Peters arrived to find England ‘embroiled in troubles and War’, and was pressured to join the other leading ministers on campaign. The preacher quickly found himself in Ireland, before being assigned to ministry in the fleet. He was in demand from the great men of the cause: his particular patron was the Earl of Warwick, commander of the Parliamentary navy, and a colonial pioneer in North and Central America. Peters was also a valued presence in the retinues of successive lords general – the Earl of Essex, Lord Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell. These immensely powerful figures valued Peters’s extraordinarily infectious words, which could rouse men to fight with a courage reserved for those utterly confident in God’s blessing.
Peters whipped up New Model Army troops before battle, or in the prelude to attack on a besieged position. He was then repeatedly chosen to report their resulting victories to Parliament: he could be relied on to fire his audience, raise morale and stiffen resolve. ‘In all which affairs I did labour to persuade the Army to do their duty,’28 was how he coyly recorded the impact of his remarkable eloquence. Often, and intentionally, his triumphant reports resulted in increased money being allocated by Parliament to their troops in the field.
During the build-up to the King’s trial, Peters was busy. He addressed congregations in London that included a high proportion of soldiers, and persuaded them that a king was eligible for trial and condemnation, if his actions demanded punishment. A Mr Beaver would recall how, in December 1648 (he could remember the date exactly, because it was while Parliament was observing a fast), he had listened to Hugh Peters preaching in the church of St Margaret’s, Westminster. Peters’s New Testament text that day was the story of the freeing of the criminal Barabbas in place of Jesus – an error by the misled mob that had led to that greatest of historical wrongs – Christ’s crucifixion.
From the pulpit Peters chided those who might repeat the travesty, and allow the wrong man to escape justice now. He reserved particular condemnation for London’s merchants, accusing them of being prepared to reach a shameful compromise with the defeated King in order to line their pockets. Beaver remembered Peters’s words: ‘ “I have been in the City,” he said, “which may very well be compared to Jerusalem in this conjuncture of time, and I profess these foolish citizens, for a little trading and profit they will have Christ” (pointing to the redcoats on the pulpit stairs) “crucified, and that great Barabbas at Windsor released . . . O Jesus, what should we do now?” with such like strange expressions, and shrugging of his shoulders in the pulpit.’29 Beaver heard Peters continue in this melodramatic vein for two or three hours, justifying and encouraging the King’s execution, while warning the military that if they failed to see the appropriate sentence passed they would invite destruction on themselves.
Peters also worked on the King’s judges. The diarist John Evelyn recorded on 17 January 1649: ‘I heard the rebel Peters incite the Rebel powers met in the Painted Chamber, to destroy his Majesty and saw that arch traitor Bradshaw, who not long after condemned [the King].’30 Four days later Peters preached to a congregation of the commissioners of the High Court of Justice, taking as his text Psalm 149, verse 8, which exhorted, ‘Bind your Kings with chains, and your Nobles in fetters of iron.’ Warming to his theme, Peters said, ‘What, will ye cut off the King’s head, the head of a Protestant Prince and King? Turn to your Bibles and you shall find it there, “Whosoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” . . . and I see neither King Charles, nor Prince Charles, nor Prince Rupert, nor Prince Maurice [Rupert and Maurice were nephews and leading generals of the King], nor any of that rabble excepted out of it . . . This is the day that I and many saints of God besides have been praying for these many years.’31
A man named Chase recalled Oliver Cromwell laughing while Peters preached that day, apparently in appreciation of Peters’s eccentric style of delivery: it was theatrical to the point of absurdity. To worldly observers it was all a bit much: Samuel Pepys would later record listening to a learned but overblown sermon by Dr Creeton, a chaplain to Charles II, pronouncing him ‘the most comical man that ever I heard in my life. Just such a man as Hugh Peter[s].’32
But the extravagant delivery enchanted the less sophisticated. A historian of Salem noted of Peters that, ‘his language was peculiar to himself. He had a power of associating his thoughts in such a manner, as to be sure to leave them upon the memory. If his images were coarse they were familiar, and never failed to answer his purpose.’33 His purpose in early 1649 was to push on to condemnation of the King. Thomas Richardson would say of Peters, after the first day of the royal trial, ‘I heard him commend Bradshaw, the carriage of him in the trial of the King, and another, Cook’s carriage: to be short, Mr Peters holding up his hands said, “This is a most glorious beginning of the work.” ’34 Sir Jeremy Whitcot remembered Peters’s rapturous delight as the High Court of Justice gathered steam towards its goal of convicting the King. ‘I cannot but look upon this Court with a great reverence,’ he heard Peters say, ‘for it doth resemble in some measure the trial that shall be at the end of the world by the Saints.’35
On three occasions, Peters recalled, he had spoken with Charles I, advising him on how to achieve salvation, and offering to preach to him the true word of God. ‘The poor wretch would not hear me,’36 Peters said, with pity.
In the early years of the Commonwealth, Peters seems to have enjoyed being a prominent figure at the execution of leading Royalists. He had arranged the surrender of the Duke of Hamilton to Parliament at Uttoxeter in 1648, and was with him on the scaffold the following year, when the duke was seen to embrace Peters warmly, before he was beheaded. He also delighted in saving others from execution, including the Earl of Norwich.
Peters’s years in the Netherlands, the American colonies and Ireland gave him a very broad perspective. He had deep knowledge of Ireland, and was sympathetic to the plight of its Protestants. He also assisted the oppressed Protestant minority in Catholic Piedmont. Peters’s strong attachment to the Netherlands led to his disagreeing fiercely with Cromwell about the Anglo-Dutch War – Peters feeling strongly that the two Protestant powers should work together, not blow one another apart on the seas.
At the death of his master, the Lord Protector, Peters had given the sermon, taking as his text, ‘My servant Moses is dead.’ His steps in Cromwell’s funeral procession were the prelude to his retirement: his health was poor. Peters was heard from intermittently after that, most vocally when recording his dismay at Richard Cromwell’s fall. He rose again from his sickbed in January 1660, when Parliament instructed him to intercept Monck with words of guidance during the general’s advance towards London. He caught up with Monck at St Albans, delivering a poorly received address in the daytime, which he followed with an equally ill-judged prayer that evening. These blunders would remain fresh in the minds of the new regime, after the Restoration.
Peters seems to have remained strangely oblivious of the approaching danger. Confident that he would live out his days in peace, he wrote to Monck reminding him that he was chronically ill, while pointing to his having abstained from public life in the year since the collapse of Richard Cromwell’s Protectorate. Peters hoped his total submission would guarantee his future safety.
But the Restoration provided the perfect opportunity for reprisal against those whose unpopularity matched their former power. Peters was a symbol of the republican, Puritan, decade that now demanded total rejection. In January 1660 the infirm preacher was banished from his set of rooms at Whitehall. Four months later he was relieved of the library that had been entrusted to him in 1644: it had belonged to William Laud, Charles I’s Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been executed for his role as the King’s religious henchman. Also in May, a spate of cartoons and ballads greeted the order for Peters to be apprehended: the masses were baying for his blood. Effigies of Peters were burnt in public, along with Cromwell’s. He was suspected of being one of the King’s brace of executioners. On 19 June a pamphlet appeared
detailing an alleged confession by Peters to his doctor, in which he was presented as a more than willing hand in the King’s trial and execution.
On 18 July, Peters learnt that his application for the royal mercy offered in the Act of Indemnity had been rejected. This unexpected news sent him into hiding, from where he composed a robust defence of his actions, and submitted it to the House of Lords. His self-justification was later published as The Case of Mr Hugh Peters, Impartially Communicated to the View and Censure of the Whole World, and opened with a complaint at the overwhelming prejudice he faced without even being heard. ‘Before his holy Majesty, Angels and Men,’ Peters swore he had nothing whatsoever – whether in thought, or by action – to do with Charles I’s death. He reminded his readers that he had helped Royalists during the Commonwealth, while admitting, ‘It is true, I was of a Party, when I acted zealously, but without malice or mischief.’37 It is clear that he thought this lack of forgiveness from the new King was a mistake, ‘unless my evil be only for acting with such a Party’.38 Surely this was not possible, he said, for it would lead to half the nation remaining unpardoned, and vulnerable to reprisal.
Peters panicked, in the face of terrible and unforeseen danger. He seems to have chosen to forget the public nature of his attacks on the King – the whipping up of congregations and assemblies, so they would contemplate putting Charles I on trial for his life; the riding at the head of the crowd-drawing procession that hurried the King from Windsor to St James’s – and tried to pretend that things had not been as they had appeared.
This involved some nimble reinventions. He maintained that he had not been party to Pride’s Purge when, in truth, he had been one of the few preachers to support it; that he had never profited from the war, despite receiving not just Laud’s library, but also an annuity from Parliament, as well as confiscated Royalist property; and he vigorously dismissed the many reports that he had been unfaithful (‘unclean’, in the language of the time) to his mentally ill wife – a particularly serious accusation, since in the Puritan colony where he was alleged to have strayed, adultery was a capital offence. He pointed to his Christian creed, and his status as a gentleman, to lend weight to his version of events, before swearing to be loyal to Charles II, and ‘to be passive under Authority, rather than impatient’.39
This failed to satisfy his enemies, and the hunt for the preacher continued. It ended in success on 2 September when Peters was found hiding under the bed of some Quaker friends in their Southwark home. The man who had urged the New Model Army to perform brave deeds discovered quickly that he was not, himself, a man of courage. There was a tangible desperation about his addled remarks in Court that betrayed his disbelieving terror at the very real prospect of a traitor’s death.
At his arraignment, on 10 October, when asked to plead, he replied in consternation, ‘I would not for ten thousand worlds say, I am guilty. I am not guilty.’ When asked how he would be tried, the controversial preacher offered, ‘By the Word of God.’ Those in the public gallery recognised this as an erroneous reply, put forward by a defendant desperate to wrap himself in protective religious clothing, and erupted in derisive laughter. The question was put to him again, and Peters was obliged to reply, this time, correctly, ‘By God, and the Country.’40
During his trial, on 13 October – the day Harrison was castrated, gutted and chopped into five parcels of flesh – Sir Edward Turnor told the court not to be misled by Peter’s priestly status, for, ‘He did make use of his profession, wherein he should have been the minister of peace, to make himself a trumpeter of war, of treason and sedition in the kingdom.’41
A devastating witness was produced, who illuminated the deep hatred for the King and the royal family that lurked within Peters. Dr William Young had looked after the preacher when he had been desperately ill with dysentery in Ireland. It took Peters a week to get over the worst of his sickness, and he then convalesced for nine further weeks in the physician’s home. During those two months in 1648, the priest had been open with his thoughts, often staying up till the early hours to dissect the minutiae of recent wars. ‘Many times I should hear him rail most insufferably against the Blood Royal,’ Young told the court, ‘not only against our Martyred King, but against his Royal offspring.’ Peters had also shared with Young his true and secret purpose for returning home from New England: ‘He told me that for the driving on of this interest of this Reformation, he was employed out of New England for the stirring up of this war, and driving it on.’42
Dr Young next recounted that Peters told him that it was the King’s being taken by the army from Holdenby, when he moved from Parliament’s control to that of the military, which had led to thoughts of executing the monarch. Oliver Cromwell had learnt that Parliament was plotting to have him arrested. He and Peters had escaped from London to Ware. The two men concluded there that the only way to restore peace was through the trial and death of the King. Young believed that it was Peters who originally proposed this plan, and it was Cromwell who agreed to it.
This theory was given further substance through the testimony of Sir Jeremy Whitcot, who recalled hearing Peters ‘speak very scurrilously of the King. Among the rest, he was making some kind of narration of Cromwell making an escape, and that he [Cromwell] was intended to be surprised, “that if he had not presently gone away, he had been clapped up in the Tower and declared a traitor”. He said there was a meeting of the officers of the Army, where he used this expression, “And there we did resolve to set aside the King.”’43
Other witnesses were called, who spoke of Peters’s presence at meetings where the agenda was hostility to the King. Wilbert Gunter, who drew ale at The Star pub in Coleman Street, recalled seeing Peters sitting with Cromwell and others for many hours after the King’s arrest, and heard Peters referring to the monarch repeatedly and dismissively as ‘Charles Stuart’.
It was shown that Peters had long been an outspoken critic of the King. George Starkey came from Windsor, the birthplace of the New Model Army. Starkey’s family lived near the castle, and their home had been requisitioned as lodgings by Henry Ireton. It contained a large room that the Council of War used for meetings. It was in this that Starkey frequently saw Cromwell, Ireton and Peters, together with two others whose names he did not know, sitting up till two or three in the morning, talking with intensity and passion.
Starkey had a clear memory of Peters’s relentlessly poor opinion of Charles I: ‘I remember some of his expressions were these, that he was a tyrant, that he was a fool, that he was not fit to be King or bear that office; I have heard him say, that for the office itself (in those very words which shortly after came into print) that it was a dangerous, changeable, and useless office.’44 Starkey told the court how his elderly, Royalist father had quietly seethed with resentment at the presence of his compulsory houseguests. But when news came of the King’s imprisonment on the Isle of Wight, it was too much for the old man: he vowed to make his true feelings known. His first act of defiance was to hide the key to his wine cellar. Then, while saying grace at dinner that night, he dared to throw in an impudent barb: ‘God save the King’s most excellent Majesty,’ he said, ‘and preserve him out of the hands of all his enemies.’ At this, Peters turned deliberately towards his elderly, reluctant host, and coldly declared: ‘Old gentleman, your idol will not stand long.’45
Peters’s guilt as to ‘contriving’ the death of the King was established under this great weight of evidence. What remained unproven was the suspicion that he was one of the two royal executioners – either the man who swung the axe, or the one who then held high the King’s dripping head. Richard Nunneley swore that he had seen Peters prior to the beheading, busy round the scaffold. Nunneley specifically remembered Peters summoning a carpenter from Houndsditch named Tench, whom he instructed to beat four iron staples into the floor of the scaffold. These were to be used for securing the King, if he refused to submit to death.
Nunneley maintained that Peters disappeared fro
m view an hour before the King walked on to the scaffold. It was not until after Charles’s head had been severed that he spotted Peters again – wearing a black cloak and wide-brimmed hat, in conversation with the hangman. Nunneley swore that he later saw the two men drinking water together.
Peters excitedly rebutted this evidence, claiming that he had been confined to bed at home during the execution, too ill to move. He produced a servant to back up this version of events; but this witness was, the judge would conclude, deeply unsatisfactory.
Although the identity of the two men on the scaffold has never been proven, there were eyewitness accounts – including that of a waterman, whose job it was to taxi people along the River Thames – that the man who swung the axe so expertly that day was the regular hangman, Richard Brandon. According to the waterman, Brandon was in his boat later that day, in a terrible state, his conscience in turmoil at the thought of having beheaded the Lord’s anointed.
It seems unlikely that Peters, who was accustomed to chronic ill health, had absented himself from a moment of such unique magnitude as the death of the King. This was by some distance the most sensational event that this busy, fervent, involved preacher would ever witness – the thrilling collision of his devout religious theories with his radical political aims.
On a practical level Parliament needed the execution to be performed clinically, so that it did not descend into bloody chaos. The man most likely to deliver death in one clean stroke was Brandon, the seasoned axeman. But, even with added financial inducements, Brandon was conscience-stricken by the task in hand. What better comfort for a God-fearing executioner than to give him a preacher as a scaffold companion? Might not Peters have been the man to hold aloft Charles I’s severed head?
Killers of the King Page 18