Not entirely happy with this theory, the same publication decided the following week to summarise all that it had heard about Charles’s possible fate in the three weeks since the battle of Worcester. ‘The Reports of the Scots King are various,’ it acknowledged:
I made mention in my last that the Earl of Lauderdale reported, that he saw him fall under a violent blow which one of our Soldiers gave him. There are many others who affirm, that they beheld him in person with that Body of Horse which afterwards fled out of Worcester, and (in a speed full of tumult and distraction galloping from Beaudley [sic] to Wolverhampton) they heard him repeat these words, ‘Shift for yourselves, Gentlemen, shift for yourselves!’ By this it seems he perceived that the many Troops that were with him would serve rather to betray him than assist him, and that, in the conditions in which he was, his greatest safety was in the fewest numbers. There are others who for one night have lodged him in a Castle within four miles of Kendal, and they will tell you that he lay there one night at his entrance into Englance [sic]; but if you ask further of them they cannot tell you with whom on his return he came thither, or how he got away. Some are most confident that he is not amongst the living, and have been so precisely curious as to seek for him among the graves of dead. Others will tell you, that about four days after the great fight at Worcester, he was within three miles of London, and ferried over the River to Wandsworth, and (if you please to believe them) they will persuade you that on the next morning he came over the Bridge into the City with one man only in his company. Others will tell you, that Hind the famous robber whom they call his Scout-master General, did provide him with a Bark at Pensey in Suffolk; and they can tell you too that it cost threescore pound, in which bottom, say they, he was transported into France, although the last letters from thence make not the least mention of it. In this contrariety and contradiction of Reports we know not where to ground; but in this all wise men do agree, that the Parliament are happily rid of an Implacable Enemy; and that if he be not a dead man, yet wherever he is, he is but a lost man, and never any more able to be in the Head of an Army against them in the English Ground.4
After finding that the ship at Redbridge that had been arranged for Charles’s escape had been requisitioned for service against the Royalists on Jersey, Colonel Phillips headed back to Salisbury. There he consulted with John Coventry and Dr Humphrey Henchman, the canon and precentor of Salisbury Cathedral, who advised the king to look to the Sussex coast for his escape, since Southampton was so overrun by Parliamentarians.
The Royalist network sparked back into life. Henchman and Phillips recommended contacting Lawrence Hyde, who lived at Hinton Daubney, a hamlet in Hampshire near to Hambledon. Hyde was a committed Royalist, his late father having served Charles I as chief justice of the King’s Bench.
If Hyde was unable to help, another possibility would be George Gunter, whose home was in Racton, four miles from Chichester, in West Sussex. In the end, Gunter proved the more convenient choice, but it was a matter of great good luck that he was on hand to help at all.
George Gunter had served as a colonel in Charles I’s army, and was still being made to pay for that loyalty in the autumn of 1651. Because of Parliament’s fear of the recent invasion from Scotland, Gunter had been one of many Royalists across the land who had been ordered not to stray more than five miles from his home. If he ventured further than that, he would be arrested.
Meanwhile, in the wake of Worcester, the huge expense of maintaining the army and of raising the militia for the defence of the new regime was more than the government could bear. Irregular units were paid off and disbanded as quickly as possible, but the New Model Army’s continued vigilance still came at a high price. Cavaliers like Gunter were consequently punished for their allegiance to the Stuarts, and forced to pay enormous fines against their estates.
In late September 1651, three weeks after Worcester, Gunter received an order from the Committee for the Advance of Money for the Service of the Parliament. It had been established nine years earlier, under ‘An Ordinance for the assessing of all such as have not contributed upon the Propositions of both Houses of Parliament for the raising of money, plate, horse and horsemen, etc.’ Its tentacles originally spread everywhere, but since the end of the First Civil War in 1646 it had focused all its attention on Royalists, demanding forced payments.
The committee was at that time recovering from a scandal. Its previous chairman had been Lord Howard of Escrick, who had been ousted in disgrace after Major General Thomas Harrison exposed him in 1650 for taking bribes from Royalists. Lord Howard had been sent as a prisoner to the Tower of London.
The committee worked out of Haberdashers’ Hall in the City of London, and it was to this address that Colonel Gunter was instructed to present himself immediately. With him he must bring payment of a £200 fine, which the committee calculated to be one twenty-fifth of his total worth. If he failed to obey, he was advised, all his assets would be seized by the committee.
Gunter told the messenger who delivered this sobering news that the order was impossible to obey. He pointed out that he could not possibly go to London, as he was not permitted to move more than five miles from home. The messenger ‘told him it should be at his peril if he did not obey’.
The next day Gunter rode to Chichester, a predominantly Parliamentary city during the Civil Wars, to ask the enemy authorities there which of their two directives took precedence: the one confining him to his immediate neighbourhood, or the one ordering him to London. Unsurprisingly, they said that he must go to Haberdashers’ Hall in time to avoid his property’s complete confiscation. The happy result of this, given what was to transpire, was that Gunter, from this point until his financial dealings with the committee were finally concluded, was able to go where he wanted, without restriction.
Gunter travelled up to London, and argued hard that the fine was set at too high a rate. He made his case well, and managed to have his fine halved. The problem he now faced was how to raise the required £100 in cash against his estate, given the difficulty prominent Royalists were all experiencing in securing credit. Not only had their army been defeated, but it was increasingly believed that their king was most likely lost. On 7 October A Perfect Account of the Daily Intelligence reported from London that all Charles’s friends ‘have clad themselves in mourning’.5 Everything seemed turned against any who supported the Crown. ‘The current running [was] then so hard against the King, the royal party, and all good men,’ Gunter recalled, ‘that [I] could not borrow the money in all London.’
Aware that the date by which he had to make full payment of the reduced figure was fast approaching, Gunter raced back home to Racton. On 7 October he successfully secured the sum from a moneylender who already held the bond on his estate. He returned home between eight and nine o’clock that evening to find his wife Katharine waiting for him in the doorway. She told him that a gentleman called Barlow, from Devon, was waiting for him in the parlour to talk about an urgent matter ‘which none besides yourself can decide’.6
Gunter followed his wife into the room, and saw two men sitting on either side of the fireplace: his cousin, Captain Thomas Gunter, and opposite him, in a ludicrously inadequate disguise, Lord Wilmot. The colonel immediately recognised Wilmot, and was amazed to realise that his cousin Thomas had failed to do so. This was especially surprising because the captain had served under Wilmot’s command in the earlier wars.
Gunter had some food and a bottle of sack brought to the table – he would later remember how, to everyone present’s astonishment, two hornets buzzed out of the bottle when it was unstopped. He noticed Wilmot’s retainer, Swan, quietly warn his master to be careful of Captain Gunter’s young servant, ‘Ponie’, who was outside. Ponie had previously served the Earl of Cleveland, and during that period of service he must have set eyes on Wilmot many times.
After supper Gunter insisted on showing his Devonian guest to his quarters himself, since his wife had given the household ser
vants the day off. He led the way upstairs, a candle in his hand, and then bade his wife and cousin to head for their bedrooms while he waited to check that ‘Mr Barlow’ had all he required.
The two men now being alone, Wilmot went straight to the point: ‘The King of England, my master, your master, and the master of all good Englishmen, is near you, and in great distress. Can you help us to a boat?’ Gunter’s immediate concern was for the man, not the plan: ‘Is he well? Is he safe?’ Wilmot reassured him that he was. ‘God be blessed,’ Gunter replied. He went on to say that it would take him a little time to sort out a boat, and the king must be kept in safe hands in the meantime. Wilmot then qualified what he had said about the king’s safety: he had not seen him for a short while, but believed he was being sheltered safely.
The task of securing a boat, though, was not as straightforward as Wilmot might have hoped. Gunter was candid about his lack of maritime knowledge or connections. As he would recall, ‘for all he lived so near the sea, yet there was no man living so little acquainted with those kind of men. However, as he thought himself bound by all obligations, sacred and civil, to do his utmost to preserve his King, so he would faithfully promise with all possible care and alacrity, yea expedition (which he accounted to be the life of such a business), to acquit himself of his duty.’7
The relentless pressures of the prolonged escape attempt are easy to forget. Wilmot would have been put to death on capture, as certainly as the Earl of Derby had been. He had nearly been caught several times in the days immediately following Worcester. For five weeks he had been responsible for overseeing the safety of his master: he had been the constant, while others had dipped in and out of their life-or-death odyssey. Deeply affected by the sincerity and passion of Colonel Gunter’s declaration of loyalty, he embraced the colonel, ‘and kissed his cheek again and again’.
Gunter reassured Wilmot that he was sure everything would work out well for the king and for him, and then went to his own bedroom. His wife was waiting anxiously for him, and demanded to know who the strange Mr Barlow really was. She had tried to get the same information out of Thomas Gunter earlier in the evening, but he was adamant that the Devonian was none other than he claimed to be. But Mrs Gunter was insistent: her husband must share this man’s true identity with her.
This was an age when husbands believed themselves to be superior to all others in the family hierarchy, be they wives, children or (if there were any) servants. It had been that way in England since Anglo-Saxon times: the husband governed the household as the monarch reigned over the nation. Just as a country benefited from a strong ruler, so a household was believed to blossom if the husband remained firmly in charge. Even in wealthy circles, such as the Gunters inhabited, a wife remained under the ‘rod’ of her husband from the moment her father handed over such power at her marriage until one of the couple died.
The colonel apologised to his wife, but said he could not talk to her about their guest, and that she must not worry herself about things that did not involve her. But Mrs Gunter was not to be silenced, believing that this matter did in fact involve her and the rest of her family. She suspected that, in an age when a man’s condemnation for high crimes could also lead to the confiscation of all his possessions, her husband was embroiled in a project that could damn them all: him to death, and she and her family to eternal poverty. ‘And in that,’ she said, ‘I am concerned.’ She then burst into a loud sobbing fit, which the colonel was unable to stop.
Gunter took his candle and made as if to move to another room. But once he was out the door he went straight back to Wilmot’s quarters, knocked on the door, and apologised for disturbing him. He then asked if it might be allowable to share all that the two of them had discussed earlier with his wife. Gunter stressed that he entirely trusted her to keep everything to herself, but assured Wilmot that if he preferred that he did not share the information, he would placate her as best he could. ‘No, no,’ Wilmot soothed, ‘by all means acquaint her with it.’
Gunter returned to his wife and explained that ‘Mr Barlow’ was in fact Lord Wilmot. He also told her about the king’s highly dangerous predicament, and how he had been asked to help find a boat to carry Charles and Wilmot overseas. He dabbed the tears from his wife’s eyes, then was pleased to see that, now she understood the great secret, she was quickly cheering up. She declared herself fully supportive of her husband’s mission, though she was sceptical about its likely success: ‘Go on, and prosper. Yet I fear you will hardly do it.’ The colonel himself was equally pessimistic: ‘However, I must endeavor, and will do my best, leaving the success to God Almighty.’
Brought up to believe that women were, as the Bible termed them, ‘the weaker vessel’, Gunter congratulated himself on his luck in having a wife who deported herself ‘during the whole carriage of the business, with so much discretion, courage, and fidelity, that (without vanity be it spoken) she seemed (her danger considered) to outgo her sex’.8
Gunter slept very little that night, thinking through all that he had to plan, aware of the consequences of failure to him and his family, and eager to come up with a scheme that gave the greatest chance of success to the king.
The next morning, Wednesday, 8 October, he agreed with Wilmot that he would go to make enquiries about a boat, and would return home as soon as he had news. He asked a retired servant, John Day, to accompany him as he rode the two miles or so south-west through Bourne (called Westbourne now) to the coastal village of Emsworth. On their short journey they crossed over from West Sussex into Hampshire.
While Gunter knew nobody in the local seafaring community, Day was connected to some of them by blood. They had hoped to find boats lying idle at Emsworth awaiting work, but there were none to be seen. The two men headed back, wondering what to do next. Gunter was surprised, when nearly home, to bump into Wilmot. With the possibility of escape so tantalisingly close, Wilmot had found it impossible to wait patiently for the colonel’s return, and on the spur of the moment he had decided to find out for himself what was going on. But, prone to forgetfulness at the best of times, he found that he had left behind a black purse stuffed with gold coins that he usually kept on him.
Wilmot had checked everywhere, and by now accepted that he had somehow left Gunter’s home without the money needed to finance the escape. He sent his manservant, Swan, back to see if it was in his bedroom. Fortunately Katharine Gunter, when she checked on her guest that morning, had seen the pouch lying on Wilmot’s bed, and kept it safe before handing it over to Swan.
Meanwhile Colonel Gunter and Wilmot, undaunted by the setback at Emsworth, decided to try Langstone Harbour, three miles to the west. The harbour lay in an inlet between Hayling Island and Portsea Island, and was the site of a salt works, where sea water was boiled in a large lead pan before being added to the salt harvested naturally after each high tide. Langstone was also a busy fishing port, which was why the Royalists had chosen to scout it out. However, yet again, no boats were available for the king’s use.
Wilmot and Gunter shared a plate of oysters at Langstone, and then went their separate ways. Wilmot returned to the safety of Lawrence Hyde’s home at Hinton Daubney, where Gunter promised to come that evening with a fresh plan. Gunter then met up with his cousin Thomas Gunter, and let him in on the secret. The colonel appreciated the need to act fast, he trusted his cousin implicitly, and the captain’s involvement would be useful in increasing the number of avenues that could be explored.
Colonel Gunter arrived at Hinton Daubney in time for supper. He proposed that they all meet again the following day in the larger port of Chichester, when he would let Wilmot know of any progress he and his cousin had made. Gunter then ‘took his leave of the Lord [Wilmot], it being a very dismal night for wind and rain, which made the Lord very much to importune the Colonel to stay. But he refused, replying that delays were dangerous; and let the weather be what it would, he had a sure guide.’
Gunter set off home, which he reached in the early h
ours. Allowing himself a short sleep, he then headed for Chichester, where he joined forces with his cousin. Thomas Gunter reported that he and his friend William Rishton had already made numerous enquiries, but without success: not a single English merchantman was due to head out in the coming days.
Colonel Gunter now had the idea of turning things on their head: rather than searching for an English ship heading overseas, why not look for a French vessel heading home?
He checked which French merchants were then in Chichester harbour, and recognised the name of Francis Mançell. The colonel went to Mançell, plied him with French wine and Spanish tobacco, then changed the tone of the convivial meeting by admitting, ‘I do not only come to visit you, but must request one favour of you.’ Mançell said he would be happy to help in any way that he could. Gunter said he needed to hire a small ship, ‘for I have two special friends of mine, that have been engaged in a duel; and there is mischief done, and I am obliged to get them off if I can’.
Mançell, thrillingly for Gunter, said he could see no problem with this, and suggested Brighton, thirty miles away, as the port of departure. Gunter was so excited at having at last found a possible avenue for escape, albeit at a slight distance, that he asked Mançell to set off with him immediately for Brighton. But Mançell pointed out that this would not be possible, because Chichester was hosting its traditional annual festival that day – the Sloe Fair was a holiday that attracted revellers from across all the surrounding area. Even people from Brighton would be there in large numbers, meaning it would be impossible to make any arrangements for a boat. But they could, he said, set out the next day.
To Catch a King Page 21