In the King's Absence

by Josephine Bell

  In Holland the news of Cromwell’s death came as a surprise and was viewed with caution. The many refugees from the Protector’s regime began by greeting it with extravagant joy, with parties, meetings, feasts they could ill afford. But this did not last very long, for the next news told of the accepted succession of Cromwell’s second son Richard, who was little known by the exiles. He was as little known, by the majority of his new subjects, they told one another.

  And yet they seemed to have raised no objection to him. Nor had the royalists who had banded themselves together for all those years of oppression. They had not taken this unexpected crisis of government to raise their forces and seize power. Had they really lost the hearts of the people by their feebleness? Would they allow the present dismal rule to continue indefinitely?

  Colonel Ogilvy had a third idea. He had never lost touch with King Charles’s inner circle of advisers. Indeed they had deliberately supplied him with all significant news from England and kept him up to date, with the juggling of the great continental powers, the Protestant Allies in the north; France, ruled by Cardinal Mazarin; and Spain with her still occupied base in Flanders, the Spanish Netherlands. Clarendon had found Colonel Ogilvy a most reliable, cosmopolitan gentleman who could be relied upon to form a sane judgement in every fresh turn and crisis of the King’s affairs. Also a veteran soldier who could be called upon to command where military danger threatened.

  So Ogilvy knew already that England under Cromwell and with the help of his trained army and his brilliant Admiral Blake had won the respect of the continentals. He knew too in spite of the fact that Spain had great possessions and had granted a small treaty with Charles that gave him leave to stay in Brussels, this country of the Great Armada was in a state of early decline, her power and wealth in the western world across the ocean diminished, while that of England in North America and the Caribbean grew by conquest and emigration, together with those of the French and the Dutch. British naval power in the Channel, reflecting this advance, could aid and confirm a change of government at home far more effectively than those ageing royalists with their ineffective plots and uncertain bands of secret followers.

  ‘The old Protector’s generals will never serve under the Lord Richard, as they call him,’ Colonel Ogilvy explained to Alan. ‘The people hope for an easing of the worst of the puritan rule, but there is great unrest in the army. Only in Scotland all is under control, I am told. For they have there General Monck, who knows his own mind. Which is not, I believe, for wholehearted support of this Lord Richard and his parliamentary supporters.’

  ‘My poor father,’ Lady Anne Ogilvy lamented. ‘He will be in greater danger than ever if there is another turmoil, army against army, general against general and each trying to seize the old Protector’s place.’

  ‘I think the minds of the people at this present are all set upon giving the late Oliver a royal funeral,’ Alan suggested. ‘I heard from Tom Howard he is to be sent to observe the ceremony, embalming of the body, an effigy upon the coffin and so forth.’

  ‘A Norfolk farmer’s son!’ Lady Anne was astonished.

  ‘A gentleman farmer.’

  ‘A yeoman!’

  ‘His uncle – or was it his great-uncle? – was a wealthy man. Did he not entertain King James the First, when that monarch came from Scotland to London to be crowned King of both countries?’

  ‘Sir Francis Leslie tells that story,’ the colonel said.

  His own father, his natural father, had told it too. He had no wish to go back in conversation to those far off times when the Ogilvy connection had begun, so he asked, ‘When did you hear from Tom Howard, Alan? By letter or by word of mouth?’

  ‘In person and only this morning. He was sailing from Ijmuiden. He brought me orders from the King. I must return to Brussels to undertake a private and personal mission for His Majesty.’

  Alan’s family knew he would not tell them what this was. Probably his orders held no detail. This was true, but he guessed what they must be. Mainly the King’s concern for his eldest son. It never left him for long, this concern, nor was he allowed to forget it, for Lucy Walter had continued to follow her disgraceful career. Having exhausted the possibilities of Holland she had transferred herself to the wider field of Paris, where the boy’s surroundings must be even more undesirable than at Rotterdam, Dordrecht or other towns in the Netherlands.

  So Alan returned to his duty and was summoned very soon to hear His Majesty’s pleasure.

  He found Charles in a happy, carefree mood, using his unfailing charm with great effect.

  ‘I am about to send you on a triple mission to Paris, Alan,’ he began.

  ‘Sire!’

  ‘First to my most beloved little sister, Minette, who hath been betrothed to the French King Louis’s brother, an immoral product of Gomorrah, God help her! Give her the package I shall put up for her and observe if she grieves for her fate or accepts it as something she may surmount and for which she looks to find compensation.’

  Alan bowed, to show he understood the whole of this unhappy, news, but he did not dare to speak of it.

  ‘Then you are to convey my greetings and my duty to my royal mother, but by her Chamberlain, not in person, lest she should be offended by your youth and humble station. Also by the hand of her Chamberlain my request for my brothers, the Prince James and the Prince Henry, to join me here in Brussels as soon as may be. My letters to them put forward the reasons for my pressing the urgency of this action. And lastly, Alan, you are to find and bring here to me in Brussels my son, His Grace of Monmouth. The time is overripe for this action. I can no longer endure the notoriety that follows his mother wherever she goes. She hath done me too touch harm already over the years. It must end now that our exile may not be much longer extended.’

  He had risen from his chair when he began to speak about the boy and now as he hinted at the great developments he fully expected to take place in England, he returned to his royal manner, so that Alan, flattered and bemused by the former intimacy, the charm of confidence from such a source, was moved to fall on his knees before his King, to swear his full allegiance again, to ask God’s blessing on his dear Master and to kiss the hand extended to him to mark that Master’s acknowledgement of this enthusiasm.

  ‘We would our faithful subjects in England showed a wit and energy to equal yours, sir,’ Charles said as he dismissed the young man.

  The mission to Paris proceeded without a serious mishap. The letters and packets to the royal personages were delivered to Queen Henrietta Maria’s Chamberlain and friend, whom some said was now her lover. No answers were returned to Alan, but he understood they had been made to Charles direct.

  It was far different with Mistress Walter. It took him some time to find the lady and when at last he did so he found her in a poor quarter of the city, much reduced in circumstances but still attended by Dutch Mother Schik. She had no steady protector, the old woman told him.

  ‘Nor has she had one since she came here, looking to the widowed Queen for help, poor misguided creature. She hoped to have earned money for her silence, her discretion. She nearly found herself taken and hanged for such insolence, but we had hid ourselves and as the Queen dared not attract attention –’

  ‘But surely England is in favour again with the French just now? Some of Cromwell’s soldiers have fought for France against Spain, have they not? Louis’s war was ended with Cromwell. The Queen is Louis’s aunt, after all?’

  The old woman shook her head.

  ‘I know nothing of politics. I only know the boy should be away from her. Will you explain it to her while I get him ready? He has little enough to take with him, poor lamb.’

  So Alan saw Lucy Walter again. He scarcely recognized her, for though she was not yet thirty years of age her dissolute life and her present poverty had entirely destroyed her early beauty. She appeared as she undoubtedly was, an old, experienced whore, hardened in her trade, grown vulgar, coarse, diseased and with it all de
spairing, resentful.

  She wept when she saw Alan. His still youthful face reminded her of the boy she had spoken with in Dordrecht more than six years ago, who had then seemed to be sorry for Charles’s neglect and disapproval.

  She tried to revive that memory with him, even to jest about his sudden escape from being seen by his uncle. But this only brought up Alan’s own persisting sorrow over his ruined love, so that he answered coldly out of his own sorrow, ‘I must not delay, madam. That time is best forgotten. If His Grace is ready –’

  ‘His Grace?’

  ‘The King demands full control of his son’s future, madam. The young Duke’s further upbringing will be in the hands of his royal father.’

  ‘And his sister?’

  ‘Your second child, madam, is not the King’s, as you very well know. She stays with you.’

  Mistress Walter wept again. Alan was greatly relieved when Mother Schik brought the young James Scott to say goodbye to his mother, which he did with no show of feeling of any kind. This chilled Alan somewhat, though he was grateful for the ease of their departure.

  In Brussels the boy behaved quietly and with due deference when presented to his father, whom he was meeting for the first time. He was a well-grown and comely boy, nearly ten years old now. Charles was delighted with him. Even Clarendon, who was present, could not have wished the interview to have gone better. But later, watching the King from a window walking and laughing in the garden with his latest light of love, he shook his head, murmuring to himself, ‘Monmouth hath his father’s heart. But how many more young dukes will spring from that source and ne’ er one of them an heir to the throne? A bride, a bride, is what the new England needs, please God, to succeed.’

  But the coming of the new England proceeded at a very slow pace indeed. However, proceed it did, at first with a fresh knowledge, provided mainly by Thurloe’s well-managed and manned organization of the government’s security. The new Protector was left in no doubt that the opposition to him was growing fast. The whole country was moving slowly into rebellion, like a heavy much-filled stew pot coming to the boil, with bubbles bursting on the surface here and there and a general tendency of the contents to heave up over the rim of the vessel.

  A new Parliament was formed, mostly of the surviving members of the old ‘Rump’. But as before, religious difficulties immediately caused discord. The Presbyterians wanted their sect to prevail unopposed, with a Directory to lead it; while the Anglicans now became bold enough to demand a return of Episcopacy and the Prayer Book.

  At the same time the Army grew more and more disaffected. The end of the major-generals had meant the great reduction of their forces, so by the time Cromwell died there were large numbers of soldiers, especially those conscripted in recent years, who quietly deserted and made their way to their homes and former occupations, mainly on the land. Their loss was felt and their allegiance now very doubtful.

  Meanwhile those sluggish bodies, ‘The Trust’ and ‘The Sealed Knot’, gained further important recruits of fame and distinction, but made little use of them. They were urged on by appeals from the King in exile, but for the most part decided that the time was not yet ripe for military action. In this they were probably right, immediately after Cromwell’s death, but a few months later, in the new year, when his son’s incompetence became quite obvious, John Mordaunt, a prominent member of ‘The Trust’, began to urge plans upon his fellow leaders of the group for a general rising.

  But the plans were muddled and Sir Richard Willis, a government spy and traitor to the Royalist Cause, who had already helped to bring about the failure of Penruddock’s rising, was again at work in their midst, directed by Thurloe’s office. He opposed action in August, ostensibly on account of the harvest. However, John Mordaunt did in fact go to see the King, who realized without difficulty that a further period of waiting could not be avoided.

  A letter came to Captain James Ogilvy in Brussels from his father in Oxford. He took it to Alan in great excitement.

  ‘I have this news, cousin,’ he said ‘England begins to stir. The chains that have chafed her for so long begin to loosen. They expect this new Protector to fail and to resign, for he is a gentle soul, unused to military ways.’

  ‘Which have been the Usurper’s only real power,’ Alan; said. ‘What else does my great-uncle say?’

  ‘First that my poor sister Sarah grows daily more uncertain in her wits. This because George Leslie with whom she was ever infatuated, poor thing, hath never gone to Oxford to visit there as he promised her. This means he finds her no longer useful to him as he did when she lived in the Phillips household.’

  ‘But it also suggests George is no longer plaguing Doctor Richard does it not?’

  ‘Let us hope so. One more hopeful news. My father’s man, that went to fight for the Martyr and never came back from the Wars, hath returned hale and hearty to serve his old master. My father writes of him thus: “The fellow has a wife and a young son he will set to school in Oxford. How thankful I am to have him with me.” ’

  ‘So we may thank the good Lord that Doctor Richard will have the care and attention he has lacked for so long,’ Alan said with feeling.

  James answered with equal feeling and tears in his eyes, ‘I shall take Thomas home to him. I have asked leave to give up my commission here where I do nothing on very short commons. If there is to be a rising I shall join it while Thomas will be safe with proper care.’

  ‘You deem it safe to go back to England?’

  ‘I feared Thurloe far less than George. I belong to none of the would-be rebel bodies. It is only George who could bring our name into disrepute again. And George seems to have given up his evil moves.’

  Alan nodded. Thomas was no better in his general health, his cough remained. It seemed to Alan likely that he was not long for this world. After all, he was in his late thirties and had led an active, hard life since early manhood. In recent times there had been many men who had not survived their twenties from death in war or death from those twin fatal diseases, the smallpox and the plague. The Lord was merciful. He might have planned a quiet end for Thomas, without much pain, in the pleasant house and garden of a happy childhood.

  Captain James’s release from his commission came in the spring of 1659. His arrangements were already made: Doctor Richard, in a state of thankful jubilation, was ready to receive them. At the last James was called to an audience with the King. He gladly obeyed.

  ‘We are much beholden to the family of Ogilvy,’ Charles said to him. ‘You have been faithful to our Cause. You have given much thought and time, since you joined us here, to the training of those volunteers who have come with great enthusiasm, but no military training at all. You will, we know, continue to serve, as and when you are able. But you have deserved this retreat both for the sake of your aged father and your maimed brother. It is right and just you should become their guardian for such time as they are spared to you.’

  ‘I humbly thank Your Gracious Majesty,’ Captain James said, overwhelmed by the King’s words and his whole royal presence.

  ‘In token of our gratitude, we propose to make you knight,’ Charles went on. ‘Come forward, sir, if you please.’

  So Captain James went forward and knelt for the accolade and left the audience chamber in a daze, to be greeted and toasted by his army companions and again by his cousins, Colonel Francis and Lady Anne Ogilvy and Alan and three shy little girls, the latter’s sisters.

  The next day he and Thomas rode north to Bruges, where they arranged for a boat to take them to England from Sluys. It was in Bruges they heard the latest news from England. Richard Cromwell had resigned. The Protectorate had fallen.

  Chapter Twenty

  In Amsterdam the news of the eclipse of the Protectorate and the consequent confusion in the seat of government in England was received by Master Hugh Phillips and his family with very mixed feelings. They had heard it from the good friends who had protected Mistress Phillips and her child
ren while their escape from London was arranged. But he had learned much from his wife already. The news, when it came, was not unexpected.

  ‘The poor Lord Richard never looked to succeed his great father to anyone’s satisfaction,’ Cynthia told him. ‘And besides, the severity that so unjustly fell upon you, sir was already crumbling throughout the land, for the people had grown intolerant of it.’

  ‘I was attacked by false reports to Thurloe engineered by that young scoundrel, Ogilvy.’

  ‘I begin to doubt it,’ she said boldly. ‘I begin to think the chief misinformer all along hath been your sometime friend and longtime enemy, my childhood’s playmate, George Leslie.’

  ‘We have known that his unsavoury jealousy and envy has eaten away all of his excellence, alas,’ Hugh Phillips groaned. ‘But since he has sedulously avoided us and our house these many years how can he have put forward those facts that Thurloe twisted into betrayals?’

  ‘Because Sarah supplied him with them.’

  ‘Sarah! Your sister Sarah? Poor witless youngest child of your parents?’

  Cynthia nodded

  ‘She was always devoted to George, because he pampered and flattered her as a means to gain access to me, at the time he was courting me. Always deceitful was George, always ready to sacrifice others to gain his desired ends, always cruel, always an arrant liar. Did you never observe her devotion? I could not explain her feelings for George at the time you were becoming his rival, either to you or to my father, whom I feared would forbid our marriage.’

  She looked at her husband with deep affection; the same assured loving, trusting confidence her mother had bestowed upon Doctor Richard and that now sustained the cloth merchant in his present trial.

  He was too moved on this occasion to continue the discussion, but thinking over what she had said, he found a great deal of sense in it. Certainly George Leslie seemed to have made no progress against his cloth business contacts, nor his house in London. The latter had been sealed for sequestration, but a guard had been mounted upon it and so far the contents were safe. And this was after Sarah Ogilvy had gone back to her father’s house. Well, that was where she should be, where she should always have been, but that Cynthia had felt such compassion for the poor creature whom she had befriended as a child when her nursemaid had lost patience with her slowness at walking and talking and also with her frequent tantrums.