10 CHARLES II. IN DORSET. 



higher and more natural probability of tradition in this case 

 being founded on fact than was the case in many other similar 

 claims put forward on behalf of our old houses. 



Believing as I do that the interest taken in what the late 

 Bishop of Llandaff* terms " by far the most romantic piece of 

 English history we possess," is still as great, and that the desire 

 to know as much as possible of what actually did happen during 

 those wonderful wanderings is as keen now, as was ever the loyalty 

 of our Dorset forefathers to preserve the Royal subject of them, 

 I have ventured to take my former paper in "Notes and 

 Queries"t as the basis of my presenb one, and to put before my 

 readers in addition as much more of detail and circumstance as 

 may be fitting to, and appreciated by, a Dorset public. I cannot 

 make the same complaint as Lord Clarendon, when he wrote, "it 

 is a great pity there was never a journal made of that miraculous 

 deliverance in which there might be seen so many visible 

 impressions of the immediate hand of God," for there are several 

 works of authority to which the student of these days might turn 

 for information. 



Besides the King's own account of his wanderings dictated by 

 him to Samuel Pepys, the great diarist, in October 1680, and 

 printed originally by Lord Hailes, more than a hundred years ago, 

 from the authentic MSS. in the library of Magdalen College, 

 Cambridge, we have a work called " Boscobel," by Thomas 

 Blount, a Catholic lawyer, and (like myself) a member of the 

 Inner Temple, which was published in two parts. The first part, 

 containing an account of the King's wanderings as far as Bentley, 

 was published soon after the Restoration and dedicated to the 

 King ; the second part, continuing the account from Bentley until 

 the King's escape from Brighthelmstone, did not appear until 

 many years subsequently, when it was published conjointly with 

 the "Claustrum Regale Reseratum," or "The King's Concealment 



* In a letter to Mr. J. Hughes in 1827. 



t 6th series, viii., 329. 



J 13th book of " History of Rebellion." 



