Among the exiles, he identified various conspirators. The Louvre Group tended to be Catholic and courted alliance with Scotland. The Old Royalists were Anglican and opposed a Scottish alliance. A set called the Swordsmen associated with Prince Rupert in Paris, men who had no particular policy, other than fighting. The Action Party were more militant but just as unsuccessful. Sometime in 1653, the most famous and secretive group emerged, the Sealed Knot. They had hopes to attract backing from the Levellers. It was not completely crazy, because the Levellers had opposed the King's execution and disenchanted leaders of their party did come knocking at Royalist doors. They found them easily. That was how secret the secret plotters were.
Lovell made a scathing assessment of these cliques: their hopes were ridiculous, their disorder was dire. He despised them for working against one another, for their piss-poor judgement and lamentable lack of security. Typically, he attached himself to none of them. However, he did offer his services. Charles II always played the innocent, but from the start of his exile after the battle of Worcester he had used loyal friends to organise underhand designs. Lovell was told in confidence that Lord Cottingham and Sir Edward Hyde were behind the murders of two Commonwealth diplomats, Isaac Dorislaus at The Hague and Anthony Ascham in Madrid, with the King's connivance. He learned that his friend Edmund Treves was in the party that killed Dorislaus. He also heard Edmund later died at Worcester. He was surprised how much the waste of that good young life depressed him.
Hyde was very much still active in intrigue, though many cavaliers despised him as an over-ambitious careerist. Lovell hated Hyde. But also dabbling with secret work was Sir Marmaduke Langdale. Langdale had been one of Charles I's premier commanders. A long-faced, lean-figured, old-school cavalier, he had operated mainly in the north, a regular opponent of the Fairfaxes. He formed the Northern Horse from the relics of Lord Newcastle's broken troops after Marston Moor but they were defeated at Naseby. In the second civil war Langdale was crushed by Cromwell at the battle of Preston and captured; he escaped in various disguises, including that of a milkmaid. Now permanently excluded from England by Parliament, Sir Marmaduke Langdale was a member of Charles II's council in exile.
It was with Langdale that Orlando Lovell condescended to work. Langdale viewed him with fair regard. As a man of action, Lovell was experienced, physical, energetic, cool-headed and brave-hearted, a strong swordsman and an accurate shot. His mental skills included his ability to assess the enemy and, to a lesser extent, operational planning. Though a truculent follower, he made a terse but efficient leader. His supreme talent was to be devious. He was so good at that because he enjoyed it so much. Lovell would make a rabid plotter.
The plan hatched with Langdale was that Lovell would go across to England and resume normal life. He would pose as a penitent returning from exile; he would recover his estates, give false oaths of loyalty, establish himself somewhere convenient, recruit and report back on conditions. For this, his easiest disguise would be to live once again with his wife; he could use the regular Royalist claim, that he had come back to England 'to settle his family'.
At the moment when Lovell first landed in Hampshire, Juliana was still reluctant to believe he was dead. She was doggedly waiting to hear from him and would have taken up their old family life, wherever and however Lovell suggested. Had he found her, Lovell's plan would have worked.
So he landed in Hampshire. When he looked around his home county, he could see much damage but signs of recovery. True, war had had permanent effects. Large tracts of forest had been felled, stolen by locals for fuel or more recently commandeered by Parliament for shipbuilding; swathes of great trees, a whole generation, were lost forever. Farms had decayed too, but they were now slowly being reclaimed for crops and livestock. Cattle and horses were now bred again. Prices were stabilising, fences were rebuilt, buildings that had been damaged beyond repair were pulled down for tidiness and to reuse their materials. Country-born, Orlando Lovell noticed these things. He had been born into the landowning class and was disgusted by the suffering imposed on the land by long years of war. His heart hardened against the rulers of the Commonwealth, whom he saw as responsible for the destruction.
In Hampshire, he was infuriated to find that his own meagre estates had never been returned to him after Juliana helped him compound for pardon. They were forfeited to Parliament. Worse, his property had been snapped up, at a knock-down price, by one of many astute speculators who were grabbing Royalist land: his own land agent, John Jolley. Lovell would never see the money; it went to pay Parliamentary soldiers.
When Jolley admitted this outrage, he only escaped injury because they were in a tavern with people watching — people who might report a trouble-making Royalist. Jolley informed the incensed Lovell that an information had been laid against him by somebody unknown. He had been proscribed by Parliament; designated 'dangerous and disaffected'; ordered into banishment. If caught, he would be imprisoned. He faced a firing-squad or the gallows.
Lovell disappeared fast, before he could be betrayed. In Hampshire he could trust no one. He had intended to try to see his father, but this was likely to go badly so he did not wait to do it. He had learned one other thing from John Jolley: Juliana and their two sons were at Lewisham. Lovell travelled there, but he found tenants in possession. He did not approach them. Had he done so, and had he tracked down Juliana to Shoe Lane, he would not have been too late. She would not — could not — have turned away her husband. She had not yet gone looking for a printer. So if Lovell lost her, it was due to his own inertia.
Fearing that trouble might follow him from Hampshire, Lovell burrowed into hiding in London. Much of the news there was of the trial of the Leveller, John Lilburne, who had returned to England from exile in Bruges; he claimed that Cromwell's dismissing the Rump had rendered his banishment invalid. His old ally Richard Overton tried to get him a good lawyer and attended daily. The jury would find Lilburne not guilty; he would try to obtain a writ of habeas corpus but would be put in the Tower again anyway.
During this highly charged trial, John Thurloe took over sole management of the intelligence service for Cromwell. Around the same time, intuition warned Colonel Orlando Lovell that he was being watched. Immediately he packed, changed his coat and his hairstyle, sold his horse for more than he had paid for it, left his lodging through an inconspicuous alley and escaped back to the Continent.
Chapter Seventy-Four — London and abroad: 1653-54
'If he be returned, it must be lately… I could learn nothing where he was, but was assured he was upon dangerous designs…'
(From the State Papers of John Thurloe)
Not all plotters against the Commonwealth were Royalists. This was the problem Thurloe had to face. If the Commonwealth failed, it was likely to be because so much time and energy had to be given to countering dissent, both abroad and at home. At home the most dangerous dissenter was Edward Sexby.
Orlando Lovell's ship back to France crossed one that was returning to England with Sexby, whose history was becoming bizarre. He had just spent months in Bordeaux, among elements of the Fronde rebellion against the French monarchy — a rebellion that had been more farcical than fanatical, more striking for its in-fighting among aristocrats than for any serious reconsideration of social order. Sexby was at the high point of a career that had bucketed through promotion, special service, court-martial and cashiering, after which he was sent to France with four associates, a thousand pounds and a special brief to 'find out things, prevent danger and create an interest'.
He took himself to Bordeaux as a self-appointed political adviser, producing for the Frondeurs a document called L'Accord du Peuple, crudely adapted from the Levellers' manifesto. Sexby had hopes of Bordeaux where, unlike the general carnival elsewhere, craftsmen had banded in a commune to declare a republic. The Fronde was really an odd, half-hearted amalgam; fashionable loaves and hats had been created in the shape of street-urchins' catapults or 'frondes', several beautif
ul duchesses had intrigued with contemptible lovers and the usual misery had been inflicted on the poor. Then this hotchpotch movement faded fast. The commune in Bordeaux caved in. They opened their gates to royal troops. Threatened with arrest, Edward Sexby climbed out over the city walls by night.
His mission had undoubtedly been dangerous. One of his companions was captured and tortured to death. Sexby returned home, put in a stupendous expenses claim, then made a lofty attempt to set himself up as foreign policy adviser to Cromwell. He suggested a top-secret expedition to gain a British foothold in France, perhaps at La Rochelle. When Cromwell rejected this, Sexby turned bitterly against Cromwell. As Gideon Jukes had noted years before, being sidelined had never suited him.
The stage was now set for Edward Sexby's extraordinary career as Cromwell's implacable enemy.
Whether Oliver Cromwell was a hypocrite or simply pragmatic, in December 1653 he was forced to accept that, after the Rump departed, even its successor, the carefully vetted Barebones Parliament, did not work. Cromwell assumed the title of Lord Protector. He would be an absolute ruler, though he refused to consider the offer of the crown. His enemies mocked this rejection, though it was probably genuine. Many old allies were horrified. Old enemies saw this as their chance.
The Protectorate not only gave a focus for manic Royalist intrigue, it also led to opposition at home from religious and political radicals. Fifth Monarchists and Baptists fulminated. Levellers would bitterly oppose rule by one man, whether he called himself Protector or King. All of them sought Cromwell's removal. Sexby, too, was now busy at that work.
John Thurloe's intelligence service set about tracking every set of dissidents. To do so, the spymaster drew on any possible resources, encouraging turncoats and bribing double agents. In December 1653 as the Protectorate began, Richard Overton, the Leveller, who only a few months before had been stalwartly supporting John Lilburne at his trial, was paid twenty pounds by Thurloe. This substantial sum was an inducement to report on the activities of Edward Sexby.
It was suspected Overton might renege. An attempt was made, therefore, to recruit someone to monitor his activities — one candidate being Lambert Jukes, whose wife knew the wife of Overton. A doubt hung over Lambert, as a convicted Ranter. Even more likely to move in Overton's circles, because he was a printer and Overton constantly wrote pamphlets, was Lambert's brother, Gideon Jukes. He had a sound New Model Army record, and sometimes wrote for the official Parliamentary publisher, Marchamont Nedham. Nedham had connections with Thurloe and it was he who made informal approaches to Gideon.
This Nedham had a mixed history as a publisher and editor, though Gideon found him fairly congenial. In the '40s, Nedham had published Mercurius Britannicus, the Parliamentary response to Royalist propaganda, and after Naseby he printed the King's incriminating papers. He changed sides dramatically over the execution — but while under sentence of death in Newgate, his old love for Parliament was reborn by magic. Ever since, he had championed the need for all parties to submit to the Commonwealth's government, in order to achieve social stability.
As the official propagandist, Nedham was paid a salary, though when he set up the state news-sheet Mercurius Politicus, he also supported it financially by taking in paid advertisements for a sister periodical called The Public Adviser; its regular news of houses and shops for sale, medical prescriptions and apprenticeships offered for gentlemen's sons seemed to Gideon a cheerful indication that life was getting back to normal after years of war. Nedham had a famously jocular style as editor, with superb contacts and correspondents. His official licenser was John Milton, also a contributor, who held a post with the Council of State, having oversight of foreign documents. Other collaborators were also poets, John Dryden and Andrew Marvell.
Gideon had been first introduced to Marchamont Nedham by Robert Allibone in 1651, when Mercurius Politicus was about a year old. He found Nedham a short, hawk-nosed, intense, lively character, whose long black hair and two earrings gave him a raffish appearance. Gideon liked him more than Robert did, so it was only after Robert's death that Gideon wrote occasional pieces for him. He approved of the man's belief in separation of church and state; his dedication to freedom of conscience; even his eagerness — so much despised by others — to make publishing pay. Gideon did not disapprove of that and, for him, Nedham's relationship with the secret service also held spice. He knew the editor worked very closely with John Thurloe. It was logical. They used each other's networks of correspondents. By drawing on Thurloe's intelligence, Nedham obtained reports that were rightly seen as making Mercurius Politicus the only news worth reading.
Marchamont Nedham tried to recruit Gideon to spy on Richard Overton. Gideon wriggled, saying he had just become attached to a lady and was settling himself domestically. He smiled a little to think that the spymaster's office was unaware of his real acquaintance with Overton — the man who had once lured him into his dotterel suit in The Triumph of Peace…
Eventually he agreed the request. 'I shall need time to track him down — ' Gideon rather hoped this would prove impossible.
'Covent Garden,' replied Nedham immediately. 'He lodges in Bedford Street with a Colonel Wetton.'
'Well, that will be helpful,' answered Gideon, a little primly, as his hopes of ducking the task were overturned. 'I may be able to find where he drinks — '
'The Cross Keys,' Nedham instructed firmly.
Now Sir Marmaduke Langdale had Orlando Lovell as his tool, and John Thurloe had Gideon Jukes. Nobody was aware of the ironies.
Thurloe did have Lovell on a list of Royalist activists. The spymaster used Royalist double agents on the Continent, one of whom had noticed Lovell. At this period Thurloe was cultivating a secret correspondent in France called Henry Manning, who was close to Charles II's court. He most usefully sent details of the Sealed Knot, so the supposedly secure group was corrupted from within pretty well as soon as it was formed. Thurloe knew of six founder members, Belasys, Loughborough, Compton, Villiers, Willys and Russell. Others were implicated, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. A name that occasionally came up as an associate was 'Colonel Lovell', though the Duke of York's tutor was called Lovell, which at first confused the issue. Thurloe's agents had not fully latched on to Colonel Orlando Lovell, in cahoots with Sir Marmaduke Langdale. Nor were any of them yet aware of his awkward connection with their own informant, Gideon Jukes.
'We are here in great quiet under our new protector', wrote a Royalist from England, in a letter that was intercepted by Thurloe in January 1654. It was somewhat inaccurate.
Over winter and spring many upheavals occurred, though government espionage had success against them. Thurloe's organisation broke a curious plot directed by Cardinal Mazarin of France involving English Anabaptists. The codewords 'Mr Cross intends to visit Sweden' gave away the Earl of Glencairn's intended rebellion in Scotland which would have brought Charles II there. Imprisoned conspirators supplied long lists of names and haunts, such as the Windmill in Lothbury where one man had met fellow-plotters under cover of his weekly trip to play billiards. The Gerard Plot was foiled and the two brothers who led it were executed.
Orlando Lovell took no part in these proliferating schemes; he derided all of them. However, in September 1654, when Charles II formally commissioned the Earl of Rochester to lead a new wave of risings in England, this seemed to be old-style action and Lovell deigned to assist. Over the next six months he was involved in the procurement and distribution of arms. The weapons were to furnish a countrywide rebellion, which would be led by long-time cavaliers and new recruits. Lord Rochester landed in Kent in mid-February 1655.
Lovell followed. After his involvement in the 1648 rebellion there, it was familiar territory. And Kent was a convenient base from which he could now seriously attempt to find his wife.
Chapter Seventy-Five — London, Gravesend, Kent: London, 1654-55
'Good God! What damned lick-arses are here!'
(Letter from a frustrated Ro
yalist in exile, intercepted by Thurloe)
On the 6th of September 1654, Richard Overton penned a letter to Secretary Thurloe. Marchamont Nedham brought a copy to show Gideon, now deemed to be an expert on Overton:
I suppose I should not much mistake myself if I should more than suppose that there will be attempts and endeavours by persons of great ability and interest against the government, as it now is: but for my part I shall seek my own quiet and the public peace, and be glad I may be an instrument in the prevention of disturbance. I may happily be capable of doing some considerable service therein, and as may fall in my way; and I assure you, I shall be very ready to do it, if it may find but your acceptance. If it do, I humbly beg the favour of your notice, when and where I may best wait upon you, and have some discourse about the business, and to receive your directions and commands therein. Sir, craving your pardon for this presumption, and with all due acknowledgements of other favours I formerly received from you, I shall still remain,
Your honour's most humble servant to command,
Richard Overton.
Gideon was fascinated. 'It is a wary piece of prose. I imagine that Secretary Thurloe enjoyed its deconstruction. The slithering clauses and two-faced humility are painful!'
'And most unlike the plain-speaking of the usual informants,' said Nedham.' "Ruth Wiskin testifies that one Christopher Emerson called the Lord Protector a rogue and a rascal, and a bloodsucker, and said that he should have his throat cut ere long"…'
Gideon considered Overton's note. 'Master Nedham, this phrase, "the government, as it now is", hints that he has lingering discomfort with the Protectorate. Is the man genuinely seeking public peace — or just strapped for cash?'
'He is an old pamphleteer, with no regular employment. The intelligence office has a large expenses fund, as Overton already knows.'
Rebels and traitors Page 74