On somewhat better authority,[1] it rests that the unhappy Charles I., on the 18th of November, 1647, outwitted by his enemies and deceived by his friends, entrusted himself, after his flight from Hampton Court, to Colonel Hammond, and, embarking here, returned by Hurst to atone for the past by his life.
But of greater interest is the Roman Road which connected Leap with Southampton and Winchester in one direction, and Ringwood and the west in another. Its traces may be found not only here but on the opposite side, where, still known by the Norman name of Rue Street, it passes westward of Carisbrook to the extreme south of the Island. Its old appellation is preserved, too, on this side in the name of a farmhouse—King's Rue, and Rue Copse, and Rue Common; and it is well worthy of notice that this word is even now sometimes used in the Forest, as in Sussex, for a row or hedgerow. The road, however, can still tell us something of the past. The opinion of late philologists and geographers, with the exception of Lappenburg and Sir G. C. Lewis, has been against the idea that the
- ↑ I believe on that of the Oglander MSS. in the possession of the Earl of Yarborough, but which I have never seen. Neither the Iter Carolinum, Herbert's Memoirs (London, 1572, p. 38), Huntington's account (same volume, p. 160), Berkeley's Memoirs (second edition, 1702, p. 65), The Ashbumham Narrative (London, 1830, vol. ii. p. 119), nor Whalley's letter in Peck's Desiderata Curiosa (tom, ii., lib. ix, pp. 374, 375), nor Hammond's, in Rushworth's Collection (part iv., vol. ii., p. 874), mention the place, though the latter would seem to indicate that the King sailed direct from Tichfield to Cowes. Ashburnham and Berkeley had, we know from Berkeley (Memoirs, same edition as before, p. 57) and Ludlow (Memoirs, 1771, p. 93), previously gone by Lymington to the Island.
canum. Bouquet. Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, tom, xviii. p. 113 C), nor the Chronicon Turonense (in the Veterum Scriptorum Amplissima Collectio of Marténe and Durand, tom. v. p. 1059 B), nor Rymer's Foedera ("De salvo conductu Domini Ludovici," tom. i. p. 222), say anything of the place of embarkation.
