TO DAY IN HISTORY

Southland Times, Issue 20498, 29 May 1928, Page 6

TO DAY IN HISTORY

MAY 29. Oak Apple Day. Born: Charles 11. of England, at London, 1630; Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, 1660; Louis Daubenton, at Montbard, 1716; Patrick Henry, American patriot and orator, in Virginia, 1736; Joseph Fouche, Police Minister under Napoleon I. and under the Bourbons, at Nantes, 1763. Died: Cardinal Beaton, assassinated at St. Andrews, 1546; Dr. Andrew Ducarel, English antiquary at South Lambeth, 1785; the Empress Josephine, at Malmaison, 1814; Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, miscellaneous writer, at Edinburgh, 1848; Sir W. S. Gilbert, librettist, 1911. Events: The Restoration, 1660; arrival of Bishop Selwyn in New Zealand, 1842; Empress of Ireland disaster, 1914; mine sprung at Quinn’s Post (Gallipoli), Turkish attack repulsed, 1915; Italians evacuated Asiago and Arsiero, 1916; Germans take Soissons in great Aisne Battle, 1918. THE KING AT BOSCOBEL. After the defeat of the royal army at Worcester, September 3, 1651, King Charles and his principal officers determined on seeking safety by returning along the west coast of England to Scotland. As they proceeded, however, the King bethought him that the party was too large to make a safe retreat, and if he could get to London before the news of the battle he might obtain a passage incognito in a vessel for France or Holland. On Kinver Heath they were brought to a standstill by the failure of their guide to find the way. In the midst of the dismay that prevailed, the Earl of Derby stated to the King that he had lately, when in similar difficulty, been beholden for his life to a place of concealment on the borders of Staffordshire—a place called Boscobel. Another voice, that of Charles Gifford, the proprietor of this very place, broke the silence—“l will undertake to guide his Majesty to Boscobel before daybreak.” It was immediately determined that the King, with a very small party of associates, should proceed under Gifford’s care to the promised shelter. By daybreak Charles had reached White Ladies, a house taking its name from a ruined monastry hard by, and in the possession of the Gifford family, who were all Catholics. Here he was kindly received, put into a peasant’s dress and sent off to the neighbouring house of Boscobel under the care of a dependent of the family, named Richard Penderel. His friends took leave of him and pursued their journey to the north. Charles in his anxiety to make towards London, determined to set out on foot “in a country fellow’s habit, with a pair of ordinary grey cloth breeches, a leather doublet, and a green jerkin,” taking no one with him but “trusty Dick Penderel,” as one of the brethren was called; they had, however, scarcely reached the edge of the wood, when a troop of the rebel soldiery obliged them to lie close all day there, in a drenching rain. During this time the King altered his mind and determined to go towards the Severn, and so to France, from some Welsh seaport. At midnight they started on their journey, but after some hair-breadth escapes, finding the journey difficult and dangerous, they returned to Boscobel. Here they found Colonel William Careless, who had seen the last man killed in the Worcester fight, and whom the King at once took into his confidence. Being Sunday, the King kept in the house or amused hmiself by reading in the close arbour in the little garden; and the next day he took the Colonel’s advice to “get up into a great oak, in a pretty plain place, where we can see all around us.” This tree was about a bowshot distance from the house. Charles describes it as “a great oak that had been lopped some three or four years before and being grown out again very bushy and thick, could not be seen through.” There Charles and the Colonel stayed the whole day, having taken up with them some bread and cheese and small beer, the Colonel having a pillow placed on his knees that the King might rest his head on it as he sat among the branches. While there they saw many soldiers beating the woods for persons escaped. After an uneasy day the King left the friendly shelter of Boscobel at midnight, for Mr Whitgrave’s house at Mosely; the day after he went to Colonel Lane’s at Bentley; from thence disguised as a serv-ing-man, he rode with Lane’s sister towards Bristol, intending to take a ship there; but after many misadventures and much uncertain rambling, he at last succeeded in obtaining a vessel at Shoreham in Sussex, which carried him across to Fecamp in Normandy. OAK APPLE DAY. On the north side of the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London, near the powder magazine, flourished two old trees, said to have been planted by Charles 11. from acorns of the Boscobel oak. They were bot h blighted by a severe frost; one has been entirely removed, but the stem and a few branches of the other still remain, covered with ivy and protected by an iron fence. In the Bodleian library is preserved a fragment of the original tree, turned into the form of a salver, or stand for a tankard; the inscription upon it records it as a gift to Mrs Letitia Lane, a member of the family who aided Charles in his escape. It was the intention of the King to institute a new order, into which those only were to be admitted who were eminently distinguished for their loyalty—they were to be styled Knights of the Royal Oak; but these knights were soon abolished, “it being wisely judged,” says Noble, in his “Memoirs of the Cromwell Family,” “that the Order was calculated to keep awake animosities which it was the part of wisdom to lull to sleep.” He adds that the names of the intended knights are to be seen in the “Baronetage,” published in 5 vols. Bvo. 1741, and that Henry Cromwell, “first cousin one removed to Oliver, Lord Protector,” was among the number. This gentleman was a zealous loyalist, instrumental in the restoration of the royal family; “and as he knew that the name of Cromwell would not be very grateful in the Charles the Second, he disused it, and styled himself only plain Henry Williams, Esq-, by which name he was set down in the list of such persons as were to be made Knights of the Royal Oak. Oak Apple Day is still celebrated in parts of the Old Country in memory of King Charles’ preservation at Boscobel, and also of the Restoration which took place in