Killers of the King

by Charles Spencer

  When the second term of this Parliament opened in January 1658, the ninety members excluded from the opening session were at last admitted. It was an opportunity for the republican regicides to justify their actions nine years earlier, and to attack Cromwell for not remaining true to their aims at that time.

  The former spymaster Thomas Scott was quick to speak: ‘Shall I, that sat in a Parliament that brought a King to the bar, and to the block, not speak my mind freely here?’28 he challenged.

  Scott was particularly incensed that the Lord Protector had formed a new House of Lords, given the Rump’s decision – immediately after Charles I’s head was cut off – to dispense with the Upper House. ‘The Lords would not join in the trial of the King,’ he reminded the Commons. ‘We must lay things bare and naked. We were either to lay all that blood of ten years war upon ourselves, or upon some other object. We called the King of England to our bar, and arraigned him. He was for his obstinacy and guilt condemned and executed; and so let all the enemies of God perish. The House of Commons had a good conscience in it.’29

  On 3 September 1658, Cromwell died unexpectedly, aged fifty-nine. He had suffered from malaria and urinary infections for some time, and it seems likely that complications to these conditions led to septicaemia. Certainly, incompetent doctors hurried the death along. Equally, Cromwell’s spirit had been broken by the recent death of his favourite daughter, Elizabeth, at the age of twenty-nine. As he neared the end, Cromwell bequeathed the Lord Protectorship to his eldest surviving son, Richard.

  Oliver Cromwell’s funeral was based on that of James I, father of the man in whose execution he had played so prominent a role. The cortege processed from Somerset House to Westminster Abbey, for interment in Henry VII’s Chapel. The route was strewn with sand, to muffle the clatter of hooves and wheels on the cobbles, and so set a suitably sombre tone. Rails were put in place to hold back the crowds. Soldiers looked on, their banners bound in a cypress mourning veil. Six horses drew the coffin, set on a bed of state bedecked in black velvet, to the burial place of England’s kings.

  John Evelyn was among the onlookers. He noticed that ‘The Pall [was] held up by his new Lords: Oliver lying in effigy in royal robes, and crowned with a crown, sceptre, and mund, like a King: the Pendants and Guidons were carried by the Officers of the Army, the Imperial banners, Achievements etc. by the Heralds in their Coats . . .’ It was a magnificent procession. Cromwell’s generals, lords, courtiers and family were joined by the ambassadors of Holland, France and Portugal, ‘many thousands of people,’ it was recorded, ‘being spectators in the windows, and upon the scaffolds all along the way as it passed’.30

  ‘But,’ John Evelyn noted in his diary, ‘it was the joyfullest funeral that ever I saw, for there was none that cried, but dogs, which the soldiers hooted away with a barbarous noise; drinking, and taking tobacco in the street as they went.’31

  Richard Cromwell, the new Lord Protector, had neither the resolve nor the ruthlessness to make a success of his inheritance. His quiet personal authority won over some of the senior army officers loyal to his father’s legacy, including the regicides Colonel Ingoldsby and Major Generals Goffe and Whalley, each of them related to the Cromwells by blood or marriage. These three were among the new Lord Protector’s closest followers. However, Richard was unable to control the army as a whole: his father had been its brilliant general and had earned its loyalty – successes Richard had neither attempted nor achieved. At the same time, with Oliver dead, the many Parliamentary enemies of the Protectorship felt able to speak freely.

  These dangerous stirrings were noted by Colonel Thomas Pride, who was among those to sign Richard Cromwell’s proclamation as the new Protector. Pride, in failing health, felt pessimistic about the future for England, Scotland and Ireland. His last words, from his deathbed in October 1658, were, ‘that he was very sorry for these three nations, whom he saw in a most sad and deplorable condition’.32 Richard stood down in May 1659, after fewer than nine months’ rule. The Rump Parliament, dispersed by Cromwell and his henchman Harrison six years earlier, now reconvened, promising to maintain a Commonwealth with no King, no Lord Protector and no House of Lords. It also formed a Council of State of twenty-one men, seven of whom had signed Charles I’s death warrant: those responsible for the King’s death were still grimly holding on to power. But life in the absence of the charismatic and commanding Oliver Cromwell was difficult for those who had loved or loathed him: his followers found themselves leaderless, while his enemies discovered they really had very little in common, other than a hatred for the deceased.

  The army was now divided, with Fleetwood and Lambert each keen to gain control of it and the nation. Yet both generals were now alienated from many of their junior officers and men, who resented their commanders taking advantage of rank and file poverty to enrich themselves: like Harrison, they had profited from their men’s desperation and bought their credit notes for wages owed by Parliament at bargain rates. Vavasor Powell, a Fifth Monarchist from Wales, spoke for many when he claimed of the newly wealthy generals that ‘Their great parks and new houses and gallant wives had choked them up.’33

  Tension between the army and Parliament was taken to a higher pitch when, on 12 October 1659, MPs voted to be rid of the seven-man committee and take greater military control for itself. Lambert, with Fleetwood’s connivance, descended on the Palace of Westminster with two regiments, surrounding it, and having its doors locked and guarded. Lambert replaced Parliament’s authority with a twenty-three-man Committee of Safety, with himself and Fleetwood as its military men.

  John Bradshaw, the lord president during Charles I’s trial, now stepped forward. He had lost his posts during the mid-1650s as a result of his breach with Oliver Cromwell. Richard Cromwell had called Bradshaw back to high office during his brief rule, but by then Bradshaw was seriously ill – probably with malaria. In October he insisted on being taken from his Whitehall sickbed to Parliament to denounce the military’s intimidation of the Rump. At the end of the month, by now on his deathbed, Bradshaw’s final words were defiant: if a judge had been needed to try Charles I once more, he declared, he would have been ‘the first man to do it’.

  Parliament now called for loyal officers to come to its aid. Oliver Cromwell’s commander in Scotland for the previous five years, George Monck – who had served as an admiral in the Anglo-Dutch War, casting his cloak over Deane’s mangled remains – resolved to see through a promise he had earlier made in print: to protect Parliament and to champion political stability, whatever the personal danger to himself. He looked for an alliance with Colonel John Jones and Sir Hardress Waller, two of the regicides commanding forces in Ireland, but they refused to join him, fearing a fatal division in the army if they did. Monck nevertheless felt strong enough to act alone. He had discarded those likely to sympathise with Lambert and Fleetwood from his northern army. More importantly, he had ensured his men were fully paid: a decade earlier, when serving in Ireland as a colonel, 500 out of his 700 men ‘ran away to the enemy, because they ha[d] money there’.34 He would not allow such a situation to arise again. Monck prepared to march south with a unified, disciplined and well-furnished force.

  In November 1659, Lambert led an army north to Newcastle, to meet Monck. He was not seeking battle, but rather for Monck and his men to unite with him: together they could block the ambitions of the common enemy, the Royalists. Lambert wrote to the Commissioners of the Army of Scotland: ‘My soul longs for such an accommodation betwixt the armies as may tend to the glory of God, the peace of these Nations, and preservation of that interest which God has owned as his own, and from which I shall (the Lord enabling me) never part.’35

  But Monck had no need for, or trust in, Lambert. He delayed negotiations, knowing that Lambert’s forces were poorly supplied, unpaid, and were already beginning to desert. Meanwhile in London, on 24 December, the Committee of Safety fell. Two days later Parliament gave Monck, in Clarendon’s words, ‘the office and p
ower of general of all the forces in the three kingdoms . . . as absolutely as ever they had given it to Cromwell’.36

  Although some officers rode north now, to encourage Lambert to bring Monck to battle, it was too late: Lambert’s forces had all but evaporated. He rode south with just fifty men, most of them officers. He was scooped up and committed to the Tower of London.

  On 2 January, Monck entered England, crossing the border at Coldstream with a force of 5,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry. He received support from many quarters, including the retired lord general, Thomas Fairfax. Monck sent men ahead to have London cleared of other forces, so his men, trusted veterans, could be quartered there on their arrival. Parliament made their dependence on Monck clear once more by preparing his lodgings in a grand suite of rooms in Whitehall.

  Monck had fought for the King in the Civil War, before being taken prisoner. He had then chosen to serve Parliament, rising to high rank on land and sea. Nobody could tell how he would use his great power now.

  Chapter 5

  The Word of a King

  The cursed Presbyterian crew

  Was then put to the flight,

  Some did fly by day,

  And others run by night.

  In barns and stables they did cant,

  And every place they could,

  He made them remember,

  The spilling royal blood.

  ‘King Charles the Second’s Restoration, 29 May’ – a ballad, 1660

  The Prince of Wales had learnt of Cromwell’s death with disbelief. In the mid-1650s, Charles Stuart’s existence had diminished to one of impoverished despair. Cromwell had successfully insisted, by the terms of a treaty with France, that the family of Charles I be exiled from French territory. The Prince had moved for two years to Cologne, ‘whilst,’ one of his companions recalled, ‘all the princes of Europe seemed to contend amongst themselves who should most eminently forget and neglect him’.1 He was in the countryside of what is now Belgium when his father’s nemesis died. He moved immediately to Brussels, eagerly awaiting possibilities.

  In 1655 a false report of Cromwell’s death, and his replacement by Major General Lambert, had reached the Royalists in exile. Secretary Nicholas had written at the time: ‘If Cromwell should be dead, and Lambert chosen in his place, he or any other who had not actually a hand in the murder of the late King may be treated with and pardoned, so as to restore the King on good conditions, which is the only hope I expect from such a change.’2 Now, with Oliver Cromwell’s death confirmed, it was welcome news that Monck had become the most powerful man in the country: he had played no part in Charles I’s execution. It was possible to negotiate with such a man.

  At first, the Royalists received no word from Monck. Indeed, his early actions were discouraging for Charles, and reassuring to those who wanted to perpetuate the Commonwealth. Monck stated his intention was to serve Parliament, and its members were happy to take him at his word, and use him as their sword arm. When the City of London refused to grant desperately needed funds until a free Parliament was called, the members asked Monck to intervene. He took his troops into the City and, to the consternation of the Royalists, arrested the ringleaders there. Monck then broke the gates that marked, and the portcullises that symbolised, the City’s independence. When the Prince of Wales heard this, his confidant Clarendon recalled, ‘All the little remainder of his hope was extinguished, and he had nothing left before his eyes but a perpetual exile.’3

  The following day Praise-God Barebone attacked the Stuarts in Parliament, his petition insisting that only those who took an oath rejecting the line of Charles I should be allowed to hold public office. Even to mention restoration, Barebone urged, should result in a charge of high treason. Monck realised that he would be among the first called upon to make this oath of renunciation. He would very soon be forced to declare his hand.

  Meanwhile Monck made quiet contact with Sir Charles Coote, Lord President of Connaught, the western province of Ireland. Like Monck, Coote had been a Royalist officer who had switched allegiance during the First Civil War to fight for Parliament. Coote appreciated that the tide had suddenly and definitely turned in favour of the Stuarts. He was desperate not to be punished for his treachery, or for his actions as a Parliamentary commander. Coote was keen to capture Edmund Ludlow, one of the most prominent regicides in Ireland, so he could deliver him up to Charles as a demonstration of his rediscovered loyalty to the Crown. This, he hoped, would result in his being pardoned. Ludlow was too wary to be trapped, though, so Coote next settled on catching John Cook, the lead prosecutor at Charles I’s trial.

  Coote invited Cook to come from his home in Waterford, to a meeting in Dublin. The lawyer and his wife were troubled by this summons, and considered fleeing to the American colonies. But Cook eventually decided to accept, and headed towards Dublin. He was picked up en route by Coote’s men, and thrown in prison.

  Coote now rounded up a handful of others involved in Charles I’s death: Colonel John Jones, Cromwell’s brother-in-law; Sir Hardress Waller, who had been so pivotal in the success of Pride’s Purge; Colonel Matthew Tomlinson, who had guarded the King in his final days; and Colonel Hercules Huncks and Lieutenant Colonel Robert Phare, two of the officers who had been on duty on the scaffold when the execution was carried out. As the possibility of Stuart restoration turned into likelihood, there was a scramble for redemption among Parliamentarians. The regicides were quickly identified as especially vulnerable pawns, to be bartered in return for forgiveness.

  Fear at the consequences of a royal return became clear in the House of Commons by mid-March 1660, with dissolution looming, and the future unsure but threatening. Those who had stood against the late King wanted to lay down a clear marker between their conduct, and that of those who had been behind the judicial death of Charles I. John Crew, MP for Brackley during the Long Parliament, had been an eager opponent of the Royalists during the first two Civil Wars. However, he had been one of the members excluded by Pride’s Purge, and now was his moment for revenge. He moved that, before this Parliament voted itself into extinction, it must bear witness against those responsible for the infamous execution, which prompted many members to declare their hands innocent of the King’s blood.

  The return to royal rule was not yet guaranteed. On 12 April there was a reigniting of republican hope with the news that John Lambert was free again: he had escaped the Tower of London with the help of his chambermaid, who took his place in his prison bed, wearing his nightcap and managing a gruff goodnight to the guards from behind the bed curtains. Lambert let himself down from his window by a rope made from bound sheets. On reaching the ground, six of his followers spirited him away by barge. When the gaoler unlocked the cell door the next morning, all he could say was, ‘In the name of God, Joan, what makes you here?’4

  Lambert wanted a return to the days when an irresistible Parliamentary army controlled the land. He planned a rendezvous, on Easter Day 1660, of like-minded nostalgics at Edgehill, Warwickshire – chosen because of its central geographical position, and also because this was where the first great battle of the Civil War had taken place. Ripples spread through the army, as they recalled the days of triumph. Parliament declared Lambert a rebel, offered £100 for his capture, and dispatched a force under Colonel Richard Ingoldsby to bring him in, dead or alive.

  Among those riding with Lambert as he moved through Northamptonshire towards Warwickshire were Colonels Okey and Axtell, both of whom had had a hand in the king’s death. Other regicides were slow to help – a matter for later regret. One of those who had organised Lambert’s escape from the Tower went to see Lieutenant General Edmund Ludlow, imploring him to raise troops in the west, and bring them across as reinforcements. ‘But,’ Ludlow would later apologetically admit, ‘I thought it not prudent to engage my friends in so public a manner, till I should see some possibility of making a stand.’5

  A stand of sorts was made near Daventry but, with only 300 cavalry and forty infantry
, Lambert’s force was no match for Ingoldsby’s. Lambert tried to escape, but his Berber horse was built for speed and agility, not the Northamptonshire plough. He surrendered to Ingoldsby, without resistance. Trying to find a way of keeping the cause afloat and himself at liberty, Lambert offered his services in the reinstatement of Ingoldsby’s patron and cousin, Richard Cromwell. Ingoldsby made it clear that he was not there to negotiate, but merely to take Lambert prisoner. ‘Pray, my lord,’ said Lambert, ‘let me escape; what good will my life, or perpetual imprisonment, do you?’6

  Ingoldsby, like Coote in Ireland, knew the answer to that question. It seemed certain the Stuart line would soon be restored and he needed to accrue credit or be held to account for his past conduct. Although Ingoldsby had not sat in judgment of the King, his signature was on the death warrant, and in the period between the conclusion of the First Civil War and Charles I’s execution his regiment had been one of the most radical, demanding the King be judged for shedding the blood of his people. Ingoldsby returned Lambert to London, and the Tower. It was not immediately obvious, but with Lambert’s renewed incarceration went the last hope of the regicides to halt the tide towards Royalism. Ingoldsby was pleased to accept the thanks of Parliament for his ‘late great and eminent services to this Nation’.7 He hoped that this gratitude would manifest itself in redemption and pardon.

  All the surviving regicides now focused on their likely fates, as the reign of another Charles Stuart beckoned. During Lambert’s time on the loose, Colonel Hutchinson sought advice from his friend Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, who had disagreed so forcefully with Oliver Cromwell over the ability of a king to be judged at all, let alone by a legal entity as contentious as the High Court of Justice, and had refused to take part in the trial.