During the interval Charles was royally lodged at Hampton Court, and was freely permitted to have his children with him, but all the time he was at his usual work of plotting. The Marquis of Ormond, having surrendered his command in Ireland to the Parliament, was come hither; and Lord Capel, who had been one of Charles's most distinguished commanders, being also permitted by Parliament to return from abroad, a scheme was laid, whilst Charles was amusing the army and Parliament with the discussion of the "Proposals," that the next spring, through the Scottish Commissioners, who were also in the plot, a Scottish army should enter England forty thousand strong, and calling on the Presbyterians to join them should march forward. At the same time Ormond should lead an army from Ireland, whilst Capel summoned the rest of the king's friends in England to join the converging forces, and plant the king on the throne. But this wholesale conspiracy could not escape the secret agents of Cromwell; the whole was revealed to him, and he bitterly upbraided Ashburnham with the incurable duplicity of his master, who, whilst he was negotiating with the army, was planning its destruction.

From this moment, whatever was the cause, and the preceding incidents appear both certain and sufficient, Cromwell, Ireton, and the army in general, came to the conclusion that all attempts to bring so double-faced and intriguing a person to honourable and enduring terms were vain; that if he were restored to power, he would use it to destroy every one who had been compelled to oppose his despotic plans; if he were not restored, they would be in a perpetual state of plottings, alarms, and disquietudes, destructive of all comfort or prosperity to the nation. As the officers drew back from further intercourse with the king, the menaces of the Levellers became louder; and there were not wanting persons to carry these threats to the king. He saw the Levellers growing in violence, and in numbers; in fact, Leveller and Agitator were synonymous terms; the infection had spread through the greater part of the army. The fact of the officers having been friendly with him, had made them suspicious to the men; they had driven Ireton from the council, and there were loud threats of impeaching Cromwell. Several regiments were in a state of insubordination, and it was doubtful whether, at the approaching rendezvous, Fairfax could maintain the discipline of the army. The reports of the proceedings of the Levellers (who really threatened to seize his person to prevent the Parliament or officers agreeing with him) and their truculent manifestoes, were all diligently carried to Charles by the Scottish Commissioners, who, according to Berkeley, "were the first that presented his dangers to him." He was assured by Mr. Ackworth that Colonel Rainsborough, the favourite of the Levellers, meant to kill him; and Clarendon says that "every day he received little billets or letters, secretly conveyed to him without any name, which advertised him of wicked designs upon his life;" many, he adds, who repaired to him brought the same advice from men of unquestionable sincerity.

Charles resolved to escape, and, as he was in some cases as religiously scrupulous of his word as he was in others reckless of it, he withdrew his promise not to attempt to escape, on the plea that he found himself quite as rigorously watched as if he were not on honour. Colonel Whalley, who commanded his guard, at once ordered it to be doubled, and dismissed all the king's servants except Legge, refusing further admittance to him. Notwithstanding this, he found means of communicating with Ashburnham and Berkeley, and consulted with them on the means of escape, and the place to escape to. He suggested the City, and Ashburnham advised him to go to the house of the Lord Mayor, in London, there to meet the Scottish Commissioners, agree with them on their last propositions, and then send for the Lords. Berkeley disapproved of this, believing they would not bring over the Commons; and then Ashburnham recommended the king to flee to the Isle of Wight, and throw himself on the generosity of Colonel Hammond, the governor there. This, he says, he did, because Colonel Hammond had a few days before told him he was going down to his government, "because he found the army was resolved to break all promises with the king, and that he would have nothing to do with such perfidious actions."

This seems to have inspired a belief in these men that Hammond was secretly in favour of the king, strengthened, no doubt, by the fact that Dr. Hammond, the king's chaplain, was his uncle, and had lately introduced him to his Majesty as an ingenuous and repentant youth, and, notwithstanding his post, of real loyalty. They forgot that Hammond had another uncle, Lieutenant-General Hammond, who was as democratic as the chaplain was loyal, and was a great patron of the Adjutators. They seem to have reckoned as little on the honour of the young man, who was a gentleman and officer, and had married a daughter of John Hampden.

There were other schemes, one to seek refuge in Sir John Oglander's House, in the Isle of Wight; and there was a talk of a ship being ordered to be somewhere ready for him; but when the escape was made, it appeared to have been just as ill contrived as all the rest of Charles's escapes. Ashburnham and Berkeley had contrived to meet the king in the evening in the gallery of Hampton Court, and settled the mode of escape. It was the king's custom, on the Mondays and Thursdays, to write letters for the foreign post, and in the evenings he left his bedchamber between five and six o'clock and went to prayers, and thence to supper. On one of these evenings, Thursday, the 11th of November, Whalley, finding the king much later than usual in leaving his chamber, became uneasy, went thither, and found him gone. On the table he had left some letters, one to the Parliament, another to the Commissioners, and a third to Colonel Whalley. In the letter to the Parliament he said liberty was as necessary to kings as others; that he had endured a long captivity in the hope that it might lead to a good peace, but that, as it did not, he had withdrawn himself; that, wherever he might be, he should earnestly desire a satisfactory agreement without further bloodshed, and was ready to break through his cloud of retirement and show himself the father of his country whenever he could be heard with honour, freedom, and safety.

CARISBROOKE CASTLE, ISLE OF WIGHT. (From a photograph by F. G. O. Stuart, Southampton.)

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It appeared that he had escaped by way of Paradise, a place so called in the gardens; his cloak was found lying in the gallery, and there were tramplings about a back gate leading to the waterside. Legge accompanied him down the backstairs, and Ashburnham and Berkeley joined them at the gate. The night was dark and stormy, which favoured their escape. They crossed the river at Thames Ditton, and made for Sutton, in Hampshire, where they had horses in readiness. Why they had not provided horses at a nearer point does not appear. In the night they lost their way in the forest, and reaching Sutton only at daybreak, and hearing that a county committee on Parliamentary business was sitting there, they got out their horses, and rode away towards Southampton.

That night Cromwell was aroused from his bed at Putney with a startling express that the king had escaped. He at once despatched a letter to the Speaker, Lenthall, dated twelve o'clock, with the tidings for Parliament, and the news was announced next morning to both Houses. The confusion may be imagined; orders were issued to close all ports; and those who concealed the place of the king's retreat, or harboured his person, were declared guilty of high treason, and menaced with loss of all their estate, and with death without mercy. On the 13th of November Whalley gave a narrative to the Lords of the particulars of his escape as far as known. It appeared that the repeated howling of a greyhound in the king's chamber first assured them that he could not be there. However, on Monday, the 15th, a letter from Colonel Hammond, from the Isle of Wight, much to the relief of Parliament and army, announced that the absconded king was safe in his hands at Carisbrooke Castle.