The Scottish army was assembled, under Hamilton and Lesley, as early as the season would permit, and Charles was allowed to join the camp. But, imminent as the danger was, the Scots were still divided by ecclesiastical disputes. The forces of the western counties, disclaiming the authority of the parliament, would not act in conjunction with an army that admitted any engagers or malignants among them. They called themselves the protesters, and the other party were denominated the resolutioners; distinctions which continued to agitate the kingdom with theological hatred and animosity 23.

Charles, having put himself at the head of his troops, encamped at Torwood, in a very advantageous situation. The town of Stirling lay at his back, and the plentiful county of Fife supplied him with provisions. His front, to which the English army advanced, was defended by strong entrenchments; and his soldiers, as well as his generals, being rendered more deliberately cautious by experience, Cromwell in vain attempted to draw them from their posts by offering them battle. After the two armies had faced each other about six weeks, Cromwell sent a detachment over the Forth into Fife, in order to cut off the king's provisions; and so intent was he on that object, that, losing sight of all beside, he passed over with his whole army, and effectually accom. plished his purpose. The king found it impossible to keep his post any longer.

In this desperate extremity, Charles embraced a resolution worthy of a prince contending for empire. He lifted his camp, and boldly marched into England, with an army of fourteen thousand men. Cromwell, whose mind was more vigorous than comprehensive, was equally surprised and alarmed at this movement. But if he had been guilty of an error, in the ardour of distressing his enemy, he took the most effectual means to repair it. He dispatched Lambert with a body of cavalry to hang upon the rear of the royal

23. Burnet, vol. i.

army;

army; he left monk to complete the reduction of Scotland; and he himself followed the king with all possible expedition.

Charles had certainly reason to expect, from the general hatred which prevailed against the parliament, that his presence would produce a general insurrection in England. But he found himself disappointed. The English presbyterians, having no notice of his design, were not prepared to join him; and the cavaliers, of old royalists, to whom his approach was equally unknown, were farther deterred from such a measure, by the necessity of subscribing the covenant. Both parties were overawed by the militia of the counties, which the parliament had, every where, authority sufficient to raise. National antipathy had also its influence and the king found when he arrived at Worcester, that his forces were little more numerous than when he left the borders of Scotland. Cromwell, with an army of thirty thousand men, attacked Worcester on all sides; and Charles, after beholding the ruin of his cause, and giving many proofs of personal valour, was obliged to have recourse to flight. The duke of Hamilton, who made a desperate resistance, was mortally wounded, and the Scots were almost all either killed or taken. The prisoners, to the number of eight thousand, were sold as slaves to the American planters24.

When the king left Worcester, he was attended by Lesley the Scottish general, and a party of horse; but seeing them overwhelmed with consternation, and fearing they could not reach their own country, he withdrew himself from them in the night, with two or three friends, from whom he also separated himself, after making them cut off his hair, that he might the better effect his escape, in an unknown character. By the direction of the earl of Derby, he went to Boscobel, a lone house on the borders of Straffordshire, inhabited by one Pendrel, an obscure but honest farmer. Here

24. Whitlocke. Clarendon.

he

he continued for some days, in the disguise of a peasant, employed in cutting faggots along with the farmer and his three brothers. One day for the better concealment, he mounted a spreading oak; among the thick branches of which he sheltered himself, while several persons passed below in search of their unhappy sovereign, and expressed, in his hearing, their earnest desire of seizing him, that they might deliver him into the hands of his father's murderers25.

An attempt to relate all the romantic adventures of Charles before he completed his escape, would lead me into details that could only serve to gratify an idle curiosity. But there is one other anecdote that must not be omitted, as it shews, in a strong light, the loyalty and liberal spirit of the English gentry, even in those times of gencral rebellion and fanaticism.

The king having met with lord Wilmot, who was skulking in the neighbourhood of Boscobel, they agreed to throw themselves upon the fidelity of Mr. Lane, a zealous royalist, who lived at Bently, not many miles distant. By the contrivance of this gentleman, who treated them with great respect and cordiality, they were enabled to reach the seacoast; the king riding, on the same horse before Mr. Lane's daughter to Bristol, in the character of a servant. But, when Charles arrived there, he found no ship would sail from that port, for either France or Spain, for more than a month: he was therefore, obliged to look elsewhere in quest of a passage. In the meantime, he entrusted himself to colonel Wyndham of Dorsetshire, a gentleman of distinguished loy alty. Wyndham, before he received the king, asked leave to impart the secret to his mother. The request was granted, and that venerable matron, on being introduced to her royal guest, expressed the utmost joy, that having lost, without regret, three sons and one grandson in defence of his father

25. This tree was afterwards called the Royal Oak, and long regarded with great veneration by the people in the neighbourhood,

she

she was still reserved, in her declining years, to be instrumental in bis preservation. The colonel himself told Charles that his father, sir Thomas, in the year 1636, a few days before his death, called to him his five sons, and said, "my "children! you have hitherto seen serene and quiet times;' “but I must warn you now to prepare for clouds and storms. "Factions arise on every side, and threaten the tranquillity "of your native country. But whatever happens, do you "faithfully honour and obey your prince, and adhere to the

I charge you never to forsake the crown, though it should bang upon a bush !"-" These last words," added Wyndham, "made such impression on our breasts, "that the many afflictions of these sad times could never "efface their indelible character26,"

While the king remained at the house of colonel Wynd. hain, all his friends in Britain, and over Europe, were held in the most anxious suspence, with respect to his fate. No one could conjecture what was become of him, or whether he was dead or alive: but a report of his death being generally credited, happily relaxed the search of his enemies. Meantime many attempts were made to procure a vessel for his escape, though without success. He was obliged to shift bis quarters, to assume new disguises, and entrust himself to other friends, who all gave proofs of incorruptible fidelity and attachment. At last a small vessel was found at Shoreham in Sussex, where he embarked and arrived safely at Fieschamp, in Normandy, after one and forty days concealment, during which the secret of his life had been entrusted to forty different persons27.

The battle of Worcester, which utterly extinguished hopes of the royalists, afforded Cromwell what he called his crowning mercy28; an immediate prospect of that sovereignty which had long been the object of his ambition. Extravagantly elated with his good fortune, he would have

26. Clarendon, Bates. Heathe. vol. xx. p. 47.

27 Ibid.

28 Parl. Hist.

knighted

knighted in the field of victory Lambert and Fleetwood, two of his generals, if he had not been dissuaded by his friends from exercising that act of regal authority 29. Every place now submitted to the arms of the commonwealth: not only in Great Britain, Ireland, and the contiguous islands, but also on the continent of America, and in the East and West Indies; so that the parliament had soon leisure to look abroad, and to exert its vigour against foreign nations. The Dutch first felt the weight of its vengeance.

The independence of the United Provinces being secured by the treaty of Munster, that republic was now beedme the greatest commercial state in Europe. The English had long been jealous of the prosperity of the Hollanders; but the common interests of religion, for a time, and afterward the alliance between the house of Stuart and the family of Orange, prevented any rupture between the two nations. This alliance had also led the states to favour the royal cause, during the civil wars in England, and to overlook the murder of Dorislaus, one of the regicides, who was assassinated at the Hague by the followers of Montrose. But after the death of William II. prince of Orange, who was carried off by the small-pox, when he was on the point of enslaving the people whom his ancestors had restored to liberty, more respect was shewn to the English commonwealth by the governing party in Holland, which was chiefly composed of violent republicans. Through the influence of that party, a perpetual edict was issued against the dignity of stadtholder. Encouraged by this revolution, the English parliament thought the season favourable for cementing a close confedewith the States: and St. John, who was sent over to the racy Hague, in the character of a plenipotentiary, had entertained the idea of forming such a coalition between the two republics as would have rendered their interests inseparable. But their High Mightinesses, unwilling to enter into such a so

29. Whitlocke, p. 523.

lema