A missal belonging to a Catholic priest who saved the life of Charles II following his defeat in the English Civil War has been acquired for the National Trust.
The book, bearing the signature of Fr John Huddleston, will go on display at a trust property, Moseley Old Hall, near Wolverhampton in Staffordshire, where the priest was chaplain. The two formed a life-long friendship, and Huddleston received Charles into the Catholic Church on his deathbed.
Supporters of the National Trust paid £6,900 for the missal – significantly more than the guide price of £2,000 – in an online auction. It was sold by a Wirral family, one of whose members bought it for sixpence from a Liverpool bookshop in the late 1950s.
Fr Huddleston, a Benedictine priest, lived with the Catholic Whitgreave family, at Moseley Hall, disguised as a servant. They were among Catholics who stayed loyal to the Royalist cause following the execution of Charles I. His son, Charles II, went on the run following his defeat in the Battle of Worcester in 1651. Oliver Cromwell put a price on his head and his Roundheads scoured the area in search of the young king.
Charles fled first to Boscobel House, Shropshire, where he hid in an oak tree in the grounds. The following night he arrived at Moseley Hall with a small group of supporters, entering by a back door that can still be seen today. Huddleston became his constant companion, sheltering him in his first-floor room, which had a view of the approach road and had an escape route via a back staircase. It also had a priest hole, reached by a trap-door beneath the floor of a cupboard, where Charles hid when soldiers turned up at the house. The king is known to have consulted books in Huddleston’s library and it is likely that the missal, dating from 1623, was among them. It is believed that no other books belonging to the priest have appeared on the open market.
Following the restoration, Charles made Huddleston chaplain to his Catholic mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, and later to his Portuguese Catholic wife, Catherine of Braganza. He summoned the priest to his bedside as he lay dying. Fr Huddleston heard the king’s confession, administered the Eucharist and received him into the Catholic Church. According to one account, Charles told Huddleston he had saved his life twice, first his body, then his soul. John Crane of Cato Crane Auctions said it could be “assumed quite comfortably” that the priest had the book with him at this time.
The bed where Charles slept fully clothed is still at Moseley Old Hall. There are portraits of Thomas Whitgreave, the owner of the hall at the time, and of Fr Huddleston. The house’s collection includes a letter the king sent to a young woman, Jane Lane, thanking her for helping him escape to France. Jane risked her life by allowing him to travel with her to Bristol disguised as her servant. After the Restoration, he gave her £1,000, the same sum offered for his capture when he was a fugitive.
The purchase of the missal is evidence of the National Trust’s growing interest in the Catholic history of its properties. In 2020, it commissioned a finger-tip archaeological search under boards in the attic of Oxburgh Hall, a fifteenth century manor house in Norfolk. The house belonged to the Bedingfields, a recusant family, and the search uncovered items used for secret Catholic worship, among them a fragment of a fifteenth century illuminated manuscript, musical scores and a copy of the 1568 edition of The Kynges Psalmes by St John Fisher.
Sarah Kay, Cultural Heritage Curator for the National Trust said: “We are delighted to have been successful in the bidding for the Missal but are still deciding on options for display at Moseley Old Hall and need to assess whether any conservation work will be needed. We will share details of when visitors can see the book, in due course.”
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