Charles II in Jersey

Another piece from 1966, Jersey Life, this time on the connection with Charles II and Jersey. I would take issue with just one part of it - Jersey, the writer says, was "free from poverty and, in short, flourishing under a benevolent feudal system." As the article only deals with the upper echelons of society, I would rather dispute this. The lot of peasant workers on the land - and these were times of subsistence agriculture - were never exactly free from poverty.

Charles II in Jersey
By Robert Innes Smith

When the axe fell. upon the neck of Charles I in 1649, his son, the Prince of Wales, at once became de jure King of England and Scotland, and Duke of Normandy, though of course it was eleven years before he returned to England, to the accompaniment of pealing bells and rejoicing people to become dc facto monarch. called back by a country heartily sick of an abortive experiment in republicanism and of the rule of that tyrannical Bible-thumping hypocrite Oliver Cromwell.

Though Charles was King in 1649, it was an estate in name only. In fact he was a penniless hanger-on at the Courts of Europe, begging money where he could to support his meagre requirements and those of his faithful followers and hoping for an insurrection at home to enable him to return to his rightful patrimony. Poor Charles spent most of his life moving from pillar to post and the death of his father simply changed his potential status rather than his physical circumstances.

We have to go back in time to February 1646. The Civil War was at its height and things were going badly for King Charles. His son, the Prince. was then not quite sixteen years of age in command of his own troops in the West Country and had just been approached by Fairfax, the Roundhead general, to acknowledge Parliament and accept the Throne as Cromwell‘s puppet in place of his father. How much the Puritans underestimated the integrity and honour of the boy-prince even to contemplate such an offer!

The Royalist troops were meantime being pushed further west and Fairfax advanced rapidly, taking several towns. The Prince and a few battered remnants of his troops were sweating it out in Truro. Fairfax would be upon them at any minute and Charles would be taken. There was only one course left—flight. They made hastily for Penzance and sailed for the Isles of Scilly and safety.

For a month the Prince and his followers remained at St. Mary‘s, living in the tumble-down castle there. The weather was bad and the building was far from wind and water tight. There was never enough to eat and the islanders seemed little more than animals living close to the soil on a starvation: diet.

After a month of this miserable existence rebel ships were seen off the coast and it was decided to make for Jersey as soon as possible.

On the 16th April, I646. The Proud Black Eagle, a frigate carrying the Prince and his little Court, dropped anchor in St. Aubyn's Bay. The passengers disembarked gloomily, fully expecting a similar state of affairs as existed at St. Mary’s. They were happily proved completely wrong. Jersey at that time was a well-organised island, financially sound, free rom poverty and, in short, flourishing under a benevolent feudal system. Above all. the inhabitants were wholly loyal to the Crown. They welcomed the son and heir of the Duke of Normandy as their natural leader and the Prince was made welcome in the fine old manor houses of the island’s historic and highly civilised gentry.

The seven weeks which Charla spent in Jersey were comfortable ones during which, for a short dream-like period, he played at being a Prince. He attended church in St. Helier in state, reviewed the island‘s troops, visited Colonel Carteret at Mont Orgueil Castle and knighted him, held levees, was saluted by cannon, attended balls given by the local seigneurs and generally made himself agreeable to the ladies of the island by his fine manners.

The Charade did not last long. With this taste of kingship on a small scale, he suddenly realised that he was wasting his time. He must get away and fight his father’s holy war against heresy and hypocrisy. Was his father not King by Divine Right? Was he not his father‘s heir? Prince Charles became restless and eventually bored. But what was the next move to be? The adolescent Prince listened to the arguments in the Council Chamber of Elizabeth Castle between his courtiers and advisers, Hyde and Colepepper, Wentworth and Wilmot, Jermyn and Digby. Was he to remain in Jersey and risk invasion or go to France to his mother and probably get help from Cardinal Mazarin?

The objections to the latter course were that once abroad he would be ‘a foreigner and a beggar‘ to use Hyde‘s own words, and also that he would be persuaded by his mother, the Queen, to attend Mass. If he stayed in Jersey he would at least still be in his father’s kingdom and reasonably comfortable and safe.

But to a youth of Charles’s mettle the safe course was not for him. There was a cause to be fought for and won and even though a further fourteen years of wandering and humiliation were in store for him, he could not have foreseen this and in any case Henrietta Maria wanted him at the Court of St. Germain, where she was living as an exile. The courtiers wrangled on, most of them being against his going to France. But in the end, after hearing their arguments in silence, he made up his own mind and announced that he would sail for France at the earliest opportunity. This meant weather permitting.

For four days the young Prince waited with his boat at the ready, but the wind was against him. At last on the following day conditions were a little more favourable and the dark little figure walked away from the crowd at the quay, many of whom were weeping, to board the boat. He looked back to wave at the kindly gentlemen. and their ladies and the humbler people who had treated him in a manner fit for a man born to be king. The sails unfurled and soon the reddish rugged coastline receded into the distance and the Prince of Wales looked his last on the one corner of his father's kingdom which was one hundred per cent loyal to the descendant of the Norman overlords of the Channel Islands. ‘

A mere seven months and more than three centuries ago, yet still the future Charles II is remembered here. In the museum at St. Helier is a tangible reminder of the royal visitor—a somewhat diminutive suit which he wore while staying here. Looking at this faded garment the gulf of time is suddenly bridged and one can easily see in the mind’s eye the swarthy youth with his courtly manners and Continental charm.

The way before him was to be long and arduous and his life, until the Restoration, was to be something of a rough and tumble. He was to become the first English king with the common touch—- how else could it be when he was to spend so much time disguised as a servant and in the company of simple country people?

But in all that long haul which led at last to his rightful throne, Charles always remembered Jersey as the one civilised interlude during which the islanders gave him the warmth of their hearts and their hearths, and for a brief moment let him know what it was to be a Royal Prince.