History of King Charles the Second of England by Jacob Abbott (best biographies to read TXT) 📖

and happiness are gone, and nothing but the pressure from without of affliction or calamity can ever restore them!

In consequence, in a great measure, of Henrietta's efficient help, the king's affairs greatly improved, and, for a time, it seemed as if he would gain an ultimate and final victory over his enemies, and recover his lost dominion. He advanced to Oxford, and made his head quarters there, and commenced the preparations for once more getting possession of the palaces and fortresses of London. He called together a Parliament at Oxford; some members came, and were regularly organized in the two houses of Lords and Commons, while the rest remained at London and continued their sittings there. Thus there were two governments, two Parliaments, and two capitals in England, and the whole realm was rent and distracted by the respective claims of these contending powers over the allegiance of the subjects and the government of the realm.


CHAPTER III.

QUEEN HENRIETTA'S FLIGHT.


The brightening of the prospects in King Charles's affairs which was produced, for a time, by the queen's vigorous and energetic action, proved to be only a temporary gleam after all. The clouds and darkness soon returned again, and brooded over his horizon more gloomily than ever. The Parliament raised and organized new and more powerful armies. The great Republican general, Oliver Cromwell, who afterward became so celebrated as the Protector in the time of the Commonwealth, came into the field, and was very successful in all his military plans. Other Republican generals appeared in all parts of the kingdom, and fought with great determination and great success, driving the armies of the king before them wherever they moved, and reducing town after town, and castle after castle, until it began to appear evident that the whole kingdom would soon fall into their hands.

In the mean time, the family of the queen were very much separated from each other, the children having been left in various places, exposed each to different privations and dangers. Two or three of them were in London in the hands of their father's enemies. Mary, the young bride of the Prince of Orange, was in Holland. Prince Charles, the oldest son, who was now about fourteen years of age, was at the head of one of his father's armies in the west of England. Of course, such a boy could not be expected to accomplish any thing as a general, or even to exercise any real military command. He, however, had his place at the head of a considerable force, and though there were generals with him to conduct all the operations, and to direct the soldiery, they were nominally the lieutenants of the prince, and acted, in all cases, in their young commander's name. Their great duty was, however, after all, to take care of their charge; and the army which accompanied Charles was thus rather an escort and a guard, to secure his safety, than a force from which any aid was to be expected in the recovery of the kingdom.

The queen did every thing in her power to sustain the sinking fortunes of her husband, but in vain. At length, in June, 1644, she found herself unable to continue any longer such warlike and masculine exposures and toils. It became necessary for her to seek some place of retreat, where she could enjoy, for a time at least, the quiet and repose now essential to the preservation of her life. Oxford was no longer a place of safety. The Parliament had ordered her impeachment on account of her having brought in arms and munitions of war from foreign lands, to disturb, as they said, the peace of the kingdom. The Parliamentary armies were advancing toward Oxford, and she was threatened with being shut up and besieged there. She accordingly left Oxford, and went down to the sea- coast to Exeter, a strongly fortified place, on a hill surrounded in part by other hills, and very near the sea. There was a palace within the walls, where the queen thought she could enjoy, for a time at least, the needed seclusion and repose. The king accompanied her for a few miles on her journey, to a place called Abingdon, which is in the neighborhood of Oxford, and there the unhappy pair bade each other farewell, with much grief and many tears. They never met again.

Henrietta continued her sorrowful journey alone. She reached the sea- coast in the south-western part of England, where Exeter is situated, and shut herself up in the place of her retreat. She was in a state of great destitution, for Charles's circumstances were now so reduced that he could afford her very little aid. She sent across the Channel to her friends in France, asking them to help her. They sent immediately the supplies that she needed--articles of clothing, a considerable sum of money, and a nurse. She retained the clothing and the nurse, and a little of the money; the rest she sent to Charles. She was, however, now herself tolerably provided for in her new home, and here, a few weeks afterward, her sixth child was born. It was a daughter.

The queen's long continued exertions and exposures had seriously impaired her health, and she lay, feeble and low, in her sick chamber for about ten days, when she learned to her dismay that one of the Parliamentary generals was advancing at the head of his army to attack the town which she had made her refuge. This general's name was Essex. The queen sent a messenger out to meet Essex, asking him to allow her to withdraw from the town before he should invest it with his armies. She said that she was very weak and feeble, and unable to endure the privations and alarms which the inhabitants of a besieged town have necessarily to bear; and she asked his permission, therefore, to retire to Bristol, till her health should be restored. Essex replied that he could not give her permission to retire from Exeter; that, in fact, the object of his coming there was to escort her to London, to bring her before Parliament, to answer to the charge of treason.

The queen perceived immediately that nothing but the most prompt and resolute action could enable her to escape the impending danger. She had but little bodily strength remaining, but that little was stimulated and renewed by the mental resolution and energy which, as is usual in temperaments like hers, burned all the brighter in proportion to the urgency of the danger which called it into action. She rose from her sick bed, and began to concert measures for making her escape. She confided her plan to three trusty friends, one gentleman, one lady, and her confessor, who, as her spiritual teacher and guide, was her constant companion. She disguised herself and these her attendants, and succeeded in getting through the gates of Exeter without attracting any observation. This was before Essex arrived. She found, however, before she went far, that the van of the army was approaching, and she had to seek refuge in a hut till her enemies had passed. She concealed herself among some straw, her attendants seeking such other hiding places as were at hand. It was two days before the bodies of soldiery had all passed so as to make it safe for the queen to come out of her retreat. The hut would seem to have been uninhabited, as the accounts state that she remained all this time without food, though this seems to be an almost incredible degree of privation and exposure for an English queen. At any rate, she remained during all this time in a state of great mental anxiety and alarm, for there were parties of soldiery constantly going by, with a tumult and noise which kept her in continual terror. Their harsh and dissonant voices, heard sometimes in angry quarrels and sometimes in mirth, were always frightful. In fact, for a helpless woman in a situation like that of the queen, the mood of reckless and brutal mirth in such savages was perhaps more to be dreaded than that of their anger.

At one time the queen overheard a party of these soldiers talking about her . They knew that to get possession of the papist queen was the object of their expedition. They spoke of getting her head and carrying it to London, saying that Parliament had offered a reward of fifty thousand crowns for it, and expressed the savage pleasure which it would give them to secure this prize, by imprecations and oaths.

They did not, however, discover their intended victim. After the whole army passed, the queen ventured cautiously forth from her retreat; the little party got together again, and, still retaining their disguises, moved on over the road by which the soldiers had come, and which was in the shocking condition that a road and a country always exhibit where an army has been marching. Faint and exhausted with sickness, abstinence, and the effects of long continued anxiety and fear, the queen had scarcely strength to go on. She persevered, however, and at length found a second refuge in a cabin in a wood. She was going to Plymouth, which is forty or fifty miles from Exeter, to the south-west, and is the great port and naval station of the English, in that quarter of the island.

She stopped at this cabin for a little time to rest, and to wait for some other friends and members of her household from the palace in Exeter to join her. Those friends were to wait until they found that the queen succeeded in making her escape, and then they were to follow, each in a different way, and all assuming such disguises as would most effectually help to conceal them. There was one of the party whom it must have been somewhat difficult to disguise. It was a dwarf, named Geoffrey Hudson, who had been a long time in the service of Henrietta as a personal attendant and messenger. It was the fancy of queens and princesses in those days to have such personages in their train. The oddity of the idea pleased them, and the smaller the dimensions of such a servitor, the greater was his value. In modern times all this is changed. Tall footmen now, in the families of the great, receive salaries in proportion to the number of inches in their stature, and the dwarfs go to the museums, to be exhibited, for a price, to the common wonder of mankind.

The manner in which Sir Geoffrey Hudson was introduced into the service of the queen was as odd as his figure. It was just after she was married, and when she was about eighteen years old. She had two dwarfs then already, a gentleman and a lady, or, as they termed it then, a cavalier and a dame , and, to carry out the whimsical idea, she had arranged a match between these two, and had them married. Now there was in her court at that time a wild and thoughtless nobleman, a great friend and constant companion of her husband Charles the First, named Buckingham. An account of his various exploits is given in our history of Charles the First. Buckingham happened to hear of this Geoffrey Hudson, who was then a boy of seven or eight years of age, living with his parents somewhere in the interior of England. He sent for him, and had him brought secretly to his house, and made an arrangement to have him enter the service of the queen, without, however, saying any thing of his design to her. He then invited the queen and her husband to visit him at his palace; and when the