Linnaeus Clancharlie’s voluntary exile begins with a political refusal: after the Restoration, he would not swear allegiance to the returning monarchy, though doing so could have restored his place among England’s peers. He turned away from the public celebration of the new order and spent his remaining years in Switzerland, faithful to the republic that had fallen.

Political allegiance and the Restoration

A contemporary of Oliver Cromwell, Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie was among the few peers who accepted the republic. The narration allows that he may have supported it while it was triumphant, since its ascendancy made adherence expedient. Yet his conduct after the parliamentary government fell complicates that explanation: he persisted in his fidelity to the defeated republic rather than treating its defeat as a reason to change sides.

The Restoration offered him a clear route back. Repentance was welcomed, Charles II was described as kindly disposed toward those who returned to their allegiance, and taking the oath to the king would have sufficed for peers to resume their seats in the House of Lords. Clancharlie could have joined those who adapted to the new regime, among them men such as Monk and Jeffreys, who were rewarded with powerful and lucrative appointments. Instead, he rejected the available return to rank and honor.

The choice of exile

Clancharlie’s refusal came amid a public mood of acclamation for the monarchy. The nation welcomed the king, the dynasty rose again, and the return of prince and people was presented as a reconciliation. The narrator emphasizes the force of that consensus: at the very moment when the past appeared to become the future, Clancharlie turned his head from the celebration. Where he could have been a peer, he preferred to be an outlaw, and he voluntarily left his country.

The decision became a lasting commitment rather than a brief gesture. Years passed; Clancharlie grew old in fidelity to the dead republic. The narration calls the ridicule directed at him the natural reward of his folly, exposing the social judgment attached to a loyalty that had outlived its political cause. His exile thus separates not only a man from his country but also his private allegiance from the public account of what counted as sensible or honorable conduct.

Exile in Switzerland

Clancharlie settled in Switzerland in a dwelling described as a kind of lofty ruin on the shore of Lake Geneva. He chose a rugged, remote stretch between Chillon and Vevey, near the tomb of Ludlow. The Alps enclosed the place with twilight, wind, and clouds; he lived in the shadows cast by the mountains, rarely encountered by passersby. The setting makes his political separation visible as physical isolation: he was outside his country and, in the narrator’s phrase, almost outside his century.

The contrast was sharpened by reports of England’s apparent prosperity under Charles II. The king was admired as amiable and able to govern; returning peers had resumed their seats, and London was described as full of banquets and carousals. Against this spectacle, Clancharlie appears in plain clothing like that of the common people, pale, absent-minded, and bent toward the grave, walking near the lake in winter and scarcely heeding the storm. His solitary figure stands apart from the Restoration’s confidence and celebration.

Narrative significance

The account presents exile as both a political consequence and a test of constancy. Clancharlie’s initial acceptance of the republic may be explained as accommodation to its power, but his continued loyalty after its fall resists a purely opportunistic reading. His choice also reverses the usual measure of success: he relinquishes peerage, country, and the rewards available to royal loyalists, while the triumphant public treats that refusal as folly. The remote lakeside life gives lasting form to the conflict between an individual’s fidelity and a society eager to regard the restored order as settled and universally welcome.