15
There are strong probabilities that Charles Stuart and the Duke of Buckingham were in or about Staffordshire, some days after the victory at Worcester, and probably they may still be in those parts under disguise.
The Council of State to Captain John Ley, 13 October 1651
Francis Wyndham led the royal party back to his home in Trent. He made it clear that he was willing to host the king for as long as necessary, but Charles was already concerned at the length of time he had been spending in this one place. More and more people were coming into contact with him, in a household that was the fulcrum of local society. Also, he remained acutely aware that the surrounding area had a large Parliamentary element in it.
The king was startled one day by the frantic ringing of the nearby church’s bells. Seeing a number of villagers buzzing excitedly in the churchyard, he asked one of Wyndham’s housemaids to go to find out the cause of the commotion. She reported back that a Parliamentary soldier had arrived, proudly brandishing a buff coat that he claimed to have stripped from the king’s body after having killed him. The crowd was clearly thrilled by the news.
Charles thought hard about other people nearby whose loyalty to the Crown could be relied upon to help him in his escape. That Wednesday night, Anne Wyndham’s brother-in-law Edward Hyde (a cousin of Charles’s adviser Sir Edward Hyde) was visiting Trent House from his home in West Hatch, halfway between Trent and Salisbury. At dinner he mentioned that he had recently seen Colonel Robert Phillips. Phillips was of solid Royalist stock; as a result he had been in custody while Charles’s army moved south, but had been released after the battle of Worcester had neutered the Crown’s cause, and allowed to return to his family, forty miles away in Salisbury.
Charles decided to send Lord Wilmot and Harry Peters to talk through plans with Phillips. While in Salisbury they would also sound out another trusty supporter, John Coventry, the son of the former Keeper of the Great Seal. Their task was to see if either man could help secure the elusive transport abroad. Wilmot and Peters met Coventry in the King’s Arms inn, which was run by a Royalist called Henry Hewett. Coventry then asked Phillips to join them, ‘who presently came; and after my Lord and he had saluted, they having been formerly acquainted in the army, Mr Coventry left them together, saying he would go into the next room and take a pipe of tobacco with Mr Hewett. Then my Lord asked the Colonel whether he could help a gentleman in distress out of the kingdom.’1
Phillips said he would certainly do so, since that was his duty as a gentleman, but Wilmot sensed that he was only going to assist half-heartedly unless he was let in on the great secret. ‘Sir,’ said Wilmot, ‘I am commanded to be free with you, and to let you know that the King is at Colonel Wyndham’s house at Trent, and his condition is such that he knows not how to dispose of himself. He is assured of your fidelity, and is told that no man is more capable to serve him in this exigent. He therefore commits himself to your care to provide for his safety.’2
Phillips was astonished by the news. His first words were pessimistic: knowing how powerful the enemy was, and how tightly they now seemed to control all of England, he said he thought it highly unlikely that they would get anywhere. However, he promised to do all he could to save the king, vowing to perish in the attempt if need be.
John Coventry rejoined Wilmot and Phillips with a cheery, ‘Well, gentlemen, are you agreed?’ Reassured that they were, and that the great adventure was on, he called for bottles of wine, over which Wilmot told the other two all that he had been through in the three weeks since the defeat at Worcester. The most remarkable aspect of the tale was the good luck that Wilmot had enjoyed throughout, especially given his aversion to disguise.
They eventually parted, with Wilmot setting off for Trent once again, while Coventry and Phillips walked along Salisbury Cathedral Close. Phillips, still incredulous at the secret he had been let into, told Coventry all that he and Wilmot had discussed. Coventry assured his friend that he could rely on him for any help, at any time, and wished him the best of luck in his efforts on the king’s behalf.
Phillips set about his task with great energy. He headed off for Southampton to sound out a reliable merchant called Horne, who operated out of the port. Horne was not at home when Phillips called, but he was expected back the following day, so Phillips left a message that he would be staying nearby at a friend’s house, and asked him to visit him there as soon as he could.
Horne appeared the next day, and Phillips asked him to accompany him on a walk outside. He told him that he needed to get some friends of his across to France without anyone knowing. Horne paused, then replied, ‘There is such a man now at home, so honest a fellow that I would trust 10,000 lives, were I master of as many, in his hands; and I will make haste home and speak with him.’
He asked Phillips to meet him at three o’clock the next day, Sunday, 28 September, at Redbridge, a shipbuilding hamlet to the west of Southampton. Horne reported that he had brokered the negotiations between the master and Phillips for a boat lying on the shore, which could sail three days later. A fare of £40 would be charged, with half paid up-front, and the rest on the day of the voyage.
But again, it was not to be. With no warning, the vessel was seized by the Parliamentarians and pressed into service for their attack on Carteret’s Royalists on Jersey. The only consolation was a return of part of the £20 down-payment.
Meanwhile, in London, the leaders of the Commonwealth were trying to make sense of their continued inability to hunt down Charles.
On 27 September the Weekly Intelligencer newsbook amplified earlier rumours of the king’s death in battle as an explanation for his remaining unfound: ‘It is confirmed by several personages of worth, that the Earl of Lauderdale hath reported, that at Worcester fight he saw one of our soldiers make a great blow at the Scots King, and that he fell down under the weight and violence thereof; It is conceived he is dead, and that being stripped of his clothes where he fell in the Royal Fort, he was taken the less notice of, his skin being of a sad complexion, and that undiscovered, he was buried with the multitude of the slain, to partake of the same numerical corruption, and to crumble with them into promiscuous dusts, never hereafter to be regretted.’3
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 servants 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 hours. 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.
Gunter set off home, again into a stormy night, this time on a horse borrowed from Lawrence Hyde – his own was exhausted by all the recent frequent journeys along the south coast of England looking for a way out for the king. He himself was also extremely tired, but once again he only had time for a couple of hours’ sleep before he was back on the road to Chichester.
On Friday, 10 October the colonel met up with Mançell, and lent him a horse. At two o’clock that afternoon they rode into Brighton, whose population of 4,000 made it the largest town in Sussex. Its transformation from a small village with a few dozen boats in the previous century, to a significant town at this time, had arisen from its long history as a fishing centre, and its growing importance as a port. By the mid-seventeenth century it had a thriving business in wine, coal, salt and stone, yet it would still be small enough in the 1730s for the surrounding cornfields to draw admiration from visitors.
Brighton was a place of commerce, that chose not to be burdened by politics. It was happy to be a major centre of carriage for Parliament, and the previous year ships protecting the town’s fishing fleet had captured a Royalist crew after being attacked. The people of Brighton were equally content to defy the authorities, taking part in clandestine, but lucrative, work for Royalists.
Mançell found that the man he usually dealt with in Brighton, Nicholas Tattersall, was out of town, having gone to Chichester’s Sloe Fair. But he soon heard that Tattersall was only four miles away, in Shoreham. Mançell sent a message asking Tattersall to come and see him as soon as he could, because he had an interesting proposal to put to him.
The Royalists’ luck seemed at last to have turned. Tattersall revealed that he had an active licence for his ship, the Surprise, allowing departure from Shoreham for Poole in Dorset with a cargo of coal. Gunter left it to Mançell to make the deal with the ship’s captain. Tattersall insisted on knowing who the men were that he was to carry before he would agree to anything. Mançell repeated the tale that he believed to be true – that the stowaways were two friends of the colonel’s who had been involved in a duel, and who needed to get away quickly and secretly before being held to account. This was acceptable to Tattersall, and by two o’clock in the afternoon of Saturday, 11 October his fee of £60, to be paid in advance, was agreed. For a further £50 he agreed to be ready to sail at an hour’s notice, since Gunter and Mançell could not yet tell when the two duellists would make it to Shoreham.
Colonel Gunter, exhaustion battling with exhilaration, rode to tell Lord Wilmot that the plan was in place. Wilmot was with Lawrence Hyde, Colonel Phillips and Thomas Gunter at the house of Anthony Brown, a tenant of Hyde’s, and a brother-in-law of Thomas. On hearing the news, Phillips told Colonel Gunter, ‘Thou shalt be a saint in my almanac forever!’ Gunter then went to where Wilmot was hiding, saluted his senior officer, and gave him a full account of everything that had occurred since their last meeting. Wilmot could not have been more delighted.
Gunter was then told he must sleep, while Phillips was entrusted with going the next day to inform the king that he must immediately come to Lord Wilmot and Colonel Gunter, in preparation for a voyage to France.
Meanwhile, in London that same day, the Council of State composed an urgent directive to be sent to the customs officers of all the ports in England:
Council has informations inducing probabilities that Charles Stuart is still in England, as also the Duke of Buckingham, obscured and under disguise, expecting a fit time to pass into foreign parts. Have a special care of that which is otherwise your duty, and use your utmost diligence to make a strict search, and take due consideration of all such as attempt to pass beyond the seas from your port, or any creek, and suffer none to pass whom you may have cause to suspect to be Charles Stuart or the Duke of Buckingham, or any other such person of quality. We need not put you in mind that Parliament has appointed £1,000 to be given to him or them that shall apprehend the leader of the late invading army. For your better discovery of him, take notice of him to be a tall man, above two yards high, his hair a deep brown, near to black, and has been, as we hear, cut off since the destruction of his army at Worcester, so that it is not very long; expect him under disguise, and do not let any pass without a due and particular search, and look particularly to the bye creeks of embarkation in or belonging to your port.