A HISTORIC house near Bridport where King Charles II is said to have stayed on his flight from Cromwell's Roundheads is up for sale for £350,000.

King Charles Cottage, in Broadwindsor, is so named because it is said to have been where he spent a night on the run after the Battle of Worcester.

The 21-year-old was fleeing from Oliver Cromwell's army for six weeks in 1651 with a reward of £1,000 on his head.

His flight came after his father, Charles I, was executed in 1649 and as the civil war between the Parliamentarians and the Royalists neared its end.

A stone tablet inset in the front wall of the Grade II listed stone cottage states King Charles II slept here September 23-24, 1651'.

King Charles Cottage was once part of the old Castle Inn, where Charles and his party spent the night.

They had narrowly avoided arrest at Bridport and were trying to make their way back to safety of Trent, near Sherborne.

The innkeeper at the Castle, Rice Jones, was a staunch Royalist and put the runaway king up for the night in a room at the top of the house.

The group was settling in for a peaceful night when a regiment of Roundheads marched into the village on their way to the coast and demanded billets at the inn.

Every empty room in the building was requisitioned and the King's party was effectively cut off on the top floor.

The party looked cornered - until one of the women troop-followers decided to give birth on the kitchen floor of the inn.

The event brought the constable and overseer of the poor to the inn in the middle of the night, anxious that the brat' might not be left in the charge of the parish by the Roundheads.

The King, with yet another sleepless night behind him, awaited the departure of the first light next morning before making good his own escape from west Dorset.

The inn is now divided into two homes - and it is on the front wall of King Charles Cottage that the plaque was put up in 1902.

Charles was forced into exile when Parliament won the civil war and Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector.

With the fall of the Protectorate in 1659, Charles returned and became king.