by L. C. Tyler
‘Yes, when I last saw her. Fortunately she was unaware that she and her father had to leave England because of information that I had supplied to Mr Thurloe.’
‘You think so?’
‘Of course. She clearly bore me no ill-will. And if she had suspected, I am certain she would have paid me back in some way before now.’
‘Such as ensuring that you were imprisoned on a diet of bread and water?’
‘But that was necessary …’
‘For as long as you were kept there? A day or two should have sufficed – a couple of weeks at the most.’
‘You mean …’
‘Oh, I can’t be certain – but Aminta was certainly in contact with that nice Mr Morland. It is possible that she may have caused him to influence Mr Thurloe’s thinking on the matter. I mean, a rumour or two may have spread to the effect that the Sealed Knot suspected you of betraying them and that it would be better that you were not released just yet.’
‘I see,’ I say.
‘She did come to visit you to make sure that you were not suffering too much.’
‘Or perhaps to make sure that I was suffering enough. She gave my cakes to the gaolers.’
‘Well, that is an act of charity too. She is a kind woman. I’m sure that you bear her no ill-will,’ says my mother.
‘She did, of course, speak on my behalf to Sir Edward Hyde,’ I say.
‘Precisely. You remain very much in her debt. I hope you gave Sir Edward my best wishes, though, due to the nature of our correspondence, he would probably have remembered me as 472 rather than Mistress Grey.’
‘I think Mr Morland reminded him of your past services,’ I say. ‘It would seem that he also told Sir Edward that my stepfather is playing an important role in the restoration of the King.’
‘In his own estimation perhaps. The Colonel continues to correspond with General Monck. Cromwell’s death has not stirred the General into immediate action as we hoped, but he is watching events with his usual caution. He feels, having been a Royalist and then a Parliamentarian, he can change sides only once more. If this new Cromwell does not work out any better than the old one, then I think he may finally be ready to bring his army south and support a Restoration. I do hope so. Republics are so dull. From what you tell me, the young King seems charming. He clearly charmed you.’
‘He lacks seriousness.’
‘I am sure that he can appoint serious ministers. Sir Edward Hyde is reputed to be very uninteresting.’
‘The King is also unduly influenced by his women.’
‘I am not sure what you mean by unduly. I think he sounds an admirable monarch – not at all like his father, who was rather cold and distant. And dead now, like your … Well, dead anyway.’
‘As is Oliver Cromwell.’
‘I suppose you will now return to your legal studies?’
‘Perhaps. For a while. I have, however, written to a Mr Daniel O’Neill. He offered me a job. I may take it up, in due course.’
‘I have met Mr O’Neill. Irish, of course, but thoroughly charming too. He will be an important man after the Restoration.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Once His Majesty returns to his rightful place.’
‘I am pleased you have finally come to your senses,’ my mother says, ‘and that you have abandoned this Puritanism that you learned at Cambridge.’
‘I was never a Puritan,’ I say.
‘Well, this Republicanism then,’ says my mother. ‘I believe you may actually become a Royalist.’
‘I am beginning to think I have always been a Royalist at heart,’ I say. ‘And a loyal servant of His Gracious Majesty.’
My mother nods. ‘As have we all. Except that some people have not been aware of it as they might have been. What an eventful year! Before we know where we are it will be Christmas again. I think this time we might find a little holly to decorate the house. And we could have a goose. With a spiced sauce. Don’t you think so, John?’
‘Why not?’ I say. ‘Why not.’
Postscript
May 1660
It is a fine day and the wind blows fair from France. The Naseby, hastily renamed the Royal Charles, is moored just off Dover beach. From the mainmast flutters the royal standard, not seen openly in this part of the world for over ten years.
A tall man with flowing black locks and blacker stubble on his chin emerges from the captain’s cabin and walks unsteadily across the deck to the ship’s rail. He blinks uncomfortably at the light reflected off the gleaming water. There are dark rings round his eyes. He has been up drinking all night with Sir Michael de Ripley and others, for who would waste a single moment of a day like this in mere sleep?
A flock of courtiers cluster around him, not so close as to crowd His Majesty, but close enough to bathe in the rekindled glow of kingship. Many of them have new titles, bestowed on them on board the ship. Others have had old titles restored. The Duke of Buckingham is absent, as is Sir Richard Willys, but near the centre of the group stands Viscount Pole, and a little further off Sir Samuel Morland. At the very back of the crowd, with no title at all but still content with his part in the proceedings, stands the young Mr Samuel Pepys. All seem very happy.
The King descends into a gilded barge in which he is rowed ceremoniously to the shore. Not far behind, a second boat brings many of the court – including Mr Pepys, who has used his elbows adroitly to gain a seat – and also one of the King’s dogs. The dog shits in the boat. Mr Pepys laughs. Later he will write about it in his diary, but for the moment he enjoys the salt wind and the sun on his face. And, all the time, England gets closer, stroke by stroke. White cliffs tower above His Majesty for the first time in eight years.
King Charles II of France, England, Scotland and Ireland (and now recognised as such in all of those countries except France) surveys his people, clustered on the quayside. There’s Monck, he thinks, with half a regiment of foot behind him. He took his time deciding which side he was on, but he’s here now at least. He’ll want me to make him a Duke. And that fat lump of lard must be the Mayor of Dover. He’ll probably want a knighthood. They all want something from me. The pretty wench by the Mayor’s side must be his wife or his daughter. Now, I wouldn’t mind if she wanted something from me. And I’ll wager the first thing the Mayor tells me as I step ashore is that he’s been a Royalist all along. I can’t believe the number of people who have told me they were secret Royalists the whole time. Honestly, if I’d known they were all Royalists, I’d have done this years ago. Maybe I should have even accepted Willys’s offer. We might both have had a surprise.
The King places one shoe, with its bright new red heel, on the gangplank – then he pauses just for an instant, as if trying to ascertain whether this might not, in fact, be the most elaborate double-cross that Parliament has yet devised. How many times has Monck changed sides? And even if he can be trusted, do any of those men with muskets still hanker after a Republic? It would, after all, only take one. Well, there was no going back now.
He swallows hard and then raises his hat to the crowd in greeting. There is, in response, a cheer like the roar of a cannon. It both deafens and, in a strange way, soothes.
So far so good then. With his head still pounding from last night’s debauch, the King proceeds slowly down the plank and enters his Kingdom.
Author’s Note
This book is self-evidently a work of fiction, though, equally clearly for those who know the period, many of the characters are real and many of the events actually happened.
Charles II, Cromwell, Pepys, Thurloe, Morland, Willys, Fairfax, Lambert, O’Neill, Brodrick and Bate all played a role in the real events of 1657–8. John Grey, the various members of the Clifford/Pole family, Esmond Underhill and Sir Michael de Ripley are conversely all imaginary. Especially Sir Michael de Ripley.
I have attempted to portray the real characters much as they were and to shape my fictitious ones according to the needs of the plot. I took as few liberties as possible with ac
tual historical events. There was a plot to lure Charles II to England under circumstances not unlike those I describe – though the main source for this fact seems to be Samuel Morland, who claimed to have prevented it. He may not have been entirely truthful. Willys was certainly accused by Morland of going over to Thurloe, and the Barret letters (from which I have quoted) were cited in evidence. What Willys’s motives were in doing a deal with Thurloe, how much he gave away and how much damage he did to the Sealed Knot remain a matter for debate – but Thurloe did describe him as his ‘masterpiece of corruption’, thus giving me a title for this book.
There were many attempts on Cromwell’s life, and some were (reportedly) just as described. It is difficult to take all of the plots seriously, for the reasons I give – some were simply ludicrous and doomed to fail from the start. That, of course, did not stop the plotters from being executed. Cromwell took many of the precautions I mention in order to avoid such plots – his armour, his changes of route, his liking for rooms with more than one exit. His eventual death was announced as having been caused by ague, but it has been suggested that he was poisoned, quite possibly by his own physician, Dr Bate. It was a rumour that was current within a short time of the Protector’s death, and Bate certainly never denied it. He eventually became Charles II’s physician, thus serving three Heads of State.
Only very occasionally have I deliberately played around with dates or the sequence of events. One to which I must confess is the compressing of Willys’s career as a double agent so that his denunciation by Morland occurs in 1658 rather than the following year. This is partly to suit the plot but also because many of the surviving facts about the case come from Morland and are not necessarily to be relied on. In any case, that Morland denounced Willys unsuccessfully in 1658 doesn’t mean that he didn’t successfully expose him the following year. Interestingly, there is also a story that Morland claimed that he and a ‘Mrs Russell’ had poisoned Cromwell and that Thurloe had ‘had a lick’ of the poison and been laid up by it. The source of that tale (and it is found nowhere else) is Sir Richard Willys, who may also have had a point to prove.
There is one other inaccuracy I must admit to. In the Prologue, I have Charles II sailing away from Shoreham beach under a full moon. It was in fact about ten o’clock in the morning when the boat faded from view. But this is a work of fiction and, honestly, a full moon works so much better.
Acknowledgements
Many of the books that I consulted in writing A Masterpiece of Corruption are listed in the acknowledgements section of my earlier book featuring John Grey, A Cruel Necessity. I would, however, like to repeat my indebtedness in particular to Geoffrey Smith’s The Cavaliers in Exile, David Underdown’s Royalist Conspiracy in England, Philip Aubrey’s Mr Secretary Thurloe and D. L. Hobman’s Cromwell’s Master Spy: A Study of John Thurloe. Additionally, I have drawn on H. F. McMain’s The Death of Oliver Cromwell, in which he sets out in detail the case for Cromwell having been poisoned by his doctors. For the character of Cromwell generally, books I consulted included Martyn Bennett’s Oliver Cromwell and Christopher Hill’s God’s Englishman. Regarding the authenticity of the Barret Letters, there are two very thorough studies in the English Historical Review: David Underdown’s Sir Richard Willys and Secretary Thurloe and Margery Hollings’s Thomas Barret: A Study in the Secret History of the Interregnum. With regard to legal education and the status of lawyers in the seventeenth century, W. R. Preest’s The Inns of Court provides useful information. And Lisa Picard’s Restoration London, mentioned in previous acknowledgements, remains a joy to read.
I must also thank everyone at Constable & Robinson/Little, Brown for their help in the various stages of writing this book – especially Krystyna, Amanda, Florence and Joan (and Kate for advice on the website). My thanks are as ever due to David Headley and all at the DHH Literary Agency for their support, and last but not least to my family, including the newest member, Rachel, who shares the dedication at the front of the book.
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Prologue
London – July 1665
Jem wrapped his scarf more securely round his face and surveyed the desolation before him. This wasn’t the sort of work he usually did, but it was work. Regular paid work. And there was little enough of that in London at the moment, what with most of the big houses shut up and all of the gentry fled to the country. It wasn’t heavy work either – not like ploughing or haymaking. And it was, you might say, a permanent position, in the sense that it would probably keep him in bread and ale until he died. Jem cautiously pulled the scarf down a couple of inches and repeated the invitation that he had been making all day to the citizens of London.
‘Bring out your dead!’ he called at the top of his voice. ‘Bring out your dead!’
The wagon behind him creaked and groaned as it rolled slowly through the grassy streets, its wheels grinding against the cobbles. It was full, but not too smelly, because they were doing collections every day now and usually got them loaded before they started to rot or fall apart too much. You wanted to get your customers onto the cart in one piece if you could. Of course they couldn’t complain about poor service, but it was a matter of professional pride to Jem that head, body, arms and legs should, if possible, all go into the same pit, to be reunited in whatever manner God ordained on Judgement Day.
The street was empty – not so much as a cat or dog. Jem hadn’t seen a cat or a dog for weeks, not since the Lord Mayor had wisely ordered a cull. There were plenty of rats, mainly on account of the lack of cats and dogs, but the cull had been necessary to make the city safe from the pestilence that was now in its third or fourth month – it was tricky saying when it had all started because nobody had wanted to admit that the Plague was in London, less still that it was in their own house, and the first deaths had been attributed quite imaginatively to all manner of causes. Two groats and a glass of ale got you a certificate saying ‘consumption’ or ‘impostume of the head’ as you preferred. But plague wasn’t something that could be kept secret for very long. Certainly nobody who strayed into London now could be in any doubt at all that things were not quite as they should be. Houses sealed up. Red crosses on the doors. And an all-pervasive smell of rotting flesh from the ones that nobody had found yet.
‘Bring out your dead!’ Jem repeated.
Bristol, where Jem came from, was reportedly now as bad. The Plague was everywhere. He sometimes wondered about his family, whether they were still alive or dead. At the present rate, everyone would be dead soon everywhere. London would be one big pit of festering corpses, and the last man standing would have to shovel earth over his own grave.
He gave the horse’s reins a tug, not because there was much point in going faster, but because as the leader of this little team he had to assert his authority from time to time, even if it was only with the horse. At the rear of the cart tramped Bill and Dick, their faces also covered to protect them from the invisible miasma that spread the disease. Jem had additionally a bag of cloves round his neck, which he’d been sold as an infallible defence. He was also chewing tobacco because somebody had put round a rumour that no tobacconist had died since the plague had begun. Trade in tobacco had increased ten-fold and Jem suspected he knew where the rumour had started. Well, he might as well spend his money on that than save it for a rainy day. No point in dying with silver in your pocket. He’d need to remind Bill and Dick to check the pockets of the customers on the cart before they pitted them, though he suspected that they had already done so privately when they loaded up. Takings had dropped since Dick joined the team and Jem reckoned he knew why. Lifting money after the corpses had been transported, and Jem was watching the unloading, was a sort of tip for good service. Lifting money when they collected the customers, and Jem was busy looking after the horse, was simply wrong in every possible way. Then there was that woman they pitted yesterday. Jem was sure that she�
��d had a ruby brooch at her throat, but Bill and Dick had said they’d seen nothing at all – maybe a spot of blood? Spot of blood! They must think he was born yesterday.
‘Two more over there,’ said Jem, halting the horse outside a boarded up house. ‘Fetch ’em onto the cart.’
The two bodies were propped against the wall, as if sleeping off the effects of too much ale, but their wide-open eyes gave evidence that they were not slumbering. One had the pink face and black fingers that you often saw in customers. The other seemed untouched, except he was also dead. That was how it went. You never could tell exactly what the plague would do to you.
Jem watched carefully as both bodies were loaded. If there was money on either, he was having his share. And a share in the price of that ruby if he could prove Bill had taken it.
‘Time to go to the pit,’ he said to his assistants. ‘We’re full.’
In fact, they picked up another three as they trundled north to the nearest of the new plague pits in Barnsbury, the warm afternoon sun on their faces and the birds singing in the green trees. It wasn’t bad work, if you could just keep healthy yourself.
Jem oversaw the unloading.
‘Carefully now!’ he called, from a safe-ish distance. ‘These are Christian men and women. Have some respect.’
Dick nodded as he and Bill, feet at the edge of the pit, swung the body backwards and forwards, gradually gaining momentum, and then let it fly in an arc, turning over and over, until it landed on top of the heap below them.
‘Wait!’ called Jem.
There was something odd about that one. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something he had spotted as the body spun its way to the grave. Something that caught the rays of the dying sun. Something, in summary, that should not have been there. All three looked down from the edge of the chasm at one body amongst the hundreds that lay below them in every possible posture.