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 family, half a mile further on. Here at daybreak on 4 Sept. Charles took leave of all his companions, except Wilmot, who alone was privy to his design of escaping not to Scotland, but to London, and who remained concealed in the neighbourhood. Charles wandered from Worcester to Boscobel [see ]; thence to Mr. Whitgreave’s seat of Moseley, and Colonel Lane's at Bentley; thence again, as Miss Jane Lane's attendant to Leigh, near Bristol, and to Colonel Wyndham’s house at Trent, near Sherbourne; and finally to the George Inn at Brighton, a journey extending over forty-one days. During this period he was recognised, according to various calculations, by from forty to fifty men and women, and a reward of 1,000l. had been set on his head, and a penalty of death attached to any act aiding his concealment. His own part was well played throughout in the way of endurance and sang-froid, and after the Restoration he gave substantial proofs of his gratitude to many of those who had contributed to his preservation. (The best account of the adventures of Charles after Worcester is in Thomas Blount's relation entitled Boscobel (1660), which, however, it is curious to find declared inaccurate by royal order; see the quotation from The Kingdom's Intelligencer, January 1661, in A Cavalier's Notebook, 139–40. The king dictated his own narrative to, October 1680; account, vi. 513–45, is also derived from the accounts of the king and of Wilmot. Whitgreave likewise drew up a narrative.)

Charles landed in safety at Fécamp in Normandy on 16 Oct. 1651. His expressions now and four years later, when he was urged to make another attempt in the same quarter, showed that he had had enough, and more than enough, of Scotland (Cal. 1651, xxi; cf., vi. 111); and never were his prospects gloomier than during his sojourn at Paris and St. Germain, which lasted till June 1654. He was at first well received by the Duke of Orleans and several of the great nobles; it is even stated that there was a notion of his making the duke’s daughter (, Life of James II, i. 55). His pecuniary difficulties pressed hard on him; the pension of six thousand livres a month now assigned to him by the French court was more regularly anticipated than paid (, vi. 568), and his share of the profits from Prince Rupert's sea brigandage was only occasional (Pythouse Papers, 34). Unable, like his brother James, to take service under the French colours, he had to remain the nominal head of a factious court, where his mother and her favourites, ‘the Louvrians,’ as they were called, deplored his anger against the Scots, and in vain sought to induce him to attend the presbyterian services at Charenton; while his weightiest advisers, Hyde and Ormonde, who with Jermyn and Wilmot formed his new council, could offer him no better advice than to remain quiescent,and he was observed to lapse into taciturnity (Cal. 1651–2, 2). But from France, torn by internal conflicts, there was nothing to he hoped (cf., iv. 54). He lost a good friend by the death of his brother-in-law, William II, prince of Orange. When the States-General had declared war against England, they declined his offer to take the command of any English ships which might come over to their side, and when peace was made in April 1654 the exclusion of the English royal family from the United Provinces was one of its conditions. No result followed from the diplomatic tour of the Earl of Norwich in 1652 (Cal. 1651–2, xi), and the mission of Rochester (Wilmot) to the diet of Ratisbon in 1655 produced only a small subsidy, proposed like a charitable subscription by the Elector of Mainz (, vi. 51, 105). Yet even in these years his followers' demands for commissions and places, mostly, no doubt, prospective, continued. At home Cromwell, in November 1652, rejected Whitelocke's advice to arrive at an understanding with the king of Scots (, iii. 468-74), whose subjects were on 12 April 1654 declared discharged from their allegiance to him. About the same time Vowell's plot for the murder of the Protector and the proclamation of Charles, who was beyond doubt cognisant. of the scheme, was discovered (Cal. 1654, xvii–xviii). Early in the same year regular diplomatic relations were opened between England and France, and a treat of alliance between these powers projected, of which the expulsion of Charles from France would inevitably form a proviso.

In the end Charles resolved to go to Germany. The royalists in England contrived to send him a few thousand pounds, Mazarin paid him all the arrears of his pension, and Charles took the opportunity of appointing a treasurer, Stephen Fox, so efficient that, according to Clarendon (vii. 107), from this date to just before the Restoration the king's expenses never exceeded 240l. a year. ‘Good old secretary’ Nicholas shortly afterwards returned to the royal service. Early in June 1654 Charles passed unregarded through Flanders, in order to spend several weeks with his sister, the widowed Princess of Orange, at Spa, and afterwards at Aix-le-Chapelle, where he had at first thought of fixing his residence. He, however, proceeded to Cologne, where he was received with much solemnity both by