History of King Charles the Second of EnglandAbbott, Jacob
History
History of King Charles the Second of England
Abbott, Jacob
Charles II, King of England, 1630-1685
They did not, however, discover their intended victim. After the whole
army passed, the queen ventured cautiously forth from her retreat; the
little party got together again, and, still retaining their disguises,
moved on over the road by which the soldiers had come, and which was
in the shocking condition that a road and a country always exhibit
where an army has been marching. Faint and exhausted with sickness,
abstinence, and the effects of long continued anxiety and fear, the
queen had scarcely strength to go on. She persevered, however, and at
length found a second refuge in a cabin in a wood. She was going to
Plymouth, which is forty or fifty miles from Exeter, to the south-west,
and is the great port and naval station of the English, in that quarter
of the island.
She stopped at this cabin for a little time to rest, and to wait for
some other friends and members of her household from the palace in
Exeter to join her. Those friends were to wait until they found that
the queen succeeded in making her escape, and then they were to follow,
each in a different way, and all assuming such disguises as would most
effectually help to conceal them. There was one of the party whom it
must have been somewhat difficult to disguise. It was a dwarf, named
Geoffrey Hudson, who had been a long time in the service of Henrietta
as a personal attendant and messenger. It was the fancy of queens and
princesses in those days to have such personages in their train. The
oddity of the idea pleased them, and the smaller the dimensions of
such a servitor, the greater was his value. In modern times all this
is changed. Tall footmen now, in the families of the great, receive
salaries in proportion to the number of inches in their stature, and
the dwarfs go to the museums, to be exhibited, for a price, to the
common wonder of mankind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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