Down from Eastchurch, we come out of the “hill country” of Sheppey, along a beautiful avenue of overarching trees, to the Harty Road station of the Sheppey Light Railway, and thence along the levels to Leysdown and the long, flat shell-beach of Shellness, with the pink-washed coastguard buildings at the extreme end, looking across the Swale to Whitstable. History has been made at Shellness. It was on December 11th, 1688, that James the Second fled, panic-stricken, from his palace of Whitehall, before the advance of the Prince of Orange, who had been proclaimed King in his stead in the market-place of Newton Abbot, on November 7th, by the title of William the Third. The fugitive sovereign, with a wig of unaccustomed modest cut and semi-clerical clothes for disguise, made his hasty exit in company with Sir Edward Hales, a Roman Catholic pervert whom he had recently appointed Master of the Ordnance, Lieutenant of the Tower, and Privy Councillor. This facile person brought with him a gentleman named Sheldon and a Mr. Abbadie, who occupied the position of Page of the Backstairs. If you do but consider a moment, there is something exquisitely appropriate and humorous in a Page of the Backstairs taking part in such a fugitive back-door departure. A librettist in comic opera could have thought of no happier touch. One is curious to know how it was that King James came to select such a difficult, out-of-the-way place as Sheppey for his departure. He, of course, sought some obscure point for embarkation, but there were easily dozens of sufficiently quiet and unfrequented places suited to his purpose, without taking this extreme trouble. The explanation is that the King was really at this time almost beside himself, and his mind was so disordered that he could not think coherently nor plan anything. Hales was the master at this juncture. He was the owner of property in Sheppey, and had a steward, one Bannister by name, whom he could trust, at his house of Neat’s Court, Minster. The steward was instructed to hire a vessel at Elmley, and did so, and some of the party went aboard there and others were to be picked up here, at Shellness, whence it was hoped to make a passage for France. The hoy was on the point of departure, when Bannister’s livery was noticed by the fishermen. It was a livery well known locally, and little liked since Hales had rendered himself so obnoxious to the Protestants. The spectacle, therefore, of Bannister assisting a company of strange gentlefolk to embark from so unaccustomed a place, at such an untimeous hour, in those times of social, political, and religious disturbance, and in a craft so humble, was one to excite curiosity and suspicion. The fishermen assembled to the number of fifty or sixty on the beach, soon recognised Hales, and, that once done, there was no escaping. They surrounded the fugitives, and prevented them by force from leaving.