The King's City

by Don Jordan

  Davenant had pulled it off. He had disguised theatre by calling it opera, and had incidentally begun the development of opera in England. There was another reason why Davenant was able to stage his theatrical events while others struggled to do so: he engineered them to ensure that they made some reference to Cromwellian government policies.

  Davenant introduced the visual framework that would hold theatre in its grasp for the next three hundred years – the proscenium arch, or ‘picture window’ stage. With his new device, he put on one of the most important productions in the history of the English stage: The Siege of Rhodes, based loosely on events of 1522, when the Spanish blockaded the city. This entertainment in September 1656 not only referred disparagingly to England’s arch-enemy Spain but marked the beginning of English opera, containing musical and recitative elements we would recognise today. A greater novelty was the appearance of the first Englishwoman on an English stage, a lady called Mrs Catherine Coleman.† John Webb, an architect who had learned his craft assisting Inigo Jones in the design of court masques that incorporated moveable scenery and other theatrical tours de force, designed the sets. Even the high-minded John Evelyn went to see The Siege of Rhodes, reporting that he had witnessed an opera after the Italian Way, in recitative music and scenes’.9

  Davenant followed up this success by moving production out of his house and into one of the city’s disused theatres for an opera about Sir Francis Drake. From there he planned the playhouse he was to build in Lisle’s tennis court. It was to be a blend of the traditional and the innovative, designed to give London’s public an entirely new theatrical experience. Davenant’s wish was to take the English tradition of rhetorical theatre and build on top of it a new drama based on spectacle. This would require new forms of writing and acting. It would also require the shocking introduction of women players, in the European manner. Having once been unofficial poet laureate to Charles I, now, in the spring of 1660, Davenant felt sure Charles II would show him similar favour.

  As he made his revolutionary plans, little did Davenant realise that a theatrical spectacular was being planned that would surpass any marvel he could produce. This was the trial and execution of the regicides, the men who had dared to execute the King’s father, Charles I.

  Immediately after Charles II’s return, and in compliance with his wishes, a new Parliament set about compiling lists of the men who had allegedly played a part in his father’s death. These were drawn up according to the clause in the King’s declaration of general amnesty made at Breda, which stipulated that those involved in sentencing his father to death were exempt from pardon. One list was compiled in the House of Commons while another, longer one emerged from the House of Lords. Many of those who drew up the lists had fought on the Parliamentary side in the Civil War, or had taken part in the administration of the Commonwealth or Protectorate. Now they prepared to send their former friends and colleagues to the scaffold.

  The combined Houses of Parliament identified fifty-six men they regarded as regicides. These were drawn largely from two groups: high-ranking officers in Cromwell’s army and members of the House of Commons. A few unfortunates who were particularly hated by the new Parliament were included out of spite. The firebrand Roundhead preacher Hugh Peter was one of these, his name added to the list although he had not sat in judgement on the King, Some escaped the list by paying large bribes. Many evaded retribution by simply declaring it had all been a terrible mistake and they had now seen the error of their ways. In a particularly celebrated case, Richard Ingoldsby successfully claimed that Oliver Cromwell had held his hand and forced him to sign the King’s death warrant. His signature on the document was notably florid.

  Revenge was in the air. Many royalists looked forward to a bloodbath of Commonwealth men who had ruled after the execution of Charles’s father. Wiser heads knew that political divisions had to be healed. Sheer numbers dictated that many of the most significant members of the previous administration would have to be pardoned, and perhaps – if the price were right – welcomed into the new’ administration. All sorts of former Commonwealth men were suddenly ardent royalists. With the change in government, men knew their fortunes could be made or ruined, dependent upon what they had done in the past – or more importantly how they were perceived now. Those who changed tack ranged from spies and diplomats like George Downing, or politicians and lawyers like Bulstrode Whitelock, to well-known poets like Andrew Marvell and John Dryden.

  For a small but important group, the King’s return signalled not an opportunity for a position at court, a monopoly of some sort, or a title, but a fight for life itself. Men who had run the country now had prices on their heads. Many fled to the continent, pursued by royalist spies, kidnap gangs and assassination squads. Their departure brought opportunities for others keen to pick over their abandoned estates and property.

  When the regicide Sir James Harrington fled to the continent, his wife had no option but to sell their home to raise money. Swakeleys House was a red-brick mansion with Dutch gables built on an enormous scale at Twickenham, on the Thames to the west of London. It was bought by Robert Viner, a talented and ambitious young London banker and goldsmith, whose family were already well established in both lines of business. Viner would later go on to become Lord Mayor of London and an important financial backer of the monarchy.

  While Viner benefited from Harrington’s escape, for the Puritan poet John Milton flight was not an option, as he was blind. Milton, who had served in Cromwell’s government and had written extensively against tyranny and the rule of kings, knew he was unlikely to escape the hurtful attentions of the new regime. He went into hiding in a friend’s house in West Smithfield. His friends claimed he was dead and staged a funeral to convince the authorities. After some weeks, Milton judged it safe to reappear. He had miscalculated and was promptly imprisoned in the Tower, where he was held under threat of execution for treason until the intervention of Viscountess Ranelagh, Andrew Marvell and others. Continuing anti-royalist sentiment among the lower classes was rewarded by prison, the stocks, flogging and, in some cases, death.

  In October, those regicides who could be rounded up were subjected to a series of show trials at the Old Bailey. Twenty-eight had been selected for trial, chiefly because they had not run away and had been easily apprehended. On the evening of 9 October their guards gathered them together in the Tower of London and read them the indictment for high treason. It was the first time they had heard the charges against them. The trials began on the following morning at the Sessions House of the Old Bailey, giving the defendants no opportunity to hire lawyers or prepare a defence. Voices opposed to the Stuarts forecast that the proceedings would be rigged, and so it turned out. When they began, it became clear that every effort had been made to ensure guilty verdicts. The Solicitor-General, Sir Heneage Finch, and the Baron of the Exchequer, Sir Orlando Bridgeman, had secretly met with other senior lawyers to change the rules of evidence. They decided corroborating testimony was unnecessary, as was any legal defence for the accused.10 Eleven judges sat on the bench, accompanied by thirty-four lay commissioners. A contemporary estimated that no fewer than fifteen of them had opposed Charles I, either fighting in the Parliamentary army, as members of Parliament or as judges who had sentenced him to death. Now they sat in judgement on their former friends and allies.

  During the lead-up to the trials, Charles was surprisingly quiet on the subject. He had his partisan Houses of Parliament to do his work for him, with his brothers James and Henry as his go-betweens to ensure all went to plan. He also had personal matters on his mind. His chief distraction was his mistress, Barbara Palmer. The daughter of an ardent Royalist, she had returned from exile with him. According to one observer, the relationship ‘did so disorder him that often he was not master of himself nor capable of minding business, which in so critical a time, required great application’.11

  Charles had a yet more vexing matter to contend with. Anne, the daughter of his great adv
isor Edward Hyde, had become pregnant by James, Duke of York, who had secretly married her. For the House of Stuart, this was a serious matter, for it meant that James could not be married to some suitable foreign princess and so forge or strengthen an alliance. Courtiers suggested all sorts of stratagems to get James out of the marriage, but Charles declared that his brother had made his bed and must he in it.

  The trials were a sensation. Londoners flocked to the courthouse to watch. The Sessions House was a peculiar building, with the courtroom open to the street, so the throng could press up against the perimeter railings and watch as those who had so recently run the country were tried for treason. Whenever the accused began to speak in their defence or to ask the court a question on a point of law they were quickly slapped down. The common hangman stood by the bar of the court, holding a noose, indicating to the accused what they could expect and to the jury what they should decide.12

  The cases were quickly heard and death sentences were carried out in tandem with the hearings, designed to take place over ten days. On 13 October the executions began at Charing Cross, close to the spot where the King’s father had been sent to his death in 1649. Londoners thronged to see the second great spectacle of the new King’s reign. The first of the regicides to be executed was Thomas Harrison, a Cromwellian colonel and an ardent Puritan and anti-royalist. If the new government thought the imminent torture and slow death would show their old enemies to be men of straw they were mistaken. Harrison’s brave demeanour and defiant speech were unexpected. ‘God hath covered my head many times in the day of battle,’ he declared. ‘By God I have leaped over a wall, by God I have runned through a troop, and by my God I will go through this death.’13 After being throttled on the end of a noose, Harrison was lain down on the scaffold, still conscious, to be disembowelled. As the executioner leant over him and with his knife began his task, with one last Herculean effort Harrison leapt up and hit him on the chin. This was not the sort of theatre Charles and the turncoat court had been hoping for.

  Not all those condemned to death had signed Charles I’s death warrant or taken part in his trial. Some were executed for other forms of involvement. John Cooke, the brilliant young lawyer who had written the case accusing the King of making war against his people, was among them. In his speech from the gallows he said he was the first man ever condemned to death for supporting justice. He admonished the former Commonwealth men who had sentenced him, saying, ‘Brother hath betrayed brother to death’. Having learnt a lesson from Harrisons execution, the sheriff in charge interrupted Cooke several times before giving the order to have him hoisted by the neck and swung choking out over the crowd before being taken down and disembowelled.

  Forced to watch Cooke’s grisly death was Hugh Peters, whose crime was to have been Cromwell’s favourite preacher. As Peters cried out, ‘Oh, this is a good day. He is come that I have looked for and I shall be with Him in glory!’ the crowd drowned him out with booing and jeering.

  According to Evelyn, as the first of the men who had had the temerity to challenge the divine right of King’s was tortured to death on the scaffold at Charing Cross, the King went to watch, hidden from the crowd behind a window. And so the executions took place ‘in the presence of the king. . . whom they also sought to kill’.14

  As the executioners went about their work, the smell became so bad that the site of the executions was removed from Charing Cross to Tyburn, the site of the ancient gallows to the west of the city on the road to Oxford. In all, ten regicides were hanged, drawn and quartered before the grisly exhibition was brought to a premature end, in fear that the London mob was turning against the display of violent revenge. According to a member of Charles’s government, the King grew ‘weary’ of the killings.15’ Whatever the reason, Charles demonstrated what amounted to a degree of royal mercy, drawing back from revenge before the show trials moved towards their completion. Meanwhile, without fanfare or publicity, spies were dispatched to track down those regicides who had fled abroad. Plots were hatched to murder them or bring them home to face trial. Money was channelled to spies and kidnappers via Charles s sister Henrietta Anne, married to Louis XIV’s brother Philippe. Charles may not have had the stomach for carnage upon a scaffold, but he had the heart for retribution.

  * The building exists today at 3 Cornmarket, Oxford.

  † French actresses had appeared on stage in London in the late 1620s.

  CHAPTER 4

  SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE?

  When Charles returned, the question was, what would he do now? How would he reign? There is little evidence that he had given much thought to such matters. Fortunately, others had. Those with experience of government who were not on the run or in prison for their part in the trial and execution of Charles I had strong ideas about how the country should be ruled. The elected Cavalier Commons and the reinstated House of Lords knew exactly what to do, and a programme of reforming government structures and appointing new government officers was quickly under way.

  Charles has often been portrayed as the Merry Monarch, the easy-going pleasure-seeker, but there was more to him. It is true he became the King of Fun, creating a court of carnal and sporting pleasure. But from the outset, he also became the King of Tolerance, allowing freedom of religious observance that helped heal the schisms of the past (though this tolerance would come under repeated pressure as his reign progressed). He became the King of War, prosecuting a series of conflicts with the Dutch in an attempt to win outright access to foreign trade and wealth. And he became the King of Commerce, presiding over state-sponsored mass slavery in order to provide a workforce for England s colonies, changing the social and political fabric of the nation for generations, and causing irreparable harm to West African societies, though few cared about or even recognised this at the time.

  As soon as Charles was ensconced in Whitehall Palace, people who wanted something from him formed a metaphorical line at the palace door. But before he could dispense patronage, Charles had his own family to cater for. His brother, the Duke of York, was appointed Lord High Admiral, in charge of the navy, the single greatest organisational entity in the land. Then he turned to those who had stood by him in his exile, who had helped the royal cause on the battlefield or with money. These favourites were rewarded with titles, lands and jobs, as befitted their rank, role or abilities – and equally importantly, whether or not Charles liked them. The old guard was swept away and London saw a regiment of new faces take over the levers of power. Some, like the diplomat and spy George Downing, made the transition appear seamless, gliding from serving one administration to the next. Like many, Downing showed an aptitude for betraying his former friends that came as easily as changing his shirt. Thurloe, too tainted by Puritanism (and by his master Cromwell), was allowed to fade away, his intelligence-gathering ignored and his person shunned.

  Some of the new faces were in fact quite old: Edward Hyde, now aged fifty-one, continued as Lord Chancellor, the office he had held in exile with the King (becoming the ist Earl of Clarendon the following year), while 67-year-old Sir Edward Nicholas continued as Secretary of State, an office he now held jointly with 58-year-old Sir William Mortice, a relative of Monck, who had helped arrange the King’s return. These older men had great experience of office and were essential to Charles in arranging his new administration. He would soon the of them, however, and replace them with younger men.

  The arts, trades and sciences were all waiting for support from the King. Men of science and philosophy came calling, seeking a charter for a new society of learning and experimentation. Merchants and traders required the King’s say-so – the granting of a warrant – to reopen businesses closed by the Puritans. Merchants trading with the East Indies and China wanted a new charter for their trading company, updating that granted by Elizabeth I. Those trading in Africa and the West Indies sought a charter for their new company. One group particularly close to the King’s heart approached him for warrants to reopen the theatres.

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sp; Then there was Charles’s own life to set in order. Ancient royal palaces needed reinstating as official residences. Charles’s mistress, Barbara Palmer, needed to be set up in a grand house near Whitehall Palace. A suitable one was found in King Street, backing onto the palace gardens. Parliament had to agree an income for the King. It was set at a little over £1 million a year, a sum that seemed sufficient but was not – something which was to have profound repercussions for future relations between Crown and Parliament. Charles was not enamoured of Parliament. Like his father before him, he harboured ambitions of ruling as an absolute monarch. How, then, to find the money to rule? He had in his gift the incomes from various estates and from assorted taxes and duties. Would these be enough?

  One man who thought he had an answer to making money for the royal coffers rvas Charles’s irrepressible older cousin, Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Rupert was one of the most unfortunate of creatures, a prince without a principality, a warrior without a war. He was the third son of Frederick, King of Bohemia and Elector Palatine, and Elizabeth, sister of Charles I.* Following battles in 1620 and 1622, Frederick had found himself deprived of both his titles and had to flee to The Hague, where Rupert was brought up. Rupert excelled at his lessons and grew to be a handsome man, exceptionally tall for the time (by the age of eighteen he was 6ft 4m in height). In later portraits we see a thin patrician face, with wide-set eyes above a long straight nose, a full wide mouth and a firm, cleft chin – a cavalier to the life.