Sword of State: The Remarkable Story of George Monck

by Richard Woodman

  ‘This makes me feel that the King regards you as a common man.’

  ‘Nonsense! The King has granted me privileges beyond imagination. You castigate his bastards, but if I am a Plantagenet, I am a Plantagenet bastard. And besides, Prince Rupert will be with me.’

  ‘He will?’

  ‘Aye. We are to have the joint command.’

  Anne sighed. Monck continued stroking her hair as she leant towards him again. ‘If I am killed in action,’ he said slowly, ‘which may be better than death by slow degrees and is perhaps the King’s intention, Kit’s future will be assured.’

  ‘I cannot contemplate your death, George.’ She clung to him.

  ‘He handled himself well tonight; I was proud of him.’ The expression soothed Anne, diverting her from the contemplation of widowhood to that of her clever son.

  ‘Yes,’ she said with something of her sharp tongue returned to her, ‘but Craven was importunate.’

  ‘He is a man considered by many as an eccentric fellow.’

  ‘Do you think he anticipated His Highness’s visit?’

  Monck chuckled. ‘I said he was eccentric, but not a soothsayer.’

  They fell silent and a few minutes later Anne was fast asleep. Monck lay on his back, breathing with difficulty and staring into the darkness. He did not wish to go back to sea, though the prospect had lost the terrors it had once had, and he might have thought that having brought Anne to a state of resignation, the end of the evening had earned him some rest. But something still troubled him and he was at a loss to identify it, aware that his mental faculties were slower than they had once been. He was, after all, an old man and it was only to be expected, like this damned asthma from which he suffered increasingly. He cudgelled his wits until the irritating fact swam back into his consciousness: it was the not knowing of Sandwich’s disgrace. Rupert was correct in saying that Pepys’s adherence to Sandwich might well have been the reason he had not heard from the most likely channel. That was not the point; the point was that he had not heard at all. Or had he? Had someone else mentioned it en passant, and he had simply forgotten? He dredged around in his memory and then he had it. He had heard, and from an unlikely source, quite by chance! A matter of sheer happenstance: of course! It had been Anne! Anne passing the tittle-tattle amid some inconsequential gossip from the Court that Monck never attended to, the King’s flagrant immorality being such a disappointment to the straight-laced Monck.

  Relief at having nailed the source was quickly displaced by something else: Monck was aware that his forgetfulness was poignant; it was not simply the effect of ageing, but of his two great distempers, the spotted-fever he had endured in Edinburgh ten years earlier, the lasting effects of which he had been warned; and his more recent and near-fatal disease. The realisation troubled him deeply. He was a man of deep conviction; he had survived a score of sieges, skirmishes and general actions unscathed, believing that in some way he served God’s providence. His bodily weakness seemed something malign, as though those compromises and accommodations that other men saw as sins but which Monck had adopted as expedients necessary for the common good, had attracted providence’s wrath. In those self-exposing small hours of the night he was again troubled by his intemperate thrashing of Nicholas Battyn, to which there was also to be added the beating of Able Seaman Harris in Whitehall, and that of the unknown officer who had so provoked him on the march south.

  Troubled, he tossed and turned, slipping into half-sleep, then a profound slumber from which he emerged into the dawn, wakened by a nightmare of such vividness that he found Anne shaking him as he cried aloud.

  ‘George! George, my darling, what is that ails you? A dream, another dream? You are not well again. Oh, God help us if you are not well…’

  ‘I am myself entirely,’ he gasped, his body wet with sweat, his night-shirt sodden. But the fear had abated and he nestled against Anne. ‘I am quite well, Nan. Quite well, I thank you. Come, it is yet early. Let us sleep.’

  And so they did, clasped in each other’s arms like the passionate lovers they had once been.

  CHAPTER SEVEN – THE NORTH SEA

  June – September 1666

  ‘This is that of which disasters are made, Your Grace.’

  Captain Sir John Kempthorne looked at his Commander-in-Chief who was staring out through the stern windows of the great cabin, peering at the first light of the summer dawn. He stood awkwardly, supporting himself against the lazy roll of the ship even though she lay at anchor. Even in such circumstances, My Lord Duke of Albemarle had no sea-legs, a fact noted by Kempthorne with some misgivings. The Royal Charles lay athwart wind and tide off the North Foreland of Kent, and Monck, turning inboard to address the business of the day, found it necessary to lean against his cabin table. His legs pained him severely and he knew that he would never acquire that sprightliness of balance the seasoned sea-officers such as Kempthorne displayed. Such felicity was for younger men.

  ‘Dividing the fleet was not intended, but then it was not expected to deal with two threats.’ Monck said, feeling again the burden of high command descend upon him. ‘Take a seat, sir.’ Monck indicated a chair to Kempthorne and motioned to the waiting servant. ‘Wine, if you please. And be so good as to pass word for Sir William.’ Monck gave Kempthorne a wan smile. ‘Now, your charts, if you please.’

  Monck swept aside the litter of papers, the victualing returns and requisitions that had been brought to him that morning and were the sharp-end of what he and Pepys had been working on ashore all those months earlier. ‘Not until we master those villains of contractors shall we have a fleet capable of keeping the sea for long,’ he growled conversationally as Kempthorne unrolled upon the space Monck had cleared, the charts he had brought into the great cabin. The fleet had been awaiting the arrival of sufficient powder and shot to meet the enemy and this had only arrived the previous afternoon in the hoys sent from Chatham. It had taken the reminder of the day for their lading to be disposed of among the men-at-war anchored in The Downs and now Monck was eager to move against the Dutch.

  As he and Kempthorne settled themselves they were joined by Sir William Clarke who occupied the third chair, next to Kempthorne and opposite Monck.

  ‘Good morning, Will.’

  ‘Good morning, Your Grace, Sir John.’

  ‘Sir William.’

  The men made their courteous half-bows to each other and Clarke riffled his papers. He had insisted upon joining his old chief once word had got out that Monck was to hoist his flag again. Monck had refused his offer, but Clarke had insisted. It was, he claimed, a matter of honour. Monck was touched and, in view of his own misgivings as to his ability to carry out his high-office thanks to the infirmity of his body, he had consented to Clarke’s accompanying him.

  ‘The first of the barges is coming alongside now, Your Grace,’ Clarke advised, referring to the arrival of the fleet’s admirals and flag-captains for the Council-of-War Monck had summoned ‘before sunrise’. The three men then fell to a brief preparatory discussion as to the current state of the fleet and its most urgent wants. As they concluded their deliberations the first group of Monck’s subordinate flag-officers was announced and Monck rose to greet them.

  ‘Do you send that to Deal immediately, Captain,’ Monck ordered Kempthorne, indicating the letter Will Clarke was just then sealing. Turning it over, he added the superscription and passed it to Kempthorne. ‘That will give Master Pepys something to get his teeth into,’ Monck said, turning to the almost ridiculously young Vice Admiral Berkeley who led the van of Sir George Ayscue’s White Squadron. Berkeley was accompanied by Rear Admiral Harman whose five ships formed the rear, followed by Ayscue himself, fresh-faced from his barber aboard his flag-ship, the 92-gun Royal Prince.

  ‘’Tis appropriate that the forward most squadron arrives first,’ Monck welcomed them affably, as the Vice and Rear Admirals of his own Red, or Centre, Squadron, made their appearance. He shook hands with Vice Admiral Sir Joseph Jordan and Rear
Admiral Sir Robert Holmes, their flags flying in the Royal Oak and Defiance respectively. Finally, the boats of the Blue, or Rear Squadron, delivered Vice Sir Thomas Teddeman and Rear Admiral Richard Utber to the gathering. As wine was served Monck called them to order and dealt swiftly with a point of formal command arising from the absence of the admiral commanding the Blue Squadron, who was victualing his flag-ship, the Mary, in Portsmouth.

  ‘In the absence of the proper flag-officer, Sir Thomas Teddeman will assume command of the Rear Squadron,’ he said shortly. ‘Now, gather round, if you please, gentlemen.’ The ring of bewigged officers closed round the table upon which Kempthorne’s charts lay. Several had been less-careful of their toilet than Ayscue and rubbed stubbly cheeks or scratched heads itchy under their wigs. Some still stank of sleep and last night’s indulgences. A man known for his own ability to drink deep, Monck nevertheless viewed the more jaded of them with disapproval; then, like them, he bent over the charts.

  These showed the whole expanse of the southern North Sea below a line between Great Yarmouth in the west and the island of Texel in the east. The shorelines eventually closed to the narrow strait between Cap Gris Nez in France and the South Foreland of England. In this vast triangle, the sea was littered with shoals. Off the English coast lay the Aldeburgh Napes, the Shipwash and the Galloper Banks, the Inner and Outer Gabbards; and, further south barring the Thames Estuary, the Kentish Knock. Beyond this to the west the estuary was bestrewn with shallows, the deeps of the several channels seaming sinuously towards the Sea-Reach of the Thames and the debouchement of the River Medway at the Nore. Choking the Dover Strait was the Goodwin Sands, known to seamen as ‘the great ship-swallower,’ for once aground there it was said to be impossible to refloat a ship. Running eastwards parallel to the coast of Flanders and then northwards, along the coast of Holland, extended a whole sunken archipelago of sand-banks: the Sandettié Bank, the Nieuwpoort and Ostende Banks, the Ruytingens, Inner and Outer, the North, East and West Hinders, the Schouwen, Ridge and Haak Sands. They gave the Dutch fleet numerous anchorages from which they might lie secure from the deeper-draughted English vessels which could not penetrate these shallows.

  ‘We have sixty men-o’-war,’ Monck began, summarising the situation, ‘and we hourly expect news of the enemy’s movements by the Lark – here – or the Pearl – here.’ Monck leaned across the chart to indicate the cruising grounds of the two fly-boats, the Lark plying between the Kentish Knock and the Galloper, the Pearl to the north-east of the North Foreland feeling for soundings on the Falls Bank.

  ‘We also have a fire-ship off the Ness,’ he added, laying his right index finger on the area east of Orfordness. ‘And with the wind so lately in the east, the Dutch will already be at sea, so I do not think it will be more than a few hours before we have certain knowledge of them, even in this hazy weather.’ Monck waited a moment as the assembly jostled for a better view of the charts, then settled to hear what Monck had yet to say.

  ‘De Ruyter will make for the Strait of Dover to interpose between us and Prince Rupert’s fleet,’ Monck said. ‘We know that from our intelligencers. But he cannot go further without exposing his own coast, so we remain here until he is sighted for. Once he finds the strait clear,’ Monck indicated the Dover Strait to the south of them, ‘then he will turn north and seek us out, to defeat us in detail before we are reinforced.’ Monck paused and looked round. His colleagues were all nodding gravely; no-one, it was clear, dissented from Monck’s view.

  ‘It is certain,’ he resumed, ‘that De Ruyter’s fleet will out-number our own but the generality of his ships are lighter, shallower in their draught and, while this gives them an advantage in that they can slip over some of the shoals and defy us, their vessels do not bear the weight of metal that we do. This, to some extent mitigates in our favour but we have most recently learned that they now possess larger and deeper men-o’-war of which we must beware. Furthermore, and I urge your attention upon this point, gentlemen, one upon which I was insistent in the last war: we are best served if our fire is concentrated and we fight in strict line, head-to-tail, stem-to-stern in close battle-array… two… er…’

  ‘Cables,’ someone suggested, mentioning the unit by which a nautical mile was divided into ten, a fact Monck’s nautical knowledge did not apparently extend to.

  ‘Aye, cables. Two cables to be the distance between us.’

  ‘What about shifts in the wind, Your Grace? Such an eventuality would disrupt us, particularly if the enemy break our line?’ asked Ayscue. Monck guessed he was speaking for many of them who had not fought alongside him before.

  ‘I hope that a concentration of force in line would dissuade an attempt to break us. We would rake such an attempt and concentrate our fire on the headmost ship. I do not conceive it a thing Mynheer will attempt but, taking your point Sir George, in such a case, each division is to stay in order of battle, it being the duty of each captain to follow his flag-officer and each flag-officer to have regard to his superior. Should you, Sir George, become separated to the extent that it is impossible to rejoin my flag, then you should maintain your own line, bringing it to bear where it shall have the greatest effect upon the enemy. If we obey the principle of mutual support in all cases, no-one shall have done any wrong to the King’s service.’ He paused a moment, then added: ‘Remember, our artillery is our chief weapon; as long as we act to maintain its concentration, then we must – and shall – prevail. Any questions?’

  ‘The season is known for flukish winds, Your Grace,’ someone piped up from the rear. ‘Such variables have the power to unseat the best plans.’ The observation was met with a chorus of agreement.

  ‘I understand your anxieties but I cannot predict such things. Moreover,’ Monck added, not to be outdone in this seamanlike matter of the weather, ‘this present haze limits our powers of observation. Close-order is, therefore, of the highest importance.’ He looked about him again. ‘Gentlemen, we are in the hands of providence. Should the wind, or lack of it, compromise us, then we must all do our best to conform with our intentions. Preserving the principle of close order will best aid our endeavours. Be clear, gentlemen, I am resolved to press the enemy hard and if we do not succeed in our first encounter, be certain that we shall proceed to a second and, if the need be, a third.’

  As they began to troop out of the cabin a young officer sidled up to Kempthorne who quickly approached Monck with his news. ‘Your Grace, the Pearl is in the offing and the wind is growing from the sou’-west. She appears to be making the signal for a fleet in sight!’

  ‘Where away?’ Monck asked, sharply.

  ‘We can see nothing from the masthead, sir,’ the lieutenant reported, ‘but the Pearl’s signal is unmistakable and she is still off the North Foreland.’

  Kempthorne peered through the stern windows. There was no doubt about it, the wind was freshening. He caught Monck’s eye. ‘The wind’s rising, Your Grace. We shall likely have a gale before nightfall.’

  Monck grunted. ‘Very well. Pass the word and hoist the signal to weigh with three guns!’

  The signal was on its way aloft and the attention of the fleet was drawn to it by three concussions, the smoke billowing out from the forecastle of the Royal Charles, even as the fleet’s senior officers tumbled down the flag-ship’s side into their barges. And there was no doubt that the gun-smoke was drifting away to the eastwards.

  Already many of the ships, seeing the approaching Pearl knew what it portended. Those in charge had observed the rising wind and the quarter from which it came. Already the pipes were squealing as the hands were ordered to the capstans and the ships’ fiddlers to their encouragement, while the top-men ran aloft to cast off the gaskets.

  Monck followed the last of his flag-officers out onto the quarterdeck of the Royal Charles. ‘You, sir!’ he called to one of the young lieutenants. ‘Aloft with a perspective glass and tell me the moment you see the enemy! Go to, sir! Go to this instant!’ Monck turned to one of the qua
rtermasters and enquired: ‘What o’clock is it?’

  The man ducked down and peered into the binnacle. ‘It wants a quarter-glass to four bells, sir.’

  A few minutes before six o’clock in the morning. Well, at least the men had time to break their fast and the Commander-in-Chief himself felt the want of some stomach-ballast.

  The pink Pearl was beating up through the Gull Channel and would be close under the flag-ship’s lee quarter within the hour, so there was time for some food. By the time the Pearl rounded-to to hail the Royal Charles, Monck was back on deck and Kempthorne himself was standing in the lower larboard mizzen rigging, one hand cupped to his ear. Monck, his own hearing long impaired by the concussion of heavy artillery, awaited the Pink’s report. There was an exchange of shouts, then Kempthorne jumped down and came up to Monck.

  ‘They’re at anchor, three leagues to loo’ard of the North Sand Head,’ Kempthorne gestured to the eastwards.

  ‘Two hour’s sailing,’ Monck said, ‘barely time to get our fleet into station.’

  ‘Just enough, Your Grace,’ said Kempthorne encouragingly, ‘particularly in this wind, if they don’t all fall in upon each other.’

  ‘Let’s hope you are right,’ Monck responded grimly.

  ‘We have the wind and the weather gauge,’ Kempthorne said confidently.

  ‘Hmm!’ Monck turned and looked to windward. Despite the season, the clouds were low and extended. Even Monck knew enough weather lore to recognise the onset of a gale, while the summer’s heat produced a har that left a clear sky aloft but laid a shroud across the horizon. A burst of activity forward and the soft roar of falling canvas drew his attention back to what was happening on the Royal Charles. Released from their confining gaskets by the nimble topmen, the great topsails fell off the yards and lay slack in the bunt-lines as the anchor cable was drawn in dripping from the sea-bed. As the anchor came aweigh the order was given to trim the braces and then ‘Sheet home!’ and the clews of the topsails were drawn out and down to the arms of the yards below. As the forecastle gang struggled to fish and cat the heavy anchor, the topsail filled with the wind and the great ship gathered momentum. All around her similar scenes were playing out and Monck stared about him, watching as the first chuckles of water appeared below the bluff forefoot of the adjacent ships; saw them steady in their various turns, watched as sail after sail fell from the yards and was drawn home to belly in the wind. The fleet gathered way, each man-of-war leaning to the breeze, heeling under its driving force. From under the lee of the Kentish coast the English fleet stood north-east to meet the enemy.