Royalist Agents, Conspirators and Spies

by Geoffrey Smith

  While his fellow plotters were fleeing to France, Daniel O’Neill kept his nerve; he was clearly not someone who was easily rattled. O’Neill even sought to profit from Strafford’s downfall by reviving his campaign to recover the lost family estates in Ulster. On 30 April, just when Suckling’s plan to infiltrate his men into the Tower was approaching its climax, the Lords received a petition from O’Neill requesting that the circumstances in which his family lands had been alienated be examined, a petition that the Lords seemed at first prepared to consider sympathetically.41 So, for the time being, O’Neill remained in London. Considering his hostility to Strafford, it is not unlikely that he was one of the immense crowd that witnessed the execution of the king’s faithful but hated minister on Tower Hill on 12 May. Then, less than a month later, on 8 June, the report of the select committee set up to investigate the plots was released to the Commons. The report, based on Goring’s revelations, widened both the intended aims of the plots and the number of officers involved. Wilmot attempted to defend himself and denounced Goring as ‘a perjured man’, but along with two fellow MPs, Hugh Pollard and William Ashburnham, he was arrested. Detained on ‘suspicion of treason’, Wilmot was committed to the Tower and Pollard and Ashburnham to other prisons.42

  O’Neill, who like Wilmot received several mentions in the report, was summoned for an examination on the day following its release. He dutifully appeared before Parliament, defended his behaviour, then slipped out of London that same evening, but not in flight to the coast. Instead, accompanied by his fellow officer Sir John Berkeley, O’Neill headed for York, entrusted by the king with the unenviable task of reviving the scheme for the army to march on London.

  A major problem for those plotters who hoped to persuade the English army to move southwards had always been the presence of the Scottish army in the two northern counties. Sir Jacob Astley, when approached by O’Neill with the renewed proposal that the army ‘might be called up to attend the person of the King and the Parliament for their security’, made the sensible reply that ‘they must fight with the Scots first and beat them before they could move Southward’.43 Astley also feared that ‘when they came to London they would find resistance by the Parliament and the Scots might rally and follow them’.44 What Astley did not know, although O’Neill seems to have hinted at it, was that in the early summer of 1641 the king was involved in various intrigues to neutralise the Scottish army. Typically, Charles was following two contradictory policies simultaneously. While secretly encouraging the growth of a genuinely royalist party in Scotland, led by the active and ambitious James Graham, Earl and later Marquess of Montrose, Charles was at the same time dangling the prospect of concessions and agreements before the leading Covenanters, attempting to win over the same men whose power and influence Montrose hoped to destroy.45

  The success of either of these policies could have eliminated the threat posed by the Scottish army, but unfortunately for Charles, the effect of the two contradictory policies co-existing was for them to cancel each other out. In any case, this attempted revival of the army plot was given no time to mature. Closely following O’Neill and Berkeley up the Great North Road was Parliament’s Serjeant at Arms with orders to arrest the two officers. For Goring’s revelations on the plot had now been supplemented by those of his fellow conspirator Harry Percy. The contents of an indiscreet letter written by Percy to his older brother Northumberland, containing what Charles’s sister, the exiled Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia, called ‘his basest and foolishest confession’, had just been divulged by the earl to Parliament. Berkeley and O’Neill did not wait for the arrival of the Serjeant at Arms in York. On 28 June, Elizabeth of Bohemia wrote from The Hague to her faithful supporter the diplomat Sir Thomas Roe about the disastrous consequences of ‘Harry Percy’s business’, ending her letter with the information that ‘O’Neale is fled and come over hither.’46

  The army plots fully deserve Secretary Vane’s criticism of them to Roe as an ill-carried design.47 The objectives of the plotters were muddled and unrealistic, their planning inadequate and their security measures almost non-existent. Percy’s petition, backed by the threat of military action, was never presented; Goring did not receive the command he sought in the English army, which at no time showed any inclination to march on London to intimidate Parliament and uphold the king’s authority; while the planned coup de main against the garrison of the Tower in order to rescue Strafford was never launched. Even worse for the conspirators and their backers, instead of the army plots being dismissed as half-baked and ignominious fiascos, Pym’s inflated and terrifying version of a vast popish conspiracy was taken very seriously. Inflammatory speeches referred to the ‘designs of the priests and Jesuits, and other adherents of the see of Rome’ to destroy the religion, the laws and the liberties of the king’s subjects. With the exception of Carnarvon, very much a peripheral figure, all the army plotters, even the Gaelic Ulsterman O’Neill, were Protestants. Nevertheless, belief in what a contemporary broadsheet called ‘damnable plots by the treacherous Papists and Jesuits’ was widely held, not least in Parliament, where the accusations were accepted not only by Pym’s supporters, but also by many traditionally royalist MPs.48

  From the viewpoint of Charles I the effects of the army plots were uniformly disastrous. Instead of saving Strafford, the plots helped to ensure his death. The failed attempt to gain possession of the Tower coincided with the debate on the Bill of Attainder against Strafford in the Lords, and so probably contributed to the bill being passed. The Act against dissolving the Long Parliament without its own consent, debated and passed during the tense first two weeks of May, also reflects the fear that the plotters aimed to intimidate or even suppress Parliament. Underlying this extreme reaction was the widespread but still at this time unstated fear that the plots were not the sole work of a few discontented and headstrong courtier officers. Behind the plotters stood Charles I and Henrietta Maria, encouraging and even directing their activities, but with the right hand (the king) not always knowing what the left hand (the queen) was doing.

  For the army plots have been called by at least one historian a ‘royal plot’. Puzzling features of the plots, like the conspirators’ contempt for security and Goring’s betrayal of their plans, an action that did not cause him to lose royal favour, have been explained by suggesting that Charles wanted to use the threat of military action to over-awe Parliament, without taking the irrevocable step of actually having recourse to force. It was intended that Parliament realise that plans were being made to enforce its compliance or even subjection, in the hope that this realisation would deter the bolder spirits from their radical programme and encourage the more traditionally conservative MPs to resist them.49 Unfortunately for Charles, the threat of military action against it only increased rather than diminished the intransigence of Parliament. The effects were the opposite of what was intended. Instead of a demonstration of the power of the crown, upheld by the swords of a loyal and formidable army, the death of Strafford and a significant loss of royal prestige and authority were the principal consequences of the muddled and ‘ill carried’ army plots.

  Several of the scattered army plotters did not remain either in prison or in exile for long. Hugh Pollard, although expelled from Parliament, was released on bail and retired quietly to his estate in Devon, while Carnarvon, another fairly minor figure in the plot, seems to have returned to England quite quickly. Alone of the plotters, the once dashing wit and poet Suckling never saw England again. He reached Paris from Dieppe in the middle of May and was for a short time a frequent visitor to the residence of the Countess of Leicester, wife of the English ambassador, who found him ‘good company but much abated in his mirth’. When Leicester, who was not in Paris at the time, learned of these visits he forbade his wife to receive any of the exiled plotters into her house. After this rebuff Suckling sank rapidly into poverty and obscurity. He died in Paris, probably during the second half of 1641, in miserable circumstances, and according to
Aubrey, after taking poison. The date of his death and the site of his burial are unknown. Suckling has the unfortunate distinction of being the first, but by no means the last, Cavalier to die in exile.50

  For the time being Jermyn and Percy remained in exile – a sensible decision, as in August they were found guilty of high treason by the Commons committee established to investigate the plot. It was therefore rash of O’Neill and Berkeley suddenly to return to England in September, when Parliament was enjoying a well-earned recess and the king had departed on a visit to Scotland. There Charles hoped either to reach an accommodation with the Covenanter leaders or to rally royalist support in the northern kingdom which would enable him to destroy them, or conceivably to carry out both policies at once. After an appearance before the Commons committee O’Neill and Berkeley were both arrested, and when Parliament re-assembled in October, Berkeley was committed to the Tower and O’Neill to the Gatehouse. By this time knowledge of the plan in June to make another attempt to persuade the army to march south had been discovered, the generals Conyers and Astley and other officers had been interrogated, and it was not long before O’Neill joined Berkeley in the Tower.51 It is an ironic reflection on Charles I’s devious relationship with his senior ministers and advisers that the new Secretary of State, Edward Nicholas, could write in November to inform the king that ‘it is said there is a new design discovered by a later intention than Mr Percy’s to have debauched ye late army’, ending his letter with the plaintive comment ‘but what it is I cannot learn’.52 Charles could have told him.

  While Berkeley and O’Neill languished in the Tower, England drifted hesitantly but inexorably towards civil war. In October Ireland, freed from the firm hand of Strafford’s rule and with several thousand hastily demobilised soldiers from the Lord Deputy’s army on the loose, erupted into rebellion against English authority. Charles was still in Scotland when he received the news of the rising, entangled in and embarrassed by the consequences of another mismanaged and confused royalist plot – the ‘Incident’. This was a scheme organised, to use that word extremely loosely, by an ill-assorted collection of noblemen, army officers and courtiers, most of whom had links to Montrose, to arrest or possibly even assassinate Hamilton and Argyll. This was seen as a necessary preliminary to the re-establishment of the effective sovereignty of the king and the assumption of power by a royalist government headed by Montrose, who would be freed from Edinburgh Castle, where the machinations of Argyll had confined him.53

  A key figure in the plot as it developed was the enigmatic and complex William Murray, destined to be a prominent if controversial figure among the agents who served the Stuart cause. Originally appointed whipping boy to the young prince, Murray grew up to be Charles’s close personal companion, accompanying him on his journey to Madrid in 1623 to court the Infanta Maria. When Charles succeeded to the throne he almost immediately appointed Murray a groom of the bedchamber.54 With his preference for the secrecy of private negotiations and agreements over formal and open consultations with ministers and counsellors, Charles found plenty of employment for Will Murray; as a trusted royalist agent he was to make many cross-Channel passages and was to be become well known in Edinburgh, Paris and The Hague as well as in Whitehall. A complex figure, Murray was much more than just a frequenter of the back stairs of palaces and a confidant of royal intrigues. He was also a connoisseur of the arts and a man of taste, very much in tune with the cultural values of the royal court in the 1630s and at home in the company of men like Inigo Jones, Van Dyck and his fellow groom of the bedchamber, Endymion Porter. His mansion, Ham House in Surrey, richly decorated, lavishly furnished and with a splendid collection of works of art, remains his impressive memorial.55

  As a Scot with personal contacts among the nobles and officers concentrated in Edinburgh, clearly trusted by the king but of modest social status, Murray was able to move comparatively easily among the tense and mutually suspicious figures attracted to Edinburgh by the presence of the king. Robert Baillie, a distinguished academic theologian and influential propagandist for the Covenanting cause, reported to his colleague William Spang that ‘William Murray was in deep of all the King’s secrets’, but at the same time was trusted by Argyll and Hamilton, with whom he had frequent private meetings.56 Prominent among the officers in the Covenanter army approached by Murray was Colonel John Cochrane, a professional soldier with military experience in the Thirty Years War.57 Until 1641 Cochrane, with his useful familiarity with the courts and languages of northern Europe, had been highly regarded by the Covenanter regime, a man ‘of great credit and expectation’, according to Baillie. He was employed on diplomatic missions to present the Scottish case to the crowns of Sweden and Denmark, tasks which he combined with arms and munitions purchases in Hamburg for the Covenanter army. Back in Scotland in time for the Bishops’ Wars, his regiment captured the royalist Nithsdale’s two strongholds of Carlavarock and Thrieve.58 Then Cochrane changed sides, abandoning the cause of the godly Presbyterian Kirk for that of the ‘incendiary’ Montrose. ‘Poor Cochrane, his credit is undone among us,’ lamented Baillie. Cochrane, how easily we cannot know, allowed himself to be persuaded that the ‘settling of the troubles of this kingdom’ could only be done if, as Murray allegedly expressed it, ‘those two men [Hamilton and Argyll] be sequestrat’, in other words, disposed of.59 Cochrane, whose regiment was stationed close to Edinburgh, showed himself willing to co-operate in the conspiracy. Over a period of several days, other actively or potentially royalist noblemen and officers were also drawn into the design to overthrow the Argyll–Hamilton partnership, their plans concocted over several days of sociable and indiscreet meetings that were frequently conducted in an alcoholic haze. Mere deposition from power was no longer considered enough by some of the more fiery plotters. According to Hamilton’s brother, the Earl of Lanark, the conspirators intended ‘to cut the throats of Argyll, my brother and myself’.60

  Not surprisingly, the consumption of too much wine by the plotters as they formulated their plans, combined with the observation of too little caution, led to the scheme being discovered. Charles, who must have known that something was going on and who had a private late-night meeting with Cochrane, was humiliated. The prestige and authority of Argyll and Hamilton were strengthened, while the Scottish royalists were discredited and dismayed. Arrests and interrogations followed, leading to a series of contradictory and inconclusive depositions by those involved. Murray and Cochrane, for example, disagreed with each other on whether the ‘cutting of throats’ of Argyll and the Hamilton brothers had ever been part of the programme.61 To the Scottish historian Andrew Lang, writing one hundred years ago, ‘The Incident remains as dark as it ever was.’ Although considerable light has been shed on its more murky corners by the work of recent historians, some mysteries remain.62 Will Murray, for example, although apparently a major plotter, was soon released, without any suggestion that he had lost either the favour of the king or the trust of the Covenanter leaders. Murray returned back to London in Charles’s entourage, to be followed to England some months later by Cochrane, who turned up at York. As the Civil War approached, both Murray and Cochrane were to find that there continued to be an urgent need for their services as royalist agents.

  While Charles was making his leisurely way back from Edinburgh through England in November, the disturbing rumours about the Incident circulating in London were being overwhelmed and thrust into the background by the increasingly terrifying news from Ireland. The rebellion, which began in Ulster and in which the O’Neill name figured prominently among the rising’s leaders, spread rapidly into other regions of the kingdom. The wild atrocity stories brought to England by frightened and impoverished refugees further stimulated the anti-popish feelings already inflamed by Pym’s exploitation of the army plots. They certainly did not improve Daniel O’Neill’s chances of an early release, or even of a fair trial. In sharp contrast to the lenient treatment of the plotters allegedly involved in The Incident, who for th
e most part were quickly released with no charges being laid against them, in December the Commons resolved to impeach O’Neill for high treason, accusing him of having plotted and practised ‘to bring up the Army against Parliament and interrupt the proceedings thereof’.63 Luckily for the prisoner in the Tower, the developing political crisis in the winter of 1641–42 absorbed the energies of the parliamentary leaders, and for the time being the trial was postponed.

  On 4 January 1642 Charles I launched his dramatic counterstroke, the attempt to arrest the five MPs whom he considered the leaders of the parliamentary opposition to the crown. A mixed force of 400–500 men, soldiers of fortune, courtiers, reformadoes (discharged soldiers) from the English army in the north, escorted the king when he descended on Parliament. This miscellaneous little force was commanded by a Scottish courtier, Sir William Fleming, a friend and kinsman of Montrose, and a son of the Earl of Wigtown, one of Argyll’s bitterest enemies.64 If successful, Charles’s masterstroke would have put Pym and four of his lieutenants into the Tower, and presumably Berkeley and O’Neill out of it, but of course it failed dismally, and with disastrous consequences. Charles had now lost control of London. In the last week of February the queen sailed from Dover to the Low Countries, to gather support for her husband’s cause, to raise money and buy arms, and to be joined there by two of the exiled plotters, Percy and Jermyn. With the queen safely out of the way, Charles too soon slipped away from London and by easy stages travelled north to York. While England was dividing into two sides, O’Neill and Berkeley remained in the Tower. Then on 6 May the proceedings of the Commons were interrupted by the dramatic news from the Lieutenant of the Tower that O’Neill had ‘gotten out’. The Lords, on being immediately informed of O’Neill’s escape, sent orders to the Lord Admiral, the Warden of the Cinque Ports, sheriffs and other maritime officials requiring that searches should be made in all English ports for O’Neill, who was described as of a ‘sanguine Complexion, of a middle Stature, light brown Hair, about the age of Thirty years, little or no beard, and of late hath been sickly’.65