At the centre of Whitehall was ‘His Highness the Lord Protector’ himself. Cromwell was fifty-nine this year and his authority appeared incontestable. He had vigorously put down and punished the latest royalist conspiracies; he had won Dunkirk and Jamaica for England and defeated Spain decisively. In Europe he was acknowledged and respected as a great leader, and at home his government was strong and stable; but many problems remained, one being the disaffection of former colleagues who held to the Good Old Cause of true republicanism. Another was finance: every official at the Exchequer knew that the army and the navy were clamouring for money, and that the soldiers and sailors went unpaid month after month, sometimes to the point of mutinous outbreaks. Reforming the financial system had to be Cromwell’s next task. But even as the Pepys family was settling into Axe Yard, Cromwell was moving away from both his problems and his triumphs. The illness and death of his favourite daughter caused him a profound, distracting grief. He was with her at Hampton Court when she died in early August, and four days later had her buried in Westminster Abbey. He returned to Whitehall, and, through his shock and sorrow, became aware that he himself was unwell. On 26 August he dined with his old friend Bulstrode Whitelocke and admitted as much. And now it was suddenly obvious to everyone who saw him. The alarming news spread, and on Sunday, 29 August, prayers for the lord protector were said in the churches. On the Monday a hurricane blew over England. It was a common belief that a high wind heralded the death of a great person, one shared by Pepys, who alluded to it more than once in his Diary. Now it was seen as a portent of the end of an era, and so Andrew Marvell described the winds:
Out of the binder’s hand the sheaves they tore,
And thrashed the harvest in the airy floor;
Or of huge trees, whose growth with his did rise,
The deep foundations opened to the skies…
And as through air his wasting spirits flowed,
The universe laboured beneath their load.7
But it also marked the beginning of a new era, for, as the hurricane blew, a Lincolnshire schoolboy called Isaac Newton amused himself computing its force by noting the difference in the distances he could jump, first with, and then against, the wind.8
On 2 September a council meeting was called. Edward Montagu had returned to London from his ship to be there. Cromwell was too ill to attend; in any case he had understood that he was not going to recover. When his attendant encouraged him to drink a cordial to help him sleep, he replied, ‘It is not my design to drink or to sleep, but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.’ In the afternoon of the next day he died. Death had come upon him with terrible speed, reaching him on the anniversary of two of his greatest battles, Dunbar and Worcester, at which he had crushed Charles Stuart. The country was stunned, much as it had been in January 1649 at the death of Charles I. Thurloe wrote to Downing in the Hague that Cromwell ‘died more lamented than any man hath done in this or the generations past. His name is and will be precious to all generations, and is now even to those who murmured at him in his life tyme.’9 Downing put his household in Holland into mourning and prepared to travel to London for the funeral.
Edward Montagu immediately signed the proclamation supporting the appointment of Richard Cromwell to succeed his father, while the republican army leaders prepared to oppose him. Montagu also drew up his own declaration of loyalty to Richard – the two men were much of an age – and expressed his confidence that he would ‘carry on the glorious work of liberty and reformation’ begun by his father; and he pledged loyalty to government by a single person, two houses of parliament and a commonwealth, repudiating republicans and royalists alike. He led a deputation of naval officers to present this to the new protector, who received them with obvious pleasure and offered to pay special attention to naval affairs.10 As a gesture of personal friendship, Richard Cromwell also appointed Montagu colonel of a regiment of horse. Pepys felt the benefit, because the new colonel made him regimental muster-master and secretary, for which he was handsomely paid at £50 a quarter without, in his own words, ‘taking any care in the world for’.11 It was his first direct experience of how government funds were distributed through patronage. A man who received one well-paid sinecure could simply hand out further sinecures to chosen underlings. The principle was stored away in Pepys’s mental filing system for future use.
Montagu kept his servant and secretary hard at work during the next months as the new protector’s supporters faced his republican opponents across the council table. In October he went to sea with a squadron from Portsmouth to deal with privateers off Dunkirk, but he was back in November for Council of State and Treasury business. The preparations for Cromwell’s state funeral were under way. It was staged like that of a king and directly modelled on James I’s. Ironically, there was a suggestion that royalists should be ordered out of London as a security measure, but Montagu opposed this, saying there was no fear of disturbance.12 Cost was not spared, and the preparations took so long that the ceremony had to be postponed from 9 November until the 23rd, twelve weeks after the death. Cromwell’s body had been buried privately much earlier, but now six horses drew his effigy – crowned, with a sceptre and clothed in royal robes – from Somerset House, where it had lain in state, accompanied by a procession of mourners; the most important of these had been summoned to be there by eight in the morning, ticket in hand. The start was delayed because of disputes about precedence among the foreign ambassadors.
All were on foot, and they proceeded very slowly along the Strand and past Charing Cross, turning south into King Street, and through Whitehall and on to the Abbey. Drummers and trumpeters, banners and horses decorated with plumes and escutcheons, went with them. Pickering held up the train of Lord Fleetwood, Cromwell’s son-in-law and chief mourner. Republicans and their enemies walked together. Montagu himself was among Cromwell’s peers, his baron’s train carried behind him, and Downing, who must have been staying in Axe Yard, was in the procession as teller of the Exchequer. He was a friend of Milton, who was there leaning on the arm of Hartlib, and two younger poets, Marvell and Dryden, were also in the line, with all the time in the world to meditate their ceremonial verses on the death.13 Bulstrode Whitelocke was one of the twelve pallbearers. A group of Cromwell’s favourite musicians was there. Mr Secretary Thurloe was among the high officials, and General Monck had come from Scotland. All along the way railings had been put up and infantry in new red coats trimmed with black stood two deep against them. Pepys’s ‘father Bowyer’ was there as usher of the Exchequer, and his old tutor Samuel Morland as clerk of the Signet, and Henry Scobell, clerk to the House of Lords and uncle of Pepys’s friend Dick; and Mr Creed, secretary to the general-at-sea, Montagu, probably Richard Creed, whose younger brother John was to become Pepys’s close associate and rival. Among all these, where was Pepys? It is inconceivable that he was not keeping a keen eye on the show, and even possible he was admitted to the procession as one of Montagu’s servants, since numbers of such lowly figures were allowed to take their places among the great ones.
Most of those present must have known that Cromwell’s body had already been buried, and one hostile witness noted that ‘there was none that Cried’, and that the soldiers were drinking and taking tobacco in the streets as the procession passed: this was John Evelyn, but even he observed that there were ‘innumerable mourners’.14 They processed for most of the short winter day, and when they reached the abbey the effigy was carried by ten gentlemen to the east end and installed in a magnificent structure; ticket holders were admitted, but there was no further ceremony, and the mourners dispersed, by now certainly eager for something to eat.15
Richard Cromwell was a reluctant successor, with none of the instincts of a leader or even a politician. As one harsh chronicler put it, ‘The old Vulture died, and out of his ashes rose a Titmouse.’16 His council was split from the start between hostile republicans, mostly army officers, and supporters, among them Montagu. Montagu was at Hinchingb
rooke for Christmas and to greet another newborn son, his fifth: rather strikingly for a declared anti-royalist, he named the boy Charles. While he was at home there were elections, and although as a peer he was not concerned in them directly, he helped Thurloe, another of the new protector’s supporters, to win Huntingdon. The absence of any letters from Pepys in London to Hinchingbrooke this winter – there are letters for 1657 and 1659 – suggests that Montagu may have summoned him to come down and lend a hand with the election, allowing him to pay his respects to his Lady and to visit his uncle Robert at Brampton at the same time. It is obvious from the way he mentions the Huntingdon gentry in the early part of his Diary that he was used to seeing them, recognized them in church and knew all their names. It is also clear that a relationship of trust and friendship was well established between Pepys and Jemima Montagu, who showed him ‘extraordinary love and kindness’ when she came to London in 1660.17
Montagu took up his duties as general-at-sea again and sailed for the Baltic in March 1659 to take command of the fleet supporting the Swedes against the Danes in their long-running quarrel. On leaving he told Richard Cromwell he would rather see him in his grave than that he should give way to the republican plots being hatched against him.18 Montagu anchored off Elsinore in April. He was there to ensure that the Baltic should be kept open to English trade, something the Dutch alliance with the Danes threatened. From the Hague, Downing was writing advice on naval matters to Thurloe, recommending that the English should adopt the convoy system for all their trade. But naval policy was the last thing anyone in London was concentrating on, as the army leaders applied every sort of pressure to make Richard Cromwell submit to their will. In April a despondent Whitelocke left London; in May he was accused of corresponding with Charles Stuart and had to defend himself stoutly. Evelyn noted ‘Anarchy & confusion’ in his diary; but Evelyn also managed to attend a performance of an opera by William D’Avenant at the Cockpit in Drury Lane in May, finding it ‘prodigious, that in a time of such a publique Consternation, such a Vanity should be kept up or permitted; I being ingag’d with company, could not decently resist the going to see it, though my heart smote me for it’.19 However Evelyn’s heart smote him, the persistence of art, music and poetry was one of the few encouraging aspects of the times; Milton, still officially a servant of the state, had begun to write Paradise Lost.
Pepys, music lover as he was, is unlikely to have been at D’Avenant’s opera for the good reason that he too was preparing to go to sea. His activities emerge from obscurity and guesswork in May, when Montagu summoned him to the Baltic as a messenger who could be trusted to carry private papers. Pepys himself said he had no idea what he was taking to his master, though it has been conjectured that he took letters from both Richard Cromwell and the republican army leader Charles Fleetwood, each asking for the support of the fleet.20 But it was too late for Richard, and on 24 May he signed a paper promising to retire. By now Pepys was well on his way north aboard a ketch, the Hind. He made friends with Captain Richard Country –’my little Captain that I loved’, he called him later – and on the 26th he handed his packet of letters to Montagu, who gave no indication at all of what they contained or what his response to them might be.21 He simply had Pepys courteously entertained aboard the Naseby by his lieutenant, David Lambert, then sent him straight back to London.22
Pepys was home in Axe Yard on 8 June 1659, in time for Richard Cromwell’s formal abdication. Behind the scenes furious plotting was under way. Thurloe had been sacked and had written to Downing to ask him if he wished to continue as English envoy at the Hague under the new government. Downing chose to remain at the Hague, where he was considering his position carefully. Samuel Morland, who had been intercepting letters for Thurloe, provided Charles Stuart with a written account of Montagu’s character, describing him as a man of sweet and candid disposition, but extremely cautious, and intimate with very few. ‘As for his affection,’ he went on, ‘he was wholly devoted to old Noll, his country man, and for his sake a great lover of all his family, but a perfect hater of the men that now rule, as he has often told me privately: and I have it from very good hands, that he is at this time very deeply discontented at the present change; insomuch that I verily believe if he ever be gained it is in this conjuncture.’ But, Morland warned the king, Montagu had estates, income, wife and many children to consider.23 Armed with this information, Charles sent his own messengers to the Baltic in July, with a letter offering Montagu great rewards – an earldom, a fortune, whatever he desired – in exchange for his, and the fleet’s, support. Montagu replied that the time was not yet ripe. His prudence was well judged, not least because the arrival of the royal envoys coincided with that of Algernon Sidney, a republican MP and councillor sent out to supervise and spy on Montagu by the new republican government in London.
Montagu saw Sidney as a ‘mortal enemy’, and indeed Sidney charged him with negotiating secretly with Charles, an act of treachery deserving of death.24 Montagu later told Pepys that he had made up his mind to support Charles that August, but told nobody.25 Discreet as he was, in London the council stripped him of his peerage, his colonelcy and his place on the council, announced they were reclaiming his Whitehall lodgings and seized many of his private papers. Although Pepys knew nothing, he was in a difficult situation: he could only keep his head down. His discretion at this time was enough to convince Montagu that he could be relied on absolutely and marked him out for serious promotion once the moment came – but Pepys himselfhad no idea of this. Montagu determined to take the fleet home, informing Sidney that lack of provisions and sickness among the men made it necessary. His captains shared his view, and most of them sailed with him. When he reached the Suffolk coast he was met by the news that a royalist rising in Cheshire had been put down, and two icy and inquisitorial Admiralty commissioners were waiting to come aboard and insist he went straight to London. In London he was questioned further. An informant alleged he was engaged to bring Charles Stuart over. No evidence was found, but the command of the navy effectively passed to its republican vice-admiral, John Lawson. Richard Cromwell wrote to commiserate and suggest that ‘out of town’ was ‘the most proper place for persons that are out of employment’. Montagu agreed, and, since there were no grounds for keeping him in London, he was allowed to go home to Hinchingbrooke.26
And there he remained during the last months of 1659, while Pepys kept him informed of what was happening in London. He could not have had a better pair of eyes and ears at his service than this dedicated rover of the streets with a keen interest in events in Whitehall. After the republican major-general John Lambert surrounded Westminster Hall with his soldiers on 13 October and excluded the speaker and most of the MPs, Pepys was able to report the despairing departure from London of the parliamentary leader Arthur Haslerig and Admiralty commissioner Herbert Morley, and to list the members of the new Committee of Safety – yet another government for a nation bewildered and exhausted by conflict and change. He kept to a discreetly non-committal tone himself, but he also parcelled up other people’s comments for Montagu: ‘I have adventured to send your Lordshipp the enclosed pamphlets for your diversion.’27 He was finding his own métier as a writer, and in December produced a sequence of letters on the crisis that are classics of reporting.
In the first he sets the scene: the City apprentices are busy with a petition for the removal of the army from their streets, so that ‘a rising was expected last night, and many indeed have been the affronts offered from the apprentices to the Red-coats of late. Late last night was likewise a proclamation made up and down the town, to prohibit the contriving or Subscribing any such petitions or papers for the future.’ This was on 3 December. On the 5th there was a ‘fray’ in which the apprentices went forward with their petition, the council saw this as the start of an insurrection, and many more soldiers, foot and horse, were sent into the City. The shops were shut, the people hooted at the soldiers,
boys flung stones, tiles, turnip
s &c… some they disarmed and kicked, others abused the horses with stones and rubbish they flung at them… in some places the apprentices would get a football (it being a hard frost) and drive it among the soldiers on purpose, and they either darst not (or prudently would not) interrupt them; in fine, many soldiers were hurt with stones, and one I see was very near having his brains knocked out with a brickbat flung from the top of an house at him. On the other side, the soldiers proclaimed the proclamation against any subscriptions, which the boys shouted at in contempt, which some could not bear but let fly their muskets and killed in several places (whereof I see one in Cornhill shot through the head) 6 or 7. [sic] and several wounded.28
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self Page 12