The Puritan Princess

by Miranda Malins

  ‘Major-General Fleetwood not with you?’ Richard asks, pointedly taking the opposite approach to our uncle and giving his brother-in-law the frostiness of his full title. ‘I have summoned him to the palace and yet still he does not come.’

  Uncle Desborough clasps his hands behind his back as if to stop them from doing something else. ‘Will you agree to dissolve Parliament,’ he asks bluntly, ‘and entrust yourself to the army? We have no desire to pull you from your throne but you must choose to support us in this fight.’

  ‘And if I do not agree?’

  I watch them helplessly, my heart in my mouth.

  ‘Then it is all over. Even now Charles is mustering the regiments at St James’s. You can summon the men to rendezvous here instead but they won’t come. They will choose Charles.’

  Dick bites his lower lip and drops his gaze to the carpet.

  I must do something, anything, to help.

  ‘Will you give His Highness a few moments, Uncle, to consult with his advisers?’ I ask, keeping my voice level and my delivery smooth.

  Desborough looks at me then, his eyes locking onto mine like one of the crack-shot musketeers in his regiment fastening on a target. Still he will not dignify me with a direct address but he gives a short, stiff bow and blunders away to the other side of the room where he installs himself sentry-like by a window with his back to us.

  ‘So what now?’ I whisper, my pulse racing.

  Seeing Desborough’s removal, Thurloe, Bulstrode Whitelocke and Lord Broghill flock around us while Nathaniel Fiennes and Charles Wolseley hasten to join us, their boyish faces unusually grim.

  ‘Gentlemen?’ Richard turns to them, keeping his voice low. ‘You are my advisers. My sister asks what now?’

  ‘I am afraid you must dissolve Parliament, Highness,’ Thurloe says carefully, glancing at Broghill who nods in agreement. ‘We cannot have civil unrest, we cannot allow the army to rise in rebellion. It will buy us some more time to negotiate with the officers – they have more love for you than many in Parliament who secretly wish the king to return.’

  His answer surprises me and I find myself wading into the debate as the old – or rather the young – Frances never would have done: ‘But surely there must come a time when we take a stand against the army’s power?’ I look from one man’s face to another. ‘Father knew it needed to be done but could never bring himself to do it when they had been through so much together. But Richard, you need feel no such scruples. You owe them no personal loyalty as Father did. You have a majority in Parliament; they will back you in bringing the army to heel.’

  There is a pause long enough for me to fear I have stepped out of my place too far.

  ‘I agree with Her Highness,’ Bulstrode says at length, his black eyes moving from mine to my brother’s, and I smile at him with a young woman’s gratitude. ‘If you give way now you will be lost. You will be naught but the army’s puppet. The Parliament is your only bulwark against the officers’ power. Maintaining the Parliament is our best hope.’

  Richard walks away from us then, his legs taking him across to the fireplace where he stands for some minutes as Father used to do, his face cast down into the flames. Softly I inch towards him, the better to hear his answer as I know that he will not turn around before he speaks.

  ‘Charles and my uncle are family,’ he says at last, keeping his eyes on the fire. ‘I can reason with them. Besides, they have told me that if I will not dissolve the Parliament, then the army will do so by force, just as they did in ’48 and ’53. If they do that, the country will be under martial law and we will be left to shift for ourselves. I have to do it, I have no choice.’

  My thoughts fly to the family I have left: to Mother and the Claypoles across Whitehall, to Bridget awaiting Charles’s return from his troops, to Mary hundreds of miles away deep in a royalist county and traitorous family, and to Harry, frighteningly exposed in his command in Ireland. Will we all survive what comes?

  But Richard’s must be the last word and so we stand in silence watching as a flaming log disintegrates and falls glowing into the ash.

  After this, power slips through our fingers like water. In the coming days, no one officially tells me that the Protectorate of the House of Cromwell is being abolished, that Richard is fallen from his throne whatever Uncle Desborough’s promises to keep him upon it, that our time as the first family of the nation is at an end. There are no uprisings, no battles, no arrests nor show trials and executions, as there would have been in the brutal time of our Tudor forebears. We are not taken to the Tower through Traitor’s Gate or turned out of the palace, the fine clothes torn from our backs. In fact, my daily life continues much as ever: I dress, wash and sleep in the same rooms at Whitehall, am addressed with the same courtesy by staff and courtiers, sit at Richard’s left hand at dinner.

  Were it not for the restlessness of my still-nameless puppy, I might have barely noticed our wholly altered state. Plagued by his boundless yapping at my heels I decide to take him out for a walk in St James’s Park one morning and persuade Dick – so upset and pale now, his rough humour forgotten – to come with me. But we only get as far as the staircase by the Chairhouse when a huddle of soldiers blocks our way. I look about me for our own Protectoral guard in Father’s grey-and-black livery but they are nowhere to be seen. Richard regains enough vigour to demand of them what they think they are doing but they merely shrug and cross their halberds. ‘Orders, Your Highness,’ the sergeant says gruffly. ‘I’m afraid you’re not to leave the palace.’

  ‘And my sister?’

  Another shrug.

  ‘And so we are under house arrest,’ Richard says, taking my arm and steering me back along the privy gallery, the puppy worrying at our feet. ‘I am still Lord Protector – or at least I was when I last checked – and yet I cannot walk in my own gardens. What would my father say to that?’

  I am shocked and suddenly deeply afraid. I look at Richard for reassurance but find a broken man beside me, and my pounding heart aches for him; whatever befalls us, I know Dick will carry Father’s imagined disappointment in him across his shoulders like a pilgrim’s pack for the rest of his life.

  Confined to the palace, any lingering ability Dick has to shape events is severely hampered. He spends his time frantically scribbling and, whenever he is not being closely observed by the soldiers, tries to get letters out to his deputies and officers away from court – the men Edward Montagu once confidently called the best of men guarding the edges of the realm. He writes to Montagu himself, who is brokering the Protector’s peace from his flagship Naseby on the Baltic Sea, unaware of what is happening at home. To Harry in Ireland, to General Monck who commands the army in Scotland when he is not sourcing falcons for John Lambert, and to our cousin Robina’s husband, General-at-Sea William Lockhart, who negotiated Mary’s marriage in Paris and now leads our army at Dunkirk.

  Dick shows me the letters: he writes cautiously, his words loaded and coded for we know not who will read them. Thurloe uses some of his best and most discreet couriers to carry the messages past the soldiers but nevertheless many days pass and no response returns from any but Monck who says he will not intervene on Richard’s behalf. I don’t know what to feel at Harry’s silence: despair that it may mean the most powerful Cromwell left in the game can do nothing for us; or relief that it may mean my beloved brother will not risk his dear life for the lost cause we have become.

  While Dick writes and waits, the senior officers of the army seize complete control in London. They discuss the future with the leading republican MPs and within days decide to bring back the ‘Long’ Parliament – the assembly that fought the civil war and the ‘rump’ of which condemned the king to death and continued to sit until Father expelled them in ’53. The MPs elected to serve in Richard’s Parliament are deselected and those elected before them reassembled, though the army is careful to allow in only those MPs who swore to uphold the Commonwealth in ’49 after the king’s execution, not t
hose excluded before the king’s trial in Colonel Pride’s purge.

  This is the first step towards Richard’s removal and Thurloe brings us the news with a long face. Events tumble away from us after that. Petitions pour into London from the provinces demanding the abolition of the Protectorate and the return of the Commonwealth, and the senior officers of the army vote to do it. Quickly, they assemble an interim government to rule until a new Council of State can be appointed: a Committee of Safety, its very name a throwback to the civil war, enhancing the climate of fear. Charles is a member of course, with Uncle Desborough and Lambert added to its number a few days later.

  When the Council of State is created two weeks later and the Committee of Safety disbanded, I am surprised to hear Bulstrode Whitelocke named to its ranks, and reflect on my friend’s uncanny ability to keep his head above the water whatever flood engulfs us.

  ‘Government must continue,’ he explains to me, doing me the courtesy of at least looking a little sheepish. ‘This may not be a legitimate government, de jure if you will; but it is nevertheless the government we have, de facto in other words. Better that I am there to help see the rule of law is observed by the others than that no one is.’

  I think I understand what he means. Government of one kind or other must always continue or else man would fall into Master Hobbes’ warring state of nature and life would be nasty, brutish and short. The world beyond England’s shores cannot wait for her to prevaricate, of course; an odd realisation that comes to me when I hear that a truce has been declared between France and Spain and a treaty signed at the Hague for us to mediate for peace between Denmark and Sweden. It may be that the Cromwell family is being expunged from public life, but Father’s foreign policy continues nonetheless.

  And yet, no sooner am I reassured by one piece of news than I am disturbed by another. The orders dispatched from the Council chamber in the first few days of its sitting are restrained in tone, yet John brings me the news that the newly returned Rump Parliament rants and rages: the MPs smashing Richard’s Protectoral seal and stripping the Protectoral arms from buildings, just as I imagined they would when Thurloe and I had dined together a few weeks ago. I shiver at the images that float before my eyes and search John’s face for reassurance as he leans in the doorway of my room.

  But he can only offer me a widower’s sad smile. ‘All we can do now is wait to know what will become of us. Take care of yourself, Fanny, I must get back to the children.’

  I close the door and dissolve into a rage of tears, beating my fists against the oak. Once again I am cast as a helpless pawn in the political game, such a bitter, poisonous pill after all I have done to try and shape my own future. I think of that future, the one which shone clearly in brilliant colours, and the future that now clouds before me in a dull, suffocating haze.

  Though the situation seems hopeless, I know Thurloe and Richard’s other close advisers continue to scheme, playing the cards left to them while Dick is still formally in office, while there is still time. I see the French ambassador, Monsieur Bordeaux, slip into Thurloe’s room late one night, when I myself have come to talk to him. I hover outside the door, desperate to invent an excuse to go in, but turn back to my own room instead, contenting myself with wishful thinking: was the ambassador offering his master Cardinal Mazarin’s help to Richard? Could our French allies secure him in office? But, however much I long for his continuation as Lord Protector and for the guaranteed safety of my family this would ensure, I cannot reconcile myself to the thought of using foreign troops to keep us in power. If he did this, would Dick not be just as bad as the tyrant King Charles when he looked to the Irish for help at the very start of our late wars?

  Furthermore, I do not believe Dick has the stomach for a fight. Though he retains his dignity and, for the most part, his good temper, each day he is a little more depleted, a little sadder and wiser, his heart heavy and his tread laboured. He does not resist what comes, but neither does he fall shrinking under the fire of his former friends. He shows his frustration and the deep well of sadness within him only to Dorothy, to Thurloe and to me. Before all others, he is equable and restrained: he questions, he negotiates, he accepts. And so, when at last they come to him and demand his resignation, Dick answers his officers and his subjects calmly and politely, emerging at the end with at least a form of settlement: he will abdicate as Lord Protector and take no future share in government but, in return, he will be treated generously. His official debts – which now, he tells me nervously, amount to some twenty-nine thousand pounds – paid, his removal expenses met, a London house and annuity provided. He will be a private gentleman once again, pensioned into an obscure old age at thirty-two, carrying Father’s legacy and the Cromwell family name with him.

  And what of me? What do I become? What do I live for now?

  Nobody tells me.

  Without instruction, I simply linger in the palace with Richard, waiting for the servants to come and box up our things for removal. As we wait, our life is dismantled around us. Carpenters clamber on scaffolding to remove our coat of arms from the buildings, wood chippings and dust falling like rain beneath them as they saw away at the symbols of my family. Our banners are lowered from the rafters in the Great Hall, servants folding them neatly and taking them away, though I have no idea where.

  John and the children leave for the relative safety of his manor house at Northborough and Mother writes to tell me she is going with them: her transformation from Cromwell to Claypole in her dead daughter’s stead complete. Richard, meanwhile, has already sent Dorothy and their children ahead of him to their estate in Hampshire. Mary and Thomas have remained in Yorkshire and she writes urging me to come to live with them. Harry also sends word to say that he has resigned his post as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and is, at last, returning to us and to his in-laws’ home at Chippenham near Cambridge; any latent hope of Richard’s that his younger brother would launch a rebellion on his behalf is dashed in the neat folds of Harry’s letter.

  Once more, the note is delivered by Harry’s brother-in-law John Russell and, almost without deciding it between us, we drift down to the bird hut to visit Venus. This time I don’t even have the energy to send Katherine to the kitchen for scraps, but John pulls a small bag of raw minced meat from his pocket and opens it for me to feed her.

  I smile at him gratefully and my face cracks with the effort.

  ‘Will you be all right, my lady?’ he asks softly and I remember Mary putting the same words to me when we last parted. ‘What of you in all this?’

  No one else has thought of me in months and I hardly know how to answer such kindness when I have none of my own left to summon.

  ‘I am at a loss,’ I reply, absently tilting my head to mirror Venus as she gazes at me with burning marble eyes. ‘I have lived here in the palace as daughter, wife and now sister. Where, if not here, am I to call home?’

  ‘Lady Frances.’ John Russell dips his head in concern and edges closer to me, keeping his voice low. ‘You know your family is as dear to me as my own. We are kin. You are welcome to come and stay with us at any time, especially once your brother Harry and my sister have returned to us from Ireland. Could we not be merry again at Chippenham?’

  ‘Merry,’ I repeat in confusion as if the word is unknown to me. ‘I cannot imagine such a thing. I cannot see a future at all.’

  He flinches beside me as if I have rebuked him and I know I sound peevish and bitter. Yet I hardly care. The young Frances would have wanted to make a good impression, especially on a young bachelor like John Russell, a man of distant kinship to me who only means to be kind. But I do not. I turn to look at him now, at his pale blue eyes and concerned expression, at the shape of his shoulders shifting under his ill-fitting brown jacket, and see nothing at all.

  He seems to sense my mood and I think he will say no more, but then he speaks gently: ‘You will have a future, Lady Frances, I promise you.’

  I watch Venus as she shakes her head a
nd fluffs her feathers in pleasure, feeling the weight of her on my fist. They are kind words but hollow of any meaning to me.

  At last, the servants come to pack Richard’s things and he directs a few of them to my rooms to help Katherine, who has already begun to lay out my clothes in readiness. She cries as she does this for she is to stay at Whitehall with her husband Chaplain White, at least for now. Without her beside me and reluctant to make any journey alone, I have decided to go with Dick to his house in Hampshire and to stay there to support him, at least for a time. After that I do not know.

  Our day of departure is set for tomorrow and, with no one else of our family left behind, Bridget comes to bid us farewell. We are having a funereal breakfast when she is shown in to us. We three remaining siblings stare at each other for the first moments before Bridget approaches and allows the footman to draw out a chair for her. I glance at Richard but his face is set hard, his napkin clenched in his fists.

  ‘Dick,’ she begins, leaning towards him, but Richard cuts her off immediately.

  ‘No. I cannot …’ He rises from his chair and, throwing the napkin on the table, strides out of the room.

  Bridget shrivels back into herself and looks at me, her face lined with a curious blend of sadness and righteousness.

  ‘Can you blame him?’ I stare at her, longing for a sister’s comforting hug even as, in this moment, I loathe her. If only it was Mary sitting where she is, or Betty. ‘He is bitter against Charles, against him above all others.’

  Bridget shakes her head and looks at me with Father’s level gaze. ‘I came to tell him it was not his downfall that Charles sought. He and Uncle Desborough fought to keep Richard as Protector with reduced powers but the more radical officers wouldn’t have it and they were outvoted.’

  It is my turn to shake my head. ‘You cannot undo what Charles has done to Dick, to us all.’

  ‘Fanny …’

  ‘Our lives are over. And for what? Can you tell me this new republic will last? Can you promise me the army and the Rump Parliament will work together happily as they have never before been able to do?’ I laugh then, thinking bitterly of Charles and the hundreds of times he has sat around this very table with us. ‘Charles has got what he wanted – he’s Commander-in-Chief of the army now, isn’t he? He has won. But the Rump says he must answer to Parliament and Lambert says it won’t wash. And so here we go again …’