Sword of State: The Wielding

by Richard Woodman

  This being so, His Royal Highness concurred with me that if the tinder be not brought to the flame then the flame must be taken to the tinder, which Metaphor served us Nicely for we sent Sir Robert Holmes with some smaller vessels and fire-ships into the Gap between Vlie and Terschelling, by which means he fell upon the assembled Trade and burnt some One Hundred and Sixty Dutch Merchant Ships including their Great Indiamen – the equivalent to that great ship named for you that we launched in honour of the Trinity Brethren last year. This event we have named Holmes’s Bonfire which took place upon August the 8th in the evening thereof.

  Such matters leaving us the Most Complete Masters of the Dutch coast and the seas between, we have had occasion to fall back down-Channel, it blowing Strong and Persistent from the East which, if it did not bring the Dutch out to further Contest matters they must be seen to have Given over to us that Command of the Sea that they hitherto reserved for themselves. Besides, there came word of a French fleet to disturb our Slumbers. However that may be, there has been no sign thereof and withal the Weather now inclining towards that season the Mariners describe as Equinoctial and the breeder of great Gales and Storms, we stood west and arrived at this place.

  I am content that we have heard that the lighting of other Bonfires and the ringing of the Church Bells announced our Victory, but am afeared that the emergence of Faction will follow upon certain remonstrances between Sir Robt Holmes and Sir Jeremiah Smith. Holmes is of the Prince’s party while I am staunch in the Defence of Sir Jeremiah. This is an unhappy situation and I have writ to the King to state with perfect Candour that Sir Jeremiah had more men killed in his ship than in any other in our Fleet. There is talk of their fighting for their Honour, which I think a Grievous thing when both men have behaved with Great Gallantry during the late War.

  One other thing I must give thee Warning of and desire that you make known to both Will Morice and thy Brother that they may Work in my our Interest. There are those who express an Opinion that I have favoured the Prosecution of this War to mine own Gain. I am prepared to Defend my Conduct before Parliament and would not shrink from this for it has become a Necessity.

  I pray that this letter may find my Love well and soon able to welcome,

  Your Loving Husband,

  Albemarle.

  *

  Holmes and Smith fought their duel and Monck prepared for a difficult return to London and the political upheaval that – notwithstanding the English victory that had followed – he knew would follow his loss of the Four Days’ Battle. He deeply regretted that the St James’s Day action had not annihilated the Dutch fleet, for all that it had left the English dominating the North Sea and the Channel, the French having never unmoored. The uneasy worm of unfinished business writhed in Monck’s belly with the itch of foreboding. He had been too long a political warrior not to know the temper of his enemies, both at home and abroad. The Dutch would not rest and would take Holmes’s raid upon their commercial shipping as a deep wound that required avenging, deeper even than a fleet defeat. As for his enemies at home, those at Court hated him the most, men consumed by jealousy and motivated by faction who would pull down any success until it could be measured alongside their own mediocrity. Monck gave not a fig for them for himself, only that they might ruin his achievement and thereby that of the country he loved. Ruminating on such things as he and Lock dealt with the business of the fleet - which Rupert kindly delegated to him ‘as it being a matter with which he was more conversant’ – he was interrupted by an importunate Hubbard.

  ‘Beg pardon, Your Grace, but an express has just arrived from London. I have an order for you from the King. The city is on fire.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT – LONDON

  September 1666 – April 1667

  Monck regarded the still smoking ruins of what had once been houses along the Strand. Beside him stood the Earl of Craven, whose blackened features told of his tireless efforts to extinguish the fire and save lives during the preceding week.

  ‘Here it was,’ Craven said, gesturing to the stumps of burnt timber which had once marked the corner of a dwelling, ‘that His Majesty himself ordered the placing of powder to blow down an interval and breach the flames.’

  Monck nodded. ‘That was well done.’ He stared about him at the devastation wrought by the conflagration, most of which lay to the eastward. ‘’Tis a pity the remedy was not applied earlier,’ he commented drily. ‘The King was abed, no doubt,’ he added, pointedly.

  Craven nodded. ‘Aye, much time was lost but both the King and the Duke of York took an active part with their Lifeguard when the extent of the mischief was known.’

  Monck looked askance at his companion. ‘I hear Your Lordship was among those first on the scene,’ he remarked, conversationally.

  ‘I did my best, Your Grace,’ Craven replied seriously, ‘having had a horse trained not to bolt before fire, but to ride towards it.’ Monck suppressed a smile. Craven was an engaging fellow, of that there was no doubt. His loyalty to the King’s aunt, the Queen of Bohemia, was legendary but there was a touch of madness in his ideas which had a harum-scarum quality. ‘But I have not the authority which Your Grace carries,’ Craven went on, ‘London much missed your presence and many say that had thou been here when the fire began, far less damage would have been sustained.’

  ‘Well, well, I am here now and troops have been posted, and supplies secured for the encampment at Moorfields where there must be upwards of forty or fifty thousand poor souls awaiting charity.’

  The King’s summons to London had been peremptory and Monck had wondered why, at every crisis, His Majesty thought of nothing else but calling for him? The cynic in Monck said that putting him in charge allowed any subsequent blame to be diverted to Monck’s broad shoulders. But, although Charles grew in confidence and increasingly assumed an arrogance towards Monck that deliberately emphasised the gulf between a Duke – howsoever noble – and a King, the older man read uncertainty in Charles’s dark eyes. It was evidence of that weakness that lurked in the tall, vigorous and sturdy body of His Majesty that all too readily gave him over to the lubricious pleasures of his many mistresses. Whether or not it was Henry Jermyn who had sired him, King Charles II bore all the most unfortunate traits of the House of Stuart.

  Monck had put all his energies into seizing control of the city, five sixths of which within the walls had been destroyed, some four-hundred acres, to which must be added a further sixty acres beyond. In all eighty-seven parish churches, the guild-halls of fifty-two livery companies, together with that of the Trinity Brethren and an estimated thirteen thousand homes, shops and business premises had been lost to the flames.

  Standing down the exhausted Lifeguard, Monck had brought in his own Coldstreamers to dissuade looting and used the Army’s commissariat to commandeer and requisition necessary foodstuffs, tents and tilts for the dispossessed inhabitants. Encampments, regulated by old soldiers, were set up at Moorfields, at Highgate, and in St George’s Fields in Southwark near the very church in which Monck and his Anne had been quietly married.

  Co-operating with the Mayor, Sir Thomas Bludworth, and his Aldermen who had established themselves in Gresham College after the burning of the Guildhall and the Exchange, Monck had mastered the aftermath. He rapidly brought relief to the needy and with this came a necessary confidence in government. Monck issued a proclamation requiring all towns about London to send in returns of available accommodation into which those with means might be moved, thus relieving the immediate wants of those able to afford a measure of self-help. Public buildings were ordered to store and guard – helped by the Army and the Trained Bands – such private possessions as were saved, thereby dissuading looting. With his usual but extraordinary capacity for hard work which he combined with a canny eye for detail, Monck galvanised a hitherto pole-axed population into an invigoration of initiative to act upon its own behalf. Mounted upon one or other of his great chargers, Monck seemed to be everywhere, such that the citizens saw in h
is presence something remarkable in his stolid figure, more so even than the young King in his shirt-sleeves commanding the fire-parties.

  While some fanatics railed that the great fire was, like the plague, a judgement of God – though whether this was for the licentiousness of the Court, the Restoration of the Monarchy, or the egregious abandonment of ‘the Good Old Cause’ – was unclear, Monck’s enforced common-sense response stabilised the situation so that within two days of his imposition of near-martial rule, he found merchants trading in Gresham College as if upon the floor of the Exchange.

  What was seen by many as miraculous was to Monck a simple and pragmatic result of organisation, such were the fears that preyed upon the minds of men and women in the aftermath of disaster. But, Monck recognised, he had not endured the horror of the fire and part of him remained with the fleet, for he was deeply unhappy about the manner of his leaving. Among the tendered reasons for the fire was the certainty of God’s verdict enshrined in the days of strong easterly winds – ‘God’s bellows’ was the fanciful phrase then doing the rounds – which had given the Dutch every opportunity of joining battle. That they had not was proof of their defeat, but equally it had frustrated Monck and Rupert from pressing their forces, preventing a planned descent by fire-ships on the anchorage of the Texelstroom and the Weilings, where they might have set off a bonfire to rival that of Rear Admiral Holmes.

  The irony of a fire in the heart of London did not escape Monck, particularly when, upon the evening of his departure from the fleet for London, his flag-officers and captains, led by Sir Thomas Allen, had given him a grand dinner at Portsmouth.

  He had surprised them all, betraying his emotion and the inner turmoil of his heart, by weeping quietly as they toasted him. As he withdrew, having drunk most of them under the table, a tipsy Allen had addressed him quietly. ‘Your Grace, we are truly sorry to have you leave us, notwithstanding the King hath commanded it. Be assured that we shall pray for your safe return among our number, for it is not a common opinion among us that the Dutch are yet beaten.’

  Now, as he stood contemplating the scene of devastation, the notion that he had left open the outcome of the war troubled him more than the destruction of London. The city would rise from its ashes; did not the renewed activity of the merchants presage such a thing? As for a war at sea, that was an entirely different matter. Monck shook his head and blew out his cheeks, turning to Craven and motioning to the orderly a few yards off to bring forward his horse.

  ‘Well, My Lord, I am first for Moorfields and then Highgate to see what progress has been made with tents and field kitchens. If you are willing, would you inspect St George’s Fields?’

  ‘Of course, Your Grace. Southwark it is.’

  With the assistance of the orderly officer Monck heaved himself into the saddle of the large bay and dug in his spurs. As he rode along he graciously accepted the kind wishes of the street-vendors and their customers, encouraging the former to bring the necessaries into the city and to the latter to help each other. As with his soldiers, Monck’s easy manner carried the conviction that someone cared for them and their families. Afterwards, at a meeting of the Privy Council, Clarendon had remarked that it could ‘hardly be conceived how great a supply of all kinds was brought from all places within four and twenty hours’ of His Grace’s return to London. Lord Arlington had then added the perceptive comment that ‘My Lord Duke of Albemarle hath given the King his throne a second time’.

  At home in The Cockpit, the Reverend Doctor Thomas Gumble assured the Duchess that ‘His Grace’s actions had about them something of the sublime,’ and that ‘he was reminded in His Grace’s decisions and motions of the miracle of the two loaves and five fishes’. Here, too, Monck had revealed his true anxiety: the fleet. The end of the month of September saw him once again in Portsmouth, in conference with Lock, Allen and others among the chief officers of the fleet, fretting over the expense of the war and the gift that this gave to the King’s enemies in Parliament.

  Monck was back in London in October, seeking some private time with his family. Anne had been touched by her husband’s great and prosperous endeavours in the city and the regard in which he was held by those who cheered his coach when they recognised his arms upon the door-panels though only she and Kit were within. Now she welcomed him as her especial hero. It hurt her, therefore, when he brushed aside her paneulogism, for he was full of the real concern of the moment: the intentions of the Dutch and the state of the English Navy.

  ‘I shall yet become His Majesty’s whipping-boy, Anne,’ the anxiety clear in his tone of voice. ‘Our troubles are far from over and the Navy has yet a call upon my services.’

  ‘Why you, George? Why always you? There are other men, younger men, men with the conceit to do what you have done if they only follow your example.’

  ‘Whom have you in mind, Anne? Sandwich? Young Pepys, his lackey? The latter has the brains and the energy, but has too much conceit to carry on my own method. Like all young men, he conceives the old are stupid, their ways to be not modified but superseded entirely. Besides, they look to those who can elevate them. Pepys has Sandwich and the Duke of York. Albemarle is a tired old fellow of yesterday, a man who walked with the first Charles and turned his coat to be Oliver’s lap-dog.’

  ‘Stop that talk! I won’t have it! You are tired, that is all, and the King should grant you time to recruit your spirits and your health. Why do you laugh?’

  Monck took her in his arms and looked down at her. She was no longer the pleasant-faced woman who had washed his shirts and brought him meat pies during his imprisonment, but he did not notice that. She was the mother of his only surviving son, the soul-mate of his long, eventful and turbulent life, the sharer of his fortunes, and he kissed her expostulating mouth.

  ‘My health is ruined, Nan.’ He backed off, holding her at arm’s length. ‘Look at me, my darling. What do you see? A grossly fat old man who can barely stand, let alone walk. Had I not a ready horse or a carriage, I must needs lean upon a stick. I wheeze and croak like a spavined mare and… Yes, yes, I know what Doctor Gumble says about the efficacy of prayer, but I do not see the evidence for believing it, do you? Remember what I said to you about touching the King for the cure of scrofula? Come, come, Anne, stop those tears, we have yet some time together. What remains to me of life must be well spent for I have enemies enough who will dishonour my corpse if they can, just as they did Oliver’s… No, no, you may shake your pretty head but you know it to be true. I am become too heavy not to be toppled, and thou must not fall with me, nor must Kit. Brother Clarges will do very well, so too will Morice. My day will be done soon and we may go down into Devon…’

  But there was more to Monck’s gentle remonstrance to Anne than that of a preoccupied husband. He was correct in admitting he was likely to become the King’s whipping boy. Largely due to Anne’s public persona, which was a mixture of avarice and tight-fistedness, Monck himself attracted more and more opprobrium over his wealth. It had become common to attribute the seemingly endless – but, in the eyes of some, equally pointless – war with the Dutch as being attributable solely to the greed of the Duke of Albemarle. The very fact that at every crisis it was Albemarle who was sent for, seemed to suggest to the ignorant and the gullible that he possessed some hold over the King and willed that he was sent to command the fleet.

  Aware as only he could be of the true nature of things, Monck was wary and, upon the tide of his victory on St James’s Day, apt to play down his part. Prince Rupert was unwell, and absent from Court, exposing Monck to the facile jests of those attending the King who were jealous of his power and money. Monck had a natural aversion to playing the courtier; essentially modest, he was incapable of a courtier’s amusing games, of intrigue, politicking and seduction. But this left him exposed, the butt of jokes and seemingly stupid. He fell to privately drinking with the King’s chief surgeon, a man named John Troutbeck who had formerly been surgeon to Monck’s Regiment of Lifeguards. As o
ld comrades they enjoyed a reminiscent bottle while the Court was at cards and the talk was all of who was fucking whom and other such fashionable licentiousness. Their withdrawal to an ante-chamber had prompted a discussion of the court’s morals which both abhorred, Troutbeck admitting that the King had run such great risks in his love-making that it was to be hoped that Queen Catherine never conceived for the offspring might prove monstrous. That turn in their conversation led them to consider the case of the Heir Presumptive, James, Duke of York and his marriage to Anne Hyde, Clarendon’s daughter.

  ‘Is she fit to be a Queen?’ the inebriated Troutbeck had asked rhetorically. ‘Why yes,’ Troutbeck responded to his own query. ‘I heard only yesterday – in the privacy of my office as physician you understand, Your Grace, and I should not confess it to you now but that it touches you closely,’ said, woefully slurring his speech, ‘but that His Majesty said to his Royal Brother that it did not signify if His Highness’s cock spoke in her favour, for Nan Hyde would make a Queen as she had made a better Duchess than Nan Monck!’

  ‘In vino veritas, Troutbeck,’ Monck wheezed, rising to his feet, his eyes cold chips of ice. ‘I would rather I had heard the insult from His Majesty than from you, but I thank you for your confession.’

  Troutbeck had stared at Monck uncomprehendingly until the extent of his gross impropriety dawned upon his drunken sensibilities. Thoroughly alarmed at both the effect his revelation had had upon Old George and the extent of his betrayal of the King’s confidence, Troutbeck rose, bowed, and made apology. Monck growled his forgiveness but took his leave, knowing the tittle-tattle would pass round the Court if it had not already done so. Later he heard that, at a meeting of the Navy Board to which he was not summoned, the Duke of York had hinted that answers to the question of misappropriation of funds amounting to £148,000 set aside for the payment of naval contractors and of which but £1,315 had actually been paid, might be found upon enquiry of the Duke of Albemarle. That the enquiry was never put to Monck demonstrated the iniquity of the question, but it did not stop those seeking to hint that the loss of funds was otherwise than their own responsibility.