When Charles,lonely for the loss of Miss Lane,was safe at Trent,a ship was hired at Lyme,the master of which engaged to take two gentlemen to France.In the evening of the same day,the King-now riding as servant before another young lady-set off for a public-house at a place called Charmouth,where the captain of the vessel was to take him on board.But,the captain's wife,being afraid of her husband getting into trouble,locked him up and would not let him sail.Then they went away to Bridport;and,coming to the inn there,found the stable-yard full of soldiers who were on the look-out for Charles,and who talked about him while they drank.He had such presence of mind,that he led the horses of his party through the yard as any other servant might have done,and said,'Come out of the way,you soldiers;let us have room to pass here!'As he went along,he met a half-tipsy ostler,who rubbed his eyes and said to him,'Why,I was formerly servant to Mr.
Potter at Exeter,and surely I have sometimes seen you there,young man?'He certainly had,for Charles had lodged there.His ready answer was,'Ah,I did live with him once;but I have no time to talk now.We'll have a pot of beer together when I come back.'
From this dangerous place he returned to Trent,and lay there concealed several days.Then he escaped to Heale,near Salisbury;
Where,in the house of a widow lady,he was hidden five days,until the master of a collier lying off Shoreham in Sussex,undertook to convey a 'gentleman'to France.On the night of the fifteenth of October,accompanied by two colonels and a merchant,the King rode to Brighton,then a little fishing village,to give the captain of the ship a supper before going on board;but,so many people knew him,that this captain knew him too,and not only he,but the landlord and landlady also.Before he went away,the landlord came behind his chair,kissed his hand,and said he hoped to live to be a lord and to see his wife a lady;at which Charles laughed.They had had a good supper by this time,and plenty of smoking and drinking,at which the King was a first-rate hand;so,the captain assured him that he would stand by him,and he did.It was agreed that the captain should pretend to sail to Deal,and that Charles should address the sailors and say he was a gentleman in debt who was running away from his creditors,and that he hoped they would join him in persuading the captain to put him ashore in France.As the King acted his part very well indeed,and gave the sailors twenty shillings to drink,they begged the captain to do what such a worthy gentleman asked.He pretended to yield to their entreaties,and the King got safe to Normandy.
Ireland being now subdued,and Scotland kept quiet by plenty of forts and soldiers put there by Oliver,the Parliament would have gone on quietly enough,as far as fighting with any foreign enemy went,but for getting into trouble with the Dutch,who in the spring of the year one thousand six hundred and fifty-one sent a fleet into the Downs under their ADMIRAL VAN TROMP,to call upon the bold English ADMIRAL BLAKE (who was there with half as many ships as the Dutch)to strike his flag.Blake fired a raging broadside instead,and beat off Van Tromp;who,in the autumn,came back again with seventy ships,and challenged the bold Blake-who still was only half as strong-to fight him.Blake fought him all day;but,finding that the Dutch were too many for him,got quietly off at night.What does Van Tromp upon this,but goes cruising and boasting about the Channel,between the North Foreland and the Isle of Wight,with a great Dutch broom tied to his masthead,as a sign that he could and would sweep the English of the sea!Within three months,Blake lowered his tone though,and his broom too;for,he and two other bold commanders,DEAN and MONK,fought him three whole days,took twenty-three of his ships,shivered his broom to pieces,and settled his business.
Things were no sooner quiet again,than the army began to complain to the Parliament that they were not governing the nation properly,and to hint that they thought they could do it better themselves.
Oliver,who had now made up his mind to be the head of the state,or nothing at all,supported them in this,and called a meeting of officers and his own Parliamentary friends,at his lodgings in Whitehall,to consider the best way of getting rid of the Parliament.It had now lasted just as many years as the King's unbridled power had lasted,before it came into existence.The end of the deliberation was,that Oliver went down to the House in his usual plain black dress,with his usual grey worsted stockings,but with an unusual party of soldiers behind him.These last he left in the lobby,and then went in and sat down.Presently he got up,made the Parliament a speech,told them that the Lord had done with them,stamped his foot and said,'You are no Parliament.Bring them in!Bring them in!'At this signal the door flew open,and the soldiers appeared.'This is not honest,'said Sir Harry Vane,one of the members.'Sir Harry Vane!'cried Cromwell;'O,Sir Harry Vane!The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!'Then he pointed out members one by one,and said this man was a drunkard,and that man a dissipated fellow,and that man a liar,and so on.
Then he caused the Speaker to be walked out of his chair,told the guard to clear the House,called the mace upon the table-which is a sign that the House is sitting-'a fool's bauble,'and said,'here,carry it away!'Being obeyed in all these orders,he quietly locked the door,put the key in his pocket,walked back to Whitehall again,and told his friends,who were still assembled there,what he had done.
They formed a new Council of State after this extraordinary proceeding,and got a new Parliament together in their own way:
