Royalist Agents, Conspirators and Spies

by Geoffrey Smith

  Other developments on the Continent were more likely to affect Charles II’s prospects than the renewal of the Swedish–Danish war in the Baltic. The most significant was the prospect that the long war between Spain and France, which had imposed enormous strains on both monarchies, intensified by the demands and cost of the recent campaign in Flanders, might finally be coming to an end. During 1658 tentative steps towards the ending of hostilities were being taken, and any peace treaty between France and Spain could have major implications for the exiled Stuarts. Then the death of the Emperor Ferdinand III meant that an imperial election would also take place early in 1658, with the possibility that the next emperor might not be a Habsburg, a possibility which, if realised, as Bampfield described it in absurdly extravagant language in a report to Thurloe, was ‘likely to produce one of the greatest changes, that has happened for some ages in Christendom’.7 Bampfield was dispatched by Thurloe to report on the proceedings at the Imperial Diet in Frankfurt. He planned to include Heidelberg on his journey, and was provided with letters of introduction to Prince Rupert from Jermyn, who recommended the agent to the prince’s ‘favour and protection’, Bampfield deserving ‘all the reliefs that innocently may be afforded him’. Not surprisingly, the exiled court was not impressed when it learned of Jermyn’s action. Nicholas wrote from Brussels on 6 May to inform Rupert that the king was astonished that Jermyn should recommend Bampfield, and totally rejected any suggestion that he should be permitted to enter the prince’s service, pointing out that ‘Coll. Bampfield is now actually employed in Cromwell’s service.’8

  Although these various events on the Continent, ranging from all-out wars to secret diplomatic exchanges, seriously engaged the attention of the king’s advisers in Brussels, their main focus remained fixed on England. There the situation was transformed – or so the royalists hoped – by the longed for, prayed for and plotted for death of Oliver Cromwell on 3 September, at the height of the storm that swept Charles Davison overboard to his death off the coast of Antwerp and on the anniversary of his great victories at Dunbar and Worcester. Writing to Henry Cromwell on 30 August to inform him of his father’s condition, Thurloe reported that now once again the Cavaliers were beginning to stir, believing that finally their day was come.9

  Royalist hopes that the Protector’s death would lead to the immediate collapse of his regime proved to be sadly premature, as for a few months Richard Cromwell appeared to have achieved a peaceful succession to his father’s office. But as the political situation in England became increasingly confused and unstable, with threatened Cromwellians, resurgent republicans, ambitious generals and even religious radicals all manoeuvring and intriguing to either seize or retain authority, opportunities began to emerge for the royalists to exploit. And in John Mordaunt it finally seemed that the man to seize these opportunities had appeared. Undeterred by the narrowness of his escape from the block, on his release from prison Mordaunt renewed his offer of service to the king.

  The offer, carried by Mordaunt’s personally devoted agent Hartgill Baron to Brussels in December, was received enthusiastically by Charles.10 By this time the Cavaliers and their prospective allies were well and truly stirring in a number of areas, and someone like Mordaunt was urgently needed to direct this resurgence of activity. The arrests that had broken up the plans for a rising in the spring had occurred principally in London and the Home Counties. The royalist underground organisation in the West Country had not been seriously dislocated, and it possessed a capable and energetic leader in Sir John Grenville, with all the local prestige that the holder of that name enjoyed. To communicate with other centres of conspiracy and with the exiled court, the western network had available a number of reliable agents and messengers: John Seymour, Jonathan Trelawney, Edward Roscarrock and Captain John Skelton, a client of Grenville’s.11

  Grenville and his network represented the traditional Cavalier church and king interest. But, as past experience had demonstrated only too clearly, the king could not rely solely on the Cavaliers to bring about his restoration. A broad alliance of opponents of the Commonwealth was needed. To bring the Presbyterians into such an alliance was a major objective of Mordaunt’s. Contacts were established or renewed with prominent figures like the Cheshire magnate, Sir George Booth, Sir William Waller and Major General Richard Browne. Key figures in these approaches were Massey and his friend Titus, who were once more drawn into the web of royalist conspiracy.12

  As the Clarendon papers illustrate, the volume of intelligence reports from London was steadily increasing during the months that followed Cromwell’s death. Hyde acquired a remarkably large number of correspondents, their letters ranging from ephemeral gossip, which Abbess Knatchbull sometimes did not even bother to pass on to the Chancellor after she had read them, to the intelligence reports of men like Rumbold, Brodrick, Villiers and Barwick, who all possessed insiders’ knowledge of the progress of royalist plots. Barwick, who had attended Dr Hewett on the scaffold, also had connections with London’s sometimes persecuted Church of England congregations, and according to his brother, was ‘negotiating with many Citizens of London of principal note’. He was involved in the project to consecrate new bishops in order to prevent the Anglican episcopal bench from dying out. As well as communicating with the court by the regular post, Barwick employed couriers, including Gregory Paulden and Richard Allestree.13 The latter was an ordained Anglican clergyman who, while a student at Oxford, had joined the royalist army and seen action in the Civil War. Although Allestree had these elements in common with Francis Corker, there the similarities ended, for his royalist loyalties were total, and in the late 1650s he made several clandestine journeys between plotters in London and the exiled court, on at least one occasion in the company of that experienced agent John Stephens.14

  To co-ordinate and direct these scattered expressions of royalist opposition to whatever form the post-Oliver government finally took, a new secret council was commissioned by Charles II on 1 March 1659. The membership of this new council, ‘the Great Trust and Commission’, reflected this broadening of the range of royalist conspiracy. It included both full and more vaguely defined associated members, some of whom were nominated later: the original members of the Knot; some members of the different ‘Action parties’, for example Andrew Newport and Sir Thomas Peyton; prominent Presbyterians and ex-parliamentarians like Waller and Sir George Booth; a representative of the royalist nobility, Compton’s older brother, the Earl of Northampton; Sir John Grenville, the undisputed leader of the ‘Gentlemen of the West’; a London lawyer, Job Charlton, and some experienced agents, the Cavalier Will Legge and the parliamentarians-turned-royalists, Massey and his friend Titus.15 A warrant for a viscountcy confirmed that the king entrusted leadership of the Great Trust to Mordaunt.

  While the Great Trust was being organised under Mordaunt’s energetic leadership, the Cromwellian regime was crumbling. ‘The proceedings at Westminster,’ reported Barwick to Hyde in February, referring to the bitter divisions in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, ‘are so full of distraction, that it is probable they will end in confusion. For one party thinks the protectorists cannot stand and the other that the commonwealth cannot rise.’16 Richard, beset by mutinous army officers on the one side and noisily critical civilian republicans or ‘Commonwealthsmen’ on the other, abdicated in May. Showing a depressing absence of creative ideas, the civilian republicans moved quickly to replace the Protectorate with a restored Rump Parliament. Although this body had the unenthusiastic support for the moment of the military grandees, it was increasingly regarded with derision and contempt by much of the nation.17 Royalist agents acted to exploit the opportunities that were now opening before them. Mordaunt, Grenville and the Great Trust, the Sealed Knot, the exiled court, the Presbyterians, London merchants and provincial country gentry: they all had their own interlocking networks of couriers, intelligencers, spies and plotters. Some accepted Mordaunt’s leadership, and some most assuredly did not; some respected the
position of Hyde as the king’s chief minister and adviser, and some tried to by-pass and ignore the Chancellor; some displayed courage and loyalty of a high order, while others were passive, inept or even actively treacherous.

  Mordaunt’s energy and his willingness to broaden the base of royalist opposition to the Commonwealth were positive features in this revival of conspiracy. While his impatience and arrogance alienated some influential royalists, he had the support of Charles, Hyde and Ormond, while Grenville, who was steadily emerging as a respected leader of the royalist resistance movement, expressed his willingness to ‘observe all your [Mordaunt’s], Commands, [to] serve you upon all occasions to the utmost of my power’. 18 It is significant that two of the most highly regarded agents, Stephens and Armorer, were happy to work for him. On 21 March, Hyde had recommended Armorer to Mordaunt as one ‘who is specially trusted’, who had ‘much confidence’ with the Shropshire royalist Andrew Newport, a member of the newly formed Great Trust, and who knew more about ‘the design upon Shrewsbury’ than anybody else. Hyde also wanted Armorer to arrange a meeting between Rumbold of the Knot and Mordaunt’s personal agent, Hartgill Baron.19 Armorer’s rise from obscurity to this important position of trust in the king’s party, by this time one of ‘their prime agents’ as Ross described him to Gervase Holles, had been marked by a series of clientage connections with a diverse collection of royalist leaders: Nicholas, Langdale, Rochester, Hyde, O’Neill, Ormond, and now Mordaunt. Like Daniel O’Neill, Armorer liked to be at the centre of events. During the early months of 1659 he was back and forwards across the Channel several times.20

  As events moved towards a crisis the king’s agents were kept active, attempting both to keep the exiled court up to date with developments and to communicate between the various groups of plotters. Emissaries were sent to General Monck in Scotland, who maintained an impenetrable secrecy about his intentions, if he knew what they were, and to Admiral Edward Montagu in the Baltic, where his fleet was protecting English interests in the Danish–Swedish war. Montagu’s response to royalist approaches was encouraging, although he was not impressed by Hyde’s emissary, Sir Thomas Whetstone, ‘the most unfit the King could have sent’.21 A nephew of Cromwell, and a beneficiary of the Protector’s misplaced patronage, Whetstone’s career as a royalist agent was both brief and disastrous. As a naval officer under the Protectorate his career had been marked by displays of incompetence, drunkenness and insubordination which led to his arrest and the appointment of a court martial to try him. The death of his uncle deprived him of a protective patron and so he turned royalist, fled to Brussels, was knighted by Charles, and sent to his fellow naval officer, Montagu, who understandably refused to have anything to do with him.22

  James Halsall, finally released from prison early in 1659, is a much more impressive figure. Justifying Thurloe’s disapproval of his release, he immediately resumed his old career, crossing to Holland in July to report to the king and involving himself in the preparations for a general insurrection which was planned to break out on 1 August. There were a number of targets. Massey headed for Gloucester, while Roger Whitley, a veteran of Civil War campaigns in the Welsh marches, rode off to join Sir George Booth in Cheshire. Hartgill Baron naturally remained close to Mordaunt in Surrey, while Charles Lyttelton, one of the most active of the second generation of royalist agents, returned in July from a mission to the court, and travelled quickly across England to Shropshire, where he had instructions to support Andrew Newport’s plan to capture Shrewsbury. Agents who lived in exile headed for the coast, ready to cross into England. Blague, presumably recovered from his wounds, wrote to Hyde that he was ‘now at the boat-side’, ready to cross to East Anglia, where he hoped to raise a small force. Armorer, having just arrived from England, was in Calais, waiting for an opportunity to return across the Channel. In July Charles, accompanied by Titus, who was on his way to England to join Massey, also arrived in Calais, ready to cross the Channel with his brother James if the news was encouraging.23

  It wasn’t. The insurrection that broke out at the beginning of August was not quite the dismal fiasco of Penruddock’s rising, but it was certainly a total failure. Traditionally known as Booth’s rising, after Sir George Booth who occupied Chester and briefly held some neighbouring towns and castles, its quick suppression once again crushed the hopes of the king’s followers. At the battle of Winnington Bridge – really not much more than a skirmish followed by a rout – Lambert’s army, superior to Booth’s in all the important military essentials from morale to equipment, won a total victory. Chester and the other towns and castles held by Booth’s followers quickly surrendered. Booth himself, fleeing south, was captured at Newport Pagnell in an unconvincing female disguise and was committed to the Tower. General Lambert returned in triumph to London, with his prestige and authority considerably augmented – a circumstance with ominous implications for the Rump.24

  It is not difficult to explain the swift and decisive crushing of the August rising. The divisions between the ‘wary gentlemen’ of the Knot and the impetuous and sometimes tactless Mordaunt were widened by the last-minute revelations of the treachery of both Willys and Corker.25 Samuel Morland was probably making a shrewd and long-sighted judgement when he signalled his change of sides by providing Charles with information, supported by letters, that confirmed Thurloe’s employment of Willys and Corker, but the timing of his revelations, as they leaked out during July, could only cause dismay, and even initial disbelief, to the plotters. In fact, the Rump was not dependent on intelligence from Willys and Corker to frustrate the royalists’ plans. After the Restoration, Thomas Scot, who in 1659 had regained his old position as director of government counter-security operations, replacing the loyal Cromwellian Thurloe, claimed to have ‘from all places heard says and alarms of Sir George Booth’s business but could fix nowhere, and some from Coll. Bampfield, which I suppose he got from his general acquaintance among the Presbyterians’.26 A large and varied number of ‘says and alarms’ meant that the government was well informed on the preparations for the rising, which in any case could hardly be concealed. Confronted once again by the old enemy the tenuous alliance between the Rump and the army held firm. Government forces had been strengthened and were prepared. When Robert Walters landed in Lincolnshire and Blague in Norfolk, they were both quickly apprehended.27 Large-scale troop movements to reinforce obvious targets, a general tightening of security and a wave of arrests left the conspirators’ plans in tatters. The seizure of activists like Massey, Legge, Newport, Willoughby and others persuaded the more cautious, like Northampton and his fellow royalist lords, to remain quietly at home, and compelled others, like Mordaunt, to go into hiding. The arrests, the flights and the abstentions crippled the plans to capture towns like Bristol, Gloucester and Shrewsbury.28 And when those dominoes failed to fall, then the dominoes dependent on their toppling, like Grenville’s responsibility, the West Country, also remained standing. Booth was left isolated when he rose in Cheshire.

  The royalists and their allies who planned the rising in the summer of 1659 believed that they would be able to restore the monarchy by their own efforts, without reliance on foreign aid, which Mordaunt believed was ‘a sad cure for an ill disease, when more nobly we may do it ourselves’.29 They feared that if they failed, then the alternatives for Britain would be either a military dictatorship, or a narrowly based regime of Puritan ‘fanatics’ or anarchy. But a successful rising would have meant a renewal of civil war, an attempt to achieve a restoration by violence, and many English men and women, not just the overly cautious ‘wary gentlemen’ of the Knot or lords ‘unwilling to hazard their estates’, were not prepared to embrace that course.30 Events were clearly changing rapidly; it was perhaps best to wait on them.

  Also left waiting, in his case on the French coast, was Charles II. The news of Booth’s apparently successful rising caused the king and his small following, which included Ormond, Bristol and O’Neill, to leave Calais and head for a Breton
port where they could charter a ship to take them to Chester. Fortunately for Charles, Titus had remained in Calais, where he learned of Booth’s defeat at Winnington Bridge and immediately sent the news to St. Malo in time to prevent the royal party embarking for an English port which had already surrendered to Lambert’s forces.31 Instead of returning forlornly to Brussels, Charles decided instead to attend the Franco-Spanish peace negotiations at Fuentarrabia on the Pyrenees frontier. If those two powerful monarchies could finally bring their long war to an end, then they might be prepared to consider more seriously the needs of the house of Stuart. The king’s return to a reliance on foreign aid shows that for the time being at least, he had despaired of the ability of his British supporters to bring about his restoration.32