Sword of State: The Remarkable Story of George Monck

by Richard Woodman

  He looked again at Anne. She had taken to wearing the gold chain in bed ever since she had returned from her confinement in London, where they had stayed after their wedding at St George’s, Southwark. It had been a happy day, even though there were those among the few invited guests that thought George Monck had married beneath him, contracting a mésalliance with a farrier’s daughter. Such an attitude was an insult not merely to Monck but to Doctor Clarges who gave his sister away with every appearance of the successful lawyer. Well, Monck thought contentedly, the times were topsy-turvy and Anne had come down the aisle on Tom’s arm unashamedly, obviously and heavily pregnant.

  ‘It gives their tongues something to wag about,’ she had said gamely. The stolid victor of Scheveningen said nothing, but smiled indulgently. The child, a boy they had had baptised Christopher, had arrived twelve days later.

  Anne was dangling the gold chain over the baby whose finger-tips Monck could see reaching for it. She was making cooing noises and Monck smiled; little Kit was a sturdy chap like his father, but he had his mother’s eyes and – if his present enthusiasm was any indication – his mother’s love of gold. Anne’s acquisitiveness was understandable, for her poor origins made the novelty of wealth an almost unbearable temptation. Women had not the means to better themselves as had men; her brother – Doctor or not – could show the results of his labours, whereas Anne must always be regarded as Monck’s mistress-turned-wife. As to the love of lucre, he was not immune to its lure himself, but had been more concerned with wresting back Potheridge and its demesne from the usurers in Exeter to whom Monck’s father and late elder-brother had mortgaged it. The pinch of poverty and the humiliation that had come with it was too sharply etched in George Monck’s mind for ought else. Potheridge was his now, and Anne’s too, since they were man-and-wife, which made it little Kit’s thereafter. At least the boy would not starve, unless, from easy wealth, he became a spend-thrift and libertine, wasting in philandering what inheritance came to him in due course. Monck sighed, and stared at the ceiling, aware that some shadow hovered about him.

  Was it that Oliver had made himself Lord Protector and he – Honest George – had had a hand in it that troubled him? And had Oliver noticed the rebuke as to his conduct in Ireland, implicit in Monck’s candid remarks? And was that why he, Monck, was again appointed to a command at sea instead of Scotland? Oliver had spoken of Scotland, and Scotland was now – or so he had heard – in open rebellion. Had Clarges spoken the truth, or was he dissembling in his own interest? Did Monck rely upon his brother-in-law too much? And if he did, who else could he turn to? Or was it just the unpleasant prospect of returning to sea that had troubled his sleep?

  Then it flooded back to him: it had been the dream. He had had it several times since coming home and it disturbed him. He tried to recall the spectre. Several times, he seemed within an ace of catching it before it slipped away, eluding him.

  A burst of giggling from Anne recalled him to the present and he gazed at her as she amused and teased the baby with the heavy gold chain. And then the dream came back to him with an almost physical impact. He felt a sudden, inexplicable horror as if it was eating his mind, until he realised it had formed round his memory of the incident in Whitehall, when he had deliberately pricked Harris and drawn blood. Only in his dream it had not been Harris he had pinked with his sword, it had been Nicholas Battyn corrupted by the grave, so hideous that Monck could not recall exactly what he looked like other than his visage was vile beyond imagination.

  Monck lay back on the pillow suddenly wet with perspiration, commanding himself to pull himself together: it was only a dream, for the love of Christ! What, in God’s name was the matter with him that he took fright from a dream? From the cot the baby began to wail piteously, the noise shrill and, to Monck, disturbing. Anne was suddenly, disproportionately anxious, distraught at the abrupt transformation in her little darling.

  ‘Open the window!’ Monck said as Anne bent tenderly over her upset child.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Open the window!’ Monck repeated, flinging the bedding aside and throwing the casement wide.

  ‘George! ’Tis freezing!’ She scooped the bawling infant up and clasped him to her breast, ‘It’s snowing outside! George? George! For heaven’s sake close the window. George? What on earth is the matter?’

  Monck stood at the window in his night-shirt, apparently impervious to the cold air streaming in, ignoring his wife’s pleas. Then, as if far away in his mind he said softly, ‘there…begone,’ and pulled the window to.

  Anne looked at him askance as he turned to her, a sheepish smile on his face. ‘Have you lost your mind, George?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘I asked if you had lost your mind,’ Anne’s mood was turning savage, protectively maternal, ‘throwing the window so wide on such a morning and little Kit aggrieved over something.’

  ‘Well, he’s quiet now, so I must have done some good.’ Monck temporised, embarrassed and confused.

  Then Anne realised Kit had fallen silent in her arms. She looked adoringly down at him. ‘’Tis not you George, but his mother who quietens him.’ Recollecting why she was catechising her husband she asked, nodding at the window where he still stood, ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Open the window,’ she said a note of exasperation in her voice.

  ‘Why, I, er, I farted,’ he lied.

  Anne wrinkled her nose. ‘I did not notice,’ she said.

  ‘No, of course you didn’t, I opened the window.’ Monck turned to stare out through the glass at the heavy snowfall that whitened the patch of lawn Morice had laid according to his instruction.

  ‘What are you looking for now?’ she asked, putting Kit to her breast.

  ‘Not what, who…?’ he murmured abstractedly to himself.

  ‘Who then? she persisted, ‘Jack Frost?’

  Monck caught himself for a fool and cast the matter aside with a laugh. ‘Of course, Jack Frost! Who else?’ Anne was staring down at her child, apparently ignoring Monck, who reached for his breeches, feeling foolish and thankful the disturbing moment had passed.

  ‘You dreamed again, didn’t you,’ Anne said, looking up from the baby as he had one leg poised over his breeches. ‘You’ve been restless for days and it isn’t the child…’ She waited for his reaction but he did not know what to say and concentrated on dressing himself.

  ‘You opened the window to let out the ghost,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘Why else? Was it Battyn?’

  ‘How did you know his name?’

  ‘Will Morice knows the story and says you had nothing to do with the man’s death.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Monck sighed, then sat on the side of the bed. Anne, still with the baby at her breast, sat next to him.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘When I was in London last October I had an encounter…’

  ‘The rioting seamen in Whitehall? Tom told me all about it. He said you showed exemplary courage and went alone among them. The Lord Protector remarked upon it.’

  ‘Did he? Well, the Lord Protector does not know that I was damned near killing a man in cold blood. When it was over it was as if I had been thrashing Battyn all over again.’ Monck shook his head. ‘It has cast me down and at a time when I should have been otherwise, now that we have an heir and Potheridge is free of entailments.’

  ‘Then dismiss the matter from your mind. The George Monck I met all those years ago…’

  ‘It is not so very many.’

  ‘’Tis enough for me to know you have changed. The Scottish fever…’

  ‘Aye, the Scottish fever; Macrae was right; he told me it might have an impact upon me.’ Monck sighed and looked at Anne beside him. ‘I shall have to be gone to sea again soon, unless the Dutch plenipotentiaries put their name to the treaty.’

  ‘They will.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Monck’s look of surprise made Anne smile.

  �
��Because Tom told me it is expected daily. You will not have to go to sea but,’ she shrugged, detached Kit from her right breast and put him on the left. ‘Happily your appointment as a General in the navy provides us with a generous allowance.’

  ‘You should not think like that.’

  ‘George! You are a very great man; you beat the best Dutch admirals they could send against you and whatever the mumbling-bumbling-jumbling members of the Parliament might say about it all, you are richly deserving of proper recompense.’

  ‘The Parliament no longer exists,’ he reminded her.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she responded dismissively, turning her attention to the baby. ‘Besides, Oliver will be easier to approach…’

  Ignoring Anne’s importunity, Monck thought of Deane and Rusbridge, and the thousand other poor souls that had been gathered up in the carnage off Scheveningen. He was no stranger to death in battle, but he had never felt the entire weight of it before. The fact that Maarten Van Tromp had been among the even greater numbers of Dutch dead gave him no satisfaction, not even that it avenged the death of Richard Deane.

  ‘A sea-battle is a terrible thing,’ he remarked quietly.

  ‘It seems to me that war is a very terrible thing,’ Anne said as the baby relinquished her nipple, the milk dribbling from his mouth.

  ‘What rose-bud lips he has,’ Monck remarked, looking at Anne. ‘Much like his mother.’ They kissed and as they drew apart Monck added, ‘you must seek a wet-nurse for the little lad.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Anne said unenthusiastically.

  Monck stood and searched for his shoes. ‘Fine ladies do not suckle infants,’ he said thrusting his foot into the first of them.

  ‘Am I a fine lady, George?’ Anne rose and put Kit back into the cot where he gurgled, kicking, his little fists punching the air.

  ‘The finest I know,’ he said gallantly as she came to him and they embraced.

  ‘You must go for a walk, even in this snow. ’Twill do you good. Take a gun and the spaniels and don’t come back until you have thrown off the megrims; can you do that for me?’

  Monck smiled. ‘You and the boy.’

  He was gone all day, revelling in the snow and the sheer challenge of the elements. It reminded him of being on campaign in Scotland and he shot two hares which the bounding spaniels brought to him. When he came back there were letters from London. Tom Clarges wrote that matters with the Dutch would soon be concluded, that Monck’s anticipated returns from the East India Company were better than expected – a fact attested to by a small bag of peppercorns, which caused Monck to smile wryly – and that confirmation had reached London of the rising in the Scottish Highlands. Most confusingly, Clarges also wrote that he had ‘received intimation’ that Monck was intended for sea-service, unsatisfactory and unsettling information in view of the conclusions he had conjured out of the frozen landscape. Since the pepper was the only tangible evidence of reality, Monck drank that night to the East India Company. As for the rest, he growled at Anne, ‘it can all go hang until we hear more of it all.’

  ‘You sound more like your own self,’ she remarked, smiling at him. ‘The walk has done you good.’

  Monck grunted. Oddly, he privately agreed with her. He felt a great deal more composed in his mind and – the idea had come to him as a brightening prospect – he had made a personal decision to review the manuscript of his intended book, Observations upon War. It was a task much to his liking and he was suddenly, inexplicably, fired up to undertake it. Then it occurred to him that his irrational action in throwing open the bed-room window had been necessary to exorcise not the ghost of Battyn, but something more compelling, more immediate and more personal. Somehow all this had been conflated with the tragic death of Deane. Deane had not haunted him as Battyn had, but Deane’s death and its weird foretelling seemed in itself, presciently linked with Monck. He could not explain the conjunction; he did not need to: it simply was.

  The weeks dragged by. Monck expected recall, orders, some stirring of affairs. Reluctant as he was to leave the domestic hearth, the call of his country rang louder as the days lengthened. He wrote to Clarges, to Thurloe, even to the Lord Protector in person, urging the fleet, or at least a squadron of observation, blockade the Dutch coast once the Equinox was passed. All he received in return was a letter abjuring patience.

  On the 2nd April Monck received a summons to attend the Lord Protector in London. A conclusion to the Anglo-Dutch negotiations was said to be imminent and on the 4th the stocky figure of the hero of Scheveningen was cheered by a small crowd as he dismounted from his horse at the entrance to the Cockpit. He had ridden from Potheridge with Dick Cann and two led horses, moved by a new certainty and consequently wore the buff coat with its orange-red sash under a broad cloak, the wide-brimmed hat, baldric, sword and jack-boots that bore – not the stamp of Resolution’s quarter-deck – but the sodden field of Dunbar.

  Two hours later he emerged, nodded to Dick Cann and swung himself into the saddle of his tired horse.

  ‘Not far,’ he said curtly, tugging the horse’s head round, and heeling his right spur into its warm flank. That evening he summoned Tom Clarges to dine with him at Mistress Franks’s lodging in Westminster, a stone’s-throw from the great abbey-church of King Edward the Confessor, and a short walk from the Cockpit.

  ‘I give you good evening, George, though you should have come directly to my own house,’ said a smiling Clarges as he threw off his cloak and accepted the glass Monck held out to him. He caught then gleam in Monck’s eye and realised a profound change had come over the man. There was again that intimidating energy that he had first remarked in Monck in this very room a little over two years earlier. Gone was softening of Potheridge, matrimony and fatherhood.

  ‘I did not wish to trouble you and Mary and I needed a lodging close to Whitehall.’

  ‘We are not far off.’

  ‘No.’ Monck was pouring himself a glass.

  ‘Well?’ Clarges asked, watching Monck take a draft from his glass.

  ‘I am for Scotland, Tom. I am made Governor again. My full orders are being drafted and I leave on the 6th. Lilburne has proved a disaster and has asked to be relieved. He wrote to me and suggested that I replaced him. I am intending to be in Scotland in ten or twelve days. We must therefore stir ourselves, for there is much to be done and I shall be obliged to you for some assistance. Anne must be told. She cannot come with me while there is open rebellion.’

  ‘I see.’ After a moment’s silence as both men digested what all this meant, Clarges remarked: ‘Curiously enough, I heard from Wragg today.’

  ‘Wragg?’ Monck frowned at the inconsequence. ‘Oh, yes, I recall the man. It was here too, well, well…’ Monck stared round the room before asking, ‘what of him?’

  ‘He sought me out to tell me that he was convinced the man Harbottle’s affidavit was true.’

  ‘Great God be thanked,’ Monck laughed. ‘Then I am not bigamously married as I have heard has been said of me!’

  LONDON AND SCOTLAND

  April – June 1654

  ‘Lilburne’s neglect has, alas, greatly encumbered you, George,’ Cromwell said. ‘And for that I am sorry but I place great confidence in you.’

  Monck suppressed a grim smile. The map over which the two men had been pouring was a poor one, but it was eloquent of the difficulties of campaigning in Scotland, a matter with which both men were familiar, having tramped the sodden by-ways, their troops shitting their pants with the bloody flux under the teeming rain.

  ‘But you have done it before,’ Cromwell said, sitting and motioning Monck to do likewise.

  ‘There are some matters of protocol to adopt,’ Thurloe had briefed Monck on his arrival at the Cockpit and before he ushered him into Cromwell’s presence. ‘Concede the Lord Protector precedence in all matters and address him as “Your Highness”.’ Monck had grunted his understanding. He had no argument with such forms; they were, in the circumstances, appropriate. To
be truthful Monck would not have objected had Oliver taken the proffered Crown, but he had wisely refused what he knew would attract accusations of usurpation. It was enough that there were those in the Army who muttered against any pretensions of grandeur. For Monck rank and entitlement were indivisible from high office; he expected no less

  ‘Do you have any questions?’ Cromwell asked, looking up from the map that lay on the table between them.

  Monck shook his head. ‘No questions, Your Highness, but perhaps some apprehensions, not,’ he added hurriedly, ‘as to the conduct of the campaign, but as to the matter of reinforcements, should they become necessary, but chiefly for money.’

  Cromwell met Monck’s eyes. ‘You have the revenues of Scotland at your disposal, George,’ he pointed out, with an air of weariness.

  ‘I have had correspondence with Lilburne, Your Highness, in the course of which he wrote of the much diminished state of the National finances. I have also heard from William Clarke. He was, as you will recall, my military secretary during my previous Governorship. He informs me that having occasion to visit Edinburgh from his post at Dundee he acquainted himself that the Scottish Treasury is effectively empty. I shall have need of money to effect the public service and to fund a war-chest; I do not need to tell Your Highness that I cannot campaign without it and, since we have concluded that I must strike soon to discomfit the rebels, I must have ready funds to the sum of twenty, or twenty-five thousand pounds available to me.’

  Cromwell sighed and nodded. ‘It shall be done, though it will stretch matters here…’