The Desperate Young King Charles II

two centuries prior. Adams and Jefferson found the place deeply moving. After all, like Oliver Cromwell, the pair had firsthand experience 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?

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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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

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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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, 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 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 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 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

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.

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

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 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 listen to your favorite shows.