Wilmot continued to seek help from Royalists in the area. Thomas Henslow, of Boarhunt, near the Hampshire coast, was one who was approached at this time, and he appears to have passed on the news of the king’s proximity to the Earl of Southampton. Southampton was a Royalist grandee of the old school. A close political ally of Sir Edward Hyde’s, he had been so trusted by Charles’s late father that he had tried to negotiate for peace on the Crown’s behalf in 1643 and 1645. He now got word to the king that he was happy to offer whatever assistance might be needed. But, trusting that Gunter’s ship would prove to be the answer to all his hopes, Charles forbade his comrades from bringing Southampton in on the design. After so many near misses and dashed hopes, he was prepared to gamble everything on this plan to flit from Shoreham across the Channel.
Also daring to hope that successful escape was imminent, Wilmot dispatched Colonel Phillips to London, to meet a Royalist sympathiser who could arrange a speedy transfer of money to France. Wilmot told Phillips to ask for this credit to arrive as soon as possible in Rouen – a favourite French haunt of Royalists in exile (particularly those unable to afford Parisian court life), which Wilmot thought an excellent destination for the king.
Colonel Gunter arrived in Brighton and went to the George,* which he found empty. He booked the best bedroom for himself, ate his supper, and was enjoying a glass of wine when Charles and Wilmot also arrived in the inn. The landlord, Gaius Smith, said, ‘More guests!’ to Gunter, before going forward to greet them.
Gunter ignored the new arrivals, until he heard Charles toast Wilmot with: ‘Here, Mr Barlow, I drink to thee!’ Smith the landlord was next to Gunter at that moment, and the colonel said to him, ‘I know that name – I pray enquire, and whether he was not a major in the King’s army.’ Smith went to ask the question, and returned to say that Gunter was quite correct. ‘Mr Barlow’ and the supposed major then invited Gunter to join them for a drink, and they all moved to Gunter’s room, because of its larger size.
Colonel Gunter would remember how ‘At supper, the King was cheerful, not showing the least sign of fear or apprehension of any danger, neither then nor at any time during the whole course of this business. Which is no small wonder, considering that the very thought of his enemies, so great and so many, so diligent, and so much interested in his ruin, was enough, as long as he was within their reach and as it were in the midst of them, to have daunted the stoutest courage in the world.’3
Francis Mançell, the French merchant who had secured the ship, and the ship’s captain, Nicholas Tattersall, joined the group for further supper at the George. Charles, as ever, was extremely conscious of when he was being looked at too intently. Over supper he felt Tattersall’s eyes constantly on him.
After the five men had eaten, Tattersall called Mançell over to tell him that he was most upset that he had not told him who the ‘man of quality’ was, for, he said, ‘He is the king, and I very well know him to be so.’ Mançell assured Tattersall that he was wrong, but Tattersall was adamant: ‘I know him very well, for he took my ship, together with other fishing vessels, at Bright-Hempson [Brighton] in the year 1648!’ This was while Charles was in charge of the Royalist fleet during the Second Civil War, when the then Prince of Wales was denied battle by a sudden storm. His only successes had been picking off a few enemy ships, one of them Tattersall’s.
Tattersall continued: ‘But be not troubled at it, for I think I do God and my country good service in preserving the king, and by the grace of God I will venture my life and all for him, and set him safely on the shore (if I can) in France.’
Mançell reported every word back to the king, who realised he had no choice but to trust Tattersall. He took the precaution of keeping the merchant and the ship’s captain with him, drinking and smoking, rather than allowing them to go home, where they might spread the thrilling (and highly valuable) information they now knew.
This was not the only unsettling moment for the king during that long night waiting at the George. While Charles ‘stood [with] his back against the fire, leaning over a chair’, the landlord, Gaius Smith, made a point of chatting to him. When the two were briefly alone, Smith bent over, took Charles’s hand, which was resting on the back of a chair, and kissed it, before whispering, ‘God bless you, wheresoever you go – I do not doubt before I die but to be a lord, and my wife a lady.’ Another who was present heard Smith say, ‘It shall not be said but I have kissed the best man’s hand in England.’
Charles laughed nervously, and moved to another room. Colonel Gunter was amazed by his poise at such a moment of danger: ‘It was admirable to see how the King (as though he had not been concerned in these words, which might have sounded in the ears of another man as the sentence of death) turned about in silence, without any alteration of countenance or taking notice of what had been said.’
Charles could only hope that the innkeeper would remain focused on possible future royal rewards, rather than opting for an immediate bounty by turning him in. After a while, Charles retreated to his bedroom, and Colonel Gunter followed to say how appalled he was at the landlord’s outburst. ‘Peace, peace, Colonel,’ the king said. ‘The fellow knows me, and I him. He was one that belonged to the back-stairs [staff] to my father. I hope he is an honest fellow.’
Tattersall, however, proved increasingly awkward. When pressed by Colonel Gunter about whether he was ready for the voyage, he announced that they would be going nowhere that night, given the state of the tide and the direction of the wind. He revealed that he had brought the Surprise into a creek, from which it would be impossible to move her in such conditions. It seemed that the great disappointment at Charmouth was about to be played out once more.
But Charles refused to give up this time. He waited outside, and it was he who noticed the wind suddenly change into a more helpful direction. Gunter offered a further £10 if the boat were made ready straight away. Tattersall, now that he was aware that one of his passengers was the king, held out for a better price all round, insisting that his boat be fully insured against the danger of the mission. The Royalists rounded on him for his opportunism, but Tattersall would not yield, forcing Colonel Gunter to agree to fully cover the Surprise’s supposed value of £200.
With the costs agreed, Tattersall next insisted that the debt be secured by a bond. Gunter was furious, and suggested they look for another vessel. But Charles realised there could be no further delays, and nobody else could possibly be brought into the plan at such a late stage. The king reassured Tattersall of Gunter’s position, saying: ‘He saith right – a gentleman’s word, especially before witnesses, is as good as his bond.’
Now that all arrangements were finally in place, Colonel Gunter urged the king to get some rest. This he did, falling asleep fully dressed with Lord Wilmot nearby. Gunter woke them both at two o’clock, and they took a back road to the creek, where a boat was waiting to take them to the Surprise.
The king and Wilmot said farewell to their companions, and went with Tattersall, Colonel Gunter and Robert Swan to Shoreham. It turned out that their ‘ship’ was actually a small coal barge – the king estimated that she was not above sixty tons. She had a crew of just four men (we know one was named Thomas Tuppon, and that a Richard Carver was her master), and a boy. She was lying with her hull in the mud, because the tide was out.
Wilmot and Charles bid farewell to Colonel Gunter and to Swan, and scaled a ladder onto the ship, making for a small cabin which they stayed in while the tide began to rise. The king found a bunk there, and rested in it. Suddenly Tattersall entered the cabin, kissed Charles’s hand, and professed his complete loyalty, as well as his determination to get him safely to France.
At seven there was enough water for the ship to pass out of Shoreham. She set off towards the Isle of Wight, as if on her approved route to Poole. Gunter waited on the shore with the horses in case anything went wrong. ‘At eight o’clock I saw them on sail,’ he would recall, ‘and it was the afternoon before they were out of si
ght. The wind (O Providence!) held very good till next morning to ten o’clock.’
His job was done, but he did learn of one last drama: ‘I was not gone out of the town two hours, but soldiers came thither to search for a tall black man, 6 foot and 2 inches high.’ But the king was gone.
Early in the voyage, Tattersall again came to Charles’s cabin, and asked him to talk the crew into taking him to France. Charles went to address them without Tattersall present, to make it look as though the captain was ignorant of the plan. This was to protect him from recriminations if the escape succeeded. Charles told the men that he and his companion unfortunately found themselves in debt, and they had to get away from England to avoid being punished for their temporary lack of funds. Debt was a serious issue: debtors’ prisons did not recognise social class.
Charles said there was a solution to their problem: money owing to them in Rouen, which they urgently needed to collect, so they could return to England and pay off their creditors. He and his companion desperately needed to reach a port on the north French coast, so they could get to Rouen and achieve financial salvation. Charles gave them twenty shillings while they considered his plea.
The crew told Charles that they would do as he asked, provided he could persuade the captain of his plan. Tattersall was then fetched, and pretended to be taken aback at the request, making a great show of being concerned that such a diversion would delay his journey to Poole. But the crew joined Charles in pressing him, and he eventually agreed to the plan.
Ten hours after setting off from Shoreham, at five in the afternoon, the Surprise turned from within sight of the Isle of Wight towards France. The French coast could be seen as the sun rose the following morning. But the tide was against them, even as safety was within sight. The ship came to a halt two miles from shore, off the port of Fécamp.
As they waited at anchor for the tide to turn, a sleek vessel appeared in the distance. Charles, Wilmot and Tattersall took it to be a pirate ship. It looked as though the king, having evaded his many enemies in England, might now be taken prisoner by Spanish privateers, who were attacking French shipping as part of the ongoing Franco–Spanish War.
Charles persuaded Wilmot that the safest thing to do was to take the Surprise’s small boat, used for supplies, and row it ashore. He was worried that Tattersall, clearly scared by the suspected pirates, might put safety before his professed loyalty to the Crown, and sail as fast as he could back to England. In fact the ‘Spanish pirate ship’ proved to be a French sloop, and it left them alone.
Charles and Wilmot rowed for the French coast, and the Surprise headed for Poole, with a letter from Charles in Tattersall’s pocket guaranteeing safe passage in case Carteret’s Royalist vessels operating out of Jersey intercepted her. She had such a fair wind behind her that she reached her destination in perfect time. Nobody knew of the diversion to France, and the crew kept it secret.
In Fécamp, Charles and Wilmot spent some time arranging horses to take them the forty-five miles to Rouen. They checked into a fine inn near the town’s fish market before setting off.
Their reception in Rouen was inhospitable, for the king and the lord were judged on their shabby clothes, and were suspected of being lowlifes. Charles later told a group including Samuel Pepys that ‘At Rouen he looked so poorly, that the people went into the rooms before he went away to see whether he had not stole something or other.’4
Charles knew of an English merchant based in Rouen called John Sandburne, and he was brought to speak for the duo. Colonel Phillips had successfully sent the bill of exchange to Rouen, which the king was now able to cash in. Charles and Wilmot then spent a day cleaning themselves up, and fitting themselves out in finer clothes. Charles also sent a message to his mother in Paris, letting her know that he was safely on French soil.
The next day, after spending the night at the home of a Mr Scot, the two escapees hired a coach and set off for Paris. It was the final leg of a six-week journey that had seen the king work his way secretively through ten English counties, before finally crossing the Channel.
* Referred to in contemporary documents as ‘the Oulde George’. There was another George in Middle Street, which has often been thought of as the inn in question, but it seems more likely that the fugitives would have avoided the centre of Brighton, and selected a rendezvous in a quiet neighbourhood that was on the Shoreham side of town.
PART FOUR
REACTION, REWARDS AND REDEMPTION
17
Reaction
Now I hear the King is in France; I said by October we should hear where he was if alive, on this ground that a king is too great a person to conceal long; some said he was killed, some said he was here and there.
The diary of the Reverend Ralph Josselin, 30 October 1651
Henrietta Maria and the Duke of York had been in a state of ‘fearful amazement’ since the defeat at Worcester, until ‘they received the comfortable news of his Majesty being safely landed at Feschamp in Normandy, being attended only by the Lord Wilmot. On the news of his arrival the Duke thought it his duty to go and meet him.’1 The two brothers met up in Magny-en-Vexin, forty miles north-west of Paris. On reaching the capital, Charles was reunited with his mother and ‘all the persons of quality then in Town, with all the demonstrations of joy which could possibly be expected’.2 The Duke of Orléans was among those prominent in ‘a most Splendid and Honourable Cavalcade at [the king’s] Reception and Entry into Paris’, attended by ‘the most eminent French nobility’, who congratulated Charles on his deliverance.3
The Marquess of Ormonde, the senior Irish Royalist, wrote from France: ‘The King being by an eminent and high providence escaped the bloody hands of the Rebels is arrived at Paris … The several dangers he hath been in … are said to be so many that the miracle of his coming off gives us strong hope that God hath reserved him to do great things by him and for him.’4
The Cardinal de Retz was among those to greet Charles. In his memoirs he recorded his shock at the state of the young king: ‘His Majesty had not changed his shirt all the way from England; upon his arrival at Paris indeed, he had one lent him by my Lord Jermyn, but the Queen, his mother, had not money to buy him another for the next day.’5
The cardinal was equally appalled at the lack of generosity of the French royal family now that the brave but impoverished escapee was again its guest: ‘The Duke of Orléans went to compliment his Majesty upon his Arrival; but it was not in my power to persuade his Royal Highness to give his nephew one penny; because, said he, a little would not be worth his acceptance, and a great deal would engage me to do as much hereafter.’6 Ashamed at the duke’s tight-fistedness, the cardinal borrowed 1,500 pistoles from a magistrate friend, and quietly handed them over to Lord Taaffe, a courtier of Charles’s, for the king’s use.
For Parliament in London, there was utter astonishment that the king had managed to escape. Embarrassed at the failure of their armies to catch one man, and worried that the figurehead of their enemies was free to lead Royalists against their regime in the future, their newsbooks tried to downplay the significance of an escape that was the talk of Europe.
‘The news this week is as observable from the sea as from the land,’ began a begrudging report of 18 October in the Diary, ‘for the report is free enough, that the Scots King is at The Hague; he came disguised to Gravesend, his hair cut close to his head, and his canvas habilements (as if he were some seaman) did so take of all suspicion, that not any in the ship had the least distrust of him. To this his language which was altogether Dutch to whomsoever he spake, did add to their disregard, insomuch that it is said, no man took notice who or what he was, until such time as he landed, & when being there acknowledged, he had such honour given to him, as the subjection of servile spirits do prodigally attribute to sole supremacy, when they idolize it.’
The account continued to try to make sense of an escape whose details remained unknown. The author wrote with feigned authority, stating categoricall
y that Charles had stayed at the Red Lion inn in Gravesend, while in disguise. It was asserted with equal certainty and inaccuracy that Charles had been smuggled overseas in a Dutch ship, and that the Dutch would suffer for such interference. As for any Englishmen involved in getting the king from the battlefield of Worcester to the Dutch ship, the warning was clear: ‘Those who have so long entertained him, directly against the tenor of the Act of Parliament, will undoubtedly be sought after, and their punishment be made exemplary.’7
Mercurius Politicus, the main Parliamentary propaganda sheet, also peddled the line that the hated Dutch were to blame for the king’s voyage to freedom. ‘We have certain intelligence from Holland of the King of Scots’ late arrival at Scheveling, a mile from The Hague in a Dutch man of war, being accompanied with the Duke of Buckingham, my Lord Wilmot, and one or two of the gang more, all accoutered in seamen’s habits. No sooner was the news brought to the Princess Royal’s Court, but presently they took horse and away to the said village, where the Princess had the first sight of him; much rejoicing there was at this safe arrival, after they had condoled his great loss which seemed to be much lessened, by having his person safe amongst them.’8 It was a short report, sandwiched by longer tales of Parliamentary triumphs in Ireland, and of bravery against the arrogant Dutch at sea.
The Weekly Intelligencer was openly astounded at how the extremely tall and swarthy king had managed to evade detection. ‘It is certain his habit was but mean when he landed,’ it noted, ‘but whether he had on a canvas suit (as some report) or whether he discoloured his hair with saffron, and added by art a more clear complexion to his cheeks, to deceive the beholders, as others would have it, or whether his hair was cut off as some affirm, I cannot determine.’ It was equally short of other details, but still hazarded a guess: ‘Neither is it possible for the present punctually to tell you what or where his companions, or in what port in England he took shipping for Holland, but it is believed in some place not far from London.’9
To Catch a King Page 23