The stout-hearted honest Penderels—William, John, Richard, Humphrey, and George—and their brother-in-law, Francis Yates, made his bodyguard, each with a wood-bill or pikestaff on his shoulder, and some of them with pistols in their pockets. Two marched before, one on each side of the horse, and two at a little distance behind, determined to do or die in the King's defence should he be waylaid and attacked. It was near midnight when they set out on this hazardous march, and it was very dark and rainy. The old mill-horse was a lank, hard-boned, rough-going beast, and the King complained that "it was the heaviest dull jade he ever rode on." Humphrey, the owner, who was walking by his side, defended his faithful beast, it is said, in the smart rejoinder: "My liege! can you blame the horse to go heavily when he has the weight of three kingdoms on his back?" At Penford Mill, about two miles from Moseley, on the advice of his guides, the King dismounted, and they proceeded the rest of the way by a private and safer path, and reached the appointed meeting-place in a little grove near the house. Here the Penderels left their royal charge in the hands of Lord Wilmot and the others waiting to receive him. William, the special hero of the band of brothers, with Humphrey and George, had fallen back and were returning to Boscobel with the horse, unknown to the King and
