Gunmen, Gallants and Ghosts

by Dennis Wheatley

  The epic closes with a fair wind, and the rising sun gilding the sails of the tall ship as it stand out to sea—and we may be certain that when the news of Charles’s safe arrival at Féconamp was spread abroad, many a dust-encrusted bottle was opened and many a cup of good ale drawn, that stout hearts in England might drink—’A Health unto His Majesty’.

  CHAPTER III

  Arrived in France his ‘miraculous preservation’ was a nine days’ wonder. The Court came out before the gates of Paris to welcome him, and pressed for a recital of his adventures; but Charles would only shake his close-cropped head; nothing would induce him to compromise those friends who had proved so loyal in his hour of need.

  The excitement died away and the King was faced with stark reality. He was an exile once more, the unwelcome guest of a power upon whose hospitality he could hardly count from week to week, his pockets empty, and even his mother, at their first supper together on the night of his return, told him that he must pay for his board at her table, beginning with that evening.

  Hyde rejoined him, and, as Chancellor of a hypothetical Exchequer, entered into a tireless correspondence with every party, state, and person likely to aid the broken fortunes of his master. Hyde’s task was no easy one for he was faced with jealousies and difficulties on every side; Presbyterian oligarchs and Catholic fanatics alike tried to intrigue the King into dangerous understandings, but Charles’s faith in his Minister was never shaken, and through the long years the Chancellor, English and Anglican to the backbone, stuck doggedly to the policy of his first declaration that ‘It must be the resurrection of English courage and loyalty that alone should recover England for the King.’

  Ormonde, that splendid loyalist, ever filled with generous common sense, and a man after Charles’s own heart, was also with him, and Bristol, erratic, uncertain, but enthusiastic. Henry Bennet, later to become Earl of Arlington, and the King’s best friend, was dispatched on an embassy to Spain, but Wilmot and Jermyn remained in Paris, the former bluff and downright, aching to draw his sword again, the latter sleek and pompous, the only prosperous member of the party, head of the Queen Mother Henrietta’s household and, many said, her lover.

  That winter the Court of France was faced with its own troubles. The young King Louis had to be smuggled out of a rebellious Paris to St. Germain, from whence he conducted a war upon his haughty nobles, the leaders of the Fronde. Charles was left destitute in Paris and forced to secure his meals on credit at a tavern, yet despite his privations he kept cheerful—heartening and encouraging his down-at-heels retainers so that the gay Lord Taaffe said of him: ‘May I never drink wine if I had not rather live at six sous a day with him, than have all the blessings of this world without him.’

  Threadbare and penniless he might be, but nothing could rob him of his power to derive joy from simple things, a christening, a dog-fight, a good bottle of wine, and a perpetual delight in the conversation of every variety of human being. In addition there were plenty of fair ladies who were happy to have this handsome and amusing young man as their lover for his charm alone. Lady Byron is mentioned about this time as his seventeenth mistress, yet for policy’s sake he entered upon more serious affairs, and at his mother’s behest paid court to the greatest heiress in France, ‘La Grande Mademoiselle’. This fiery and high-nosed princess would have none of him, however, and set her cap at higher game in the person of the young Louis, whereupon Charles, to his intense relief, became free to consote himself more than somewhat with her lovely maid of honour, the Duchess de Chatillon.

  In ’53, the hopes of the Royalists rose with a sudden bound at the news of Cromwell’s forcible ejection of the Rump, but nothing came of it. A jester chalked upon the ancient doors at Westminster, ‘This House to Let Unfurnished’, and the usurper, setting himself up in the place of Parliament, became more absolute master of Britain than before.

  In ’54, Charles escaped from his ever-mounting debts in Paris to the friendly city of Cologne, but while he danced to German fiddles or took his exercise upon the ramparts, the industrious Hyde ever kept him informed of all affairs in England.

  Then, in ‘55, it seemed that the turn of the tide had really come. Cromwell had declared that all Christians were to be suffered except ‘Papists, Prelatists, and teachers of Lewdness’, yet the last, like the charge of ‘Conduct Unbecoming’ against an officer in the Army, could be made to serve a very great variety of purposes. The churches were put up to let, the cathedrals ordered to be pulled down, and while the hammers of the Puritans smashed the lovely old stained glass, the sickles of the tax-gatherers cut to the financial roots of the country, ham-stringing commerce and argriculture alike to provide for the upkeep of the ferocious Army.

  England was ripe for an attempt to throw off the yoke. Wilmot was sent secretly to London, Ormonde declared himself ‘ready to try for hanging’. By night and day, swift couriers sped between the waiting exiles and their friends at home.

  In February, Cromwell’s spies reported Charles’s sudden disappearance from Cologne, and only after weeks of anxious search found him again pacing the sand-dunes of Middleburg, straining his eyes across the sea and ready instantly to act upon the message that should bid him start on another attempt to regain his throne.

  The message never came. Cromwell’s agents, tireless and ubiquitous, enabled him to arrest the ringleaders and forestall the Royalist plans. Colonel Penruddock alone was able to raise his followers in Wiltshire, and he was speedily defeated. England was divided into ten Military Districts, each under a Major-General. Royalist suspects and sympathiseres were arrested by the score and transported for life to the slavery of the American plantations. Charles, downcast and penniless, retraced his steps to Cologne.

  The English Government was now at war with Spain, and in the hope of deriving assistance from the grandees, Charles went to Brussels, where he placed the swords of himself and his followers at their disposal, early in ‘56. The gesture resulted in a bitter humiliation, since the proud Spaniards ignored his offer and, with courteous insolence, refused him aid in his destitution.

  Charles’s next resting-place was the beautiful old town of Bruges, and there may still be seen the goldmounted bow and arrows with which he used to while away the tedious hours, waiting—for ever waiting—good news out of England. Now again the exile’s hopes were high. Cromwell was ruling with such fierce autocracy that even large sections of the Puritans were turning against him. The Levellers, once a powerful party among the Zealots, were now in favour of the King’s return. Reams of paper were covered in a correspondence to arrange a rising, but they were moneyless and so was he, the months dragged on, and at last this hope also had to be abandoned.

  Bristol now added astrology to his other whimsies, and so intrigued the superstitious Don John of Austria, the Spanish Governor of the Netherlands, that he managed to wring money from his pockets and an official alliance for the King. James, Duke of York, was recalled from his service with the French, where he had proved himself a capable lieutenant to the great Turenne, and sent with his troops to fight against his old commander. Yet this development only served to plunge Charles into greater difficulties than before. The French, quite naturally, stopped his miserable pension. The Spaniards could not bring themselves to offer a sum ‘worthy of his acceptance’, and the wretched Charles was called upon to support an out-of-elbows army which grew by leaps and bounds owing to the constant stream of fugitives from England.

  By ‘57 the King was in a desperate state, meat, drink, firing, candles for the past winter, all entirely owed for, but permission was at last received from the Spaniards for him to join his army at Dunkirk, and there, with James for company, he busied himself with the war against the French. The year was enlivened by the Levellers’ unsuccessful attempt against Cromwell’s life, and the retaliation by the Lord Protector’s spies, who endeavoured to lure the Royal brothers to an English port, that they might be shot.

  At home, things were going from bad to worse. Cro
mwell’s victory had proved his Waterloo. He had made the Army but he could not shake it off, and the land groaned under its tyranny. No less than 12,000 persons were in prison for political offences but with every arrest there followed fresh outbursts of discontent. The exiles waited, starving but ever hopeful that next week—next month—would bring the joyful news that England had at last revolted from the thraldom of the fanatics.

  Buckingham, weary of exile, had made friends with the mammon of unrighteousness. The Parliamentary General, Lord Fairfax, had secured the best part of the Duke’s estates as his share of the plunder, so Buckingham went home and married the General’s daughter to get his own back. Cromwell put him in the Tower for his pains, but it was another blow for Charles, who so greatly enjoyed this versatile rogue’s company.

  The King spent the summer in Brussels, moving to Hoogstraeten on the Dutch-Flemish frontier in August. During the following months he made frequent excursions into Holland, and there fell deeply in love with Henrietta, the charming daughter of the Dowager Princess of Orange. Henrietta was kind, but the Dowager had no use for ‘Charles Lackland’ as a son-in-law, and so once more the future King of England drank the cup of humiliation—made the more bitter by disappointment in a genuine love affair.

  On his last visit to the lady of his love he narrowly escaped capture. An old gentleman surprised him at his inn, secured entrance to his room, and locked the door behind him. Then, flinging off his disguise, he fell upon his knees and begged the King to fly instantly. It was Downing, Cromwell’s ambassador to Holland, who had received orders to arrest him if he set foot on Dutch soil. But it was the arch-enemy’s last throw. A month later the Great Protector lay dead, worn out from his long struggle with that hydra-headed monster that he had done so much to bring into being.

  When the news reached Flanders every Royalist heart flamed with new hope. Now at last the great homecoming was a certainty—but it was not to be. Week followed week, no tidings came, the Puritan Army had England by the throat. Winter closed down once more upon the ragged exiles, as they slunk starving to their freezing lodgings in the back streets of the Continental towns.

  In ’59 Lambert endeavoured to play Cromwell’s part. He had the brutality, but not the strength, and hopes for the King began to grow again. ‘The Sealed Knot’, that mysterious society which determined the secret policy of the Royalists, became exceedingly active. Risings were planned to take place in a dozen counties, and the exiles repolished their rusty weapons with grim delight in the work that was to come. Charles hastened to Calais, that he might be ready instantly to embark. Then came the terrible news from Samuel Moreland that Sir Richard Willis, who was high in the councils of The Sealed Knot, had betrayed them. It was too late to countermand the orders in the furthest counties, and before the Loyalists in the north, who had risen for the King, had time to concentrate, they were surrounded, outnumbered, and destroyed. Again a wave of persecution and arrest laid low the gentry of the English countryside.

  Sadly and bitterly Charles turned his steps towards the Pyrenees. France and Spain had now agreed to a peace which was to be sealed by the young King Louis’s marriage to the Infanta Maria. From that resplendent concourse at Fuenterrabia, where the wealth of two great nations was gathered for the ceremony, the luckless, threadbare Prince hoped to beg a few hundred crowns to keep his needy followers from starvation. He even offered to marry the nouveau riche heiress Hortense Mancini in his dire necessity, but the wily Mazarin rejected this poor suitor for his niece’s hand, declaring hypocritically that ‘it was too great an honour’, and kept a hold upon his moneybags.

  One ray of sunshine lit the King’s return. At Colombes he broke his journey to visit his mother, and there, when every hand in Europe was against him, he found fresh encouragement in the love and admiration of his little sister, Henrietta, or Minette, as he called her. She was then only fifteen, but wise beyond her years from a similar adversity to his own, and nothing would persuade her that he was not the greatest, bravest, truest Prince in all the world. Charles, with quick appreciation of her sympathy, opened to her secrets which he would never disclose to his most trusted councillors, his most passionate loves, or any other member of. his family. Thus, in those few brief days, was born a spiritual affection between the two which lasted till her death, and which no other joy could ever replace in his existence.

  Back in Brussels once more, he found Hyde and the rest, up to their eyes in debt, miserable and dejected, yet it seemed that the finding of Minette was a presage of better days to come.

  In England, Lambert was quarrelling with the Army, and the Army with the ‘Rump’. The tax-gatherers had sucked the last halfpenny from the people, and the troops were mutinous from lack of pay. An angry populace of every sect and party clamoured with ever-growing insistence for the election of a ‘Free Parliament’ and salvation from this state of anarchy. As the troubled weeks went by, the eyes of all men gradually centred upon one figure, the strong, taciturn commander of the well-disciplined Scottish Army, General Monk.

  With sudden decision Monk acted. He secured the strong places throughout Scotland, disarmed his Anabaptist officers, and on January 1, 1660, in the bitter cold of a northern winter, crossed the border into England.

  Anxiously, all Europe watched and waited. What did he mean to do? The exiles’ disappointments had been so many and so bitter throughout these long years of hope deferred, they feared that he would only prove another Cromwell. Then, with beating hearts, they learned that the veteran Fairfax had left his bed to join him, and all Yorkshire risen at his call.

  Slowly, but steadily, Monk’s columns wound their way over snow-covered hill and dale, and as they advanced all resistance melted away before them. Yet on the long march southward he would say no word as to his intentions, and when at last they came over Hampstead hills to London he was still ominously silent.

  A decision by the Aldermen to pay no taxes until a ‘Free Parliament’ should be called gave the Rump an opportunity to test Monk’s loyalty to themselves. They ordered him to occupy the City. Amidst a tense, watchful silence, he obeyed. Then he assembled his officers, spoke to them of their duty as he saw it, and declared a ‘Tree Parliament’. Instantly London and the country were seized with a delirium of joy—yet Monk continued stubbornly silent regarding the Royalists abroad.

  On 16 March the ‘Long’ Parliament brought its existence to an end by the vote of its excluded members, and at last Monk signified his willingness to receive Sir John Grenville, the Royal emissary. On the 30th, Grenville reached Brussels and delivered Monk’s message, urging the King to leave the territory of a state with whom England was still at war. Before the Spaniards had time to stop him, Charles galloped across the Dutch frontier and entered Breda.

  Here he signed the famous Declaration, agreeing to: A General Amnesty—Security of Tenure for property gained during the late troublous times—Liberty of Conscience—and Arrears of pay for the Army, all as a Free Parliament should determine. With it he sent letters for both Houses and a commission for Monk as Captain General of his Forces.

  In April, Lambert escaped from the Tower, but was defeated at Daventry. On the 28th the new Parliament met, and three days later Grenville laid the King’s letter before them. They listened to it bareheaded and in silence, then William Morrice moved that the Constitution of England had ever lain in King, Lords, and Commons. His motion was carried without a dissentient vote. Unanimously the Houses asked that the King should return at once to rule them; then the flood-gates of joy were opened, and the House broke up in a pandemonium of wild, tumultuous loyalty.

  They knew, as England knew, that the King alone was capable of restoring the good old times, when men were free and money plentiful. They had suffered the tyranny of ‘democracy’ too long, and the whole nation was shaken with a great, glad happiness at the tidings of his return.

  The exiles still hardly dared believe it true, until a deputation from the States General arrived, inviting the King to The
Hague, and offering the almost unbelievable sum of £30,000 for his expenses. When they reached The Hague they were hardly left time to wonder. By every boat and every road, Loyalists came pouring into the town. From Antwerp, Brussels, Havre, Caen, Paris, Cologne, Rouen, crowding about the Royal lodgings, their faces lit with happiness. Old enemies arrived from England, protesting that they had ever been the King’s best friends. The citizens of London who had howled for the blood of the martyred King sent smiling representatives with £10,000 in gold. Charles had to take his brothers to handle it, because none of them had ever seen so much before.

  On 15 May the Fleet arrived, under Sir Edward Montague. With him he brought a poor relation, young Samuel Pepys, who on the first day of that year had begun to keep the secret diary which has added so greatly to our knowledge of the period. Healths were drunk, cannon fired, and joy-bells rung, as on the 22nd Charles went aboard the flagship Naseby, now rechristened Royal Charles. Anchor was weighed with fifty thousand cheering people on the shore, and the 25th found him at Dover welcomed by the deafening huzzas of fifty thousand more.

  The King kissed Monk, who was there to receive him on the beach, calling him ‘father’ and ‘preserver of the crown’, then, accepting a gilded Bible from the Mayor, declared it to be ‘the thing he loved above all others in the world’. Wild with excitement, half the population of Kent ran cheering and shouting beside his coach to Canterbury, and so, amidst similar scenes of unparalleled enthusiasm, he made his way towards the capital.

  On the 29th day of May he entered London, and never was there such a home-coming in the life of any man before or since. The people wept for very joy to see him, their own ‘Black Boy’—tall, slim, bareheaded, smiling—bowing to either side as he rode through their midst, half-deadened by the unceasing plaudits of the multitude. The fountains ran wine, the church bells pealed, the cannon thundered, while thousands upon thousands stood packed in the narrow streets to see him pass, hoarse with cheering, drunk with joy, wildly elated by the thought that in his person Merrie England was come back once more.