Sword of State: The Remarkable Story of George Monck

by Richard Woodman

  *

  ‘Oaths! Oaths! If a war was to be won by the swearing of oaths we should have no end of victories and want a new war to swear them to! No, my Lord, I shall not take another oath beyond that directly pertaining to my commission. As for taking the Covenant, that I will not do.’

  The twenty-seven year-old Lord Lisle stared at the man before him, noting the leaner face and paler skin that, more visible in a better light, were the products of his long imprisonment. ‘You do not change, Colonel,’ he said with a sigh.

  ‘You would not have summoned me if I had,’ Monck retorted shortly, aware that his intransigence embarrassed the inexperienced Lisle. A member of the ruling Parliamentary Council of State that sat at Derby House, Lisle had summoned Colonel Monck to a meeting to sound him out for service in Ireland where, in the eyes of the Derby House Committee, the situation had become intolerable.

  Ireland had languished under a partial peace since the time of Ormonde’s composition with the rebels. This had released the English troops in Ireland for service at home, for Ormonde had had no powers to treat on behalf of the Scots forces in Ulster. Since the end of the Civil War in England, the victorious English Parliament was eager to bring the Irish to heel and avenge the spilling of Protestant blood in their unhappy land. With the Protestant Ulster Scots of Parliament’s opinion, if not quite at its side, Dublin and most of Leinster was still held by Ormonde in the name of the King. In the south Lord Inchiquin had come over to the Parliament and, adopting a Parliamentary title, sought to rule Munster in its name. As for the rest of the country, it was held in loose confederation by the Papal Nuncio, Giovanni Battista Rinunccini, Bishop of Fermo, who – having arrived with a war chest, swords, pike heads, several thousand stand of arms and ten tons of gunpowder – had set up his headquarters in Kilkenny. From here he had formed a Catholic party by uniting the recusant Catholic ‘Old English,’ under Colonel Thomas Preston, with the Gaelic tribes under Owen Roe O’Neill. Rinunccini nursed the pious objective of placing the province thus created under the protection of Spain and holding it in the name of the Pope. This was incendiary to the sober-suited men of Derby House.

  As Monck emerged from The Tower and prepared to go on campaign, the agents of Parliament sought to prevent Inchiquin, a man given to consequential fits of pique, again changing sides and joining Ormonde. In the Commons the members argued about who was best fitted to act as Lord Lieutenant and command the forces being mustered to embark for Ireland. In the meanwhile Ormonde, now pressed by the rebels and retiring within the Pale, offered to surrender Dublin to Parliament rather than allow the Catholic party a victory. Significantly, Ormonde urged upon the Parliament a recommendation to send out Colonel Monck and those officers of the Irish brigade whom Monck favoured, including Harry Warren, who had gone into England with him. Parliament, anxious that Inchiquin would change sides yet again if Dublin fell to the Catholics, finally decided upon Lisle, as Lord Lieutenant. The complications of competing factions, particularly among the Presbyterians who were, in theory, Royalist, welcomed Ormonde’s advice while Lisle, eager to find some competent military officers capable of delivering the cause from this morass, thus found the wind blowing in George Monck’s favour. To find the man himself unwilling to undertake a role he was fitted for and, in all other respects, eager to embrace, all upon account of an oath, seemed the very pinnacle of perversity. But he knew Monck better than to remonstrate further.

  Instead he smote his thigh with exasperation. ‘I wash my hands of you, Colonel,’ he said. ‘The Irish Committee of the Council of State will want to see you and you may lay your case before them but I warn you, the Presbyterians among us will insist upon your taking the Covenant.’

  ‘We shall see, my Lord,’ Monck answered shortly.

  ‘Tomorrow, then,’ Lisle said, waving his dismissal. Monck bowed and withdrew.

  The following day Monck emerged from his encounter with the Irish Committee; he had persisted in his refusal to take the Covenant, though the Committee reported to the House of Commons that he had done so, thus securing both his services and his freedom. Later, just before he left London, he confided to Anne Ratsford that he had agreed only to hold his commission as others did.

  ‘’Twas a form of words with which they had to be content. It meant to each that which he desired, and only one – a Presbyterian! – objected.’

  It was now autumn and, despite protestations of urgency, Lisle’s orders were not forthcoming. Delay followed delay as first Ormonde and the Parliamentary Commissioners sent to Dublin to treat with him argued over the terms of the surrender, and then at home the difficulties of raising three and a half thousand foot and six hundred horse met obstacle after obstacle. It was late February of 1647 before Lisle, with Monck in his train, landed his forces in Ireland, not at Dublin, but at Cork where Lisle was immediately embroiled in further arguments with Inchiquin, a vain man of similar age to Lisle. Owing to his own youth and inexperience, the term of Lisle’s commission had been limited; by now it had only a few weeks to run. By the time of its expiry in April not a thing had been achieved and by May Day Monck found himself back in London.

  ‘I seem,’ he said to Anne, with an air of weary resignation, ‘to be destined always to be attached to military failure.’

  But two months later the wheel of fortune turned again and a messenger knocked at his lodgings, summoning him to appear once more before the Irish Committee. He returned four hours later and sent word for Anne to come to him when she could. That night he told her of his appointment as Sergeant Major General of the Scots and English forces in the counties of Down and Antrim. She listened patiently though uncomprehending as the flood of words poured from him, an oddity coming from a man she knew to possess a reputation for grim taciturnity. Ignorant of the meaning of this tumbling discourse, she was intuitively aware that he had need of her ear, and that this unpredictable animation was a product of his frustrating years of incarceration and unfulfilled ambition. What she could not know was that George Monck was outlining the strategic position and applying the observed principles which he had so carefully laid down in his manuscript.

  The only thing Anne understood was that the Marquess of Ormonde had quit Ireland in late July, handing his forces over to Colonel Michael Jones, a Protestant officer, and that Oliver Cromwell had been instrumental in persuading the Council of State to abolish the role of Lord Lieutenant and leave Michael Jones and George Monck to destroy the rebels.

  ‘Mark my words, Anne, if Jones and I cannot finish the business, Oliver Cromwell is itching to campaign against the Catholics. In the meanwhile Jones is to have Leinster and I, with seven thousand pounds, am to command Ulster.’

  ‘Seven thousand pounds?’ said an astonished Anne, for whom the sum seemed impossible.

  ‘Aye, in my charge as is my money in thine.’

  *

  ‘Lord, how a man must dissemble just to keep his feet in this benighted land!’ Monck exploded so that his assembled staff, their faces long and woeful, regarded their chief with a mixture of suspicion and dread. Honest George, they felt, had not proved honest enough and his army, short of food and powder, was dismayed to learn their commander had been treating with the rebel O’Neill, offering him six barrels of gunpowder as the price for a cessation of hostilities. Monck stared about him, glaring at the assembled officers one at a time. Not one of them met his gaze. He knew their opinion of him and cared not a fig for it.

  ‘What is the temper of the men?’ he growled. There was an awkward silence. ‘I asked a question, gentlemen.’ Monck’s tone was menacing.

  ‘Sir, if I may …’

  ‘No sir! You may not; what is the temper of the men?’

  ‘They are unhappy, sir … the situation as revealed by this matter of Colonel Ferral ...’

  ‘Very well; it may surprise you to know that I understand their anxiety, that I sympathise with their position but …’ he paused for emphasis, ‘but, let me make it quite clear that I command and that I
charge you, as you have sworn your obedience so to do, that at the first whiff of sedition or mutiny you shall inform me of it directly.’ They were looking at him now. This was no round-robin diatribe but an order issued to each and every one of them. He met their gaze, fixing each of them with his implacable eye.

  ‘Very well; that is all.’

  ‘Damn Ferral!’ he muttered as he relieved himself of baldric and sword, calling for his man-servant to divest him of his cuirass. He had ridden through the lines of the encampment that morning and noted for himself the resentment, anger and, often-enough, mere incomprehension that marked the men’s faces as they broke their fasts and went about their chores. He heard too, their mumbling opinion offered to his back. God knows they were a small enough force to hold down this wretched country, but he – and they – had done his best. Had it not been for the incompetence of Ferral in holding his men in check at Dundalk … but it was done now. Done, and, with Inchiquin in the know, and Parliament next to be informed, Monck knew the matter would see him damned. He was furious for having been caught in a political trap, a victim of secret orders. But it was no good dwelling on that. He cursed again; such was his sense of responsibility that he was, in any case, incapable of passing the blame; besides, at the time he had been happy enough to fulfil the instructions he had received by the hand of an officer from England. The red coats of the newcomer’s escort and his own sash had proclaimed him a squadron commander of one of the New Model Army’s cavalry regiments. So conspicuous an arrival had been announced as despatches from the Council of State and Monck had been handed a General Order to the Army in Ireland. Besides this, however, Captain Arthur had brought a secret communication for Monck’s eyes only and Monck knew the signatory of the sealed letter.

  But the gunpowder had been an error; a mistake, he feared, as consequential as his youthful assault on Nicholas Battyn. Monck caught himself from too excoriating a self-condemnation. The assault on Battyn had been wild and intemperate, a furious and emotional response to his father’s deep and public humiliation as much as a young man’s judgement on an older man’s venality. The gunpowder for O’Neill had been a calculation, a calculation necessary to clinch a deal, it was true to say, for Monck knew that O’Neill’s demands were so outrageous that, while his secret instructions insisted he immobilised O’Neill in arranging an accommodation, the rebel chief’s conditional demands and any armistice that went with them, would be rejected. With ratification impossible and his secret instructions explicit, Monck had to play for time he did not have, so succumbed to the ploy of passing the gunpowder and a quantity of ammunition to the enemy by way of a circumvention. He knew that once he had the powder in his possession O’Neill would again enter the field if his demands were not met, but those six barrels were intended to persuade the Irish commander that Monck at least was to be depended upon – at least as long as he commanded in Ulster. If only Ferral’s men had not over-steeped themselves in drink in Dundalk and blown the ploy to Kingdom Come, God rot them!

  O’Neill had sent Colonel Ferral and five hundred men to collect the powder but they came upon quantities of liquor in Dundalk and, on their way home with their prize, they were ambushed by Inchiquin who, informed of the treachery, cut them to pieces and exposed Monck’s part in the affair.

  Matters began well enough, he wrote to Anne in August of 1649, the first letter she had received since his departure two years earlier. Preston was soon dealt with, he went on, referring briefly to the routs inflicted on the rebels at Dungans Hill and Knocknanaus, but O’Neill and his wild Irish proved a more intractable problem. O’Neill, he explained briefly, was an old Low Countries warrior, dogged, redoubtable and long experienced in the Spanish service, who had taken to waging partisan warfare. Barely comprehending the words that she made out with difficulty, reading them as she did in her small bed-chamber, one ear cocked in case her husband returned, she was overwhelmed with a sense of connection with her lover despite the long break in their communication. Like that out-pouring of words on the eve of his departure, this letter was evidence of the great confidence he placed in her and she felt an obligation to struggle to the end of his missive. Hoping she would not be disturbed, she read on.

  We met him at his own game, scouring the glens of Antrim, burning, ravaging and plundering for provisions, of which we are always in want. The renewal of the Civil War in England so curtailed all the support of which we had expectation from home, that we were obliged to depend upon our own resources. Even so, we so reduced much of Ulster to a governable state that I flatter myself to say the country was quiet and showed even a tendency to prosperity. So severe had our chastisement proved that I received offers of information, appointing a Scout-Master to garner intelligence and, in this wise, any raid O’Neill contemplated was met in the moment of its execution and scattered like dust along the highway.

  In digging their own potatoes in land once possessed by O’Neill’s ragamuffins, my soldiers’ prosperity was the ruin of O’Neill’s men and I came less-and-less to rely upon supplies from England. Finding it unnecessary to harry a man no more than the prosecution of successful war demanded, some at least of those set against us began to weaken. By mingling love with severity of discipline I hoped to persuade them to lay down their arms and to come in to us. Alas, it was never to be, far too many were at the game in their own interest and all the while there was such turmoil in England that we began to feel forgotten.

  The troubles that now assailed us were endless, turbulent and, like a great wave of the sea, overwhelming. Ormonde’s intrigues with the Scots Presbyterians bore fruit in Ireland as well as England. In the south Inchiquin went over to Ormonde and the King, whereupon Munster was lost to the Parliament just as the new war broke out in England. All was now confusion as Inchiquin sought alliance with the Scots settlers in Ulster. These were divided among themselves but, seeing the danger most in my rear, with Munro and his once loyal Scotchmen in Belfast and Carrickfergus, I hurried to his headquarters with a body of men and took him. He has since been committed to The Tower and I made Governor of Belfast with five hundred pounds to my credit. With the news of General Cromwell’s victory over the Scots at Preston, we looked for better times, unknowing that matters lay unresolved in England between the Presbyterians and the Independents in Parliament, and all in expectation of reinforcement of a grand expedition to Ireland. Then came the news of the King’s trial and execution…

  Anne laid the letter down. There were still several pages to read but while she found Monck’s account incomprehensible, the reference to the execution of King Charles at the end of January last, brought the reality of these events vividly to her imagination. The King’s execution had touched London – and herself – directly.

  She remembered that cold January day, with the City streets empty as if a sluice had been opened and all those who normally crowded its narrow thoroughfares had been carried westwards by a relentless tide of curiosity, to crowd Whitehall and gawp at the awful and sombre spectacle. She had not taken much interest in the King’s arrest and knew only that he seemed to her uneducated and ill-informed perception, a man incapable of settling to his divinely ordained task. To her the art of kingship seemed a simple matter: just as, in often impossible circumstances, she ran her small household and modest business tending the state’s prisoners in The Tower and making an occasional bonnet, it seemed all a king had to do was keep his people happy. How Charles had so signally failed to accomplish this was a mystery past her divining, but it seemed – from what little she knew – that he never kept his word and never listened to advice. That he was brought to a trial was less of a shock than the news that he was to be executed.

  ‘Could he not be imprisoned?’ she had asked her husband when he was expatiating upon the day’s events in the court then trying him as they were being gossiped about in every tavern and alehouse in London.

  ‘Nah!’ Ratsford had expostulated, treating his young wife – unusually enough – to a malodourous and carr
ied smile. Warmed with ale and the pleasing prospect of one of the world’s great being brought low, Ratsford felt uncommon stirrings in respect of the woman bustling about her kitchen. ‘E’s too slippery,’ he declaimed with a superior air, ‘can’t be trusted an’ got too many friends as wants ter make trouble, like. Better for me an’ you that he’s done away with, sent to the Devil in two parts …’ He laughed at his own wit.

  ‘But what will become of the country with no King?’

  ‘We’ll still ‘ave a bloody Parliament! Strikes me they can do the job better’n Charles Stuart.’ Ratsford had adopted a pompous tone the better to enunciate the name by which the King had been referred to in his trial. ‘All fer the best, if yer asks me,’ he said, patting his knee and beckoning to her to please him by sitting on it.

  ‘I’ve your dinner to see too,’ she had temporised, handing him a full bumper of ale to keep him occupied.

  On the day of the execution Ratsford had joined several of his friends and, like the rest of their neighbouring menfolk and a good deal of their wives, sallied to Whitehall. When he came back that evening he was roaring drunk and insisted Anne lay with him. Skilled at managing her objectionable husband, she fondled him until he spent himself and fell asleep. For months now her privities had been denied Ratsford; for months they had belonged to George Monck alone.

  The thought recalled her to the letter that lay, momentarily neglected, in her lap. She took it up again, found she was unable to read it in the twilight and lit a candle. Ratsford had not come home and while she risked interruption, she felt compelled to finish it; she owed George that, and searched out the last passage again.

  Then came the news of the King’s trial and execution, which threw a petard among the hounds. The Scots would have none of any Republic, Ormonde declared the Prince of Wales King of the Three Kingdoms and sent emissaries to me and others, including O’Neill. Under the Papist Nuncio’s influence O’Neill must have vacillated, but the rest of us gave our reply. Whether Ormonde supposed I would return to an earlier allegiance, I know not, but I knew of the great expedition meditated against Ireland and was bound in all honour, as commissioned, to serve the Parliament.