Sword of State: The Remarkable Story of George Monck

by Richard Woodman

  By January 1652, despite the persistent pain in his legs, Monck was fit enough to meet John Lambert, his old colleague Richard Deane and the dozen other English Commissioners sent from London to carry out negotiations with the Scottish delegates. Most of these men were sympathetic to the plight of the Scots and, under Monck’s influence, they reduced the punitive tax Parliament wished to levy upon them too indemnify the English for the cost of the campaign. Thereafter both Monck and Lambert toiled together for several weeks in what passed for amity in the face of the Scots delegation, successfully bringing the parties together sufficiently to proclaim the twenty-one Scottish deputies to be sent south to negotiate the terms of a Union between England and Scotland. Many Scots considered this Union to be little better than the condition of a blackbird eaten by a hawk, but as trade picked up and prospered, many Scots – particularly the mercantile classes in the larger towns – became reconciled to the turn events had taken and Monck’s government was seen by some as less rapacious that that which had preceded it.

  *

  ‘Well sir,’ Lambert said, his face a mask of polite formality as he climbed into the coach alongside Monck, nodding at William Clarke sitting opposite and clutching Monck’s voluminous leather despatch bag, ‘I am sorry for your indisposition and hope it does not long compromise you.’

  ‘That is kind of you,’ Monck replied with equal politesse as he made way for the younger man.

  ‘I am of a mind to reach London without delay,’ Lambert added, revealing the true reason for his concern.

  Despite the pain in his legs to which he had, perforce, to reconcile himself, Monck smiled, penetrating Lambert’s smoke-screen. It was a month later and their task on conciliation between the Scots and the occupying English was over. Monck was relieved of his command in the face of his ill-health and had handed over his governorship to Richard Deane. Now he and Lambert shared a carriage and escort on the road south.

  ‘You will be eager to reach Dublin, no doubt,’ Monck remarked, referring to Lambert’s new appointment.

  ‘When the public service calls, General Monck, a man must answer it with some despatch,’ Lambert remarked sententiously.

  Monck grunted, recalling Lambert, like Clarke, was a lawyer. ‘Indeed, General Lambert, indeed,’ he agreed drily.

  They parted company at Berwick after a night’s lodging there, Monck pleading the pain in his legs required a slower pace than that upon which Lambert insisted. The younger man agreed to leave the conveyance to the invalid. Clambering onto the horse he had ordered be made ready, Lambert looked down at Monck as he stood beside the open door of the carriage to bid him farewell. ‘I give you God’s love, General Monck.’

  ‘God go with you, General Lambert.’

  Monck watched Lambert and his escort of Ironsides clatter away down the London road. ‘There goes ambition,’ he thought to himself, staring after the younger man with a tinge of envy. He had nothing to reproach himself for; his tenure of the chief command in Scotland had been the nearest thing to a triumph that the head of a victorious army of occupation could achieve. Even now Deane had begun the last phase of the pacification of Scotland in the English interest, but Monck nevertheless nursed a sense of grievance that his fever and its after-effects had deprived him of that final triumph. Not only was his sense of self-worth cheated, his disease had robbed him of some private wealth. It was, he felt, a high price to pay, in all senses of the phrase, for the door of opportunity was, he felt, now closing in his face.

  Before leaving Edinburgh he had written to Anne, telling her that he was coming south and hoped to be with her before the end of the month. She had had a long wait, a wait that must have tried her sorely, for she had written to him herself, her short, painfully contrived missives reaching him by way of the Army despatches.

  Now, as Lambert and his troop of cavalry rode off, Monck looked about him, breathing in the sharp morning air before submitting to the stuffy confinement of the coach. He stared back along the road to where it crossed the River Tweed which sparkled in the early morning sunshine, unconsciously rubbing his aching legs. He could not then know that the pain would trouble him for the rest of his life, nor that he too would one day cross the Tweed on an occasion infinitely more momentous than Lambert’s hurried progress or his own slow retirement. At that moment it seemed that he had done all a man might reasonably be expected to do in the service of the Commonwealth.

  Turning to the open door of the coach he nodded to the cornet commanding his now reduced escort, clambered in and subsided with a groan upon the padded seat. He nodded at William Clarke who had, in accordance with the etiquette, entered the coach some moments earlier and had been patiently awaiting his chief. A minute later the equipage lurched forward as the horses’ hooves struck the stones and they took up their burden.

  ‘Think you we left Scotland in a better state than we found it, Will?’

  ‘I have no doubt of it, sir.’

  ‘But they did not invite us to improve them,’ Monck responded.

  ‘No, sir, they did not. But some things are best left to God.’

  Monck smiled and looked at Clarke. ‘Do you truly think that all that happens is God’s will?’

  ‘Well … I, er …’

  ‘Or does man purpose what his ambition drives him to and is it God’s function to act as moderator?’ Monck paused as Clarke considered this proposition. But any response he was considering was cut short by Monck. ‘Come Will, thy wits must need work and argument for both principles if thou art to resume thy duties pleading contrary cases in court.’

  ‘I have not thought of returning to the law, General. I am for Dundee once your own affairs are settled.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I had forgot. And you shall take your wife back with you?’

  Clarke nodded. ‘Yes, Dorothy expects to join me now matters are better settled.’

  ‘Then I wish you both well.’

  ‘And you, sir?’ Clarke asked, aware that Monck had a paramour hidden away in the West Country.

  Monck blew out his cheeks. ‘Well, once we have drawn our present business to a conclusion in London,’ he said, nodding to the despatch case behind Clarke’s legs which contained the documents to be laid before Parliament as justification for Monck’s governorship, ‘then I think I must try Bath and discover what relief the waters might provide for my distemper.’ He paused, then went on, ‘I shall not be called upon to serve again for my health is too broken down.’

  After a few moments of silence as Clarke digested he said, ‘Should you change your mind, sir, or should you be summonsed to take upon yourself further duties for the common weal I beg that you recall me to your service, sir.’

  Monck studied his colleague for a long time and then nodded. ‘Very well, though it is unlikely enough. But you have been indispensable Will, and I am indebted to you.’

  ‘It has not been a hardship, sir, to serve under you,’ Clarke said.

  ‘I am truly touched, Will, and I thank you for it.’

  An easy and companionable silence grew between them as each became lost in his own private thoughts. The curtailment of his Governorship of Scotland may have deprived Monck of full recompense but there was no denying Parliament had voted him a handsome sum of money for his services. There was some consolation in that, to be sure, and although he was in for a damned tedious journey, at least at the end of it he would see Anne. Bath, he thought, would provide a cure for his sorry carcass if any cure was to be had, and then they could lose themselves in the green loveliness of the Torridge valley, marry and enjoy a quiet life. Once he had …

  He looked at Clarke. The man had fallen asleep, his head lolling as the carriage jolted its uncomfortable way south. Clarke was clever, his barrister’s sharp mind had made him a smart collector and sifter of intelligence and he had embraced Monck’s methods as if they had been his own. Indeed, as the head of Monck’s Intelligence Department he had had access to all manner of secret information, some of which lay in the satchel tu
cked behind his legs. For perhaps half an hour Monck considered seeking Clarke’s advice on the question for which he had assured Anne he had found an answer. The problem was that the answer required him to hazard his honour as much as his honesty and while he had been minded to gamble upon that two years ago, he was less certain now. Of a sudden he resolved not to involve Clarke. Such a man might be helpful, but Monck had no further appetite for selling his soul as a hostage to fortune. He knew himself not to be one of fortune’s favourites like John Lambert. Some men fell naturally into the way of advantage and saw their good luck as a reward for virtue. Lambert was one such and Oliver might have been another except that Monck divined him to be a man of honest humility, a true God-fearing man.

  Monck shuddered at the train of thought thus initiated, looking up sharply to see whether the sudden movement had disturbed Clarke, but the younger man remained asleep. Why was he so troubled about his own honour? And how come Cromwell obtruded, as if dragged from the recesses of his own, inner self to somehow reproach him. The thought puzzled him so that he frowned, his weather-beaten brow furrowing with the effort of thought as he disinterred the object of his mental quest with an audible gasp of horror.

  It was Oliver, of course; Oliver who had taken his all-or-nothing advice over defeating the Irish and had in consequence laid waste to Drogheda, burning those who had taken refuge in its church. The horror of it had penetrated Monck’s fevered unconsciousness even as he had languished on his sickbed in Edinburgh, the high fever augmenting its hellish terrors. That one might plead military necessity was one thing, but Oliver boasted of it before Parliament as if it were a redemptive act. Monck had never advised that. He slumped back into the hard cushions, a sheen of sweat on his features: it was all too late now. Dunbar had supervened, the business of Scotland had occupied him and so it was not until now, in the hours of enforced idleness when he had to answer for his own conduct before the Bar of the Commons that Monck had taken stock. Why had Cromwell, a man destiny had placed in high and influential office, failed to grasp the precise tenets of his profession as Monck had done? Why had he not tempered his conduct in the way that Monck had himself outlined in his Observations on war, for such must be obvious to a man as intelligent as Oliver? Had Monck overplayed his hand when he advised Cromwell at Milford? Perhaps.

  ‘Too little of the fox,’ Monck murmured to himself.

  ‘Wh-what is that you say, sir?’ Opposite Clarke started awake.

  ‘Eh? Oh, nothing, I must have been talking to myself.’

  Clarke’s intervention brought Monck out of his gloomy introspection but reminded him of something else, something quite different unless it was a similarity of misfortune. ‘I was just thinking that while in London I should wait upon Bishop Wren …’

  ‘You would return to The Tower?’ Clarke was puzzled.

  ‘Aye. The man has been there too long and must want some amusement.’

  ‘He will stay there yet some time,’ Clarke added.

  Monck nodded. ‘Yes, that is quite probably the case.’

  But the contemplation of executing a good work had soothed Monck’s troubled mind a little so that, as the coach lurched and bumped along, he too fell into a fitful doze. The Tower reminded him of Anne and their early meetings. Oliver must make his own composition with God. God would know the difference between the intentions of the two men. George Monck would visit Wren and, in passing through London – and all alone – he would lay the ghost of Ratsford.

  Read on for the first chapter of The Tempering: Book Two in the Sword of State series

  SWORD OF STATE

  THE TEMPERING

  LONDON

  March 1652

  Monck pushed the empty platter away from him and took another swig at the tankard of small beer provided by his landlady. It tasted sour in his mouth, adding to the black mood which had dogged him all day and was exacerbated by the rattling shutters which told that outside March was going out like a lion – and a wet one at that. He was angry with himself – furious, in fact – aware that he had drunk excessively last night when dining with Lord Conway. Ned Conway had served with him in Ulster and Monck’s enjoyment of his old colleague’s company had led him to say too much about himself. Now, twenty-four hours later, he chid himself: it was true that he was bored by apparently useless weeks of waiting in London, but that was no excuse for a loose tongue. Always a guarded man, Monck had let slip his caution in the conviviality of the meeting by revealing his intention to abandon his military career and then marry. His only consolation was that Conway went to bed a good deal drunker than Monck himself, for the General had a prodigious capacity for wine, one of the many features of his remarkable character that impressed itself upon his subordinate officers. Moreover, Monck thought, raking over what he could recall of the detail of their conversation, Conway had gone to his bed with the impression that Monck’s intended was the widow of Ned’s uncle, Edward Popham. If that was the case, he had perhaps not compromised himself as much as he thought, though the lady concerned might not think so, should she hear of the impropriety. Well, the milk was spilt now but, had his idle presence in London not hinged on the question of matrimony, Monck would have long ago joined Anne in the old manor-house at Potheridge on the banks of the Torridge in Devon where she patiently awaited his long-delayed return. She had expected him there after he had taken the waters at Bath, seeking a cure for his bad legs but he had instead returned directly to London, unwilling to put her in danger until this whole damnable matter was cleared-up; after all, adultery was a hanging offence and Monck had earned a deep respect for the rule of law.

  He emptied the ale-pot, leaned back in his chair and regarded the room in which he was quartered with a jaundiced eye. After his long service in Scotland, ended by a near-fatal attack of the spotted-fever that had apparently wrecked his health, he had hoped to go home to Anne and Potheridge. Instead he was stuck here, in cheap lodgings in Westminster. The twin candles on the small table at which he sat guttered as the gale outside penetrated the room and set the shadows about him dancing on the grubby walls. He had endured far worse quarters during his long years of campaigning, to be sure, often sleeping in the open, wrapped in his cloak.

  ‘Dunbar,’ he murmured to himself. He had slept in his sodden cloak that night, by Heaven! He recalled the eve of the battle outside the Scottish sea-port with a wry smile, remembering with a quickening of the pulse – for their plight had come perilously close to utter catastrophe – how the English Army’s line of retreat had been cut off by Leslie’s out-numbering Scots. And how Cromwell had chewed his lower lip until it bled! But the Lord General had given John Lambert most of the credit for the victory that had so remarkably turned the tables on Leslie and so dramatically reversed the fortunes of the English Army in Scotland. Not that Cromwell had kept his own achievement out of his despatch, but the young and charming Lambert had been selected for especial praise. Monck’s own part in changing the Army’s fate had been set aside, though Oliver had left him Governor of the northern Nation while he raced off in hot pursuit of Charles Stuart and crushed him at Worcester exactly a year later.

  Was that only six months ago? It seemed almost half a lifetime to Monck as he recalled the subsequent agonies of the spotted-fever to which he had succumbed after pacifying most of Scotland. It was not just his legs that had suffered from the disease; it seemed his mind had been affected. His physician, an Edinburgh man engaged by his military secretary, the faithful William Clarke, had seemed to take some delight in explaining to the English commander, that ‘his fever o’erheated his brain which, simmering within the skull might, might, mind ye, have a permanent effect upon Your Excellency’s mental faculties’.

  ‘In what way?’ Monck had gasped, his eyes swimming in their burning sockets.

  Macrae had shrugged his shoulders. ‘I canna tell, sir, but it might reduce one’s deductive powers. There is nae telling.’ The quack had paused, relishing his small triumph over his country’s conqueror. �
�Or it could put ye oot of sorts, induce a moodiness foreign to your nature heretofore. But one canna be certain o’ sich matters and only time will tell and time might – might, mind ye – prove a better healer.’

  ‘I am reassured,’ Monck had murmured sarcastically from his damp pillow.

  ‘Broth, sir, guid beef broth, is your best specific.’

  Monck had nodded weakly and closed his eyes. Now he thought the lugubrious Scot correct. Here was a moodiness settled upon him that was certainly foreign to him ‘heretofore’. He sighed, then another thought struck him. It was all nonsense; at the root of his black mood was the ancient shadow of a dead man, Nicholas Battyn, whose maledictions followed Monck like a gypsy’s curse. Always some sadness triggered the damnable memory of Battyn and the extreme folly of Monck’s youthful and intemperate outburst. He had narrowly escaped the gallows for his misconduct and felt the beating of Battyn to be his personal, consequential and spiritually fatal original sin. Its memory burned him even at this remove of time, assailing him at low moments, bringing its evil as explanation of every unfortunate circumstance that subsequently impinged upon him; it was as if – illogically, but convincingly – his very being turned upon it. Indeed, he could even persuade himself that King Charles’s failure to take his advice and recruit and train a small effective army before his enemies did just that, rested entirely upon the adolescent misdemeanour of his advisor – George Monck. Had not the King himself raised the matter of Monck’s intemperance when they had walked together in Christchurch garden? It was as though he, George Monck, had begun a chain of events that had led Charles to the scaffold and that the very thing Monck sought more than anything, peace for his country, had in fact been placed entirely beyond accomplishment by his own stupidity! Men who quailed before the severity of the terrible General Monck’s glare could not imagine the tough old soldier’s thoughts running through the dark pursued by such a demon! And oh, how he longed for that peace, both for himself and for his country.