Jane Lane, Lady Fisher

Jane Lane was a Staffordshire gentlewoman who helped Charles II escape after the royalist defeat at Worcester in 1651. Because she possessed a military pass to travel to Somerset, Charles disguised himself as her servant and rode with her across country. Jane later fled to exile when her role became known and returned after the Restoration, receiving royal gifts and a pension. Her family preserved accounts and objects connected with the escape.

Jane appears in Robert Harris’s Act of Oblivion and in many novels and retellings of Charles II’s flight. Fiction often gives her the practical competence required to coach a king in the behaviour of a servant while moving through hostile territory. The episode provides both adventure and an unusual reversal of social rank, although later royalist memory polished its details into legend.

Georgette Heyer’s Royal Escape is set after defeat at the Battle of Worcester in 1651. The future Charles II must cross a country controlled by the Commonwealth while Parliament’s forces search for him.