The memory still made Monck sweat, for he had now found himself in serious trouble, locked-up, awaiting trial. Such defiance of a law-officer was an act of high contempt. He might have been hanged for his trouble in defending his father’s honour by thrashing a King’s officer. He had learned a hard lesson from that intemperate moment, for all that Nicholas Battyn was as corrupt and foul as that other, older, Nick.
Although born at Potheridge in the north of the county in December 1608, George Monck had, of necessity and at an early age, been lodged by his impecunious father with the boy’s grandfather, Sir George Smyth of Heavytree near Exeter. Old Smyth, much taken with his young grandson, offered to educate him if the lad lived half the year at Heavytree an offer from his father-in-law that Sir Thomas could not refuse. He let the lad go. This estrangement seemed not to trouble the sturdy George, making him more aware of the name he bore and the family connections he enjoyed. The thin trickle of royal blood was of less significance to the imagination of the boy than more romantic associations of nearer relatives. At Heavytree he was surrounded by uncles, aunts and first and second cousins; besides those that breathed, there were those that had died gloriously. One uncle, Richard, had died a captain; another, Arthur, had been killed in action at the defence of Ostend in 1602, dying at the side of Sir Francis Vere, the first soldier of his age. His great-uncle Francis had sailed with Drake during El Draco’s attack on the Portuguese coast in 1589 and had received his mortal wound at the storming of La Coruña. His aunt Grace had married Sir Bevil Grenville, grandson of Sir Richard Grenville who, in the Revenge, had died defying the might of fifteen of Spanish galleons in a long and furious fight at Flores in the Azores.
Nor had Monck lied to Anne when he boasted of having known Sir Walter Raleigh, for his Aunt Frances had married Sir Lewis Stukeley, a cousin and friend of Raleigh himself and Sir Walter had called on Stukeley at Farringdon more than once. Besides this splendid acquaintanceship, Stukeley had adopted Pocahontas’s son, Tom Rolfe, after the boy’s mother had died of smallpox.
Fit, adventurous, bright and eager, all this had led young George to embrace the notion of going a-soldiering, an idea his father encouraged, intending to place him when the time was right. Despite his seemingly carefree existence, however, young George could not fail to be aware of his father’s constant indebtedness, not least because the writs against him prevented Sir Thomas from venturing abroad – hence the necessity of seeking assistance from Nicholas Battyn. Thus, when the hot-tempered youth took a sword to the corrupt under-sheriff, he placed himself in grievous danger as the enraged and contused attorney threatened the full and terrible weight of the law. Fortunately the King’s intended expedition to Spain was on the eve of departure and, once it was clear that Battyn’s greatest hurt was to his self-conceit, George Monck found himself spirited away, attached to another relative, the present Sir Richard Grenville, younger brother to Sir Bevil and grandson of his famous namesake. Sir Richard commanded troops under the able Sir John Burroughs and they were bound upon foreign service. Circumstances rescued the young man from the weight of the law.
As always, when he recalled those distant but vivid and impetuous days of his youth, Monck broke out in cold sweat. But the knowledge as to quite how close he had come to the gallows to save his father’s honour, was quickly followed by hot indignation over what had followed. The expedition to Cadiz of 1625 proved the first of a string of disasters in which the hapless young Monck had found himself embroiled. It seemed scarcely credible to him then, in his youthful ignorance, that such an expedition should so miscarry. He understood it better now, but the sense of fury at the waste, the lost opportunities, the useless deaths by disease and poor victuals that had attended the vain and silly operation, still possessed the power to sting his eyes with angry and indignant tears.
For a man of George Monck’s imperturbable character, to be so easily moved so long after these events was an indication of how deeply they had affected him. The impact of them was profound, for while he might still sweat at the recollection of his own foolhardy behaviour, the effect of the subsequent military catastrophe in which he had found himself caught-up, still had the power to trigger a sense of outrage.
It had been a tremendous folly. There had been no lack of good commanders – Grenville and Burroughs among them – but the military operation against Cadiz had been appallingly bungled. The soldiers, short of food, had been allowed wine and, in consequence, got out-of-hand. The result had been a humiliating retreat to the ships which, being ill-fitted, found scurvy soon afterwards breaking out among their crews and the embarked troops.
Monck recalled the mood of frustration, the arguments and recriminations among the officers and, perhaps worst of all, the indifference and indiscipline of many of the common soldiers. On the homeward voyage he had much to think on. This was not the honourable profession of arms his boyhood imagination had conceived it to be; this was a shambles, a national disaster and a dishonourable waste. What had truly shocked him was the change in the greater mass of the troops, for they lacked the heroically steadfast qualities he had thought soldiers naturally possessed; now the evidence was otherwise, for they had demonstrated cowardly behaviour, not the stirring determination that he thought a pre-requisite to the profession of arms. Cowardice in Englishmen was something the lad found hard to stomach, an impugning of an inviolable article of faith akin to blasphemy. But he had witnessed it with his own eyes and the knowledge burdened him, troubling him and lying in his psyche like a curdling of the blood. Those few men who had shown spirit had been in the minority; the rest were drunkards when they could be, or worse when women were available which, mercifully, had not been often on this campaign.
Monck recalled the taint of that return, the taint of shameful military conduct mixed with the taint of his own crime. He had seemed mired in a man’s world at odds with his boyhood preconceptions, embedded as they were in family legend and youthful high-hopes. In Monck’s absence Battyn had died and Monck had heard it said that the thrashing he had received at the lad’s hands had precipitated his death. It was suggested murder might be added to the charges the young Monck had thus far evaded. He did not linger to determine the truth; thoroughly out-of-sorts he left word with Sir Richard of his intentions and fled to London. Although he preferred not to dwell upon those two years of penury and the excoriating dread of being a wanted man, he never forgot them. Most of all Monck grieved for the further trouble he had brought down upon his wretched father’s head. It was not what he had intended when he sought out Battyn to chastise him for his infamy.
Impelled by some sense of what his forbears might have done, Monck disappeared, finding in the noise and riot of London an avenue to a quiet retreat, for the Thames was full of shipping. He served for two voyages to the Mediterranean as a gunner aboard the Perseus, a merchantman owned by the Levant Company and, in between, went secretly into the West Country to maintain contact with his family. When he heard that King Charles intended supporting the Protestant Huguenots in their rebellion against their King with a new expedition, Monck quietly sought an appointment under Sir Richard Grenville, joining him as Grenville himself again joined Burroughs. At the time Monck entertained no doubts of the success of the expedition. It was inconceivable that it would be a worse disaster than the Cadiz debacle, for it was to be commanded by the foremost courtier of the age, the glittering, glamorous George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.
Buckingham’s expeditions to La Rochelle and the Ȋle de Ré proved even more disastrous than that to Cadiz, but by a feat of arms Monck made his name so that men marked him thereafter. Seeking to rid his kinsman of the taint of Battyn’s death by some notable service, Grenville had commended Monck to his commander-in-chief. Entrusted with despatches from Buckingham to the King, Monck’s appearance at Court had found a measure of the royal favour. Monck had been sent back to Buckingham with secret information gleaned by King Charles’s agents. A French fleet would attempt to cut off the English ships lyi
ng in their anchorage and Monck was charged with speedily carrying the warning to Buckingham, a signal honour in itself. Monck had taken ship, but light and contrary winds had held the vessel up, then a foggy calm and the fierce tides on the French coast drove her into a bay where, in desperation, she had been anchored before running aground. Unwilling to submit to further delay, Monck had insisted on being landed by boat and, without a word of French, let alone the patois of Brittany, had made his way to La Rochelle, passed through the French lines unmolested, and had walked into Buckingham’s headquarters. He had not saved Buckingham from disaster, the Duke would accomplish that on his own account, but he had earned himself a commission as an ensign in Burroughs’ regiment for bringing a timely warning.
Now, staring out over the Thames, Monck cast the recollection aside. He never dwelt upon his triumphs, for they failed to offset his sins, but his subsequent adventures in the Low Countries, at the siege of Breda, in Scotland and, above all, commanding troops in Ireland, had taught him much. Privately he considered his experiences to have been a school of adversity which, he thought as his mind ran on to the present moment, had informed the authority with which he wrote his book. He turned from the window to stare at the sheets of his manuscript strewn on the table. In his present predicament it seemed that the only thing he might profitably do was to distil the fruits of those long years of endeavour for the benefit of others. Typically, the thought of those who came after him suffering the same disgrace and dishonour from incompetence and miscarriages, stung him into greater exertion.
Crossing to the chair he sat down and lifted the top-sheet, recalling Anne had read it the evening before. He held it for a second, trying to recapture the pleasure of that moment then, with a self-deprecating shake of his head, he restored it to its proper place among the ordered leaves, drew a plain sheet of paper towards him, dipped his quill and began to write:
He that is a Chief Commander ought to know that if he will be secure in War, he must be watchful and valiant: and that expedition and secrecy crowneth all warlike exploits with success and glory: and that the opportunity of time is the mother of all worthy exploits.
He was back in the stride of the thing now and worked on for several hours, ramming home the hard-won lessons:
War is not capable of a second error; one fault being enough to ruin an Army. It is requisite in a General to mingle love with the severity of his discipline. If thou art called to the dignity of a Commander, dignify thy place by commands: and that thou mayest be the more perfect in commanding others, practice upon thyself. A General shall rule much, if reason rule him and ought to use his best endeavours, to buy good success with extraordinary labour. For industry commandeth fortune and laboursome industry by circumspect and heedful carriage seldom fail, either by hap or cunning, to make good that part, wherein the main point of the matter dependeth. And where the lion’s skin will not serve, there let him take part of the fox’s to piece it out…
‘Aye,’ he murmured to himself, ‘vigilance and industry, vigilance and industry.’
The key turned in the lock with such an intrusive noise that he turned, almost surprised by his surroundings, so absorbed had he become in his work. The turnkey stood in the doorway and announced, ‘The Colonel has a visitor.’
For a moment he thought it Anne, but the gaoler stood aside and he was quickly disabused as a man in the grubby lawn of unwashed canonicals swept into the room.
‘I give you a good day, Colonel Monck.’
Monck laid down his quill, scrambled to his feet and gave the cleric a perfunctory nod of the head. ‘I was not expecting company,’ he remarked curtly, disposing of the usual courtesies.
‘So I see, Colonel,’ the visitor smiled. His mouth was small, dominated by a long thin nose, his forehead high and his chin pointed. He wore a small, fashionable beard and his own hair. ‘And I can see that even if you had, I should have been a disappointment.’
‘My Lord Bishop …’ Monck shook his head deprecatingly and indicated the bed. ‘Pray be seated and tell me …’ He paused, turning to the gaoler. ‘Get out,’ he commanded, remaining silent as the man withdrew and locked them in.
‘He will be listening without,’ remarked the bishop with a rueful smile. ‘There are few secrets in such a place as this.’
‘True, my Lord Bishop, but I have little to say to you and therefore concern myself only with what you have to say to me. I see you have not brought me the sacrament.’
‘Wouldest you that I had?’
Monck shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’
‘You are indeed the enigma, Colonel, that they say you are. Tell me, what manner of man art thou?’
Monck held his peace, staring instead at his interlocutor whose identity he knew. Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely and a King’s man had not visited him out of pastoral charity. Wren knew his man too and, the interrogative hanging between them, waited in turn for the response.
‘I am a soldier,’ Monck said at last, ‘a plain-spoken soldier who knows the value of a stolen march, an ambuscade, the necessity of forage, the provision of sufficient swine’s feathers … you comprehend my point?’
‘Perfectly, Colonel. But you are a Christian soldier …’
‘But not a fanatic, Bishop Wren, for religion, by its arguments and schisms, has provided me with a means of employment and I am myself, not a man given to religious enthusiasms.’
‘Yet,’ Wren said, gesturing eloquently around the chilly stone chamber, ‘it appears you have principles.’
‘I hope I have a conscience too,’ Monck responded sharply, adding, ‘my Lord Bishop, I abhor the means by which men bend the Gospel to their own ends. Religion belongs to God; in the hands of men it has become political, and the ordering of the world is poorly done by it. Were it not for religion, I should be neither a soldier nor a prisoner, but a plain farmer.’
‘Wouldest thou obtain thy freedom?’
‘What man would not?’
‘You could take the oaths demanded of you. I know those who would have you commanding troops in their employ.’
‘But you art not of their faction, Bishop Wren, or you would not be my neighbour in this place. You art as bound to King Charles as head of thy church as I am by my commission to serve him.’
‘Would you die a martyr for the King?’
Monck gave a cold chuckle and fixed his eyes on Wren’s. ‘Would you?’
Wren shrugged and smiled, then gestured to the barred window. ‘This is a kind of martyrdom, is it not?’
‘It is pleasanter than a forced night-march on an empty belly in a rain-storm, to be sure.’
Wren smiled again and nodded. ‘Indeed; such things are relative.’ He paused, then asked, ‘So you place your loyalty to the King above all other obligations?’
‘Other than those I owe to God, for I hold the King’s commission.’
‘And what if the King were cast down in this turbulent time?’
‘Then I should serve my poor country, placing that duty above all other earthly demands upon me.’
Wren nodded thoughtfully. ‘You are a good man, George Monck, but this is not a time for good men of unsullied principle.’
‘I would not have you judge me good or bad, sir,’ Monck bristled. ‘My principles are simple and soldierly. To him that I have sworn to serve, that oath I must uphold. Should my services be no longer required by His Majesty, I should be free to serve where I wished but, as long as they are …’
‘As long?’ Wren interrupted. ‘The King is not a man to let you go.’
‘No; and therein lies the rub of it.’
‘So, in the heart of you, you are for the Parliament?’
Monck smiled again. ‘Bishop Wren, the Parliament has cast me in this durance vile on a charge of High Treason. It has yet to pass sentence on me, but you know as well as any man, what the awful consequences of such a charge – when pressed – might be. In my heart, and after he who presently employs me and to whom I owe allegiance, I would do right by my
country.’
‘That is a simple philosophy.’
‘’Tis complicated enough for the times, my Lord Bishop,’ Monck responded with a short, indignant laugh, ‘and I do not conceive victory for either party as a simple matter.’
‘You have spoken with the King, have you not?’
‘At Oxford, yes, as you well know.’
‘You have a remarkable reputation for personal courage and skill in war.’
‘I have a reputation for luck, my Lord Bishop, and little more. As for skill in war, I learned it in a tough school, as did others who were with me there and who now do prodigious feats of arms.’
‘You speak of Thomas Fairfax?’
‘Aye, Tom Fairfax and Jacob Astley among others; all of whom are able men, though some let their passions rule their minds.’
‘Like Goring?’
‘He is not the only one.’
‘As you doubtless told the King.’
‘My Lord Bishop, what passed between the King and myself was between the King and myself.’
‘But you spoke your mind; it is scarce a secret.’
‘Is it not? Well, well …’ Monck shrugged. ‘Well, what other purpose is there in any discourse, but to speak one’s mind? That it is rare in this world is a tragedy, the more-so for His Majesty who suffers excessively from want of honesty and candour in those about him. When favour is pursued, the soldier cannot contend with the courtier. Were it not so, I would warrant, His Majesty would not find himself in such a predicament as he presently is. There, my Lord Bishop you have my creed and my reason for placing my desire to serve my country at the heart of my rude philosophy.’
‘If I understand your subtlety, Colonel,’ Wren responded, ‘you hint that the King is in want of thy patriotism.’
‘Bishop Wren, didst you seek to disturb my privacy to spring such a trap upon me?’ Monck stared coldly at Wren. ‘For now I perceive that I must stand charged with treason by both factions in this sorry dispute and it must now hang upon an outcome as to which party prevaileth and may have the privilege of my public and exemplary evisceration! Perhaps, therefore, you will consider yourself a better Christian if you deliver me to that which you represent, eh?’ Monck stood up. ‘And now, my Lord Bishop, if you will excuse me …’
Sword of State: The Remarkable Story of George Monck Page 3