The King's Smuggler: Jane Whorwood, Secret Agent to Charles I

by John Fox

Overview

Jane Whorwood (1612 - 1684) was one of Charles I's closest confidantes.

The daughter of Scots courtiers at Whitehall and 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 at least three-quarters of a ton of gold to help pay for his army.

When Charles was held captive by the Parliamentarians, from 1646 to 1649, she organized money, correspondence, several escape attempts, astrological advice and a ship to carry him to Holland. The King and she also had a wartime 'brief encounter'.

After Charles's execution in 1649, Jane's marriage collapsed in one of the most public and acrimonious separation cases of the seventeenth century. Using known and new evidence, John Fox provides the first biography of this extraordinary woman, a forgotten key player in the English Civil War.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780750999403
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	02/01/2023
Edition description:	Second Edition,New edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.08(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

John Fox is an education consultant and former teacher. He has written a number of local history books, contributed fifty history articles to the Oxford Illustrated Encyclopedia and written the new, updated entry for Jane Whorwood in the DNB. He lives near Oxford.