View over southwest Dorset from Pilsdon Pen, its highest point.

The reign of Charles I (1625-49) was initially meant to be one of greater toleration, though he was soon found himself married off to a Catholic princess who would prove less tolerant. Charles's original idea was to have a civilised court by European standards, and some church-based literature flourished, as did the 'Cavalier' school of poetry. Emma Marshall's 1889 Under Salisbury Spire In The Days Of George Herbert is built around the 1613-33 career of the Welsh poet and orator who became an MP and priest serving 3 years in a parish on the outskirts of Salisbury before dying of TB; his posthumously published poetry volume The Temple was influential in its time, some poems becoming standard hymns. Among the developing school of “Cavalier Poets,” a local example was John Clavel [1603-42] the Highwayman Poet, who was from a Dorset family. Clavel Tower in the Purbeck would be the best known memorial of the family name in posterity would be , a scenic clifftop folly built later on by the family on its clifftop estate, which became a favourite of Thomas Hardy. In 1627 Clavel published a verse account of his life while awaiting execution for robbery, before being pardoned by Charles I due to his family connections, with the royal command he publish his poem as a recantation. As well as the resulting A Recantation of an Ill Led Life [partly online here], he wrote a play, The Soddered Citizen.

While academic texts usually disdain the 1651 episode as romanticism, and slight it accordingly, Lady Antonia Fraser's 1979 King Charles II is a notable recent example (in paperback) of general biography of the king which incorporates the escape. There is also Charles The Second, King Of England, Scotland And Ireland (1989), by Prof Ronald Hutton of Bristol U. The latest biography of Charles is Jenny Uglow's A Gambling Man: Charles II And The Restoration, 2009. In a sense there is no escaping the story, the primary example of this phenomena, yet it is perhaps fortunate it has come down to us in this fashion, for like many a real-life adventure, the twists and turns of the story would be too incredible for fiction or drama unsupported. As Antonia Fraser says, the true story is as exciting as any fictional version.
As the novel as a literary form scarcely existed in 1660, the first novels covering the escape only date from the early 19C, when Sir Walter Scott first popularised the historical novel genre. Nield's 1929 Guide To The Best Historical Novels cites as the earliest accurate historical-novel version Boscobel (1872) by prolific Victorian novelist W. Harrison Ainsworth (1805-82), which covers the various Dorset adventures and ends after the party arrive at Stonehenge. Though out of print, it is available online as a downloadable PDF, here.
(Nonfiction studies by historians compiling these various as-told-to accounts into printed books began after this, e.g. Allan Fea's The Flight Of The King, 1897.) Nield's 5th edition of his Guide [1929] also mentions a few early 20th-C. novels: Edith E. Cowper's juvenile novel The King's Double (1915), set in Melbury, Sherborne, Bridport etc. in 1651. He also recommends another juvenile novel, Margaret Stuart Lane's The Wild Bird (1926), whose title is the nickname of a girl living in "Langbedding" between Lyme and Charmouth during Charles's escape. The 1919 A Nest Of Malignants by historical novelist Dorothea Moore (1880-1933) is partly set during Charles's flight across southeast Wiltshire. The 1932 Borrowed Names by Elspeth M Briggs (1902-61) is set locally in the 1650s. Since Nield's Guide ended, there has been Georgette Heyer's 1938 costume romance Royal Escape, which is based on historical research, covers the entire itinerary, and is the best-known example. The 1651 escape episode also features in other examples of the less historical genre of adult romantic novels loosely called Regency Romances (the Regency period is actually c1800). Barbara Cartland's 1949 romance Cupid Rides Pillion begins with Charles's being helped to escape the pursuing Roundheads. In Anne Wakefield Madden's 1976 Edge Of Danger, set in "Queen's Mead" Dorset 1651, the "spirited" young heroine helps not the Prince but a young Cavalier supporter.
The other genre that continued to cover the escape have been novels written for the Young Adult market. Barbara Softly's 1962 Place Mill is set around Christchurch's mediaeval mill in 1651, while Charles II is on the run in Dorset. There were also adaptations for radio for the schools age group. 'David Scott Daniell' (Albert Scott Daniell, 1906-1965) was a prolific writer for radio who lived near Bridport and in 1939 wrote for BBC Radio 'Children's Hour' a 4-part series about the 1651 escape, which is presumably the basis of his 1958 YA novel, reprinted in 1962 as a Puffin paperback, Hunt Royal, which comes with a useful route map.
There have also been stage plays and films. Harry Ashley's miscellany Dorset Yarns notes that comic aspects of the escape (perhaps we should say escapade) has provided the basis for Aldwych farces (i.e. stage plays of Ben Travers' Aldwych Theatre school of farce) and Carry On films. Dennis Wheatley, who wrote a 1933 biography of Charles II, Old Rowley, before he became an occult-thriller writer (and longtime local resident at Lymington), said “the Flight of the King” would make “the greatest epic of escape in history.” He may have been prompted by the 1930 biography King Charles II by the Salisbury-resident popular historian Sir Arthur Bryant, who begins his story in medias res with Charles's 1651 escape in progress, the rest of the story told as what we now call flashbacks; it's claimed that this approach made it more accessible and a US Book Society choice and a bestseller. Wheatley's suggestion however was never seriously taken up, and subsequent films have focused on his cavalier helpers, who in real life did risk all to help Charles escape but in novels are usually fictional in all but name.
Charles plays a minor role in the 1958 Technicolor swashbuckler The Moonraker, from a play by former film censor Arthur Watkyn, about the “last Cavalier” (played by George Baker) who is arranging an escape rendezvous for Charles at the Windwhistle Inn “on the Bridport road.” The play was mainly set at this inn, but was opened-out for filming, with an intro shot at Stonehenge, a town scene shot at Lacock preserved village [NT], and after the inn sequence, a swordfight finale atop Stair Hole rock-arch at Lulworth. (See inset opposite for pictures and further details.) In 1988, Barbara Cartland's Cupid Rides Pillion was filmed tongue-in-cheek as The Lady And The Highwayman; the only relic of historical fact in this otherwise unrelated costume romance is the helping-Charles-elude-the-Roundheads opening scene, which is shot locally and quite distinctly in Dorset, though at the Purbeck rather than western end. Here, a fresh-faced young Hugh Grant as the Silver Blade helps Michael York as Charles escape the Roundheads via a diversion into Winspit Quarry caves! There was also a 2010 Radio 4 play by TV dramatist Ian Curteis, Boscobel, on the king's journey as a personal learning curve, though it almost stops short of the Dorset episode, only including the brouhaha at the west Dorset inn where an illegitimate baby's birth allows Charles & co to escape the Roundheads there.

Modern Literary & Dramatic Works Set In The Restoration Era
In terms of more recent works, there are any number of historical novels, mainly romances, covering the Great Plague and Fire of London, and portraying Charles as the Merry Monarch (playing cards while surrounded by spaniels, cavorting with Nell Gwynn etc), but these seem all London-centred, with no local setting. The local area has been used as a filming location for a number of works set geographically elsewhere, including the film version of the Rose Tremain novel Restoration, a large-budget extravaganza made for the British Film Centenary 1996 (with Sam Neill as Charles, in a supporting role); this is not set locally story-wise, but uses two Dorset locales: Forde Abbey [N of Lyme], and Mapperton Gardens in west Dorset.
The 2005 film The Libertine, from the 1994 Stephen Jeffreys play, with Johnny Depp as the debauched 2nd Earl of Rochester and John Malkovich as Charles II, was shot partly at Montacute House, Somerset, which portrayed Rochester's country seat. The 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) was the son of Charles's 1651 helper Col. Wilmot, who he had rewarded with a peerage. The son became a noted poet, wit and rake whose admirers would include Defoe, Voltaire, Hazlitt Tennyson, and Goethe. In the play and film, he is banished from court for writing a scurrilous satire (spelt Satyre as a pun on satyr) on Charles II. (“I handed you a chance to show your shining talent and what do you give me in return? A pornographic representation of a royal court where the men only deal in buggery and the women's sole object of interest is the dildo!”) Charles nevertheless tries to enlist his help as a propagandist in his political schemes. This may have been because it was Rochester who composed the lines which became the definitive quote about Charles: "He never said a foolish thing, nor ever did a wise one." (There are actually several versions; the one supposedly inscribed on Charles's bedchamber door is: “Here lies our sovereign lord the king, / Whose word no man relies on; / He never says a foolish thing, / Nor ever does a wise one.”) Charles rejoined that this was true as his words were his own, but his actions were those of his ministers. (This is included in the BBC 2003 drama Charles II.) The lines would become Charles's epitaph.

Works covering a regnal era naturally focus on the personal rise and fall of the monarch, but the real story of Charles's reign was so much more complex than his Merry Monarch popular image. The era was so complicated by religious politics that it is only recently we have had a dramatization that tries to deal with this. The 4-hour 2003 BBC TV drama Charles II: The Power And The Passion does not have any local settings, but it and the accompanying documentary material on the DVD, provide useful background for understanding the context of other more limited works. The BBC's 4-part drama, scripted by Adrian Hodges and directed by Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement), with Rufus Sewell as Charles II, covers the entire Restoration Era. (North American readers should note the US version, inanely retitled "The Last King," lost nearly an hour of scenes, the original 235 minutes cut down to fit two 2-hour slots with commercials.) Its revisionist approach portrays Charles not as a witty "Merry Monarch" in a court of learned men, but as a man surrounded by women who make his life miserable until they get their way - whether it is money, titles, or the persecution of Catholics. (The infamous libertine the Earl of Rochester makes a cameo appearance with his famous quote about the king, soon after Nell Gwynn appears.) The drama, opening in 1660, does not cover the 1651 escape. However on the DVD, the accompanying documentary The Boy Who Would Be King features biographers and TV-presenter historians discussing his earlier life, with the 1651 escape covered by a mix of re-enactment and present-day visits (Michael Palin trying out a “priests hole” hideaway), though again stopping short of Dorset locales.
Stephen Coote's 2008 biography Royal Survivor says that despite the witty Merry Monarch image, Charles after his return was often silent and withdrawn. This is scarcely surprising under the circumstances. His 40 days and nights in the wilderness must have been an eye-opener as well as continual nervous strain. It's the classic story of the king going out in his own kingdom to learn a few home truths, but little seems to have been with this dramatically. The 2008 Radio 4 radio play Boscobel by distinguished TV dramatist Ian Curteis did focus on the prince's cross-country journey as something of a learning experience, though it ends almost as soon as he reaches Dorset.

The youthful Charles had been tutored in exile by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), the Wiltshire-born author of the 1651 key political-philosophy tract Leviathan, with its famous quote about life for most people being solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Actually Hobbes said it would be so, were it not for the political class imposing order on chaos (i.e. civil war) - best done, he argued, via absolute monarchy. Somewhat ironically, Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, with its dramatic cover [pictured right] and arguments for a 'social contract,' so alarmed the royalists Hobbes lived in exile amongst in Paris that he fled, seeking the protection of the Puritan government in London. This confusion was typical of the time, when open arguments about (in this case, against) any separation of powers between monarchy, civil state and Established (i.e. official, meaning Anglican) church were new to people, and complicated by existing dogmatic Catholic v Protestant tenets and hatreds.
These issues were to come to a head when Charles died in 1685, and his pro-Catholic brother James assumed the crown. Attempts by Protestant forces to remove James II began the first months of his reign, with the short-lived, disastrous Monmouth Rising, whose principal events occurred in this region, from the Duke of Monmouth's landing at Lyme Regis in June 1685 to his post-defeat flight eastward across Dorset.

The Rising's grisly aftermath, the summary trials around the south-west known as the Bloody Assizes, has long attracted novelists. For James II's Chief Justice, Baron Jeffreys, was a persecutor so rabid he could have been a villain straight out of a costume melodrama, letting his religious prejudice guide his conduct. (“Show me a Presbyterian and I'll show thee a lying knave.”) He condemned hundreds at his 'Bloody Assizes' held in Dorchester and elsewhere. Dozens who pleaded guilty were hanged, drawn and quartered, often on no more evidence than being reported away from their work during the rising. Their heads were stuck by Jeffreys' order on poles all around the County as a warning.
Others who accepted Judge Jeffrey's 'advice' to plead guilty were given clemency and merely shipped off to the West Indies as slave labour (as happens to Dr Peter Blood at the start of Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood). Jeffreys's first victim was actually a 67 year old local widow, Dame Alice Lisle of Moyles Court manor near Ringwood, whom Jeffreys ordered to be immediately burnt for sheltering two fugitives, a sentence James commuted to public beheading at Winchester. Her story is novelised in Gladys Murdoch's 1914 Winchester-set Mistress Charity Godolphin. The 1985 novel A Head On My Shoulders by a 20C resident of Moyles Court [later a school], Vesper Hunter, is a diary-style novel set in 1674, covering Alice Lisle's earlier life, after her husband was assassinated for being one of those who had signed Charles I's death warrant. She is also a character (with some dramatic license taken) in the “Alice” chapter of Edward Rutherfurd's ages-spanning 2000 novel The Forest (Moyles Court being on the western edge of the New Forest), which also has earlier-set scenes with the king hunting in the adjacent forest.