I have great pleasure in forwarding to you an anecdote of the captivity of Charles I., which I think will be considered interesting to your readers. Of its authenticity there can be no doubt. I extract it from a small paper book, purchased some fifty years since, at Newport, in the Isle of Wight, which contains the history of a family named Douglas, for some years resident in that town, written by the last representative, Eliza Douglas, at the sale of whose effects it came into my grandfather's hands. There are many curious particulars in it besides the anecdote I have sent you; especially an account of the writer's great-great-grandfather (the husband of the heroine of this tale), who "traded abroad, and was took into Turkey as a slave," and there gained the affections of his master's daughter, after the most approved old-ballad fashion; though, alas! it was not to her love that he owed his liberty, but (dreadful bathos!) to his skill in "cooking fowls, &c. &c. in the English taste;" which, on a certain occasion, when some English merchants came to dine with his master, "so pleased the company, that they offered to redeem him, which was accepted; and when freed he came home to England, and lived in London to an advanced age; so old that they fed him with a tea-spoon." After his death his wife married again; and it was during this second marriage that the interview with King Charles took place. "My mother's great-grandmother, when a-breeding with her daughter, Mary Craige, which was at y'e time of _King Charles_ being a _prisoner_ in _Carisbrook Castle_, she longed to kiss the King's _hand_; and when he was brought to Newport to be carried off, she being acquainted with the gentleman's housekeeper, where the King was coming to stay, till orders for him to leave the island, she went to the housekeeper, told her what she wanted, and they contrived for her to come the morning he was to go away. So up she got, and dressed herself, and set off to call her midwife, and going along, the first and second guard stopped her and asked her where she was going; she told them 'to call her midwife,' which she did. They went to this lady, and she went and acquainted his Majesty with the affair; he desired she may come up to him, and she said, when she came into the room, his Majesty seemed to appear as if he had been at _prayers_. He rose up and came to her, who fell on her knees before him; he took her up by the arm himself, and put his _cheek_ to her, and she said she gave him a good hearty smack on his cheek. His Majesty then said, 'Pray God bless you, and that you go withal.' She then went down stairs to wait and see the King take coach; she got so close that she saw a gentleman in it; and when the King stept into the coach, he said, 'Pray, Sir, what is your name?' he replied, 'I am Col. Pride.' 'Not miscalled,' says the King. Then Pride says, 'Drive on,