The first task of the Parliamentary officers was to sort the Scots from the English. The Englishmen who had fought for Charles were kept back for special treatment, for, as Derby had discovered, they were viewed not simply as the enemy, but as contemptible homegrown traitors. The Scots were merely defeated foreign invaders, to be treated cruelly, but not mercilessly. Nineteen of the senior Scottish officers were escorted to Windsor Castle, where they were kept under separate constant watch. The journey south was tougher for the men they had led.
The Council of State asked Cromwell that those Scottish prisoners destined for London should be marched in a way that was ‘not too speedy, so that we may be the better prepared to dispose of them’. Various options were looked at to provide a sufficiently large prison compound, including the tiltyard at Greenwich and the East India Company’s shipbuilding yard at Blackwall. The latter had the advantage of being surrounded by a twelve-foot-high wall.
The regicide Colonel Barkstead was instructed to see if the artillery ground in Tothill Fields, where the militia had recently paraded before the battle of Worcester, might be suitable for holding 4,000 of the Scottish prisoners. This was marshy land between Millbank and Pimlico, historically associated with necromancy – communication with the dead. It was suitably bleak, and large, and was approved for the task.
En route, the ‘Scots, Highlanders, or Redshanks’, as Parliament referred to them, were made to sleep on Hampstead Heath, before being led through Highgate, Islington and Kingsland (now Dalston, but then a wooded area with few inhabitants, where the young Samuel Pepys ‘used to shoot a bow and arrow’). On their way to London they had relied on people’s kindness for food. The oatmeal bags they carried with them on campaign, that held a week’s worth of oats (used for making porridge, oatcakes, and a rough but calorific raw oat paste), were long empty. Now they ate tough biscuit given to them by strangers as an act of charity.
On the Saturday the Scottish prisoners were escorted through the City of London, passing through Aldgate, then along Cheapside, Fleet Street and the Strand. After that, as a Royalist called James Heath noted in his Chronicle of the Late Intestine War, they were ‘driven like a herd of swine through Westminster to Tothill Fields’. It was reminiscent of a scene from a triumph of Ancient Rome, the barbarians paraded before the gawping, jeering citizens of a conquering republic.
Another eyewitness to this humiliation of the defeated revealed the contempt for the Scots that was prevalent in England at the time: ‘For the most part they were sturdy surly knaves,’ he told his readers. ‘Keep them under, and they may serve for nasty, stinking, vassals. I leave to every indifferent person that hath beheld them to judge what a condition they had been in if such a generation as this had prevailed and become their masters, or cut their throats, of which they made themselves so sure many of them brought their wives and bairns in with them. Yet were so many of our Scotified Citizens so pitiful unto them, that as they passed through the City they made them (though prisoners at mercy) masters of more money and good white bread than some of them ever see in their lives.’14
This contingent of Scots prisoners and their dependants were turned out into Tothill Fields. Food was bought for them in bulk. It was enough to keep them from starvation, but not to fill their bellies. The very basic bread and cheese of this prison diet was costing the Commonwealth more than £56 per day, and there were concerns at how such a great expense could be maintained for long. A shed was built for the sick and wounded to shelter in, with the rest forced to live in the open autumn air like farm animals. Straw was provided at the end of September ‘for their lodgings’. It was all relentlessly grim and unhealthy – an estimated 1,200 of the Scots who were imprisoned at Tothill were also buried there.
It was a similar tale of extreme hardship in the north. Sir Arthur Hazlerigg had been instructed by Parliament to take the 2,300 prisoners in his custody from Durham to Chester and Liverpool, so they could be transported as forced labourers to Ireland. He felt compelled to report to London how terrible conditions had been among the captured: ‘When they came to Morpeth, the prisoners being put into a large walled garden, they ate up raw cabbages, leaves, and roots … which cabbage, as I conceive, they having fasted, as they themselves said, near eight days, poisoned their bodies; for, as they were coming from thence to Newcastle, some died by the wayside; and when they came to Newcastle, I put them into the greatest church in the town: and the next morning, when I sent them to Durham, about seven score were sick, and not able to march, and three died that night, and some fell down in their march from Newcastle to Durham, and died.’
Hazlerigg was at pains to say that the Scots ‘wanted not for anything that was fit for prisoners’, and boasted that ‘there was never the like care taken for any such number of prisoners that ever were in England’. He had broths made for them from oatmeal, beef and cabbage, and provided enough coal to make a hundred fires, but they could not shake off the flux – dysentery. Hazlerigg believed the Scots were themselves responsible for their susceptibility to this illness, for ‘they were so unruly, sluttish, and nasty, that it is not to be believed; they acted rather like beasts than men; so that the marshal was allowed 40 men to cleanse and sweep them every day’.
He also despaired at the Scots’ treatment of their fellow prisoners, ‘for they were exceeding cruel one towards another. If a man was perceived to have any money, it was two to one but he was killed before morning, and robbed; and if he had any good clothes, he that wanted, if he was able, would strangle him, and put on his clothes.’15 Hazlerigg reckoned he had suffered the loss of 1,600 Scottish prisoners through death, mainly because of sickness and wounds, but the rest to violence.
Meanwhile the effectiveness of Harrison’s operation was astonishing. The Diary, a Parliamentary newsbook, would record with satisfaction on 29 September: ‘We cannot hear of one man come into Scotland of all the army that was defeated at Worcester.’16 The result of this was that for some time many in Scotland refused to believe the news of a massive defeat put about by the English soldiers in their land. They wanted to hear from their own people what had happened, but Parliament’s strict guarding of the route north meant defeated eyewitnesses could not get home with the terrible news – not just of the battle, but also of what was happening to those Scots captured in its aftermath.
Meanwhile, the womenfolk of those who had marched south, not to reappear, were distraught at the vanishing of so many of their men: ‘Here is old (or rather new) howling among the ladies in Scotland,’ Parliament’s propagandists noted, ‘for their husbands, fathers, sons, friends, that are slain and taken in England and Scotland.’17
The future, for many of the taken Scots, involved years of indentured labour, during which they were treated little better than slaves. A thousand of them were sent to help drain the malaria-infested fens of East Anglia. Their task was to control the waterways so they could be used for transport, and also to prevent these fertile flatlands from being flooded each winter. This hard manual toil was deeply unpopular with the local inhabitants, whose livelihoods of fishing, wildfowling and reed-cutting were threatened by the improvements, and who rioted in protest. But the project was favoured by a commercial body called the Gentleman Adventurers, to whom it promised great wealth. Their work had been disrupted by the Civil Wars, but the end of the conflict, and the supply of cheap prison labour, meant that it could now resume. At the same time Parliament benefited, by farming out the policing and feeding of some of its multitude of captives to a third party. The Gentleman Adventurers had to pay a £10 forfeit for each escapee.
On 22 September, the Council of State agreed that Oliver Cromwell should oversee the transportation of all the Scottish prisoners beneath the rank of lieutenant, or cornet of horse, from Liverpool, Chester, Stafford, Shrewsbury and Worcester, to Bristol, to await transportation abroad. Prisoners were kept in poor conditions, and received meagre daily provisions. They died at the rate of thirty a day before the ships had even left harbour. One
imprisoned Scottish minister was to be sent with every 200 prisoners, at no charge, for spiritual counselling, and these preachers were to be ‘free from servitude’ when relocated.
Two thousand prisoners were sent in chains to do forced labour in the New World. The Reverend John Cotton wrote to Cromwell, explaining how it would be for these men: ‘They have not been sold for slaves, to perpetual servitude, but for six, or seven, or eight years.’ Those selling them for these stretches received around £30 per man, against transatlantic transport costs of about one-tenth of that sum. It was a lucrative trade in conquered human cargo.
The ship John and Sara would take 272 of these Scottish prisoners across the Atlantic to Massachusetts. There they were sold by Thomas Kemble of Charlestown, north of Boston, and worked mainly as unskilled labourers in Hammersmith, the ironworks on the Saugus River, which had started production of pig iron and grey iron in 1646. Others went to work in sawmills in New Hampshire and Maine. Many others were sent to toil in the West Indies and Ireland.
In the face of their terrible battlefield losses, and the garnering of so many prisoners, leading Scots back home were quick to make peace with the victors. On Wednesday, 1 October, reports were sent to London that many of the gentry and clergy of western Scotland had been to visit Lieutenant General George Monck, Parliament’s military commander in their country. They said they were eager to make amends with the government in England. The Weekly Intelligencer reported, in a bemused tone, how these men ‘allege, or at least pretend, that they have all along opposed the late proceedings of the King, and have protested against them’.18 The Scots said they recognised that this latest victory against them was God’s punishment for having allied their country with the Royalist ‘malignants’, and that they had no interest in ‘increasin[g] the indignation of the Almighty’. They threw themselves on the Commonwealth’s mercy, in total submission.
Despite the huge numbers of captives, the Commonwealth knew from the beginning that there were more to be brought in, if victory were to be taken to its ultimate point. On 8 September, five days after the battle, the Council of State urged its militia forces throughout England and Scotland to maintain their high state of watchfulness for fugitives: ‘Many stragglers from the rout and slaughter of the army may endeavour to hide themselves [in your counties, so] be very diligent to apprehend all such, and keep them in safe custody.’
A few days later, on 13 September, in order to encourage everyone to join the search for Royalists, the Council of State announced that all horses and weapons taken from each Royalist prisoner should be given to his captor. Nobody – whether regular soldier or local official – could deprive the brave citizen of his rightful prize.
On 16 September, further encouragement was sent out to the commanders of the militia in the north to watch all roads, so ‘that those who obscure themselves may be apprehended when they attempt to escape home’.19 On the same day, three commanders further south were reminded of the remaining enemy still on the run: ‘As some of them do for some time obscure themselves, hoping, after the enquiry for them is over, to pass into their own country, order a watchful eye to be still kept upon the ways and passages for their apprehension.’20
Two of those caught by this time were men who had been with the king at Whiteladies. Charles Giffard, who had readily agreed to the Earl of Derby’s suggestion that the king hide in his house at Boscobel, was captured and held in an inn at Bunbury, in Cheshire. He managed to escape.
Meanwhile the first Francis Yates, the small farmer from Brewood who had guided Charles through back roads to Whiteladies on the night of defeat, was caught and identified as having helped the king in his flight. The Parliamentarians repeatedly interrogated him, determined to find out where he had taken Charles, but he refused to talk. Realising that he would not give up the information, and eager to set an example to others who might be tempted to assist the king, Yates was hanged in Oxford.
Even as the vigorous search for fleeing Royalists continued across the land, there was a need to celebrate the victory that had scattered the Commonwealth’s enemies so dramatically and decisively. Before the battle, the very survival of the new republic had been in question. Worcester put paid to any such worries in a day. Victory on such a scale also established who was going to be its leading light.
At ten o’clock on the morning of Friday, 12 September the lord mayor of London, his aldermen, the sheriff and the recorder met at the Guildhall in their scarlet robes. They knew Cromwell was returning, and set off in their carriages to greet him. They met the conquering hero in Acton, where the recorder read out profuse praise and congratulations from the City of London before Cromwell continued towards the capital. He was cheered on his way by members of the Council of State, who had so recently questioned his trustworthiness as they quaked at the thought of royal retribution for their part in the death of Charles I.
By the time Cromwell’s carriage reached Hyde Park Corner, there were 300 coaches following in his wake. At Knightsbridge the Blue Regiment of the militia, drawn from eight wards of the City of London, saluted the Lord General. In Piccadilly, Colonel Barkstead’s redcoats stood to attention. Cannon thundered their gratitude from St James’s as Cromwell reached Charing Cross. Throughout his progress, volleys of musket-shot from the troops mixed with cheers from the London crowds. ‘As the General passed by,’ an admiring scribe wrote, ‘the people all along as he went put off their hats, and had reciprocal respects returned from him.’21
While the public acclamation of his military victory was relentless, Cromwell insisted that he was only the instrument of God, performing His will, and striking down His enemies. But Hugh Peter, the leading firebrand preacher of his time, who combined his role as Cromwell’s unofficial chaplain with command of a fighting regiment, confided to friends that victory at Worcester changed Cromwell forever. Before, he had been humble. But afterwards, Peter noted, Cromwell was more ‘elevated’. Although he remained God-fearing, Worcester gave Cromwell confidence that he had been marked out to do great things. Nineteen months after this, his final battlefield victory, he would enter Parliament with a troop of musketeers and forcibly expel its members. Eight months after that, he would accept the title he would keep for life: that of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.
14
Touching Distance
The King’s misfortune and the uncertainty of his personal safety renders me so confused in all my faculties that I am at this time especially most incapable of giving any advice.
Sir Edward Nicholas to the Marquess of Ormonde, October 1651
Everything seemed firmly in place for the king to manage his escape from England: Stephen Limbry’s services had been secured; his merchantman would leave Lyme Regis, and stop briefly off Charmouth, so Charles and Wilmot could climb aboard; then they would sail on to France. It was hard to see what could go wrong, provided the pair could remain at large in the meantime.
On Monday, 22 September, Charles set off from Trent House for Charmouth, posing as the servant to Juliana Coningsby, a cousin of Francis Wyndham. It was the same ruse that had worked when he had shared a saddle with Jane Lane. With them went Wyndham, Wilmot, Wilmot’s servant, and an employee of the Wyndhams called Harry Peters.
There was a fair that day in Lyme Regis, so Peters was sent ahead with five shillings to give to Margaret Wade, the landlady of Charmouth’s inn, the Queen’s Arms. Wyndham wanted to secure the two best rooms there before the place became filled with revellers.
Ellesdon planned to join up with the Royalist party as it headed for Charmouth, at Wilde, a tucked-away country retreat that belonged to his father, but was occupied by a tenant. To explain away the anticipated influx of the king and his party, Ellesdon told the tenant that he was expecting the imminent arrival of a group of friends travelling on the carriage from London.
Half an hour later, Charles and his companions arrived at Wilde. Ellesdon reassured Wilmot that he had been through every detail
of the plan with Limbry so carefully that there could be no snags. The crew had been told that Wilmot was a merchant by the name of Payne, who needed to get to St-Malo with his servant to sort out some business difficulties caused by a corrupt agent. Ellesdon would later claim that Charles was so pleased with what he heard that he gave him a gold coin, promising to give him more when he was in a position to reward him properly. In Ellesdon’s version of events, he then headed back to Lyme Regis to oversee final arrangements with Limbry and his ship.
Meanwhile the royal party headed for the inn at Charmouth. Charles and Wilmot stayed in the reserved rooms, expecting to be sailing for France in a matter of hours. While they looked forward to freedom, Wyndham and his servant went to the small creek on the shore, as planned, to wait for the boat from Limbry’s ship that would ferry the king and Wilmot aboard. But after several hours it had not appeared. It was a season of very extreme tides, and after the tide turned, Wyndham realised that the chance had passed. He returned to the inn with the deeply disappointing news.
Who was to blame for the plan’s failure? According to Ellesdon, it was Limbry. He claimed that Limbry had kept his wife in the dark about his dangerous commitment to smuggle two strangers aboard his ship. She only found out when she asked him why he was setting off with his sea chest unexpectedly. When he revealed his plan, she was both furious and frightened. In this version of events, Mrs Limbry had been at Lyme Regis’s fair that day, where ‘she had heard the proclamation read, wherein £1,000 was promised as a reward for the discovery of the king, and in which the danger of those also was represented that should conceal his Majesty or any of those that were engaged with him at Worcester, and apprehending that this gentlemen [sic] might be one of the party’.1 For this reason, Ellesdon concluded, Limbry’s wife forbade him from travelling that evening. Ellesdon claimed that he was even locked inside his own home by his wife and daughters, and that they threatened to go to Captain Macy, commander of an infantry unit in Lyme Regis, if he insisted on trying to see his mission through.
To Catch a King Page 19