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History of King Charles II of England
Chapter III. Queen Henrietta's Flight.
by Abbott, Jacob
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The brightening of the prospects in King Charles's affairs which was
produced, for a time, by the queen's vigorous and energetic action,
proved to be only a temporary gleam after all. The clouds and darkness
soon returned again, and brooded over his horizon more gloomily than
ever. The Parliament raised and organized new and more powerful armies.
The great Republican general, Oliver Cromwell, who afterward became
so celebrated as the Protector in the time of the Commonwealth, came
into the field, and was very successful in all his military plans.
Other Republican generals appeared in all parts of the kingdom, and
fought with great determination and great success, driving the armies
of the king before them wherever they moved, and reducing town after
town, and castle after castle, until it began to appear evident that
the whole kingdom would soon fall into their hands.
In the mean time, the family of the queen were very much separated
from each other, the children having been left in various places,
exposed each to different privations and dangers. Two or three of them
were in London in the hands of their father's enemies. Mary, the young
bride of the Prince of Orange, was in Holland. Prince Charles, the
oldest son, who was now about fourteen years of age, was at the head
of one of his father's armies in the west of England. Of course, such
a boy could not be expected to accomplish any thing as a general, or
even to exercise any real military command. He, however, had his place
at the head of a considerable force, and though there were generals
with him to conduct all the operations, and to direct the soldiery,
they were nominally the lieutenants of the prince, and acted, in all
cases, in their young commander's name. Their great duty was, however,
after all, to take care of their charge; and the army which accompanied
Charles was thus rather an escort and a guard, to secure his safety,
than a force from which any aid was to be expected in the recovery of
the kingdom.
The queen did every thing in her power to sustain the sinking fortunes
of her husband, but in vain. At length, in June, 1644, she found herself
unable to continue any longer such warlike and masculine exposures and
toils. It became necessary for her to seek some place of retreat, where
she could enjoy, for a time at least, the quiet and repose now essential
to the preservation of her life. Oxford was no longer a place of safety.
The Parliament had ordered her impeachment on account of her having
brought in arms and munitions of war from foreign lands, to disturb,
as they said, the peace of the kingdom. The Parliamentary armies were
advancing toward Oxford, and she was threatened with being shut up and
besieged there. She accordingly left Oxford, and went down to the sea-
coast to Exeter, a strongly fortified place, on a hill surrounded in
part by other hills, and very near the sea. There was a palace within
the walls, where the queen thought she could enjoy, for a time at
least, the needed seclusion and repose. The king accompanied her for
a few miles on her journey, to a place called Abingdon, which is in
the neighborhood of Oxford, and there the unhappy pair bade each other
farewell, with much grief and many tears. They never met again.
Henrietta continued her sorrowful journey alone. She reached the sea-
coast in the south-western part of England, where Exeter is situated,
and shut herself up in the place of her retreat. She was in a state
of great destitution, for Charles's circumstances were now so reduced
that he could afford her very little aid. She sent across the Channel
to her friends in France, asking them to help her. They sent immediately
the supplies that she needed--articles of clothing, a considerable sum
of money, and a nurse. She retained the clothing and the nurse, and
a little of the money; the rest she sent to Charles. She was, however,
now herself tolerably provided for in her new home, and here, a few
weeks afterward, her sixth child was born. It was a daughter.
The queen's long continued exertions and exposures had seriously
impaired her health, and she lay, feeble and low, in her sick chamber
for about ten days, when she learned to her dismay that one of the
Parliamentary generals was advancing at the head of his army to attack
the town which she had made her refuge. This general's name was Essex.
The queen sent a messenger out to meet Essex, asking him to allow her
to withdraw from the town before he should invest it with his armies.
She said that she was very weak and feeble, and unable to endure the
privations and alarms which the inhabitants of a besieged town have
necessarily to bear; and she asked his permission, therefore, to retire
to Bristol, till her health should be restored. Essex replied that he
could not give her permission to retire from Exeter; that, in fact,
the object of his coming there was to escort her to London, to bring
her before Parliament, to answer to the charge of treason.
The queen perceived immediately that nothing but the most prompt and
resolute action could enable her to escape the impending danger. She
had but little bodily strength remaining, but that little was stimulated
and renewed by the mental resolution and energy which, as is usual in
temperaments like hers, burned all the brighter in proportion to the
urgency of the danger which called it into action. She rose from her
sick bed, and began to concert measures for making her escape. She
confided her plan to three trusty friends, one gentleman, one lady,
and her confessor, who, as her spiritual teacher and guide, was her
constant companion. She disguised herself and these her attendants,
and succeeded in getting through the gates of Exeter without attracting
any observation. This was before Essex arrived. She found, however,
before she went far, that the van of the army was approaching, and she
had to seek refuge in a hut till her enemies had passed. She concealed
herself among some straw, her attendants seeking such other hiding
places as were at hand. It was two days before the bodies of soldiery
had all passed so as to make it safe for the queen to come out of her
retreat. The hut would seem to have been uninhabited, as the accounts
state that she remained all this time without food, though this seems
to be an almost incredible degree of privation and exposure for an
English queen. At any rate, she remained during all this time in a
state of great mental anxiety and alarm, for there were parties of
soldiery constantly going by, with a tumult and noise which kept her
in continual terror. Their harsh and dissonant voices, heard sometimes
in angry quarrels and sometimes in mirth, were always frightful. In
fact, for a helpless woman in a situation like that of the queen, the
mood of reckless and brutal mirth in such savages was perhaps more to
be dreaded than that of their anger.
At one time the queen overheard a party of these soldiers talking about
her. They knew that to get possession of the papist queen was the
object of their expedition. They spoke of getting her head and carrying
it to London, saying that Parliament had offered a reward of fifty
thousand crowns for it, and expressed the savage pleasure which it
would give them to secure this prize, by imprecations and oaths.
They did not, however, discover their intended victim. After the whole
army passed, the queen ventured cautiously forth from her retreat; the
little party got together again, and, still retaining their disguises,
moved on over the road by which the soldiers had come, and which was
in the shocking condition that a road and a country always exhibit
where an army has been marching. Faint and exhausted with sickness,
abstinence, and the effects of long continued anxiety and fear, the
queen had scarcely strength to go on. She persevered, however, and at
length found a second refuge in a cabin in a wood. She was going to
Plymouth, which is forty or fifty miles from Exeter, to the south-west,
and is the great port and naval station of the English, in that quarter
of the island.
She stopped at this cabin for a little time to rest, and to wait for
some other friends and members of her household from the palace in
Exeter to join her. Those friends were to wait until they found that
the queen succeeded in making her escape, and then they were to follow,
each in a different way, and all assuming such disguises as would most
effectually help to conceal them. There was one of the party whom it
must have been somewhat difficult to disguise. It was a dwarf, named
Geoffrey Hudson, who had been a long time in the service of Henrietta
as a personal attendant and messenger. It was the fancy of queens and
princesses in those days to have such personages in their train. The
oddity of the idea pleased them, and the smaller the dimensions of
such a servitor, the greater was his value. In modern times all this
is changed. Tall footmen now, in the families of the great, receive
salaries in proportion to the number of inches in their stature, and
the dwarfs go to the museums, to be exhibited, for a price, to the
common wonder of mankind.
The manner in which Sir Geoffrey Hudson was introduced into the service
of the queen was as odd as his figure. It was just after she was
married, and when she was about eighteen years old. She had two dwarfs
then already, a gentleman and a lady, or, as they termed it then, a
cavalier and a dame, and, to carry out the whimsical idea, she had
arranged a match between these two, and had them married. Now there
was in her court at that time a wild and thoughtless nobleman, a great
friend and constant companion of her husband Charles the First, named
Buckingham. An account of his various exploits is given in our history
of Charles the First. Buckingham happened to hear of this Geoffrey
Hudson, who was then a boy of seven or eight years of age, living with
his parents somewhere in the interior of England. He sent for him, and
had him brought secretly to his house, and made an arrangement to have
him enter the service of the queen, without, however, saying any thing
of his design to her. He then invited the queen and her husband to
visit him at his palace; and when the time for luncheon arrived, one
day, he conducted the party into the dining saloon to partake of some
refreshment. There was upon the table, among other viands, what appeared
to be a large venison pie. The company gathered around the table, and
a servant proceeded to cut the pie, and on his breaking and raising
a piece of the crust, out stepped the young dwarf upon the table,
splendidly dressed and armed, and, advancing toward the queen, he
kneeled before her, and begged to be received into her train. Her
majesty was very much pleased with the addition itself thus made to
her household, as well as diverted by the odd manner in which her new
attendant was introduced into her service.
The youthful dwarf was then only eighteen inches high, and he continued
so until he was thirty years of age, when, to every body's surprise,
he began to grow. He grew quite rapidly, and, for a time, there was
a prospect that he would be entirely spoiled, as his whole value had
consisted thus far in his littleness. He attained the height of three
feet and a half, and there the mysterious principle of organic
expansion, the most mysterious and inexplicable, perhaps, that is
exhibited in all the phenomena of life, seemed to be finally exhausted,
and, though he lived to be nearly seventy years of age, he grew no
more.
Notwithstanding the bodily infirmity, whatever it may have been, which
prevented his growth, the dwarf possessed a considerable degree of
mental capacity and courage. He did not bear, however, very good-
naturedly, the jests and gibes of which he was the continual object,
from the unfeeling courtiers, who often took pleasure in teasing him
and in getting him into all sorts of absurd and ridiculous situations.
At last his patience was entirely exhausted, and he challenged one of
his tormentors, whose name was Crofts, to a duel. Crofts accepted the
challenge, and, being determined to persevere in his fun to the end,
appeared on the battle ground armed only with a squirt. This raised
a laugh, of course, but it did not tend much to cool the injured
Lilliputian's anger. He sternly insisted on another meeting, and with
real weapons. Crofts had expected to have turned off the whole affair
in a joke, but he found this could not be done; and public opinion
among the courtiers around him compelled him finally to accept the
challenge in earnest. The parties met on horseback, to put them more
nearly on an equality. They fought with pistols. Crofts was killed
upon the spot.
After this Hudson was treated with more respect. He was entrusted by
the queen with many commissions, and sometimes business was committed
to him which required no little capacity, judgment, and courage. He
was now, at the time of the queen's escape from Exeter, of his full
stature, but as this was only three and a half feet, he encountered
great danger in attempting to find his way out of the city and through
the advancing columns of the army to rejoin the queen. He persevered,
however, and reached her safely at last in the cabin in the wood. The
babe, not yet two weeks old, was necessarily left behind. She was left
in charge of Lady Morton, whom the queen appointed her governess. Lady
Morton was young and beautiful. She was possessed of great strength
and energy of character, and she devoted herself with her whole soul
to preserving the life and securing the safety of her little charge.
The queen and her party had to traverse a wild and desolate forest,
many miles in extent, on the way to Plymouth. The name of it was
Dartmoor Forest. Lonely as it was, however, the party was safer in it
than in the open and inhabited country, which was all disturbed and
in commotion, as every country necessarily is in time of civil war.
As the queen drew near to Plymouth, she found that, for some reason,
it would not be safe to enter that town, and so the whole party went
on, continuing their journey farther to the westward still.
Now there is one important sea-port to the westward of Plymouth which
is called Falmouth, and near it, on a high promontory jutting into the
sea, is a large and strong castle, called Pendennis Castle. This castle
was, at the time of the queen's escape, in the hands of the king's
friends, and she determined, accordingly, to seek refuge there. The
whole party arrived here safely on the 29th of June. They were all
completely worn out and exhausted by the fatigues, privations, and
exposures of their terrible journey.
The queen had determined to make her escape as soon as possible to
France. She could no longer be of any service to the king in England;
her resources were exhausted, and her personal health was so feeble
that she must have been a burden to his cause, and not a help, if she
had remained. There was a ship from Holland in the harbor. The Prince
of Orange, it will be recollected, who had married the queen's oldest
daughter, was a prince of Holland, and this vessel was under his
direction. Some writers say it was sent to Falmouth by him to be ready
for his mother-in-law, in case she should wish to make her escape from
England. Others speak of it as being there accidentally at this time.
However this may be, it was immediately placed at Queen Henrietta's
disposal, and she determined to embark in it on the following morning.
She knew very well that, as soon as Essex should have heard of her
escape, parties would be scouring the country in all directions in
pursuit of her, and that, although the castle where she had found a
temporary refuge was strong, it was not best to incur the risk of being
shut up and besieged in it.
She accordingly embarked, with all her company, on board the Dutch
ship on the very morning after her arrival, and immediately put to
sea. They made all sail for the coast of France, intending to land at
Dieppe. Dieppe is almost precisely east of Falmouth, two or three
hundred miles from it, up the English Channel. As it is on the other
side of the Channel, it would lie to the south of Falmouth, were it
not that both the French and English coasts trend here to the northward.
Some time before they arrived at their port, they perceived some ships
in the offing that seemed to be pursuing them. They endeavored to
escape, but their pursuers gained rapidly upon them, and at length
fired a gun as a signal for the queen's vessel to stop. The ball came
bounding over the water toward them, but did no harm. Of course there
was a scene of universal commotion and panic on board the queen's ship.
Some wanted to fire back upon the pursuers, some wished to stop and
surrender, and others shrieked and cried, and were overwhelmed with
uncontrollable emotions of terror.
In the midst of this dreadful scene of confusion, the queen, as was
usual with her in such emergencies, retained all her self-possession,
and though weak and helpless before, felt a fresh strength and energy
now, which the imminence itself of the danger seemed to inspire. She
was excited, it is true, as well as the rest, but it was, in her case,
the excitement of courage and resolution, and not of senseless terror
and despair. She ascended to the deck; she took the direct command of
the ship; she gave instructions to the pilot how to steer; and, though
there was a storm coming on, she ordered every sail to be set, that
the ship might be driven as rapidly as possible through the water. She
forbade the captain to fire back upon their pursuers, fearing that
such firing would occasion delay; and she gave distinct and positive
orders to the captain, that so soon as it should appear that all hope
of escape was gone, and that they must inevitably fall into the hands
of their enemies, he was to set fire to the magazine of gunpowder, in
order that they might all be destroyed by the explosion.
In the mean time all the ships, pursuers and pursued, were rapidly
nearing the French coast. The fugitives were hoping to reach their
port. They were also hoping every moment to see some friendly French
ships appear in sight to rescue them. To balance this double hope,
there was a double fear. There were their pursuers behind them, whose
shots were continually booming over the water, threatening them with
destruction, and there was a storm arising which, with the great press
of sail that they were carrying, brought with it a danger, perhaps,
more imminent still.
It happened that these hopes and fears were all realized, and nearly
at the same time. A shot struck the ship, producing a great shock, and
throwing all on board into terrible consternation. It damaged the
rigging, bringing down the rent sails and broken cordage to the deck,
and thus stopped the vessel's way. At the same moment some French
vessels came in sight, and, as soon as they understood the case, bore
down full sail to rescue the disabled vessel. The pursuers, changing
suddenly their pursuit to flight, altered their course and moved slowly
away. The storm, however, increased, and, preventing them from making
the harbor of Dieppe, drove them along the shore, threatening every
moment to dash them upon the rocks and breakers. At length the queen's
vessel succeeded in getting into a rocky cove, where they were sheltered
from the winds and waves, and found a chance to land. The queen ordered
out the boat, and was set ashore with her attendants on the rocks. She
climbed over them, wet as they were with the dashing spray, and slippery
with sea weed. The little party, drenched with the rain, and exhausted
and forlorn, wandered along the shore till they came to a little village
of fishermen's huts. The queen went into the first wretched cabin which
offered itself, and lay down upon the straw in the corner for rest and
sleep.
The tidings immediately spread all over the region that the Queen of
England had landed on the coast, and produced, of course, universal
excitement. The gentry in the neighborhood flocked down the next
morning, in their carriages, to offer Henrietta their aid. They supplied
her wants, invited her to their houses, and offered her their equipages
to take her wherever she should decide to go. What she wanted was
seclusion and rest. They accordingly conveyed her, at her request, to
the Baths of Bourbon, where she remained some time, until, in fact,
her health and strength were in some measure restored. Great personages
of state were sent to her here from Paris, with money and all other
necessary supplies, and in due time she was escorted in state to the
city, and established in great magnificence and splendor in the Louvre,
which was then one of the principal palaces of the capital.
Notwithstanding the outward change which was thus made in the
circumstances of the exiled queen, she was very unhappy. As the
excitement of her danger and her efforts to escape it passed away, her
spirits sunk, her beauty faded, and her countenance assumed the wan
and haggard expression of despair. She mourned over the ruin of her
husband's hopes, and her separation from him and from her children,
with perpetual tears. She called to mind continually the image of the
little babe, not yet three weeks old, whom she had left so defenseless
in the very midst of her enemies. She longed to get some tidings of
the child, and reproached herself sometimes for having thus, as it
were, abandoned her.
The localities which were the scenes of these events have been made
very famous by them, and traditional tales of Queen Henrietta's
residence in Exeter, and of her romantic escape from it, have been
handed down there, from generation to generation, to the present day.
They caused her portrait to be painted too, and hung it up in the city
hall of Exeter as a memorial of their royal visitor. The palace where
the little infant was born has long since passed away, but the portrait
hangs in the Guildhall still.
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