9 McElligott and Smith, Royalists and Royalism, p. 15; Donagan, ‘Varieties of royalism’, pp. 76–8.
10 Clarendon, Rebellion, vi, 33; vii, 185. For examples of challenges to single combat, see Adamson, ‘Baronial Context’, pp. 102–5.
11 For Seymour, see W. A. Shaw, ‘Seymour, Henry (bap. 1612, d. 16870), rev. Ronald Clayton, ODNB, 2004, online edn, 2008, accessed 15 March 2010; Newman, Royalist Officers, pp. 337–8; B. D. Henning, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1660– 1690, 3 vols (London: Secker & Warburg, 1983), iii, 421–2.
12 Ian Roy, ‘“This Proud Unthankefull City”: A Cavalier View of London in the Civil War’, in Stephen Porter (ed.), London and the Civil War (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 156–7.
13 Clarendon, Rebellion, vii, 72; Keith Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997), p. 404.
14 Ibid., pp. 155–7; Peter Barwick, The Life of the Reverend Dr John Barwick, ed. and trans. H. Bedford (London, 1724), p. 46.
15 Valerie Pearl, London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 107–48; Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion, pp. 180–97; C. V. Wedgwood, The King’s War, 1641–1647 (London: Collins, 1958), pp. 49, 58–62.
16 Pearl, London and Outbreak of Puritan Revolution, pp. 143–59, 240–41, 276–7; Roy, ‘“This Proud Unthankefull City”’, pp. 152–3; Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion, pp. 187–97.
17 Roy, ‘“This Proud, Unthankefull City”’, p. 153; Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion, pp. 236–40.
18 For examples, see P. W. Thomas, Sir John Berkenhead 1617–1679: A Royalist Career in Politics and Polemics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 45–6, 53–4.
19 Barwick, Life, p. 46; ODNB.
20 Barwick, Life, pp. 47, 49–51, 55–6, 59, 60; ODNB.
21 Barwick, Life, pp. 61–3.
22 Ibid., pp. 43–7, 53–5; Roy, ‘“This Proud, Unthankefull city”’, p. 157; The Parliament Scout (20–27 July 1643), p. 40.
23 Mercurius Civicus, no. 79 (21–28 November, 1644), p. 729.
24 Ibid., no. 4 (25 May–1 June 1643), p. 32; Thomas, Berkenhead, p. 29.
25 Ibid., pp. 61–2.
26 The enormous collection of tracts, pamphlets, newsletters and newsbooks compiled by the London bookseller George Thomason contains a comprehensive series of issues of Mercurius Aulicus.
27 P. Barwick, Life, p. 33; Thomas, Berkenhead, pp. 50, 54, 55–9. For Royston, see also HMC, 6th Report (1877), pp. 71–2. Brought before the Lords on 2 August, Thomas denied knowledge of The Souldier’s Catechisme, but admitted that Royston had tried to employ him to distribute copies of Aulicus in Westminster Hall, but ‘he had refused to meddle with any such scandalous Book, whereupon Mr Royston did send his Man with them’; LJ, vii, 519–20 (1–2 August 1645).
28 See, for example, Mercurius Aulicus, Week 22, 3 June 1643, pp. 284, 286, 290–92.
29 Mercurius Britanicus, no. 1 (23–29 August 1643), p. 7; ibid., no. 33 (22–29 April 1644), p. 256; Thomas, Berkenhead, pp. 43–4.
30 In March 1645 an attendant of the French ambassador was caught with ‘16 Aulicuses, beside divers Letters’ concealed on his person. See also other examples of this kind cited in Thomas, Berkenhead, pp. 53–4.
31 A Narrative by John Ashburnham of his Attendance on King Charles the First (London, 1830), ii, Appendix, pp. v, vii, viii, xiv, xix, xxi, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, xxx, xxxi, xxxiv. See also Roy, ‘“This Proud, Unthankefull City”’, p. 155; Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion, pp. 245–6.
32 Mercurius Civicus, no. 4 (25 May–1 June 1643), p. 28; The Weekly Account, no. 5 (27 September–4 October 1643), p. 6; Certain Informations from several parts of the Kingdom, no. 46 (27 November–4 December 1643), p. 358; Thomas, Berkenhead, p. 46; Charles Carlton, Going to the Wars: The Experience of the British Civil Wars 1638–1651 (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 263.
33 For Waller’s plot, see Clarendon, Rebellion, vii, 54–72; S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, 1642–1646, 4 vols (London: Windrush Press, 1987), i, 144–9; Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion, pp. 348–51; Pearl, London and Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution, pp. 265–6; Wilcher, Writing of Royalism, p. 161; ODNB (Edmund Waller).
34 Mercurius Aulicus, Week 22, 3 June 1643, p. 292; Robert Ashton, The English Civil War: Conservatism and Revolution 1603–1649 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978, rev. edn 1989), p. 210, cited in Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion, p. 161.
35 Roy, ‘“This Proud, Unthankefull City”’, p. 156.
36 BL Harleian MS 164, fo. 277b; Clarendon, Rebellion, vii, 59; ODNB (Nicholas Crisp).
37 Clarendon, Rebellion, vii, 59; A Brief Narrative of the late Treacherous and horrid Designe (London, 1643), pp. 1–6.
38 Brief Narrative, p. 2; England’s Monument of Mercies in Her Miraculous Preservations (London, 1646), p. 1; Ashburnham Narrative, ii, Appendix, pp. vii, xxii (references to payments in intelligence accounts to and from Heron and Hampden); Clarendon, Rebellion, vii, 60, 61; Roy, ‘“This Proud, Unthankefull City”’, p. 160; ODNB (Katherine Stuart).
39 Charles to Henrietta Maria, 2 March 1643, cited in Gardiner, Civil War, i, 95.
40 Clarendon, Rebellion, vii, 60; Roy, ‘“This Proud, Unthankefull City”’, pp. 159–60; Wilcher, Writing of Royalism, p. 161.
41 For the commission, see T. B. Howell (ed.), A Complete Collection of State Trials, 8 vols (London, 1816), iv, cols 628–30.
42 Clarendon, Rebellion, vii, 55; ODNB.
43 For a valuable analysis of the shifting groupings at Westminster during this period, see Scott, Politics and War, pp. 39–47, 58–62.
44 David L. Smith, Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, 1640–1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 112–13.
45 For Challoner, see Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion, pp. 246–7, 348–9. An inventory of Challoner’s assets after his execution valued his stock at £2,616 and his household goods at £45; CSPD, 1641–43, p. 472.
46 Tompkins seems to have been far more supportive of the plans for an armed rising than was Challoner. In his gallows speech Tompkins asserted his ‘affection and gratitude to the King’, whom he had served ‘above 22 years’; The Whole Confession and Speech of Mr. Nathaniel Tompkins (1643), p. 6.
47 Gardiner, Great Civil War, i, 146–7; Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion, pp. 247, 350; Wedgwood, King’s War, pp. 218–19; Ann Hughes, ‘Stuart, Katherine, Lady Aubigny [Viscountess Newburgh] (d. 1650)’, ODNB, online edn, 2004, accessed 15 March 2010.
48 Brief Narrative, p. 1; A Continuation of Certain special and remarkable Passages, no. 50 (29 June–6 July), p. 8; Mr Challenor: His Confession and Speech (1643), p. 4.; Gardiner, Great Civil War, i, 157–8.
49 Ibid., pp. 2–3.
50 Clarendon, Rebellion, vii, 63.
51 Ibid., vii, 63, 174; Roy, ‘“This Proud, Unthankefull City”’, pp. 161–2. S. R. Gardiner makes a convincing case that Portland was lying when he rejected Waller’s accusation of complicity in the plot; see Gardiner, Great Civil War, i, 156–7, 199.
52 HMC, 6th Report, 24 September 1644, p. 28; Mr Waller’s Speech in the House of Commons on Tuesday the 4th of July, 1643; Clarendon, Rebellion, vii, 73, 85n; Warren Chernaik, ‘Waller, Edmund (1606–1687)’, ODNB, online edn, 2004, accessed 15 March 2010. Aubrey’s claim that in order to save his life Waller ‘Bribed the whole House, which was the first time a house of Commons was ever bribed’ is probably excessive on more than one count; Dick, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, p. 360.
53 For the ‘peace party’ and the movement for a negotiated peace, see Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion, pp. 336–48; Wedgwood, King’s War, pp. 219, 237–9.
54 John Pym, A Discovery of the Great Plot for the Utter Ruine of the City of London and the Parliament (London, 1643), pp. 2–4, 6–9.
55 See, for example, The Malignants treacherous and Bloody Plot against the Parliament and City of London by God’s Providen
ce happily prevented (London, 31 May 1643). When the peace campaign reappeared, it was in the form of popular demonstrations by citizens, principally women, with little or no evidence of any royalist influence behind the scenes and with their surviving supporters in Parliament increasingly ineffectual; see Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion, pp. 351–3; David Scott, Politics and War in the Three Stuart Kingdoms, 1637–49 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 61–5.
56 England’s Monument of Mercy in Her Miraculous Preservation from Manifold, Plots, Conspiracies Contrivances … (London, 1646).
57 For interceptions of plate and treasure intended for Oxford, see Mercurius Civicus, no. 4 (25 May–1 June 1643), pp. 27–8; Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion, pp. 245–6.
58 For Sir Basil Brooke’s plot as an example of an insignificant and obscure conspiracy, see ibid., pp. 353–5.
59 Thomas, Berkenhead, pp. 42–3, 59, 76–7.
60 Barwick, Life, p. 63.
Chapter 3
War in the Three Kingdoms 1643–1646
The unnatural Enemies to this their Native Country … have gone about seeking how they may devour it, by their restless Endeavours to bring in Foreign Aids from Holland, Courland, Denmark, Portugal, Ireland, France and from Rome itself, of Shipping, Arms, Ammunition, Men, Money, Horse and Foot, and that in no small proportions.
Introduction to The Lord George Digby’s Cabinet and Dr Goff’s Negotiations …
taken at the Battle at Sherburn in Yorkshire, the 15th of October Last (1645)
Mr O’Neile hath with much diligence and judgement wrought in what he was employed; the success remains yet disputable.
James Butler, Marquess of Ormond to George, Lord Digby, Dublin, 20 June 1644
The failure of Waller’s plot meant one fewer ‘fine design’ for the king to present to his consort when their long-awaited reunion took place near the battlefield of Edgehill on 13 July. In fact, by this time several other promising designs had failed to live up to the king’s expectations; the plans by royalists to seize control of Hull and Lincoln from within had also ended in failure.1 Yet royalist morale remained high. The spectacular series of victories in the south-west by the splendid army commanded by Hertford and Hopton culminated in the storming of Bristol by Rupert’s Cavaliers on 26 July. But the capture of Bristol was to be the high point in what had been until then a run of largely uninterrupted royalist military successes. Following Essex’s relief of Gloucester in August and his army’s successful return to London after fighting another drawn battle at Newbury, in which Rupert’s forces suffered heavy casualties, the summer campaigning season gradually ground to an end. Expensive armies and garrisons were left scattered across the kingdom, somehow needing to be maintained over the winter. With the war showing every sign of continuing to drag on indefinitely, both sides were looking for a way to break the wearisome and expensive pattern of inconclusive campaigns and drawn battles. Hopefully yet warily, the opposing high commands in Westminster and Oxford looked towards the other Stuart kingdoms; their hopes of decisive military aid were very much intermixed with fears of the possible negative consequences if large bodies of Scots or Irish troops intervened on English battlefields.
In Scotland the Covenanter regime seemed to be firmly in control. Yet while the government dominated by Argyll and his allies earnestly debated whether to intervene in England in support of Parliament or to remain neutral on the sidelines, a heterogenous collection of enemies waited for the opportunity to challenge the Covenanters’ supremacy. The royalist clans in the north-east; the hereditary foes of the Campbells in the Isles and the western Highlands; the largely Catholic followers of lords like Nithsdale and Carnwath in the Lowlands: habitually distrustful of each other, they were united only by a professed loyalty to King Charles and a deep hatred of Argyll. Contemplating from Oxford the complexities of the Scottish situation, Charles and his advisers wobbled between two policies: whether to encourage the diplomatic efforts of the cautious Hamilton to persuade Argyll to use his influence to keep Scotland neutral, or to support the aggressive projects of royalist firebrands like the earls of Carnwath, Antrim and Montrose. Contemptuous of Hamilton’s cautious and ultimately ineffectual diplomacy, they advocated instead a military assault on the Covenanter regime. The devious Antrim, whose principal objective was to destroy Campbell power in the Isles and the western Highlands and reinstate the ancient authority of Clan Donald, had essentially little in common with Montrose, who expressed vehemently his demands that he be authorised by the king to raise a royalist rebellion in the northern kingdom.2 Circumstances and apparently common objectives made them uneasy if impatient allies. To support the projects of Antrim and Montrose openly would undermine Hamilton’s diplomacy, but to keep them on the leash was not only becoming increasingly difficult, it made it easier for the Covenanters to strengthen their authority in Scotland and so be in a stronger position to give effective military aid to the English Parliament.
If the royalist policy options for Scotland were both complex and dangerous in their implications, they were simplicity itself compared to what confronted the king’s advisers when they contemplated the situation in Ireland. In theory there were powerful royalist forces potentially available in Ireland for the king to employ in England. There were significant numbers of principally Protestant New English (recent settlers) and some Catholic Old English (descendants of medieval English settlers) troops who remained loyal to Ormond, the king’s representative. In addition, there were the regiments sent from England in the early months of 1642 to suppress the Irish Rebellion. But the outbreak of the English Civil War deprived these forces of reinforcements and supplies; as their strength dwindled they were increasingly tied down and put on the defensive by the armies of the Catholic Confederates.3 Not only was Ormond only able to send relatively small numbers of these troops to England to serve the king, his own position was becoming increasingly precarious. Charles’s response to this situation was to order Ormond in April 1643 to negotiate a truce with the Confederates. In return for the expectation of substantial military aid from Ireland, which could be directed against the king’s enemies in either or both of his other rebellious kingdoms, Charles risked inflaming the already potent hostility among his Protestant subjects in all three kingdoms towards the popish rebels widely believed to be guilty of frightful atrocities in the 1641 Ulster rebellion. As Clarendon was later to acknowledge, ‘the imputation raised by Parliament upon the King’ that his dealings with the Irish indicated ‘an intention to bring in, or … of conniving at and tolerating Popery, did make a deep impression upon the people generally’.4 Encouraged by the queen, Charles refused to be deflected from this policy. On 15 September the ‘cessation of arms’, a ceasefire agreed to for one year but renewable, was concluded between Ormond as the leader of the Irish royalists and the Confederation of Kilkenny.5
The timing of Ormond’s negotiations with representatives of the Confederation approximately coincided with the meetings between Parliament’s commissioners and the Covenanter leaders, who were aware of Antrim’s invasion plans and remained understandably deeply suspicious of the king’s willingness to deal with Catholic Irish rebels. Ten days after the cessation was signed in Ireland, the Solemn League and Covenant – the alliance between the English Parliament and the Scots Covenanters – was concluded at Westminster. A Covenanter army of over 20,000 men, still commanded by Alexander Leslie, now Earl of Leven, the general who had humiliated the English at Newburn nearly four years earlier, crossed the Tweed into England on 19 January 1644. The failure of Hamilton’s policy of attempting to persuade the Scots to remain neutral left its principal advocate totally discredited. When that unfortunate nobleman arrived in Oxford in December he was arrested and imprisoned. Present in Oxford to observe and profit from Hamilton’s fall were both Antrim and Montrose, eager now finally to have the opportunity to carry into effect their plans to unleash the fierce clansmen of Clan Donald on the hated Campbells and to raise the king’s stand
ard in the Highlands.6
The ambitious plans of Antrim and Montrose, although at last receiving enthusiastic royal support, faced a formidable range of difficulties if they were to be carried out successfully. Trusted couriers and agents were needed to perform an intimidating array of tasks. The way had to be prepared for a descent on Scotland by Antrim’s chosen general, the redoubtable Alasdair MacColla, and his Irish forces. MacColla was a heroic figure, considered by David Stevenson to be ‘one of the greatest warriors of Highland tradition’, only truly happy when he was slaughtering Campbells.7 But if the Campbell lands were to be invaded successfully from Ulster, the co-operation of Ormond, no admirer of Antrim, was essential. For MacColla’s men had to be organised and mustered; shipping had to be concentrated in secure and suitable ports; money had to be raised to pay, equip and maintain soldiers and sailors; and all this had to be done in a kingdom torn by multiple political, religious and ethnic divisions, and impoverished by the ravages of marauding armies. Similarly, the way had to be prepared for Montrose’s return to Scotland with the king’s commission. The royalist clans in the Highlands, widely scattered between the Gordon territory in the north-east and the remnants of Clan Donald in the Western Isles, had to be first informed of the plan for a rising, and then persuaded to concentrate their fighting men to welcome Montrose when he made the perilous journey from England to command them.
The schemes prepared in the king’s headquarters at Oxford to extend the English Civil War into a genuine war of the three kingdoms did not stop only at drawing Ireland and Scotland into the conflict. For Charles I had significant family connections with potential allies on the Continent. His daughter Mary had married the young William of Orange in Whitehall at the height of the tensions caused by the trial of Strafford and the army plots. William’s father, Prince Frederick Henry, valued greatly this family alliance with the royal house of Stuart. Charles, with a French princess for a wife and a Danish princess for mother, also sought to maintain and derive practical benefits from friendly diplomatic relations with his uncle, Christian IV of Denmark, and brother-in-law, Louis XIII of France.
Royalist Agents, Conspirators and Spies Page 9