Charles then told Wilmot, Whitgreave and Huddleston to join him in his room. The king sat on his bed, and ate biscuits while drinking sweet Spanish wine. He started to suffer from a nose-bleed – something, he reassured Huddleston, that he often experienced, so it was of no concern to him. He dabbed at the blood with a rough rag from his pocket, before Huddleston swapped it for a fine handkerchief.*
Charles asked Huddleston and Whitgreave to remove his shoes. Huddleston closely inspected the mess that confronted him: ‘His shoes were cut and slashed, as well over the toes as behind in the heels, to give ease to his feet, grown tender with his uneasy night’s marches on foot; much gravel got into his shoes, which were as wet within as without. The stockings he had then on were a pair of white flannel stockings next his skin which His Majesty said he used with his boots with green embroidered tops; which they were glad to cut off, having no other ready to use. Over them were a pair of old sad gray stirrup stockings, much darned in the knees, the heels … cut off; which in his march toward Wales, he was advised to draw over his own, to obscure the whiteness of his own, which gave too great a show. On the night that Mr Huddleston came to turn off His Majesty’s own stockings, he found little rolls of paper between them and his feet; and marveling thereat, His Majesty told them he was advised to put white paper between as remedy, the most excellent remedy for the chafing of his feet.’2 Huddleston was silently appalled – this bad advice must have made the king’s suffering even greater.
The priest placed a cushion under Charles’s feet, and carefully dried them off. He then slipped clean warm stockings and slippers onto them, after which the king sprang up and joked that he now felt so reinvigorated that he was ready to lead another march. ‘If it would please Almighty God to send him once more an army of 10,000 good and loyal soldiers and subjects,’ Whitgreave remembered the king declaring, ‘he feared not to expel all those rogues forth of his kingdom.’3 It was humorous fighting talk from a young man who must have felt certain, in his quieter moments, that no English army would ever again rise for his family’s thrice-defeated cause.
Huddleston looked at the king’s shirt and found it in a miserable state. He asked Wilmot if he might be permitted to change it. ‘Yes, by all means,’ Wilmot replied, adding that he would be pleased to have a fresh one as well, since he had been wearing his since before the battle.
Huddleston was happy to offer a pair of tow-coloured shirts from the batch of six that he had received three days earlier, at the time he had bumped into John Penderel and been brought into the royal conspiracy. He aired them both, giving one to the king and the second to Wilmot. Whitgreave also gave some of his clothes to the king, including a pair of boots.
The men chatted for an hour, before Charles announced that he was eager to take to his bed for a good night’s sleep. It must have been after four o’clock in the morning, on Monday, 8 September, when he lay down to rest on a pallet in the priest hole.
Wilmot now took the opportunity to talk to Whitgreave alone. He told him that he or Huddleston would always be near enough to the king to pass on news of any sudden visits by the enemy. But he wanted Whitgreave to be very clear on one further point: ‘If it should so fall out that the rebels have intelligence of your harbouring any of the king’s party, and should therefore put you to any torture for confession,’ he instructed his host, ‘be sure you discover me first, which may haply in such case satisfy them, and preserve the king.’4 Wilmot may well have been infuriating because of his vanity and his inflexible ways, but the king had chosen his companion well when it came to raw courage.
After sunrise that day all the household servants were sent off on errands, except a kitchen maid. She was a Roman Catholic, who was trusted with more of her master’s business than her colleagues. But not even she could be allowed to know the true identity of the extra guest she must now cook for. She was told that she was going to have to secretly get more supplies because a Royalist relative of Father Huddleston’s was hiding upstairs after fighting at the battle of Worcester. Like all the servants, she was ordered not to venture to the top of the hall – the reason given was that Huddleston was unwell, and must not be disturbed. Only three people ever saw the king, or knew he was there, during his stay at Moseley Hall: Father Huddleston, who stayed with him throughout; Thomas Whitgreave; and Mrs Alice Whitgreave, Thomas’s mother.
Alice had brought Roman Catholicism to Moseley when she married her second husband, Thomas’s father. As she was first introduced to the king in his chamber at the top of her home, she kissed his hand. He returned the gesture with a salute. The young king and the elderly widow would greatly enjoy each other’s company during his stay.
Alice would spend much of her time supervising the servants and checking on the quality of the food that would be served to her hidden guest. She ladled his food out herself in the kitchen, and passed it to her son. Thomas then took it upstairs to the door into Huddleston’s rooms, from where the priest would carry it to the table where the king ate. Sometimes Charles invited the widow and her son to eat with him.
Apart from the Whitgreave family and Huddleston, the motley household included three boys that Huddleston was tutoring. These were Thomas Paling and Francis Reynolds – two of Whitgreave’s nephews – and Sir John Preston, the thirteen-year-old son of an aristocratic Royalist cavalry colonel who had been mortally wounded in battle six years earlier. The Preston family estate had been confiscated by Parliament and given to one of its supporters. The Prestons and the Huddlestons were strongly linked through both their Catholicism and their shared roots in Lancashire and Cumberland.
The boys were excused lessons, and instead were allotted a window each from which to watch for any strangers approaching the house. They were not informed of the king’s presence, but must have known they were on sentry duty for a reason. Young Sir John Preston joked to his two companions during supper one evening, ‘Eat hard, boys, for we have been on the life guard and hard duty this day!’ As Whitgreave noted, this was ‘more truly spoken than he was aware’, the life guard being the regiment dedicated to the monarch’s personal protection. ‘The best soldiers of all could not be more diligent or exact than those three lads,’ Huddleston would remember.
On Monday, 8 September Whitgreave went into the centre of Wolverhampton to see what news he could gather. He was also tasked by Wilmot with contacting Colonel Lane, so his horses could be brought back from Bentley to Moseley. When they were delivered, Wilmot rode to Bentley to tell the colonel to come the following night to collect the king, and take him from Moseley to Bentley.
Charles spent that Monday night in bed while Huddleston watched over him, and Whitgreave kept guard in the passage outside. Meanwhile the good sense of having moved him to Moseley was immediately proven: Parliamentary forces arrived at Boscobel later on the day the king had left, to search the house for fugitives.
Most of the next day he spent either lying on a bed in Huddleston’s room, or sitting in Whitgreave’s study, above the front door of Moseley Hall. He enjoyed chatting with his two companions, and peering out of the window. At one point his attention was drawn to the sight of a band of desperate beggars shuffling into view. Studying them more closely, he realised with shock that these pitiful figures were some of his own soldiers, ‘all of them stripped’, Huddleston remembered, ‘many of them cut, some without stocking or shoe, scarce so much left upon them as to cover their nakedness, eating peas out of reaps and handfuls of straw in their hands, which they had pulled up in the fields as they passed, roots and raw coleworts [bitter cabbages] cast out of gardens for hogs, and gathered up by them in the ways as they passed, to preserve themselves from famine, not daring to call at any house, scarce to beg bread or touch anything but what was given them by good people of pity. Some of them His Majesty knew, pointed at, and said they were Highlanders of his own regiment, and one of them an officer.’5
The sight of these pathetic remnants of his army set Charles to thinking aloud: ‘There he told us of t
he Scottish usage, and of his march from thence to Worcester, and of the flight there, and enquired of us how this country and the gentry stood affected, and who were against him.’ Many of the names he heard belonged to Catholics.
Later Charles noticed a book in the study. It was a copy of Manual of Controversies, a catechism written by the contemporary Catholic theologian Henry Turbeville. After reading some of it, he declared that he would take it with him on his travels.
In the middle of that day, a troop of Parliamentary cavalry passed through the village of Moseley. John Penderel spotted them, but decided not to bother the king with the news, because he could see that they were not coming to the hall, and (as he later said) he had no wish to ruin Charles’s lunch with a needless alarm.
The same day a much more menacing event occurred. Whitgreave was standing watch by one of the windows while Charles took a nap, when he was troubled to see a neighbour running as fast as he could towards Moseley Hall. The man blurted out his message to one of the Whitgreaves’ maids, who then went to the bottom of the stairs and shouted, ‘Soldiers! Soldiers are coming!’
The king jumped up from his bed and ran to the priest hole, where he hid with Huddleston. Whitgreave secured it from the outside, then left the house to confront and distract the search party. But as soon as the Roundheads saw Whitgreave, they fell on him. They knew him to have fought against them at Naseby in 1645, and now accused him of having returned to Royalist colours at Worcester a few days earlier. ‘But after much dispute with them,’ Whitgreave recalled, with relief, ‘and by the neighbours being informed of their false information, that I was not there [at Worcester], being very ill a great while, they let me go.’ Once Whitgreave was released from his roughing up, he was considered above suspicion. This enabled him to travel a little from his home, gather information, and buy supplies for the house.
He remained outside the hall until he had seen the last of the search party leave the area. He was later told that the redcoats had brought with them a famous priest-catcher called Southall. Priest-catchers were often from a military or spying background, and they worked with informants to track down Roman Catholics. It was a business: their best tool was bribery, while success entitled them to a reward of a third of any money forfeited by the captured. During the eleven years leading up to the summer of 1651, these bounty hunters had caught fifty Catholics. While some were reprieved, the rest were exiled or executed.
Southall had peeled off from the main search party and gone to pay a visit on the nearby blacksmith, in the hope of a helpful lead. Everyone knew that, because of his everyday contact with travellers passing through, the blacksmith was the figure in any community who was most in touch with the goings on of the outside world; gossip was nearly as much a part of his repertoire as the hammer and the anvil. The Moseley blacksmith, a man by the name of Holbeard, was busy shoeing a horse when Southall appeared and asked him if he knew where the king was. If he did, Southall promised, he would receive a £1,000 reward. Holbeard told him he could not help, since he had no idea of the king’s whereabouts. Southall moved on, as near to claiming the enormous reward as he would ever be.
On the same afternoon Wilmot sent word that Colonel Lane would come that night to collect the king. Charles asked Father Huddleston for one last favour before he went: he wanted to see the Catholic chapel hidden in Moseley’s eaves. Charles reassured Huddleston that he had nothing to fear from his request, and promised that when he won his throne back he would ensure that Catholics had no need to hide their prayers or their preachers. After looking round the chapel, Whitgreave noted with pride that Charles said ‘it was a very decent place’.
Around midnight, Colonel Lane and Whitgreave rendezvoused, Whitgreave’s nephew Francis Reynolds holding the colonel’s and the king’s horses. Whitgreave led Lane to a stile at the corner of his orchard, where he was to wait for the king.
Inside Moseley Hall, Charles took his leave of the trio who had kept him safe, thanking Alice Whitgreave, Thomas Whitgreave and Father Huddleston for their loyalty and kindness. Mrs Whitgreave handed ‘some raisins, almonds and other sweetmeats’ to the king, some of which he sampled then, before putting the rest aside for later.
While Parliamentary troops scoured the countryside for the man they were desperate to capture, inside this mansion three Royalists sank to their knees in deference to their king. They prayed aloud that God might protect him from his enemies. He saluted Mrs Whitgreave, and promised Father Huddleston and Thomas Whitgreave that he would never forget all that they had done for him.
Charles walked with Whitgreave and Huddleston towards Colonel Lane, and the four men continued to where the two horses were being held. It was a cold and drizzly night, so Huddleston insisted the king take his cloak with him, as well as some money. When the king mounted his horse, Whitgreave and Huddleston knelt and kissed his hand once again, uttering more words of hope and encouragement. He and Colonel Lane then disappeared into the night.
Father Huddleston would later note that ‘all the persons employed in this work, within the knowledge of Father H, were Roman Catholics but Mr Huntbatch’.6
* The priest would keep the rag as a royal relic, and eventually sent it to a relative, a Mr Brithwayte, who venerated it.
PART THREE
A LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN
12
Heading for the Coast
It is constantly reported, and believed, that the Scots King is dead, and the late Queen of England is of the same belief, and doth mourn for him.
Weekly Intelligencer, September 1651
On Monday, 8 September the Weekly Intelligencer reported on Major General Harrison’s progress as he harvested Royalist fugitives while continuing his relentless hunt for the king: ‘After such a field of our enemies, which this great victory had mowed, and taken … about 10,000 of them, Major General Harrison hath since gleaned no less than fourteen hundred of them in one place, and letters this day advertise that some hundreds more have been gathered up in another, so that (some of the chiefest of them being made sacrifices for the establishment of the Commonwealth) we hope after this harvest, to enjoy many happy years of peace and plenty.’1
If that dream of a settled and prosperous future were to come true, it was essential that Charles be caught. While he remained unaccounted for, speculation was beginning to mount as to what might have happened to him. ‘It is this day reported,’ the Weekly Intelligencer pronounced, ‘that the Scots King attended but with twelve men, is fled back over Warrington Bridge, endeavouring to return by the same way by which he came; but such is the vigilance of Colonel Lilburne, that it will be almost impossible for him to escape; others are extremely confident, and will not be gainsaid but that he is fled toward North Wales, and being a lost man, will do his uttermost to get into the Isle of Man to make his moan there.’2
The next day, Mercurius Politicus noted how the English people had risen to help Harrison’s men in the apprehending of fleeing Scots: ‘That part of the enemy that took Preston Road for Lancaster, were overtaken by commanded parties of Major General Harrison … Not any of these scattered remnants can escape through, but have been stuck in the hands of the country people, by hundreds and fifties.’3
John Penderel went to discuss arrangements for the journey with Jane Lane, the colonel’s handsome younger sister. She was, the diarist John Evelyn would write, a lady blessed with ‘an acute wit’. Jane sent John back to Charles with some boiled walnuts, which she urged the king to rub on his face and hands, to obscure the whiteness associated with gentle living. As Charles had already learnt from earlier protectors, dark skin was the inevitable consequence of toiling outdoors.
Colonel Lane took Charles to Bentley that night of Tuesday, 9 September, accompanied by John Penderel. Once there, the king adapted his disguise. Out went the simple clothes of a countryman, and instead he put on a sober grey suit, more befitting the status of a trusted manservant. For this journey Charles took on the alias of ‘William Jackson’, the name
of a son of one of the Lanes’ tenants. He carried ten or twelve silver shillings – anything more would have aroused suspicion if he was stopped by the enemy and forced to turn out his pockets.
On Wednesday, 10 September, Colonel and Jane Lane rode to a field beside Bentley where they met up with the king just before dawn. John Penderel now parted with Charles, who would set off on the next leg of his life-or-death adventure in the hands of Mistress Lane. For the first time in his escape attempt, there would be not a single Penderel brother on hand to help the king. The departure of John, who Father Huddleston would later judge to have helped the king even more than his siblings had done, must have been a poignant moment.
Jane assured Charles that she knew the country they would be crossing intimately, and had many friends along the route who could help in an emergency. The king was shown to a strawberry roan gelding, and Colonel Lane quietly took him aside to give him a quick lesson in the etiquette he should display towards his lady companion. As was customary for a senior manservant at the time, the king was to ride at the front of a double saddle shared with his mistress.
Jane’s mother came to say goodbye to her daughter. There was an awkward pause when Jane turned from her parents to the horse and then stood looking expectantly at Charles. ‘Will,’ said Colonel Lane, ‘thou must give my sister thy hand.’ Charles tried to remember his recent instructions, but instead ‘offered his hand the contrary way’, which made old Mrs Lane exclaim in good-humoured despair, ‘What a goodly horseman my daughter has got to ride before her!’4
To Catch a King Page 16