July 23, 2019 • 30 mins
By the time he was 17, Charles II was a prince in exile. When his father, the King of England, was beheaded, the country became a protectorate without a monarch. But Charles was willing to sacrifice whatever (and whoever) it took to win his crown back.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart
Radio and Aaron Minky. Listener discretion advised. In seventeen eighty six,
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson visited the battlefield at Fort
Royal Hill in Wooster, England. Adams was the ambassador to
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Great Britain, Jefferson was negotiating trade deals with Europe, and
the two were political rivals, but they had traveled together
in order to see the place where the Royalists had
been utterly defeated by Oliver Cromwell and his army over
two centuries prior. Adams and Jefferson found the place deeply moving.
After all, like Oliver Cromwell, the pair had firsthand experience
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in waging war to overthrow a monarch. But to the
shock and shame of the future presidents, Wooster locals seemed
to barely note or care at all that they lived
near the historic battle site, and so John Adams delivered
what he called an impromptu lecture to the townspeople. Do
Englishmen so soon forget the ground where liberty was fought for?
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Tell your neighbors and your children that this is holy ground,
much holier than that on which your churches stand all
England should come in pilgrimage to this hill once a year.
To Adams and Jefferson, Worcester represented the place where liberty
loving Englishmen had risen up to conquer a despotic would
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be king. But less than a decade after the battle,
England had welcomed Charles the Second back to their shores
with open arms, parades and celebration. He was a homecoming
son the merry monarch who became synonymous with indulging in
women and debauchery. Those familiar with Charles the Second tend
(01:50):
to imagine him after the restoration of the monarchy as
king in a flowing curly wig and surrounded by a
fleet of spaniels. But just after the Battle of Worcester,
he was a man on the run, haircut short and
ill fitting shoes, always just an inch ahead of certain
death at the hands of parliamentary soldiers searching for him.
(02:13):
Charles would spend his young life doing whatever it took
to win his crown back and avenge his father's execution,
even if it meant sacrificing religion, friends, safety, and dignity.
How much would he be willing to give up in
order to win back his birthright. For Charles the Second,
(02:34):
if it meant being king, the answer was everything. I'm
Danish schwartz and this is noble blood. If Charles the
Seconds father Charles the First believed in one thing, it
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was the divine right of kings to rule. Charles the
First lived and breathed the notion that being king meant
power bestowed upon him by God. After all, wasn't it
God who made him king in the first place, And
that belief was one he instilled in his young son
from the very beginning. Remember, son, you were chosen by
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God to rule, and your will is God's will. That
was the constant refrain for young Charles the Second in
his father's court. That, and don't become a Catholic like
your mother. Charles the Second mother, Henrietta Maria of France,
had only been given permission by the Pope to marry
the Anglican king Charles the First if she promised to
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be a force for Catholicism in Europe. Most of Charles
the Second childhood was a Dylic cushioned by the luxury
of court, even if that luxury demanded certain restrictions and
ritual For eleven years his father ruled singularly until his
taxes and continual dismissal of Parlia Mint ignited a rebellion.
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The parliamentarians, led by Oliver Cromwell, rose up in civil
war against King Charles the First, who they accused of
tyranny and treason. Even though he was only fourteen at
the time, Charles the Second joined his father in the
battles of the First English Civil War. Members of the
army noticed the young prince's bravery. The boy, who was
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already so tall with the striking dark complexion of his
French Italian mother. He stayed with his father on the
front lines of battle on warships, refusing to retreat to
the safety of below deck, fighting a more and more
perilous war against Oliver Cromwell's new model army, until finally
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everyone knew that the cause was lost and the Prince
would need to leave the country for his own safety.
The prince's mother, the Queen, had already left, sobbing and
calling out for her husband until her boat disappear here
beneath the horizon. Charles the second, younger sister and brother
were left behind, separated and hidden, but as heir to
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the throne. Charles the Second represented a massive threat to
the new republic that the parliamentarians were building. His freedom
meant royalists could still rally behind him, and so they
needed him dead. Young Charles the second exile began in Jersey,
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an island off the coast of France, where his host
attempted to maintain the royal pomp and ceremony that the
young prince had been accustomed to back when he was
the heir to a throne that still existed. Charles the
Second would sit alone at elaborate banquet tables every night
for dinner. Kneeling squires would offer each dish one at
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a time, while another servant carved a portion of the
food to serve for the prince, and a third, on
a bended knee, offered a silver bowl for him to
rinse his hands. A cupbearer poured his wine, always tasting
it first to check for poison, and lifted a silver
basin under the Prince's chin while he drank, so a
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drop would never fall and soil his fine royal clothes.
It was empty, pathetic pageantry. Charles the Second was a
prince without a nation, a teenage exile surrounded by hollow
ritual that no longer had any meaning. He had servants
but no power. After Jersey, his exile brought him to
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Sicily and finally to France, where he was able to
join his mother. In France, the prince, who had battled
on warships alongside his father's army, was treated like a child.
His only income was pocket money given to him by
his mother. Although later in life Charles the Second would
be famous for his lascivious flirtations and many mistresses. As
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a young man, he was gawky and awkward, especially compared
to the sophistication of the French court. There was a
princess there at court, Madame de Montpensier, titled and fabulously wealthy.
In short, she would be a strategic match, and the
two were set next to each other a feast to
see if Charles might be able to woo her. Later,
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Madame de Montpensier would recount the evening back to her friend,
who shrieked and laughter. The prince humiliated himself, and Madame
de Montpensier was humiliated for him. He sat next to her,
so paralyzed with fear that he didn't utter a single
word for fifteen minutes. Not long after that banquet, Charles
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the Second left France to stay with his elder sister
and her husband in the Netherlands, hoping that the Dutch
might be more willing than the French to help his
father in the fight still raging in England. But it
was too late. The former King Charles the First was
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defeat did by the parliamentarians and brought into custody awaiting trial.
It would be a trial for treason, and the penalty
was death. Charles the Second went to extraordinary lengths to
try to protect his father, engaging in every flavor of diplomacy,
begging forging new allies, offering ransoms, writing to the new
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parliamentarian government, and all but begging for his father's life. Finally,
he made the ultimate concession. Charles the Second sent the
new English government a blank sheet of parchment with his
signature at the bottom, a literal carte blanche, a moral
blank check. It said, I will agree to anything to
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save my father Cromwell and his government ignored it. On
an icy day at the end of January, the former
King Charles the First was brought to the scaffolding for
his execute Jian he put on two shirts before he
left his prison cell so people wouldn't see him shivering
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in the cold and think that he was afraid. Even
as he walked the steps to his death, Charles the
First never denounced his faith or his belief in the
divine right of kings. In his final words, Charles the
First addressed the large crowd that had assembled to bear
witness to the regicide. He called himself a martyr of
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the people, and one final time he proclaimed his innocence.
But the crowd was held too far away, and Charles
the First was blocked by a wall of parliamentary guards.
The king's final address to his people went entirely unheard.
Charles the First lowered his head onto the block and
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apologized for his long hair, in case it made the
executioner's job more difficult, he gathered it beneath a silk cap. Then, finally,
for the first and only time in British history, the
executioner brought his blade down on the neck of a monarch.
When the executioner held up the head to the crowd,
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he was expecting cheers, The crowd only gasped. It was
very very quiet, it said. When Charles the second heard
of his father's execution, he fell to the floor and
screamed in agony. If Charles the Second was going to
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win back the English throne, he needed an army, and
his best hope was Scotland. Though the deeply pious Presbyterian
Scotland had nominally declared Charles the Second as king, they
refused to let him enter the country unless he pledged
to accept Presbyterianism and spread the faith across Britain when
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he had once again and become king. That would mean
Charles the Second formally renouncing the faith of his Anglican
father and the faith of his Catholic mother. He needed
to negotiate. Fortunately for Charles the Second, he had a
brilliant bargaining chip, the spectacular General Montrose, who had fought
valiantly for Charles the First and won several spectacular, surprising
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victories for the royal forces. Montrose was loyal to Charles
the Second and readily agreed when Charles the Second asked
him to invade Scotland with a small force to attempt
to raise the Highland clans in order to challenge the
Scottish government on his behalf. But as Mantros fought, Charles
privately continued his negotiations with the Scottish government until he
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finally agreed to the terms of the Scottish nobles. Charles
wrote a letter to Mantros telling him that he was
making him a Knight of the Garter, the most prestigious
order of chivalry that could be granted by a monarch.
It was as good as a kiss of death. While
Mantros was still battling on his behalf, Charles secretly signed
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a treaty with the very people against whom Montrose was fighting.
Montrose was captured, dragged through the streets, and hanged like
a common criminal, not even receiving a nobleman's death of
beheading with an axe. Charles the Second gave up Mantros,
his father's finest general and a military hero, but he
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got his alliance to Scotland. After agreeing to uphold Presbyterianism.
Charles the Second entered Scotland as their king. He and
his men made their way from the coast into Edinburgh,
passing through the North gates into the city. What's that,
Charles asked, looking up an irregular shape on the gate.
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It was twisted and blackened, pecked at by birds and
run through with a large nail. One of the Scottish
guards answered him. It was one of Montrose's arms hung
up on the city gate as a warning and deterrent
to others. Charles was silent the rest of the ride,
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even though he was technically king in Scotland. Having signed
the Presbyterian Covenant meant that that crown was almost more
symbolic than anything it had, about the same power as
a crown made a foil or a burger king paper
crown a few hundred years too early. See. While his
father had a foundational faith in the divine right of
kings to rule as granted by God himself, the Presbyterian
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Scots saw a king as more of a magistrate than
anything else. Charles was a king again, but with no
real kingliness. In Scotland. The king was a man just
like anyone else, and like other men, Charles the Second
was required to obey the strict protocols of the religion.
He was forbidden from walking about on Sundays and forced
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to sit through six hours of Sunday sermons. With the Covenant,
Charles had signed away his religion and his divine power,
but at least he had an army willing to go
up against Oliver Cromwell in England, and on September three,
six fifty, they got their chance. Cromwell and his men
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had advanced in a preemptive strike towards Edinburgh. When they
met with the Scottish forces in the Battle of Dunbar.
The Scots massively outnumbered the Englishmen, and they also occupied
the high ground, leaving the English soldiers trapped between a
hill and the north Sea. All the Scottish army needed
to do was await them out, but the Scottish general
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believed that England was already fatally weakened, and so Scotland charged.
Cromwell watched with amazement. The Lord hath delivered them into
our hands. He said. It was a decisive victory for
England that put the entirety of southern Scotland under their
control and left Scotland completely humiliated. Needing a scapegoat for
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the victory, they forced their King, Charles the Second, to
publicly declare that the outcome of the battle was God's
punishment for the sins of his parents and his entire family.
What could the young king do but agree he was
a king in name only a puppet for the Scottish
Presbyterian covenanters, and so Charles the Second swallowed his pride
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and did as they asked. Now, Charles the second path
for winning back the English throne would require him doing
it on English soil, and so he and a small
army of Scottish men and the English royalists he could
gather along the way, went down south to make their
final stand against Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Worcester.
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This time it was the English who had the advantage
of numbers, nearly thirty thousand men, the largest army ever
assembled on British soil, and double what Charles had been
able to gather. Cromwell had predicted the movements of Charles
and his armies and made a strategic decision to delay
the charge three days, so it would occur on September third,
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sixteen fifty one, exactly one year to the day after
he had beat Scotland in the ground in the Battle
of Dunbar. Worcester was an instant massacre for Charles the
Second and his army. Three thousand of his men were
killed and another ten thousand were captured to pored it
off to work as indentured servants or worse. As Charles
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and his close cadre of men rode away from the
battle site, the king kept stopping his horse. His father
had taught him to always fight on the front lines.
We have to go back, Charles the second said, we
have to keep fighting. His men looked at one another,
but only first split second that was it. One of
his men finally said, the battle is over. The parliamentarians
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needed Charles dead. Even though the Parliamentarians had won a
decisive military victory, there were still those loyal to Charles,
and as long as he lived, he was still a
symbolic threat to the new Republic. Almost no one in
Charles's army had escaped from Worcester. Cromwell's men had cast
a wide net around the battle, and they assumed that
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the king, who had been on the front lines leading
his army for most of the fight, would be among
the many dead bodies left when the fighting was over.
But by some miracle a brilliant stroke of luck, Charles
had escaped, and so the would be king spent the
next six weeks weaving through the English countryside in an
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increasingly perilous series of near captures. Trying to make it
to safety while the parliamentary and guards searched for him.
Escape was a risky and dangerous prospect. The king was
six ft two at a time when the height of
the average Englishman was closer to five ft six, and
he had an astonishing price on his head, a thousand pounds.
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He had a few allies, a small network of England's
secret Catholics, but anyone he meant could betray him and
would certainly be tortured as to his whereabouts if soldiers
discovered that they had been associated. Among that Catholic network
were five brothers with a surname Pendril, who sought as
a mission from God to protect their king against the
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enemy of Cromwell's Protestantism. One of the brothers, Richard, cut
the King's hair so that it was short on top
and long at the side, in the style of a
common laborer. Charles was trained in the local dialect and
given workmen's clothes and shoes for King Arles, the second,
who had up until that point only ever won the
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finest footwear. The rough shoes left his feet bleeding and
blistered thanks to his height. None of the shoes the
Pendrols had on hand would fit him, and so Charles
was forced to slice open the sides of a pair
of shoes several sizes too small. Charles would go days
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without sleep, making escapes in the middle of the night
to a state where he might be welcomed and smuggled in.
Charles was hidden inside secret priest holds where Catholics hid
priests to keep them safe from forced conversions after the
religion had been outlawed. A captain named of all things
William Careless had been one of the final royal soldiers
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to make it out of Worcester alive. He and Charles
had made it to the boscobell estates, where the Pendril
brothers were caretakers, only to hear of an approaching battillion
of Puritan guards. Careless knew that if he brought the
king inside, no matter how well hidden the houses, priests
holes were, eventually the soldiers would find him, and so,
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at Careless's suggestion, William Pendril brought out a ladder. Careless
and the king climbed high into an oak tree dense
with leaves, and stayed there for an entire day while
a troop of Cromwell's guards marched beneath them, searching the
countryside for a king who, at that very moment was
a dozen feet above their heads. The king was asleep
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in the branches when a pair of guards sat at
the base of the tree, taking a break from their
search to clear the rubble from their shoes. Careless was
awake and came to a terrible realization his leg was
asleep and Charles was lying on his leg. If the
sleeping Charles didn't move, Careless's numb leg would caused them
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both to tumble from their perch directly onto the guards below, and,
so covering Charles's mouth so he wouldn't yell, Careless pinched
him and then pinched him again. Mercifully, Charles woke up
and quietly shifted his weight, and the two remained safely
hidden in their perch until the guards moved on. After
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the king successfully evaded troops at Basketball, two of the
Pendril brothers went with him to the estate of mostly
Old Hall, the home of a man named Thomas white Grave. There,
Charles the second was given his first proper bed to
sleep in since he had escaped from the Battle of Worcester.
A family priest was also there, a man by the
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name of Father John Huddleston, who bathed and bandaged the
King's torn and bloody feet. Charles had been shown so
much generosity and loyalty by Father Huddleston, and by all
of the Catholic Englishmen who had aided him along in
his escape, that Charles pledged then and there that should
he become King of England again, he would once again
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grant Catholics religious freedom. If it pleases God, I come
to my crown, he told Father Huddleston, both you and
all your persuasion shall have as much liberty as any
of my subjects. Charles stayed relatively comfortably at mostly Old
Hall for two days until parliamentary troops arrived on the
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afternoon of the third day. Charles and Father Huddleston's were
quickly hidden in a priest hole, but the troops tortured
and interrogated their host, Thomas Whitegrave, convinced that he had
fought with Charles at Wooster, even though the truth was
that he hadn't. Eventually, after hours of interrogation, the troops left,
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but the forces of danger were only closing in on
Charles faster. The Pendril's brother in Law had already been
haptured by English forces, interrogated, tortured, and hanged, but the
entire time he had refused to give Charles up. For
the final leg of his journey, Charles rode with a
woman named Jane Lane, who had received a permit from
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the military to travel to Bristol with one of her
servants in order to visit a family member. If he
made it to Bristol, Charles could find a boat to
take him to France, and so he adopted the alias
William Jackson and rode on Jane's horse with her, maintaining
the charade that he was her servant to anyone they met.
When the two stopped at an estate for lodging, Charles,
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as William Jackson, was sent to the kitchens to work
as any servant would have been. He was assigned to
wind up the jack that would be used to roast
meat in a fireplace, but Charles, having been royalty his
entire life, had no idea how to do it. The
cook was immediately suspicious. What kind of servants are you
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who doesn't know how to work a jack? He spat.
Charles thought quickly and came up with an excuse. His
family was so poor. He said that they so rarely
ate meat that he had no experience with roasting it.
The cook was satisfied. The entire escape lasted six weeks,
and when Charles finally made it to Bristol, he was
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able to smuggle his way onto a French merchant ship
and make his way to safety right under the noses
of the parliamentary guards. It was the most heroic experience
Charles the Second would have for the next decade. He
was safe while he was abroad, but he was also
politically impotent, relegated to attempting to beg for treaties with
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princes from surrounding countries who had little to no interest
in his plate. But then something happened. A little less
than ten years later, Oliver Cromwell died on the exact
anniversary of the Battles of Dunbar and Stir. Cromwell's son, Richard,
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was milk toast and passive, and with no strong leader
to take over, parliamentarians recognized that the country was on
the verge of civil war. To stave off anarchy, the
leaders of the government had secretly written to Charles the Second,
who had been living in the Spanish Netherlands. Charles the
Second agreed to their terms of forgiveness and leniency for
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those who had fought him, with the exception of those
who had committed regicide against his father, and so in
sixteen sixty Charles the Second was welcomed back to England.
He hadn't won the crown. Really, this was, if anything,
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a victory of waiting and circumstance. But it didn't matter.
Even if it was a role stripped of its power,
even if he was a symbol, even if he was
a puppet, none of it mattered. He was finally the
king of an England. Charles would spend much of his
later life for counting the story of those six weeks
he had spent on the run, two wrapt audiences. It
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had been the only time in his life where he
interacted with common people and lived by his wits, completely
free of palace ritual and formality. They were weeks of
piracy and adventure, of death, defying odds, and close calls
that became closer the more often the stories were told.
Charles the Second would be an indulged king, famous for
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his feasts and mistresses, known for his flamboyant fashions and
general hedonism, and though he was a king, Parliament still
retained much of the power that they had had in
the interregnum. When Charles attempted to pass a rule permitting
Catholic worship, as he had promised his loyal supporters, who
had risked their live staid in his escape, Parliament instantly
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forced him to withdraw. Charles capitulated there was nothing he
could do, or nothing he would be willing to do
if it meant risking his position, the throne for which
he had sacrificed so much to gain. When Charles was
on his deathbed, suffering from oregon failure and internal bleeding
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that even the most dedicated blood letting efforts of the
royal physicians couldn't care, his brother James came to comfort him.
The Charles had over a dozen illegitimate children, he had
none by his wife, and so James would be next
in line for the throne. James brought his dying brother
a priest sire. He said, this good man wants saved
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your life. He now comes to save your soul. It
was Father John Huddleston, the very man who had once
bandaged Charles feet when he was escaping from English soldiers
so long ago. Though King Charles had outwardly portrayed himself
as loyal to the Church of England for his entire
adult life, he had secretly been Catholic, devoted to the
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faith of his mother and of the people who had
shown such courage in helping him escape. Before Charles the
Second died, father Huddleston performed the right to formally receive
him into the Catholic Church. Charles was finally free to
be loyal to his true beliefs when he had nothing
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left to lose. That might be where Charles died, but
there's still a little more to the story. Stick around
after a brief sponsor break to hear more about Charles
the Second and his legacy. In sixteen nineteen, astronomer Edmund
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Haley of Haley's Common Fame named a new constellation in
the southern skies with twelve stars. Haley drew a mighty
tree with far extending roots and thick, leafy canopy. He
called his new constellation Robber Carolina Charles is Oak. But
this new constellation overlapped heavily with the constellation Argo Navis
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the Great Ship, and as astronomers mapped the stars of
the area. In the years to come, they largely forgot
or ignored Robert Carolina, such that now the constellation is
considered obsolete. But just because it's no longer marked in
the stars doesn't mean that Charles's Tree is forgotten. To
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this day, the Royal Oak remains a popular name for
establishments frequented by the labors the king had once spent
time with English pubs. Noble Blood is a co production
of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey. The show was
(29:54):
written and hosted by Danis Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey,
Matt Frederick, Alex William and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is
on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can
learn more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales
dot com. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(30:15):
listen to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart
Radio and Aaron Minky. Listener discretion advised. In seventeen eighty six,
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson visited the battlefield at Fort
Royal Hill in Wooster, England. Adams was the ambassador to
(00:21):
Great Britain, Jefferson was negotiating trade deals with Europe, and
the two were political rivals, but they had traveled together
in order to see the place where the Royalists had
been utterly defeated by Oliver Cromwell and his army over
two centuries prior. Adams and Jefferson found the place deeply moving.
After all, like Oliver Cromwell, the pair had firsthand experience
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in waging war to overthrow a monarch. But to the
shock and shame of the future presidents, Wooster locals seemed
to barely note or care at all that they lived
near the historic battle site, and so John Adams delivered
what he called an impromptu lecture to the townspeople. Do
Englishmen so soon forget the ground where liberty was fought for?
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Tell your neighbors and your children that this is holy ground,
much holier than that on which your churches stand all
England should come in pilgrimage to this hill once a year.
To Adams and Jefferson, Worcester represented the place where liberty
loving Englishmen had risen up to conquer a despotic would
(01:28):
be king. But less than a decade after the battle,
England had welcomed Charles the Second back to their shores
with open arms, parades and celebration. He was a homecoming
son the merry monarch who became synonymous with indulging in
women and debauchery. Those familiar with Charles the Second tend
(01:50):
to imagine him after the restoration of the monarchy as
king in a flowing curly wig and surrounded by a
fleet of spaniels. But just after the Battle of Worcester,
he was a man on the run, haircut short and
ill fitting shoes, always just an inch ahead of certain
death at the hands of parliamentary soldiers searching for him.
(02:13):
Charles would spend his young life doing whatever it took
to win his crown back and avenge his father's execution,
even if it meant sacrificing religion, friends, safety, and dignity.
How much would he be willing to give up in
order to win back his birthright. For Charles the Second,
(02:34):
if it meant being king, the answer was everything. I'm
Danish schwartz and this is noble blood. If Charles the
Seconds father Charles the First believed in one thing, it
(02:55):
was the divine right of kings to rule. Charles the
First lived and breathed the notion that being king meant
power bestowed upon him by God. After all, wasn't it
God who made him king in the first place, And
that belief was one he instilled in his young son
from the very beginning. Remember, son, you were chosen by
(03:18):
God to rule, and your will is God's will. That
was the constant refrain for young Charles the Second in
his father's court. That, and don't become a Catholic like
your mother. Charles the Second mother, Henrietta Maria of France,
had only been given permission by the Pope to marry
the Anglican king Charles the First if she promised to
(03:40):
be a force for Catholicism in Europe. Most of Charles
the Second childhood was a Dylic cushioned by the luxury
of court, even if that luxury demanded certain restrictions and
ritual For eleven years his father ruled singularly until his
taxes and continual dismissal of Parlia Mint ignited a rebellion.
(04:03):
The parliamentarians, led by Oliver Cromwell, rose up in civil
war against King Charles the First, who they accused of
tyranny and treason. Even though he was only fourteen at
the time, Charles the Second joined his father in the
battles of the First English Civil War. Members of the
army noticed the young prince's bravery. The boy, who was
(04:24):
already so tall with the striking dark complexion of his
French Italian mother. He stayed with his father on the
front lines of battle on warships, refusing to retreat to
the safety of below deck, fighting a more and more
perilous war against Oliver Cromwell's new model army, until finally
(04:46):
everyone knew that the cause was lost and the Prince
would need to leave the country for his own safety.
The prince's mother, the Queen, had already left, sobbing and
calling out for her husband until her boat disappear here
beneath the horizon. Charles the second, younger sister and brother
were left behind, separated and hidden, but as heir to
(05:08):
the throne. Charles the Second represented a massive threat to
the new republic that the parliamentarians were building. His freedom
meant royalists could still rally behind him, and so they
needed him dead. Young Charles the second exile began in Jersey,
(05:30):
an island off the coast of France, where his host
attempted to maintain the royal pomp and ceremony that the
young prince had been accustomed to back when he was
the heir to a throne that still existed. Charles the
Second would sit alone at elaborate banquet tables every night
for dinner. Kneeling squires would offer each dish one at
(05:51):
a time, while another servant carved a portion of the
food to serve for the prince, and a third, on
a bended knee, offered a silver bowl for him to
rinse his hands. A cupbearer poured his wine, always tasting
it first to check for poison, and lifted a silver
basin under the Prince's chin while he drank, so a
(06:12):
drop would never fall and soil his fine royal clothes.
It was empty, pathetic pageantry. Charles the Second was a
prince without a nation, a teenage exile surrounded by hollow
ritual that no longer had any meaning. He had servants
but no power. After Jersey, his exile brought him to
(06:34):
Sicily and finally to France, where he was able to
join his mother. In France, the prince, who had battled
on warships alongside his father's army, was treated like a child.
His only income was pocket money given to him by
his mother. Although later in life Charles the Second would
be famous for his lascivious flirtations and many mistresses. As
(06:56):
a young man, he was gawky and awkward, especially compared
to the sophistication of the French court. There was a
princess there at court, Madame de Montpensier, titled and fabulously wealthy.
In short, she would be a strategic match, and the
two were set next to each other a feast to
see if Charles might be able to woo her. Later,
(07:18):
Madame de Montpensier would recount the evening back to her friend,
who shrieked and laughter. The prince humiliated himself, and Madame
de Montpensier was humiliated for him. He sat next to her,
so paralyzed with fear that he didn't utter a single
word for fifteen minutes. Not long after that banquet, Charles
(07:39):
the Second left France to stay with his elder sister
and her husband in the Netherlands, hoping that the Dutch
might be more willing than the French to help his
father in the fight still raging in England. But it
was too late. The former King Charles the First was
(07:59):
defeat did by the parliamentarians and brought into custody awaiting trial.
It would be a trial for treason, and the penalty
was death. Charles the Second went to extraordinary lengths to
try to protect his father, engaging in every flavor of diplomacy,
begging forging new allies, offering ransoms, writing to the new
(08:23):
parliamentarian government, and all but begging for his father's life. Finally,
he made the ultimate concession. Charles the Second sent the
new English government a blank sheet of parchment with his
signature at the bottom, a literal carte blanche, a moral
blank check. It said, I will agree to anything to
(08:46):
save my father Cromwell and his government ignored it. On
an icy day at the end of January, the former
King Charles the First was brought to the scaffolding for
his execute Jian he put on two shirts before he
left his prison cell so people wouldn't see him shivering
(09:06):
in the cold and think that he was afraid. Even
as he walked the steps to his death, Charles the
First never denounced his faith or his belief in the
divine right of kings. In his final words, Charles the
First addressed the large crowd that had assembled to bear
witness to the regicide. He called himself a martyr of
(09:28):
the people, and one final time he proclaimed his innocence.
But the crowd was held too far away, and Charles
the First was blocked by a wall of parliamentary guards.
The king's final address to his people went entirely unheard.
Charles the First lowered his head onto the block and
(09:49):
apologized for his long hair, in case it made the
executioner's job more difficult, he gathered it beneath a silk cap. Then, finally,
for the first and only time in British history, the
executioner brought his blade down on the neck of a monarch.
When the executioner held up the head to the crowd,
(10:11):
he was expecting cheers, The crowd only gasped. It was
very very quiet, it said. When Charles the second heard
of his father's execution, he fell to the floor and
screamed in agony. If Charles the Second was going to
(10:38):
win back the English throne, he needed an army, and
his best hope was Scotland. Though the deeply pious Presbyterian
Scotland had nominally declared Charles the Second as king, they
refused to let him enter the country unless he pledged
to accept Presbyterianism and spread the faith across Britain when
(10:59):
he had once again and become king. That would mean
Charles the Second formally renouncing the faith of his Anglican
father and the faith of his Catholic mother. He needed
to negotiate. Fortunately for Charles the Second, he had a
brilliant bargaining chip, the spectacular General Montrose, who had fought
valiantly for Charles the First and won several spectacular, surprising
(11:22):
victories for the royal forces. Montrose was loyal to Charles
the Second and readily agreed when Charles the Second asked
him to invade Scotland with a small force to attempt
to raise the Highland clans in order to challenge the
Scottish government on his behalf. But as Mantros fought, Charles
privately continued his negotiations with the Scottish government until he
(11:46):
finally agreed to the terms of the Scottish nobles. Charles
wrote a letter to Mantros telling him that he was
making him a Knight of the Garter, the most prestigious
order of chivalry that could be granted by a monarch.
It was as good as a kiss of death. While
Mantros was still battling on his behalf, Charles secretly signed
(12:07):
a treaty with the very people against whom Montrose was fighting.
Montrose was captured, dragged through the streets, and hanged like
a common criminal, not even receiving a nobleman's death of
beheading with an axe. Charles the Second gave up Mantros,
his father's finest general and a military hero, but he
(12:28):
got his alliance to Scotland. After agreeing to uphold Presbyterianism.
Charles the Second entered Scotland as their king. He and
his men made their way from the coast into Edinburgh,
passing through the North gates into the city. What's that,
Charles asked, looking up an irregular shape on the gate.
(12:51):
It was twisted and blackened, pecked at by birds and
run through with a large nail. One of the Scottish
guards answered him. It was one of Montrose's arms hung
up on the city gate as a warning and deterrent
to others. Charles was silent the rest of the ride,
(13:22):
even though he was technically king in Scotland. Having signed
the Presbyterian Covenant meant that that crown was almost more
symbolic than anything it had, about the same power as
a crown made a foil or a burger king paper
crown a few hundred years too early. See. While his
father had a foundational faith in the divine right of
kings to rule as granted by God himself, the Presbyterian
(13:46):
Scots saw a king as more of a magistrate than
anything else. Charles was a king again, but with no
real kingliness. In Scotland. The king was a man just
like anyone else, and like other men, Charles the Second
was required to obey the strict protocols of the religion.
He was forbidden from walking about on Sundays and forced
(14:07):
to sit through six hours of Sunday sermons. With the Covenant,
Charles had signed away his religion and his divine power,
but at least he had an army willing to go
up against Oliver Cromwell in England, and on September three,
six fifty, they got their chance. Cromwell and his men
(14:28):
had advanced in a preemptive strike towards Edinburgh. When they
met with the Scottish forces in the Battle of Dunbar.
The Scots massively outnumbered the Englishmen, and they also occupied
the high ground, leaving the English soldiers trapped between a
hill and the north Sea. All the Scottish army needed
to do was await them out, but the Scottish general
(14:51):
believed that England was already fatally weakened, and so Scotland charged.
Cromwell watched with amazement. The Lord hath delivered them into
our hands. He said. It was a decisive victory for
England that put the entirety of southern Scotland under their
control and left Scotland completely humiliated. Needing a scapegoat for
(15:16):
the victory, they forced their King, Charles the Second, to
publicly declare that the outcome of the battle was God's
punishment for the sins of his parents and his entire family.
What could the young king do but agree he was
a king in name only a puppet for the Scottish
Presbyterian covenanters, and so Charles the Second swallowed his pride
(15:38):
and did as they asked. Now, Charles the second path
for winning back the English throne would require him doing
it on English soil, and so he and a small
army of Scottish men and the English royalists he could
gather along the way, went down south to make their
final stand against Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Worcester.
(16:01):
This time it was the English who had the advantage
of numbers, nearly thirty thousand men, the largest army ever
assembled on British soil, and double what Charles had been
able to gather. Cromwell had predicted the movements of Charles
and his armies and made a strategic decision to delay
the charge three days, so it would occur on September third,
(16:23):
sixteen fifty one, exactly one year to the day after
he had beat Scotland in the ground in the Battle
of Dunbar. Worcester was an instant massacre for Charles the
Second and his army. Three thousand of his men were
killed and another ten thousand were captured to pored it
off to work as indentured servants or worse. As Charles
(16:46):
and his close cadre of men rode away from the
battle site, the king kept stopping his horse. His father
had taught him to always fight on the front lines.
We have to go back, Charles the second said, we
have to keep fighting. His men looked at one another,
but only first split second that was it. One of
his men finally said, the battle is over. The parliamentarians
(17:17):
needed Charles dead. Even though the Parliamentarians had won a
decisive military victory, there were still those loyal to Charles,
and as long as he lived, he was still a
symbolic threat to the new Republic. Almost no one in
Charles's army had escaped from Worcester. Cromwell's men had cast
a wide net around the battle, and they assumed that
(17:39):
the king, who had been on the front lines leading
his army for most of the fight, would be among
the many dead bodies left when the fighting was over.
But by some miracle a brilliant stroke of luck, Charles
had escaped, and so the would be king spent the
next six weeks weaving through the English countryside in an
(17:59):
increasingly perilous series of near captures. Trying to make it
to safety while the parliamentary and guards searched for him.
Escape was a risky and dangerous prospect. The king was
six ft two at a time when the height of
the average Englishman was closer to five ft six, and
he had an astonishing price on his head, a thousand pounds.
(18:21):
He had a few allies, a small network of England's
secret Catholics, but anyone he meant could betray him and
would certainly be tortured as to his whereabouts if soldiers
discovered that they had been associated. Among that Catholic network
were five brothers with a surname Pendril, who sought as
a mission from God to protect their king against the
(18:42):
enemy of Cromwell's Protestantism. One of the brothers, Richard, cut
the King's hair so that it was short on top
and long at the side, in the style of a
common laborer. Charles was trained in the local dialect and
given workmen's clothes and shoes for King Arles, the second,
who had up until that point only ever won the
(19:03):
finest footwear. The rough shoes left his feet bleeding and
blistered thanks to his height. None of the shoes the
Pendrols had on hand would fit him, and so Charles
was forced to slice open the sides of a pair
of shoes several sizes too small. Charles would go days
(19:27):
without sleep, making escapes in the middle of the night
to a state where he might be welcomed and smuggled in.
Charles was hidden inside secret priest holds where Catholics hid
priests to keep them safe from forced conversions after the
religion had been outlawed. A captain named of all things
William Careless had been one of the final royal soldiers
(19:50):
to make it out of Worcester alive. He and Charles
had made it to the boscobell estates, where the Pendril
brothers were caretakers, only to hear of an approaching battillion
of Puritan guards. Careless knew that if he brought the
king inside, no matter how well hidden the houses, priests
holes were, eventually the soldiers would find him, and so,
(20:12):
at Careless's suggestion, William Pendril brought out a ladder. Careless
and the king climbed high into an oak tree dense
with leaves, and stayed there for an entire day while
a troop of Cromwell's guards marched beneath them, searching the
countryside for a king who, at that very moment was
a dozen feet above their heads. The king was asleep
(20:37):
in the branches when a pair of guards sat at
the base of the tree, taking a break from their
search to clear the rubble from their shoes. Careless was
awake and came to a terrible realization his leg was
asleep and Charles was lying on his leg. If the
sleeping Charles didn't move, Careless's numb leg would caused them
(21:00):
both to tumble from their perch directly onto the guards below, and,
so covering Charles's mouth so he wouldn't yell, Careless pinched
him and then pinched him again. Mercifully, Charles woke up
and quietly shifted his weight, and the two remained safely
hidden in their perch until the guards moved on. After
(21:27):
the king successfully evaded troops at Basketball, two of the
Pendril brothers went with him to the estate of mostly
Old Hall, the home of a man named Thomas white Grave. There,
Charles the second was given his first proper bed to
sleep in since he had escaped from the Battle of Worcester.
A family priest was also there, a man by the
(21:49):
name of Father John Huddleston, who bathed and bandaged the
King's torn and bloody feet. Charles had been shown so
much generosity and loyalty by Father Huddleston, and by all
of the Catholic Englishmen who had aided him along in
his escape, that Charles pledged then and there that should
he become King of England again, he would once again
(22:10):
grant Catholics religious freedom. If it pleases God, I come
to my crown, he told Father Huddleston, both you and
all your persuasion shall have as much liberty as any
of my subjects. Charles stayed relatively comfortably at mostly Old
Hall for two days until parliamentary troops arrived on the
(22:32):
afternoon of the third day. Charles and Father Huddleston's were
quickly hidden in a priest hole, but the troops tortured
and interrogated their host, Thomas Whitegrave, convinced that he had
fought with Charles at Wooster, even though the truth was
that he hadn't. Eventually, after hours of interrogation, the troops left,
(22:53):
but the forces of danger were only closing in on
Charles faster. The Pendril's brother in Law had already been
haptured by English forces, interrogated, tortured, and hanged, but the
entire time he had refused to give Charles up. For
the final leg of his journey, Charles rode with a
woman named Jane Lane, who had received a permit from
(23:15):
the military to travel to Bristol with one of her
servants in order to visit a family member. If he
made it to Bristol, Charles could find a boat to
take him to France, and so he adopted the alias
William Jackson and rode on Jane's horse with her, maintaining
the charade that he was her servant to anyone they met.
When the two stopped at an estate for lodging, Charles,
(23:38):
as William Jackson, was sent to the kitchens to work
as any servant would have been. He was assigned to
wind up the jack that would be used to roast
meat in a fireplace, but Charles, having been royalty his
entire life, had no idea how to do it. The
cook was immediately suspicious. What kind of servants are you
(23:58):
who doesn't know how to work a jack? He spat.
Charles thought quickly and came up with an excuse. His
family was so poor. He said that they so rarely
ate meat that he had no experience with roasting it.
The cook was satisfied. The entire escape lasted six weeks,
and when Charles finally made it to Bristol, he was
(24:21):
able to smuggle his way onto a French merchant ship
and make his way to safety right under the noses
of the parliamentary guards. It was the most heroic experience
Charles the Second would have for the next decade. He
was safe while he was abroad, but he was also
politically impotent, relegated to attempting to beg for treaties with
(24:41):
princes from surrounding countries who had little to no interest
in his plate. But then something happened. A little less
than ten years later, Oliver Cromwell died on the exact
anniversary of the Battles of Dunbar and Stir. Cromwell's son, Richard,
(25:02):
was milk toast and passive, and with no strong leader
to take over, parliamentarians recognized that the country was on
the verge of civil war. To stave off anarchy, the
leaders of the government had secretly written to Charles the Second,
who had been living in the Spanish Netherlands. Charles the
Second agreed to their terms of forgiveness and leniency for
(25:25):
those who had fought him, with the exception of those
who had committed regicide against his father, and so in
sixteen sixty Charles the Second was welcomed back to England.
He hadn't won the crown. Really, this was, if anything,
(25:47):
a victory of waiting and circumstance. But it didn't matter.
Even if it was a role stripped of its power,
even if he was a symbol, even if he was
a puppet, none of it mattered. He was finally the
king of an England. Charles would spend much of his
later life for counting the story of those six weeks
he had spent on the run, two wrapt audiences. It
(26:09):
had been the only time in his life where he
interacted with common people and lived by his wits, completely
free of palace ritual and formality. They were weeks of
piracy and adventure, of death, defying odds, and close calls
that became closer the more often the stories were told.
Charles the Second would be an indulged king, famous for
(26:30):
his feasts and mistresses, known for his flamboyant fashions and
general hedonism, and though he was a king, Parliament still
retained much of the power that they had had in
the interregnum. When Charles attempted to pass a rule permitting
Catholic worship, as he had promised his loyal supporters, who
had risked their live staid in his escape, Parliament instantly
(26:53):
forced him to withdraw. Charles capitulated there was nothing he
could do, or nothing he would be willing to do
if it meant risking his position, the throne for which
he had sacrificed so much to gain. When Charles was
on his deathbed, suffering from oregon failure and internal bleeding
(27:15):
that even the most dedicated blood letting efforts of the
royal physicians couldn't care, his brother James came to comfort him.
The Charles had over a dozen illegitimate children, he had
none by his wife, and so James would be next
in line for the throne. James brought his dying brother
a priest sire. He said, this good man wants saved
(27:37):
your life. He now comes to save your soul. It
was Father John Huddleston, the very man who had once
bandaged Charles feet when he was escaping from English soldiers
so long ago. Though King Charles had outwardly portrayed himself
as loyal to the Church of England for his entire
adult life, he had secretly been Catholic, devoted to the
(28:00):
faith of his mother and of the people who had
shown such courage in helping him escape. Before Charles the
Second died, father Huddleston performed the right to formally receive
him into the Catholic Church. Charles was finally free to
be loyal to his true beliefs when he had nothing
(28:20):
left to lose. That might be where Charles died, but
there's still a little more to the story. Stick around
after a brief sponsor break to hear more about Charles
the Second and his legacy. In sixteen nineteen, astronomer Edmund
(28:48):
Haley of Haley's Common Fame named a new constellation in
the southern skies with twelve stars. Haley drew a mighty
tree with far extending roots and thick, leafy canopy. He
called his new constellation Robber Carolina Charles is Oak. But
this new constellation overlapped heavily with the constellation Argo Navis
(29:13):
the Great Ship, and as astronomers mapped the stars of
the area. In the years to come, they largely forgot
or ignored Robert Carolina, such that now the constellation is
considered obsolete. But just because it's no longer marked in
the stars doesn't mean that Charles's Tree is forgotten. To
(29:33):
this day, the Royal Oak remains a popular name for
establishments frequented by the labors the king had once spent
time with English pubs. Noble Blood is a co production
of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey. The show was
(29:54):
written and hosted by Danis Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey,
Matt Frederick, Alex William and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is
on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can
learn more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales
dot com. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(30:15):
listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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