ut a
fortnight, and was become known to very many), I went directly
away to a widow gentlewoman's house, one Mrs. Hyde, some four
or five miles from Salisbury, where I came into the house just
as it was almost dark, with Robin Philips only, not intending
at first to make myself known. But just as I alighted at the
door, Mrs. Hyde knew me, though she had never seen me but once
in her life, and that was with the king, my father, in the army,
when we marched by Salisbury some years before, in the time of
the war; but she, being a discreet woman, took no notice at that
time of me, I passing only for a friend of Robin Philips', by
whose advice I went thither.
"At supper there was with us Frederick Hyde, since a judge, and
his sister-in-law, a widow, Robin Philips, myself, and Dr. Henshaw
[Henchman], since Bishop of London, whom I had appointed to meet
me there.
"While we were at slipper, I observed Mrs. Hyde and her brother
Frederick to look a little earnestly at me, which led me to believe
they might know me. But I was not at all startled by it, it having
been my purpose to let her know who I was; and, accordingly,
after supper Mrs. Hyde came to me, and I discovered myself to
her, who told me she had a very safe place to hide me in, till
we knew whether our ship was ready or no. But she said it was
not safe for her to trust anybody but herself and her sister,
and therefore advised me to take my horse next morning and make
as if I quitted the house, and return again about night; for she
would order it so that all her servants and everybody should
be out of the house but herself and her sister, whose name I
remember not.
"So Robin Philips and I took our horses and went as far as
Stonehenge; and there we staid looking upon the stones for some
time, and returned back again to Hale [Heale] (the place where
Mrs. Hyde lived) about the hour she appointed; where I went up
into the hiding-hole, that was very convenient and safe, and
staid there all alone (Robin Philips then going away to Salisbury)
some four or five days."
Both exterior and interior of Heale House as it stands to-day
point to a later date than 1651, though there are here and there
vestiges of architecture anterior to the middle of the seventeenth
century; the hiding-place, however, is not among these, and looks
nothing beyond a very deep cupboard adjoining one of the bedrooms,
with nothing peculiar to distinguish it from ordinary cupboards.
But for all
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