To Catch A King: Charles II's Great Escape. Charles Spencer

could not contain his joy at the defeat of the allies to whom he had been so miserably shackled, and threw his hat in the air at the news. For their part, the Covenanters tried to shift blame for the debacle onto their young king’s shoulders. They claimed he had shown a lack of commitment to his religious promises, and divine punishment had been the inevitable consequence.

      The Covenanters also rebuked the king’s followers. John Middleton was a Scot who had risen dramatically through the army’s ranks, from fourteen-year-old pikeman to lieutenant general. He had fought against the Royalists in the First Civil War, but had then changed sides, joining the Engagers and leading their cavalry in the Scottish invasion of England in the summer of 1648. Middleton had been captured at the battle of Preston, but was released on parole. He soon broke that commitment, allying himself closely to the new king of Scotland.

      The Kirk party noted Middleton’s Royalist sympathies and allegiance to their domestic political rivals, as well as his general debauchery, and in October 1650 excommunicated him. He was only allowed to return to serve in Charles’s army after the humiliation of a public penance in Dundee, when he was forced to wear sackcloth and ashes. This was an embarrassment that Middleton would never forget. It was also typical of the heavy-handed treatment meted out to Charles and his followers. The young king was finding it increasingly hard to bear.

      A month after Dunbar, Royalists under the Marquess of Huntly attempted a coup d’état in support of Charles in the north of Scotland. They intended to bring Highlanders to the king, and so free him from Covenanter control. This design was known as ‘The Start’, and though it came about with Charles’s blessing, it failed because of his indecision.

      Leaving Perth under the pretence of participating in a falconry hunting party, the king made a dash for freedom once he had got a fair distance from the city. But his absence was quickly noted, and a force was sent to retrieve him. He was soon overhauled. Two officers who led the pursuit discovered him ‘lying in a nasty room on an old bolster above a mat of sedge and rushes, over-wearied and very fearful’.10 The ignominious end to this escape attempt is of particular interest, given how Charles was to behave exactly a year later, when on the run for his life.

      On 1 January 1651, at Scone in Perthshire, the coronation took place that formalised Charles’s status as king of Scotland. The Marquess of Argyll, happy to remind the monarch of where true power lay, placed the crown on Charles’s head and installed him on the throne.

      In reality, though, matters in Scotland were turning in the king’s favour. The Covenanters had lost much credibility through their defeat at Dunbar, and Charles had an easy charm that his northern subjects warmed to. He was proving to be a popular king.

      Meanwhile, despite their spectacular triumph at Dunbar, the English still had little control over large areas of Scotland. David Leslie clung on determinedly in defensive mode north of the Firth of Forth, with his headquarters at Stirling. But on 17 July 1650 the deadlock was broken when Major General John Lambert played a masterstroke, sending a seaborne expedition into Fife, outflanking Leslie’s army. Three days later he defeated the Scottish force sent to meet him at the battle of Inverkeithing. The victory gave the New Model Army control of the Firth of Forth, and cut Charles off from his supporters in the Highlands.

      Cromwell now moved his main army north of the defeated Scots. As he did so, he deliberately left the road to England open, hoping Charles would be tempted to lead his men south. Cromwell was confident that the army he had with him, when combined with the forces he had left standing ready at home, could defeat any Scottish force the king could muster. He also believed that the people of England would unite against what would in effect be a foreign invasion, should the king of Scotland take the bait.

      Charles was unaware of the trap, and shaken by the enemy advantage gained at Inverkeithing. At the same time he was desperate to get away from Scotland, to regain some of the authority and independence that had been taken from him by the all-controlling Covenanters. He had been an exile since leaving Cornwall for the Isles of Scilly more than five years earlier. Now that he seemed to have been presented with the prospect of a clear run south, the young king dared to dream of a triumphant return to England. He ordered his forces to prepare for invasion, even though his military commanders urged caution.

      George Downing had grown up in Massachusetts, and had attended Harvard College, being one of the nine young men who comprised its first year of graduates in 1642. He had since returned to England, to support Parliament as a preacher before switching to military service. From 1650 he was Scoutmaster General of Scotland, in charge of the Commonwealth’s agents in that country. He reported to London that ‘The generality [i.e. the generals] of the Scots were against the present attempt for England, but the King told them, he would march with such as would follow him: he looks very despondingly, but must adventure all.’11

      The Parliamentary commander in north-western England, Major General Thomas Harrison, was a religious zealot with complete confidence that he and his Puritan comrades were doing the Lord’s work. He was sure that Charles and his army were destined for defeat. Like Downing, he sensed that the enemy’s decision to head south had arisen from a place of weakness: the king’s men clearly had ‘a mighty terror from God upon them’, Harrison wrote. He urged ‘every good man’ to take ‘all possible means God may put into your hands, to give a check to this vile generation until our army come up’.12

      On 31 July Charles set off from Stirling Castle with his Scottish army, hoping his English courtiers were correct when they promised him that Royalists in his homeland would rush to swell his ranks. If they did, he had a good chance of regaining his family’s throne. If they did not, his great gamble could only be seen as an appalling error of judgement, based on nothing more than the continual grind of humiliation and disappointment, and the lure of misplaced hope.

      5

       A Foreign Invasion

      The Scottish Armie, which would never bee brought to fight in their own Countrie, have now left the same for lost; and are marched into England.

      The Council of State to the Lord Mayor of London, 10 August 1651

      Charles entered England near Carlisle on 5 August 1651, at the head of forty-six regiments of Scottish soldiers. They came from all over Scotland, among them Urry’s Horse from Aberdeen and Banffshire, the Earl of Home’s cavalry and infantry from Berwick, Clan MacKinnon from Skye, MacNeil’s Foot from the Outer Hebrides, Lord Drummond’s two regiments from Perthshire, and the Duke of Hamilton’s Horse from Clydesdale.

      But the spymaster George Downing wrote to his controllers in London of the despondency that he detected at the core of this army, and not just amongst its high command: ‘They are not above 11,000 men at most; they have very little provision with them; through all the country in Scotland we find their runaways: in a word, nothing was left but a desperate cure, or a desperate ruin, wherewith my heart is filled in the confident expectation of.’1

      The same sentiment stirred in the breast of Charles’s senior Scottish officer, Lieutenant General Leslie. When, in battle, a junior officer rode to Leslie to report ‘The enemy is approaching,’ it would have been understandable if this fifty-year-old professional soldier had taken a moment to remind himself exactly who it was that he was risking his life against this time. Leslie had, in a distinguished but somewhat relentless career, unsheathed his sword, then ridden hard at Germans, Lithuanians, Poles, Spaniards, Englishmen and fellow Scots.

      He had been in command of 7,000 Covenanters when they overcame the 800 Royalists under the Marquess of Montrose at the battle of Philiphaugh in September 1645. A hundred of Montrose’s men surrendered on the promise that their lives would be spared. But Presbyterian ministers intervened, telling Leslie that such mercy was folly and urging him to go back on his word.