Charles was greeted by a tumultuous welcome from the vast crowds gathered
on the beach and a salute was fired from the guns of the Castle.
This acclamation must have, in some part, been due to a feeling of relief
at the prospect of having once more a King and settled government after
the turmoil of the Civil War. The King must have been greatly moved by
the welcome he received, as letters which he wrote afterwards show. The
diarist Samuel Pepys was in the King’s
entourage and described the event, and an extract from the Dover Corporation
Records gives some further details of this historic scene:
“Memorandum. - That the 25th May, 1660, the King arrived
in Dover Roads from Holland with twenty sail of His Majesty’s great ships
and frigates, the Right Hon. Edward Lord Montague being General, and landed
the same day being attended by His Excellency the Lord General Monck who
first met His Majesty upon the bridge let into the sea for His Majesty’s
more safe and convenient landing, and at His Majesty’s coming from the
bridge, the Mayor of this Town, Thomas Broome, Esq., made a speech to
His Majesty upon his knees, and Mr. John Reading, Minister of the Gospel,
presented His Majesty with the Holy Bible as a gift from this town, and
Mr. Reading thereupon made a speech likewise to His Majesty and His Gracious
Majesty laying his hand upon his breast , told Mr. Mayor nothing would
be more dear to him than the Bible. His Excellency the Lord General was
accompanied with the Earl of Winchelsea and a great number of nobility
and gentry of England and his life guard all most richly accoutred.”
King Charles II was to keep magnificent Court at Dover
Castle ten years later, when , in 1670, a secret treaty was negotiated
with the French King Louis XIV. The signing took place under the cover
of a State Visit by Charles’s sister Henriette, Duchess of Orleans, who
had been at the heart of the negotiations. Charles was so anxious to meet
his sister, whom he had not seen for nine years, that he arrived far to
early at Dover. Then he returned to London and embarked on a ship with
the intention of meeting her mid-Channel, but the winds were unfavourable.
Instead he went to Dover by road and greeted the French fleet from his
royal barge. As the King was accompanied by a large entourage of courtiers
and as Henritette had with her courtiers, and members of her own household
numbering 250, the available accommodation was rather strained. However
there were ample balls, concerts, plays and other festivities sufficient
to camouflage the signing of a secret treaty during the King’s two week
stay at the Castle.
Charles II landing at Dover. 25 May, 1660.
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