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Charles II's 19 Days

Jonathan Caseley

In the 1640s and 50s, the villagers of Trent , like most of the area by this time, were Puritans and staunch anti-Royalists. Puritanism was a reaction to the religious policies of Charles I, who, while Anglican, had married a Catholic, and was promoting the divine right of the King, the power of Bishops, and use of vestments. Many thought he wanted to be absolute ruler, and abolish Parliament. On Cromwell’s coming to power, churches everywhere had their statues destroyed and stained glass smashed, as all remnants of the Catholic Church were removed from buildings and services. St Andrew’s carved pews were probably hidden in the manor. Bishops were removed from office, Christmas and Mayday were abolished, as well as dancing, the theatre and children’s games on a Sunday.

In 1651 King Charles II was 21, tall, slender, handsome, and a veteran of several battles: first, as a fifteen year old in the Civil War battles of 1645, before he was sent abroad for safety in the following year; and secondly as the returning King who, having landed in Scotland in 1651, invaded England to retake his crown and his Kingdom. His Scottish forces were defeated however, at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September, when Oliver Cromwell and his parliamentarians surrounded the city, and the King was forced to flee.

So began thirty-three days of hiding as he and his small party made their way to a boat to France , and safety. The familiar image is of the King hiding in an oak tree at Boscobel; an image that, when he did finally return to England in 1660 to be crowned King, was used extensively for all its allegorical meaning. Hence, with the addition of seasonal fruit, Oak Apple Day was the 29^th May, the date of both the King’s birthday and his coronation.

It tied in nicely with the seasonal images of harvest, cider, and rural stability that the new King and his government wanted to promote. The English Oak protecting the young King had great propagandic potential and was a nice, clear, simple icon and was used in verse, song, play and pub name. Let’s be honest, who would have called their pub or have as their county’s emblem “The cupboard-under-the-stairs”? Well, Trent and Somerset could have, because for nineteen of those thirty-three days Charles was in Trent hiding in the manor of the Royalist Colonel Sir Francis Wyndham, and ready to move to the secret “Priest’s Hole” if the house was approached.

So, despite not having the appeal of the oak tree, Trent , through Wyndham, played a bigger part in the flight of Charles. Wyndham was a Royalist and knew Charles I personally. In 1651 he had recently moved to Trent, having married the heiress of the manor Anne Gerard. It is through her diaries that a lot of the information about the King’s stay in Trent comes.

After the battle of Worcester Charles II, his servants and the principal noblemen who had survived first headed north. Charles’s main companion for the entirety of his flight was Lord Wilmot, who was a bit of a liability: while he was courageous and self-confident he was also ‘stupid… careless… forgetful [and] indiscreet’, refusing to give up the style of life as an officer and a gentleman, and always travelling on horseback (Ollard p.30). He was not an ideal companion for Charles to have.

At the time we pick up the story, the plan to escape through London or Wales had changed. Charles was disguised as ‘Will Jackson’, the servant of Jane Lane, the sister of a Colonel Lane of Bentley Hall. Jane Lane and her cousin Henry Lascelles had a pass to visit the house of Sir George Norton at Abbots Leigh, just west of Bristol, the second busiest port in the country. The plan therefore changed to finding a ship from Bristol to France .

Abbots Leigh, a solid Elizabethan manor house, was reached late in the afternoon of Friday September 12^th. The Nortons, unaware of the King’s identity, welcomed Jane and Henry in, and ‘Will’ took the horses to the stables. Jane intimated to Mrs Norton that her servant was feeling unwell, and could he go to bed and have his supper sent up to him? The butler, John Pope, brought him some food, and took good care of him.

The next morning at breakfast, which ‘Will’ took downstairs with the other servants, Pope looked very earnestly at him, and seemed to recognise him. Charles recounted to Pepys that later “Mr Lascelles came to me… and said ‘What shall we do? I am afraid Pope knows you, for he says very positively to me that it is you, but I have denied it.’” Pope was quickly taken into the King’s confidence. He had been a falconer to one of Charles I’s courtiers, and had served with the King’s army in the war. He was asked to find suitable passage to France. It was soon apparent, however, that no ship could be found in Bristol, and it was decided that the king should try to leave from the south coast. It was Pope who suggested Trent as the next hiding place (Sandison p.49). As well as Francis’s connections to the King, his brother Edmund married the King’s nurse Christabel Pyne. Also Wilmot had been staying with the sister of Mrs Francis Wyndham (née Anne Gerard). Her servant Henry Rogers was formerly a servant of the Gerards at Trent and would act as guide.

Wilmot, his batman Robert Swan and Rogers were sent ahead to warn the Wyndhams of the King’s arrival. Francis Wyndham was overjoyed that Charles was not dead as widely reported. Jane Lane riding pillion with Lascelles and ‘Will’ set out on Tuesday morning, September 16^th. They spent a night at Castle Cary and arrived at Trent between 9 and 10 on the morning of 17^th September.

Trent in 1651.

Francis Wyndham married Anne Gerard, whose family owned Trent Manor, and they were both newcomers to Trent , which was enough by itself to rouse suspicion against them, let alone that he was a staunch Royalist. In 1651 the household of the Manor consisted of 26 people. We know that Anne Wyndham, his mother Lady Wyndham, her niece Juliana Coningsby, two female domestics Eleanor Withers and Joan Halsenoth, and a manservant Henry Peters were all taken into confidence. The others were quickly found jobs to do to keep them out of the way when Charles was to arrive, and rooms were prepared for him with access to the priest’s hole. Their neighbours in the other manor house, the Youngs, appear to have been Roundheads. Certainly the school founded with £1000 from John Young’s will of 1650 had ‘a distinctly Puritan bias’ (Sandison p.47). The villagers it seems were also staunchly anti-Royalist. The close proximity of the Manor to the village and the church was always going to make the King’s stay there a potentially dangerous one, and unlike some of his previous sheltering houses, he was unable to stroll in the gardens. He had to stay inside out of sight, which he found very dull. He passed the time cooking his own food and boring holes in gold coins.

Charles, Wilmot and Wyndham quickly began to discuss what options there were. The next day Wyndham went to Melbury Court, ten miles to the south in Dorset, and the seat of the wealthy and influential (and Royalist) Strangways family. They had connections in maritime trade from the south coast. He was met by Colonel Giles Strangways, who heard what Wyndham had to say. He couldn’t help – all his Royalist sea captains in Weymouth had been arrested or had made themselves scarce. He gave Wyndham £100 in gold to aid the cause. Wyndham returned to Trent without the support of the biggest Royalist family on Dorset. Perhaps, after two disastrous civil wars and Charles II’s own recent botched attempt to return, those with the most to lose were not so keen to help any more.

Wyndham then thought of a merchant called Ellesdon with Royalist sympathies he knew in Lyme Regis, and headed off on Friday 19^th September to ascertain whether passage to France could be had. Ellesdon found a Stephen Limbry was going to St Malo the following Monday, the 22nd. It was agreed that for £60 Limbry would leave Lyme, travel after dark to Charmouth where longboats would be put ashore to bring aboard ‘Royalist sympathisers escaping from creditors’, as he was told. Wyndham returned to Trent with good news, and Henry Peters was sent the next day to secure lodgings in Charmouth. It was too risky to be in Lyme, as it was Fair Day, and proclamations of the £1,000 reward for the capture of Charles were bound to be made.

On Friday 19^th September 1651, while Colonel Francis Wyndham has been securing passage at the coast, there had been one mild excitement in Trent . It is worth quoting Richard Ollard’s The Escape of Charles II at length:

“Suddenly in the middle of the morning there had been a great to-do in the village. Bonfires had been lit and the church bells had rung. A Parliamentary trooper had appeared in the village claiming he had personally killed the king and that the buff coat he was wearing had been stripped from the corpse. There was no denying the enthusiasm with which the news had been received. From his window [Charles] could see a joyful crowd of villagers gathering in the churchyard. ”Alas! Poor people,” he said

“Certainly the villagers of Trent seem to have been a headstrong, moody, murmuring race. Early on Sunday morning the village tailor warned Colonel Wyndham that it was rumoured that there were persons of quality hidden in the manor and it was planned to search the house and seize them. Needless to say Wilmot was to thank for this last-minute threat to the whole enterprise, as Anne Wyndham’s account makes clear:

‘The Colonel (rewarding the good man for his care and kindness towards himself and his family) told him that his kinsman (meaning the Lord Wilmot) was not private but public in his house (for his lordship pleased to be) and that he believed he would show himself in the church at the time of prayers. When the honest fellow was gone, the Colonel acquaints the King what passed between himself and the tailor, and withal besought his majesty to persuade the Lord Wilmot to accompany him to church, thinking by this means, not only to lessen the jealousy, but also to gain the good opinion of some of the fanaticks who would be apt to believe that the Colonel was rather brought to church by my lord than his lordship by the colonel, who seldom came to that place since faction and rebellion had justled out and kept possessions against peace and religion. He alleged, moreover, that he sate in an aisle distinct from the body of the congregation, so that the parishioners could not take a full view of any of his company. These reasons […] not only allayed the fury but also took out the very sting of those wasps, insomuch as they, who last night talked of nothing but searching, began now to say that Cromwell’s late success against the King had made the Colonel a convert.’”

The popular belief held today by some that the King sat in St Andrew’s disguised as a maid is not true. That the King was travelling disguised as a woman was a popular story after the battle of Worcester, as the 21 year old King was tall and slender.

On Monday 22^nd September 1651 Charles left Trent disguised as a mounted servant, with Juliana Coningsby riding pillion. Wyndham rode with them as guide. Lord Wilmot and Wyndham’s servant Henry Peters rode a distance behind them so as not to appear part of the same group, Charles probably mindful of Wilmot’s inability to keep a low profile. Shortly after sunset they arrived at the Queen’s Arms in Charmouth at which Peters had booked rooms the previous week. Their cover story was that Juliana and Francis were eloping together, and Charles was her manservant. Sure enough, the landlady was conspiratorially helpful when Wilmot, Juliana and Charles at once went to their room while Wyndham and Peters hung around downstairs supposedly on the look out for irate relations, but actually on the look out for Stephen Limbry, their sea captain. Near midnight, the two slipped down to the beach to wait for the longboats. Midnight came and went. Rosy fingered dawn began to rise over the sea and it was clear that the King must be got away at once.

It was decided that Juliana, Wyndham and Charles should go on to Bridport, take rooms at the principal inn there, and wait for Wilmot and Peters to discover what went wrong. They found out that Limbry’s wife suspected her husband was taking Royalists abroad and locked him in the bedroom when he went to pack. Meanwhile, at Bridport, Charles’s party found the town swarming with Roundhead troops heading for Jersey, but they coolly rode up to the best inn. Soon enough Peters arrived and they all left to meet Wilmot a mile or two along the Dorchester road.

Unknown to them, they were already in danger of being discovered. Ollard relates that at Charmouth the ostler at the Queen’s Arms noticed and was suspicious of the nocturnal ramblings of Wyndham and his servant Peters, and also the state of readiness to move kept by the lady and the two manservants who accompanied her. He leapt to the conclusion that the King was disguised as a woman. Next morning after Charles and Wyndham had left for Bridport, Wilmot’s horse had also cast a shoe, and when the ostler replaced it he looked at the other three shoes and could tell that they had been set in different counties, and one of them in Worcestershire.

The party moved out before the ostler could properly raise the alarm, but it was not long before Captain Macy the CO of the Parliamentary forces set off for Bridport at the gallop. He arrived there a few minutes after Charles had left along the main road to Dorchester and London, and Macy quickly picked up their trail. At this point Wyndham and Charles made a decision to turn off the road, and head north across country over the hills to Trent. It can’t have been more than five minutes later that Macy thundered by along the road. Had they not turned off, they would certainly have been caught.

Tuesday 23^rd September. North of Bridport the royal party got lost and stopped for the night at the inn at Broadwindsor, west of Beaminster. By luck the landlord was a Royalist known to Wyndham. Wyndham and Wilmot told him they had broken their parole by being so far from Trent, and he obligingly put them up in the top storey of the building, where they would not be observed. It was not a peaceful night; a detachment of troops on their way to the coast arrived at 9pm and demanded rooms. The noise of the soldiers would have kept the royal party on their toes, for sure.

Kept awake, Charles and his party made plans. Wyndham, Juliana Coningsby and Charles should return to Trent. Peters and Wilmot, the liability, would go to the King’s Arms at Salisbury, a place of well-known Royalist loyalties. It was now too dangerous to leave from the Dorset coast, and from Salisbury possibilities might be found to leave from Hampshire or Sussex. As soon as the troops left Broadwindsor, they all mounted their horses, Charles and his escort riding quietly back to Trent .

The tranquillity of Trent gave welcome relief after the excitement of the last few days. It was three weeks since the King fled from the Battle of Worcester. The tabloids of the day reported stories of sightings of the King near Worcester, or heading for Scotland, or dead, or on the run with Captain Hinde the murderous Highwayman, near Coventry. Needless to say, the juiciest story was the one that people loved to believe.

Meanwhile Wyndham learnt that Colonel Robert Phelips had been seen in Salisbury . Phelips was the younger son of the great family who had owned Montacute before their lands were taken away from them. Wilmot was instructed to meet him and seek his help, which he did, and Phelips agreed to help. He set about this quite quickly. To cut a complicated story short it was decided that the King should be moved nearer to Salisbury, and Robert Phelips arrived in Trent on Sunday October 5^th to take Charles to Heale House, three miles outside Salisbury, on the banks of the Avon. Again he was to travel as the manservant of Juliana Coningsby, accompanied by Henry Peters.

The last words go to Anne Wyndham whose diaries and account of the King’s time in Trent are invaluable: “About ten the next morning, October the sixth, his majesty took leave of the old Lady Wyndham, the colonel’s lady and family, not omitting the meanest of them that served him; but to the good old lady he vouchsafed more than ordinary respect, who accounted it her highest honour that she had had three sons and one grandchild slain in the defence of the father, and that she herself, in her old age, had been instrumental in the protection of the son, both kings of England.

“Thus his sacred majesty… bad farewell to Trent, the ark in which God shut him up when the floods of rebellion had covered the face of his dominions.”

He had spent nineteen days there.

The article is based on various sources including Richard Ollard’s book “The Escape of CharlesII: After the Battle of Worcester” and Annette Sandison’s book “ Trent : Biography of a Village”.

The Dorset Historic Churches Trust wishes gratefully to record its sincere thanks to Mr Jonathan Caseley for providing this article and for allowing it to be featured.