16
I need not tell you, that we were lately upon a fear, of having oppression renewed upon us, and to have had those to rule over us, whose little finger would have been heavier than our former oppressor’s loins. I need not tell you of an enemy that came like an overflowing flood, that would even have swallowed us up quick.
From the sermon of Joseph Caryl at the service of thanksgiving for the victory at Worcester, 2 October 1651
We must now go back a few days, to reconnect with the king’s progress during the period when Colonel Gunter was working so hard with Wilmot to find a ship. On Monday, 6 October Charles had set off from Trent House with Juliana Coningsby, Wyndham’s servant Harry Peters, and Colonel Phillips. They had ridden for forty miles, over back roads, towards Heale House, the home of Katherine Hyde, near Salisbury. En route they passed through Wincanton, and lunched at the George inn at Mere. Charles was quietly amused when the innkeeper, Christopher Philips, raised a glass to toast the king.
Heale House, in Nether Woodford (as the village of Middle Woodford was then known), was a few miles north of Salisbury. The large and beautiful house had been built in the previous century by William Green, on a bank of the River Avon, above a stretch rich with trout. The Hyde family had suffered several recent losses: in 1641 there had been the death of Heale House’s seventy-nine-year-old owner Sir Lawrence Hyde, a respected lawyer who had been attorney general to Charles’s grandmother, Anne of Denmark; Sir Lawrence’s heir, another Lawrence, had also died, and his widow Katherine now occupied Heale.
In 1650, Katherine’s brother-in-law Sir Henry Hyde had paid for his loyalty to the Crown with his life. Sent to Turkey to try to gain support for Charles’s cause, he had been intercepted, arrested and handed over to Parliament. Imprisoned in the Tower of London, he was condemned to execution. On the scaffold he kissed the blade of the axe that then beheaded him.
Katherine Hyde welcomed Charles as he arrived at Heale at dusk. He was introduced to her merely as Phillips’s friend, but she was not fooled. Charles did not know it, but she had seen him several years earlier, near Salisbury, when he had been a prince riding in his father’s Civil War army, and she had not forgotten him.
At Mrs Hyde’s table that night sat the king, Phillips, Frederick Hyde – whose father-in-law had been hanged for helping a Royalist plot in 1643, but who seems not to have participated in the Civil Wars himself – and his widowed sister-in-law, and Dr Humphrey Henchman, who Charles had asked to meet him there.
During dinner, Charles was aware of Mrs Hyde and Frederick looking intently at him. After everyone had finished eating, he took Mrs Hyde aside and told her who he truly was. It came as no surprise to her. She assured him that she could keep him safe, but warned that she trusted nobody in the household except her sister. She advised him to leave the house temporarily the next day, because there was a fair in Salisbury then, which she could allow all her servants to go to. Charles and Colonel Phillips, and Juliana Coningsby and Harry Peters, should pack up their things, and appear to depart from Heale for good, before the staff left to enjoy their day off. The pair would then secretly return to the house while it was free of servants, and hide before their return.
Charles left with Phillips the following morning to spend the day riding on Salisbury Plain while Mrs Hyde saw her plan through. They made their way to view ‘the great wonder of that country’, Stonehenge. It was even more of a mystery then than it is now. Charles’s grandfather, James I, a man with a keen intellect, had sent his Architect General, Inigo Jones, to study the stones, and establish what they were, and who had built them.
For more than 300 years, from the early twelfth century, the common belief was that the wizard Merlin had placed them there. From the fifteenth century, the mythical theory was replaced by one based on actual history, the assumption being that the ancient Britons were responsible for the monument.
Inigo Jones felt that the structure would have been too sophisticated for woad-daubed savages to have designed. He believed, rather, that the stones were the remains of a massive hexagonal building designed by the Romans during their occupation of Britain. Following that proposition through, and studying the designs listed by the Roman architect Vitruvius, he asserted that what visitors to Salisbury Plain witnessed were the remains of a Roman temple dedicated to Caelus, the sky god who was the equivalent of the Greek deity Uranus. Other seventeenth-century observers believed them to be the work of the Druids.
Charles, who had a keen scientific mind – this was a man who later chose to sleep with a dozen clocks in his bedroom because of his fascination with their inner workings – would remember that he ‘stayed looking upon the stones for some time’. That time stayed with Colonel Phillips too. He noted that he and the king ‘took a view of the wonder of that country, Stonehenge, where they found that the King’s Arithmetic gave the lie to the fabulous tale that these stones cannot be told alike twice arising’.1
After their morning visiting Stonehenge, Charles and Phillips rode back towards Heale in the afternoon. Dr Henchman was waiting to greet the king in a nearby field, and escorted him to the house. After handing the king over to the priest’s care, Colonel Phillips led Charles’s horse away with him, so as to leave no clue of his return. When Charles reached the house, he found that Juliana Coningsby and Harry Peters had already returned to it.
Charles went into the priest hole at Heale for several days, hoping that luck might finally go his way. Mrs Hyde and her sister took it in turns to bring him food in his hiding place. Meanwhile, Colonel Phillips rode off to find out from Gunter what progress he had managed to make.
Gunter greeted him with the good news that Tattersall had contracted with Mançell to take the fugitives, and that they would be departing from Shoreham on Tuesday, 14 October. While Tattersall’s vessel, the Surprise, had permission to sail for Poole with its shipment of coal, the plan was for the ship to divert to France before resuming its legitimate voyage. Gunter explained that Tattersall was unaware that one of the men he would be carrying was the king.
Colonel Phillips reached Salisbury on Sunday, 12 October, and transmitted the plan to Dr Henchman, who then brought the promising update to the king. Because the journey to Shoreham was eighty miles, Phillips insisted that the party set off as soon as possible. He arranged to be outside Heale, with the king’s horse in hand, at three o’clock the following morning. But Charles’s mount seems to have panicked on entering a meadow, snapping its bridle before charging off into the darkness. ‘After some time, with no small trouble’, the colonel caught it and knotted the leather together again.
While waiting for the king, Lord Wilmot, Colonel Gunter and Captain Gunter rode to visit Colonel Gunter’s sister at Hambledon, which was halfway between Heale and Brighton. On reaching her house, they decided to keep themselves active before Charles’s anticipated arrival. They borrowed two greyhounds from her, and went to join in the hare-coursing that was taking place that day on the Downs.
After the hunting, Colonel Gunter set off to join up with the king and Colonel Phillips. He came across them outside Warneford, near Winchester. In case anyone was watching, he rode past them without a second glance, and stopped to smoke his pipe and drink some beer in the George and Falcon inn. He then went back the way he had just come, and caught up with Charles and Phillips. He bowed to the king, then led the way, as he had already established the safest route for them to take.
When they got to Broad-Halfpenny Down, near Hambledon, Charles asked Colonel Gunter, ‘Canst thou get me a lodging hereabout?’ Gunter told him that he had arranged for his cousin, Lawrence Hyde, to take him in. ‘Know you no other?’ Charles asked. For some reason he preferred not to stay at Hyde’s house, despite knowing it to be very safe. ‘Yes,’ replied Gunter. ‘I know divers yeomanly men where for a night we may be welcome. And there is one who married my sister, whose house stands privately and out of the way.’ ‘Let us go there,’ Charles said.
Colonel Gunter led the king, Wilmot and Phillips to his sister and brother-in-law’s home by a back route, while Captain Gunter and Robert Swan scouted the neighbourhood for any possible hazards. Dismounting by the front door of the modest house, Charles told Phillips to walk before him, saying, ‘Thou lookest the most like a gentleman, now.’ They were welcomed in by Colonel Gunter’s sister, Mrs Symonds, who Phillips would remember as ‘a most hearty loyal gentlewoman’. She was certainly a generous hostess. The fire was roaring, and as night closed in they sat and enjoyed wine, ale and biscuits together before dinner.
Thomas Symonds, the owner of the house, arrived home as the group sat down to eat. He had spent a long time in the nearby inn, and his manners were dulled by alcohol. He met the sudden infusion of uninvited guests with a distinct lack of charm. ‘This is brave,’ he said. ‘A man can no sooner be out of the way, but his house must be taken up with I know not whom.’ Before he could embarrass himself or his guests further, he suddenly recognised Colonel Gunter.
‘Is it you?’ he asked his brother-in-law. ‘You are welcome; and, as [for] your friends, so they are all.’ He now surveyed the visitors with delight, till his gaze fell on the tall, dowdily dressed man with the plain haircut who stood out so starkly from the group of Cavaliers. Symonds looked suspiciously at Charles, and challenged him with: ‘Here’s a Roundhead.’ He then turned to Colonel Gunter and said, ‘I never knew you [to] keep Roundheads’ company before.’
The colonel reassured him that his pudding-bowled friend was no supporter of Cromwell: ‘’Tis no matter; he is my friend and, I will assure you, no dangerous man.’ Relieved, Symonds took Charles cheerily by the hand, and jokingly toasted him as ‘Brother Roundhead’.
Charles decided that the best way to navigate the situation was to go along with it. He pretended to be a Puritan, and chided his host whenever he swore with little tellings-off, such as ‘O dear brother, that is a ’scape: swear not, I beseech you.’ Meanwhile, with the drunken Symonds pouring ever more generous measures of spirits and beer, Charles relied on his companions to whisk away his own cup, whenever their host was not looking, in order to spare him from an excess of alcohol. Colonel Gunter wrote later of how impressed all of those accompanying Charles were with his poise, good grace and fine acting during his ordeal by drunken host.
Knowing that the king was only halfway through his long journey to Shoreham, Gunter felt that he needed to extricate him from this awkward situation. He achieved this by appealing to his brother-in-law’s debauchery. ‘I wonder how thou shouldest judge so right: he is a Roundhead indeed, and if we could get him to bed, the house were our own, and we could be merry.’ In this way, Charles was able to slip away to bed, with Colonel Phillips lying nearby to guard him. Wilmot, able to roister as well as any man, stayed downstairs with Symonds, happily matching him drink for drink.
The royal party left in the morning, Gunter bringing two ox tongues along for provisions. They had only got to Arundel Hill when they saw ahead of them the careering figure of Colonel Herbert Morley, who was, in Colonel Gunter’s words, ‘full-but, hunting’. He was so distracted by his pursuit that he did not take closer notice of the group of men passing nearby.
Morley came from a prominent, wealthy Sussex family whose home was at Glynde Place. He had been brought up by Puritan guardians from the age of sixteen, following the death of his father, and had subsequently sided with Parliament, commanding a cavalry regiment during the First Civil War. He had been appointed one of Charles I’s judges twenty-one months earlier, but had refused to take part in the trial. He was now governor of Arundel Castle, which had been taken from the Royalists eight years earlier after a siege. Colonel and Captain Gunter had both served in the force that had surrendered the castle to Morley.
The king’s party all dismounted and led their horses down a steep hill to avoid this influential enemy, whose duties included raising Parliamentary troops and confiscating Royalist estates in Sussex. ‘The King being told who Morley was,’ Colonel Gunter remembered, ‘replied merrily: “I did not like his starched mouchats [handkerchief].”’
After this close shave, the party repaired to an inn at Houghton Bridge, where they ordered drinks and bread, with which they enjoyed the pair of ox tongues that Colonel Gunter now produced from his pockets.
Afterwards they came to Bramber, where they saw ahead of them a large number of enemy soldiers on both sides of the street. They realised that the rebels had seen them first, and Wilmot’s immediate reaction was that they should turn back. But Colonel Gunter argued, ‘If we do, we are undone. Let us go on boldly, and we shall not be suspected.’ Charles nodded in agreement: ‘He saith well.’ Gunter led the party through the enemy troops, who, they overheard, were off duty after a night’s guarding nearby Bramber Bridge.
The king and his companions had not gone far when they heard horse hooves pounding towards them: it was thirty or forty of the troops they had passed, galloping in their direction. The Royalists, realising that flight was impossible, dropped their pace, but the Roundheads pushed past them, and sped off into the distance, oblivious of the great prize they had twice let slip through their fingers in quick succession.
Colonel Gunter had arranged for Charles to be hidden in the home of a Mr Bagshall, in the small village of Beeding (now called Upper Beeding). But Wilmot, unsettled by the recent close brushes with the enemy, felt that this was no longer safe enough, and ‘carried the King out of the road, I know not whither’, Gunter remembered.2 The colonel himself rode on to Brighton, to await a summons from Wilmot when he was required.
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 sight. 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.