Royalist Agents, Conspirators and Spies

by Geoffrey Smith

  Having wavered indecisively for months between confirming the cautious Sealed Knot as the sole controlling authority in charge of royalist conspiracy and encouraging the more ardent spirits of the ‘Action party’, Charles turned in this crisis to the ‘Infallible Subtle’ Daniel O’Neill to resolve the conflict. O’Neill was to be sent to England to reconcile the opposing views of the two groups of plotters, ‘to beget a right understanding amongst them and to tell them his [the king’s] opinion’. The immediate responsibility for either authorising or deferring the rising was removed from both the Knot and the ‘Action party’ and given to Rochester and O’Neill. In the mean time Charles and a few close followers would travel as unobtrusively as possible to the little port of Middleburg on Dutch coast, from where, if the rising were successful, they could sail for England.66

  As royalist security measures were effectively negligible, these preparations for a rising, in particular the constant travels of agents between the court and the centres of conspiracy, did not go unnoticed. Adventurous royalist émigrés, sniffing at the possibility of some employment for their swords, began to concentrate in the Channel ports, looking for a passage to England. One of Thurloe’s spies reported from Bruges early in March that ‘there is a great gathering of English gallants at Bruges, Ostend and Dunkirk, and some have gone to Calais; at least 150 have passed through within ten days’. He not surprisingly concluded, on this evidence, that ‘some great plot is intended’.67 The government authorities were already taking prompt action. In a speech to the Lord Mayor and Common Council of London on 13 February, Cromwell warned them at considerable and typical length of the imminent threat posed by royalist and Leveller plots, while Thurloe and his officers acted swiftly and effectively. Security was tightened at the Channel ports, where a ‘letter of restraint’ from the Protector to customs officials ordered the detention of all foreigners and suspicious persons attempting to enter the country. There was a general intensification of military preparedness throughout the country, troop movements, and a wave of arrests that swept up many of the militants of the ‘Action party’ and critically dislocated the conspirators’ plans, especially those of ‘the Gentlemen of the West’, many of whom by mid-February were on the run if they were not already in custody.68

  Despite these increasingly discouraging developments, a wave of royalist agents and other exiles hopeful of action continued to flow into England, their movements reported by Thurloe’s spies, in particular by Henry Manning, whose letters show his increasing irritation at the failure of government officials to capture them. After some narrow escapes Rochester, O’Neill and his travelling companion Armorer, Ross and Halsall, several agents intended to contact the ‘Gentleman of the West’, notably John Seymour, Jonathan Trelawney and Colonel Robert Phelips of Montacute, Somerset, all reached London safely.69 Rochester and Sir Joseph Wagstaffe, a convivial drinking companion and an old comrade from the Civil War, whom he had encountered by chance at Dunkirk and who had cheerfully accepted the invitation ‘to keep him company and run the same hazard with him’, landed in Margate, where they survived an examination without being detained and were able to continue to London.70 But the big weakness in the Protector’s security system for the Channel poets was Dover. At that key port the combination of lax port authorities, ‘the Commissioners of the Passage’, an incompetent Lieutenant-Governor of Dover Castle (Captain Thomas Wilson), and most important, an active royalist agent among the customs officials (Robert Day, the Deputy Clerk of the Passage), provided an avenue for agents to enter and leave England with comparative impunity.71

  O’Neill and Armorer arrived in Dover early in February, and were both promptly detained under the Protector’s new ‘letters of restraint’.72 At first the news of O’Neill’s detention caused dismay at The Hague and Cologne, until it was learned in quick succession that his papers were safe, his identity had not been discovered, and that he had escaped, probably with the connivance of Robert Day. Having once gone over the wall from the Tower of London, Dover Castle presumably presented fewer challenges. Charles expressed to Hyde his relief at the news: ‘I must confess that the escape of that lucky fellow Bryan (O’Neill’s cover name) pleases me very well.’ The king thought it ‘a very good sign our factors … have so good fortune as to escape’.73 Armorer, who was travelling under the guise of a Newcastle merchant named Nicholas Wright, had his cover disclosed by another of Thurloe’s informers, Major Sir Robert Stone, a dubious character in the household of Elizabeth of Bohemia. By the time Thurloe had been informed of the real identity of ‘Nicholas Wright’, the alleged merchant detained in Dover Castle, it was too late. Thanks to the good offices of Robert Day, who had engaged for his good behaviour, he had been freed by the castle’s lieutenant-governor, Captain Wilson. The hapless governor apologised profusely to Thurloe at the prisoner’s release, while expressing the pious hope that ‘the Lord will graciously disappoint his horrid intentions’. Having allowed the real thing to disappear, the governor included in his apologetic letter a description of Major Armorer, alias Mr Wright, as ‘a pretty full and somewhat ruddy fac’d man, of a middle stature, about 35 or 36 years of age, having a deep brown hair, short beard, his hair on his head and face much of a colour’.74

  O’Neill and Armorer were not the only agents to demonstrate the inefficiency of the government’s security measures at Dover. Jonathan Trelawney, under the pseudonym ‘Morris’, passed through the port at the same time as O’Neill and Armorer, but was not detained at all. Then on 9 March Ormond reported to Hyde that he had heard that Humphrey Boswell had been ‘restrained at Dover, but escaped with his usual dexterity’. Ormond’s conclusion was that ‘Cromwell is ill-served or they [the agents] are well befriended’.75

  Ormond’s optimism was ill-founded. As it turned out, the ability of a swarm of the king’s agents – O’Neill, Armorer, the Halsall and Paulden brothers, Ross, Trelawney, Phelips, Davison, Stephens, Boswell, Walters and others – to enter England undetected and spread across the country to the different centres of conspiracy was the only positive achievement to come out of the plans for the rising that broke out in March. For the insurrection, often called Penruddock’s rising after the Wiltshire Cavalier Colonel John Penruddock, whose short-lived capture of Salisbury was the conspirators’ only success, was otherwise in all respects a disaster.

  The rising almost did not break out at all. For, undeterred by their experiences in Dover, O’Neill and Armorer had continued on to London and made contact with a number of representatives of the Knot and the ‘Action party’ as well as sympathetic but uncommitted Presbyterians, like Lord Willoughby. O’Neill’s initial and sensible assessment of the situation, conveyed to Charles and Hyde in a long letter written in the not very convincing guise of a friend’s report to a bankrupt merchant on the prospects of clearing his debts, was that the king’s affairs were ‘in such disorder by the absence of some of your friends and the restraint of others’ that ‘there was no good to be done’ and his supporters should return to their homes. Unfortunately, his legendary subtlety and cleverness were then overruled by another of his strongest characteristics, his unfaltering optimism whatever the circumstances, and he allowed himself to be talked out of this realistic assessment, first by Sir Thomas Armstrong, a landless soldier of fortune and veteran of the Irish wars who was also, somewhat surprisingly, a leading member of the ‘Action party’, and then by the newly arrived Rochester, eager to exercise his royal authority to take charge of the rising.76 The fateful decision was made to go ahead, to authorise a series of risings against the Protector’s government to break out on 8 March. Leaving O’Neill behind in London, the conspirators scattered to their different intended targets and places of rendezvous. Wagstaffe and some agents headed west, while the Paulden and Halsall brothers, Thomas Carnaby, Robert Walters and others had already been dispatched to the Midlands, Yorkshire and Northumberland. Rochester, accompanied by Armorer, rode north to take command of the forces intended to seize York.77

&n
bsp; For the royalist plotters who hoped that they were about to shake the Protector’s regime to its foundations, the night of 8 March was a depressing series of anti-climaxes and non-events. A number of small gatherings of nervous and ill-equipped men, their numbers far below what had been expected or promised, assembled furtively, only to disperse hastily, making no assaults on anywhere. With the exception of Penruddock and Wagstaffe’s brief occupation of Salisbury, nothing of any consequence happened. There are several reasons for the failure of the rising to even take off, much less be successful: the overwhelming military strength and high state of preparedness of the Protector’s forces; the crippling effect of the widespread arrests of royalist activists during the previous weeks; the doubts and divisions between the leaders of the Sealed Knot and the ‘Action party’; the lack of clear and decisive instructions from the exiled court; reservations about the choice of Rochester as commander, and finally – understandable in the circumstances – the reluctance of influential magnates, whether they were royalists like Hertford, Presbyterians like Willoughby or disaffected parliamentarians like Fairfax, to act openly against the government. Powerful signs of good prospects for success were needed before not just the magnates, but the great mass of royalist sympathisers, would take up arms against the formidable army of Oliver Cromwell.78

  The swift suppression of the March rising left the king’s agents scattered and stranded throughout the country, understandably anxious not to be seized as Cromwell’s troops and Thurloe’s officers moved swiftly and efficiently to stamp out the flickering embers of royalist opposition to the regime. Arrests were widespread, sweeping up not only known activists, but also prominent but entirely innocent royalists like Cornwallis and Progers. Although, as we have seen, these two courtiers had both earlier returned to England from exile and had been living quietly and obscurely, this did not save them from imprisonment.79 Abraham Cowley, Jermyn’s secretary, who had returned to England on an obscure secret mission in the summer of 1654, was also arrested at this time. After being interrogated by Cromwell and Thurloe he was committed to the Tower, but was released on bail before the end of the year. The suspicion that Cowley was prepared to compromise his political allegiance has shadowed his reputation ever since. Even before the adverse royalist reaction to the tone of his Poems, published in 1656, and containing a preface that argued that it was now time to accept what had been determined by the ‘event of battle and the unaccountable Will of God’, he had aroused O’Neill’s distrust. In his report to Hyde and the king on the eve of the outbreak of the March rising he accused ‘Mr Juxley’s [Jermyn’s] clerk with the red head’ of forwarding intelligence to Cromwell. ‘You know him,’ declared O’Neill, ‘he is a poet and a bitter enemy of yours.’80 Intimidated by this wave of arrests, it is not surprising that the real plotters, whether originally based in England or in exile, headed for the comparative anonymity and security of safe houses in London, or else directly for the coast and a passage across the Channel.

  The unfortunate Colonel Penruddock went to the block in Exeter on 8 May, and about a dozen other royalists captured in arms were also executed, while others were transported to Barbados.81 But most of the agents who had been involved in planning the rising eventually made their way back to the Continent, in some cases after narrow escapes. Robert Walters and Tom Paulden were both arrested, but both escaped, Paulden from the Gatehouse prison after throwing pepper in the guard’s eyes. Rochester and Armorer, fleeing south in disguise, were detained by a suspicious magistrate at Aylesbury, but judicious bribes gained them their freedom. Captain Peter Mews, the agent who had carried letters for Glencairn and Middleton in the Highlands rising, reported to his friend Nicholas that ‘Earl Rochester’s escape at Aylesbury cost him dear, being compelled to part with his gold chain; better that than his head.’82

  Manning was furious at the failure of Thurloe’s officers to capture the agents as they slipped back across the Channel. He had already complained at their inability to track down ‘Wilmot, Dan O’Neile, and one major Armorer, who when your last post came were all in London’. According to Manning, they could be found at ‘one Mr Markham’s house in the Savoy, the lord Lumley’s, or some of those places which I know to be their haunts’. This last piece of intelligence is not particularly informative, although to be fair, in other reports he identified John Chase’s apothecary and the Horseshoe tavern, both in Drury Lane, as ‘haunts’ favoured by the king’s servants.83 But there were a number of other safe houses in the capital, unknown to Manning, where fugitive royalists were concealed. After the Restoration, James Halsall attempted to organise financial aid for a Mrs Carter, who ‘preserved in her house Tom Blague, Robin Killigrew, Sir Robert Shirley, Mr O’Neale, Nic. Armorer, Lord Rochester, himself, and many others of the King’s servants’. Also, among the flood of petitions for recognition of and reward for services that swamped Secretary Nicholas after the Restoration were a number from London householders who claimed to have concealed royalists on the run. For example, in December 1664 a merchant named John Kay alleged that he had ‘hazarded his life by preserving in his house and lending money to Dan O’Neale, Sir Nich. Armorer, Col. Richard Talbot, and others’, while one Ann Abbot claimed the credit for having sheltered a more aristocratic clientele that included the Duke of Buckingham (presumably when he was a fugitive after the battle of Worcester), the earls of Rochester and Ossory (Ormond’s eldest son) and Sir John Stephens.84

  After varying periods either on the run or lying concealed, most of the agents involved in the March rising eventually managed to escape into exile. At the beginning of May, O’Neill turned up at The Hague, from where Hyde wrote to inform Charles that ‘O’Neale is safe in this town by his usual good luck in avoiding being hanged.’ He was doubtless ready to appreciate the hospitality provided by Mary of Orange and Catherine Stanhope/Heenvliet. ‘Many you name in your last are with us,’ wrote Manning to Thurloe on 11 August, his increasing irritation very evident as his letters record the arrival back on the Continent of a succession of royalist fugitives: Rochester, Wagstaffe, Armorer, Halsall, Trelawney, Ross, Walters, Phelips, Stephens and many others. His conclusions, conveyed forthrightly to Thurloe, were that ‘your governor of Dover must be either knave or fool’ and that ‘Day of Dover and c. are rogues’.85 More welcome to Thurloe would have been Manning’s description of a demoralised court, their hopes and plans in ruins, their leaders torn by mutual recriminations, and their followers broken and dismayed. ‘In short they are at a gaze,’ Manning informed his employer, ‘and know not what resolution to take; only the murdering of the Protector’.86

  Between the first intelligence report that Daniel O’Neill delivered to the king and Hyde in March 1653, with its gloomy conclusion that ‘there is no talk of Presbyterian nor Royalist at present’, and his extremely optimistic assessment, sent to the same two men, of the chances of success of the rising that he and Rochester had just authorised, there were exactly two years. Those two years saw the promising rise and catastrophic fall of a series of royalist attempts to overthrow the newly established and hopefully insecure Cromwellian Protectorate. The different plans, plots and insurrections – Glencairn’s rising in the Highlands, the farcical Ship Tavern and Gerard plots, the elaborate designs of the Sealed Knot and ‘Action party’ for nationwide co-ordinated risings – all failed. In some ways the prospects for the Stuart cause were even more depressing in the middle of 1655 than they had been when O’Neill made his first secret intelligence gathering visit to London over two years earlier.

  Yet during those two years there had been a noticeable revival of royalist activity. This revival is reflected in the remarkable increase in the number of agents employed in the king’s service; some were based in England and employed by the various groups, secret councils or ‘knots’ responsible for organising conspiracy or intelligence, while others were in exile, either attached to one of the Stuart courts or positioned within the clientage networks of prominent royalist émigrés. But, continuing
a trend that had begun with the regicide and the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1649 and had been hastened by the defeat of the last royalist field army at Worcester, both the personnel and the roles of the king’s agents had changed. Previously, agents like Sir John Cochrane, John Poley, Sir Frederick Cornwallis, Dr Goffe, Will Murray, Sir Kenelm Digby, Tom Elliot and others had been employed on often official diplomatic missions, seeking material aid, financial and even military, for a cause that was still active in the political and military fields and was recognised as legitimate by the European powers. Their missions had been to princes and potentates: Queen Henrietta Maria, the kings of France, Denmark and Portugal, the Pope, the dukes of Lorraine and Courland, the Prince of Orange and so on. By the time Cromwell expelled the Rump and established the Protectorate, most of these men were no longer employed on the king’s business and the nature of royalist diplomacy had changed. The missions to the Imperial Diet at Regensburg of envoys like Rochester and the capable Irish diplomat and scholar Richard Bellings were now directed at raising money towards the cost of maintenance of the exiled court, not to negotiate for the landing of foreign armies in England to support royalist armies already in the field.87

  There are several reasons for this development, but the most important is that European princes no longer saw much point in wasting their resources on what they regarded as a foundering cause. The long series of royalist defeats not only caused European rulers and their ministers to abandon the Stuart cause; allied with the effects of the hardships of life in penurious exile, it explains why loyal courtiers like Poley, Progers and Cornwallis, for example, abandoned their careers in the king’s service and returned to England. Also, some other agents had lost favour through their own indiscretions or misjudgements or as a consequence of changes in court politics and policies. The melancholy fate of Sir John Cochrane has already been discussed. It is also significant that the March 1655 rising was an overwhelmingly Cavalier affair with very little Presbyterian involvement. There seems to have been no role for the most experienced Presbyterian agent, Silius Titus, and the approaches to Lord Willoughby of Parham, whom Titus knew well, were entrusted instead to Armorer, a Cavalier.88