Escape of Charles II

With the support of a network of Royalist gentry, Charles first attempted to escape into Wales, then to Bristol disguised as a servant, then to the south coast at Charmouth.

During the six-week flight, he passed through numerous English counties, and at one point was forced to hide in an oak tree on the grounds of a house that was being searched by Parliamentarian soldiers.

An alternative explanation is that the heath in question was that in the eastern part of the parish of Kinver, east of Caunsall, Whittington, Dunsley, and including Iverley.

At Kinver Heath, the party conferred and Lord Derby suggested Boscobel House in Shropshire as a safe place of refuge.

At dawn and in pouring rain, Charles was moved out of White Ladies into the nearby Spring Coppice on the estate, hiding there with Richard Pendrell.

After dark, Richard Pendrell took Charles to Hobball Grange, where he had a meal, then immediately set off for Madeley, hoping to cross the River Severn into Wales where the Royalists had strong support.

They found that the river was closely guarded, and Charles and Richard were forced to return to Boscobel, wading through a stream along the way and stopping at White Ladies where they learned Lord Wilmot was safe at nearby Moseley Hall.

[14] The exhausted King slept for some of the time, supported by Careless who, when his arms became tired, was "constrained...to pinch His Majesty to the end he might awaken him to prevent his present danger".

[17] At the suggestion of Lord Wilmot, Charles left Boscobel for Moseley Hall late in the evening of 7 September, riding an old horse that had been provided by the miller, Humphrey Pendrell.

Three of the brothers took the horse back, while Richard and John Pendrell along with Francis Yates continued with the King to Moseley Hall.

[19] When Parliamentary troops arrived at the Hall Charles was hurriedly hidden in a priest hole, secreted behind the wall of a bedroom.

Wilmot had learned that Jane had obtained a permit allowing herself and a servant to travel to Abbots Leigh in Somerset to visit a friend, Ellen Norton, who was expecting a baby.

Wilmot refused to travel in disguise; he rode half a mile ahead of the party and said that if challenged he would claim to be out hunting.

The party continued through Stratford-upon-Avon, and on to Long Marston where they spent the night of 10 September at the house of John Tomes, another relation of Jane's.

[27][28] Since no ships were to be found, Pope suggested the King find refuge at the home of Colonel Francis Wyndham, another Royalist officer, who lived forty miles away in the village of Trent near Sherborne on the Somerset/Dorset border.

The King spent the next few days at Trent House while Wyndham and Wilmot attempted to find a ship from Lyme Regis or Weymouth.

Wyndham contacted Captain Ellesdon, a friend in Lyme Regis, one of whose tenants, Stephen Limbry, was sailing from Charmouth to Saint-Malo the following week.

To explain the party's need to depart quietly at night, the landlady was told in confidence that her guests were an eloping couple (Wyndham's cousin and Wilmot posing respectively as bride and groom), with Charles as their manservant.

[31] Stranded on the beach at dawn, with no sign of the promised boat, Charles and Wyndham decided to head to nearby Bridport, hoping to find out there what had happened to Limbry.

The inn's ostler, a veteran Parliamentary soldier, became suspicious – and had his suspicions confirmed when a blacksmith told him that one of the horse's shoes had been forged in Worcestershire.

Taking a small country road (Lee Lane) heading north they narrowly missed a party of troops who were riding from Charmouth.

Fortunately for Charles, attention was diverted by one of the women travelling with the soldiers going into labour, allowing the King to escape the next morning and return to Trent House.

Phelips, Coventry and Doctor Henchman of Salisbury Cathedral decided to try the Sussex coast, and contacted Colonel George Gunter of Racton, between Havant and Chichester.

[33] No sooner had Charles arrived than he pretended to leave permanently: riding about the district, visiting Stonehenge, and finally returning known only to Mrs Hyde.

Together they made arrangements with Captain Nicholas Tattersell to carry the King and Wilmot from Shoreham in a coal boat Surprise for the sum of £80.

As they were leaving, a party of around fifty soldiers rode rapidly towards them before dashing past and up a narrow lane, giving the travellers a severe fright.

[39] Two hours after that, a troop of cavalry arrived in Shoreham to arrest the King, having been given orders to search for "a tall, black man, six feet two inches in height".

On his return to England in 1660 the King granted a variety of annuities and gifts to some of the people who had aided him, including the Pendrell brothers and Jane Lane.

[42] As Charles II lay dying on the evening of 5 February 1685, his brother and heir the Duke of York brought Father John Huddleston, whom the King had spent time with at Moseley Hall and who was then residing at Somerset House, to his bedside, saying, "Sire, this good man once saved your life.

Charles confirmed that he wished to die in the Roman Catholic Church, and Huddleston heard the King's confession and administered Extreme Unction and the Viaticum.