At the point where this lane leaves the road, another, looking like a mere farm road, turns off northwards. This leads to Childerley Hall, now a farm house, but in 1647 of sufficient consequence to serve as a sleeping place for Royalty. Hither King Charles the First was brought by his captors, when carried off by Cornet Joyce from Holmby House in Northamptonshire, as has been already narrated.[183] He was not altogether an unwilling captive, for both he and the Army hoped to arrive at some mutual accommodation which would make both independent of that Parliamentary control of which both were heartily wearied. [Footnote 183: See p. 182.] He was treated, accordingly, with the utmost respect; and during his stay at Childerley Hall[184] (from Saturday, June 5, to Tuesday, June 8), the students of Cambridge "flocked apace" to pay their homage to him. "He is exceedingly cheerful," writes a contemporary scribe,[185] "shows himself to all, and commands that no scholler be debarred from kissing his hand, for which honour they return humble thanks and _Vivat Rex_; and there the Sophs are in their gowns and caps as if no further than Barnwell." Nay, even the great chiefs of the army, the men who at Marston and Naseby had faced and conquered him, Fairfax, Ireton, and Whalley, and Cromwell himself, came hither to join in this hand-kissing, and, one after another, to be astonished at the ability and graciousness which their distressed Sovereign showed in the private interview granted to each in turn. [Footnote 184: Childerley was then the seat of the Cutts family.] [Footnote 185: Quoted in _East Anglia and the Civil War_ by Mr. Kingston.] But, if local tradition is to be trusted, beneath all this gallant show of gracious acquiescence in the inevitable, there lurked in the King's heart a deep conviction that the hope on which it was founded was forlorn indeed. For this tradition tells of a truly desperate dash for freedom, the success of which was all but impossible. It has been constantly handed down at Madingley Hall that on one of these June midnights a white figure knocked at the door, and a subdued voice asked for "Jack" (Sir John Cotton, a noted loyalist, whose seat the Hall was at that time). He came, and found this mysterious visitor none other than the King himself, disguised in a peasant's smock, and imploring concealment till he could escape from the country. By a secret stair, traces of which still exist, he was conducted to a hiding place in the roof. But it was too late; his flight had been discovered, and the pursuing troopers were already out in search of him. Madingley Hall would, of course, be amongst the very first places to be suspected of harbouring him, and the wild venture ended in despair. All was hushed up; for both he and his captors wished to keep up the fiction that he was with them willingly.