The announcement of the innkeeper
struck consternation into the party.
“This is bad news indeed,”
Colonel Wyndham said; “what does your majesty
advise now?”
“I know not, my good Wyndham,”
King Charles replied. “Methinks ’twere
better that I should give myself up at once. Fate
seems against us, and I’m only bringing danger
on all my friends.”
“Your friends are ready to risk
the danger,” Colonel Wyndham said; “and
I doubt not that we shall finally place your majesty
in safety. I think we had best try Bridport.
Unfortunately, the Roundheads are so sure of your
being on the coast that it is well-nigh impossible
to procure a ship, so strict is the search of all
who leave port. If we could but put them off
your scent, and lead them to believe that you have
given it up in despair here, and are trying again
to reach Scotland, it might throw them off their guard,
and make it more easy for us to find a ship.”
“I might do that,” Harry
said. “I have with me my comrade Jacob,
who is about the king’s height and stature.
I will travel north again, and will in some way excite
suspicion that he is the king. The news that your
majesty has been seen traveling there will throw them
off your track here.”
“But you may be caught yourself,”
the king said. “The Earl of Derby and other
officers have been executed. There would be small
chance for you were you to fall into their hands.”
“I trust that I shall escape,
sire. My friend Jacob is as cunning as a fox,
and will, I warrant me, throw dust in their eyes.
And how has it fared with your majesty since I left
you at White Ladies?”
“Faith,” Charles replied,
laughing, “I have been like a rat with the dogs
after him. The next night after leaving you I
was in danger from a rascally miller, who raised an
alarm because we refused to stay at his bidding.
Then we made for Moseley, where I hoped to cross the
Severn. The Roundheads had set a guard there,
and Richard Penderell went to the house of Mr. Woolfe,
a loyal gentleman, and asked him for shelter for an
officer from Worcester. Mr. Woolfe said he would
risk his neck for none save the king himself.
Then Richard told him who I was, and brought me in.
Mr. Woolfe hid me in the barn and gave me provisions.
The neighborhood was dangerous, for the search was
hot thereabout, and I determined to double back again
to White Ladies, that I might hear what had become
of Wilmot. Richard Penderell guided me to Boscabell,
a farmhouse kept by his brother William. Here
I found Major Careless in hiding. The search
was hot, and we thought of hiding in a wood near, but
William advised that as this might be searched we should
take refuge in an oak lying apart in the middle of
the plain.”
“This had been lopped three
or four years before and had grown again very thick
and bushy, so that it could not be seen through.
So, early in the morning, Careless and I, taking provisions
for the day, climbed up it and hid there, and it was
well we did so, for in the day the Roundheads came
and searched the wood from end to end, as also the
house. But they did not think of the tree.
The next two days I lay at Boscabell, and learned
on the second day that Wilmot was hiding at the house
of Mr. Whitgrave, a Catholic gentleman at Moseley,
where he begged me to join him. That night I
rode thither. The six Penderells, for there were
that number of brothers, rode with me as a bodyguard.
I was well received by Mr. Whitgrave, who furnished
me with fresh linen, to my great comfort, for that
which I had on was coarse, and galled my flesh grievously,
and my feet were so sore I could scarce walk.
But the Roundheads were all about, and the search
hot, and it was determined that I should leave.
This time I was dressed as a decent serving man, and
Colonel Lane’s daughter agreed to go with me.
I was to pass as her serving man, taking her to Bristol.
A cousin rode with us in company. Colonel Lane
procured us a pass, and we met with no adventure for
three days. A smith who shod my horse, which
had cast a shoe, did say that that rogue Charles Stuart
had not been taken yet, and that he thought he ought
to be hanged. I thought so too, so we had no argument.
At Bristol we could find no ship in which I could
embark, and after some time I went with Miss Lane
and her cousin to my good friend Colonel Wyndham, at
Trent House. After much trouble he had engaged
a ship to take me hence, and now this rascal refuses
to go, or rather his wife refuses for him. And
now, my friend, we will at once make for Bridport,
since Colonel Wyndham hopes to find a ship there.
I trust we may meet ere long in France. None
of my friends have served me and my father more faithfully
than you. It would seem but a mockery now to take
knighthood at the hands of Charles Stuart, but it
will not harm thee.”
Taking a sword from Colonel Wyndham,
the king dubbed Harry knight. Then giving his
hand to the landlord to kiss, Charles, accompanied
by his two companions, left the inn.
A few minutes later Harry started
and joined his friends. Jacob agreed at once
to the proposal to throw the Roundheads off King Charles’
track. The next day they started north, and traveled
through Wiltshire up into Gloucestershire, still keeping
their disguises as gypsies. There they left their
donkey with a peasant, telling him they would return
in a fortnight’s time and claim it. In
a wood near they again changed their disguise, hid
their gypsy dresses, and started north on foot.
In the evening they stopped at Fairford, and took
up their abode at a small inn, where they asked for
a private room. They soon ascertained that the
landlord was a follower of the Parliament. Going
toward the room into which they were shown, Jacob
stumbled, and swore in a man’s voice, which
caused the servant maid who was conducting them to
start and look suspiciously at him. Supper was
brought, but Harry noticed that the landlord, who
himself brought it in, glanced several times at Jacob.
They were eating their supper when they heard his footstep
again coming along the passage. Harry dropped
on one knee, and was in the act of handing the jug
in that attitude to Jacob, when the landlord entered.
Harry rose hastily, as if in confusion, and the landlord,
setting down on the table a dish which he had brought,
again retired.
“Throw up the window, Jacob,
and listen,” Harry said. “We must
not be caught like rats in a trap.”
The window opened into a garden, and
Jacob, listening, could hear footsteps as of men running
in the streets.
“That is enough, then,”
Harry said. “The alarm is given. Now
let us be off.” They leaped from the window,
and they were soon making their way across the country.
They had not been gone a hundred yards before they
heard a great shouting, and knew that their departure
had been discovered. They had not walked far
that day and now pressed forward north. They
had filled their pockets with the remains of their
supper, and after walking all night, left the road,
and climbing into a haystack at a short distance,
ate their breakfast and were soon fast asleep.
It was late in the afternoon before
they awoke. Then they walked on until, after
darkness fell, they entered a small village. Here
they went into a shop to buy bread. The woman
looked at them earnestly.
“I do not know whether it concerns
you,” she said, “but I will warn you that
this morning a mounted man from Fairford came by warning
all to seize a tall countryman with a young fellow
and a woman with him, for that she was no other than
King Charles.”
“Thanks, my good woman,”
Jacob said. “Thanks for your warning.
I do not say that I am he you name, but whether or
no, the king shall hear some day of your good-will.”
Traveling on again, they made thirty
miles that night, and again slept in a wood.
The next evening, when they entered a village to buy
food, the man in the shop, after looking at them,
suddenly seized Jacob, and shouted loudly for help.
Harry stretched him on the ground with a heavy blow
of the stout cudgel he carried. The man’s
shouts, however, had called up some of his neighbors,
and these ran up as they issued from the shop, and
tried to seize them. The friends, however, struck
out lustily with their sticks, Jacob carrying one
concealed beneath his dress. In two or three
minutes they had fought their way clear, and ran at
full speed through the village, pursued by a shouting
crowd of rustics.
“Now,” Harry said, “we
can return for our gypsy dresses, and then make for
the east coast. We have put the king’s enemies
off the scent. I trust that when we may get across
the water we may hear that he is in safety.”
They made a long detour, traveling
only at night, Harry entering alone after dusk the
villages where it was necessary to buy food. When
they regained the wood where they had left their disguises
they dressed themselves again as gypsies, called for
the donkey, and then journeyed across England by easy
stages to Colchester, where they succeeded in taking
passage in a lugger bound for Hamburg. They arrived
there in safety, and found to their great joy the
news had arrived that the king had landed in France.
He had, they afterward found, failed
to obtain a ship at Bridport, where when he arrived
he here found a large number of soldiers about to cross
to Jersey. He returned to Trent House, and a ship
at Southampton was then engaged. But this was
afterward taken up for the carriage of troops.
A week later a ship lying at Shoreham was hired to
carry a nobleman and his servant to France, and King
Charles, with his friends, made his way thither in
safety. The captain of the ship at once recognized
the king, but remained true to his promise, and landed
him at Fécamp in Normandy.
Six weeks had elapsed since the battle
of Worcester, and during that time the king’s
hiding-places had been known to no less than forty-five
persons, all of whom proved faithful to the trust,
and it was owing to their prudence and caution as
well as to their loyalty that the king escaped, in
spite of the reward offered and the hot search kept
up everywhere for him.
Harry had now to settle upon his plans
for the future. There was no hope whatever of
an early restoration. He had no thought of hanging
about the king whose ways and dissolute associates
revolted him. It was open to him to take service,
as so many of his companions had done, in one or other
of the Continental armies, but Harry had had more than
enough of fighting. He determined then to cross
the ocean to the plantations of Virginia, where many
loyal gentlemen had established themselves. The
moneys which Colonel Furness had during the last four
years regularly sent across to a banker at the Hague,
for his use, were lying untouched, and these constituted
a sum amply sufficient for establishing himself there.
Before starting, however, he determined that if possible
he would take a wife with him. In all his wanderings
he had never seen any one he liked so much as his
old playmate, Lucy Rippinghall. It was nearly
four years since he had seen her, and she must now
be twenty-one. Herbert, he knew by his father’s
letters, had left the army at the end of the first
civil war, and was carrying on his father’s business,
the wool-stapler having been killed at Marston Moor.
Harry wrote to the colonel, telling him of his intention
to go to Virginia and settle there until either Cromwell’s
death, and the dying out of old animosities, or the
restoration of the king permitted him to return to
England, and also that he was writing to ask Lucy
Rippinghall to accompany him as his wife. He
told his father that he was well aware that he would
not have regarded such a match as suitable had he
been living at home with him at Furness Hall, but
that any inequality of birth would matter no whit in
the plantations of Virginia, and that such a match
would greatly promote his happiness there. By
the same mail he wrote to Herbert Rippinghall.
“My dear Herbert:
The bonds of affection which held us together when
boys are in no way slackened in their hold upon me,
and you showed, when we last met, that you loved me
in no way less than of old. I purpose sailing
to Virginia with such store of money as would purchase
a plantation there, and there I mean to settle down
until such times as these divisions in England may
be all passed. But I would fain not go alone.
As a boy I loved your sister Lucy, and I have seen
none to take the place of her image in my heart.
She is, I know, still unmarried, but I know not whether
she has any regard for me. I do beseech you to
sound her, and if she be willing to give her to me.
I hear that you are well married, and can therefore
the better spare her. If she be willing to take
me, I will be a good husband to her, and trust some
day or other to bring her back to be lady of Furness
Hall. Although I know that she will care little
for such things, I may say that she would be Lady Lucy,
since the king has been pleased to make me Sir Harry
Furness. Should the dear girl be willing, will
you, since I cannot come to you, bring her hither
to me. I have written to my father, and have told
him what I purpose to do. Trusting that this
will find you as well disposed toward me as ever,
I remain, your affectionate friend, Harry Furness.”
This letter, together with that to
his father, Harry gave to Mike. The post in those
days was extremely irregular, and none confided letters
of importance to it which could possibly be sent by
hand. Such a communication as that to Herbert
Rippinghall was not one which Harry cared to trust
to the post. Mike had never been at Abingdon,
and would therefore be unknown there. Nor, indeed,
unless they were taken prisoners in battle or in the
first hot pursuit, were any of lower degree meddled
with after their return to their homes. There
was therefore no fear whatever of molestation.
At this time Jacob was far from well. The fatigues
which he had undergone since the king broke up his
camp at Stirling had been immense. Prolonged marches,
great anxiety, sleeping on wet ground, being frequently
soaked to the skin by heavy rains, all these things
had told upon him, and now that the necessity for
exertion was over, a sort of low fever seized him,
and he was forced to take to his bed. The leech
whom Harry called in told him that Jacob needed rest
and care more than medicine. He gave him, however,
cooling drinks, and said that when the fever passed
he would need strengthening food and medicine.
Hamburg was at that time the resort
of many desperate men from England. After Worcester,
as after the crushing out of the first civil war, those
too deeply committed to return to their homes sought
refuge here. But though all professed to be Cavaliers,
who were suffering only from their loyalty to the
crown, a great many of them were men who had no just
claim to so honorable a position. There were many
who took advantage of the times in England to satisfy
private enmities or to gratify evil passions.
Although the courts of law sat during the whole of
the civil war, and the judges made their circuits,
there was necessarily far more crime than in ordinary
times. Thus many of those who betook themselves
to Hamburg and other seaports on the continent had
made England too hot for them by crimes of violence
and dishonesty.
The evening after Mike sailed Harry,
who had been sitting during the afternoon chatting
by Jacob’s bedside, went out to take the air.
He strolled along the wharves, near which were the
drinking-houses, whence came sounds of singing, dancing,
and revelry, mingled occasionally with shouts and
the clash of steel, as quarrels arose among the sailors
and others frequenting them. Never having seen
one of these places, Harry strolled into one which
appeared of a somewhat better class than the rest.
At one end was a sort of raised platform, upon which
were two men, with fiddles, who, from time to time,
played lively airs, to which those at the tables kept
time by stamping their feet. Sometimes men or
women came on to the platform and sang. The occupants
of the body of the hall were mostly sailors, but among
whom were a considerable number of men, who seemed
by their garb to be broken-down soldiers and adventurers.
Harry took his seat by the door, called
for a glass of wine and drank it, and, having soon
seen enough of the nature of the entertainment, was
about to leave, when his attention was attracted by
a young girl who took her place on the platform.
She was evidently a gypsy, for at this time these
people were the minstrels of Europe. It would
have been considered shameful for any other woman
to sing publicly. Two or three of these women
had already sung, and Harry had been disgusted with
their hard voices and bold looks. But he saw
that the one who now took her place on the platform
was of a different nature. She advanced nervously,
and as if quite strange to such a scene, and touched
her guitar with trembling fingers. Then she began
to sing a Spanish romance in a sweet, pure voice.
There was a good deal of applause when it finished,
for even the rough sailors could appreciate the softness
and beauty of the melody. Then a half-drunken
man shouted, “Give us something lively.
Sing ‘May the Devil fly off with Old Noll.’”
The proposal was received with a shout
of approval by many, but some of the sailors cried
out, “No, no. No politics. We won’t
hear Cromwell insulted.”
This only led to louder and more angry
shouts on the part of the others, and in all parts
of the room men rose to their feet, gesticulating and
shouting. The girl, who evidently did not understand
a word that was said, stood looking with affright
at the tumult which had so suddenly risen. In
a minute swords were drawn. The foreign sailors,
in ignorance of the cause of dispute, drew their knives,
and stood by the side of those from the English ships,
while the foreign soldiers seemed ready to make common
cause with the English who had commenced the disturbance.
Two or three of the latter leaped upon the platform
to insist upon their wishes being carried out.
The girl, with a little scream, retreated into a corner.
Harry, indignant at the conduct to his countrymen,
had drawn his sword, and made his way quietly toward
the end of the hall, and he now sprang upon the platform.
“Stand back,” he shouted
angrily. “I’ll spit the first man
who advances a step.”
“And who are you, sir, who ventures
to thrust yourself into a quarrel, and to interfere
with English gentlemen?”
“English gentlemen,” Harry
said bitterly. “God help England if you
are specimens of her gentlemen.”
“S’death!” exclaimed
one. “Run the scoundrel through, Ralph.”
In a moment Harry slashed open the
cheek of one, and ran the other through the arm.
By this time the fray had become general in the hall.
Benches were broken up, swords and knives were used
freely. Just as the matter began to grow serious
there was a cry of “The watch!” and a
strong armed guard entered the hall.
There was an instant cessation of
hostilities, and then both parties uniting, rushed
upon the watch, and by sheer weight bore them back
out of the place. Harry looked round, and saw
that the girl had fled by a door at the back of the
platform. Seeing that a fight was going on round
the door, and desiring to escape from the broil, he
went out by the door she had taken, followed a passage
for some distance, went down a dimly-lighted stair,
and issued through a door into the air. He found
himself in a foul and narrow lane. It was entirely
unlighted, and Harry made his way with difficulty
along, stumbling into holes in the pavement, and over
heaps of rubbish of all kinds.
“I have got into a nice quarter
of the town,” he muttered to himself. “I
have heard there are places in Hamburg, the resort
of thieves and scoundrels of the worst kind, and where
even the watch dare not penetrate, Methinks that this
must be one them.”
He groped his way along till he came
to the end of the lane. Here a dim light was
burning. Three or four other lanes, in appearance
as forbidding as that up which he had come, met at
this spot. Several men were standing about.
Harry paused for a moment, wondering whether he had
better take the first turning at random, or invite
attention by asking his way. He determined that
the former was the least dangerous alternative, and
turned down the lane to his right. He had not
gone ten steps when a woman came up to him from behind.
“Are you not the gentleman who
drew a sword to save me from insult?” she asked
in French.
Harry understood enough of the language
to make out what she said.
“Yes,” he said, “if you are the
singer.”
“Good heavens! sir, what misfortune
has brought you here? I recognized your face
in the light. Your life, sir, is in the greatest
danger. There are men here who would murder you
for the sake of a gold piece, and that jewel which
fastens your plume must have caught their eyes.
Follow me, sir, quickly.”