dean of Tuam, "a true child of the Church of England," "a true
Cavalier," and avowed that "what concerns Ireland is in no ways
binding"; while to the Roman Catholics in England he promised
concessions and expressed his goodwill towards their church to Pope
Innocent X. His attempt, called "The Start," on the 4th of October 1650,
to escape from the faction at Perth and to join Huntly and the royalists
in the north failed, and he was overtaken and compelled to return. On
the 1st of January 1651 he was crowned at Scone, when he was forced to
repeat his oaths to both the covenants.

Meanwhile Cromwell had advanced and had defeated the Presbyterians at
Dunbar on the 3rd of September 1650, subsequently occupying Edinburgh.
This defeat was not wholly unwelcome to Charles in the circumstances; in
the following summer, during Cromwell's advance to the north, he shook
off the Presbyterian influence, and on the 31st of July 1651 marched
south into England with an army of about 10,000 commanded by David
Leslie. He was proclaimed king at Carlisle, joined by the earl of Derby
in Lancashire, evaded the troops of Lambert and Harrison in Cheshire,
marched through Shropshire, meeting with a rebuff at Shrewsbury, and
entered Worcester with a small, tired and dispirited force of only
16,000 men (22nd of August). Here the decisive battle, which ruined his
hopes, and in which Charles distinguished himself by conspicuous courage
and fortitude, was fought on the 3rd of September. After leading an
unsuccessful cavalry charge against the enemy he fled, about 6 P.M.,
accompanied by Buckingham, Derby, Wilmot, Lauderdale and others, towards
Kidderminster, taking refuge at Whiteladies, about 25 m. from Worcester,
where he separated himself from all his followers except Wilmot,
concealing himself in the famous oak during the 6th of September, moving
subsequently to Boscobel, to Moseley and Bentley Hall, and thence,
disguised as Miss Lane's attendant, to Abbots Leigh near Bristol, to
Trent in Somersetshire, and finally to the George Inn at Brighton,
having been recognized during the forty-one days of his wanderings by
about fifty persons, none of whom, in spite of the reward of L1000
offered for his capture, or of the death penalty threatened for aiding
his concealment, had betrayed him.

He set sail from Shoreham on the 15th of October 1651, and landed at
Fecamp in Normandy the next day. He resided at Paris at St Germain till
June 1654, in inactivity