It was a dark and rainy night. Nights are
seldom otherwise in England in September. The brothers Penderel, six
of them in all, guided the king along through the darkness and rain,
until they were within a mile or two of the appointed place of meeting,
where the king dismounted, for the purpose of walking the rest of way,
for greater safety, and three of the brothers, taking the horse with
them, returned. The rest went on, and, after delivering the king safely
into the hands of his friends, who were waiting at the appointed place
to receive him, bade his majesty farewell, and, expressing their good
wishes for the safe accomplishment of his escape, they returned to
Boscobel.
They now altered the king's disguise in some degree, to accommodate
the change in his assumed character from that of a peasant of the woods
to a respectable farmer's son, such as would be a suitable traveling
attendant for an English dame, and they gave him the new name of William
Jackson in the place of Will Jones. Mrs. Lane's sister's husband was
to go with them a part of the way, and there was another gentleman and
lady also of the party, so they were five in all.
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