Book description
Jane Whorwood was one of Charles I's closest confidantes. The wife
of an Oxfordshire squire, when the court moved to Oxford in 1642, at
the start of the Civil War, she helped the royalist cause by spying
for the king, and smuggling gold (perhaps as much as 1,000kg) to help
pay for his army. When Charles was held captive by the
Parliamentarians, from 1646 to 1649, she organised money,
correspondence, several escape attempts, astrological advice and a
ship for him. New evidence even suggests that they may have had a
brief affair. After his execution in 1649, Jane's marriage collapsed
in one of the most public and acrimonious cases of the seventeenth
century. John Fox describes the life of this fascinating woman, and
the important role she played in the English Civil War.
