16 CHARLES II. IN DORSET. 



cai-ry over to be Royalists, resolved to secure him from danger by 

 making him a prisoner in his own chamber. All the persuasions 

 he used for his liberty were in vain ; for the more he entreated 

 the more her violent passion increased, breaking forth into such 

 clamours and lamentations that he feared, if he should any longer 

 contend, both himself and the gentlemen he promised to transport 

 would, to use the words of Mrs. Anne Wyndham, be cast away 

 in this storm without ever going to sea. Here the master showed 

 his wisdom not a little by his peaceable behaviour, for had he 

 striven in the least it is more than probable His Majesty and his 

 attendants had been suddenly seized upon in the inn. On leaving 

 Charmouth early in the morning of the 23rd September the King 

 seems to have taken the direct road to Bridport, distant some six 

 miles, riding on with Mistress Coningsby and Colonel Wyndham. 

 Harrison Ainsworth gives in his "Boscobel" a graphic description 

 of the journey from Charmouth to Bridport, and, though in a work 

 of fiction, a perfectly correct account of the route they must have 

 passed over on that journey, an account which no one who did 

 not know that part of the country well could have written. The 

 Royal party must have toiled up Stonebarrow-hill, on through 

 Morecomblake, and we can picture them whilst halting to allow 

 time for Wilmot and Peters to overtake them, admiring the 

 lovely view the wide stretching Vale of Marshwood afforded them 

 on the left, and the glorious gorse-aud-heather-covered Golden 

 Cap (a magnificent, headland overhanging the sea, said to be the 

 highest coast point between Dover and the Land's End) on the 

 right. Again, having descended that long and terribly steep hill 

 into Chideock, we can see them pausing once more on the brow of 

 the last hill before coming into Bridport a vantage spot from 

 which a most delightful peep of the peaceful and smiling village 

 of Symondsbury, nestling at the foot of Colmer's picturesque 

 cone, lies open on the left. Another mile and they approach the 

 outskirts of Bridport. A.t this time, perhaps, the most alarming 

 crisis of the King's fate was impending. The port of Lyme (we 

 learn from Mr. Hughes's narrative) swarmed with persons drawn 



