Behind the Palace Doors

by Michael Farquhar

  Still in disguise, Charles rode Humphrey Penderel’s cart horse part of the way to Moseley Hall. It was a concession to his shredded feet, but a conspicuous one; the rest of the distance he would have to walk. In mock exasperation, the king complained that his mount was “the heaviest dull jade” he had even ridden, to which Humphrey Penderel quickly responded, “My liege, can you blame the horse to go heavily when he has the weight of three kingdoms [England, Scotland, and Ireland] upon his back?”

  It had been agreed that only two of the brothers would accompany the king all the way to Moseley Hall; the others would return to Boscobel with the horse. Dismounting at the appointed place, the king eagerly set off for his destination without acknowledging the Penderels’ remarkable service. Suddenly he stopped, turned around, and ran after them. “My troubles make me forget myself,” he said humbly. “I thank you all.”†

  Terror descended on Moseley Hall after Charles arrived there to await his rendezvous with Colonel Lane and his sister Jane. “Soldiers!” a maid screamed. “Soldiers are coming!” Whitgreave, the owner of the home, whisked the king into a hiding place that had been created for fugitive priests. He then went outside nonchalantly to meet the soldiers, who immediately recognized him as a Royalist. They were about to arrest him, but Whitgreave convinced them that he had not participated in the recent Battle of Worcester, a fact verified by his neighbors.

  Before meeting with the soldiers, Whitgreave had ordered that all the doors of the home be kept open to avoid any suspicion that he might be harboring someone inside. This seemed to have effectively misled the men, who left without searching the home—all except one, who slipped into the backyard and questioned the blacksmith working there. The soldier offered one thousand pounds for information as to where the king might be, but the blacksmith, either out of loyalty or actual ignorance of Charles’s whereabouts, remained silent.

  The trouble passed, and Charles and Jane Lane set out at last for Bristol. It was the first time since he fled Worcester that the king was able to ride out in the open—albeit disguised as a servant going by the name of Will Jackson. He played the part well, relying now more on his wits, and later recounted a scene along the way after the horse he and Jane were riding threw a shoe. In his role as servant, it fell to the king to take the horse to a blacksmith.

  “As I was holding my horse’s foot,” Charles recalled with a touch of glee, “I asked the smith what news. He told me there was no news that he knew of, since the good news of the beating of the rogues of the Scots [the king’s army at Worcester]. I asked him whether there was none of the English taken that joined with the Scots. He answered that he did not hear that the rogue Charles Stuart was taken; but some of the others, he said were taken, but not Charles Stuart. I told him, that if that rogue were taken he deserved to be hanged, more than all the rest, for bringing in the Scots. Upon which he said that I spoke like an honest man, and so we parted.”

  After reaching the Norton home near Bristol, it was essential that the king maintain a low profile as he might be recognized by members of the household—particularly since he had spent time around Bristol during the Civil War of his father’s reign. Even the Nortons were not to know his identity. Jane Lane helped facilitate the deception by announcing that her servant was very ill and needed to go straight to bed. “And the truth is,” Charles later said, “my late fatigues and want of meat had indeed made me a little pale.”

  Despite all the precautions, the king was recognized by the Nortons’ butler, a man named Pope. Fortunately he was loyal and Charles decided to trust him. “I am extremely happy to know you,” Pope said, “for otherwise you might run great danger in this house. For though my master and mistress are good people, yet there are at this time one or two in it that are very great rogues, and I think I can be useful to you in anything you will command me.”

  Pope proved very useful indeed. When told that Charles’s associate Lord Wilmot would be arriving at the Norton home to meet with the king, the butler warned Charles that Wilmot would be easily recognized there. He offered to intercept Wilmot and smuggle him into the home under cover of night. Pope also agreed to make discreet inquiries about ships leaving Bristol for France, a mission that proved disappointing when he discovered that nothing suitable would be available until at least a month later. That was too long for the king to safely remain in the area, so Pope suggested he move to the village of Trent on the southern coast, where he could hide at the home of Colonel Francis Wyndham, a staunch Royalist, while waiting for an opportunity to escape England by sea. Charles would travel the forty miles or so to Trent still disguised as Jane Lane’s servant Will Jackson.

  The day before they were set to leave, the plan nearly unraveled when Mrs. Norton delivered a stillborn baby. Since the official reason for Jane Lane’s visit to Bristol was to be with her friend, it would undoubtedly arouse suspicions if she were to leave abruptly just when Mrs. Norton needed her most. Charles devised a brilliant solution. That night at dinner he arranged for Pope to deliver a fake letter advising Jane that her father was gravely ill and that she and her servant would have to return home immediately. Everyone in the Norton household would of course understand the urgency of her departure, and the next morning she and the king set off for Trent.

  Charles arrived safely at Colonel Wyndham’s house, but early in his stay he encountered a rather unsettling scene in the village. Bonfires roared and bells tolled in some kind of celebration. The king, holed up in the house and eager for some excitement, sent a maid to find out what the fuss was all about. She returned with a report that a government soldier had come to Trent bragging that he had personally killed the king at Worcester and that the buff coat he was wearing had been stripped from Charles’s corpse. The eruption of joy that followed the soldier’s bogus revelation made it painfully apparent to the king that he was not among friends. “Alas!” he said. “Poor people.”

  After witnessing this disheartening celebration of his apparent demise, Charles’s spirits were lifted considerably when he learned that a ship had been found to carry him to France. Stephen Limbry owned a small coasting vessel and agreed to pick up the king at midnight, September 22, on the shore of the nearby village of Charmouth. Giddy with anticipation, Charles and his party arrived at the appointed time. Hours went by, however, and there was no sign of Limbry. Had they been betrayed? With dawn approaching, and the king in increasing danger, it was decided that he and Wyndham would take the London road to the town of Bridport and wait at an inn there while the other members of his party tried to discover what had happened to Limbry. (As it turned out, Limbry’s wife had discovered his mission and, fearful of the consequences should he be caught helping the fugitive king, locked him in his room.)

  Approaching Bridport, Charles and Wyndham were horrified to find the town crawling with government troops gathered to subdue the last Royalist stronghold of Jersey. Wyndham begged the king to turn around, but that would mean they would miss the planned rendezvous with the rest of the group, who had gone in search of Limbry. Charles decided that the best option was the boldest. “We found the yard very full of soldiers,” the king recalled. “I alighted, and taking the horses thought it best way to go blundering in amongst them, and led them through the middle of the soldiers into the stable; which I did, and they were very angry with me for my rudeness.”

  The stableman looked closely at the king. “Sure, Sir,” he said, “I know your face?” This, Charles remembered, “was no very pleasant question to me.” He deflected it by asking the stableman about himself, where he had lived and worked. The answers gave the king the cover he needed. The man told Charles that he had worked in the stables of one Mr. Potter during the Civil War. “I thought it best to give the fellow no further occasion of thinking where he had seen me,” Charles said, “for fear he should guess right at last; therefore I told him, ‘Friend, certainly you have seen me then at Mr. Potter’s, for I served him a good while, above a year.’ ” This seemed to satisfy the stable
man, who suggested they go for a pot of beer together. The king politely declined, claiming he had to serve his master dinner, but he promised to join him the next time he was in Bridport, three weeks hence.

  Meanwhile, a soldier in Charmouth had become suspicious after observing the royal party awaiting Limbry’s boat. He alerted his commanding officer, Captain Macy, who immediately launched a search for the king. Only minutes after Charles left Bridport, Macy and his men stormed into town. Following the scent there, Macy raced up the London road toward Dorchester—the same road the king had planned to take before deciding at the last minute to return to Trent and await news of another ship. Charles had barely entered the path to Trent, which diverged off the London road, when Macy and his men roared past on their way to Dorchester. The event was celebrated by Royalists for years afterward and became known as the Miraculous Divergence.

  It would take another three weeks of anxious waiting and the threat of capture before a ship was finally found to take the king to France. His arrival there was bittersweet, for though he had eluded his enemies in England, he was still without a crown. Oliver Cromwell’s power was entrenched, and it would be another eight and a half years before Charles was invited back to rule.

  The diarist John Evelyn described the king’s glorious entry into London upon his restoration in 1660, with the

  triumph of above 20,000 horse and foot, brandishing their swords and shouting with inexpressible joy; the ways strewed with flowers, the bells ringing, the streets hung with tapestry, fountains running with wine, the Mayor, Alderman and all companies in their liveries, chains of gold and banners: lords and nobles clad in cloth of silver, gold and velvet: the windows and balconies well set with ladies: trumpets, music and myriads of people flocking even so far as from Rochester.… It was the Lord’s doing, for such a restoration was never mentioned in any history, ancient or modern, since the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity.

  Safe and secure on his throne, King Charles never tired of recounting his harrowing adventures, though many a courtier grew weary of hearing about them.

  * Catholics were severely repressed at the time, and the shelter at Boscobel was part of a vast underground network. Charles came to sympathize with the Catholics’ plight and is even believed to have converted on his deathbed.

  † The Penderels were richly rewarded upon Charles II’s restoration, as were many of the others who had risked their lives in aiding him.

  13

  Charles II (1660–1685): Old Rowley

  A king is supposed to be the father of his people, and Charles certainly was father to a good many of them.

  —GEORGE VILLIERS, SECOND DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM

  The majority of Parliamentarians who controlled England after the execution of King Charles I were Puritans who sought to impose their austerity on the nation at large. Celebratory holidays such as Christmas were suppressed, and theaters banned outright. It wasn’t until Charles II was invited back to rule in 1660 that the repressive decade of Puritan rule was replaced by a more colorful period known as the Restoration. King Charles, or the Merry Monarch, as he was called, certainly represented well this era of relaxed morality.

  Monarchs have always kept mistresses, but the reign of Charles II is often remembered as being far more licentious than most, perhaps because after a decade of repressive Puritan rule, the vigor with which Charles pursued his affairs offered such a vivid contrast to the dour days of Cromwell.

  The king simply loved the ladies—lots of them—and did so with unabashed enthusiasm. In the process he sired scads of bastards, a dozen or so, by seven or eight women, prompting the Duke of Buckingham to quip, “A king is supposed to be the father of his people, and Charles certainly was father to a good many of them.”

  Charles II set the tone for his colorful court, and was often the target of the irreverent wits who thrived there. In one bit of verse, for example, the Earl of Rochester made reference to the equipment with which the Merry Monarch satisfied his fleet of paramours:

  Nor are his high desires above his strength,

  His scepter and his prick are of a length.

  The affable king added to the chorus by making fun of himself. He had been given the nickname Old Rowley, after a famous stallion renowned for having sired an impressive progeny. One day, upon hearing a maid of the court singing a bawdy ballad comparing the king to the stud horse, Charles knocked on her door. “Who’s there?” the startled woman asked. With that the king popped his head in and cheerfully announced, “Old Rowley himself, madam, at your service.”

  King Charles valued the women in his life and treated them well—too well, in fact, heaping upon them riches he could hardly afford. Yet despite the serious drain on his finances, the king considered his mistresses a worthy investment. “He enjoyed their company,” wrote biographer Antonia Fraser, “not only for the purposes of making love to them, but to talk to them, to have supper with them, to be entertained by and to entertain them.”

  Women were essential to Charles II, and he started with them quite young. The Earl of Clarendon wrote disapprovingly of Charles’s saucy nurse, Mrs. Wyndham,* who took her charge’s virginity when he was fourteen and celebrated the conquest with untoward familiarity. She was “a woman of great rudeness and a country pride,” Clarendon wrote snappishly, who “valued herself much upon the power and familiarity which her neighbours might see she had with the Prince of Wales [Charles’s rank at the time], and therefore upon all occasions in company, and when the concourse of the people was greatest, would use great boldness towards him.” Her greatest crime, according to Clarendon, was racing across a crowded room and planting a sloppy wet kiss on the young prince.

  Even during the darkest days of his exile, Charles sought female companionship. In fact, the very year his father was executed, his Welsh mistress, Lucy Walter—a “brown, beautiful, bold but insipid creature,” as the diarist John Evelyn described her—delivered the first of Charles’s many illegitimate children, a boy named James.† Unfortunately, Lucy became a little too loose with her favors, which was thus an embarrassment to Charles—a double standard indeed. “Advise her, both for her sake and mine, that she goes to some place more private than the Hague [where Charles spent some time in exile at the court of his sister and brother-in-law, the prince and princess of Orange],” Charles instructed his friend Lord Taaffe, who had also slept with Lucy, “for her stay there is very prejudicial to us both.”

  Lucy left for England with her son and was promptly arrested upon her arrival. Eager to humiliate the king-in-exile, Cromwell soon released Charles’s “lady of pleasure and the young heir,” as he derisively called them, and had them shipped back to the Continent. There Lucy continued her sexual adventures and proved herself an entirely unfit mother. “He [James] cannot be safe from his mother’s intrigues wheresoever he is,” reported Charles’s servant Daniel O’Neale. “It is a great pity so pretty a child should be in such hands as hitherto have neglected to teach him to read or to tell twenty, though he hath a great deal of wit and a great desire to learn.”

  Charles was determined to wrest control of his son away from his estranged mistress, though this would prove difficult while he remained in exile without much money and even less power. In one mortifying scene, an agent of the king’s tried to snatch the boy away from his mother, who ran screaming into the streets of Brussels and nearly caused a diplomatic incident.

  Eventually, Lucy was forced to give up young James. The boy was sent to Paris, where, under the watch of Charles’s mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, the egregious gaps in his education would be filled. Lucy Walter followed her son but died shortly afterward, reportedly of venereal disease.

  By this time, Charles had taken up with a new love, a dazzling companion who accompanied the king back to England in 1660 to finally claim his crown, and who would become the most powerful of all his mistresses. Her name was Barbara Villiers Palmer, a tall, voluptuous beauty, with violet-blue eyes and a sensuous mouth tha
t practically begged to be kissed. Beneath that magnificent exterior, though, was a greedy, ruthlessly ambitious virago—the “curse of our nation,” as John Evelyn called her. Barbara absolutely controlled the enchanted king, and, in so doing, drained his treasury.

  Samuel Pepys lamented in his diary how blinded Charles was by lust (even while the diarist himself harbored a secret passion for Barbara, “whom I do heartily adore”)‡ and defied all wise counsel if it interfered with his carnal desires: “Cazzo dritto non vuolt consiglio,” Pepys wrote, citing the Italian proverb: A man with an erection heeds no advice.

  Barbara, who became Countess of Castlemaine,§ was the uncrowned queen of Charles’s court, housed in sumptuous apartments at Whitehall Palace and indulged in every desire by the captivated king, whom she ruled with a potent mixture of hedonism and a violently explosive temper.

  Given how much she loved power, the countess was not at all pleased when Charles married his real queen, Catherine of Braganza, in 1662. Her determination to retain her hold over the king provoked what became known as the Bedchamber Crisis.

  Poor Catherine had no idea what awaited her when she arrived from Portugal. The twenty-three-year-old bride had been exceedingly sheltered at her father’s Catholic court, spoke no English, and had little to recommend her to Charles except for a fat dowry. She was, wrote Evelyn, “low of stature, pretty shaped, languishing and excellent eyes, her teeth wronging her mouth by sticking a little too far out, for the rest sweet and lovely enough.”

  All seemed well, at first. Catherine found her new husband reasonably attentive (although, in a rare instance for Old Rowley, he was unable to consummate the marriage the first night, “for I was so sleepy”). And the king appeared happy with his new bride, writing to the Earl of Clarendon shortly after her arrival, “I cannot easily tell you how happy I think myself, and must be the worst man living (which I think I am not) if I am not a good husband.”