Sword of State: The Remarkable Story of George Monck

by Richard Woodman

  Privately, Monck was disappointed that he was denied a sea-going command, but he was too recently returned from a long period of convalescence, most of which he had spent at Potheridge with Anne and young Kit. Here, Monck had put in hand the rebuilding of the old manor house, something which had given him a great deal of satisfaction, and Anne much contentment. As for Kit, the boy had been transformed, a mirror image of himself at the same age a delighted Monck liked to think, but without the temper he concluded ruefully.

  Although the Dutch war drew the Moncks back to London, Anne was relieved that her husband was not bound to serve again at sea. His attendances at the Admiralty Board and the Privy Council found him charged with the considerable amount of organisation necessary to fit-out the fleet at Chatham, providing all manner of necessities, as he and Pepys now discussed.

  ‘Do you have the captains’ requisitions, Mr Pepys?’ Monck asked.

  ‘All but two, and them I am promised tomorrow.’

  ‘Good; then we may consolidate them by category and thereby claim some knowledge of the capital sum involved. You have contractors’ names?’

  ‘For every commodity save anchors, but the Commissioners at Chatham state, without argument, that they have sufficient for all the ships ordered out of ordinary.’

  ‘Very well, but ships lose them, that I do know, so do you see that some extra sheet and bower anchors are available, sufficient for a contingency. Indeed, I would have an inventory taken; besides anchors, cables. In my experience, apart from powder and shot, there will be a want of cable after the first gale or the first action, whichever is the sooner… Do you have all that, Mister Pepys?’

  ‘I do, Your Grace.’

  ‘Very well. Then let us set matters in train without delay. We shall confer daily unless you find it necessary to absent yourself, going to Chatham if necessary to shake the gentlemen Commissioners who, I have found, are like bugs in a rug, too cosy for their own good.’

  ‘I was hoping to go to the Deptford Victualling yard tomorrow. There is a dearth of biscuit on account of a want of flour and the contractors argue about how many times they must bake…’

  ‘Three, sir. Three at the least or it will rot in no time.’

  Monck had thrown himself into his work as – so Gumble said, and he seemed to know – a thanksgiving to Almighty God for his recovery. There were those close about Monck who marked some falling off of his mental agility. Pepys, though in awe of him, took a young man’s view and privately ridiculed the old soldier, but was pleased as punch when Monck, aware of his reliance upon Pepys’s facility for detail, roundly complimented him.

  ‘I do not know what I should do without you, Mister Pepys,’ he had said. ‘You are proving to be the right hand of the Navy, and I am as thankful for it as I am that the two of us have been charged and left to handle this business. ’Tis far better than a council of Lords, for they would have vexed us with their attendance, yet accomplished nothing.’

  Naturally taciturn, Monck gave no outward sign that he recognised his own deterioration of mind, though that of his body plagued him. He could stand only for short periods, and he gained weight, it seemed, with every passing month, but he bent to his task with his old fervour. The two men had a prodigious uphill task, for all must be done with speed and little money. There was no lack of vexations, with or without interference, but Pepys’s indefatigable energy, founded on the rock of his master’s imperturbability, began to produce order out of chaos. Threats of retribution, or the cancelling of contracts and entirely imaginary visitations by My Lord Duke of Albemarle, seemed to galvanise even the most tardy. Monck’s reputation combined with his miraculous recovery from near-death, invested his name with a peculiar authority, so that men whose fortunes rested upon naval supplies, even though they were notoriously dilatory in being paid, sought to ingratiate themselves with Honest George. Somehow, Pepys reluctantly concluded, a summons or order from Monck, the great, heavy and slow man of Pepys’s appraisal, seemed to tap a deep patriotism that produced results.

  ‘They serve Albemarle more readily than either the King or His Highness of York,’ Pepys remarked one day to Clarke, who attended his old master from his new house in Pall Mall.

  ‘He has that effect upon men close to him, Master Pepys,’ Clarke confided. ‘You will not perhaps ever understand why, for you will not serve under him on campaign, but you may take it that it is so.’

  That evening Pepys walked in the garden of The Cockpit with Monck, who leant heavily upon a cane, but showed off the planting of shrubs that he had ordered.

  ‘’Tis a damnably dry year,’ he remarked conversationally, stirring the dry earth about the base of one thin and wrinkled apricot sapling that hung limply from the red-brick wall. ‘The want of water will see this fellow off…’

  ‘I hear there is plague in the City.’

  ‘Is there not always plague in the City?’ Monck asked, disinterestedly, fingering the tinder-dry leaves. ‘Where there is war or the poor in great numbers, there you will find the plague.’

  ‘This is, I am informed, a pestilential outbreak.’

  ‘Hmm. I am more concerned with the Dutch,’ Monck grumbled. ‘We shall find them ever a hard not to crack, Mister Pepys, you may depend upon it, but I flatter myself that we have laboured all we can to do for the benefit of the King’s service and place His Highness upon the best and most forward footing of which we are capable.’

  ‘Amen to that, Your Grace,’ said Pepys.

  Within ten weeks of taking up their joint task, they had completed it. The fleet was at sea seeking battle with the Dutch, flying the flag of the Lord High Admiral and sundry other subordinate flag officers including Prince Rupert of the Rhine and Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich. Monck and Pepys thereupon turned to the matter of resupply, aware that York’s ships could not long sustain themselves and there was little in reserve. Sure enough, after three weeks of blockading the enemy within the Texelstroom and enduring a series of gales, the English were compelled to draw off to Lowestoft to restock with supplies – anchors and cables included.

  Monck was at dinner in The Cockpit when Pepys arrived waving a copy of the despatch that told of an action fought between the two fleets.

  ‘Come in, Mister Pepys, pray take a seat. A glass for Mister Pepys,’ Monck motioned the servants, ‘some meat, sir. ’Tis a good saddle of mutton…’

  Pepys made his bow to Anne and sat down. Monck waved the despatch aside until Pepys had eaten his fill and then asked him to read it. When he had finished, Monck expressed his delight. ‘Twenty ships taken! And two thousand poor fellows dead but that they cannot harm us further. And our loss only one ship…’

  ‘And an old one at that, Your Grace,’ added Pepys enthusiastically.

  ‘Indeed, but a thousand or so of our seamen lost, which is a sad blow.’

  ‘But Obdam is defeated, Your Grace. Well beaten it would seem by such an account.’

  ‘They are not easy to beat, Mister Pepys. You must strike them hard and often. The war is not settled yet to our advantage, not by a single blow.’

  But if Monck anticipated further duties as the Duke of York’s surrogate ashore, he was mistaken. A sudden and peremptory summons from the King himself set him upon another path. Crossing Whitehall he attended the Royal Apartments and made his bow to Charles who sat at a table covered with a heavy cloth and weighed down with papers and despatches. These were chiefly piled before the chair occupied by Edward, Earl of Clarendon, the King’s First Minister and the Duke of York’s father-in-law. Charles waved Monck to a third and vacant chair, gesturing for wine to be set before him.

  ‘Your Grace cannot fail to have heard of the outbreak of plague in the City.’

  ‘I have heard of it, Your Majesty, certainly.’

  ‘I cannot think of a better person than you, sir, to take the necessary measures against it.’

  Monck was astonished. ‘Surely, Sire,’ he protested, ‘there are younger, fitter and better informed men than me
to assume so heavy a burden –’

  ‘No, George,’ remarked the King leaning forward intimately and lightly touching Monck’s arm. ‘There is no-one fitter, no-one with the authority, the standing and the common-sense to prevail upon others as you may do. You are well-known in London…’

  Monck looked across the table at Clarendon who, poised with quill in hand, was staring at Monck. The First Minister lowered his eyes, dipped his pen and resumed writing. The smallest of smiles played about his mouth beneath his moustache. They had not seen eye-to-eye of late, especially over the King’s marriage to the Portuguese Princess, Catherine of Braganza. Monck had been in favour of the match, Clarendon in opposition.

  ‘My Lord of Clarendon surely has a protégé better able to do anything that I might do.’

  ‘You may require the troops, Your Grace,’ Clarendon said. ‘Who better to command them and enforce obedience than yourself, sir? His Majesty has want of your services.’

  Monck looked from Clarendon to the King, whose dark, sardonic visage was half-hidden by his extravagantly wide-brimmed hat but the mouth made a slight movement, emphasised by his moustache. Monck bowed to the Earl from the waist, perceiving their strategy. Turning again to the King he stood and leaned heavily upon the table, smiling broadly.

  ‘I see the eloquence of My Lord Clarendon’s argument, Your Majesty, and confess there is good sense in it. I have not the legs to go into the country whither My Lord intends to go, and know my duty well-enough.’

  He stepped backwards and gave the King a deep obeisance. ‘Your Majesty…’ Monck backed away, aware that he had stung the King for Charles’s wide mouth was set. There had been no mention of removing the Court out of London, but Monck, dull-witted old Monck, had divined their intention.

  The King and his First Minister exchanged glances, but not a word passed between them. After Monck had withdrawn the King expelled his breath. ‘What an old dog,’ he remarked to Clarendon, not without affection. ‘Truly, My Lord, I do not know what I should do without him, for he is bidden, and he goes and one knows he will do his duty to the utmost.’

  Clarendon nodded. ‘And he sees more than most, Sire.’

  ‘Far more,’ remarked the King.

  *

  ‘You cannot stay in London, George,’ a furious Anne retorted imperiously when Monck told her the outcome of his audience. ‘I shall have none of it.’

  ‘It is not you who commands me, madam,’ Monck said uncompromisingly. ‘You have not yet risen so high, and thus far His Majesty enjoys that privilege.’

  ‘George! That is monstrously unkind of you!’

  ‘It is nothing but the truth, the other half of which is that you shall not stay in London.’ Monck’s tone mellowed; he was thinking of their twelve year-old son. ‘You and Kit shall go down to Potheridge –’

  ‘No, that I shall not do, not if you are staying in London. I shall go to New Hall; ’tis nearer and, from time-to-time you may find it convenient to visit us.’ Anne knew she was beaten.

  ‘Very well. There is much to be done at New Hall.’

  ‘Shall we take the Clarkes thither? Dorothy sent word that William is unwell… No, no, it is not the plague,’ Anne added hurriedly as she realised the interpretation her husband put upon the news. ‘She speaks of a weariness.’

  ‘Well, that is common enough,’ Monck grumbled, pouring himself a glass of wine.

  ‘You have worn him out, George. The poor man has not your strength which all say is remarkable.’

  ‘Do they, now? Well, if they do they do not know of the discomfort I feel in my legs.’ He eased himself down in a chair which creaked under his bulk. He caught her eye and saw the concern she had for him and smiled at her.

  ‘You are a great man, George. ’Tis flattering that the King chooses you of all men.’

  ‘Huh,’ Monck grunted. ‘He plucks me upon the string marked duty and will in a day or two, depart with the Court to Newmarket or some other such place where he may tumble Milady Castlemaine until his pecker rots…’

  ‘George! That is disgusting!’

  ‘I entirely agree with you. Perhaps it is more fitting that I call it his sceptre, for he demeans his office with its pokery.’

  *

  ‘Sir William,’ Monck addressed Morice, who acted as Secretary to the specially convened committee of the Privy Council, as he wound up their fifth meeting, ‘do you make out an Order that without delay a new pest-house shall be built hard-by St Giles-in-the-Fields. My Lord Craven is, I learn, constructing another at his own expense; you shall send him a letter of thanks.’

  ‘Certainly, Your Grace.

  ‘And finally,’ Monck went on, ‘My Lord Mayor must be prevailed upon to pay for more lime, of which we stand in great need. That, I think, summarises the sense of this convocation, does it not?’

  Monck looked round the table at Lord Arlington, the Earls of Southampton and Manchester, and the Duke of Ormonde. Morice, meanwhile, completed his rough draft of the minutes. The handful of men held the great offices of state and, but two months earlier would have considered the plague a disease of the poor. Now it was plain to all that the hot, dry summer had fanned the contagion into a terrible epidemic. The ditches, runnels and choked rivulets that fed the Thames with the City’s sewage had all but dried up; the stench of shit rivalled that of the dead who were dragged out of their houses by those willing to undertake the task at the wages of desperation. The disease was no respecter of rank or birth, and a man fit at breakfast might be dead by dinner-time, so swiftly did the evil miasmas spread. Not even the burning of loose gun-powder or the breathing of posies or the scent of oranges turned aside the wrath of God, as preacher after preacher sermonised, adding to the fear that stalked the streets. Even Thomas Gumble who, in an access of loyalty, had refused to leave Monck’s side, had found sincere avid prayer no bulwark against terror, leading to the inevitable belief that God willed it upon the King and his people. The reason was not hard to discern. The licentiousness of King Charles’s Court, copied a thousand times by his now unfettered and un-Puritanical subjects; the vengeance wrought against the Godly dead, especially Cromwell; the vile and malicious harrying of the Regicides; the disbandment of the Army of the Lord of Hosts, all such acts of vengeance removed from the Hand of God Himself, had conduced to inflame the Almighty to His own Great Act of Retribution.

  The noblemen rose solemnly from the table to take wine before they departed.

  ‘They say it came from the Continent by ship,’ Morice murmured.

  Arlington demurred. ‘’Tis a disease of Jews, Catholics and Dissident fanatics,’ he responded with an aristocratic assurance. ‘They huddle in their conventicles in private houses, encouraging the miasmas which soon blow through their neighbours’ dwellings and so spread with such incontinent rapidity that no man, woman nor child is safe but by covering their mouths by a cloth of fine silk.’

  ‘It cannot have come by ship,’ remarked Manchester, ‘for it was first recorded in… where was it? Long Acre?’

  ‘Aye. Two Frenchmen died of it there.’

  ‘Ah, Frenchmen! Another pox from that accursed people.’

  ‘It was found elsewhere too,’ said Morice, voicing reason.

  ‘By what means doth it leave a ship and come ashore?’ Manchester pressed.

  ‘It went thither by the carriage there of bales of cloth imported from Antwerp.’

  ‘Some fools are placing the spread of it on rats,’ added Ormonde. ‘If ’twas the case, we should see it more often and more consistently.’

  ‘’Tis possible the rats are infected, ship-borne rats especially.’ Morice ventured, looking about him. The truth was they had no idea beyond knowing that if a person breathed tainted air, within hours a black sore, or bubo, would appear, quickly followed by a headache, chills, pains in the joints and the back, breathlessness and high-fever. In seven out of ten cases delirium and death soon afterwards followed, sometimes in two hours, more usually in six.

  ‘Is this
the distemper Your Grace took some years ago?’ Ormonde asked, turning to Monck. ‘If so you have been uncommon lucky, for it damn near killed you, did it not?’

  ‘It was not plague that I took then,’ Monck answered, nodding, ‘for it lacked the black buboes. Mine was a plainer sickness, not so speedy as this.’

  ‘Nor so deadly, sir.’

  ‘Think thee that this is a judgement by God?’ Arlington asked of the company in general.

  ‘Upon the people? Why so? It kills without favour,’ Monck said, scoffing, but reminding them of popular opinion regarding the death of Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester.

  ‘That is true, Your Grace,’ said Manchester, ‘but the removal of the people doth mightily cast down the King…’

  ‘A judgement upon the King then?’ It was Monck who articulated the thought that few dared speak of. ‘For if the King hath not a people to rule he is no King, is that your argument, My Lord?’

  Manchester shrugged. ‘It must cross more minds than mine alone.’

  ‘The King’s sins are the more likely to give him the pox,’ said Monck dismissively, easing the mood of their Lordships, who laughed uncomfortably at the prospect.

  ‘I have heard,’ said Arlington, ‘His Majesty is greatly taken with Colonel Cundun’s device…’

  ‘Oh, that is an old thing.’

  ‘But much in want now and most appropriate that it cometh from the Guards!’

  ‘’Tis said Cundun will get a step in rank for it.’

  ‘He should have a Peerage if he keeps the King from the pox!’ laughed Manchester.

  ‘My Lords…’ Monck paid his respects and left them to their idle chatter and their salacious laughter. Whether or not Charles had acquired the habit of bedding all and sundry as a consequence of his long years of exiled idleness, Monck did not find anything the least amusing in the King’s low cunt-itch.