Sir Richard Lane’s Exile And Lost Grave

A year after the failed Peace Treaty negotiations at Uxbridge, Sir Richard Lane (now Lord Keeper) helped negotiate an honorable surrender of the King’s forces in Oxford (King Charles I’s wartime capitol).  Under the generous terms, the soldiers were allowed to march out of Oxford in formation, carrying their arms.  Exchanging a signed oath not to pick up arms against parliament again for passes of safe conduct back to their homes and families, they were free from any prosecution.  But there were some royalists to whom Parliament’s penchant for retribution would only allow a few months of safe passage to make their way out of the country. These exiles risked arrest, prosecution and death for treason if they were ever seen again in England.  Among those specifically named for banishment was the king’s loyal advisor, Sir Richard Lane.

The Army of the West was steadily pushed down the peninsula of Cornwall along with the ragtag royalist refugee community that had consolidated around it.  This community it was finally forced onto ships to escape shortly before the army protecting it surrendered. Dramatically escaping encirclement on the isles of Scilly during a storm, the small fleet and their prince fled to the royalist channel island of Jersey.  There, the beleaguered refugees were welcomed and generously accommodated under the leadership of royalist Sir George Cartaret, Governor of Jersey.  This would be the first of two visits Charles II would make to Jersey—first as a refugee Prince, and years later as an exiled king, plotting to retake his throne by force.  During these years, his impoverished exile council travelled with Charles staying in whatever nearby accommodations they could find while the king without a country lived on the strained accommodation of royal relatives in France.

Shortly after the departure of the exiled King and his entourage at the end of his second visit to Jersey in 1650, Sir Richard Lane fell gravely ill. He was brought back to the Elizabeth Castle in Jersey from St Malo by the king’s brother, the Duke of York in April 1650. He died there two months later.

Intrigued by the tourist-minded possibility of visiting the grave of the author of my 1657 book, I began trying to determine where he was buried. I learned there were 13 parish churches in Jersey, with the parish church of St Helier being the closest to the Elizabeth Castle, .  Soon, I would discover there was no record of his grave—and the records in the local parish church ran back into the 1500’s. But with the assistance of a member of the local historical and scientific society, I learned of an old journal from the period which had been kept by a local man named Jean Chevalier.  With the details I supplied about Sir Richard Lane, the person assisting me reviewed a transcription of that hefty journal and found a surprisingly extensive report of the death and burial of “Milord Quiper”

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