"Slighted" signifies dismantled of its fortification; the allusion to "a
tailor" being military governor of Rushall is, of course, a cavalier's
sneer at the Republican soldiery.

Coming now to the end of the war, when Charles II. was defeated at
Worcester in 1651, the country round Willenhall became the scene of that
fugitive monarch's most romantic wanderings. Flying from the battlefield
at the close of that fatal September day, Charles made his way through
Stourbridge to Whiteladies and Boscobel. Then occurred the episode of
his hiding in the "Royal Oak," and his concealment inside the house, in
the "priests' hole" at the top of the stairs, by Mrs. Penderel.

Fearing discovery, the King was escorted by the brothers Penderel to
Moseley Hall, near Bushbury, a timber-framed mansion in the picturesque
Elizabethan style, the home of the Whitgreates, where the hunted monarch
was welcomed and immediately refreshed with some biscuits and a bottle of
sack. Charles had scarcely departed from Boscobel ere a troop of
Roundheads arrived to search it. And another narrow escape now occurred
at Moseley, where again a cunningly contrived hiding place was brought
into requisition. Even after the frustration of the search party, one
Southall, a notorious "priest catcher," called at the suspected house.

Prudence dictated another secret flight, and taking advantage of a dark
night the unhappy King was taken by Colonel Lane to his own house, and
was next hidden at Bentley Hall.

The story of the escape of Charles II. from Bentley towards the
continent, disguised as a groom and riding in front of Jane Lane's
pillion, is too well known to need re-telling here. The episode is
historic; it is the subject of a fresco painted on the walls of a
corridor in the gilded chambers of Parliament.

The whole romance of Boscobel and Bentley is told with considerable
fulness in Shaw's "Staffordshire" (I., pp. 73-84), and is accompanied by
very interesting engravings of Boscobel, Moseley Hall, and Old Bentley.

As a result of the Revolution of 1688, and with the death of Queen Anne
in 1714, the impracticable Stuarts disappeared for good from the English
throne; but as adherents to their discredited cause, known as Jacobites,
still remained numerous, it may be guessed they were not lacking in and
around Willenhall.

After the Hanoverian Succession there were, in fact, a number of avowed
Jacobites in this vicinity, who refused to take the oat