GUEST POST BY AUTHOR ABIGAIL DANE, PART THREE

From Victoria:  Abigail Dane presents her third essay, based on research for her trilogy The Whitleigh Series. The Pirate and the Virgin, Book One, is now available. Book two, The Baron and the Lady, will be published soon.   Many thanks, Abigail!


 Battle of Worcester and its Aftermath
Part 3 of 3

 For six weeks, Charles II—“England’s Most Wanted,” if you will—survived many harrowing narrow escapes and near misses before his ultimate safe arrival in France. If those perilous weeks provided the catalyst for the fugitive king’s future frivolity, as some posit, they also exposed him to the ordinary lives of ordinary people in a way most kings would never experience. His turns as servant, tenant farmer, kitchen helper, debt collector and more may help to explain why Charles II was later referred to as “a king without airs and graces.”
     After Oliver Cromwell’s death on 3 September 1658—seven years to the day after the Battle of Worcester—his incompetent son, Richard, became Lord Protector in his stead. Richard’s succession—or usurpation, as it was widely considered—lasted only nine months before he was forced to abdicate in 1659. He was allowed to “fade away” into obscurity but was thereafter referred to, ignominiously, as “Tumbledown Dick.”


Oliver Cromwell

     By 1660, the vacuum left by the departure of the infamous Cromwells would be filled by none other than the fugitive king himself. Arriving in London on his 30thbirthday and having survived to gain the ultimate victory, Charles reclaimed his father’s throne and reestablished the British monarchy during a period that came to be called “The Restoration,” which restored not only the king and monarchy, but England’s pursuit of pleasure and gaiety, as well. If Cromwell is best remembered for his severe, joyless Puritanism, Charles II—affectionately called “the Merry Monarch”—is best remembered for his many mistresses and his many illegitimate children by them.

Charles II

     With the reign of Charles II, the pendulum would swing its full arc from piety to hedonism—as if the last nine years, with their terrible cost, turmoil, misery and death, had never happened. By the time of Charles’ death in 1685, he had many children but no legitimate heirs, so he was succeeded by his brother James, who reigned as James II. One can only wonder what Cromwell would have thought of his legacy if he had returned to see what had become of his great cause in such a brief time.
POSTSCRIPT: Though the English Civil War ended in Worcester in September 1651, one might say the curtain did not descend on the last act of the play until June 2008. That’s when another Charles, also the Prince of Wales, paid off the debt incurred by his ancestor and namesake 357 years earlier. It seems Charles II had contracted for the Worcester Clothiers Company to provide uniforms to outfit his army, but in his haste, skipped town without paying the £453.3s he owed. With interest, that debt in 2008 would have been £47,500.
Source: “Historical Notes: Battle
of Worcester and its Aftermath,” in The Baron and the Lady, book two in the “Whitleigh series” by Abigail Dane.  http://TransitionsUnlimited.biz, AbigailDaneRomance@gmail.org.
Abigail Dane

Resources:  Atkinson, Charles Francis (1911) “Great Rebellion#The Third Scottish Invasion of England” in Chisholm, Hugh Encyclopædia Britannica12 (11th ed.) Cambridge University Press pp. 420–421. Also, some background info and images are from the Military Wiki (http://military.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Worcester)

A TOUR GUIDE IN ENGLAND: DAY 5 – PART ONE – ARRIVAL AT BASLOW

Day 5 saw Diane and I getting the train from St. Pancras to Chesterfield, 
with our ultimate destination being Baslow and, eventually, Chatsworth House. 

From the station in Chesterfield, we made our way to Baslow and were greeted by the sight of sheep, dozens of them, in the fields behind our hotel, the Cavendish. 

Have I ever mentioned how much I love sheep? It turns out that Diane does, too. 
We were in alt as we left our bags at the door and stood watching them, and listening to their Baaaahing for some time. 

Eventually tearing ourselves away, Diane and I entered the Cavendish Hotel, owned by the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. In fact, it was the late Duchess of Devonshire, Deborah (nee Mitford) who had worked so hard to restore, decorate and open the hotel in 1975.
Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire
The hotel began life as the Peacock Inn and bcame part of the Devonshire estate around 1830, 
when it was acquired from the Duke of Rutland. Being such a fan of Debo and Chatsworth both, I had been looking forward to our stay at the Cavendish for some time. I’m happy to say that I wasn’t disappointed. 
We were given the Burlington Room

After dropping our bags in the room, Diane and I headed out to explore Baslow further. 

The village offers two pubs, one of which is the Wheatsheaf, above and below.

Baslow is a quintessential English village, with bags of charm round every corner. 

After soaking up the atmosphere, we found that it was just barely three o’clock and so we decided that there was enough time to fit in a walk to Chatsworth House and set off in giddy anticipation, like two kids waking up on Christmas morning. Chatsworth, here we come!

You may be glad to know that a stay in Baslow and a visit to Chatsworth House are both on the itinerary for Number One London’s 2017 Country House Tour. 
Part Two Coming Soon!

GUEST POST BY AUTHOR ABIGAIL DANE, PART TWO

GUEST POST BY AUTHOR ABIGAIL DANE, PART TWO

From Victoria:  Abigail Dane, author of The Pirate and the Virgin, presents the second installment of her research notes.  Welcome back, Abigail!



Battle of Worcester and its Aftermath
Part 2 of 3
      Cromwell’s army took on its own grueling march—20 miles a day in extreme heat for seven days—to reach Ferrybridge on August 19th. Once again, the ever-pragmatic Worcester decided to align itself with the faction occupying it at the time. Cromwell’s New Model Army forces were, by then, 31,000 strong. Delaying the battle just long enough to build two pontoon bridges, Cromwell launched his attack against Charles on September 3rd—the one-year anniversary of the victory at Dunbar.
     With a 2:1 troop advantage stretching over a four-mile-long arc toward the town of Worcester, Cromwell was able to push back the Royalist forces, despite fierce fighting. The Royalist retreat turned into a trouncing after the capture of Fort Royal, a redoubt on a small hill to the southeast of the town. Among Charles’ army, 3,000 were killed and 10,000 captured. Some leaders were executed; some prisoners were sent to fight for Cromwell in Ireland; and around 8,000 Scots were deported to the New World and made to labor as indentured workers there. By contrast, the Parliamentarian casualties were estimated at a mere 200. A clear and complete rout for Cromwell.
The Proscribed Royalist, 1651, by John Everett Millais, (1853)
After the Battle of Worcester, a young Puritan woman helps a fleeing Royalist—Charles II himself?—
to escape, by hiding him in a hollow tree.

     In the next day’s report of the victory to the Speaker of the House of Commons, Cromwell famously wrote:
The dimensions of this mercy are above my thoughts. It is, for aught I know, a crowning mercy.
     That last sentence, later inscribed on the plaque placed on the Sidbury Gate in Worcester, reads in full:
THE LAST BATTLE OF THE CIVIL WAR
WAS FOUGHT AT WORCESTER ON
3rdSEPTEMBER 1651
IT IS FOR AUGHT I KNOW
A CROWNING MERCY
OLIVER CROMWELL
NEAR THIS SPOT IN THE CITY WALL STOOD
THE SIDBURY GATE, WHICH WAS STORMED
BY THE PARLIAMENTARIAN TROOPS.
ERECTED BY THE CROMWELL ASSOCIATION
AND WORCESTER CITY COUNCIL
WITH THE AID OF PUBLIC SUBSCRIPTION
1993
     Thus, the Royalist Army was destroyed and the bloody and costly conflict known as the “English Civil War” finally ended. As preacher Hugh Peters put it: “…at Worcester, where England’s sorrows began…they were happily ended.” Ironically, as a result of Charles II’s ill-fated decision to detour to Worcester, the final battle was fought just where the first battle had been fought on September 23, 1642—almost exactly nine years earlier.
     Unable to rally his troops and realizing his cause was lost, the thoroughly defeated monarch removed his armor, found a fresh mount and escaping as darkness fell, began a harrowing six-week-long flight. At one point, he hid from the patrols in an oak tree (now referred to as the “Royal Oak”) on the grounds of Boscobel House, as depicted in Millais’ painting, The Proscribed Royalist, 1651. A fearless actor, the fugitive king sometimes hid in plain sight; on one occasion striding through a crowd of Cromwell’s soldiers; on another boldly declaring to the blacksmith who was shoeing his horse: “If that rogue Charles Stuart is taken, he deserves to be hanged more than all the rest, for bringing in the Scots.”
     At a time when the average man was 5’6”, the fugitive king was 6’2” and swarthy. Being so distinctive and hard to disguise made him an exceptional target. The £1,000 reward on his head and the “death without mercy” decree for anyone found helping him made him a tempting one, as well.

Source: “Historical Notes: Battle of Worcester and its Aftermath,” in The Baron and the Lady, book two in the “Whitleigh series” by Abigail Dane.  http://TransitionsUnlimited.biz, AbigailDaneRomance@gmail.org. 



Abigail Dane

A TOUR GUIDE IN ENGLAND: DAY FOUR – PART THREE: DINNER AT SIMPSON'S IN THE STRAND

You may recall that in Part One of our Day Four post Diane, Jo and I had gone on a London Walk of the Covent Garden area that included a stop at Simpson’s in the Strand restaurant. I told you then that there would be more about this venerable and much loved eatery to come and so there shall be. Now.

From the Simpson’s in the Strand website:

Originally opened in 1828 as a chess club and coffee house – The Grand Cigar Divan – Simpson’s soon became known as the “home of chess”, attracting such chess luminaries as Howard Staunton the first English world chess champion through its doors. It was to avoid disturbing the chess games in progress that the idea of placing large joints of meat on silver-domed trolleys and wheeling them to guests’ tables first came into being, a practice Simpson’s still continues today. One of the earliest Master Cooks insisted that everything in the restaurant be British and the Simpson’s of today remains a proud exponent of the best of British food. Famous regulars include Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (and his fictional creation, Sherlock Holmes), Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone.

Known for it’s joints of beef wheeled tableside on huge, steel trollies, Simpsons has always been a favourite of those with a literary bent. From Wikipedia:  In E. M. Forster‘s Howards End, Henry Wilcox is a devotee of Simpson’s. P. G. Wodehouse devoted several paragraphs of Something New to the restaurant, and in his novel Psmith in the City, his two heroes dine there: “Psmith waited for Mike while he changed, and carried him off in a cab to Simpson’s, a restaurant which, as he justly observed, offered two great advantages, namely, that you need not dress, and, secondly, that you paid your half-crown, and were then at liberty to eat till you were helpless, if you felt so disposed, without extra charge.” Simpson’s is also featured in Wodehouse’s “Cocktail Time” as the restaurant that one of the characters, Cosmo Wisdom, chooses to lunch at after leaving Prison. Simpson’s also features in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Watson joins Holmes there during the story “The Illustrious Client” the detective is sitti
ng “looking down at the rushing stream of life in the Strand.”

The window in the upstairs bar at Simpsons. Possibly the window Holmes himself had gazed out from. 

So you see, it’s not unusual that I should have chosen Simpson’s as the scene of this evening’s dinner party, for a party it was to be and, as Diane and I had some time before the rest of my guests arrived, we headed upstairs to Knight’s Bar for a cocktail. Wodehouse would no doubt have approved. 

Literary connections aside, Simpson’s has also been the site of a Royal intrigue or two, the most widely known being that Simpson’s, this very bar no less, was used by King Edward VII to secretly meet with his mistress, Lillie Langtry.

Lillie Langtry and King Edward VII
Diane and I took a table by the window, which gave us a direct view of the table and mural, above. This was Edward VII’s table, as it stands by itself in a corner alcove, away from prying eyes. The mural disguise’s a hidden door, through which the lovely Lilly would slip in order to sit beside her Royal lover. 

And so Diane and I sat with our cocktails and waited for the rest of the party to arrive. Can you guess who they were? A member of the Royal Family, perhaps? Much better – my guests this evening were some of the fabulous guest speakers and guides who will be part of Number One London’s 2017 Tours.

From left to right: Diane Perkins (Diane Gaston), Kristine Hughes Patrone, Ian Fletcher, 
Nicola Cornick and Melanie Hilton (Louise Allen)

Oysters, dinner, wine and a grand time were had by all!

Full Details Regarding Number One London’s 
2017 Tours Coming Soon!

GUEST POST BY AUTHOR ABIGAIL DANE, PART ONE

From Victoria:  Abigail Dane has undertaken an ambitious project, a trilogy, of which the first book is now available.  Welcome, Abigail!

Author Abigail Dane



My books are  set during the English Civil War.  I have immersed myself in the history of the period, and I can make the case that this conflict changed England forever and set the stage for all that followed—in England and in the colonies of the Indies and America, as well.  In brief, as much as Henry VIII’s war against Catholicism and as much as Luther’s calls for reformation of the church, Charles’ claims of  “the divine right of kings” and Cromwell’s radical Puritanism forged the times, creating the spurt in colonization of the New World and fueling calls for religious freedom and independence that followed.  Basically, WITHOUT THIS, NEVER THAT.

The Battle of Worcester (September 3, 1651) ended the third phase of the long and costly English Civil War conflict (1642-1651). The exiled Charles II (then the crowned King of Scotland and son of the beheaded Charles I) invaded England with 16,000 troops, mostly Scotsmen. They originally intended to storm London and retake the throne, but Cromwell learned of the invasion and sent a superior troop (2:1) to meet them. The armies met at Worcester and the fight ended with a mere 200 of Cromwell’s troops dead, compared to 3,000 dead and 10,000 taken prisoner from Charles’ forces.  In the aftermath, Cromwell spent six frantic weeks scouring the countryside for the fugitive king, and Charles spent six perilous weeks evading capture in a bid to make his way to France.



 I believe the following paragraph, from the “Prologue” of my first novel in the series, The Pirate and the Virgin, captures the spirit of the conflict between Charles I and Cromwell:
To the bloody end in 1649, Charles held to his claim of divine appointment and divine right to rule as he willed. No need to consult Parliament or the people since he, the Sovereign appointed by God, was responsible only to God for his actions. Charles’ stubbornness about this was outmatched only by Cromwell’s implacable belief that kings served the people and, thus, served at the will of the people. In the end, the king submitted to the axe rather than concede his principles, and Cromwell laid the king to the axe rather than concede his.
Battle of Worcester and its Aftermath
Part 1 of 3
The people in the neighborhood appeared so ignorant and careless at Worcester that I was provoked and asked “And do Englishmen so soon forget the ground where liberty was fought for?” Tell your neighbors and your children that this is holy ground, much holier than that on which your churches stand. All England should come in pilgrimage to this hill, once a year.   —John Adams, April 1786
     This admonition was written by John Adams on the occasion of his visit, in company of Thomas Jefferson, to Fort Royal Hill—scene of the Battle of Worcester, which ended the English Civil War. Adams was deeply moved by the place, and deeply disappointed that locals knew so little about the battle and its significance. If Adams’ words sound a bit like a lecture, that may be because he intended them to be just that. One assumes he might have been thinking of the recently-concluded American Revolution, which ended at another bit of “holy ground” and pilgrimage site: namely Yorktown, scene of Cornwallis’ surrender to the Americans on October 19, 1781.
     The Second English Civil War—or perhaps more accurately the second phase of the English Civil War—ended with the execution of King Charles I at Whitehall, London, on a cold and blustery January 30th 1649. Two years later, on September 3rd, 1651, the third and final phase of this “war without an enemy” ended when Cromwell’s army routed Charles II and his forces at Fort Royal Hill in Worcester.
The Battle of Worcester, 3 September 1651
by Thomas Woodward (1801-1852)
Worcester City Museum
     Charles, while in exile as King of Scotland, had rounded up a force of 16,000 men—mostly Scots—and raced toward London to retake the British throne. His had army trekked 150 miles in a week, finally earning a bit of rest on August 8th. Charles had decided against a direct march on London, instead detouring to the Severn Valley in hopes of recruiting greater numbers for his army from this area where support for his father had been so strong. Perhaps because his was mostly a foreign army, and likely because peo
ple were simply tired of war after so long, the level of support fell far short of his expectations. Pressing on despite this, Charles II arrived in Worcester on August 22nd, prepared for battle after five days of rest.
     That delay would prove fatal.
Source: “Historical Notes: Battle of Worcester and its Aftermath,” in The Baron and the Lady, book two in the “Whitleigh series” by Abigail Dane.  http://TransitionsUnlimited.biz, AbigailDaneRomance@gmail.org.
Abigail Dane’s post continues next week.