to steal their way through the country; but of these the Scots were universally betrayed by their accent, whilst the English, for the most part, effected their escape.[1] The duke of Hamilton had been mortally wounded on the field of battle; the earls of Derby, Rothes, Cleveland, Kelly, and Lauderdale; the lords Sinclair, Kenmure, and Grandison; and the generals Leslie, Massey, Middleton, and Montgomery, were made prisoners, at different times and in separate places.  But the most interesting inquiry regarded the fortune of the young king.  Though the parliament offered[a] a reward of one thousand pounds for his person, and denounced the penalties of treason against those who should afford him shelter; though parties of horse and foot scoured the adjacent counties in search of so valuable a prize; though the magistrates received orders to arrest every unknown person, and to keep a strict watch on the sea-ports in their neighbourhood, yet no trace of his flight, no clue to his retreat, could be discovered.  Week after week passed

[Footnote 1:  Thus the duke of Buckingham was conducted by one Mathews, a carpenter, to Bilstrop, and thence to Brooksby, the seat of Lady Villiers, in Leicestershire; Lord Talbot reached his father’s house at Longford in time to conceal himself in a close place in one of the out-houses.  His pursuers found his horse yet saddled, and searched for him during four or five days in vain.  May was hidden twenty-one days in a hay-mow, belonging to Bold, a husbandman, at Chessardine, during all which time a party of soldiers was quartered in the house.—­Boscobel, 35-37.  Of the prisoners, eight suffered death, by judgment of a court-martial sitting at Chester.  One of these was the gallant earl of Derby, who pleaded that quarter had been granted to him by Captain Edge, and quarter ought to be respected by a court-martial.  It was answered that quarter could be granted to enemies only, not to traitors.  He offered to surrender his Isle of Man in exchange for his life, and petitioned for “his grace the lord general’s, and the parliament’s mercy.”  But his petition was not delivered by Lenthall before it was too late.  It was read in the house on the eve of his execution, which took place at Bolton, in Lancashire, Oct. 15, 1651.—­State Trials, v. 294.  Heath 302.  Leicester’s Journal, 121.  Journals, Oct. 14.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1651.  Sept. 10.]

away; of almost every other individual of note the fate was ascertained; that of Charles Stuart remained an impenetrable mystery.  At last, when a belief prevailed, both among his friends and foes, that he had met with death from the peasantry, ignorant of his person and quality, the intelligence arrived, that on the 17th of October, forty-four days after the battle, he had landed in safety at Fecamp, on the coast of Normandy.