That Charles II did not end his days in exile like Bonny Prince Charlie, or for that matter like his brother James, can partly be explained by the success of his agents in keeping traditional loyalist attitudes alive despite dangers, discouragements and frequent disappointments. The dismal record of failure of repeated designs needs to be matched against the royalist agents’ extraordinary record of resilience and persistence, which was to cause so much irritation to the Protector and his Secretary of State. Beginning with the army plots in 1641 and continuing through to the hectic early months of 1660, the king’s business, despite many upheavals and disasters, continued to be carried on by a diverse collection of agents and envoys, intelligencers and messengers.
Inevitably, there were interruptions and periods of inactivity. Equally inevitably, there were losses from their number. As we have seen, two of the most prominent Scottish agents in the 1640s, Cochrane and Will Murray, were gradually discredited, lost royal favour in the early 1650s and withdrew from the court. They both died before the Restoration, Cochrane in obscure circumstances in London, and Murray in retirement back in Edinburgh, although his daughter Elizabeth, who had also dabbled in plots, went on to a spectacular career in Restoration England as the mistress of Ham House and the wife by her second marriage of the powerful Earl, later Duke, of Lauderdale.21 Among other losses was that of the ardent royalist Lady d’Aubigny/Newburgh, who died prematurely in Holland in 1650, although her husband remained a prominent member of the exiled court.22 As has also been mentioned above, the elusive, in several senses, Humphrey Boswell just quietly disappeared from the record during 1656. Periods of imprisonment also could take agents and intelligencers out of circulation for long periods, and in some cases, as with ‘honest Harry Seymour’, they were understandably unable or unwilling to resume their activities on their release. A number of courtiers who had been active as envoys or couriers in the 1640s and early 1650s, for example Ashburnham, Cornwallis, Cowley, Davenant, Poley and Progers, were finally discouraged by the long succession of royalist defeats and gradually withdrew from the king’s service, in some cases returning from exile and making an uneasy peace with the republican regime. Others, like Tom Elliot and Sir William Fleming, remained with the exiled court, but were no longer employed as envoys or couriers. Fleming, of course, was captured at Worcester, and his release was on condition that he went ‘beyond the sea’ and promised ‘to act nothing prejudicial to the State’. Like Newburgh, he was prone to duels and was quite a prominent figure in Charles II’s little court, where, according to Henry Manning, he was ‘of Middleton and Hyde’s party’. Yet Fleming seems to have observed the conditions of his release. Despite his friendship with Middleton and his familiarity with Scotland and its leading families, he does not appear to have been involved in the Highland rising led by Glencairn.23
Death from natural causes, imprisonment or a voluntary withdrawal from the scene removed some agents from the royalist underground movement. Death by misadventure, as with Charles Davison’s drowning, or by the headsman’s axe or on the gallows removed others. Yet the judicial victims of parliamentary or republican severity tended to be either minor and obscure plotters and spies or unfortunate but prominent scapegoats, hopelessly out of depth in the murky waters they had rashly entered, like the merchant Richard Challoner in 1643 or the minister Christopher Love in 1651. For example, when the plans for a rising in the spring of 1658 were uncovered, five executions resulted: three very minor figures in the conspiracy, the outspoken Dr Hewett and the unfortunate Yorkshire gentleman Sir Henry Slingsby, who was tricked into making ‘treasonous’ comments while he was a prisoner in Hull.24 The really dangerous organiser of conspiracy, John Mordaunt, walked free from court to resume his plotting, and the ‘professional’ agents involved, O’Neill, Armorer, Stephens, Pile, Trelawney, Baron and others, evaded arrest and continued undeterred their clandestine activities in the royal cause.
For despite the failures and the dangers, the king’s business continued to be carried on; the losses or defections were filled by new recruits to the royal cause, some of whom, like Titus and Hopton, had distinctly un-Cavalier backgrounds. For their persistence and loyalty, their willingness to undergo many ‘long, dangerous and expensive journeys’, to endure poverty, exile and imprisonment, the king’s agents understandably looked forward to being rewarded in 1660 when the king came into his own again. They certainly did not regard themselves as helpless and passive observers of the events that reached their climax when General Monck finally declared for Charles II.
The treatment of the king’s supporters in the Restoration settlement has been a controversial subject, both at the time and with historians since. It was certainly responsible for considerable bitterness from those loyalists who thought their sufferings in the royal cause were inadequately rewarded.25 As far as the members of the royalist underground movement are concerned, the recognition of their services, like so much else in Restoration England, was not even-handed. It is not surprising that Grenville, who had handled with great skill the secret negotiations with Monck and who was high in royal favour, was easily the most generously rewarded. Honours were showered on him. He received the earldom of Bath, became Groom of the Stole – one of the offices to which Mordaunt had aspired – Keeper of St James’s Palace, Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall, Governor of Plymouth, Warden of the Stannaries, and a member of the Privy Council. For forty years Grenville was to be one of the grandees of Restoration England, both at court, where he retained the king’s friendship that had begun in 1645 when as a boy he had entered the service of the Prince of Wales, and in the West Country, the source of his territorial power and influence.26
Not surprisingly, neither Mordaunt, who had annoyed too many influential figures and aroused too much jealousy, nor the members of the Sealed Knot were anything like as well rewarded for their services as was Grenville. Mordaunt expected more than what he actually received: a viscountcy, a knighthood, the lord lieutenancy of Surrey and the governorship of Windsor Castle. He remained bitter at his failure to become a prominent figure in the Restoration court.27 For it was overwhelmingly to the court that the royalist agents looked for rewards and offices, and many of them were to be well represented in the various departments in the royal household. For example, of the ten grooms of the bedchamber in 1660, eight had been involved in conspiracy or had acted as messengers and envoys: O’Neill, Elliot, Blague, Progers, Titus, Legge, Phelips and Seymour. Shortly after the Restoration, John Ashburnham, a groom of the bedchamber to Charles I, was added to their number.28 Lists of the royal household reveal many familiar names: Sir William Fleming, Sir John Poley, Richard Hopton, Jonathan Trelawney and Colonels Whitley and Edward Grey as gentlemen of the Privy Chamber; Dr Fraiser as a physician and Richard Pile as a surgeon; James Halsall as a carver, along with John Cooper, on one list, and as a cupbearer, along with Charles Lyttelton, on another. Sir Frederick Cornwallis, who belonged to an influential family with strong court connections, received a peerage and was appointed treasurer to the royal household, but did not enjoy these honours for long, as he died in 1661. One of his clerks was Harry Firebrace, who after the Restoration left the service of Denbigh and petitioned successfully for a position in the royal household. The Knot’s secretary, William Rumbold, became clerk and eventually comptroller of the Great Wardrobe, and Thomas Ross became a groom of the Privy Chamber and, in recognition of his scholarship, keeper of the royal library. Nicholas Armorer, who was knighted in 1662, was confirmed as an equerry of the Stables.29
Outside the court one-time royalist agents came to occupy a wide range of church and state offices in the Restoration regime. The clerical agents did very well. Barwick, whose long career as intelligencer and organiser of the distribution of royalist newsletters in London, although interrupted by periods of imprisonment, lasted from the early days of the Civil War until the Restoration, was first appointed Dean of Durham and then Dean of St Paul’s, but died of consumption in October 1664. Richard Allestree retu
rned to the university he had left as a young man to join the king’s army, and was appointed to a number of academic posts, becoming Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford as well as one of Charles II’s chaplains, where he acquired a reputation for frank outspokenness in his sermons to the court. Captain Peter Mews, an old soldier who fought at Naseby and had once carried messages between the exiled court and rebellious clansmen in the Highlands, seems only to have been ordained after the Restoration, but then enjoyed a rapid series of academic and clerical preferments, and somewhat surprisingly, ended his days as Bishop of Winchester.30
For most royalist agents the armed forces and the administration offered more opportunities for employment than the church. For example, Sir William Compton was appointed Master of the Ordnance, with Legge as his lieutenant-general. Legge, who of course enjoyed the patronage of his old friend Prince Rupert, steadily accumulated a number of offices and an impressive estate, including lands in Ireland. When he died in 1670 it was said that Rupert and five dukes attended his funeral.31 Other appointments illustrate the continuing post-Restoration connection between patrons and clients. Ormond’s faithful officer Sir John Stephens was appointed Governor of Dublin Castle, while his friend Sir Nicholas Armorer, who divided his time between Ireland and his court duties in London, was made Lieutenant-Governor of Duncannan Fort, which guarded the sea approach to Waterford. Both Stephens and Armorer held commissions in the king’s Irish Guards regiment and were granted various lands, pensions and monopolies.32 Like Ormond, Grenville also looked after his clients. The Lieutenant-Governor of Plymouth, while Grenville was Governor, was Sir John Skelton, once an active agent in the royalist resistance movement in the West Country.33
By no means all ex-royalist agents were rewarded generously with places at court, commissions and offices, pensions and monopolies, fellowships and deaneries. A record of royal service was not the only criterion for the receipt of rewards. Royal favour, influential patrons, social status and luck were all important as well. Some agents did not live long enough to benefit from the new opportunities opening before them. That tough soldier Thomas Blague was appointed Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard and Governor of Yarmouth, but died before the year of Restoration was over. In March 1661 his widow Mary was granted a £500 annuity.34 Any hopes Tom Carnaby may have had for advancement from the restored monarchy were also cut short. In 1663 he held a lieutenancy in the force under Lord Frescheville that was sent to the north to suppress illegal conventicles. But in 1665 he was killed in a house in York by another ex-royalist officer, Richard Harland. Whether Carnaby’s death was the result of a duel or whether he was murdered, as his wife Elinor alleged, is unclear. The widow, who called herself Lady Carnaby, petitioned for a pension, claiming that she and her two daughters had been left destitute.35
Irrespective of its fatal consequences, Carnaby’s short-term lieutenancy was a modest reward for his services. Other agents also seem to have been largely overlooked. Tom and Gregory Paulden do not feature in the lists of appointments and grants that occupy so much of the state papers in the immediate aftermath of the Restoration; their petitions for modest rewards do not seem to have been accepted.36 The brothers suffered from their not having influential patrons willing to advance their interests. Langdale, believing himself neglected by the court, retired grumpily to his country seat in Yorkshire, where he died in 1661, while Buckingham was far too frivolous and self-centred to bother with such socially and politically insignificant persons as Gregory and Tom Paulden.
For those royalist agents and conspirators who had betrayed their trust, the Restoration threatened retribution not reward. But Charles II’s government was not vindictive, and there was no intensive campaign to round up and punish Thurloe’s army of informers, including royalist renegades. Willys, in many ways a genuinely tragic figure, was allowed to retire into obscurity on his country estate. After interrogation, the odious Corker was even permitted to return to his old parish of Bradford. If Thurloe’s papers had been available to the king’s ministers, he would surely have found himself in a cell in the Tower, and not back in the pulpit of his old church. But this tolerant attitude had its limits, which did not extend to include Colonel Bampfield. When Bampfield rashly returned to England, he was promptly arrested and ‘committed close prisoner’ to the Tower; his abject petition for clemency was endorsed by Nicholas: ‘not to be released’.37
So the treatment of royalist agents at the Restoration reflected that received by the mass of the adherents to king’s party. At one extreme, some were showered with rewards and favours, and at the other, some received nothing. If Grenville was the most generously rewarded of the king’s agents, Daniel O’Neill came close to him. Until his death in October 1664, pensions and monopolies, grants of land and properties, civil and military offices descended on him in a steady stream, although surprisingly, not a title.38 The king had no trouble in justifying the lavishness of these rewards for a royal servant, ‘who has merited our consideration by his loyalty to King Charles I and his service to us abroad’.39 His most significant newly acquired office was that of Postmaster-General, the right to farm the revenues of which he bought for an annual rent of £21,500. By a splendid irony, O’Neill assumed the responsibility once exercised by Thurloe for the mail services in the three kingdoms.40 As a royal favourite and a groom of the bedchamber, O’Neill was a prominent courtier with quarters in Whitehall. He was also MP for St Ives – one of the Cornish boroughs whose representation was controlled by Grenville – in the Cavalier Parliament, and was an absentee member for Down – its representation controlled by Ormond – in the Irish Parliament. In 1662 he married his old friend Catherine Stanhope/Heenvliet, once again a widow after her second husband’s death in March 1660, but also now Countess of Chesterfield in her own right. With his newly acquired wealth the couple built Belsize Park at Hampstead, at ‘vast expense’ according to Evelyn, while his wife also inherited the Stanhope family seat at Boughton Malherbe, Kent. To Pepys, he was ‘the great Oneale’, his use of the term linking him to his famous great-uncle, the second Earl of Tyrone, for when Pepys first met O’Neill in 1662 he was on his way to becoming one of the wealthiest men in London.41 It was twenty years since he had gone over the wall of the Tower by a rope made from sheets and towels and headed for the coast, a hunted fugitive accused of treason.
The career and character of Daniel O’Neill encapsulate both the weaknesses and the strengths of the role played by royalist agents during the civil wars and the Interregnum. The characteristics which he displayed so dramatically were also widespread among his fellow royalist agents. Optimism, a boundless and often unfounded confidence in each new design’s chances of success, accompanied by a refusal to be discouraged despite frequent reverses and disappointments; and opportunism, a willingness to accept aid from any quarter, irrespective of whether or not it would compromise traditional royalist principles and values: these characteristics were widespread among O’Neill and his fellow agents. Finally, there is O’Neill’s long history of involvement in plots and intrigues, from the army plots in 1641 to the negotiations with the leading ministers of the French and Spanish crowns in the Pyrenees in November 1659. For the comprehensive defeats of royalist armies in the three Stuart kingdoms explain the increasing dependence of royal ministers and advisers on conspiracy, on the role to be played by O’Neill and other plotters, envoys, couriers and intelligencers in preserving the king’s party and ensuring the survival of royalism when other means had all failed.
It is tempting to be dismissive of the cloak-and-dagger world of agents bearing false names and identities, smuggling themselves in disguise back and forwards across the Channel and from one safe house to another in the three kingdoms, with letters in cipher hidden in the linings of their clothes or their hats. But this was the secret world in which not only O’Neill and his fellow royalist agents, and not only the royal advisers and counsellors who employed them, but also the two Stuart kings whom they all served, lived and worked. Alt
hough Charles I had officially gone to bed at Holyrood one evening early in October 1641, this did not prevent him from having a private bedside conversation with Will Murray and Colonel Cochrane about their plans to get rid of the Marquess of Argyll.42 Nearly fourteen years later Charles II, calling himself Mr Jackson, was residing inconspicuously in the modest home of a Dutchman in the little port of Middleburg, waiting for the summons that never came to slip across the Channel to put himself at the head of an insurrection.43
The Clarendon, Nicholas and Ormond papers in the 1640s and 1650s are full of letters to and from conspirators, spies and intelligencers. When all other measures had failed, it was left to these agents to maintain a traditional allegiance to the monarchy, so the king’s advisers had to be well informed on their activities. As we have seen in this book, there are many examples of the closeness of the relationship between the king’s ministers and his agents. An intelligence report from Manning to Thurloe on 10 September 1654 reported the arrival at the court in Aachen of Nicholas Armorer, who had been in England for nearly a year. ‘I see the marquis of Ormond take him from court’, Manning reported, ‘to discourse privately with him.’44 In one of his familiar and gossipy letters to Hyde, in this case written from Fuentarrabia on 14 November 1659, O’Neill referred to the appointment to the royal household of ‘your friend Nic. Armorer’.45 Both the aristocratic grandee Ormond and Lord Chancellor Hyde had close personal relationships with the most trusted agents, whose ‘restless and invincible spirit’, in the melodramatic language of Edward Phillips, did so much to hinder the ‘Usurpers’ from ‘proceeding to a final Establishment of their Power’.46
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