e was hidden five days, until the master of a
collier lying off Shoreham in Sussex, undertook to convey a 'gentleman'
to France. On the night of the fifteenth of October, accompanied by two
colonels and a merchant, the King rode to Brighton, then a little fishing
village, to give the captain of the ship a supper before going on board;
but, so many people knew him, that this captain knew him too, and not
only he, but the landlord and landlady also. Before he went away, the
landlord came behind his chair, kissed his hand, and said he hoped to
live to be a lord and to see his wife a lady; at which Charles laughed.
They had had a good supper by this time, and plenty of smoking and
drinking, at which the King was a first-rate hand; so, the captain
assured him that he would stand by him, and he did. It was agreed that
the captain should pretend to sail to Deal, and that Charles should
address the sailors and say he was a gentleman in debt who was running
away from his creditors, and that he hoped they would join him in
persuading the captain to put him ashore in France. As the King acted
his part very well indeed, and gave the sailors twenty shillings to
drink, they begged the captain to do what such a worthy gentleman asked.
He pretended to yield to their entreaties, and the King got safe to
Normandy.

Ireland being now subdued, and Scotland kept quiet by plenty of forts and
soldiers put there by Oliver, the Parliament would have gone on quietly
enough, as far as fighting with any foreign enemy went, but for getting
into trouble with the Dutch, who in the spring of the year one thousand
six hundred and fifty-one sent a fleet into the Downs under their ADMIRAL
VAN TROMP, to call upon the bold English ADMIRAL BLAKE (who was there
with half as many ships as the Dutch) to strike his flag. Blake fired a
raging broadside instead, and beat off Van Tromp; who, in the autumn,
came back again with seventy ships, and challenged the bold Blake--who
still was only half as strong--to fight him. Blake fought him all day;
but, finding that the Dutch were too many for him, got quietly off at
night. What does Van Tromp upon this, but goes cruising and boasting
about the Channel, between the North Foreland and the Isle of Wight, with
a great Dutch broom tied to his masthead, as a sign that he could and
would sweep the English of the sea! Within three months, Blake lowered
his tone though, and his broom too; for, he and two other bold
c