Some attempts have been made to show that Charles acquitted himself with extraordinary bravery on this occasion; the effort is not successful, the description of the king's heroism at the battle of Worcester has no clear foundation. It is more probable that he looked down upon the rout of battle from the Cathedral tower; and at last, seeing all hope gone and all courage lost, he cried out, "I had rather that you would shoot me than keep me alive to see the sad consequences of this fatal day." The army was cut to pieces, most of the great generals and leaders were taken prisoners, the streets were filled with the bodies of horses and men. By six in the evening Charles had fled through St. Martin's gate. Just outside the town he tried to rally his men; but it was to no purpose, Worcester lay behind him, its houses pillaged, its citizens slain for his sake, and he forced to fly for his life. And who could have expected any other ending? A boy like Charles, with such an army, a handful of men badly supplied with ammunition, the leaders of the army quarrelling among themselves; and these before a veteran like Cromwell, with all England at his back The bravery and devotedness of the men who followed Charles may command respect, and shed some lustre over what must be regarded as a worthless cause, but that is all. So Charles fled through the streets in piteous despair on the evening of that third of September, Cromwell's fortunate day, the anniversary of the battle of Dunbar. At ten o'clock at night he sat

down, as he says, weary and scarcely able to write; yet he wrote to the Parliament of England: "The dimensions of this mercy are above my thoughts, it is for aught I know a crowning mercy." They still remember that day in Worcester, and still point out many of the places connected with the story of the battle and in Perry Wood, where Cromwell first took up his position, there is a tree, which the peasant shows to those who desire to see it, where the devil, Cromwell's intimate friend, appeared to him and gave him the promise of victory. The railway indeed runs over the ground where the hottest engagement took place; Sidbury and St. Martin's have disappeared, and large lime trees grow on the site of the Royal Fort, where the Royalist guns were seized by Cromwell and turned upon the Royalist army; but the rooms are still shown where Charles slept, and where the Duke of Hamilton, who was wounded in the action, died. Powick old bridge, which occupies a conspicuous place in the story of the battle, still stands crooked and narrow, spanning with massive arches and abutments the famous streams of the Teme and Laughern. Perhaps the most curious item memorializing the famous conflict is in the corporation records, with reference to the poor Scotch soldiers: "Paid for pitch and rosin to perfume the Hall after the Scots, two shillings." Indeed that fine old Hall needed perfuming and cleansing, for it was drenched with blood, but rather the blood of the English than the

Scotch; for it was within its walls that the English Cavaliers made a last and desperate resistance, and they were all cut to pieces or made prisoners. This was the last and great decisive conflict; the defeat of Worcester settled the Royal cause, and doomed it, with its chief and his adherents, to banishment, until the strong victor who had scattered the royal rabble at Worcester, should himself be conquered by death.

And here, before we pass on with the stream of circumstance in Cromwell's life, shall we turn for a few moments to the singular episode of the strange adventures of the Royal fugitive Charles, after the battle of Worcester? We may well do so if we are disposed to accept the words of Clarendon, who says, "It is a great pity that there was never a journal made of that miraculous deliverance, in which there might be seen so many visible impressions of the immediate hand of God!" But this language is quite a modest estimate compared with what is said by Mistress Wyndham, the wife or sister of Colonel Wyndham, who took a considerable share in the preservation of the king; this lady says, "It is a story in which the constellations of Providence are so refulgent, that their light is sufficient to confute all the atheists in the world, and to enforce all persons whose faculties are not pertinaciously depraved to acknowledge the watchful eye of God from above, looking upon all actions of men here below, making even the most wicked subservient to His just and

glorious designs. For the Almighty so closely covered the king with the wing of His protection, and so clouded the understandings of his cruel enemies, that the most piercing eye of malice could not see, nor the most barbarous bloody hand offer violence to, his sacred person, God smiting his pursuers as once he did the Sodomites, with blindness." The language of Mistress Wyndham is certainly pitched in an exalted key, but the story is as certainly very remarkable. A story is told, how many years since, before the age of railways, a nobleman and his lady, with their infant child, travelling in a wild neighbourhood, were overtaken by a snowstorm and compelled to seek shelter in a rude shepherd's hut; when the nurse, who was in attendance upon her lord and lady, began undressing the infant by the side of the warm fire, the inhabitants of the hut gazed in awe and silence at the process. As the little one was disrobed of its silken frock and fine linen, and rich dress after dress was taken away, still the shepherd and his wife gazed with awe, until, when the process of undressing was completed, and the naked baby was being washed and warmed by the fire, when all the wrappages and outer husks were peeled off, the shepherd and his wife exclaimed, "Why, it's just like one of ours!" But it is a very difficult thing to understand that kings and queens and princes are just like one of us when their state robes are off; and thus the adventures of Charles derive their interest and sanctity from the supposed importance of the person, and the

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worship with which he is regarded arises from the sense of the place he fills, and his essential importance to the future schemes of Almighty Providence. And still it certainly is one of the most interesting pieces of English folklore. It has been said, but we a little doubt the truth of the saying, that there is no country where, in so small a space as in England, so much and so many relics of the past are crowded together; and it is farther often said, that of all romantic tales in English history, that of King Charles's flight is the most so. Hairbreadth escapes, sufferings, surprises, and disguises shed quite a fictitious halo around one who was, after all, a very mean and commonplace character. The adventures of Charles, however, are indeed full of interest, and the volume of Boscobel Tracts is a charming story of old halls, many of them now gone, many of them still standing, grey and weather-worn, full of hiding-places, where the prince found a refuge. The escape of Charles is one of those stories which the English peasant has in many parts of England told pleasantly in his own rude way. It is a wonderful story of human fidelity, for though a thousand pounds was set upon the capture of Charles, and perhaps more than a score of people knew the route he was taking, not one of them ever revealed it, not one broke faith, peasant and peer were equally true; cottage and hall were equally open to the royal fugitive; indeed, it is a story which if told of a better man might bring tears into the eyes. From that fatal evening when