Sword of State: The Remarkable Story of George Monck

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Go on, Thomas,’ said a ruminative Monck quietly.

  ‘Glencairn is among the Trossachs. Clear him out first and drive them all north and west of the Great Glen.’

  ‘Exactly my own thoughts.’

  ‘The Clans regard all the wilderness of the Highlands their own. Leave ’em there quiet, and you will never be rid of the threat of rebellion. Not all of them have declared for their King,’ Morgan’s tone was sarcastic, but the Scots had crowned Charles Stuart King of Scotland before he had invaded England and met his nemesis at Worcester three years earlier. ‘But they will if we give ’em the chance.’

  Monck grunted. ‘I have no intention of giving them any such thing. Let us first secure the line of the Great Glen.’

  ‘It won’t be easy, George,’ Morgan said, lowering his voice.

  ‘No, I know that.’ Monck pulled the map round to see it better and smiled at the Welshman. ‘Now, pray your attention, yours too Will. I propose a strategy of conquest by forced march. We will operate five columns of which I shall command the centre, you Tom the right and the left will be led by Colonel Brayne whom I have ordered this morning from Ulster. He will land and establish himself at Lochaber in the west here, in part as an assurance against treachery by Argyle, and to secure our southern flank. Colonel Daniel will remain in Strathtay and Major John Hill will act from Ruthven under your orders Tom.’

  Morgan nodded.

  ‘We will conquer by degrees,’ Monck went on, ‘establish our strong points, laying up our depots and stores as we proceed. We shall ravage the country as we go, leaving nothing to support our foe. A slow but methodical process, but one that will declare our intent to the enemy. We will offer clemency but at the slightest infringement of such truces and capitulations as we command, we again lay waste everything, scorching the earth to deprive the rebels of the least sustenance and at the same time turning the people against them. It is rebellion that brings on famine, not the just rule we have established. And I will tolerate no abuse of the population. Rape and looting are capital offences from this moment. Drunkenness will warrant a flogging. All column commanders will impress this upon their troops and also make it clear to the populace.

  ‘Now, the four columns operating from bases on the east coast, will be supplied by sea from London and draw their supplies from Inverness, Perth and Edinburgh; Brayne’s will be supplied through Lochaber from Liverpool. Will is setting such as must be done in motion today. We shall not move until everything is in readiness, and that includes the troops, who I am told are in need of drill and discipline.’

  Morgan nodded. ‘That they are, by God! Lilburne was a disaster, the business beyond his capacity.’

  ‘By tomorrow night,’ Monck went on, ignoring Morgan’s interruption, ‘I wish them to know that George Monck is their Commander-in-Chief, not by word-of-mouth, but by hard knocks. I shall ride through the garrisons with you Tom and we will review all battalions and squadrons. I am particular as to discipline; what I have in mind requires nothing less than a perfection in that quality.

  ‘The Edinburgh garrison has orders to parade this afternoon and this will form the basis of my central column. Every deficiency will be made good and all necessaries should be requisitioned. Boots shall be sound, every man’s matchlock serviceable and, since the enemy possess little in the way of cavalry, pikes will be stored and extra muskets issued. Those troops unfamiliar with this firearm will need to undertake training to acquire the necessary art. It will take a few weeks to accomplish this, at the same time I do not wish the rebels to learn too much of what we are preparing, so small, limited raids by our Horse are to keep them in thrall. When we do move, I wish to move with all expedition possible. The order of march will be from four in the morning to noon. The cavalry will form the van of each column, scouts are to be thrown out on each flank and the Colonel of Horse will have the duty of finding and marking out each column’s encampment. Upon arrival and before dismissal to their mess, each company and squadron is to be inspected and deficiencies made known to the column’s staff. Every man marches with one week’s bread-and-cheese, fresh water and thirty rounds of cartridge. The Horse must carry two-days’ forage, their regimental farriers extra horse-shoes.

  ‘I have sent in requisitions for all that is required, including money. We will summon Hill and Daniel to a council at Edinburgh in five days; Brayne will be informed by despatch. In the mean time you and I, Tom, must be about rousing the troops and remind them they are Ironsides. Then we will better remind the rebels of the same fact.’ Monck came to the end of his summary of intentions and looked at his two companions.

  Clarke was jotting down some notes; Morgan was smiling broadly and rubbing his hands in anticipation. ‘Diawl, but you make an old soldier contented, Your Excellency,’ he said with unfeigned enthusiasm. ‘You are right. We must strike before the entire Highlands are set alight by any successes against us enjoyed by Middleton or Glencairn. Thus far they are held, but they creep like their mists hither-and-yon…’

  ‘And it will be the weather that is our worst enemy,’ put in Clarke, more pragmatically.

  ‘Aye and the better friend to them,’ agreed Morgan.

  ‘Then we must disarm the weather and surprise the rebels,’ said Monck. ‘Besides a week’s rations, no man marches without good boots – I would have company commanders check boots as readily as they check muskets – and no infantryman marches without a length of slow-match and a tinder-box on his person.’ Monck turned to Clarke. ‘And Will, have all Colonels of Horse each nominate ten troopers as orderlies. The most intelligent men, if you please and Tom, do you select a score of the best of them to maintain our communications with London. Before leaving London I passed word to have relays of horses made ready along the Great North Road. I would have men who understand the value of their work. The rest shall maintain communications between the columns, saving half a dozen which you shall have William, to facilitate your intelligencing.’

  The first weeks of May passed in a ferment of activity. Twelve days after Monck’s arrival at Dalkeith a courier arrived with news that the out-going Lilburne’s protests had been heeded by Cromwell. Consequently, four Ordinances had been issued, greatly improving the state of the Union between England and Scotland and placing Scotland on a more equal footing with England than hitherto. Of especial help to Monck in his post as Governor of the country were the abolition of tariffs between the two countries, which would encourage trade and raise revenue. There was also an assurance that future taxation would be fair and, insofar as disarming the Clan chiefs and simultaneously appealing to the merchant classes of Edinburgh and Glasgow were concerned, ancient feudal obligations would give way to the rule of laws common to all classes of people. On the 4th Monck set the seal on his own assumption of gubernatorial power, ordering the four Ordinances proclaimed at Edinburgh’s Mercat Cross. That evening he attended a state banquet followed by three hours of splendidly explosive fire-works as red orpiment and flowers of sulphur lit up the huddled roofs of the old city in a lurid and memorable glare. The following day Monck made a further proclamation, an Ordinance of Pardon and Grace, encouraging all but a hundred named Royalists, to abandon rebellion within twenty days. Of the hundred exceptions, two dozen would be indicted for high treason and seventy-three others risked punitive fines if they fell into Monck’s hands. He also offered a reward of £200 for the head of John Middleton, Glencairn and other rebel leaders.

  Many recalled Honest George Monck’s previous tenure of the Governorship of Scotland at the conclusion of his first suppression of Royalist ambitions. His firm but fair rule had encouraged trade, businesses had prospered and the citizens of Edinburgh had felt some recovery of their self-esteem. Monck had not mocked them, nor worn the appearance of a conqueror, going among them with little ostentation, and the rigid, uncompromising discipline with which he kept his troops in hand, prevented the outrages common to armies of occupation. He could be savage in his application of a rough, military justice
upon transgressors, but no-one could accuse him of over-bearing tyranny, which he saw as inimical to his own as much as the Protectorate’s interests.

  After a second time establishing his stamp on the civil power, Monck looked next to the preparations of his new campaign. He and Morgan were often away for several days at a time, discussing the future campaign with the regimental commanders, both Horse and Foot, men like Okey, Alured and Robert Overton. All were religious extremists, hostile to the notion of the Protectorate, but were old colleagues from the days of his first Governorship and his first Scots campaign, and good soldiers to boot. Monck’s attempts to reconcile these officers to the business in hand appeared successful as he and Morgan reviewed their troops and inspected their small arms. The two men tirelessly mustered equipment, checked cannon and horses; called for inventories of horse-shoes, picks, shovels and entrenching tools; saw to victualing and secured contractors, establishing a regular ammunition supply and the means to transfer powder and shot into the forts that would become his forward bases. They hired mobile forges, even making up bad roads where any such roads existed.

  Monck sought out his old physician, James Macrae, the man who had attended him throughout his illness of the spotted-fever, and persuaded him to set up a military hospital.

  ‘Ah, wull agree on one condition, sir, and that is that you offer sich comforts to the enemy wounded taken in battle. Ah ha’ nae sympathy wi’ their rebellion, but rather otherwise. However, we shall make nae’ progress in civilisation if we treat them like animals. The better we shall bring them to our ain way o’ thinking.’

  Monck suppressed a smile; he had thought the prejudice of regarding the Clansmen as animals to be one peculiar to Lowland Scots, for he regarded them as formidable soldiers, but he held his tongue. ‘I agree, Doctor, though I must warn you that if you heal any of their chiefs, I may still hang them.’

  ‘That’s a matter fur your ain conscience, sir.’

  ‘Then we comprehend each other very well and I thank you.’

  By the third week of May Monck had moved his head-quarters from Dalkeith Palace to Stirling Castle and from here he and Morgan with their escort of troop of Horse rode over the country, pushing west towards the Trossachs and across the Braes of Doune in the direction of Glen Artney. Everywhere they went they left assurances of untroubled peace once the present rebellion was suppressed, often impressing the nervous population and dissuading them from the uncertainties of rebellion by their open conduct. Yet everywhere they sensed the watching presence of the enemy in the brooding mountains that lay to the north and west.

  Meanwhile William Clarke worked amid his own ferment. Besides co-ordinating Monck’s myriad demands, commandeerings and contracts, he processed the regimental colonels’ requisitions and appointed several Scotsmen surgeons on Macrae’s commendation. Most importantly Clarke sifted the prisoners brought in by Morgan and Daniel, offering money for a man’s skill in knowing a highland path. Two or three foolish shepherds, unwisely caught up by Glencairn, were suborned by the gleam of gold. Such men would act as guides once Monck gave the order to march. ‘It will prove,’ Clarke soothed them, ‘of greater value to your lairds to have assisted us, rather than continue in a rebellion from which thou, and they, shall lose everything.’ His long service in the north had not been wasted, nor was his pleasant reasonableness deployed in vain.

  As the days passed Monck methodically secured his line of fortresses and posts which extended from Inverness in the north-east, to Ayr in the south-west. They sealed off the glens and watched every ford that debouched into the Lowlands. Relying upon the neutrality of Archibald Campbell, the Marquess of Argyll, from whom he had heard by word of a trusted messenger who agreed to join Monck as a guide, Monck hoped to pen Glencairn in the Grampians, knowing that Middleton was still in the far north under observation by Morgan’s second-in-command.

  Out of this whirlwind turmoil came the military order by which Monck had made his name and which had enabled Cromwell’s victory at Dunbar more surely that Lambert’s spectacular cavalry charges. The carefully laid caches of ammunition and military necessaries extended out towards the wild country of the north and west; the garrisons were stiffened; cavalry patrols extended Moncks’ knowledge of the lie-of-the-land and the shady presence of the elusive enemy. But not everything went Monck’s way. Though he had foreseen his strategy might be compromised by the Scottish weather, it was not the incessant rain and drizzle of the Dunbar campaign that now blighted his preparations.

  ‘Who would have thought that the sky over this country which is so commonly covered with dark and pissing cloud would now confound us with drought!’ Monck grumbled as after one of their inspecting forays he and Morgan stamped, frustrated, into the room in Stirling Castle in which Clarke had established his staff of orderlies. Both men brushed the dust off their buff coats, their faces and hair begrimed with it, glad to gulp the proffered wine that a servant, warned by the attentive Clarke who had heard the clatter of their arrival in the yard below his window, now brought to them.

  ‘Well?’ Monck demanded shortly, awaiting Clarke’s rapid report of the current situation.

  ‘I am confident we have all we need,’ Clarke said, ‘with the exception only of pack-horses. We have scoured the Lowlands for whatever nags are yet available but we have so reduced their numbers that there is a lack of them to work the land and I am reluctant to prosecute matters too far for fear of excessively disturbing the populace.’

  Monck nodded. ‘No matter. I intend to dismount two regiments of dragoons. We may use their horses as pack-animals but their riders will need something other than their jack-boots to march in.’

  ‘Two regiments…’ ruminated Clarke, scratching at a paper then looking up at one of his scribes. ‘Wilson, what have we at Berwick?’

  ‘Five hundred pairs, sir.’

  ‘Get them sent forward, and order a thousand more.’

  ‘Is that all, Will?’ Monck asked.

  ‘No, Your Excellency, we have heard from Brayne. He is embarked from Ulster and you shall next have word from him from Lochaber if his couriers can pass through the enemy’s country, otherwise he will need to send word by way of Liverpool.’

  ‘There is no need to stay our own hand until then, it is better the enemy knows nothing of his presence until he makes it felt.’

  ‘And there is this.’ Clarke held out an unsealed letter, for he was empowered to open all correspondence on Monck’s behalf.

  ‘Good news or bad?’ Monck took the letter, raised an eye-brow at the seal and read it. When he had finished he handed it to Morgan; the Welshman let out a low and appreciative whistle. ‘Reinforcements of three thousand men, plus fifty thousand pounds, by damn! That is good news, is it not?’

  Monck nodded, walked to the window, looked at the sky and expelled his breath. ‘If it only rains and brings on sufficient grass for horse forage, I think we need delay no longer.’

  ‘Do you wish me to order prayers for rain, Your Excellency?’

  Monck turned from the window and regarded Clarke. ‘The Lord Protector assured me that the Lord of Hosts would prosper our work,’ Monck said, dourly. ‘To order prayers for rain might lead Almighty God to question our Faith in His goodness.’

  Morgan and Clarke both smiled, then Morgan said, irrepressibly, ‘Nonetheless, I shall pray in the privacy of my closet.’

  ‘Do you do it when you have returned to Inverness, Tom. ’Twould be a disaster to have you stopped on the road by a torrent of rain.’

  ‘By your leave, I shall be off tomorrow morning.’

  Monck nodded. ‘I shall not wait for our reinforcements if it rains soon. They can join us in the field. God grant they are as well set-up as the rest of the Army now is. As for us, Tom, we shall dine this night with Will, here, and Colonel Overton; I shall see you then,’ he said as Morgan withdrew in search of a basin of warm water. Monck turned to Clarke with an air of contentment he had not felt for years, not since the eve of the onset of the sp
otted-fever.

  ‘We stand upon the eve of great events,’ Clarke remarked, sensing Monck’s buoyant mood.

  ‘If only it would rain,’ Monck said, concerned that one could only hold and eager Army on the leash for so long. ‘At least enough to produce a sufficiency of grass.’

  ‘We could order more hay up from Northumberland,’ Clarke suggested.

  Monck shook his head. ‘I am reluctant to do that,’ he said. ‘We shall need winter forage; I would have the cavalry and the pack-animals live off the country.’ Monck paused. ‘May is already far gone…’

  ‘Perhaps we should pray,’ said Clarke tentatively.

  ‘Perhaps we should, but privately. I do not want the Army too much attentive to the Lord of Hosts. Not a sentiment with which you should acquaint Robert Overton or any of the other Anabaptists,’ Monck concluded, smiling at Clarke.

  ‘I am sure Overton, Okey, Alured and the rest are regularly upon their knees over the matter, sir.’

  Monck chuckled and went in search of warm water himself. ‘I shall see you at dinner, Will.’ Clarke nodded and bent once more over his desk.

  Two days later the blue sky clouded over and by nightfall it was raining. Staring out of his closet window from Stirling Castle perched high upon its rock, Monck’s eye wandered from the grey clouds over the Trossachs far to the west, along the winding reaches of the River Forth that gleamed faintly in the darkness. Its loops reminded him of the Torridge and, as the rain hissed down, he murmured contentedly to himself: ‘He maketh the desert to flower.’