captain Stone that she needed to be on hand to help.
This pass, Lane hoped, might enable Wilmot to accompany his sister, disguised as her manservant. Once they reached their destination he could make his own way the short distance to Bristol, and find a ship to take him abroad.
Wilmot thanked Lane for his kind offer, but said he must stay at Moseley for now because he wanted to be ready to help the king, and he was delighted by the hiding place Whitgreave had provided for him. He encouraged the colonel to keep his sister’s pass safe, and to hand. For the right person, it would surely be a godsend.
On the return journey from Francis Wolfe’s home, after the attempt to cross to Wales had come to nothing, the king and Richard once again approached Evelith Mill and its fierce occupant. Charles insisted that they give it a wide berth. He was adamant that he and Richard must wade through the river rather than risk another confrontation, and a further hue and cry.
Richard protested that the stretch of water was known to be treacherous, and admitted that he did not know how to swim. Charles, a strong and enthusiastic swimmer, said he would help him over. Entering the wate
r, Charles found it only reached his waist, and he was able to guide Richard across with ease.
Once they reached Hobbal Grange, they decided to carry on for a further three miles to Boscobel House, where the Earl of Derby had urged Charles to head in the aftermath of defeat, and where William and Joan Penderel were live-in housekeepers for the Giffard family.
They arrived at Boscobel at three o’clock in the morning of Saturday, 6 September. The nine miles from Madeley had taken four hours to cover, because of the dark, the roughness of the route travelled, and the state of Charles’s feet. The king had, by this stage, been walking for two straight nights, in agony.
Joan Penderel knelt to peel off the wet shoes and stockings, which were heavy with pieces of gravel, then tended to the king’s blisters and treated his wounds. She managed to find him fresh stockings, but there were no other shoes that fitted him, so she warmed the ones that had been torturing him by popping warm coals inside them, so they would at least be dry by the time he was forced to put them on again.
The king asked of William, ‘What news?’ William informed him that Major William Careless was also concealed in the house. It was a name the king recognised as belonging to a brave officer from his crushed army at Worcester.
Careless, who had rallied to the king in the days before the battle, had been one of the Royalists who had charged down the city’s streets, risking all while the king made his escape. Indeed, Careless had stayed till the very end: he believed he had witnessed the battle’s last fatality before finally riding off.
He had then found himself in an area that he knew well – he had grown up nearby at Broom Hall, in Brewood. Then, during the First Civil War, he had briefly become governor of Tong Castle, which stood a couple of miles from Boscobel, and from Whiteladies.
David Jones, a friend of the major’s, had hidden him for a while at Tong Heath. From there he had found his way to Boscobel House, led there by a woman called Elizabeth Burgess.
Careless was another from the intertwined local Catholic gentry families of this part of western England. His loyalty to the Crown had brought him a great deal of suffering, including a spell as a prisoner of war. In the nine months prior to the battle of Worcester, after his release from captivity, he had been lying low in the vicinity, hoping that the day would come when he would be able to help the Stuart cause once more.
Charles summoned the major, who was quite overcome by the sight of his master. He started crying, and the king – tired, scared and vulnerable – joined in the tears. After they had regained control of their emotions, Charles asked Careless for his recommendations as to what he should do next.
Careless was clear in his advice, stressing that the king was in mortal danger: the major had seen the enemy in great numbers, fanning out over the entire area in pursuit of escaping Royalists. Charles’s capture was, of course, their prime goal.
Careless advised that hiding either in Boscobel House or in the nearby woodland would prove equally disastrous, given the quantity and the persistence of the enemy: they would surely discover the king in either place before long. In fact, having observed the thoroughness of the Parliamentarians up close, Careless was sure they would return to Boscobel that day.
The one spot nearby where Careless considered that Charles might find safety was in a great oak tree he had spotted on his travels, and had briefly hidden in himself. This oak had been pollarded a few years before, which had prompted it to grow back strong, with an unusually thick platform of lower branches. This lushness was, Careless had noticed, impossible to see through. In addition, the oak grew in a spot blessed with good views in every direction. As both hiding place and observation point, it struck him as the best and only option.
Charles enjoyed a quick breakfast of bread and cheese, with warmed milk and beer. Then, at nine o’clock on the morning of Saturday, 6 September he set out for the hiding place that would come to symbolise his time on the run after Worcester.
Careless led the king to the foot of the oak tree, and the two men climbed up into its dense boughs, using a woodman’s ladder lent by William Penderel. They carried with them two cushions from William’s home, as well as provisions for the day: more bread and cheese, wrapped in linen, and weak beer to wash it down with.
After settling into the hiding spot, Careless noticed Charles’s extreme tiredness following all his exertions, and invited him to lay his head in his lap, while using the cushions as a makeshift mattress. The king slept deeply for the first time in three days, his head so heavy on Careless’s lap that the major lost all sensation in one of his legs. On one occasion, as a group of redcoat soldiers were riding beneath the oak, Careless feared that his leg was so numb that he and the king might slide out of the tree and drop into the enemy’s path. Unable even to whisper, in case the Parliamentarians should hear him, but no longer able to keep the king secure, the major gently pinched Charles till he woke up.
They waited for a lull in the busy day of search parties, then shared the food and drink they had taken up with them. Meanwhile William and Joan Penderel kept watch on the ground below, Joan pretending to be busy gathering sticks. Several times they spotted redcoats combing the thick woodland, hunting for Royalist prey. At one point they saw an old woman scraping around in the field near them, looking for something to eat, and heard her suddenly shout out, to nobody they could see, ‘Master, don’t you see a troop of horse before you?’ But neither those cavalrymen, nor any of their comrades, climbed up into the branches of the formidable oak, whose heavy, leafy boughs screened the king and the major. At the one instant when an enemy cavalryman started to look too intently at the oak, and seemed to think of examining it closely, Joan Penderel quickly diverted his attention, and the moment of greatest danger passed.
In the evening Charles and Careless came down from the oak, and returned to Boscobel House. Charles sat in a hidden corner of the garden, drinking wine brought for him by Richard Penderel from Wolverhampton. In this secluded spot, so far removed from the stress of the day, William Penderel took the opportunity to shave Charles, and trim his hair some more. They stayed in the garden till it grew dark.
Meanwhile, also on Saturday, 6 September, Humphrey Penderel, the miller, went to Shifnal to pay some taxes due to the military. While there he asked Captain Broadways, the tax collector, what he had heard about goings on in the area. Their conversation was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a Parliamentary colonel, who demanded to know of Broadways if he had followed up reports that the king had been seen at Whiteladies. Broadways said he had heard the rumour that Charles had been there, but knew nothing further. He then motioned towards Humphrey, and told the colonel that this man would know more on the subject, since he was an inhabitant of the house in question.
The colonel, excited by this coincidence, interrogated Humphrey sharply, but the miller did well. He conceded that Charles, as he supposed everyone had heard, had indeed passed through the property. But, he added, it would have been quite impossible for the king to have stayed on there, undiscovered, because the three families that all called Whiteladies home could agree over nothing: there was not a chance of such a disparate group keeping the king’s hiding place secret, if he had chosen to shelter under such a divided roof.
The colonel reminded Humphrey of the £1,000 bounty on the king’s head. Humphrey was unmoved. The colonel rudely dismissed him, saying Parliament would capture the king within a day or two, with or without the help of the likes of him.
When Humphrey returned to recount this tale, it was the first time that Charles learnt of the enormous price on his head. He felt despondent, knowing what a temptation such a fortune must be to anyone, let alone a family scraping a living from the land: at this time a craftsman in the building trade was earning roughly £25 per year, and £1,000 could have bought just short of 200 head of cattle.
The Penderels had not mentioned it to their guest, but the day before, one of them had been approached by someone who had been present at Whiteladies
when Charles had first put on his woodman’s disguise. Were the brothers aware, this man enquired, where Charles was now, for he had just learnt that £1,000 was being offered for his capture. This Penderel brother, determined to keep the king safe, managed to persuade the would-be bounty hunter that it was too late to claim any such reward: they were already guilty of helping the king, and if they now confessed as much, they would both be executed for treason.
Careless reassured the king that those few who knew his whereabouts would never contemplate his betrayal, even for a reward 100 times greater than that on offer. This declaration of infinite loyalty set Charles’s mind at rest.
At the same time that Charles was coming to terms with the size of the price on his head, Parliament was redoubling its efforts to find him. There had, early on, been great excitement at the capture of ‘a tall young Gentleman’, but on examination he proved not to be the king.
A few days after the battle, the Irish and Scottish Committee, which was responsible for deciding what to do with the flood of Royalist prisoners, urged the House of Commons to ‘publish their pleasure concerning those who harbour and conceal any person who has been in arms for Charles Stuart, and for encouragement of such as shall apprehend, or discover … the said Charles Stuart’.1
Inaccurate reports came in from across England as to the king’s progress. From Cheshire, it was stated: ‘Now (blessed be God) most of the enemies of this Commonwealth, that got off from the fight at Worcester, are all killed and taken: but Charles Stuart, their Captain General, hath again narrowly escaped, and out run them all, being habited in mean apparel, with only four men to attend him: he is gone towards Scotland with a great and panic fear, by reason of his disaffection of the country towards him.’ They said that he had got as far as Didsbury, near Manchester, where he had been attacked and nearly killed by Clubmen – civilians who armed themselves in order to defend their communities from the excesses of both sides in the Civil War. ‘However,’ the report continued, ‘there is all diligence used for the waylaying and intercepting of him before he gets over [the river] Tweed.’2
To Catch a King Page 14