decisive step in the march of events which brought on the Rebellion.
One last visit together did Charles and his "Mary" pay to Hampton Court. It was when the attempt to seize the Five Members had failed, and the Queen herself was in danger, and Charles fled that he might put her, at least, in safety. Charles left London for the last time till he should enter it a prisoner. A hurried ride to Hampton found nothing prepared. King and Queen and their three eldest children had to sleep together in one room. Worse hardships had they all before life was over. A few months later and the royal standard was set up at Nottingham. When Charles left Hampton Court he did not see it again for six years.
It was on August 24, 1647, that Charles, after all the escapes of the war, and the negotiations and intrigues that followed it, after Newcastle and Holmby House, came to Hampton Court, having his state as King for the last time. Sir Thomas Herbert, his faithful groom of the chamber, in the touching memoirs which he called Carolina Threnodia, has given a short account of these three months, which is well worth giving in its own simplicity.[1]
"About the middle of August the King removed to Hampton Court, a most large and imperial house, built by that pompous prelate Cardinal Wolsey, in ostentation of his great wealth, and enlarged by King
- ↑ "Memoirs of Sir Thomas Herbert," &c., London, 1702, pp. 33, sqq.
