Sword of State: The Remarkable Story of George Monck

by Richard Woodman

  He was also obliged to write to the Lord Protector, protesting that his soldiers had served the Protectorate well, having marched over one thousand miles, and were yet wanting pay. Until the dividends of peace manifested themselves, the revenues raised from taxation had fallen short of the required amount by one third, and the cost of the war had been twice what had been allowed; a further subsidy from England was therefore essential. Thereafter, Monck assured Cromwell, this Country is now likely in a short time to be in a settled posture. He asked for relief; his legs were again troubling him; he longed to see Anne and little Kit.

  The Lord Protector replied: Monck was to stay on Scotland, his presence there being indispensable. However, when he considered his government settled, Monck might send for Anne. After the winter rains, he wrote to his wife, we shall all three be united again.

  *

  Buoyed-up by the prospect of having his family close in the New Year, Monck and the ever-faithful William Clarke – whose wife Dorothy had joined him at Dalkeith – settled to the business of governing Scotland from Dalkeith Palace. Although Monck had maintained a score and a half of strong-points across the country, he now drew-up plans for augmenting the chain of massive stone fortresses begun by Richard Deane, intending to add to those at Ayr, Perth and Inverness, two more at Inverlochy and Leith. Morgan remained in Caithness, an insurance against any revival of the Royalist cause under Middleton, and Overton, raised to Major General, was deputising for him in Aberdeen, where the flower of Monck’s Army was stationed. The pacification of the countryside combined with Monck’s regulations, began to improve the economic situation south of the Great Glen while Monck’s measures taken to remove Lilburne’s ill-advised constraints on religion but to remove the political power of the Presbyterians, drew some of the sting of the sectarianism that Monck neither understood nor would tolerate. Thus, as the winter settled its grip he had high hopes for the coming spring.

  He succeeded in dissuading Cromwell from reducing his forces, managed to secure their pay and even allowed some of his officers to take leave in London from where a warning letter came from Clarges who, as Commissary-General for the English Army in Scotland and responsible for Monck’s supply, was himself rising as a man of influence under the Protector. This convocation of colonels, Clarges wrote in confidential disparagement of Cromwell’s constitutional experiments, is eager to throw over Cromwell’s Protectorship and restore the Republic under the Army. I have heard some say that the best trained troops are those you command in Scotland and there are here at this time men from thence who conspire against you, even to the point of your life. I beg you therefore to take care…

  Already suspicious but undaunted by yet another threat to his own life, Monck consulted Clarke who had got wind of something brewing.

  ‘I had not sought to trouble Your Excellency until I had some evidence,’ Clarke had responded, promising to look further into the matter. Then, two days later, he came to Monck in an entirely uncharacteristic fluster and an expression that spoke of extreme distress.

  ‘What’s amiss?’ Monck asked immediately he saw Clarke’s state.

  ‘I have been asked, confidentially of course, some questions touching your movements in the next week…’

  ‘Ha! They wish to murder me!’ Monck’s laughter was almost as shocking to Clarke as the revelation that senior officers with whom they had so recently campaigned, could turn upon their Commander-in-Chief in so brazen a manner.

  ‘He seemed unmoved,’ he remarked to Dorothy that night as, restless and unsleeping, he revealed to his wife the cause of his anxiety.

  It took little digging, assisted by the discreet arrest and interrogation of certain officers, to discover a plot to assassinate Monck and take the Army south. Concentrating the remainder of the troops in England on the force marching south under Robert Overton, the Republicans intended to overthrow Cromwell and his Protectorate and pronounce martial law. Monck moved with ruthless speed, arresting several of his senior officers and arraigning them before a court-martial. Colonel Okey was acquitted, but deprived of his command, Alured was condemned, cashiered and imprisoned, others were dismissed. Most disappointing of all was the recently promoted Robert Overton who, ironically, had been Cromwell’s protégé. He was found to be up to his neck in conspiracy and was sent south to Cromwell under armed guard; once in London the Lord Protector committed him to The Tower.

  But it was in the final suppression of the Royalist uprising that Monck showed his true mettle. Ever contemptuous of conspirators like Overton who betrayed their trust amid deceit, Monck’s attitude to those who espoused a cause openly led to him adopting a pacific policy to the men against whom he had so recently taken the field and whom he had harried so spectacularly through the wilderness. Terms were offered to Glencairn and other Chieftains. Several, including Glencairn, were allowed, even encouraged, to raise troops for foreign-service as mercenaries, thus permitting them a means of preserving their honour and providing for themselves and the remnants of their followings.

  Others simply capitulated.

  DALKEITH

  Spring 1655 – Summer 1658

  ‘They say thou bit out the throat of one of Brayne’s men and thereby escaped capture.’

  Clarke looked at the man standing before General Monck. His plaid about his shoulders, yet otherwise dressed as a Stuart gentleman, the prisoner was young, strong and held his head high, smiling defiantly at Monck’s bulky figure. A man of vivid imagination, Clarke half-thought to see the man’s smile disfigured by bloody teeth, for this was Cameron of Lochiel, Sir Ewan Cameron, Ewan Dhu, the Wolf-slayer, most intransigent and determined of the Clan Chiefs whose fearsome reputation preceded him to Dalkeith, whither had had come in voluntary submission.

  ‘They say you invite your enemies tae dinner,’ Lochiel riposted.

  ‘Those that I do not torture,’ Monck said, drily.

  ‘And how do you decide between the twa alternatives?’

  ‘Under threat of the rack most confess to their support for Charles Stuart and are thereupon released upon promise of good conduct.’

  This seemed to perplex Lochiel, for he asked: ‘You extract one oath having compelled a man to abjure another?’

  ‘I ask none to swear any oath,’ replied Monck. ‘I have neither faith nor do I set any value in such things as oaths.’

  ‘Well nae, o’course not; you hae long since broken your own oath to the King’s faither.’

  ‘I never swore any oath to King Charles,’ Monck said, his voice level. ‘’Tis better to look a man in the eye and ask him if he will, upon his honour, undertake to comport himself according to the laws and principles of my Government.’

  Lochiel smiled again. ‘And what are sich laws and principles?’ he asked, his tone richly sarcastic.

  ‘They are simple, Sir Ewan,’ Monck said mildly. ‘To reconcile a proud and free people to the notion of submission, good governance requires the removal of all reasons for revolt. One does not oppress, nor take away all hopes of recovering the fullness of liberty, but hold out the prospect of opportunity from good obedience. I seek to assist the weak and weaken the mighty, a prospect you yourself might not welcome, but which is requisite for the good of all. Therefore the necessity of acting in a fair way…’

  ‘A fair way!’ Lochiel exclaimed furiously. ‘What say you to fairness when you burn every man, woman and child out of their hames?’

  ‘I say, sir,’ Monck replied, an edge to his voice that sounded warning to Clarke if not to the young Chieftain, ‘that there would have been no burning had there been no rebellion, and if there is more rebellion, there will be more burning. It is a method you use among yourselves when you proceed against each other. Furthermore,’ Monck went on, suppressing the angry Lochiel’s protests, ‘there are those among your countrymen – especially here in the Lowlands – who value a quiet and prosperous life and regard your own lordship over the misguided Clansmen as an aberration and a dictatorship worse than that of the Lor
d Protector and myself.’ Monck paused, then added with an air of finality: ‘You are beaten, Sir Ewan, for all your bloody tearing out the throat of a poor soldier and, while I acknowledge the courage of your resistance of which I have read copiously in Colonel Brayne’s despatches, you stand before me now, a surrendered prisoner.’

  Lochiel considered Monck for a moment, judging his captor with a penetrating eye, the scrutiny of which Monck bore without a flicker of discomfort. ‘And what if a man, fearful of the rack, gave his promise of good conduct?’

  ‘Why, I should assure myself that it was freely given…’

  ‘Despite the threat of horrid pain…’

  ‘Despite the threat of horrid pain, yes, for I, or one of my officers, or William Clarke here, would extend the hand of friendship and the conclusion of honourable agreement, such being better and more effective than any oath.’

  ‘They tell me,’ Lochiel changed tack, ‘that your ain officers sought to have you killed, men who had followed you through the mairvellous lang march of your Army.’

  Monck chuckled. ‘Sir Ewan, you well know there are as many opinions as to how best to govern – by Monarchy, by Parliament, by Committee, by Clan Chieftainship, howsoever seems best to the consenting parties – as there are birds in the air. The same factionising splits religion which, it seems to me was not at all the intention of Our Saviour but, since the chief difficulty in both cases is that of general consent, the only option at any particular time is to hold to the principle which best conveys the greatest good to the greatest number. Your rebellion served no-one but Charles Stuart and perhaps those among you who could guarantee some rewards for your pains. Your poor Highland Clansmen will ever be disdained by Charles Stuart and his ilk. Recall how seriously he took the prospect of governing them the last time he raised an army in Scotland. Not content with the throne here, he marched straight into England to claim the greater prize.’

  Lochiel was silent and Monck waited patiently for him to speak. ‘I threw myself upon your mercy, my Lord General,’ he said at last, ‘for I had conceived a respect for you as a warrior… but…’ He faltered in obvious distress, casting his eyes down.

  ‘As to those I invite to my table, Sir Ewan,’ Monck said, affecting not to notice Lochiel’s agony of conscience, ‘I delight in contentious conversation and hope to prove that greatness – for which I look to you, being only myself a serving soldier – may be argued out of persuasion but thereafter established as conviction.’

  Lochiel raised his head, a fierce pride blazing from his eyes. ‘Was it by such smug sophistry that you cast off the first King Charles, General Monck?’

  The watching Clarke revealed his astonished indignation at Lochiel’s effrontery with a sharp intake of breath, but again Monck remained cool.

  ‘What you call smug sophistry, Sir Ewan, is something more than that. Nothing is cast in stone, the world is incessantly mutable, in constant flux. I purpose what I can compass. As to King Charles, I walked with him, I talked with him, and he threw over all that I advised him. I was imprisoned for him and I never cast him off. I am loyal – perhaps to a fault – to whomsoever I serve.’

  ‘And at present you serve Cromwell.’

  ‘At present I serve Cromwell, and I would remind you that Cromwell serves the Three Nations.’

  Lochiel was silent and the two men stood confronting each other for what seemed to Clarke like an age before Monck broke the silence.

  ‘Sir Ewan, it would give me, and I daresay I may speak for Master Clarke here, great pleasure if you would join us for dinner this evening.’ Monck ignored Lochiel’s open mouth and went on in the most inconsequential manner: ‘The Duchess of Buccleuch, from whom I hold this residence, is gracing my table with her presence. She is much interested in my plans for planting the garden with trees and I am sure your own opinion on husbandry would be welcome.’

  *

  Anne, when she arrived a week later towards the end of May, was not the Anne he had left in Devon. She soon showed herself as suspicious of the Duchess of Buccleuch, even a little wary of Dorothy Clarke, unable quite to grasp that her husband’s position required her to do little other than adopt a modest manner that provoked neither expectation nor comment from those surrounding General Monck. Well aware of her lack of breeding by comparison with the handful of ladies who formed the informal court of the Governor of Scotland, Anne failed to show the good sense of her brother who, in her passing through London that spring of 1655, had advised her ‘to match her conduct to her circumstances’. To his regret, Monck discovered that while motherhood had made her attentively loving to little Kit, her intelligent character had combined unfortunately with both her natural acquisitiveness and her isolation as the Lady of Potheridge to make her sharp of tongue and forthright of opinion.

  ‘She stands upon her dignity, rather than quietly assuming it,’ was how Dorothy Clarke put it to her husband.

  Nevertheless, the reunion of man and wife soon found her with child again. As for little Kit, he became everyone’s favourite. Such was Monck’s personal popularity among the rank-and-file of the Army, that the sentinels set about Dalkeith Palace were wont to present their arms upon Kit’s toddling appearance, hand-in-hand with his nurse. And since the boy possessed the robust, square-set qualities of his father, he became a firm favourite with the ladies of Dalkeith and Edinburgh. Their expressions of enchantment were a weather-vane of the increasing popularity of Monck’s policies, especially the encouragement of trade from which the exchequer’s revenues profited, and by which means the political turmoil of the previous year gradually subsided. All seemed to provide further reason for the pregnant Anne to take against her new acquaintances.

  ‘I do not see why you need to make such a fuss of these people, George,’ she remonstrated. ‘They were in open revolt against us a twelve-month since.’

  ‘They were not all in open revolt against us, Anne,’ Monck began wearily, confused by her own conflation of herself with her husband’s duty. He had hoped Anne would bring him relief from the cares of state, not add to his manifold concerns. ‘And those that were in rebellion are now the more deserving of my care – our care for you are my wife, the wife of the Governor of Scotland.’

  ‘If I am such, why do they so despise me, eh?’

  ‘They do not despise you, Anne, they are astonished by you.’

  ‘What d’you mean, astonished? How can I astonish them?’ Her voice was shrill and shrewish. ‘Because my belly is full and they liken me to an English cow?’

  ‘By not acting as they expect, but acting as you like.’

  ‘But I am as good as they…’

  ‘Then act it,’ Monck responded sharply, getting to his feet.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To walk in the park, where the birds sing sweeter.’

  ‘To plot an orchard – or something worse – with Her Grace of Buccleuch,’ Anne muttered after him with spiteful sarcasm, tears of insensate anger starting to her eyes.

  But there was more reason for her mood than mere social inadequacy, for the new baby when it arrived, to be christened George in his father’s honour, proved sickly. Anne quickly convinced herself that the rains, the mists and the cold miasmas of Scotland were chiefly to blame for the boy’s congested lungs. She began to regret coming north, for all her real love of her husband.

  *

  That July the last of the Highland Chieftains to submit, John Graham of Duchray, came to Dalkeith, explaining the arguments of Cameron of Lochiel had convinced him the Royalist cause was lost. Monck was not so sure. The intelligence network Thurloe maintained in London, complemented by that of William Clarke in Dalkeith and augmented by the Marquess of Argyle at Inverary reached into remote Caithness and extended to The Netherlands. Glencairn, approaching the end of his leave to raise troops for foreign service, though never lifting a finger in rebellion, delighted in making trouble, trouble that acutely embarrassed Monck early that winter.

  Clarke’s department
intercepted two letters. They were in the known hand of Charles Stuart and bore the enciphered superscriptions ‘2’ and ‘T’. The first was known to be Lord Glencairn, but the second recipient was unknown. As was usual, Clarke made copies and Monck reported the text of both letters to Cromwell, assuring the Lord Protector that once the letters were delivered, the mysterious ‘T’ would be revealed. Since the exiled King Charles wrote to ‘T’ in the warmest terms, expressing his pleasure at the affection and esteem in which ‘T’ held him, Monck was anxious that the two missives did not signal the rekindling of the flames of insurrection. The two letters were secretly returned to the leaky Royalist conduit through which such correspondence passed.

  A few days later the letter addressed to the faithful ‘T’ turned up inside a blank sheet of sealed paper addressed to Monck himself. In a fury Monck, obliged to write a lengthy explanation to Cromwell utterly denying any such sentiments towards the exiled Stuart, had Glencairn arrested. He was well-aware that Glencairn had made a fool of him personally – a fact of which Anne afterwards reminded him when she needed a weapon with which to beat him – but also of his spy-system.

  Cromwell – sensing the widening web of intrigue that inevitably surrounded Honest George – sent Monck word of his own amusement. He reassured Monck that he could not take such calumnies seriously. Monck was not mollified. For his part, Clarke felt his own guilt in the matter and apologised, as if he could have prevented the affair.