According to a contemporary account, and despite having of late been ‘sickly’, O’Neill, assisted by his servant Dennis, a young Irishman, went over the Tower wall using a rope made from sheets, a tablecloth and a towel. According to Clarendon, who came to know O’Neill very well, he made his escape ‘dexterously in a lady’s dress’, which he may have donned after first getting over the wall. Several people suspected of having assisted O’Neill to escape were examined by the Commons, including a Mrs Sanders, who was related to one of his servants, and she was perhaps the provider of the dress. Despite the watch on all the ports, O’Neill’s combination of an effective disguise and native resourcefulness enabled him, for the second time in less than a year, to escape once again to Holland.66
With the melancholy exception of Suckling, all the officers involved in the army plots were either out of prison on bail or safe on the Continent when the Civil War broke out. Within three months of his escape from the Tower, O’Neill was back in England. He joined Charles I’s court in York, and was one of the comparatively small number of Cavaliers present at Nottingham in August when the royal standard was raised and the war officially began. Jermyn returned to England with Henrietta Maria, who landed at Bridlington in Yorkshire early in 1643, while Percy turned up in the royalist capital of Oxford a little earlier. Berkeley, out of the Tower on bail when the Civil War began, quietly slipped out of London and rode off to Dorset to join the royalist army being raised by the Marquess of Hertford. All of the surviving army plotters – Jermyn, Percy, Davenant, Wilmot, Goring, Ashburnham, O’Neill, Berkeley, Carnarvon – fought in various royalist armies during the Civil War. Among the Scottish royalists who also fought for Charles I in England were Colonel John Cochrane of the Incident and Sir William Fleming, who had commanded the king’s guard during the disastrous attempt to arrest the five MPs. They presumably all believed that the time for plots and conspiracies, for furtive meetings and secret oaths, was over, and that the royal cause would now be upheld until it triumphed on the field of battle. Events were soon to show that if they if they did believe that, then they were wrong.
1 Conrad Russell, ‘The First Army Plot of 1641’, in UnRevolutionary England (London: Hambledon Press, 1990), p. 281.
2 Clarendon, Rebellion, i, 159. For discussions of the nostalgic royalist myth of the ‘halcyon age’, see Robert Wilcher, The Writing of Royalism, 1628–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 7–16, and R. Malcolm Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (University of Pennsylvania, 1987), pp. 245–53.
3 See Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 788–95.
4 Ibid., p. 792.
5 In answer to an Elegiacal Letter upon the death of the King of Sweden from Aurelian Townsend. See Robert Dunlap (ed.), The Poems of Thomas Carew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), p. 77.
6 Cited in John Kenyon, The Civil Wars of England (London: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), p. 16.
7 Oliver Lawson Dick (ed.), Aubrey’s Brief Lives (Harmondsworth: Peregrine Books, 1962), p. 343; Tom Clayton, ‘Suckling, Sir John (bap. 1609, d. 1641?)’, ODNB, September 2004; online edn, January 2008, accessed 14 March 2010.
8 M. A. E. Green (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1640–1675 (London, 1875–86) (hereafter CSPD), CSPD, 1639, p. 139.
9 Loftis, Halkett and Fanshawe Memoirs, pp. xi–xiv; Alan Marshall, ‘Bampfield, Joseph (1622–1685)’, ODNB, September 2004; online edn, January 2008, accessed 14 March 2010.
10 Abraham Cowley, Poems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905), quoted in C. V. Wedgwood, The King’s Peace, 1637–1641 (London: Collins, 1955), p. 288.
11 CSPD, 1639–40, pp. 4,201, 531.
12 Clarendon, Rebellion, viii, 94; ibid., xiv, 127.
13 Ibid., viii, 268.
14 William Knowler (ed.), The Earl of Strafford’s Letters and Dispatches, 2 vols (London, 1739), ii, 297.
15 Jane H. Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Career of Randal MacDonnell, Marquis of Antrim, 1609–1683 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 55.
16 Strafford’s Letters and Despatches, ii, 287, 304.
17 CSPD, 1640–41, pp. 38–9.
18 See Donal F. Cregan, ‘An Irish Cavalier: Daniel O’Neill’, Studia Hibernica, iii (1963), pp. 82–3.
19 CSPD, 1640–41, p. 5.
20 Clarendon, Rebellion, ii, 89, 90, 111; Conrad Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637–1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 145.
21 CSPD, 1640–41, pp. 532–3.
22 Russell, ‘First Army Plot’, p. 282.
23 For Goring, see Florence S. Memegalos, George Goring (1608–1657): Caroline Courtier and Royalist General (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). For O’Neill’s ambitions, see Clarendon, Rebellion, viii, 268.
24 For Bridget and Nell, see Sir John Suckling’s A Ballade Upon a Wedding.
25 For the Order of the Fancy, see Timothy Raylor, Cavaliers, Clubs and Literary Culture: Sir John Mennes, James Smith and the Order of the Fancy (Newark, DE: University of Delaware, 1994).
26 John Rushworth, Historical Collections Beginning in 1618, 8 vols, Part iii: 1618–1649 (London, 1659, new edn 1969), v, 255–7.
27 Clarendon, Rebellion, vi, 241; ibid., vii, 92.
28 CSPD, 1640–41, pp. 532, 535, 565.
29 Commons Journal, ii, 203–4; Rushworth, Historical Collections, v, 255–7.
30 CSPD, 1640–41, pp. 571, 574; Russell, ‘First Army Plot’, p. 281.
31 CSPD, 1641–43, pp. 531–2. For the tension in London at this time, see Keith Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997), pp. 74–9.
32 HMC, Salisbury MSS, xxii, 356–9. For discussions of Goring’s motives, see Russell, ‘First Army Plot’, pp. 288–9, 296–7; Memegalos, George Goring, pp. 90–6; John Adamson, The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007), pp. 248–51.
33 For the trial of Strafford and the complex machinations that accompanied it, see the recent excellent and thorough account and analysis in Adamson, The Noble Revolt.
34 Rushworth, Historical Collections, iv, 255–7.
35 Clarendon, Rebellion, ii, 111; ibid., viii, 269; Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert, i, 188.
36 For the nature of Billingsley’s connection with Strafford, see Adamson, Noble Revolt, pp. 281, 640.
37 Staffs ROD 1778/1/21, cited in Russell, ‘First Army Plot’, p. 292.
38 CSPD, 1641–43, pp. 23, 29–30; Caroline Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), pp. 194–5.
39 CSPD, 1640–41, pp. 571, 574, 577.
40 Ibid., p. 573; ODNB (Suckling).
41 HMC, 4th Report, Appendix, pp. 61, 91; Lords Journals, iv, 453.
42 Commons Journals, ii, 176–6; CSPD, 1641–43, p. 8.
43 ONeales Escape, Thomason E. 180 (80). See also Russell, ‘First Army Plot’, p. 298.
44 ONeales Escape.
45 For analysis of the convolutions of Charles’s Scottish policy, see Adamson, The Noble Revolt, pp. 337–61, 401–14; Russell, Fall of the British Monarchies, pp. 303–29.
46 CSPD, 1641–43, pp. 14, 21. 27.
47 CSPD, 1640–41, p. 571.
48 Hibbard, Charles I and Popish Plot, pp. 194–6.
49 Russell, ‘First Army Plot’, pp. 296–7, 301.
50 Aubrey’s Brief Lives, p. 346; HMC, De Lisle and Dudley MSS, vi, 453; ODNB.
51 Commons Journals, ii, 333; Diary of John Evelyn, ed. W. Bray and H. B. Wheatley, 4 vols (London, 1906), iv, 94–5; HMC, 5th Report, pp. 5, 6.
52 Evelyn’s Diary, iv, 119–20.
53 For a recent compelling and exhaustive discussion of the Incident, see Adamson, Noble Revolt, pp. 395–405. See also Cowan, Montrose, pp. 122–9; Wedgwood, King’s Peace, pp. 460–67.
54 For Murray, see R. Malcolm Smuts, ‘Murray, William,
first earl of Dysart (d. 1655)’, ODNB, September 2004; online edn, January 2008, accessed 14 March 2010. See also Adamson, Noble Revolt, pp. 395–7.
55 Ham House (London: National Trust, 2005).
56 D. Laing (ed.), The Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie, A.M. 1637–1662, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1841–42), ii, 57–8.
57 For Cochrane, see Steve Murdoch, ‘Scotland, Scandinavia and the bishops’ wars’, in Allan I. Macinnes and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds), The Stuart Kingdoms in the Seventeenth Century: Awkward Neighbours (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002), pp. 119, 127; Basil Morgan, ‘Cochrane, Sir John (b. c. 1604, d. in or after 1657)’, ODNB, 2004, accessed 14 March 2010.
58 Baillie’s Letters and Journals, i, 190, 260; ODNB.
59 HMC, 4th Report, Appendix, Part 1 (London, 1874), pp. 166–70.; Baillie’s Letters and Journals, ii, 9. See also Adamson, Noble Revolt, p. 397; Andrew Lang, A History of Scotland from the Roman Occupation, 4 vols (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood, 1907), iii, 97.
60 Ibid., 93.
61 For depositions, see HMC, 4th Report, Appendix, pp. 163–70. See also the account by Secretary Nicholas in CSPD, 1641–43, pp. 137–9, 159.
62 Lang, History of Scotland, iii, 98.
63 Treason Discovered or The Impeachment of Daniel Oneale (London, 1641), Thomason E. 180 (80). A contemporary tract referred to O’Neill as being ‘Consanguineous to that Rebellious Family in Ireland’; ONeales Escape.
64 Adamson, Noble Revolt, pp. 481, 490, 495–7.
65 Lords Journal, v, 48; Commons Journal, i, 560–1; ii, 576; HMC, 12th Report, Appendix, ix, 495.
66 ONeales Escape; Clarendon, Rebellion, viii, 269, n. 1; Commons Journal, ii, 567, 576.
Chapter 2
Manifold Plots, Conspiracies, Contrivances 1642–1643
In this rebellious City, where there yet lived many very honest Men and hearty Favourers of the Royal Cause.
Peter Barwick, Life of the Reverend Dr John Barwick (London, 1724), p. 46
This day one Daniel Kniveton, who had been a haberdasher of small wares upon Ludgate Hill, was hanged before the Exchange in Cornhill for a Spy … for bringing Writs and Proclamations hither from Oxford.
Certain Informations from several parts of the Kingdom, 27 November, 1643
As the English Civil War finally got under way during the summer and autumn of 1642, expectations were high that it would be ended, one way or another, quite quickly. One short campaign would culminate in one decisive battle. Among the political nation, well educated in medieval precedents and familiar with several popular accounts of the barons’ wars of the late Middle Ages, the belief was widespread that another Tewkesbury or Bosworth Field would inevitably and quickly force king and Parliament into some kind of accommodation.1 This expectation that the conflict would be short – a belief extraordinarily widespread among people entering a war and, despite overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary, still held in some quarters – was destroyed at the battle of Edgehill on 23 October.2 Instead of ending the war, the drawn battle and the indecisive campaign that followed had the consequence of enormously enlarging and prolonging the conflict.
The English Civil War was a messy and muddled affair, characterised by numerous little localised campaigns, by constant skirmishes and raids, by assaults on and sieges of county towns, castles and fortified houses. Military frontiers were blurred or even non-existent; when they did exist, they were constantly shifting. The authority of both the royalist and parliamentarian high commands was frequently undermined, and even sometimes paralysed, by divisions and disputes: over policies to be followed towards the other side, over the formulation of strategy, over military tactics, over appointments of commanders, over relations between civilians and soldiers, over how to finance the war effort; and this is to list only some areas of conflict.
There are numerous examples of how divisions and disputes also split prominent families. In a society where members of the political and social elites were interconnected by a dense web of marriage alliances, clientage networks and shared responsibilities, interests and values, it was inevitable that supporters of one side would have links with adherents to the other. Oliver Cromwell had a number of Cavalier Cromwell cousins, and John Milton’s brother Christopher was a royalist. When William Feilding, first Earl of Denbigh, was killed fighting for the king at Birmingham in 1643 the title went to his eldest son, Basil, a parliamentary commander. Although the second earl was a parliamentarian, his younger brother Edward was a royalist like his father, and also like his father died in the same year, killed at Newbury.3 Friends and neighbours before the war sometimes supported different sides during it, a personal tragedy illustrated by the famous ‘war without an enemy’ lament of the parliamentarian general Sir William Waller to the royalist commander Sir Ralph Hopton.4 The enduring friendship between Waller and Hopton, despite confronting each other on the battlefield, demonstrates how the strong connections of family, class and neighbourhood, of common interests and even essential core values continued to link opponents divided by their political allegiance and convictions.5
In these circumstances it is not surprising that allegiances were often fluid and side-changing was common.6 When the Civil War began, Captain James Chudleigh, the officer employed as a courier when the army plots were first being planned, joined the parliamentary army in the West Country, where he displayed flair and courage until he was captured at the battle of Stratton on 16 May 1643. He then changed sides and joined the royalist army commanded by Hopton and Sir Bevil Grenville, only to be killed shortly afterwards in the assault on Dartmouth.7 There are many examples of this kind of side-changing and switching of allegiances, sometimes more striking and certainly more significant than Chudleigh’s.8 This volatility of allegiances was to have a considerable influence on the activities of royalist spies and conspirators. During the 1650s some of the most effective counter-espionage agents employed by John Thurloe to uncover plots against the Commonwealth were ex-royalists. Their past displays of loyalty to the Stuart cause gained them entry into royalist circles, while their present allegiance to the Lord Protector remained concealed. What has been called in a recent study the ‘temporary, contingent nature of allegiance’ was a major contributor to the general sense of confusion and indecisiveness that is such a significant element of the English Civil War.9
Two other important factors also contributed to this characteristic feature of the conflict. First, there is the devious and complex character of Charles I. His tendency to say one thing in public and something quite different when in the company of his personal advisers in private, combined with his inclination to follow separate convoluted and frequently contradictory policies simultaneously, constantly muddied the already murky waters of the royalist war effort. And second, looming in the background were the other two Stuart kingdoms, with their own complex conflicts and different objectives, their own internal feuds and divisions, ready to be drawn into the war in England.
So it is clear that the English Civil War was made for agents, spies and conspirators. The opportunities and incentives that the peculiar character of the conflict presented for their employment were endless. Once Prince Rupert’s Cavaliers had failed to end the war quickly at the end of the 1642 campaigning season, withdrawing from Turnham Green in the suburbs of London to Oxford and establishing around the royalist capital a ring of fortified strongholds, a military situation emerged that provided a large role for spies and agents. Trusted agents were needed to gather and communicate intelligence; to encourage side-changing; to foment conspiracies and risings in areas held by Parliament; to communicate between the king’s headquarters in Oxford and other centres of royalist strength and activity.
As early as September 1642, before Edgehill was fought, the Marquess of Hertford, commander of the royalist army being raised in the West Country, sent his cousin Henry Seymour to the Earl of Bedford, the opposing parliamentary commander in Somerset, with a challenge to single combat. Understandably, Bed
ford declined the challenge, although he replied courteously that he ‘would be ready when the business of the Parliament should be over to wait upon the marquis when he should require it’.10 This fairly straightforward if somewhat antiquarian mission was the first of a long series of frequently extremely hazardous journeys that would make Henry Seymour one of the most trusted, resourceful and enterprising of all the agents to be employed on ‘the king’s business’. The second son of a baronet, Seymour belonged to a family with longstanding court connections. In his youth he had been a page of honour to Queen Henrietta Maria, and then in 1638 became a groom of the bedchamber to Prince Charles, an appointment that shaped the rest of his life. Although both his father and his older brother served in the king’s forces during the Civil War, Seymour was always a courtier rather than a soldier, but clearly not someone to be trifled with. At the age of 57 he fought and wounded in a duel Roger Vaughan, a fellow member of the Cavalier Parliament.11 Beginning as a message carrier for his uncle in September 1642, Seymour survived as a royalist agent for almost fourteen years until this career was finally ended by the vigilance of John Thurloe’s counter-espionage system.
Royalist Agents, Conspirators and Spies Page 6