King Charles II

by Fraser, Antonia

  The names of the commanders have a solid and appropriate ring. It was the men serving in the regiments who presented the problems. Thurloe’s spies were full of contempt for them. ‘Of all the armies in Europe there is none wherein so much debauchery is to be seen as in these few forces which the said King hath gotten together,’ wrote one of them, ‘being so exceedingly profane from the highest to the lowest.’ The Irish in particular were singled out as being ‘better versed in the art of begging than fighting’. They were fierce enough to acquire financial contributions from whomsoever they accosted, ‘whose fear makes him more liberal than his character’.33

  It was indeed the perennial lack of money which was responsible for these troubles. The men, underpaid if paid at all, were ill-equipped and thus ill-disciplined. Hyde referred to these new regiments as ‘naked soldiers’ – a sad spectacle.34 Such troops were hardly likely to provide patterns of martial behaviour. For the lamentable truth was that the fabulous Spanish gold had failed to materialize. In some ways, King Charles was even worse off than he had been before the move to the Low Countries: in Cologne he had lived off hope and the French pension. Now the latter source had, naturally, dried up. And as Charles found the Spanish ‘Don Devil’ as recalcitrant a banker as ever the French Cardinal had been, the fountain of hope began to drain away.

  For all the bright horizons extended by the Spanish treaty, 1657 proved to be a year in which the English King touched the depths of depression. He had told Jermyn in the preceding October, à propos Mazarin’s warmth towards Cromwell, ‘You will do well to put him in mind that I am not yet so low, but that I may return both the courtesies and the injuries I have received.’35 Yet as the months wore on, the King’s ability either to reward or punish merely declined. In the summer campaign of Spanish against French, Don Juan would not allow Charles to the front, but insisted on him remaining passively at Bruges. It was a hard fate for a former commander-in-chief of a Scottish army, whose courage had never been called in question. The King’s melancholia was once again the subject of comment. The fate of his younger brothers James and Harry, permitted to shine at the front, was enviable.

  Refuge was taken in absurd schemes, and still more absurd rumours. Oliver Cromwell, for example, was said to have tried to lure Charles over to England in a single ship, accompanied by his two brothers, with a view to shooting all three of them out of hand on arrival. A glimpse of things as they really were was provided when Buckingham decided to desert; returning to England, he married the heiress of Sir Thomas Fairfax. Although he ended up clapped into prison by the Protector for his pains, Buckingham had made it clear by his behaviour that he regarded the Royalist vessel as a sinking ship. In the autumn of 1657 Hyde summed up the mood of the Royalists at home as ‘heartbroken’: as a result, they looked for redress from ‘some extraordinary act of providence’ rather than from any endeavours of their own.36

  Nor, by the autumn, had the Spaniards shown any sign of mounting that extraordinary force against England, based on Flanders, the promise of which had been the mainspring of the projected treaty. Out of England herself, those radicals discontented with the Protectoral regime, the Levellers, explored the possibilities of Spanish help via their agent Sexby. But the Spaniards, by no means convinced that the moment was ripe for any invading force, continued to indulge in that gentle art of procrastination, whose subtleties they understood so well.

  In December it was the bright suggestion of Don Juan that some further light might be cast on the English situation if Ormonde reconnoitred it. If Ormonde was impressed by the state of readiness he found there, then it would still not be too late for a Spanish army to invade before the end of the winter season. So Ormonde set out at the turn of the year, dyeing his famous poll of fair hair black. Despite some nerve-racking experiences within London itself, which should have cautioned him concerning the strong grip of the Protectoral government, Ormonde returned a favourable report.

  It was the final proof of the Protectoral government’s confidence, of which Ormonde was unaware, that his escape was probably due to a decision by Cromwell to turn a blind eye.37 The arrest of Ormonde in England, it was thought, would be politically embarrassing, and unnecessary as long as he quit the country.

  Ormonde suggested that the King could land near Yarmouth with safety – a view for which there was no real justification. But Ormonde found himself coping with the renewed demands of the Action Party in England for the presence of their sovereign, to which once again they attributed miraculous powers of rallying otherwise reluctant insurgents. In the event, the petty risings of 1658 were easily, almost effortlessly, put down by the Protectoral government. That was not really so surprising in view of the fact that most of the Royalist organizations, including the Sealed Knot, were by now permeated with government spies. The Protectorate Navy was also now blockading the Spanish Netherlands, which ruled out any question of the despatch of the reluctant Spanish Armada.

  King Charles now moved to Antwerp, a more convenient jumping-off ground for a projected invasion than Bruges-la-Morte. Here he gave in at last to the incessant clamour for honours with which the exiles were wont to greet his ears, as though peerages and decorations would at least stuff their starving mouths with glory. There is a particular despair shown in the decision to give the Garter, the sacred Garter, to a French Count not even of royal blood. Charles had already pawned his beloved George to pay for Ormonde’s expedition.

  At a ball given by the Countess of Newcastle, the intellectual wife of his former governor, a speech of the ‘highest hyperbole’ was made to the King by a Major Mohun, dressed in black velvet for the occasion and wearing a garland of bays. Major Mohun followed this success with another speech ‘by way of prophecy of his Majesty’s establishment’ in England.38 If there were any present who paid serious attention to the prophecy, by the spring of 1658 King Charles II was hardly likely to be amongst them.

  The summer saw the climax of the seemingly endless war between Spain and France. The Spanish were defeated by the French and the English combined, at the mighty Battle of the Dunes; as a result, Dunkirk was given over to the England of the Protectorate. It was true that the Stuart brothers behaved valiantly throughout the campaign. James continued to add to his reputation as a soldier, and even Charles was allowed to lead one charge at Mardyke, which he did with his usual éclat. The arrival of an English Protectoral force in Flanders in support of France did at least provide some motive for Don Juan to employ the English King as a kind of counter-attraction. Yet the long war between Spain and France, from which Charles had tried so hard to extract some advantage, was drawing to its close. It was not a dénouement which favoured the Stuarts. If anything, the course of the war had assisted revolutionary England rather than the exiled Royalists. It ended altogether the following year.

  The English King could think of no further expedient, apart from a personal appeal to the Spanish King. He was told that his presence in Spain would not be welcome.

  Disconsolately, Charles set off on a hunting and hawking expedition from Antwerp. Even that seemed to suffer from a kind of doom. He found very few partridges and too much standing corn. He was actually at Hoogstraeten, on the borders of the Netherlands, and playing tennis – rapidly becoming his favourite game – when, on 10 September 1658, Sir Stephen Fox came and told him a remarkable piece of news. A week earlier, in the words of one of Hyde’s correspondents, ‘it had pleased God out of His infinite goodness to do that which He would not allow any man the honour of doing’.39

  Oliver Cromwell had died of natural causes.

  1 But written for another Charles Stuart who led his followers into exile, King Charles II’s great-nephew, Bonnie Prince Charlie.

  2 To prove that Charles married Lucy secretly, the point is sometimes made that Mary of Orange referred to her in letters as his ‘wife’. But Mary also referred to Lucy’s other admirers as ‘husbands’, e.g. ‘her husband here’, ‘she thinks of another husband’. The allusions are clearly joc
ular. We should probably say ‘sweetheart’ today.28

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  At the Waterside

  ‘The King of Scots hath an army at the waterside, drawn down towards the waterside, ready to be shipped for England….’

  Cromwell on Charles II, 1658

  There was a short burst of wild but foolish rejoicing when the news of Cromwell’s death on 3 September 1658 reached the Netherlands. Some people who should have known better danced in the streets. For one wonderful moment it did seem as though that ‘extraordinary act of providence’ referred to by Hyde had actually arrived to save them all. In France Cardinal Mazarin forgot himself sufficiently to refer to Cromwell as ‘the dead monster’; he also hinted to Queen Henrietta Maria that the Anglo-French treaty might be running out.

  This warmth proved ephemeral. An express letter from Bristol to Hyde, breaking the news, arrived marked ‘cito, cito, cito’: but there was in fact no hurry.1 About the most significant effect of the Protector’s sudden death – he died after a short period of illness, and the Royalists in Europe were taken unawares – was to forward the suit of King Charles to his ‘best friend’ Princess Henrietta Catharine. For a moment the Dowager Princess of Orange, like Cardinal Mazarin, seemed in danger of losing her head. She fondly imagined that from a penniless émigré her daughter’s admirer had been transformed into a powerful monarch just about to embark for his kingdom.

  King Charles himself did not let the opportunity slip. He proposed immediately. Henrietta Catharine became ill with emotion. The news of the betrothal, as it was tacitly allowed to be, had the side-effect of infuriating Mary Princes of Orange. She was still smarting under Charles’ denunciation of her romance with the young Harry Jermyn. Besides, it would have meant Mary yielding precedence to her sister-in-law as Queen of England, and the subject of precedence, as we have seen, always aroused a great deal of proprietorial anguish in Mary’s breast.fn1

  As it turned out, Mary had little need to worry. By November the Dowager Princess, in common with the rest of Europe (and Cardinal Mazarin), had realized her mistake: King Charles found coolness where once there had been ardour. Early next year, a ‘new gallant’ for Henrietta Catharine made his appearance: John George of Anhalt-Dessau. She subsequently married him, evidently finding no unconquerable aversion to this particular person. Towards her own behaviour, the King was philosophical as well as generous. He told Taaffe that his fondness for her inspired in him a real wish for her true happiness. He had convinced himself that Henrietta Catharine loved her prince, and would not interfere. Towards her mother he showed less tolerance, referring to her privately as ‘an old strumpet’ and suggesting in even cruder terms that the Dowager Princess had resented his lack of attentions to herself.2

  The news of the Protector’s death did not merely fail to crown Charles’ efforts as a romantic lover, it also ushered in an even more extraordinary phase in a life already full of paradox. Nineteen months were to pass between the death of Oliver and the restoration of Charles. To those abroad, including the King, who had no means of knowing in advance at what hour the final curtain was destined to be rung down on revolutionary England, if at all, the last act seemed interminable.

  The first figure to occupy the stage vacated by Oliver was his son Richard Cromwell. Theoretically chosen by his father’s dying voice, Richard was immediately confirmed in his new position by the Council of State; Protector Richard was thus easily and uncontroversially substituted for Protector Oliver. Like the sons of Charlemagne, Richard Cromwell was a fainéant, a weak plant who had grown up thinly in the shadow of the strong stem of his father. He had taken refuge from the challenge of his father’s personality early on in a kind of gentle wastrel’s incompetence. Finance was never Richard’s strong point: when the time came for him to step down from his Protectoral eminence, one of his chief reasons for not wishing to leave the precincts of the Palace of Whitehall was because they conferred immunity from arrest for debt.

  But he was not a bad man, and therefore not a bad figurehead for the English state as it now stood. There were a number of dramas to be played out before any true desire for the return of the Stuarts could be anticipated. Shortly after the elder Protector’s death, Nicholas wrote to King Charles that he was pleased to hear ‘the rebels endeavour to set up Cromwell’s son rather than a republic’.3 That was a wise observation. The return of a republic would indeed have been a far more sinister development.

  Yet at the time a pervasive hopelessness spread like a wide, calm surface of water over the shifting sands of the King’s affairs. The death of Cromwell had broken this surface with a sudden sharp splash. Now even the ripples caused by it appeared to have died away. The real trouble was the strange tranquillity which settled over England, as Hyde put it: ‘the same or a greater calm in the kingdom than had been before’.4 This serenity was attested on all sides, both Royalist and Cromwellian.

  Sir George Downing, the Ambassador at The Hague, thought that the death had come just too soon for the various foreign conspirators, perhaps two months too soon. But Thurloe, writing in England, used the same language as Hyde: ‘There is not a dog that wags his tongue, so great a calm are we in.’5 It was this public lethargy which was disastrous for the King’s prospects in Europe. Now, if ever, was the psychological moment for Charles to prove to Spain that there existed a vast body of popular support to welcome him in England, should he reach its shores. But he could not point to any manifestations of unrest.

  So Spain did not move. In one of his speeches to the Parliament of 1658, Cromwell had referred to a great army and navy of a foreign power, threatening them on behalf of the ‘King of Scots … drawn down towards the waterside, ready to be shipped for England’. But there the Spanish fleet in Flanders remained. There were vague discussions of help from minor powers, like the Elector of Brandenburg and the Duke of Saxe-Lauenberg; perhaps Dunkirk would declare for the King, and perhaps Marshal Turenne would head a force for the invasion of England. But in general, French, Spanish and German princes were not inclined to contemplate any form of Stuart crusade until their peace was established; the Treaty of the Pyrenees between France and Spain was not signed until May 1659. The gloom of the situation may be judged by the fact that Charles was even proposed for Lambert’s daughter – the Cromwell ‘princesses’ were by now both married.6

  The next stirring came, as before, from within England herself. But it was not an ‘extraordinary act of providence’, as the death of Cromwell had been – merely an inevitable development of the fainéant Protectorate set up under Richard. By January 1659 a body of Army officers, including Lambert and Oliver Cromwell’s son-in-law, Fleetwood, and his brother-in-law, Desborough, had come to feel in themselves rather than in Richard the source of the true power in England. Those opposed to them caused a Parliament to be summoned, sometimes known as Richard’s Parliament. In this assembly, republicans, Presbyterians, and secret Royalists jostled with each other: from the other side of the water the King had at least managed to encourage some secret Royalists to put themselves up for election.

  At the same time no one, certainly not King Charles nor the Royalist conspirators within England, dreamed that the time for military invasion had passed. In March of the same year John Mordaunt was given permission to form a new action group, to the annoyance of the Sealed Knot. Once again the King’s presence in England, that magic talisman to which such powers were attributed, was being demanded. With quarrels between the rival conspirators, indecision from Charles, foreign missions, English intrigues, and a good deal of governmental counter-intelligence, it seemed that the whole dreary cycle was taking place all over again. And with the same lack of success.

  The Protectoral Parliament was dissolved on 22 April. Protector Richard was transformed into Tumbledown Dick and slipped away to silence and exile in his turn. A Council of State became the new titular head of the government. A slightly desperate expedient, the return of the Rump Parliament – elected, in its original form, an unbel
ievable nineteen years previously – was employed. But desperation did not imply in any sense a return to monarchy. It is notable that at this critical juncture nobody suggested for a moment recourse to Charles Stuart, down by the waterside across the English channel. Yet exactly twelve months later he would be gladly, even ecstatically, summoned. So the dramatic story of the Restoration continued to unfold without forfeiting its surprise and tension.

  The vital element in this summer’s royal plans was deemed to be the army of King Charles, not the reappearance of the Rump. He now had as many as 2,500 men with him in the Low Countries, the effect of the new military organization following the Spanish treaty. Mordaunt paid the King a flying visit at Brussels in June. Unfortunately, it was clear that there was considerable opposition to Mordaunt within the Royalist ranks. Brodrick, who ran the so-called New Cavalier party, disliked Mordaunt; Mordaunt in return described Brodrick, no doubt accurately, as ‘sadly given to drink’. Nevertheless, Mordaunt did succeed in his mission: he persuaded the King that things were sufficiently advanced in England. As a result, Charles assured Mordaunt on 24 June: ‘I do therefore resolve that myself or one of my brothers, or both of us will (with God’s blessing) be with you as soon as you shall desire.’ He would sail on 11 July.7