1. Colonel William Careless was a Royalist officer of the English Civil War.
21 Facts About William Careless
1. 2.
William Careless was the second son of John Careless of Broom Hall, Brewood, Staffordshire, and his wife Ellen Fluit.
3.
William Careless is chiefly remembered as the companion of King Charles II when the fugitive monarch hid in the Royal Oak following his defeat at the Battle of Worcester.
4.
William Careless's surname was changed to Carlos, the Spanish for Charles, by order of Charles II.
5.
William Careless appears to have rejoined his regiment to take part in Prince Rupert's campaign to relieve the siege of York.
6.
William Careless returned to England in or before 1650, and spent nine months in and around his home in Brewood before taking up arms in the Royalist cause.
7.
William Careless joined the king with a small force, described as a regiment of horse, as he advanced on Worcester and fought as a major under Lord Talbot at the Battle of Worcester.
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Grinling Gibbons 8.
William Careless fought to the end, covering the King's flight alongside a handful of others including the Earl of Cleveland, Sir James Hamilton, Colonel Thomas Wogan and Captains Hornyhold, Giffard, and Kemble.
9.
William Careless reputedly witnessed the death of the last man to be killed in the battle.
10.
William Careless, who was a local man, suggested that the house was unsafe and recommended that the king hide in a large pollarded oak tree in the woodlands of Boscobel.
11.
The king and William Careless took some food and drink into the tree and were gratified that Parliamentarian soldiers searched the woodland intensively without detecting them.
12.
William Careless escaped England independently of King Charles, fleeing to France; he was the first person to inform Charles' sister, Mary, Princess of Orange, of her brother's safety.
13.
William Careless served with his regiment at the Battle of the Dunes, near Dunkirk; this battle was fought between a Spanish army, with an allied British Royalist force commanded by the Duke of York, and a French army with Cromwellian English allies.
14.
William Careless returned to England with Charles II in 1660, and after the Restoration Careless was granted the lucrative proceeds of tax on hay and straw brought into London and Westminster, the right to sell ballast to shipping on the Thames and the office of inspector of livery horsekeepers.
15.
William Careless was made a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber in 1666.
16.
William Careless married the sister of Sampson Fox, who was a trooper under his command, and a Roman Catholic.
17.
William Careless was separated from his father during the battle and made his way to London.
18.
The Careless family of Brewood lost most of their land and social prominence in the 1720s when Charles Carlos, the eldest son of the Edward adopted by Colonel William Careless, squandered his inheritance.
19.
In 2013 a memorial plaque to William Careless was attached to the base of a statue of Charles II, by Grinling Gibbons, in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea.
20.
However, of the payment, from the various sources of income bestowed by Charles II, which was granted to the descendants of the heirs of William Careless some was suspended by the British government in 1822, and the remainder early in the 20th century.
21.
William Careless appears as a very prominent character in the novel Boscobel or the Royal Oak: A Tale of the Year 1651 by William Harrison Ainsworth, first published in 1872.