20 Mistress Jane Lane. 
appeared—the King gives his hat a flourish, and replaces it on his 
head, and prepares, like a good servant, to assist his mistress in 
taking her seat on the horse. Colonel Lane, closely following his 
sister, cries out as he lifts her to her seat, “ Will, thou 
must give my sister your hand,” but His Majesty, says 
Mr. Blount in his narrative, being unacquainted with these little 
offices, offered his hand the contrary way, which old Mrs. Lane, 
who had risen early to see her beloved daughter start, took notice 
of, and laughing, said to her son “ what a goodly horseman her 
daughter had got to ride before her!” How tickled the King must 
have been at this little episode, and the palpable mystification of the 
old lady. Mistress Lane takes a firm hold on his belt, and the 
supposed William Jackson rides off on his dangerous journey. 
Presently Withy, another sister of Jane’s, who had married a Mr. 
John Petre, of Horton, Buckinghamshire, joins the party with her 
husband, and a Mr. Henry Lassels, who was a cornet in Colonel 
Lane’s troop, with a serving-man on horseback to carry a port- 
manteau—all, except Mr. Lassels, being in ignorance of the plot. 
At ashort distance from Bentley My Lord Wilmot and his servant 
and Col. Lane casually rode up with a hawk and a spaniel or two, 
Boscobel. 
Baker's as if out on a sporting excursion. But now a most 
Chronicle. unforeseen accident occurred: the great double gelding 
Pepys. cast a shoe at Bromsgrove, and while the King was 
holding the horse’s foot at a village smithy the gossiping blacksmith 
said he had not heard that that rogue Charles was taken, to which 
remark the King at once replied that if that rogue Charles were 
taken he deserved to be hanged more than all the rest for bringing 
in the Scots! Whereupon the blacksmith declared he was an honest 
Baker's man. ‘The King opined that the King was fled to 
Sep ee Scotland, and lay somewhere there concealed. “I 
p. 666. rather think,’ said the blacksmith, “that he remains 
concealed somewhere in England, and how joyful should I be if I 
knew where, since for the reward of my discovery I should be the 
gainer of the thousand pounds allotted for his apprehension.”” When 
approaching Wotton, within four miles of Stratford, a troop of horse 
appeared, and, to avoid them, Mr. Petre insisted upon making a 
ee EE 
