“Dame Joan was the wife of William Penderell, one of the five
brethren who, at the time of the King’s escape, lived at Boscobel,
then rather a new house. In the ‘Harleian Miscellany’ (8vo., edit.
1810, vol. vi., p. 251) it will be seen that William’s wife ‘stripped
off the stockings, cut the blisters, and washed the feet of the
King,’ after his night’s march from Madeley, in company with Richard
Penderell (p. 251), and that whilst the King and Colonel Carless were
in the oak, William and his wife Joan were on the watch, still
freaking up and down, and she commonly near the place with a nut hook
in her hand, gathering up sticks (p. 252), and when Charles awoke
from his nap in the oak, ‘very hungary,’ and wished he had something
to eat, the Colonel plucked out of his pocket a good luncheon of
bread and cheese, which Joan Penderell had given him for provant that
day.”