The twenty-ninth of May is quite a jubilant date, as far as British monarchical history is concerned. It is Royal Oak Day - the anniversary of the restoration of the king who would be endeared to his subjects and posterity as "The Merry Monarch" - Charles II himself. But prior to his ascension to his rightful throne, when he was but a young prince desperate to hide from Parliamentarians during the English Civil War, Charles had flirted with danger and propitiously evaded capture and death on several occasions. And today is when the English commemorate what is perhaps the most storied of these evasions: Charles's preservation from the hands of the Roundheads in the branches of the Boscobel Oak.
Following the Royalist defeat at Worcester in 1651, and the death and capture of many of his supporters by Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army, Charles was compelled to flee as there was, naturally, a significant price on his head. He traversed much of the English countryside, eventually coming to stay at Boscobel House in Shropshire. It was there that the young prince was warmly welcomed by the Penderels, the house's Catholic inhabitants who were sympathetic to Charles's cause because his mother, Henrietta Maria, shared their faith. Boscobel House, in fact, was among those places where Catholic priests could find refuge as recusants of the Church of England, by hiding from authorities in "priest-holes" - concealed niches behind walls or under floors.
It was during his stay at Boscobel that Parliamentarian soldiers arrived to search for Charles himself. Caught unsuspectingly, the prince had to improvise in order to avoid his presence becoming known. He covertly escaped high into the branches of an oak tree near the house, while the soldiers beneath continued the search for his whereabouts. The legend goes that Charles spent the better part of the day there, in the oak's branches. Indeed, years later the restored king recalled the riveting incident in his own words in An Account of the Preservation of King Charles II after the Battle of Worcester:
"[Colonel William Carliss, Charles's attending royalist officer] told me, that it would be very dangerous for me either to stay in [the] house, or to go into the wood...that he knew but one way how to pass the next day, and that was, to get up into a great oak". Continuing, Charles added that, "...we went, and carried up with us some victuals for the whole day, viz. bread, cheese, small beer, and nothing else, and got up into a great oak, that had been lopt some three or four years before, and being grown out again, very bushy and thick, could not be seen through, and here we staid all the day".
As the hours elapsed, and the search beneath the great tree proved increasingly fruitless, the Parliamentarians eventually agreed to cease their search and depart. Thus, the oak at Boscobel House has since been enshrined as the "Royal Oak", a symbol of the preservation of the English monarchy, with various depictions proliferating in material culture celebrating Charles II. I have chosen several such examples to showcase in this post; click on the images to be redirected to their sources.
If you desire to learn more about the young Charles II's quest to reclaim his birthright during the English Civil War, I highly recommend the podcast Noble Blood, which devotes an episode to the subject and brilliantly dramatizes the story of the Royal Oak.
Bibliography
1. “Charles II and the Royal Oak.” English Heritage, www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/boscobel-house-and-the-royal-oak/history-charles-ii-royal-oak/.
2. Stamper, Paul. “The Tree That Hid a King: The Royal Oak at Boscobel, Shropshire.” Landscapes, vol. 3, no. 1, 2002, pp. 19–35., doi:10.1179/lan.2002.3.1.19.
