To Catch A King: Charles II's Great Escape
In January 1649, King Charles I was beheaded in London outside his palace of Whitehall and Britain became a republic. When his eldest son, Charles, returned in 1651 to fight for his throne, he was crushed by the might of Cromwell’s armies at the battle of Worcester.With 3,000 of his supporters lying dead and 10,000 taken prisoner, it seemed as if his dreams of power had been dashed. Surely it was a foregone conclusion that he would now be caught and follow his father to the block?At six foot two inches tall, the prince towered over his contemporaries and with dark skin inherited from his French-Italian mother, he stood out in a crowd. How would he fare on the run with Cromwell’s soldiers on his tail and a vast price on his head?The next six weeks would form the most memorable and dramatic of Charles’ life. Pursued relentlessly, Charles ran using disguise, deception and relying on grit, fortitude and good luck. He suffered grievously through weeks when his cause seemed hopeless. He hid in an oak tree – an event so fabled that over 400 English pubs are named Royal Oak in commemoration. Less well-known events include his witnessing a village in wild celebrations at the erroneous news of his killing; the ordeal of a medical student wrongly imprisoned because of his similarity in looks; Charles disguising himself as a servant and as one half of an eloping couple to escape capture.Charles never forgot those who helped him and, when restored to the throne as Charles II, told the tale of his adventures to Samuel Pepys who transcribed it all.In this gripping, action-packed, true adventure story, based on extensive archive material, Charles Spencer, bestselling author of Killers of the King, uses Pepys’ account and many others to retell this epic story. With bloodied feet and facing certain death if caught, Charles relied upon a patchwork of hiding places that had evolved to hide Catholics from lethal persecution. Now, in the 1650s, they saved the life of a king.
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William Collins
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017
Copyright © Charles Spencer 2017
Charles Spencer asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover illustration Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017
Map by John Gilkes
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Source ISBN: 9780008153632
Ebook Edition © October 2017 ISBN: 9780008153656
Version: 2018-10-01
For Karen
Contents
PART TWO: THE ROMAN CATHOLIC UNDERGROUND
PART THREE: A LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN
King Charles II had a favourite story. It was about the six weeks when, aged twenty-one, he had been on the run for his life. Those hunting him down had included the regicides – those responsible for his father’s trial and beheading – who feared him as a deadly avenger; the Parliamentary army, who viewed him as the commander of a defeated, foreign, invasion; and ordinary people, because upon his head sat not the English crown of his birthright, but a colossal financial reward.
This brief period of Charles II’s life stood alone for many reasons. While there were many other times when the bleak reality of his situation fell well short of any reasonable princely expectations, it marked the low point of his fortunes, both as man and royal dignitary. It was uniquely exhilarating for him, in a way that only a genuine life-or-death tussle could be. And it showed off personal qualities that were not always evident in an individual whose self-indulgence and sense of entitlement could infuriate even his most loyal devotees. In his hour of greatest danger, he was proud to note, had arisen within him a quickness of wit, an adaptability, and a hard instinct for survival, that had saved his neck.
In the spring of 1660 Charles returned to England, to claim his throne, on a ship whose figurehead of Oliver Cromwell had hastily been removed, and whose name had been changed from the Naseby (the battle that had been his father’s most punishing defeat) to the Royal Charles. Samuel Pepys was a fellow passenger, and wrote in his diary for 23 May 1660 of how: ‘Upon the quarterdeck he [Charles] fell into discourse of his escape from Worcester, where it made me ready to weep to hear the stories that he told of his difficulties that he had passed through, of his travelling four days and three nights on foot, every step up to his knees in dirt, with nothing but a green coat and a pair of country breeches on, and a pair of country shoes that made him so sore all over his feet, that he could barely stir.’
In the subjects of the kingdom that he had been allowed suddenly and unexpectedly to gain, Charles had found a fresh audience for his pet tale. They would hear repeatedly of their new young king’s exploits. Not that Pepys complained, for the retelling of events that had taken place when he had been a young man of eighteen, six months into his first year at Cambridge University, particularly intrigued him. They awoke, in this most famous of English diarists, the tracking instincts of an investigative journalist. He decided to check how much of the king’s recollections of the six weeks’ adventure were true, and to what extent they had been seasoned by royal fancy, or compromised by forgetfulness.
Two decades later, during one of the royal court’s stays in Suffolk for the horse-racing on Newmarket Heath, Pepys managed to obtain an audience with the king. In his scratchy shorthand (his eyesight had been failing for more than a decade) he took down what Charles remembered of the most electrifying time of his life. Riveted by what he had heard, Pepys quickly secured a second session, his manuscript revealing additions where he included fresh details that Charles had forgotten the first time round.
