12 CHARLES II. IN DORSET. 



from Charmouth, and his return there after the failure of that 

 attempt. 



Before I revert to the King's arrival at Charmouth (where he 

 first appears upon Dorset ground), I will shortly allude to the 

 various places (an excellent chart of which is given in Mr. 

 Hughes's book) at which he stayed in his memorable flight after 

 the battle of Worcester, the fatal result of which, and the 

 dispersal of the Scottish forces, upon which he principally relied 

 to wrest his father's crown from the hands of the Parliament, left 

 him no other hope than the bare preservation of his life. Charles, 

 having abandoned his original idea of escaping to London, and 

 unwilling to trust himself with his lukewarm Scottish allies in 

 their endeavour to return to Scotland, made an ineffectual 

 attempt to cross the Severn, in order to reach some Welsh port 

 from which he might gain the French coast. This led to the 

 Eoyal visits to Whiteladies and Boscobel (both the property of the 

 GifFard family), to Mr. Wolfe's house at Madeley ; to Mr. 

 Whitgreave's, at Moseley ; and to Colonel Lane's, at Bentley. It 

 was at Bentley that Charles determined to make for the west of 

 England, and trusted that either from Bristol or one of the 

 southern ports he might secure a passage to France. Here, then, 

 on September 10th, the King, in the character of a serving man 

 to the heroic Jane Lane (Colonel Lane's sister), who rode with 

 him upon a double horse, commenced that memorable ride, which, 

 through Stratford-on-Avon, Long Marston, Cirencester, Abbot's 

 Leigh, and Castle Gary, ended for the time at Colonel Francis 

 Wyndham's house at Trent, on the borders of Somerset and 

 Dorset. With Trent, then, which was reached on Wednesday, 

 September 17th, the interest of my Dorset readers may be said 

 to commence, for it was here that the idea was first suggested 

 that Charles should make his escape from the Dorset coast. To 

 this intent Colonel Wyndham was despatched to Melbury, in 

 Dorsetshire, the seat of Sir John Strangways, to see if either he 

 or his two sons (who had both been colonels in Charles I.'s 

 service) could be of any assistance in procuring a vessel either at 





