The "Royal Oak"

It's amazing what you can find on the internet! With nothing more than the quizzical little rhyme "The royal oak, it was the tree that saved his royal majesty," [see "R" in the rhyming alphabet] I typed in "British king oak tree," and this is what I got:

The Royal Oak is the name given to the oak tree within which King Charles II of England hid to escape the Roundheads following the Battle of Worcester in 1651. The tree was located in Boscobel Wood, which was part of the park of Boscobel House. Charles confirmed to Samuel Pepys in 1680 that while he was hiding in the tree, a Parliamentarian soldier passed directly below it. The story was popular after the Restoration; numerous large dishes painted in slip with the Boscobel Oak, supported by the Lion and Unicorn, with the king's face peeping from the branches were made by the Staffordshire potter Thomas Toft.[1]

Read the rest of the story on wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Oak.

When the primer first came out, of course, the colonialists were still British subjects, but by the time of the 1805 edition, which is where I got this one from, they were independent--but obviously still strong connected.