Sword of State: The Remarkable Story of George Monck

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Perhaps …’ Nicholas had conceded, unwilling to fall-out with his elder sibling. However, as man of the cloth, Nicholas was less forgiving of his wayward brother when it came to the matter of Anne Ratsford. He made his views known, pointing out to George the impropriety of him attending church in the company of his mistress and refusing to receive her in his rectory.

  Monck had shrugged. ‘So be it; that is your privilege, but I have it in mind to engage her by a handfasting,’ he said firmly.

  ‘Then she is free to marry?’ Nicholas asked sharply. ‘Remember adultery is not only a mortal sin, but a capital offence and rumour has it that she is another man’s wife.’

  ‘Rumour has laid other charges against me, Nick.’ Monck evaded the direct question. ‘Tell me, do they still say hereabouts that I was the cause of Battyn’s death?’

  ‘Battyn?’

  ‘Aye, Battyn. He that was under-sheriff of Devon.’

  Nicholas frowned and shook his head. ‘I have not heard it said for many a long year.’ The younger man adopted a thoughtful expression, as though reviewing a catalogue of gossip, leaving Monck to conclude that he had diverted Nicholas from the point of his question about Anne. He rose with a sigh.

  ‘I cannot stay longer. There is rain coming, I have a hard ride and there is much to be done at the manor.’

  ‘Aye, Tom was no better than father when it came to the estate.’ Nicholas rose and scratched his head, his eyes suddenly brightening. ‘I tell you what,’ he said, ‘let me introduce you to Will Morrice. He is a shrewd fellow and might well serve you by way of advice, for he administers our old Uncle Bevil’s affairs now he is in Abraham’s bosom.’

  Monck nodded his acquiescence and returned resignedly to the wretched business of putting the estate upon a better footing. Whether or not Morrice would prove of any help he did not know, though he had agreed to an overture being pursued by Nicholas if only to prevent him returning to moralising. But to his surprise Monck had found that his eye for detail, a military skill engendered by old Henry Hexham, revealed several areas by the means of which he could improve things and so he settled to the matter, spending hours every day either at his ledgers or walking his land and speaking with his tenants. The small amount of money he had by way of back-pay allowed him to make some modest, improving investments and he held out high hopes for the following year.

  While Anne felt something of neglect from all this, she was quick to understand that despite the rolling hills, the silver river which wound its way through the dense woodland, Potheridge was on the edge of ruin. She was also shrewd enough to know that George, in both their interests, must be allowed to rectify this, a matter in which her meddling – beyond a little encouragement from time to time – would not be appreciated. Instead she familiarised herself with the household and relieved Tom’s widow, a woman who wore her weeds heavily, of the burden of this task.

  Intelligent and practical, Anne had soon overcome most of the servants’ mistrust of their new Cockney mistress and, despite the fact that she and the Master were unmarried, had won a large measure of their respect largely by her ability to roll up her sleeves and apply herself to the meanest of the daily tasks. Publicly the household was a scandal, but ever since Old Sir Thomas had plunged the family and the estate into extremity, Potheridge had acquired an air of irredeemable decline.

  None of these considerations troubled Monck and Anne as the weeks passed into months and the anniversary of their arrival seemed not so far off. They settled easily to the way of life and Monck, devoted to his task on his farms, began to forget his military ambitions. Despite his robust attitude towards his brother he was troubled by his relationship with Anne, a factor that he would have to resolve if they were to settle at Potheridge and take up the life of a country squire and his lady. His visits to Nicholas failed to wear-down his brother’s refusal to meet Anne, or to persuade him and his wife to at least accept an invitation to stay at the manor. Nicholas’s inflexibility irritated Monck and he cursed Ratsford for not dying like a decent fellow. God knew there was enough cholera in London to kill off a dozen Ratsfords weekly and while he might die from scurvy or catch the Great Pox from the whores of Leghorn if he had indeed taken ship, the suspicion of his still being alive lay like a cloud over the lovers.

  But, to their mutual delight, they loved well and, besides that, lived well off the game that the estate provided. In their idle moments, they wandered in the woods that so luxuriantly overhung the silver Torridge. Anne was transported by delight at this truly idyllic turn in her adventure with her beloved George, boosted as it was with all the beauteous novelty of the countryside to a city-bred woman. She could not contain her wonder when Monck bade her to silence and they crept up on a badger’s sett outside which a family of the animals rolled in the twilight. On one golden evening Monck pointed out a pair of otters sporting in the shallows of the river and he tried to teach her, unsuccessfully as it happened, to tickle for trout. In turn she chuckled at the sight of Monck, his thick-set body lying prone on a little overhang of the greensward along the river’s bank, one arm in the cold water. And she clapped her hands like a child when, with a sudden motion, his arm flew up and a gleaming fish flew through the air to land gasping at her feet.

  On one particular evening in late May, as the setting sun showed through the trees and dappled the wavelets of the river with gold, the two of them were sauntering hand-in-hand along a short reach of the river of which they had become fond, when it occurred to Monck that he was perhaps being compensated for his strange, disturbed boyhood. And while they stood and watched as the otters appeared with two young, Anne’s eye was caught by the sapphire blue flash of a small bird that disappeared in the reeds seemingly as soon as it had revealed itself.

  ‘What was that?’ she asked.

  ‘A kingfisher,’ Monck replied, smiling.

  ‘A kingfisher. That seems somewhat like unto magic,’ she said, wondering.

  ‘Aye, perhaps it was.’ Monck stopped and drew her close to him. ‘I have neither ring nor keepsake upon me for you Anne, but if you wilt have me I am for thy handfasting.’

  Her eyes filled at this formal announcement of intent, binding between lovers even in law. Words failed her, though she tried to speak. She wanted nothing more and, after a few moments during which they kissed and embraced, she said as much.

  ‘I would have spoken to my brother long since …’ he began, his voice tailing off, ‘but for …’

  ‘But for the matter of my husband.’

  ‘But for the matter of thy husband, yes. I have not told you, but my brother has some notion … had heard some tittle-tattle that you are not free to marry …’

  ‘Think you that I did not know,’ she responded with a hint of indignation. ‘Why else would he shun me and refuse to wait upon you at the manor, for all the thirty odd miles that lie between us and him?’

  ‘I am sorry …’

  ‘’Tis not your fault, George but …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘He will not come back to me, and if he should we may buy him off.’

  Monck shook his head. ‘’T would be a precarious foundation for a marriage.’

  She drew away from him and gestured round them. ‘Not if we are buried away amid these trees,’ she exclaimed, unwilling for the shadow of Ratsford to spoil the occasion of Monck’s proposal.

  ‘Is that what we shall be, buried away amid the trees?’ He smiled sadly.

  ‘What else?’ she said simply and he shrugged. It was not only Ratsford who threw shadows. The sun was all but down now and the chilly damps of twilight were not far off. Yesterday at brother Nicholas’s he had learned that Cromwell was back from Ireland and that Sir Thomas Fairfax had been appointed commander-in-chief of a new expedition intended for Scotland.

  ‘There are rumours that Fairfax has turned the appointment down,’ Nicholas informed Monck.

  ‘Rumours, eh? Well, well, and why are we keen to chastise the Scots? Are we so set to tak
e up cudgels against the Covenant?’ All Monck’s ire against oaths was compressed into a question that was, essentially, rhetorical.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Nicholas, ‘but ’tis said that the Scottish Covenanters have agreed that if he agrees to sign the Covenant himself and to establish Presbyterianism in England and Ireland, Charles Stuart may return from exile and shall be crowned King of Scotland.’

  Now Monck, standing under the trees hand-in-hand with Anne perceived a happiness within his reach, a prospect which for an hour or so had driven all thoughts of Nicholas’s news from his mind, gave a sudden shudder at the implications of the intelligence.

  ‘You are cold?’ Anne asked rubbing his back as they turned and began to walk back to the house.

  ‘No, but grey geese are flying over my grave.’

  ‘That is not an expression I much like,’ Anne said.

  ‘No. I’m sorry.’ But the shadow of premonition had spoiled the handfasting for Monck, just as had that of Ratsford for Anne.

  *

  They did not mention their handfasting during the following week, bound by a mutual, if unspoken, agreement to suppress the matter. This had Anne privately weeping and Monck walking his land in an uncommonly foul mood and they ate in a near silence that had the servants gossiping. It was concluded that the Master had tired of his doxy and, while they would be sorry to see her go for she was a pleasant enough creature when the Master smiled upon her, they would not be surprised. Monck failed to visit his brother at the beginning of June, but they bumped into each other as Nicholas, thinking George to be ill and having heard something of trouble at Potheridge threw off his prejudice, exercised a Christian forbearance and made his way towards the old house in which he had spent his childhood, unlike its present resident.

  Both were embarrassed when the fortuitous encounter took place. Nicholas sought to explain his whereabouts but failed and neither man knew what to say for a moment. Then Monck sighed and offered his hand up to Nicholas on his nag.

  ‘Damnation, Nick, I have need of thy company and thy advice. Come, walk with me.’ As the two men fell in step Monck admitted a degree of discord but wondered how it had reached Plymtree until Nicholas revealed he had received a letter from their joint sister-in-law. Suddenly confidential, Monck outlined the problem of Ratsford and the situation as regarded Anne before falling expectantly silent.

  ‘So you have plighted your troth?’

  ‘There was a handfasting of sorts,’ Monck explained awkwardly.

  ‘But you have no evidence of the husband’s death?’

  Monck shook his head. ‘No. Only of his desertion and that is mere circumspection.’

  ‘So any form of marriage, even a clandestine ceremony in the Fleet or at the Mint would be bigamous.’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  Nicholas stopped, facing his brother who was compelled to stop and stare at him. ‘Then there is nothing I can do for you.’

  Monck stared at his brother, then looked away. ‘No.’ He sighed. ‘Well then, we shall have to continue our life of sin,’ he said shortly. ‘Will you come to the house and meet the lady?’

  ‘I think it better that I should not.’

  ‘Huh. Very well. Then good day to you brother Nicholas,’

  Nicholas Monck watched as the sturdy figure strode off. He shook his head. ‘No good will come of this,’ he said to himself, before turning his horse, remounting and heading back on the long ride to Plymtree.

  *

  Monck returned to the manor much changed and his mood rapidly transformed that of Anne. The rejection of Nicholas had ignited his old rage and, in an attempt to control it he walked with a brisk fury. Such was the swiftness of his mental processes that he was of a sudden taken by an idea. He did not tell her of it, only that he would shortly leave for London, alone, and with the intention of fully resolving the matter of Ratsford. That night they made love and the following morning the servants remarked that the Master and his mistress had broken their fast in the jolliest of circumstances. But the elation that was felt throughout Potheridge manor at the resumption of daily life untrammelled by unhappiness was short-lived, for the day brought two horsemen to the front door. The pot-helmeted cavalry cornet with a red sash jumped from his mount with a peremptory air of expectation, handing his horse’s reins to the jack-booted trooper that accompanied him. Having gained attention at the door the cornet thumped into the house asking for General Monck.

  Anne appeared and offered refreshment while word was sent for the Master who was in the woods hunting a fallow buck for the pot. When he arrived home the two men retired for half an hour, after which the cornet remounted his horse and he and his companion clattered away.

  ‘What is it, George?’ Anne asked anxiously, guessing it was summons the men had brought.

  ‘Oliver is repaying a debt …’

  ‘What mean you? He does not owe you money, does he?’

  Monck laughed. ‘No. Something of greater value. It does not matter. I am requested to join the Army and am appointed a Supernumerary Colonel and Acting Lieutenant General of the Artillery.’

  Anne had no idea what any of this meant except that, from the look of him, there was no question that Monck was about to leave her. He saw what was in her mind, stepped forward slipping his arm about her waist and before she had a chance to remonstrate said: ‘This will settle all matters, both between ourselves, for we shall be married upon my return, and between myself and Parliament …’

  ‘Parliament?’ she queried with a frown.

  ‘They reprimanded me, Anne, let me go upon an excuse. Oliver knows the truth and is reinstating me.’

  She did not – could not – understand the import of what he was confiding but he was again, suddenly, the great man she had been in awe of when she had washed and ironed his shirts in The Tower. She knew she had neither the power nor the right to stand in his way, though her heart sank within her.

  ‘What of me?’ she whispered.

  ‘You will stay here. You will be safe and you may continue to run the house, God knows someone must. I shall send word for Nicholas and you shall meet him before I go. Come, all will be well and for the best …’

  ‘What of my husband?’ she hissed, fearful of someone overhearing them, for the house seethed with the news of the cavalrymen’s visit and seemed already disturbed at the prospect of changing circumstances.

  ‘I shall deal with the matter, as I promised, and we shall be married. It is already June, Anne. I shall be back in London by the winter. Ratsford will be disposed of and you and I shall marry.’

  She was confused, at once happy and terrified, on the verge of tears and forced to smile. Men did not always return from war and even Lieutenant Generals of whatever it was were no proof against sword thrust or shot any more than the beautiful fallow buck that hung bleeding in the yard.

  In the two days that followed she watched him, as though from a great and increasing distance, make his preparations for departure, ordering the affairs of the estate, entertaining Nicholas and his wife at an awkward but not entirely unsuccessful dinner, gathering his kit and selecting his three horses. She felt the steady encroachment of separation, its icy fingers prising them apart as she privately realised something else, something that uncertainty prevented her from informing him of, though she wished to: that she might have conceived.

  And then he was gone.

  DUNBAR

  September 1650

  ‘Steady men, steady!’

  Monck’s voice seemed lost in the drizzle and the close blackness of the wet night. He looked left, along the line of his own pike-men whose shapes were soon indistinct in the sodden gloom, betrayed only by the pallid gleam of helmets and pike-heads. To his right Reade’s men stood in echelon, right flank refused. Far to the left and out of sight lay Hacker’s foot.

  ‘Colonel Hacker!’ he shouted. ‘Do your men stand, sir?’

  ‘As a rock, General Monck!’ Hacker’s reassuring voice called back out of the ni
ght.

  Monck’s position lay across the main road to Berwick, along which General David Leslie’s Scots had harried them all day. Somewhere behind Monck’s rear-guard the horse and foot of General Cromwell’s New Model Army sought bivouacs and the balm of sleep amid a cluster of bothies and stone walls that formed a small deserted habitation on the road west of Haddington. The lucky few among them were wracked by no more than the pangs of hunger and the lassitude of fatigue, but most suffered the humiliating and unpredictable promptings of dysentery, the shivers of fever and ague, and all were soaked to their skins after days of retreat.

  Only Monck’s iron will and ruthless discipline had held the rear-guard to its task, as now it had faced about and awaited Leslie’s cavalry. Leslie knew his enemy; he had fought alongside Cromwell and Fairfax at Marston Moor and had the measure of his opponents. And Monck had met him before, as he had told King Charles in Christchurch garden. Always circumspect in the presence of the foe, Monck marked the encounter with particular care. Disintegration of the rear-guard, easy enough on such a wet night amid the extremity of privation, would be disastrous. The English Army in Scotland would be destroyed and if that happened – as seemed likely in the extremity of its circumstances – God alone knew what would be the consequences for England. That his rear-guard stood in the face of that awesome cataclysm was the conceit that held Monck to his charge that foul night.

  His pickets had come in half-an-hour earlier with tales of the jingle of harness and Monck’s intuition told him Leslie would make one more attack that day – or perhaps it was the first of the next, for it must be close to midnight. Monck hefted his officer’s half-pike; undeterred by the appalling conditions or the weight of his great responsibility. It gave him a grim satisfaction, for to serve ‘from the pike up’ was the only path by which a soldier of fortune – as he had once been – could begin to mount the ladder of military achievement and this melding of command of the rear-guard with the dire necessity of having to stand as a common pike-man to put heart into his demoralised men was much to Monck’s liking.