SPELTHORNE HUNDRED 



on his correspondence as usual, as it was mail-day. 

 He waited till six o'clock ' without mistrust,' and 

 then, as there seemed no sign of the king's appear- 

 ance for the evening meal, and his door remained 

 locked, Whalley spoke to the king's gentleman-in- 

 waiting, who tried to reassure him, but at seven 

 o'clock he became, according to his own account, 

 ' extreme restless in my thoughts, lookt oft in at 

 the key-hole to see whether I could perceive his 

 Majesty, prest Mr. Maule to knock very oft he 

 still plainly told me he durst not disobey his 

 Majesty's commands ' which were that he had 

 important letters to write, and was not to be dis- 

 turbed on any account. 517 



Meanwhile, in the early darkness of the Novem- 

 ber evening, Charles had already left the palace, 

 with Colonel Legge, passing through the room 

 called ' Paradise ' 588 by the private passage spoken 

 of as 'the vault,' to the river-side/" where he was 

 met by Ashburnham and Berkeley, with horses, 

 and so made good his escape."" It has never been 

 satisfactorily decided whether they crossed the 

 river at Thames Ditton, and went thence through 

 West Molesey to Oatlands, 531 or whether they rode 

 to Hampton and over Walton Bridge to Oat- 

 lands. 688 In the first report to the House of Com- 

 mons, the Speaker said that ' the king went last 

 night, with nine horses, over Kingston Bridge.' 533 

 Colonel Whalley became desperate at about eight 

 o'clock, called Mr. Smithsby, the ' keeper of the 

 Privy Lodgings,' and with him went by the back 

 way, ' through the Privy Gardens to the Privy 

 Stairs, where he had sentinels stationed. 5 " . . . 



HAMPTON 



We came to the next chamber to his Majesty's 

 bed-chamber, where we saw his Majesty's cloak 

 lying on the midst of the floor, which much 

 amazed me.' Whalley then sent for the Par- 

 liamentary Commissioners to go with them, and 

 the king's servant, Mr. Maule, went into the bed- 

 chamber and declared that the king was not there. 

 On his table were found three letters, one addressed 

 to Colonel Whalley, one to the Parliamentary 

 Commissioners, and one to both Houses of Parlia- 

 ment. 535 He assured Whalley that it was not Crom- 

 well's letter which had caused him to take this 

 step, but confessed that he was ' loath to be made 

 a close prisoner under pretence of securing my life.' 

 The rest of the letter is chiefly concerning the 

 'household stuffe and moveables,' which the king 

 still looked upon as his own. It does not appear 

 that he realized at all the extreme significance of 

 the step he had taken. Whalley immediately sent 

 out soldiers to search the lodges in the park, and 

 Colonel Ashburnham's house at Ditton, and in- 

 formed the generals at head quarters, then at Put- 

 ney, of the occurrence. Cromwell rode over to 

 Hampton Court at once, 536 and wrote to the 

 Speaker of the House of Commons from the palace 

 at twelve o'clock the same night. His letter, and 

 that of the king, were laid before the House the 

 next day. This was the last departure of Charles I 

 from the palace. 537 



Immediately after the execution of the king a 

 Bill was introduced into Parliament to provide for 

 the sale of all the property of ' the late Charles 

 Stuart.' This Bill was passed on 4 July I649/ 38 



W Journ. of the House of Commons, v, 

 356, &c. ; Reprinted in Peck, Desidir- 

 ata Curiosa, ix, 374. 



658 See ante, p. 349. 



SM Ludlow, Memoirs, 92 ; Law, op. 

 cit. ii, 147-57- 



580 There is an interesting story given 

 by Mr. Law (Hist. Hampton Court 

 Palace, ii, 147-9), f a book which was 

 dropped by Charles in the mud while 

 he was escaping from the palace. The 

 volume T n question, with the stains of 

 mud on its leaves, is now in the Brit. 

 Mus., no. loo of the Thomason Col- 

 lection of Royalist and Parliamentary 

 tracts, known as the ' King's Tracts.' 



581 Commons* Journ. v, 356, &c. ; 

 Clarendon, Par!. Hist, iii, 788 ; Heath, 

 C/iron. of the Civil Wars, 148. Sir 

 Thomas Herbert, the king's groom of 

 the bedchamber, says that they passed 

 through a private door into the Park, 

 where no Centinel was, and at Thames 

 Ditton crossed the river ' ; Herbert, 

 Mrmoirs, 53. 



M " The account in a contemporary 

 newspaper quoted by Mr. Law leads to 

 this conclusion. Mercuriut Anti-Prag- 

 maticus, Thursday 1 1 Nov. to Thurs- 

 day 1 8 Nov. 1647. 



688 Clarendon, Par/. Hist, iii, 788. 

 Clarendon says that the king's escape 

 was not discovered till the following 

 morning, but this is evidently an error. 

 For a graphic account of the escape, 

 and a detailed comparison of different 

 contemporary documents concerning it, 

 vide Law, op. cit. ii, chap. xii. From 

 Oatlands Charles and his party made 



their way to the Isle of Wight, and 

 by the time that the Commons heard 

 Colonel Whalley' s account of his escape 

 he had already surrendered to Colonel 

 Hammond, the governor of the island, 

 and was once more a prisoner in Caris- 

 brooke Castle. 



584 It is considered probable that the 

 room from which Charles escaped was 

 one of those still existing in the south- 

 west part of the palace, overlooking the 

 ' pond garden." 



534 Rushworth, Hist. Coll. vii, 871. 



586 Rushworth, op. cit. vii, 871 ; 

 Common? Journ. v, 356. Cromwell's 

 letter certainly conveys the impression 

 that he was not unprepared for the 

 event. 



S8 ~ A Royalist rising took place at 

 Kingston-on-Thames under the Earl of 

 Holland, while the king was still at 

 Carisbrooke, in July 1648. Holland 

 was joined by the Duke of Buckingham 

 and his brother Lord Francis Villiers, 

 and a force of about six hundred horse. 

 They advanced towards Reigate, but 

 were compelled to retreat to Kingston, 

 In their last skirmish Francis Villiers 

 was killed ; Whitelocke, Memoirs, 317, 

 318, 320; Journ. of House of Lords, 

 367 ; yourn. of House of Commons, 35 ; 

 Aubrey, Hist. Surrey, i, 46 ; Law, op. 

 cit. ii, 158 et seq. Mr. G. A. Sala, in 

 his historical novel Captain Dangerous, 

 introduced an episode setting forth that 

 Lord Francis and a 'Mr. Grenville' 

 had been taken prisoners and brought 

 to Hampton Court, where they were 

 shot in one of the courtyards. The 



353 



discovery in 1871 of two skeletons 

 under the cloisters in the Fountain 

 Court led to an idea that they might 

 have been the bodies of these young 

 cavaliers, but Mr. Sala himself dis- 

 avowed any historical warrant for his 

 story ; The Times, 4 Nov. et seq. 

 1871 ; N. and Q. Nov. 1871. Lord 

 Francis's body was buried, after the 

 Restoration, in Westminster Abbey. 

 A story is told of the lady who occupied 

 the apartments near to which these 

 skeletons were found having been much 

 disturbed by what she thought were 

 ghostly or supernatural noises. She 

 addressed a formal complaint to the 

 Lord Chamberlain, who politely referred 

 her to the Board of Works. The Board, 

 it is said, refused to interfere, on the 

 ground that 'the jurisdiction of the 

 First Convnissioner did not extend to 

 the Spirit World, and that there were 

 no funds at the disposal of the Board 

 for any such purpose.' When the 

 skeletons were discovered in Nov. 1871, 

 and were afterwards buried at Hamp- 

 ton, the lady in question thoroughly 

 believed that the mystery was solved. 

 ' Of course these are the two wretched 

 men who have been worrying me all 

 these years, and the Board never found 

 it out !' Law, op. cit. ii, 161-8. Who 

 the men were, or why they were buried 

 in that place, has never been discovered. 

 It would be interesting to know if any 

 burial-place or vaults connected with 

 the chapel could have extended so far. 



i8 8 Scobell, Coll. of Acts and Ordi- 

 nances, 1649, ii, 46 et seq. 



45 



