The King's Revenge: Charles II and the Greatest Manhunt in British History

by Jordan, Don

  The year 1658 did not begin well for the Protectorate. The war against Spain, which had begun in a trade dispute four years earlier, continued to take up huge resources and manpower. Cromwell’s new, unelected upper house came under fire from republicans. There were rumours the army might move to take control. In February, Cromwell dissolved the Commons. Matters became increasingly chaotic. Members of Cromwell’s own regiment refused to support the Protectorate, new plots involving Fifth Monarchy men emerged. Members of Cromwell’s new Council of State refused to take the oath of allegiance. As the great work of the preceding fifteen years began to fall apart, Cromwell grew disillusioned.

  With information coming from England that the time was right to carry out an invasion, Charles and Hyde implored the Spanish to prepare a fleet to sail as soon as possible. Rumours and intelligence flashed back and forth across the Channel, and both sides jockeyed for the initiative. The Protectorate ordered all Catholics and royalists to leave London and stay at least five miles from the city. Then in March, the Sealed Knot and the Action Party received devastating news: the Spanish would not send a fleet. Despite this, the round-up of activists continued, with more royalists and Fifth Monarchists arrested. A court was convened to try the royalists. In June two were beheaded and in July three were hanged, drawn and quartered.

  By now, Cromwell’s health, always brittle, had deteriorated due to the malarial fever that had plagued him for more than twenty years. One weekend in August when he was feeling better he went riding at Hampton Court. The Quaker George Fox described him as looking ‘like a dead man’.27

  7

  AFTER OLIVER

  September 1658—October 1659

  Death finally caught up with Oliver Cromwell on a muggy summer afternoon in 1658. He died in a bedchamber in the crumbling glory of Whitehall Palace within hailing distance of the spot where the king had been beheaded almost a decade earlier. A bout of malaria that finally saw him relapse into a semi-conscious fever put paid to this most formidable of Englishmen. Cromwell had survived myriad battles, intrigues and assassination plots only to be laid low by an insect. He breathed his last on 3 September. It was on this date that, eight years before, he had won the Battle of Dunbar, his most stunning victory of the Civil Wars, while on the same day a year later he had crushed the royalists at Worcester and thus brought the wars to an end. Understandably he knew the date as ‘a happy day’.

  As Cromwell whispered his final incoherent words, England was buffeted by a fearsome gale that uprooted trees, blew down buildings and tossed ships on to the shore. The howls of wind and the roars of thunder over Whitehall were said to be the sounds of the Devil taking Cromwell’s soul to hell. It was put about that to win at Dunbar and Worcester he had mortgaged his soul to Satan, who had returned on the anniversary of those victories to call in the debt.1

  With the Lord Protector’s death, God or Satan had claimed the souls of fifteen of the sixty-nine judges in the king’s trial. The most prominent of the other dead judges was Henry Ireton, Cromwell’s tireless son-in-law, who outlived Charles by just over two years, dying of fever while campaigning in Ireland. One more of the king’s judges would soon be joining them – Thomas Pride, whose troops had notoriously purged Parliament of MPs opposed to putting their king on trial back in 1649. Pride died within three weeks of his hero, Cromwell.

  The Cromwellian establishment laid on an awesome state funeral modelled on that of Charles I’s father, James. The event radiated power and solemnity. It began with the lying in state at Somerset House, once the residence of Charles’s queen, Henrietta Maria. Cromwell’s corpse – a stinking mess after a botched attempt to embalm it – could not be displayed, so a life-sized figure carved in wood was used, the face moulded in wax. The effigy lay on a raised plinth dressed as a king in ermine, lace and velvet and spattered in gold ornament. According to the official account ‘in the right-hand was a scepter; in the left, a globe … Behind the head was placed a rich chair of tissued gold, whereon was placed an Imperial crown, which lay high, that the people might behold it.’2

  On the day of the funeral the crown was placed on the effigy’s head and the figure was borne out to a velvet-shrouded catafalque for the procession to Westminster Abbey. One of the pall bearers, Bulstrode Whitelocke, spied ‘infinite’ crowds jammed behind the lines of soldiers stretching along the route in their new red coats. Such was the draw of the event that people reportedly came from as far as the Orkney Islands to view the Protector’s last journey.3 The Knight Marshal of England headed the procession on horseback, bearing a black truncheon tipped at both ends with gold. Behind him were more mounted marshals, then, according to an account given to Parliament, forty lines of ‘poor men in gowns’, followed by hundreds of ‘inferior servants’, lines of drummers, dignitaries, officials of the court, commissioners, ecclesiastics, flagmen, stewards, officers of the army, and finally the rows of naval and military detachments seen at every state funeral to this day.4

  Among the chief mourners were some of the most prominent of the military men who had sat in judgment of the king in 1649. They included the stern Puritan William Goffe, a major-general whom Cromwell had entrusted with the government of Berkshire, Hampshire and Sussex during his ill-judged experiment with military rule; Colonel ‘Dick’ Ingoldsby, Cromwell’s easy-going cousin, the loyalest of the loyal according to Richard Cromwell; and Colonel John Barkstead, governor of the Tower of London, a feared and not a particularly savoury individual. Of these, Ingoldsby would play the most decisive role in the next two years, tossing away all vestiges of that reputation for loyalty.

  Notably absent were the ‘Commonwealthsmen’, the uncompromising republicans who had been among Cromwell’s closest collaborators in the Civil Wars, but who had parted company with him when he abolished the Commonwealth. The Fifth Monarchy leader General Thomas Harrison boycotted the funeral, as did the religious radical Sir Harry Vane and Edmund Ludlow. The only former allies from the ranks of leading republicans who did turn out were the sharp-tongued Sir Arthur Haselrig, who was one of the five MPs Charles had tried to arrest on the eve of the first Civil War, and the Cheshire lawyer John Bradshaw, president of the High Court of Justice that tried the king. Among royalists, Bradshaw was after Cromwell the most reviled of all the king’s judges. His hectoring attitude to Charles during the trial remained a perpetual source of fury for them. Bradshaw exhibited ‘all the pride, impudence, and superciliousness imaginable’, wrote Edward Hyde, who might equally have been describing the lifetime characteristics of the king whom Bradshaw was trying. By 1658 Bradshaw was an ill man, but he still had a year to live; Haselrig, not far behind Bradshaw in the pantheon of royalist hate figures, would survive for a further year.5

  Royalists were predictably venomous about the funeral. The poet Abraham Cowley bemoaned ‘the folly and trouble of all public pageantry’ and sneered at this particular example: ‘Methought it somewhat represented the life of him for whom it was made: much noise, much tumult, much expense, much magnificence, much vainglory. Briefly a great show and yet after all this an ill sight.’6

  It is a fair assumption that Cromwell’s departure prompted wild celebration in Charles’s court in exile. This notoriously riotous establishment had recently relocated to Brussels, in the Spanish Netherlands. The embittered Cavaliers who comprised much of the court must have exulted at the death of the man who had bested them on so many fields. The news was brought to Charles as he was playing tennis. An aide arrived shouting ‘The devil is dead!’ One imagines Charles’s courtiers gathered before the delighted prince, toasting him many times over at the news that ‘the devil’ was no more, their single regret being that one of their own was not the agent of Cromwell’s death.

  Their hopes of a restoration lay in the expected inadequacies of Cromwell’s nominated successor, his uninspiring son Richard. Few sons could have been more different from a father than the gentle, kindly Richard, who blanched at the thought of bloodshed and hadn’t even commanded a platoon. The
generals referred derisively to him as ‘the young gentleman’. In anticipation that Richard would not last long in his appointed role, a confident call to arms was drafted in Brussels for Charles by his secretary of state, Sir Edward Nicholas. This denounced the new Protector and commanded all men ‘of what[ever] condition, quality, religion, interest or persuasion … immediately to put themselves into arms and to resist, oppose and destroy the said usurper Richard Cromwell’. The declaration promised a free pardon to all former opponents who would pledge allegiance ‘except the murderers of the King our father of ever blessed memory’.

  The declaration was never issued. Whatever the doubts about Richard, England was hardly seething for change and certainly was far from ready for the return of the Stuarts. The historian N. H. Keeble writes: ‘Many were coming to recognise that in significant respects the experience of Cromwellian rule was more liberal and humane than that of Charles I, particularly in the quite exceptionally generous policy of religious toleration, its allowance of an unusual degree of freedom of the press and its aspiration to reform the law.’ Keeble concludes, ‘All the indications were that the Protectorate would survive.’7

  Charles’s Chancellor Edward Hyde would not have disagreed. His analysis must have made grim reading for his royal master. Reviewing the situation from Brussels, Hyde wrote, ‘We have not yet found the advantage by Cromwell’s death as we reasonably hoped … Nay rather we are the worse for it and the less esteemed, people imagining by the great calm that has followed that the nation is united.’ He added despairingly: ‘In truth the King hath very few friends.’ Revisiting that period some years later, he recalled that ‘the king’s condition never looked so hopeless, so desperate’.8

  In these pessimistic circumstances Cavaliers were told to wait and hope. ‘We know very well that this good change must be attended with other alterations before any eminent fruit will appear to the King,’ wrote Hyde. ‘His Majesty doth not expect that his friends should do any rash thing for him.’

  There was one cloud darkening the Protectorate sky and uncovering a shaft of light for Charles – the army. Phrases like ‘seething discontent’ and ‘badly demoralised’ come to mind in attempting to describe the mood of the New Model Army in 1659. Oliver Cromwell had moulded it into the most formidable force in Europe, but he had left a legacy of unresolved grievances at every level that ate away at morale. Senior commanders were restless over their own loss of influence in government. Junior officers resented the repeated purges of their peers. And most dangerous of all, the ranks were mutinous over a huge build-up in back pay. This mix of grievances was fertile soil for the preachifying ideologues who dotted the army – Fifth Monarchy men, that new religious breed, the Quakers, and followers of a profusion of dissident sects such as the Ranters. The army was a nightmare to control.

  As Protector, Richard was constitutionally commander-in-chief. Within days of his assumption of office, the two most senior generals, Charles Fleetwood and John Desborough – both of whom had married into the Cromwell family – were angling to wrest command of the army from Richard and vest it in Fleetwood. They aimed at complete army independence from the civil power, a state within a state. In the autumn, army petitions and mass meetings pushed the cause. However, the much-despised Richard fought the generals off. He surprised everyone by confronting restless troops and delivering thundering speeches. The words were probably written by John Thurloe, but they had the men cheering Richard Cromwell. Bolstered by this success, Richard took another brave – but ultimately disastrous – step. In need of money and hoping to reinforce his legitimacy as Protector through a parliamentary vote, he announced an election. This was to open the door for all his enemies, not least Charles Stuart.9

  Three substantial groupings emerged from the election. The largest, at up to 170 seats, was the so-called Court Party, Cromwellians led by Oliver’s workhorse secretary of state John Thurloe. Next was an amorphous group of around a hundred neutrals, mostly Presbyterians of various political hues, some ranged for and some against the Protectorate. Among them were what Edward Hyde called ‘masked royalists’, men who hid their monarchist views and were expected by such as Hyde to embarrass and impede the Cromwellians. Last, although anything but least, were fifty or so republicans hell-bent on pulling down the Cromwellian constitution and reinstalling the republic. Among them were seven unapologetic regicides including Edmund Ludlow and Thomas Scot, as well as Sir Arthur Haselrig and Sir Harry Vane.

  Top military figures secured seats too. The cavalry leader John Okey – whose battlefield skill had rescued the parliamentary cause at the Battle of Naseby – was joined by the ambitious John Lambert and Lord Fairfax, the old war hero. Fairfax took to posting himself next to Haselrig in the House, which might have been understood as suggesting that the republicans had a mightily influential ally. Few would have suspected that before the year was out Fairfax would be plotting to bring back the monarchy; indeed perhaps the man himself would have disbelieved it.

  The Parliament lasted eighty-six days. It was a roller-coaster ride of filibuster and obstruction as the republicans, led by Haselrig and Vane, attempted to tear off the Protector’s wings and make the case for a return of the Commonwealth. Legislation confirming Richard’s powers was repeatedly stalled, and progress was held up on tackling major problems, principal among them army pay. At the same time the Commons was becoming a forum for antimilitary sentiment as Presbyterians and closet royalists unloosed their resentment at the years of military rule. One jibe against an old comrade-in-arms provoked John Okey to complain, ‘I see it will be a crime to be an army man. Is the expense of our blood nothing?’10

  Tensions between army and Parliament increased sharply in March after a parliamentary committee began to investigate specific allegations against army grandees. The most heinous of these was the shipping of some eighty suspected royalists into slavery in Jamaica without trial after the Penruddock uprising. Republicans and royalists joined in condemnation of the affair.

  The crunch came in April. The General Council of Officers presented Richard with a petition demanding support for the ‘Good Old Cause’ and for Cavalier elements to be rooted out of the army, arrears of pay to be settled and steps taken to root out ‘wickedness’. This was a scarcely veiled attack on Richard’s conservative councillors. It was followed by more of the same at an emotional day of army fasting and prayer, with sermons delivered by radical republican ministers Hugh Peters and John Owen.

  A day later, at a meeting of five hundred officers, John Desborough proposed an oath declaring the justice of the execution of Charles I. Instead, on 18 April Richard ordered the officers’ council to dissolve and its members to disperse. From a Cromwell it was a feeble gesture – and the officers refused to obey.

  Most of the leading republicans had kept a low profile while the army crisis developed. This puzzled Edward Hyde in Brussels. On 11 April he had written to John Mordaunt, the king’s busiest agent, in London: ‘I would be glad to know the reason why … we have not heard the least mention of Bradshaw, Lambert, or Harrison, as if they were persons who have no parts to act.’ Mordaunt replied that he couldn’t explain it, ‘but Ludlow, Lambert, and Harrison are deep in the army design, and no friends of ours, unless by accident’.11

  In fact a bridgehead had just been established between the republicans and army grandees. Early in April, Edmund Ludlow, himself a lieutenant-general, visited Charles Fleetwood’s headquarters, Wallingford House, and outlined the republicans’ terms for an alliance. From his account these boiled down to a simple commitment on the part of the grandees to restore a republic and their support for Commonwealthsmen – republicans – in the army.12

  At this point Parliament blindly raised the stakes by starting to debate disaffection in the army, a move guaranteed to infuriate the military. A test of wills began. Richard ordered Fleetwood to present himself before the bar of the House of Commons. Fleetwood refused, whereupon Richard ordered his bodyguard to arrest him. The bodyguard
in turn refused. Finally the two sides called out their troops. Fleetwood ordered a muster of regiments at St James’s and Richard ordered a rival one in Whitehall. Three of the king’s judges among the military chiefs backed Richard – Edward Whalley, one of the heroes of Naseby, his son-in-law William Goffe and Richard Ingoldsby. When Goffe sent word for his four hundred men to come to Whitehall, however, they were already on their way to Fleetwood’s muster in St James’s. Of Richard Ingoldsby’s six troops of horse, only one followed him to Whitehall. Whalley’s men refused his order to his face. He begged them to shoot him, but they marched off to St James’s. A biographer of Richard Cromwell wrote of ‘this universal abandonment’.13

  Richard was at the army’s mercy, and one of the hidden dramas of British history was now played out by candlelight in Whitehall Palace, deep into the night. Richard’s two in-laws, Desborough and Fleetwood, confronted him and apparently refused to depart. They insisted on a dissolution of Parliament, Fleetwood warning of a bloodbath if the sitting was allowed to continue. Desborough told Cromwell that if he ordered a dissolution the army would take care of him and his interests, but if he refused to do so the army would clear the MPs out and Richard would be left ‘to shift for himself’.14

  For hours the Lord Protector refused to dissolve his Parliament. Differing accounts suggest that at times he broke off discussions with Fleetwood and Desborough to consult with his council. One account has several of them urging him ‘to remember that he was Cromwell’s son, and to act as his father would have done’.15 Another version has one of the council, Charles Howard, offering to ‘rid’ Richard of Fleetwood, Desborough, Lambert and Vane, ‘the contrivers of all this’. It seems that the boldest of the advisors was Richard Ingoldsby, who offered to take personal responsibility for dealing with Lambert. The thirty-one-year-old ‘young gentleman’ wouldn’t hear of it. Richard Cromwell explained ‘that he neither had done, nor would do any person any harm; and that, rather than a drop of blood should be spilt on his account, he would lay down that greatness which was but a burthen to him’.16