himself away from the field, and then only upon the solicitations of his
friends.

Charles retired to Kidderminster that evening. The Duke of Buckingham,
the gallant Lord Derby, Wilmot, afterwards Earl of Rochester, and some
others, rode near him. They were followed by a small body of horse.
Disconsolately they rode on northwards, a faithful band of sixty being
resolved to escort his Majesty to Scotland. At length they halted on
Kinver Heath, near Kidderminster: their guide having lost the way. In
this extremity Lord Derby said that he had been received kindly at an
old house in a secluded woody country, between Tong Castle and Brewood,
on the borders of Staffordshire. It was named 'Boscobel,' he said; and
that word has henceforth conjured up to the mind's eye the remembrance
of a band of tired heroes, riding through woody glades to an ancient
house, where shelter was given to the worn-out horses and scarcely less
harassed riders.

But not so rapidly did they in reality proceed. A Catholic family,
named Giffard, were living at White-Ladies, about twenty six miles from
Worcester. This was only about half a mile from Boscobel: it had been a
convent of Cistercian nuns, whose long white cloaks of old had once been
seen, ghost-like, amid forest glades or on hillock green. The
White-Ladies had other memories to grace it besides those of holy
vestals, or of unholy Cavaliers. From the time of the Tudors, a
respectable family named Somers had owned the White-Ladies, and
inhabited it since its white-garbed tenants had been turned out, and the
place secularized. 'Somers's House,' as it was called, (though more
happily, the old name has been restored,) had received Queen Elizabeth
on her progress. The richly cultivated old conventual gardens had
supplied the Queen with some famous pears, and, in the fulness of her