Killers of the King

by Charles Spencer

  Despite his role in the execution remaining unproven, there was no escape for Peters at trial. In his summing-up, the solicitor general said: ‘What man could more contrive the death of the King than this miserable priest hath done? . . . For many come here, and say they did it “in the fear of the Lord” – and now you see who taught them.’ After sentencing, Peters admitted that the testimony he had presented had not been as truthful as he would have liked: ‘I will submit myself to God, and if I have spoken anything against the Gospel of Christ, I am heartily sorry.’46 Regret was soon replaced by terror, as Peters plunged into a gloom of despair.

  Peters had been tried alongside the lawyer John Cook, who had mounted a brilliant legal defence that led to awkward questions as to the validity, the procedure and the content of the charges against him.

  Cook claimed he had only accepted the case against the late King because he needed the fee: he assured the court that he had no malice in helping the prosecution; rather his involvement was down to avarice. This raised the vital question as to whether a lawyer paid to represent a cause could be condemned for doing so, since he was performing his professional duties. With similar ingenuity Cook stated that he could not be guilty of contriving or plotting the death of the King, since he was only engaged as solicitor to the court the day after the charges against Charles I were proclaimed.

  On a more mundane level he also pointed out that the charge against him had been drawn up in the name of ‘I. Cooke’, not ‘J. Cooke’. This sort of administrative error could, Cook knew from experience, lead to cases being dismissed.

  But none of Cook’s clever points could penetrate the all-enveloping hostility of this Royalist court. They had come to condemn the prime movers in the death of the King, and the case’s lead prosecutor could not be allowed to elude them. Additionally, Cook had been a legal pioneer who had tried to straighten out some of the abuses of his profession, and who had recommended that lawyers should donate one-tenth of their fees to the poor. Accordingly, as Ludlow noted, ‘The malice towards this gentleman was very great from those of his own robe.’47 He was not going to receive any favours from disgruntled colleagues.

  Cook and Peters received their death sentence at the same time. They were manacled together and escorted back to prison.

  Chapter 8

  A Time to Die

  How long, Lord, holy and true, will it be ere thou avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?

  Lieutenant General Edmund Ludlow, regicide

  The prisoners had been kept in solitary confinement when in the Tower of London, but in Newgate prison they were held together. Cook generously offered legal advice to those comrades whose trials were still to come, giving detailed guidance to Colonel Axtell in particular, who took numerous notes for his defence.

  Cook also became the compassionate advocate for Peters in his vulnerable and miserable state, repeatedly seeking a stay of execution for the preacher so he could prepare himself for death while in better mental health. These requests failed, the Anglican priests who heard them seeing them as further evidence of Cook’s wickedness: why else would he seek to help someone as evil as Hugh Peters?

  Cook’s wife, Mary, was staying with relatives of fellow regicide Edmund Ludlow. She had been so persistent in her attempts to visit her husband in the Tower that the gaolers there threatened to move him to Newgate before the transfer was due. Cook offered that he would not mind the move, since Newgate provided an equally direct gateway to heaven.

  Now that Cook was committed to Newgate, as a man condemned, Mary was openly distraught at what was about to befall her husband: her worst fears had come true. He tried to lighten her load, telling her not to waste money on buying mourning clothes after he had gone, since he would by then be in the glory of heaven, resplendent in white – a reason for joy, not grief.

  The evening that Cook and Peters were formally served with their death warrants, which stated that their executions would be performed the following day, they were removed from the other prisoners to spend their last night in Newgate’s dungeon. There, Cook wrote a restrained but loving letter to his baby daughter, Freelove, addressing her tenderly as ‘My Dear Sweet Child’, and advising her of the virtues that must guide her life: humbleness, meekness, courtesy; and above all, the twin obediences – to God, and to her conscience. The doomed father presented himself to his daughter’s memory as one that God had chosen to suffer in his cause, and who would therefore be assured of a place in heaven. There, he told her, he would be joyfully reunited with the son – Freelove’s brother – who had predeceased him.

  Cook slept briefly, before waking to the continuing burden of Hugh Peters, who remained trapped in profound despair, and who was now rambling incoherently after heavy, all-night, drinking.

  That morning Cook was visited by his wife, who was weeping uncontrollably at the horror that awaited her husband, and at the imminence of their separation. ‘My dear lamb,’ he chided, lovingly, ‘let us not part in a shower. Here, our comforts have been mixed with a chequer-work of troubles, but in heaven all tears shall be wiped from our eyes.’1

  Cook and Peters were led to their separate sledges. There was a sharp pole on Cook’s on which was fixed the severed head of Thomas Harrison, the soldier’s lifeless face placed opposite that of the lawyer. It was a base form of intimidation, this macabre accompaniment on the men’s journey from Newgate to Charing Cross, through animated, abusive crowds. When they arrived, the executioner beckoned for Peters but Cook, pointing to the wretched condition of his comrade, volunteered to die first. Peters was secured by the rails to Charing Cross, where he was evidently crazed with fear, swigging back alcohol, his eyes casting about wildly for a source of deliverance.

  Peters was forced to watch his companion’s final agonies, which were preceded by a very long speech from the lawyer. In this, Cook found time to make one last plea for the postponement of Peters’s execution. ‘Here is a poor brother coming,’ said Cook, gesturing towards the tethered priest. ‘I am afraid that he is not fit to die at this time. I could wish that his Majesty might show some mercy.’2 Cook also asked that the King might spare the remainder of the condemned men, accepting his life in their place.

  After praying, Cook was hanged to the point of unconsciousness, cut down, and castrated. Death was denied him at this point because many in the crowd insisted on some sport: seeing the pathetic, blathering state that Peters was in, a Colonel Turner shouted for him to be released from the railings, and be brought forward to get a close-up view of what was about to happen to him. ‘Come, Mr Peters,’ the hangman leered, rubbing his bloodied hands together, before wiping them on his apron, ‘how do you like this work?’3 Peters was held close as Cook was torn open, the crude, scorching instruments burrowing into his stomach to extract the meat of his bowels. These were then slowly roasted in front of his eyes.

  It was a protracted and agonising end, the stench of cooked flesh hanging in the air. The executioner eventually confirmed that Cook was dead by holding his knife aloft, a dripping organ impaled on its point. His triumphant cry was, ‘Behold, the heart of a traitor!’ Cook’s head was presented next.

  It was now Peters’s turn. As he approached the ladder, he saw a friend in the crowd and gave him a gold piece, asking him to take it to his daughter with a message that – by the time she received the coin – he would be with God. Peters was most likely in no state to give a speech. Royalist reports stated that he died ‘sullenly and desperately’. Others recalled him mumbling a short prayer, before taking the drop from the ladder, apparently with a smile on his face. Ludlow – more charitable, and naturally eager to afford his friend a martyr’s exit – wrote that Peters found his courage at the very end, and told the sheriff that his attempt to terrify him through Cook’s appalling suffering had, rather, given him strength. ‘Sir, you have slain here one of the servants of the Lord before mine eyes,’ Ludlow recorded him as saying, ‘and have made me behold it on purpose to terrify and discourage me,
but God hath made it an ordinance to me for my strengthening and encouragement.’4

  Whatever the truth about his demeanour, Peters was hanged, drawn and quartered that morning. His and Cook’s heads were placed on poles overlooking the north end of Westminster Hall, where the trial of Charles I had taken place more than a decade earlier with the approval and collusion of both men.

  The next day, 17 October, was the turn of Thomas Scott, Gregory Clements, Colonel Adrian Scroope and Colonel John Jones. Scott and Clements were sent ahead, to die together.

  The four men had been allowed visits by their family and close friends the previous Sunday – an intolerably sad time, alleviated slightly by the condemned men’s determination to raise the spirits of those they were leaving behind. Jones took one of Scroope’s distraught daughters by the hand, and said, ‘You are weeping for your father, but suppose your father were tomorrow to be King of France, and you to tarry a while behind, would you weep? Why, he is going to reign with the King of Kings in eternal glory.’5

  Meanwhile Scott was bitterly regretting having returned from the Continent in the mistaken belief that he would receive the King’s mercy. His provocative words in the Commons, about his pride at being one of those responsible for the King’s death, were retold to the court by a succession of prominent witnesses. Scott countered repeatedly that what was said in Parliament was protected by privilege, so his words there could not be used against him. But the court ruled that treason was a crime of such enormity that it could have no hiding place, not even in the precious forum of the House of Commons.

  Scott’s fate had finally been sealed by the testimony of William Lenthall, Charles I’s Speaker of the House of Commons, who had clung on to office long after his master’s execution. At the Restoration, Lenthall had been selected by the Commons as one of twenty men who were not to benefit from the Act of Indemnity: they would be punished, but their lives would not be at risk. It was only the pleading of General Monck (now the Duke of Albermarle) in the Lords that downgraded Lenthall’s punishment to one of lifetime exclusion from public office.

  Desperate to regain royal favour, Lenthall had sent £3,000 as a gift to the new King. The money was banked, but resulted in no encouraging signs from the Crown. Lenthall now offered himself as a witness against Scott, claiming to have heard his treasonous words, even though he had been forced to concede that from the Speaker’s chair he had not been able to see who spoke them. As a reward for his useful testimony Lenthall was granted an audience with Charles II. But, to the delight of the many who held the former Speaker in contempt, on being presented to the King, Lenthall misjudged his courtly bow, lost his balance, and toppled over on to his back.

  Lenthall retired from public life after this, retreating to his two Oxfordshire estates: Besselsleigh Manor and Burford Priory. There, with plenty of time to look back on his life, he became racked with guilt at his shortcomings, especially his words that had damned Scott. Lenthall died in November 1662, insisting that he was such a miserable, flawed human being that there should be no great memorial to him, such as might have been expected of one who had achieved great political office. Instead he ordered that a simple slab would serve, and he had two Latin words carved on it: Vermis sum – ‘I am a worm’.

  Lenthall would have learnt that Scott had gone to his death in an altogether more honourable manner, his absolute belief in his cause helping him to face his horrifying end with defiance. Sir Orlando Bridgeman had asked to come to visit him in Newgate prison – a request that held out the possibility of last-minute forgiveness. But Scott refused to give into this temptation: he knew that any mercy offered would be in return for his public condemnation of all he had stood for. ‘Truly,’ he said, ‘I bless God I am at a point, I cannot, no, I cannot desert the cause.’6

  Scott faltered, the night before his death, when the full reality of the ordeal struck home. However, he steeled himself through a night-time of prayer. When his wife, Alice, came in the morning with their daughter and two sons for the agonising farewells, they found him reconfirmed in defiant contempt for those who were ending his life. He made his family promise not to beg for his body to be spared the customary mutilations and indignities after death: his pitiless enemies could do what they wanted with his mortal remains, for his spirit would by then be in a far better place.

  On reaching the place of execution, Scott mounted the ladder from which he would soon step away and be hanged. He began to address the crowd gathered to witness his end, with a prepared speech:

  Gentlemen, I stand here a spectacle to God, angels, and men: to God and angels, to whom I hope I shall speedily go, and now to you. I owe it to God, the nation, and myself, to say something concerning each. For myself, I think it may become me to tell you how and why I came hither, and something in general concerning my capacity. In the beginning of these troubles I was, as many others were, unsatisfied. I saw liberties and religion in the nation in great danger. To my best apprehension, I saw the approaching of popery in a great measure coming in upon us. I saw—

  The sheriff interrupted at this point, refusing to continue justify his actions, or those of the men who had taken up arms against the Crown eighteen years earlier. If Scott wanted to turn to his prayers, the sheriff explained, that would be in order – but this dangerous talk must stop.

  Scott promised not to reproach anyone, if allowed to carry on with his intended speech. But the sheriff was adamant: ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘you have but a little time, therefore spend that little time in prayer.’

  Scott, a man who was used to having his say, had put together words that were of the utmost importance to him, so he persisted: ‘I shall speak—’

  The sheriff cut in again, saying he would only allow the condemned man to pray.

  ‘It may become me to give an account of myself,’ continued Scott, ‘because—’

  But the sheriff, clearly under orders to put a stop to such inflammatory speeches, that were received with sympathy and fascination by the many onlookers, was adamant: ‘It doth not become you to speak any such thing here,’ he directed, ‘therefore I beseech you betake yourself to prayer.’ Then he repeated his earlier advice: ‘It’s but a little time you have to live, you know that is the most needful thing.’

  The exchanges between the two men became shorter and sharper. Scott insisted he wanted to explain why and how he had come to this place of execution. Another voice shouted out from the crowd: ‘Everybody knows that!’

  Scott, still astonished that he was being denied what he viewed as his native right, said with indignation, ‘It’s hard [that] an Englishman may not have liberty to speak.’

  But there was no shaming the determined official. ‘I cannot,’ he explained, with finality, ‘suffer you to speak any such thing.’

  Scott reacted with scorn: ‘I shall say no more but this, that it is a very mean and bad cause that cannot bear the words of a dying man; nor hath it been ordinarily denied to persons in my condition.’

  When Scott had outwardly accepted that he was to be denied his final words, he lay down in the dust and prayed to God, exalting him while acknowledging his own sins. He managed to weave in a political subtext to these prayers, stating that he felt strong because God had promised him a place among the saints and angels, for the Lord approved of his stance. Scott emphasised to the watching crowd that his was ‘A cause not to be repented of, I say not to be repented of.’7

  At this, the sheriff stepped in, saying that this was not a prayer but a speech, and it must stop. Scott’s words continued, in a subtler vein, but he still managed to insinuate his real thoughts: he said he hoped that all kingdoms would unite under the Lord, that the blood shed in the cause of civil and religious liberty should not be forgotten, and that his enemies would be shown the error of their ways. Then, he was put to death.

  Gregory Clements climbed the ladder now. Originally, in court, he had declared himself not guilty. But his relatives had urged him to change his plea to guilty, in an attempt to p
reserve his £40,000 fortune for their benefit once he was gone; if he had persisted in claiming his innocence, but had then been found guilty, he would have surely forfeited his estate, as well as his life. So he had accepted his fate, the final transaction of this most successful of merchants being his life, as payment for his family’s continued worldly comfort. Perhaps out of disillusionment at his relatives’ greed, he remained quiet in the days before his death, and offered few words in the moments before his execution.

  The hurdle that had carried Scott and Clements to Charing Cross now returned to collect the condemned colonels, Scroope and Jones, whom Ludlow described affectionately as ‘two comely ancient gentlemen’.8 When Scroope had been sentenced, one of his children reportedly clung to him, sobbing loudly. ‘Peace child,’ he soothed, ‘Peace – be still – not a word . . . Who would be troubled thus to die, for can anyone have greater honour than to have his soul carried to Heaven upon the wings of the prayers of so many Saints?’9 Scroope’s spirit was so at peace that he spent the time between the sledge conveying Scott and Clements to their deaths, and its return for him and Jones, fast asleep. He snored loudly. A friend woke him to say it was time to go, then hugged him tight, and asked him how he felt. ‘Very well,’ he replied, ‘I thank God never better in all my life. And now,’ he continued, ‘I will wash my hands in innocency, and so will I compass thine altar, O Lord.’10

  His final speech was a rousing glorification of God, and a public forgiveness of all his enemies – although he did refer to one in particular, ‘through whose means I was brought hither to suffer’. Some in the crowd knew this to be Major General Richard Browne, one of Parliament’s busier and more successful generals of the First Civil War, who had been loathed by Royalists: they looked down on him as ‘the faggot man’ because his wealth came from trading timber and coal. However, in the tug-of-war over the late King in the late 1640s, Browne had sided with the Presbyterians in Parliament against the army and the Puritans. After Pride’s Purge, Browne’s reward for this stance had been five years’ harsh imprisonment. The Restoration had brought about Browne’s resurgence. He was elected lord mayor of London in the month of the regicides’ trials, and had appeared as a witness against some of them. Browne had betrayed to the court Scroope’s private but fatal views on Charles I’s execution: the colonel had justified it, and declined to see it as murder. This had seen Scroope transferred from the list of those covered by the Act of Indemnity, to that of the condemned.