‘What is all that to a soldier, eh? I can tell you that a soldier learned that there are those that lack satisfaction in the government of the Nation, and that all who presented notions of their own held to this one common fact. As for the future, I told ’em nothing more than that I sought the welfare of these Nations, and that I did so through thy agency but that thou continued a reform both within and without this House. I advise thee to settle the pay of the troops and the Irish estates upon those promised them in lieu; there are some matters of equality I would wish to see settled upon Scotland, as to the rest I rely upon your good sense. My Army will support all this, but thou must admit such of the sober gentry as will support thee, denying those of the fanatical party as much as those of the cavalier. Such men will bestir mischief and, as Almighty God knows, we have had enough of faction. That is all I have to say.’
If Monck thought his quiet appeal to reason would carry the day, he was mistaken. The rising swell of disagreement that followed a brief silence rapidly transformed the House into a Bedlam of shouting, gesticulating men, some on their feet, some waving their fists at him, some few attempting to placate what looked to an increasingly contemptuous Monck like a mob. The contrast between the disciplined force that had marched south at his heels in expectation of good sense and this bear-pit of disorder was stark. Monck longed for the camp, for the evening meal with his staff and regimental commanders. Even, at that moment of profound disappointment, for a harsh march across a Highland bogh in pursuit of rebels. Therein lay challenge, the possibility of defeat and its countervailing possibility of satisfaction. This… This was just madness!
Lenthall was crying for order, addressing himself in particular to a wildly fulminating Haselrig who seemed to Monck to rave in his very face. Drawing himself up, Monck picked up his hat and left the Chamber.
*
‘Forty! A mere forty of the Members remaining from the Long Parliament and they would hold they speak for the people!’ Monck’s mood was a mixture of fury and frustration as he took a glass of wine before dinner in The Cockpit in the company of Anne, the Clarkes, the Clarges, Major Smith and Doctor Gumble. He had hoped that a mere forty Englishmen might agree with him, disband their assembly and send out writs for a general election, but no: ‘The damned fools see nothing but themselves when they consider great matters of state.’ To Monck, who had willingly submitted to the over-arching principle of Parliamentary rule, who had subordinated his own ambitions – whatever people might say about his avarice – to such a nebulous ideal, who had held fast to his duty and maintained his subordination, to see such a mob of childish factionalism was an anathema.
‘What the devil d’you make of it all?’ he asked Clarges.
‘The City will not like the fact that you did not come down heavily on the side of a new Parliament, the cavaliers that you did not claim Charles Stuart’s right to return, the radical fanatics that you would not take the oath against the House of Stuart… In short, sir, you have pleased nobody.’
Monck looked round the table. They were all looking at him. ‘Was I supposed to dictate terms, then?’ The bluff old soldier was quizzical, not comprehending the complexities of the wasp’s nest he had unwittingly stuck his head into.
‘They would have expected that,’ responded Clarges, adding ‘sadly, for that is the lowness that we have come to…’
‘Too little of the fox, eh?’ he ruminated quietly, a rueful smile playing about the corners of his mouth. ‘Damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.’ Clarges caught his eye. ‘You have more to say?’ Clarges looked awkward and Monck prompted him. ‘Come, Tom, speak your mind for mine is too weary of these tedious affairs to think clearly. I had thought Lenthall a friend.’
‘For Lenthall to remain anything towards you, sir, he must maintain a kind of neutrality. By not clearly stating your preference… no, your case, your intentions, they – Haselrig and his radical friends in the Army, along with others in the Parliament who incline to the good old cause – will now think they can put you in their pocket.’
Monck scoffed and looked at his wife. ‘Let us go down into Devon, Anne, and find some peace.’
‘We would have no peace if matters are not concluded here,’ Anne retorted sharply. They all knew she was for the King, yet she had spent the morning that her husband had stood before the Bar of the Commons entertaining the ladies of the Members who had complimented her upon her sweetmeats.
‘You, too,’ murmured Monck as Clarke and Clarges exchanged glances, well comprehending Mistress Monck’s ill-concealed agenda.
‘God’s wounds!’ Monck blasphemed, looking round at them all. ‘Then what is to be done?’
‘The reed must bend to the wind, Your Excellency,’ said Gumble, speaking for the first time. He had accompanied Monck to the Parliament and heard the General’s speech, noting the response of the assembled Members. ‘I counsel patience.’
‘Can England be patient, Doctor?’
‘England must be patient; just for a few days.’
They were half-way through their dinner when the summons came to attend the Council of State immediately. Monck left to raised eyebrows among his companions. ‘I think we shall have some days of difficulty,’ said Gumble as the company sat in silence after Monck’s departure. ‘Then the Lord will make known His will.’
‘Let us hope so,’ snapped Anne, rising abruptly from the table and leaving the room followed by Dorothy Clarke.
‘Should we all prepare for The Tower?’ quipped Gumble. ‘His Excellency has already sent me to consult with Bishop Wren who is still a prisoner there as he was when the Lord-General was incarcerated therein.’
*
The Council of State kept Monck kicking his heels in an ante-room until after midnight when they peremptorily dismissed him, telling him to sleep at a private lodging they had reserved especially for him.
‘So, I am to be a prisoner, am I?’ he snarled at the clerk who brought him this humiliating news. ‘And that after saving their skins, too.’
‘That is not the situation at all, sir.’
‘That is how it looks to me, sir, and that is how it will look to my Army.’ He knew the veiled threat would get back to those who now moved against him. He did not know that a rumour that he had been taken to The Tower had already reached The Cockpit, along with the news that he was ‘detained on state business’. A thoroughly alarmed Anne had gone immediately to the Council Chamber and, although it was now one o’clock in the morning, had beaten upon its door. In despair she had returned to The Cockpit where, an hour later, Monck appeared and ordered them all to bed. His threat had at least secured his freedom for what remained of the night.
The following morning, Monck appeared before the Council of State where he was accused of plotting the restoration of the monarchy.
‘And upon what evidence do you thus charge me?’ he asked quietly.
‘We know this to be thy purpose.’
‘And have you heard this supposed purpose from mine own mouth, eh? Or is it from the lips of some bawd?’
There was a sniggering at this, and someone said, ‘it has been mentioned by thy wife…’
Monck disdained to respond to the insult to Anne, aware that he had exposed himself to it, true or not – and he suspected Anne’s imprudent conversation had been reported.
‘Besides, you refused the Oath of Abjuration…’
‘As did many of you,’ Monck quickly riposted, ‘and of you I entertain no suspicions of fostering the Royal cause. Why then should you think it of me? Neither I nor my officers have much truck with oaths…’
‘Yet you have in your train those well-known to espouse the cause of the House of Stuart.’
‘If by that you mean Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel, he marched with me as good faith for the quiescence of the Highlands, he had proved himself worthy of the trust I placed in him since he made his composition with me, and has governed his lands, aye, and that of others, to my entire satisfaction…’
&
nbsp; ‘He is no link to Argyll and your contact with the Marquess?’ He was asked.
‘Argyll? No, sirs, he is not!’
‘Then you submit to the orders of this Council absolutely?’ someone else quizzed.
‘Since the Parliament constituted you, yes, absolutely.’
‘And you are not in the pay of the City Corporation?’
‘No, I am not. My Army is paid from the revenues of Scotland until such moment as thou shoulder those responsibilities which my satisfaction to you lays upon you.’
‘Then we would have you remove the gates of the City from off their hinges and place guards about the place.’
Monck stared about him. The order was preposterous, an almost childish piece of coercion which was clearly intended to destroy any connection that might, or might not, exist between Monck and his Army, and the rich merchants of the Corporation of the City of London. These great aldermen, Monck now knew from Clarges, were the enemies of the miserable minority of the Rump and wanted a new, representative Parliament. Nor, it had been hinted to Monck, would they be reluctant to seeing the return of a King, as long as the younger Charles understood his place among them. The Council of State disdained to explain this turn of events to Monck, for disingenuous reasons of its own which Monck could see plainly enough.
‘Well?’
‘Since you command, I must obey,’ he said, an enigmatic smile on his face, making to withdraw and leaving the Council in some perplexity. Some among them had assured their fellows that Monck would refuse, thereby providing a pretext for his arrest. So over-joyed were they at his apparent capitulation that they sent a list of citizens whose arrest they required, including the Lord Mayor.
Monck returned to The Cockpit, told his household to remain where they were and sent word by Major Smith to beat to arms. Mounting his charger and escorted by his staff and a troop of his own Horse he rode directly to the Three Tuns tavern near the Guildhall, occupying it as a temporary headquarters. The Lord Mayor sent a protest immediately and Monck had him put under arrest, naming a dozen other prominent citizens and Aldermen to join him, as the Council of State desired. He then ordered his infantry to remove the City gates and portcullises.
This rapid succession of events utterly perplexed the citizens and his own soldiers in equal measure. Some of his men thought it a great joke while his officers considered their Commander-in-Chief’s submission to be political suicide, incomprehensible and stupid. Several said so and most of his senior officers begged him not to obey so ridiculous and calculated an order. The inscrutable Monck merely told his rebellious colonels and majors to stand aside, sending word for their juniors to carry out his orders.
‘This is taking obedience too far,’ remonstrated Clarke.
Monck looked at him in mock astonishment. ‘Can one take obedience too far, William?’ he asked. ‘Why, ’pon my soul, I had not thought it!’ he added with an edge of sarcasm to his voice.
Clarke looked shrewdly at his superior, suddenly convinced Old George was playing a game, but a game so dangerous that the slightest miscarriage would see him, and Clarke too, thrown into The Tower. Shortly afterwards a deputation of those Aldermen and Freemen that could be hurriedly assembled on behalf of the Corporation of the City of London waited upon Monck, expostulating about the actions of his men.
Monck received them with every courtesy explaining that he merely carried out the orders of the Council of State and that they should take their quarrel to the Council chamber. He believed, he told them, that he had been instructed to act in such a curious manner because the said Council had been informed that the Lord Mayor and the Corporation had recently received a communication from Charles Stuart brought by an emissary – he affected not to know who, though Tom Clarges had told him it was Lord Mordaunt – and had agreed to treat with the exiled Charles.
‘This,’ Clarke explained to Clarges afterwards, ‘took the wind out of the Aldermen’s sails. Then the General played his master-stroke. Whether he thought it up on the spur of the moment or had considered it for some time, I do not know, but as the delegates conferred amongst themselves, His Excellency remarked, somewhat casually I thought that, as the City had no member representing them in the Parliament, would they consider him worthy of representing them?’
‘Thus healing in an instant the breach the Council of State had so sedulously created,’ laughed Clarges admiringly. ‘And to think they call the old fellow a fool!’
Clarke grinned, then shook his head. ‘And so we traipsed back to Whitehall where, upon His Excellency reporting the willingness of the City to make its position clear and pleading the case that they could not be judged from rumour any more than he could himself, not having a Member in the Rump. He told them that the City Corporation wished for the Parliament to recall the excluded Members, as he did himself. The Council promptly stated they did not recognise the Common Council of the Corporation. The General was not merely to remove the gates from their hinges, he was to destroy them by burning.’
‘Is there to be no end to this farcical proceeding? Every move is intended to diminish the Lord-General’s authority and to entrench the oligarchy of the Rump.’ Clarges looked anxiously at Clarke. ‘But pray do go on, you have yet some hours’ events to relate.’
‘Indeed,’ said Clarke, resuming his narrative. ‘Back went we to the Three Tuns where Morley, Monck’s Governor of The Tower, arrived to suggest the City stood against Westminster, to the great approbation of the Corporation’s Aldermen. His Excellency would have none of it but simply told his officers to get on with the work of demolition, sending Morley back to The Tower with his compliments to Bishop Wren.’
‘Aye, we heard thus here,’ broke in Clarges. ‘Arthur Haselrig was so importunate as to cry with joy that with the General carrying out the Council of State’s orders to the letter that he and his party had George, body and soul! This is bad, very bad.’
‘’Twas worse for us, for this prompted everyone within the City Bar to rush to the Three Tuns and hector His Excellency with all manner of cajolings and insolences…’
‘How did he take it all?’
‘He knows well enough that it exasperates the City, but he sat upon his chair staring into the middle-distance chewing upon his quid of baccy, impervious to appeal or threat and, as he knew they would, his soldiers did as they were told. The work was all finished by three in the afternoon and, having posted sentinels, we all marched back to our quarters here. It has been a most extraordinary day.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘In his chamber with the Mistress Anne…’
‘And she will be making him eat the humblest of all the pies he has had to digest this troublesome day.’ Clarges thought for a moment and then added, ‘come, Will, we must go to him…’
A few moments later they stood in Monck’s presence. He was in his shirt-sleeves, an old man sitting in a chair, his expressionless face turned away from them. They had heard Anne’s raised voice as they had approached; the consequent atmosphere in the room was as though choked by tobacco smoke.
‘Your Excellency,’ Clarges began.
Monck looked up at him and shook his head. ‘No more of that nonsense, Tom. What I was in Scotland I am not here. The Council of State will not even accord me my military rank, but now refers to me as a Commissioner.’ Monck gave a wan smile. Never had either William Clarke or Thomas Clarges seen him so worn out.
‘You have come to speak your mind, I know; you Clarges are good at it,’ Monck added with a hint of irony towards Anne. ‘Please, sit thee down, you too Will, and both of you say what you have to say.’
Clarges sighed, sat down and leaned forward. ‘George, George, this is no good. Your sense of honour has led you into a trap. No-one sees as far ahead as you, but you cannot reach the horizon if betwixt it and you lie snares a-plenty. The removal of the City gates, though you almost carried off a triumph by recovering the City’s good opinion, was an act which no conciliation can wipe away. You have humiliated
the City and the shame of it will stick to you because they know the Council of State could not have done it without your troops. The action, once known, will turn every town and city against you, not to mention the sober gentry whose entry into Parliament you only so lately advocated.’
‘What would you have me do, then?’
‘Return at once to the City and declare for a new, free Parliament…’
‘Will?’ Monck asked for Clarke’s opinion.
‘Exactly that, sir. Such a declaration is consonant with your words to the Members of the Rump last Monday, it accords with most of what the Corporation wishes for…’
‘And makes no mention of any King.’ Monck completed the statement and Anne hissed her unasked for disapproval. Monck looked up at her and smiled. ‘Well, I have heard what you have to say and, while I acknowledge the wisdom of it, I cannot do it.’
‘For God in Heaven’s sake!’ Clarges was astonished and angry. ‘Why cling to your notions of honour and duty when they have humiliated you, tricked you, demoted you, insulted you? What do you await, the warrant that carries you off into The Tower?’
Monck’s head fell forward onto his breast and Clarke said to Clarges, ‘they cannot do that with any justification for His Excellency has obeyed all his orders.’ He turned to Monck. ‘You could resign, sir…’
‘No! He will not resign!’ Anne’s voice was shrill, her eyes ablaze. ‘He still commands a loyal Army…’ Her voice faltered; she had nothing more to offer. Now all three stood round Monck as he sat downcast in his chair. After a moment he bestirred himself and looked up at them.
‘Today is Friday,’ he said. ‘I will decide and give you my answer on Tuesday.’
‘Tuesday?’ burst out Clarges. ‘God’s bloody wounds, George! The news of your fall will be all over the country by then, the Army will have deserted you and none of us will be able to save you from yourself!’ With that, Clarges stormed from the room. After a moment’s hesitation Clarke shrugged and followed, leaving Anne, hands on hips, staring at Monck, before she burst into tears and fled after them.
Sword of State: The Wielding Page 5