CHARLES II. MAY 29. THE ROYAL OAK. So, for the help of his memory, he invented and framed a girdle of leather, long and large, which went twice about him. This he divided into several parts, allotting each book in the Bible, in its order, to one of these divisions; then, for the chapters, he affixed points or thongs of leather to the several divisions, and made knots by fives and tens thereupon to distinguish the chapters of each book; and by other points he divided the chapters into their particular contents or verses. This he used, instead of pen and ink, to take notes of sermons; and made so good use of it, that when he came home from the conventicle, he could repeat the sermon through all its several heads, and quote the various texts men-brandishing their swords, and shouting with tioned in it, to his own great comfort, and the benefit of others. This girdle Mr Bruen kept, after Pasfield's decease, in his study, and would often merrily call it the Girdle of Verity. Born.-Charles II. of England, 1630, London; Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, 1660; Louis Daubenton, 1716, Montbard; Patrick Henry, American patriot and orator, 1736, Virginia; Joseph Fouché, police minister of Napoleon I., 1763, Nantes. Died.-Cardinal Beaton, assassinated at St Andrew's, 1546; Stephen des Courcelles, learned Protestant divine, 1658, Amsterdam; Dr Andrew Ducarel, English antiquary, 1785, South Lambeth; Empress Josephine, 1814, Malmaison; W. H. Pyne, miscellaneous writer, 1843, Paddington; Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Bart., miscellaneous writer, 1848, Edinburgh. CHARLES II. It is a great pity that Charles II. was so dissolute, and so reckless of the duties of his high station, for his life was an interesting one in many respects; and, after all, the national joy attending his restoration, and his cheerfulness, wit, and good-nature, give him a rather pleasant association with English history. His parents, Charles I. and Henrietta Maria (daughter of Henry IV. of France), who had been married in 1626, had a child named Charles James born to them in March 1629, but who did not live above a day. Their second infant, who was destined to live and to reign, saw the light on the 29th of May 1630, his birth being distinguished by the appearance, it was said, of a star at mid-day. It was on his thirtieth birthday, the 29th of May 1660, that the distresses and vicissitudes of his early life were closed by his triumphal entry as king into London. His restoration might properly be dated from the 8th of May, when he was proclaimed as sovereign of the three kingdoms in London: but the day of his entry into the metropolis, being also his birthday, was adopted as the date of that happy event. Never had England known a day of greater happiness. Defend the Commonwealth who may make a hero of Protector Oliver with highest eloquence and deftest literary art-the intoxicated delight of the people in getting quit of them, and all connected with them, is their sufficient condemnation. The truth is, it had all along been a government of great difficulty, and a government of difficulty must needs be tyrannical. The old monarchy, ill-conducted as it had been under Charles I., shone white by comparison. It was happiness overmuch for the nation to get back under it, with or without guarantees for its better behaviour in future. An army lately in rebellion joyfully marshalled the king along from Dover to London. Thousands of mounted gentleman joined the escort, inexpressible joy.' Evelyn saw the king arrive, and set down a note of it in his diary. He speaks of the way strewed with flowers; the streets hung with tapestry; the bells madly ringing; the fountains running with wine; the magistrates and the companies all out in their ceremonial dresses-chains of gold, and banners; nobles in cloth of silver and gold; the windows and balconies full of ladies; trumpets, music, and myriads of people flocking even so far as from Rochester, so as they were seven hours in passing the city, even from two in the afternoon till nine at night.' It was the Lord's doing,' he piously adds; unable to account for so happy a revolution as coming about by the ordinary chain of causes and effects. this work to state, that among the acts passed It belongs more particularly to the purpose of by parliament immediately after, was one enacting That in all succeeding ages the 29th of May be celebrated in every church and chapel in England, and the dominions thereof, by rendering thanks to God for the king's peaceable restoration to actual possession and exercise of his legal authority over his subjects,' &c. The service for the Restoration, like that for the preservation from the Gunpowder Treason, and the death of Charles I., was kept up till the year 1859. THE ROYAL OAK. The restoration of the king, after a twelve years' interregnum from the death of his father, naturally brought into public view some of the remarkable events of his intermediate life. None took a more prominent place than what had happened in September 1651, immediately after his Scottish army had been overthrown by Cromwell at Worcester. It was heretofore obscurely, but now became clearly known, that the royal person had for a day been concealed in a bushy oak in a Shropshire forest, while the Commonwealth's troopers were ranging about in search of the fugitives from the late battle. The incident was romantic and striking in itself, and, in proportion to the joy in having the king once more in his legal place, was the interest felt in the tree by which he had been to all appearance providentially preserved. The ROYAL OAK accordingly became one of the familiar domestic ideas of the English people. A spray of oak in the hat was the badge of a loyalist on the recurrence of the Restoration-day. A picture of an oak tree, with a crowned figure sitting amidst the branches, and a few dragoons scouring about the neighbouring ground, was assumed as a sign upon many a tavern in town and country. (Some taverns still bear at least the name-one in Paddington, near London). And 'Oak Appleday' became a convertible term for the Restoration-day among the rustic population. We thus find it necessary to introduce-first, a brief account of the king's connexion with the oak; and, second, a notice of the popular observance still remembered, if not practised, in memory of its preservation of a king. The King at Boscobel. After the defeat of the royal army at Worcester, (September 3, 1651,) the king and his principal officers determined on seeking safety by returning along the west of England to Scotland. As they proceeded, however, the king bethought him that the party was too large to make a safe retreat, and if he could get to London before the news of the battle, he might obtain a passage incognito in a vessel for France or Holland. On Kinver Heath they were brought to a standstill by the failure of their guide to find the way. In the midst of the dismay which prevailed, the Earl of Derby stated to the king that he had lately, when in similar difficulty, been beholden for his life to a place of concealment on the borders of Staffordshire-a place called Boscobel. Another voice, that of Charles Giffard, the proprietor of this very place, broke the silence I will undertake to guide his majesty to Boscobel before daybreak.' It was immediately determined that the king, with a very small party of associates, should proceed under Giffard's care to the promised shelter. By daybreak, Charles had reached White Ladies, a house taking its name from a ruined monastery hard by, and in the possession of Giffard's family, who were all Catholics. Here he was kindly received, put into a peasant's dress, and sent off to the neighbouring house of Boscobel, under the care of a dependent of the family, named Richard Penderel. His friends took leave of him, and pursued their journey to the North. Boscobel was a small mansion which had been not long before built by Mr Giffard, and called so from a fancy of the builder, as being situated in Bosco-bello-Italian for a fair wood. The king knew how suitable it was as a place of concealment, not only from its remote and obscure situation, but because the Catholics always had hiding-holes in their houses for priests. At this time the house was occupied by a family of peasants, named Penderel, whose employment it was to cut and sell the wood, having some cows' grass to live upon.' They were simple, upright people, devoted to their master; and, probably from habit as Catholics, accustomed to assist in concealing proscribed persons. Certain it is, the house contains two priests' holes,'* one entered by a trap in the floor of a small closet; though it does not appear It was during his wanderings in this district that Charles became acquainted with and was aided by Father Huddlestone, who ultimately gave him the last sacrament on his death-bed, after he had solemnly declared CHARLES II. that Charles took any advantage of such a retreat while living at the place. Charles, in his anxiety to make toward London, determined to set out on foot, in a country fellow's habit, with a pair of ordinary grey cloth breeches, a leathern doublet, and green jerkin,' taking no one with him but trusty Dick Penderel,' as one of the brethren was called; they had, however, scarcely reached the edge of the wood, when a troop of the rebel soldiery obliged them to lie close all day there, in a drenching rain. During this time the king altered his mind and determined to go towards the Severn, and so to France, from some Welsh seaport. At midnight they started on their journey; but after some hair-breadth escapes, finding the journey difficult and dangerous, they returned to Boscobel. Here they found Colonel William Careless, who had seen the last man killed in the Worcester fight, and whom the king at once took into his confidence. Being Sunday, the king kept in the house, or amused himself by reading in the close arbour in the little garden; and the next day he took the colonel's advice, to get up into a great oak, in a pretty plain place, where we might see round about us. This tree was about a bowshot distance from the house. Charles describes it as a great oak, that had been lopped some three or four years before, and being grown out again very bushy and thick, could not be seen through.' There Charles and the colonel stayed the whole day, having taken up with them some bread and cheese and small beer, the colonel having a pillow placed on his knees, that the king might rest his head on it as he sat among the branches. While there, they saw many soldiers beating the woods for persons escaped. After an uneasy day, the king left the friendly shelter of Boscobel at midnight, for Mr Whit grave's house at Mosely; the day after, he went to Colonel Lane's, at Bently; from whence, disguised as a serving-man, he rode with Lane's sister toward Bristol, intending to take ship there; but after many misadventures and much uncertain rambling, he at last succeeded in obtaining a vessel at Shoreham, in Sussex, which carried him across to Fécamp, in Normandy. The appearance of the lonely house in the wood, that gave such important shelter to the king, has been preserved in a contemporary engraving here copied. It was a roomy, halftimbered building, with a central turret of brickwork and timber, forming the entrance stair. A small portion of the wood was cleared around it for a little enclosed garden, having a few flowerbeds, in front of the house; and an artificial mount,' with a summer-house upon it, reached by a flight of steps. Here Charles sat during the only Sunday he passed at Boscobel. Blount says: His majesty spent some part of this Lord's-day in reading, in a pretty arbour in Boscobel garden, which grew upon a mount, and wherein there was a stone table, and seats about it; and commended the place for its retiredness." himself a member of the Romish Church. James II., alluding to both events, observed that 'the father had once saved his brother's life, and afterwards saved his soul.' the oak, as not far from Boscobel House, just by a horse track passing through the wood.' The celebrity of the tree led to its partial destruction; Blount tells us, 'Since his majesty's happy restoration, hundreds of people for many miles round have flocked to see the famous Boscobel, which had once the honour to be the palace of his sacred majesty, but chiefly to behold the Royal Oak, which has been deprived of all its young boughs by the numerous visitors, who keep them in memory of his majesty's happy preservation; insomuch, that Mr Fitzherbert, who was afterwards proprietor, was forced in a due season of the year to crop part of it for its preservation, and put himself to the charge of fencing it about with a high pale, the better to transmit the happy memory of it to posterity.' Stukely, half a century later, says: The tree is now enclosed with a brick wall, the inside whereof is covered with laurel. Close by its side grows a young thriving plant from one of its acorns. Over the door of the enclosure, I took this inscription in marble : "Felicissimam arborem, quam in asylum potentissimi Regis Caroli II. Deus. O. M., per quem reges regnant, hic crescere voluit, tam in perpetuam rei tantæ memoriam, quam specimen firma in reges fidei, muro cinctam posteris commendârunt Basilius et Jana Fitz herbert. Quercus amica Jovi."' The enclosure has long since disappeared; but the inscription is still preserved in the farmhouse at Boscobel. Burgess, in his Eidodendron, speaking of this tree, says: It succumbed at length to the reiterated attentions of its votaries; and a huge bulk of timber, consisting of many loads, was taken away by handfuls. Several saplings were raised in different parts of the country from its acorns, one of which grew near St James's palace, where Marlborough House now stands; and there was another in the Botanic Gardens, Chelsea; the former has long since been felled, and of the latter the recollection seems almost to be lost.' On the north side of the Serpentine in Hyde Park, near the powder magazine, flourished two old trees, said to have been planted by Charles II. from acorns of the Boscobel oak. They were both blighted in a severe frost a few years ago; one has been entirely removed, but the stem and a few branches of the other still remain, covered with ivy, and protected by an iron fence. In the Bodleian library is preserved a fragment of the original tree, turned into the form of a salver, or stand for a tankard; the inscription upon it records it as the gift of Mrs Letitia Lane, a member of the family who aided Charles in his escape. It was the intention of the king to institute a new order, into which those only were to be admitted who were eminently distinguished for their loyalty they were to be styled Knights of the Royal Oak;' but these knights were soon abolished, it being wisely judged,' says Noble, in his Memoirs of the Cromwell Family, that the order was calculated only to keep awake animosities which it was the part of wisdom to lull to sleep.' He adds, that the names of the intended knights are to be seen in the Baronetage, published in 5 vols. 8vo, 1741, and that Henry Cromwell, 'first cousin, one remove, to Oliver, Lord Protector,' was among the number. This gentleman was a zealous royalist, instrumental in the restoration of the royal family; ' and as he knew the name of Cromwell would not be very grateful in the court of Charles the Second, he disused it, and styled himself only plain Henry Williams, Esq., by which name he was set down in the list of such persons as were to be made Knights of the Royal Oak.'* It may be * Mrs Williams was equally ardent. her loyalty exceeded all due moderation.' curious MS. volume of religious and loyal her, preserved in the British Museum. No. 2311. Noble says, There is a rhapsody by Harleian MS. here remarked that the Cromwell family derived its origin from Wales, and that they bore the name of Williams before they assumed that of Cromwell, on the marriage of Richard Williams with the sister of Cromwell Earl of Essex, prime minister of Henry VIII.; by which he became much enriched, all grants of dissolved religious houses, &c., passing to him by the names of Richard Williams, otherwise Cromwell. He was greatgreat-grandfather to Oliver, Lord Protector. At the coronation of Charles II., the first triumphal arch erected in Leadenhall Street, near Lime Street, for the king to pass under on his way from the Tower to Westminster, is described in Ogilby's contemporary account of the ceremony as having in its centre a figure of Charles, royally attired, behind whom, on a large table, is deciphered the Royal Oak bearing crowns and sceptres instead of acorns; amongst the leaves, in a label 66 Miraturque novas Frondes et non sua poma." Leaves unknown Admiring, and strange apples not her own.) As designing its reward for the shelter afforded his majesty after the battle of Worcester.' In the Lord Mayor's show of the same year, a pageant was placed near the Nag's Head tavern, in Cheapside, like a wood, in the vacant part thereof several persons in the habit of woodmen and wood-nymphs disport themselves, dancing about the Royal Oak' while the rural god Sylvanus indulged in a long and laudatory speech in honour of the celebrated tree. Colonel Careless, the companion of Charles in the oak, was especially honoured at the Restora tion, by the change of his name to Carlos, at the king's express desire, that it might thus assimilate with his own; and the grant of this very honourable coat of arms, which is thus described in the letters patent, "upon an oak proper, in a field or, a fess gules, charged with three royal crowns of the second, by the name of Carlos. And for his crest a civic crown, or oak garland, with a sword and sceptre crossed through it saltier-wise." The Penderels were also honoured by court notice and a government pension. Dick' came to London, and died in his majesty's Trusty service. He was buried in 1671, under an altar tomb in the churchyard of St Giles's-in-theFields, then a suburban parish, and a fitting residence for the honest country woodman. The 696 CHARLES II. of silver, partially gilt, the stem and body representing an oak tree, from which hang acorns, fashioned as little bells; they ring as the cup passes from hand to hand round the festive board of the Company on great occasions. The cover represents the Royal Crown of England. Though curious in itself as a quaint and characteristic piece of plate, it derives an additional interest from the fact of its having been made by order of Charles the Second, and presented by him to the Company, the Master at that time being Sir Charles Scarborough, who was chief physician to the king. Oak-Apple Day. villages in rural England where almost every There are still a few dreamy old towns and ruin that Time has unroofed, and every mouldering wall his silent teeth have gnawed through, are attributed to the cannon of Cromwell and history has left no record that either the stern his grim Ironsides; though, in many instances, Protector or his dreaded troopers were ever and out-of-the-way places, the 29th of May near the spot. In many of these old-fashioned preservation in the oak of Boscobel, and his is still celebrated, in memory of King Charles's Restoration. The Royal Oak is also a common Merry Monarch is pictured peeping through the alehouse sign in these localities, on which the branches at the Roundheads below, looking not unlike some boy caught stealing apples, who dare not descend for fear of the owners of the fruit. Oak Apple-day is the name generally given to this rural holiday, which has taken the place of the old May-day games of our more remote ancestors; though the Maypoles are still decorated and danced around on the 29th of this month, as they were in the more memorable May-days of the olden time. But Oak Apple-day is not the merry old May-day which our forefathers delighted to honour. Sweet May, as they loved to call her, is dead; for although they still decorate the May-pole with flowers, and place a garish figure in the centre of the largest garland, it is but the emblem of a dead king now, instead of the beautiful nymph which our ancestors typified, wreathed with Maybuds, and scattering flowers on the earth, and which our grave Milton pictured as the flowery May, that came dancing from the East,' and throwing from her green lap ་ 'The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose !' On the 29th of May-one of the bright holidays of our boyish years-we were up and away at the first peep of dawn to the woods, to gather branches of oak and hawthorn, so that we might bring home the foliage and the May-buds as green and white and fresh as when the boughs were unbroken, and the blossoms ungathered. Many an old man and woman, awakened out of their sleep as we went sounding our bullockhorns through the streets at that early hour, must have wished our breath as hushed as that of Cromwell or King Charles, as the horrible noise we made rang through their chambers. Some, perhaps, would awaken with a sigh, and, recalling the past, lie half dreaming of the old years that had departed, when they were also young, and rose with the dawn as we did, and went out with merry hearts a-Maying. We were generally accompanied by a few happy girls-our sisters, or the children of our neighbours-whose mothers had gone out to bring home May-blossoms when they were girls and their husbands boys, as we then were. The girls brought home sprays of hawthorn, sheeted over with moonlight-coloured May-blossoms, which, along with wild and garden flowers, they wove into the garlands they made to hang in the oak branches, across the streets, and on the May-pole; and great rivalry there was as to which girl could make the handsomest Maygarland. If it were a dewy morning, the girls always bathed their faces in May-dew, to make them fair. It was our part to cut down and drag, or carry home huge branches of oak, with which, as Herrick says, we made each street a park-green, and trimmed with trees.' Beautiful did the old woods look in the golden_dawn, while the dewy mist still hung about the trees, and nothing seemed awake but the early birds in all that silent land of trees. We almost recall the past with regret, as we remember how we stopped the singing of those little angels of the trees,' by blowing our unmelodious horns; and marvel that neither Faun nor Dryad arose to drive us from their affrighted haunts. We climbed the huge oaks like the Druids of old, and, although we had no golden pruning-hooks, CHARLES II. we were well supplied with saws, axes, and knives, with which we hacked and hewed at the great branches, until they came down with a loud crash, sometimes before we were aware, when we now and then came down with the boughs we had been bestriding. Very often the branches were so large, we were compelled to make a rude hurdle, on which we dragged them home; a dozen of us hauling with all our strength at the high pile of oak-boughs, careful to keep upon the road-side grass, lest the dust should soil the beautiful foliage. Yet with all our care there was the tramp of the feet of our companions beside us along the dusty highway; and though the sun soon dried up the dew which had hung on the fresh-gathered leaves, it was no longer the sweet green oak that decorated the woodsno longer the maiden May, with the dew upon her bloom-but a dusty and tattered Doll Tearsheet, that dragged her bemired green skirt along the street, compared with the vernal boughs and sheeted blossoms we had gathered in the golden dawn. Many a wreck of overreaching ambition strewed the roadway from the woods, in the shape of huge oaken branches which the spoilers had cast aside, after toiling under the too weighty load until their strength was exhausted. Publicans, and others who could afford it, would purchase the biggest branches that could be bought of poor countrymen, or others whom they sent out for there was great rivalry as to who should have the largest bough at his door; and wherever the monster branch was placed, that we made our head-quarters for the day, and there was heard the loudest sounding of horns. Neither the owners of the woods, gamekeepers, nor woodmen interfered with us, beyond a caution not to touch the young trees; for lopping a few branches off the large oaks was never considered to do them any harm, nor do we remember that ever a summons was issued for trespassing on the 29th of May. Beautiful did these old towns and villages look, with their long lines of green boughs projecting from every house, while huge gaudy garlands of every colour hung suspended across the middle of the streets, which, as you looked at them in the far distance, seemed to touch one another, like lighted lamps at the bottom of a long road, forming to appearance one continuous streak of fire. Then there were flags hung out here and there, which were used at the club-feasts and Whitsuntide holidays-red, blue, yellow, purple, and white blending harmoniously with the green of the branches and their gilded oak-apples, and the garlands that were formed of every flower in season, and rainbow-coloured ribbons that went streaming out and fluttering in the wind, which set all the banners in motion, and gave a look of life to the quiet streets of these sleepy old towns. But as all is not gold that glitters, so were those gaudy-looking garlands not altogether what they appeared-for ribbons were expensive, and we were poor; so we hoarded up our blue sugarpaper, and saved clean sheets of our pink blotting-paper, with other sheets of varied colourand these, when made up into bows, and shaped like flowers, and hung too high over head for the |