The Road to Worcester

Abstract

The Cavaliers who went into exile on the continent as a consequence of the defeat of the armies of Charles I in the first Civil War did not expect their enforced absence from England to last very long. Either there would be a settlement between Charles I and the victorious, but surely essentially moderate Parliament, or there would be a dramatic reversal in the King’s military fortunes, achieved by a combination of resurgent royalism in England and an invasion either from Ireland or from Scotland by an army that would rescue and restore Charles to his rightful position. There was even the possibility of foreign aid, to be generously provided by a range of possible potentates, from the King of Denmark to the Duke of Lorraine. Secretary Nicholas was one of those optimistic exiles who clung to the first possibility. On 5 July 1647 he wrote to a fellow exile Dr Isaac Basire, who had been a chaplain to Charles I in Oxford during the Civil War, expressing his ‘hope it will not be long before we hear that peace in England is in so good forwardness, as that honest men may return with comfort to their homes’.¹ Sadly for Nicholas and his family, it was to be nearly thirteen years before he returned to his home in Wiltshire.

Many who had made escapes arrived every day in France, Flanders and Holland.

(Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion)