Sword of State: The Remarkable Story of George Monck

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Well, well, I am here now and troops have been posted, and supplies secured for the encampment at Moorfields where there must be upwards of forty or fifty thousand poor souls awaiting charity.’

  The King’s summons to London had been peremptory and Monck had wondered why, at every crisis, His Majesty thought of nothing else but calling for him? The cynic in Monck said that putting him in charge allowed any subsequent blame to be diverted to Monck’s broad shoulders. But, although Charles grew in confidence and increasingly assumed an arrogance towards Monck that deliberately emphasised the gulf between a Duke – howsoever noble – and a King, the older man read uncertainty in Charles’s dark eyes. It was evidence of that weakness that lurked in the tall, vigorous and sturdy body of His Majesty that all too readily gave him over to the lubricious pleasures of his many mistresses. Whether or not it was Henry Jermyn who had sired him, King Charles II bore all the most unfortunate traits of the House of Stuart.

  Monck had put all his energies into seizing control of the city, five sixths of which within the walls had been destroyed, some four-hundred acres, to which must be added a further sixty acres beyond. In all eighty-seven parish churches, the guild-halls of fifty-two livery companies, together with that of the Trinity Brethren and an estimated thirteen thousand homes, shops and business premises had been lost to the flames.

  Standing down the exhausted Lifeguard, Monck had brought in his own Coldstreamers to dissuade looting and used the Army’s commissariat to commandeer and requisition necessary foodstuffs, tents and tilts for the dispossessed inhabitants. Encampments, regulated by old soldiers, were set up at Moorfields, at Highgate, and in St George’s Fields in Southwark near the very church in which Monck and his Anne had been quietly married.

  Co-operating with the Mayor, Sir Thomas Bludworth, and his Aldermen who had established themselves in Gresham College after the burning of the Guildhall and the Exchange, Monck had mastered the aftermath. He rapidly brought relief to the needy and with this came a necessary confidence in government. Monck issued a proclamation requiring all towns about London to send in returns of available accommodation into which those with means might be moved, thus relieving the immediate wants of those able to afford a measure of self-help. Public buildings were ordered to store and guard – helped by the Army and the Trained Bands – such private possessions as were saved, thereby dissuading looting. With his usual but extraordinary capacity for hard work which he combined with a canny eye for detail, Monck galvanised a hitherto pole-axed population into an invigoration of initiative to act upon its own behalf. Mounted upon one or other of his great chargers, Monck seemed to be everywhere, such that the citizens saw in his presence something remarkable in his stolid figure, more so even than the young King in his shirt-sleeves commanding the fire-parties.

  While some fanatics railed that the great fire was, like the plague, a judgement of God – though whether this was for the licentiousness of the Court, the Restoration of the Monarchy, or the egregious abandonment of ‘the Good Old Cause’ – was unclear, Monck’s enforced common-sense response stabilised the situation so that within two days of his imposition of near-martial rule, he found merchants trading in Gresham College as if upon the floor of the Exchange.

  What was seen by many as miraculous was to Monck a simple and pragmatic result of organisation, such were the fears that preyed upon the minds of men and women in the aftermath of disaster. But, Monck recognised, he had not endured the horror of the fire and part of him remained with the fleet, for he was deeply unhappy about the manner of his leaving. Among the tendered reasons for the fire was the certainty of God’s verdict enshrined in the days of strong easterly winds – ‘God’s bellows’ was the fanciful phrase then doing the rounds – which had given the Dutch every opportunity of joining battle. That they had not was proof of their defeat, but equally it had frustrated Monck and Rupert from pressing their forces, preventing a planned descent by fire-ships on the anchorage of the Texelstroom and the Weilings, where they might have set off a bonfire to rival that of Rear Admiral Holmes.

  The irony of a fire in the heart of London did not escape Monck, particularly when, upon the evening of his departure from the fleet for London, his flag-officers and captains, led by Sir Thomas Allen, had given him a grand dinner at Portsmouth.

  He had surprised them all, betraying his emotion and the inner turmoil of his heart, by weeping quietly as they toasted him. As he withdrew, having drunk most of them under the table, a tipsy Allen had addressed him quietly. ‘Your Grace, we are truly sorry to have you leave us, notwithstanding the King hath commanded it. Be assured that we shall pray for your safe return among our number, for it is not a common opinion among us that the Dutch are yet beaten.’

  Now, as he stood contemplating the scene of devastation, the notion that he had left open the outcome of the war troubled him more than the destruction of London. The city would rise from its ashes; did not the renewed activity of the merchants presage such a thing? As for a war at sea, that was an entirely different matter. Monck shook his head and blew out his cheeks, turning to Craven and motioning to the orderly a few yards off to bring forward his horse.

  ‘Well, My Lord, I am first for Moorfields and then Highgate to see what progress has been made with tents and field kitchens. If you are willing, would you inspect St George’s Fields?’

  ‘Of course, Your Grace. Southwark it is.’

  With the assistance of the orderly officer Monck heaved himself into the saddle of the large bay and dug in his spurs. As he rode along he graciously accepted the kind wishes of the street-vendors and their customers, encouraging the former to bring the necessaries into the city and to the latter to help each other. As with his soldiers, Monck’s easy manner carried the conviction that someone cared for them and their families. Afterwards, at a meeting of the Privy Council, Clarendon had remarked that it could ‘hardly be conceived how great a supply of all kinds was brought from all places within four and twenty hours’ of His Grace’s return to London. Lord Arlington had then added the perceptive comment that ‘My Lord Duke of Albemarle hath given the King his throne a second time’.

  At home in The Cockpit, the Reverend Doctor Thomas Gumble assured the Duchess that ‘His Grace’s actions had about them something of the sublime,’ and that ‘he was reminded in His Grace’s decisions and motions of the miracle of the two loaves and five fishes’. Here, too, Monck had revealed his true anxiety: the fleet. The end of the month of September saw him once again in Portsmouth, in conference with Lock, Allen and others among the chief officers of the fleet, fretting over the expense of the war and the gift that this gave to the King’s enemies in Parliament.

  Monck was back in London in October, seeking some private time with his family. Anne had been touched by her husband’s great and prosperous endeavours in the city and the regard in which he was held by those who cheered his coach when they recognised his arms upon the door-panels though only she and Kit were within. Now she welcomed him as her especial hero. It hurt her, therefore, when he brushed aside her paneulogism, for he was full of the real concern of the moment: the intentions of the Dutch and the state of the English Navy.

  ‘I shall yet become His Majesty’s whipping-boy, Anne,’ the anxiety clear in his tone of voice. ‘Our troubles are far from over and the Navy has yet a call upon my services.’

  ‘Why you, George? Why always you? There are other men, younger men, men with the conceit to do what you have done if they only follow your example.’

  ‘Whom have you in mind, Anne? Sandwich? Young Pepys, his lackey? The latter has the brains and the energy, but has too much conceit to carry on my own method. Like all young men, he conceives the old are stupid, their ways to be not modified but superseded entirely. Besides, they look to those who can elevate them. Pepys has Sandwich and the Duke of York. Albemarle is a tired old fellow of yesterday, a man who walked with the first Charles and turned his coat to be Oliver’s lap-dog.’

  ‘Stop that talk!
I won’t have it! You are tired, that is all, and the King should grant you time to recruit your spirits and your health. Why do you laugh?’

  Monck took her in his arms and looked down at her. She was no longer the pleasant-faced woman who had washed his shirts and brought him meat pies during his imprisonment, but he did not notice that. She was the mother of his only surviving son, the soul-mate of his long, eventful and turbulent life, the sharer of his fortunes, and he kissed her expostulating mouth.

  ‘My health is ruined, Nan.’ He backed off, holding her at arm’s length. ‘Look at me, my darling. What do you see? A grossly fat old man who can barely stand, let alone walk. Had I not a ready horse or a carriage, I must needs lean upon a stick. I wheeze and croak like a spavined mare and… Yes, yes, I know what Doctor Gumble says about the efficacy of prayer, but I do not see the evidence for believing it, do you? Remember what I said to you about touching the King for the cure of scrofula? Come, come, Anne, stop those tears, we have yet some time together. What remains to me of life must be well spent for I have enemies enough who will dishonour my corpse if they can, just as they did Oliver’s… No, no, you may shake your pretty head but you know it to be true. I am become too heavy not to be toppled, and thou must not fall with me, nor must Kit. Brother Clarges will do very well, so too will Morice. My day will be done soon and we may go down into Devon…’

  But there was more to Monck’s gentle remonstrance to Anne than that of a preoccupied husband. He was correct in admitting he was likely to become the King’s whipping boy. Largely due to Anne’s public persona, which was a mixture of avarice and tight-fistedness, Monck himself attracted more and more opprobrium over his wealth. It had become common to attribute the seemingly endless – but, in the eyes of some, equally pointless – war with the Dutch as being attributable solely to the greed of the Duke of Albemarle. The very fact that at every crisis it was Albemarle who was sent for, seemed to suggest to the ignorant and the gullible that he possessed some hold over the King and willed that he was sent to command the fleet.

  Aware as only he could be of the true nature of things, Monck was wary and, upon the tide of his victory on St James’s Day, apt to play down his part. Prince Rupert was unwell, and absent from Court, exposing Monck to the facile jests of those attending the King who were jealous of his power and money. Monck had a natural aversion to playing the courtier; essentially modest, he was incapable of a courtier’s amusing games, of intrigue, politicking and seduction. But this left him exposed, the butt of jokes and seemingly stupid. He fell to privately drinking with the King’s chief surgeon, a man named John Troutbeck who had formerly been surgeon to Monck’s Regiment of Lifeguards. As old comrades they enjoyed a reminiscent bottle while the Court was at cards and the talk was all of who was fucking whom and other such fashionable licentiousness. Their withdrawal to an ante-chamber had prompted a discussion of the court’s morals which both abhorred, Troutbeck admitting that the King had run such great risks in his love-making that it was to be hoped that Queen Catherine never conceived for the offspring might prove monstrous. That turn in their conversation led them to consider the case of the Heir Presumptive, James, Duke of York and his marriage to Anne Hyde, Clarendon’s daughter.

  ‘Is she fit to be a Queen?’ the inebriated Troutbeck had asked rhetorically. ‘Why yes,’ Troutbeck responded to his own query. ‘I heard only yesterday – in the privacy of my office as physician you understand, Your Grace, and I should not confess it to you now but that it touches you closely,’ said, woefully slurring his speech, ‘but that His Majesty said to his Royal Brother that it did not signify if His Highness’s cock spoke in her favour, for Nan Hyde would make a Queen as she had made a better Duchess than Nan Monck!’

  ‘In vino veritas, Troutbeck,’ Monck wheezed, rising to his feet, his eyes cold chips of ice. ‘I would rather I had heard the insult from His Majesty than from you, but I thank you for your confession.’

  Troutbeck had stared at Monck uncomprehendingly until the extent of his gross impropriety dawned upon his drunken sensibilities. Thoroughly alarmed at both the effect his revelation had had upon Old George and the extent of his betrayal of the King’s confidence, Troutbeck rose, bowed, and made apology. Monck growled his forgiveness but took his leave, knowing the tittle-tattle would pass round the Court if it had not already done so. Later he heard that, at a meeting of the Navy Board to which he was not summoned, the Duke of York had hinted that answers to the question of misappropriation of funds amounting to £148,000 set aside for the payment of naval contractors and of which but £1,315 had actually been paid, might be found upon enquiry of the Duke of Albemarle. That the enquiry was never put to Monck demonstrated the iniquity of the question, but it did not stop those seeking to hint that the loss of funds was otherwise than their own responsibility.

  Monck saw in this the ambitious, duplicitous and cunning hand of Sam Pepys, and invited Pepys to wait upon him. There was much to discuss besides this slur upon Monck’s good name, for he was thoroughly alarmed at the new naval strategy the King was imposing. Amid the rebuilding of the city, and the arguments as to the arrangements for the new churches, all of which required investment, the continuing war with the Dutch seemed but a side-show to the King.

  It was early April when Pepys paid his visit at dinner time along with his brother-in-law who held a commission in Monck’s guards and had fought at sea under the Duke. Anne’s mood was sharp and the company as indifferent as the meat. Monck marked how Pepys noted this and was vexed with his wife, but there was no helping of it. He knew that Pepys had publicly voiced his misgivings over Monck’s handling of the fleet during the Four Days’ Battle, and knew too that the opinionated secretary had himself no knowledge of active service.

  ‘So, Master Pepys, if the Duke of York, my Lord Sandwich and I understand, you yourself, are opposed to this new policy of commissioning only frigates this year, who is for it?’

  ‘Why the King, sir. Nor am I yet entirely persuaded that this is the wrong policy. The Dutch were much weakened by Your Grace’s last action against them-’

  ‘Really?’ Monck broke in, ‘I had heard you disapproved of my management of the fleet.’

  Pepys flushed and prevaricated: ‘No, no, Your Grace. I was merely of the opinion that –’

  ‘Opinions, Master Pepys, are of little consequence without some modicum of experience with which to uphold them; but you know that, being a man of intelligence. Now, sir, this business of forts and booms; come explain it to me.’

  ‘Well, Your Grace,’ Pepys rushed on, glad to have escaped so easily, ‘although His Highness, meaning the Duke of York, is not entirely in favour of not commissioning the great ships, he is content if the fort of Sheerness is strengthened and a boom of chain is placed across the Medway under the guns of the port, thereby rendering the river and the trots and tiers at Chatham safe. The frigates, being sent to Plymouth to guard the Channel and to Orkney to guard the northern passage, are so well placed as to seize both outgoing and home-coming merchant ships of the enemy. Thus, starved of their trade and damaged by the raid upon Vlieland and Terschelling, they may not have the monies necessary to bring forth their fleets this year by which time we shall have secured a peace.’

  ‘My, my,’ observed Monck sardonically, picking a piece of somewhat rancid cheese from his plate, ‘it seems my mismanagement of the fleet last year will pale into insignificance with yours when the Dutch descend upon our coasts. But perhaps I should not concern myself further with such matters, your having so large a hand in the defence of the King’s realm.’

  Pepys bridled. ‘Your Grace –’

  ‘Do you not know that the Dutch fleet is already manned and commissioned? It is not a custom among them to lay-up their ships during a declared war. Moreover, whilst our own fleet may lie quiet and safe behind thy chains and guns, what of Harwich? Of Yarmouth? Of the Humber’s mouth? And I have not yet touched upon the French, or London, or do you think the Dutch will not think London worth attacki
ng, our having burned it so successfully ourselves? Eh?’

  Pepys gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘London will be protected by guns, Your Grace, at Gravesend, Tilbury…’

  ‘And are these guns in place? And manned? And is there ready powder and shot? And hemp junk for wads, and a sufficiency of pork, lentils, flour and biscuit if men have to stand-to for weeks until the Dutch make their initiative clear? Is this the proper way to conclude a war so lately left by my incompetence upon so promising a footing?’

  ‘Your Grace, I –’

  ‘Mark my words, Master Pepys, War is made with both blood and treasure. When you have expended a great deal of both and all rests upon one last throw, one does not – must not – quail. What is it you call this policy of yours and the King’s? A limited strategy? Why the Dutch will gamble all upon a final throw and unless we meet them at sea with all our great ships, then they will choose the time and the place of attack, and we will be left looking like fools.’

  ‘Your Grace,’ Pepys began reasonably, as if talking to an upset child, ‘His Majesty is of the conviction that –’

  ‘Pah! Go, Master Pepys, go! And when the Dutch have dragged us to the business of the setting down of a treaty all to our disadvantage, consider that Old Monck was not wrong!’

  *

  ‘I understand Your Grace opposes our intention to protect our fleet behind defences in the Medway.’ The King flicked at a mote of dust disfiguring the yellow silk of his slashed-sleeve, darting a glance from under the brim of his hat at the Lord-General. The other members of the Council, York, Arlington and Sandwich in particular, regarded the Duke of Albemarle with a kind of distant curiosity. Only the face of the Secretary of State, Monck’s kinsman Sir William Morice, showed anxiety. As for the others, it was as if Monck’s objection was just some silly matter, a manifestation of his own foolishness, not a consideration fundamental to the continued existence of the Kingdom of England.