Unique history book depicts the story of a declined royal rescue plot

An audacious bid to rescue King Charles I from imprisonment in Leeds is among the timeless tales discovered amid the pages of the city's earliest written history.

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Ralph Thoresby's Ducatus Leodiensis is on display until the end of January

The remarkable plot, told for what is believed to be the very first time within the centuries-old text, saw the notorious monarch offered a chance of escape from Red Hall in the city centre in 1647 by donning women's clothes, which he politely declined.

The fascinating story from the days of the English Civil War is relayed in a series of handwritten notes, scrawled in the margins of Leeds Central Library's one-of-a-kind edition of famed historian Ralph Thoresby's Ducatus Leodiensis.

Printed in the mid-1740s, the incredible book will be on display at the library until the end of January.

The lengthy series of unique annotations it contains were added by Thoresby's contemporary and fellow antiquarian Thomas Wilson, and capture what is believed to be the first ever written record of the astonishing historical anecdote.

According to the notes, it was Mrs Crosby, a servant of wool merchant Thomas Metcalf, who offered to provide the disguise to the ill-fated King.

The cunning ruse would then have seen Mrs Crosby lead Charles I out of a garden door in Lands Lane under cover of darkness before leaving Leeds and his captors behind.