The Puritan Princess

by Miranda Malins

  ‘Then I couldn’t be happier, my dearest Mall; to see you find love in the marriage that I caused …’

  ‘Hush,’ she says, taking my hand. ‘I am happy with him, although …’

  The unconscious glance Mary drops to her flat stomach tells me all I need to know. I can almost hear the longing inside her; she has wanted a baby of her own since she was four years old. I prepare a gentle question but she pulls the conversation back.

  ‘Thomas will tell you himself that he never betrayed Father nor Dick, never worked against the Protectorate.’

  I look at her with eyebrows raised; there is no need for me to say ‘But …’

  ‘But since the army brought Richard down, I believe Thomas has been corresponding with the exiled court once more; he may have sent the young king money.’

  I stiffen and a bitter taste creeps into my mouth. Is there nowhere I can be at peace?

  Mary hurries on urgently. ‘It’s best if Thomas explains himself directly to you; I want you to be friends, more than anything in the world. And I know you both too well to imagine you will begin that friendship until you have had this out between you.’

  I take Mary at her word and seek Thomas in his study after supper the following evening; if we are to talk freely, it must be alone.

  He is reading papers at his desk, a pair of spectacles perched on his nose which he hastily removes at my arrival. I am surprised to see a young man wearing glasses but I forgive his vanity and pretend I do not notice as he guides me to the fire, which has an armchair on either side. While Thomas fetches me a glass of wine, I look around the room, impressed and not a little intimidated by the fine portraits of his ancestors reclining on each wall. His truly is an aristocratic house, and with his movements as much as his speech, Thomas wears his nobility easily, like a comfortable robe shrugged on at the end of a hard day.

  We talk for a few minutes of inconsequential things but the spectre of the young ‘king’ hangs between us, listening to our conversation in a blur of dark curls and haughty lips.

  ‘Do you think he will come?’ I ask Thomas at length. ‘I had the frightening sensation on my journey here that Charles Stuart was chasing me all the way up the great north road.’

  Thomas takes a sip of wine and regards me closely over the rim of his glass. ‘I believe he will come now, yes.’

  ‘And this is something you welcome, even as it fills my heart with horror?’

  ‘I neither welcome nor fear it; I await events.’

  It is a diplomat’s answer and I press further. ‘I know you to be a royalist and I know you have kept in favour with the exiled “king”. You are my brother-in-law now: do you not think it time we understood each other truly? For Mary’s sake if for no other. I am a princess no longer, but a widow alone and adrift; a guest in your own house, dependent on your hospitality. You can speak freely.’

  ‘I apologise, Lady Frances,’ Thomas says after a pause, drawing a little straighter in his chair. ‘You are right of course, and I owe you more of my confidence. If it does not hurt you to hear my views then, yes, I welcome the king’s return.’

  ‘But why? You wish to crawl under the thumb of a tyrant once more?’

  He swivels the glass in his hand. ‘Let me put the question back to you: why not? You are not against monarchy itself – Mary has told me you both wondered at the time if your father should have become king. And he himself spoke often of the benefits of monarchy.’

  ‘Yes, but Father was chosen to rule,’ I reply. ‘He rose to his eminence by his own merit not by an accident of birth.’

  ‘And Richard?’ Thomas counters. ‘What were his qualifications?’

  He has me there and I take a sip of wine while I construct a response.

  ‘All right. But what is to prevent the young King Charles becoming the tyrant his father was?’

  ‘I would choose a different word than “tyrant” for the old king; he was … misguided.’

  ‘Very well – I will rephrase the question. What is to stop another monarch waging war against his people if a Parliament does not do what he wants?’

  Thomas regards me carefully before answering. ‘I seem to remember that when Parliament didn’t do what your father wanted in ’53, he marched his soldiers into the chamber and dissolved it. And Lambert did the same thing last autumn. Is that what you want?’ His words are as smooth and cool as milk.

  ‘That was not Father’s finest hour, I concede it. But if the king returns then what would have been the point of all the struggle and death of the last two decades? Why did Parliament win the war against the father if only to reinstate the son?’

  Thomas gets up and glides across to the wine decanter, returning with it to fill our glasses.

  ‘The point of it all will be that this king will not be the same kind of king as his father was. He will be restored under terms set by Parliament with checks on his power. We will never again treat our king like a divine being; we will see his flaws, challenge him, hold him to account. That will be the legacy of your father’s time as Head of State, if nothing else.’

  I shake my head at his naivety even as I wonder how it has come to be that I, a mere girl, see the world in more shades of grey than this seasoned politician. ‘That is wishful thinking, Viscount. Once the Stuart king is back on his throne he will do whatever he likes. You won’t be able to control him. England will slip back into its old ways and we will lose all the freedoms we fought for. He’ll muzzle the press, abolish religious freedoms, abandon our hard-earned role as Protestant peace-broker abroad, perhaps even sell Dunkirk to his French friends!’ I count off my prophecies on my fingers. ‘And we’ll have to fight all over again if we ever want our freedoms back.’

  Thomas stands again and I wonder if he needs to move around to order his thoughts, as Father used to do. This time he goes to the fire and, picking up the poker, prods the glowing logs until flames appear.

  ‘Let’s try looking at this another way,’ he says at length, staring into the hearth. ‘What is the alternative? I was fully behind the Protectorate, whatever you may think of my motives. Lord!’ Thomas turns back to face me, spreading his hands as if to reveal himself fully. ‘Do you imagine I would have married into your family, for ever linking my name with that of Cromwell, if I didn’t support your father? Many of my relations counted me a traitor but I thought your father our best chance of a return to stable, traditional government. If your father had lived … If your own family hadn’t betrayed Richard and brought him down … But martial rule? That is what we’re left with – government by a cabal of army officers, ranting about God and dissolving Parliaments whenever they want at the point of the sword? That is no England I recognise.’

  It is quite some speech and my mind races after its loose ends: if only Father hadn’t died so suddenly. If only Richard had been given more time. If only Charles hadn’t betrayed us. Perhaps if Father had accepted the crown … would that have made a difference? I feel tears of frustration pricking behind my eyes and shake my head against them.

  Thomas watches me for a few moments before continuing his argument, a little more gently.

  ‘Think of it this way. It was king against Parliament at the beginning, was it not? At the start of the civil war. Then it was king against Parliament against Parliament’s own army. But then, once the king was executed and your father’s army finally defeated us royalists in Ireland and Scotland, then it became the army against Parliament – and who should we support in that fight? I’m with Monck – a free Parliament was what your father’s side fought the war for and if a free Parliament votes to bring back the king … how can that be wrong?’

  It is a wild circle of logic and my head spins.

  Thomas sits down then, leaning towards me intently. ‘What it comes down to, Lady Frances, is this: do you believe in Parliament’s sovereignty or not? You think this is about the king but it isn’t; it is always – has always been – about Parliament.’

  ‘And what of us?’ I know
I should rise above self-interest and meet him on the field of constitutional theory but my family is what matters to me above all else. ‘What of my family?’

  He leans back in his chair then, allowing himself a gulp of his wine. ‘The king will be forgiving.’

  ‘Ha!’ I snort. ‘I do not want his forgiveness, I want his fairness.’

  ‘I believe he will be fair,’ Thomas answers quickly, holding a hand up against me. ‘He is no fool. He does not want to regain his kingdom only to see it run red again with blood. He must build consensus. Young Charles Stuart is a man of honour, his advisers are pragmatists, men whom only a hair’s breadth separated from their friends and colleagues on your side. There will be no retribution.’

  I remember what Father had said when he refused the idea of my marrying Charles – not only that he was debauched and unworthy of me but that the young man would never forgive those who killed his father. I cannot believe in the peaceful future Thomas paints. ‘Even for Cromwells?’ I ask. ‘Even for our friends who supported us and our Protectorate?’

  ‘Yes!’ he replies with sudden passion. ‘If you present yourself in the right way. Think about it: your family and supporters – many of whom, like me and like Lord Broghill, always kept some friendship with the royalist cause – you could be the new king’s most natural allies. You all believe as I do that the best government is by a single person and two houses of Parliament. You are all naturally conservative. That is why you sought to make Cromwell king. Present yourselves to the new king as lovers of monarchy and you will find him more accepting of you than the millenarian republicans and iron-clad godly generals like Charles. Perhaps you’ll even find you have more in common with the moderate royalists than you ever did with Fleetwood and Lambert.’

  My scepticism must be written on my face, for Thomas leans forward then to take my hand with surprising tenderness.

  ‘Frances, I respected your father above almost any other man. And I think he saw that with our generation there was a chance at reconciliation. Why else did he have me marry Mary? Why else did he even for a moment countenance your marrying the exiled king – Mary told me about it,’ he confesses in answer to my raised eyebrow.

  ‘You will let Mary be a Cromwell,’ I say firmly, ‘whatever happens. She and I will never renounce our father’s name. He is who we are.’

  ‘I know and I would never ask you to, nor speak ill of him myself, you have my word.’

  I squeeze his hand but rise from my seat; I do not want to argue any more.

  ‘So I haven’t convinced you?’ Thomas looks up at me, his features relaxing into a knowing smile.

  ‘You have spoken fairly, brother-in-law. You have put forward a good case.’

  ‘But you are not persuaded?’

  I shake my head, bewildered at the enormity of what he asks of me. ‘I am a Cromwell, raised from a child at the heart of Parliament’s struggle against the king – can you really expect me to overturn all the teaching of my life in one conversation?’

  Thomas bows his head in gracious acknowledgement. ‘It is your turn to speak fairly, sister; I stand,’ and he does, ‘rebuked.’

  His charm breaks through to me and I cannot help a smile returning to my lips, for all my anxiety. ‘You have persuaded me of one thing though,’ I say, turning back from the door.

  He looks at me questioningly.

  ‘I believe we shall be friends after all.’ I do not wait for an answer but leave the room quickly, climbing the grand staircase to my room. Even if I could come to trust Thomas in time, what if he is proved wrong, as I fear he will be? What would he do if his royal master demanded vengeance on my family?

  But the future belongs to Thomas and not me. Within a few weeks, the worst, the very worst, most unimaginable thing happens. Parliament votes to invite Charles Stuart home to take his throne; Thurloe and his allies have failed. Lambert escapes from the Tower and makes a last desperate bid to stop it: staging a rendezvous at Edgehill, site of the first great battle of the civil war. But not enough rally to him and he is captured again. They take him to Tyburn where he is forced to stand under the gallows imagining his death before he is dragged back once more to the Tower. The new king, meanwhile, issues declarations of love for his people and sails joyfully over the Channel. Father’s former Councillor General-at-Sea Edward Montagu, who I had once thought so honourable and glamorous, himself escorts the king to our shores on Father’s best warship the Naseby, which is rechristened the Royal Charles the moment the king places his stockinged, buckled foot on the gangplank.

  There is polite celebration at Newburgh Priory and raucous revelling across the country but I only feel sick as the kind world I have always lived in crumbles to dust around me. It is so final, I think: as absolute an end to our great wars of words and blood as could be imagined. How can we ever come back from this? Thomas travels down to his London house ready to bend the knee and Mary wishes him every success before retreating with me to her room to hide her shame. We spend much of our time closed up together; it is only on our own that we can grieve openly and enter fully into the new state of mourning we feel for a death every bit as real as Father’s. I may be safe here at Newburgh but how I wish I were at Chippenham with Harry or with Mother and John. We write to each other but none of us knows what to say. John Russell writes to me to assure me that I am in his thoughts and to wish for my return to Chippenham, but I do not reply; his kindness now is almost more than I can bear.

  Left to my brooding thoughts I think of the arrogant young king riding into London in mocking triumph; his procession as loud and grand as Caesar’s marching along the golden gallery at Hampton Court. I think of Father’s upturned face, candlelit below Mantegna’s beautiful canvases, as he mused on the heavy responsibility of power. I think of my old homes and imagine Charles Stuart cavorting through the palaces, laughing at us all and bedding his many mistresses in the very rooms Mother and Father slept in; the very bed Father died in, the words of St Paul on his lips: ‘I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me.’ I do not know Christ any more and so I try and summon Father’s strength to come to me instead. I try and bear this heartbreak as he would have done – as he would want me to do.

  But my blood boils with too much rage. I think angrily of the simpering courtiers rushing to welcome the new king; I read the pamphlets my old friends Bulstrode Whitelocke and John Thurloe hastily publish, explaining their past mistakes and declaring their ardent new loyalty to this puffed-up popinjay. If the surface of the ‘Restoration’ – as they are calling it – shines and gleams with hope and happiness, it is skin-deep, a veneer hiding a rotten underbelly of fear and violence. Master Milton’s books are burned by the public hangman at the Old Bailey, effigies of my father hang from windows and Parliament itself clamours for indictments and arrests as old scores are settled.

  Whatever his honeyed words and promises of indemnities, the new king is out for blood and we wait anxiously for him to make his move against us while our friends in London try and wheedle their way out of arrest and imprisonment. Despite his efforts at apologising in print, I learn that Bulstrode Whitelocke avoids prison only with the help of consummate bribes paid to his former friends and clients. A rumour reaches us that Thurloe has escaped punishment only by brandishing a little black book full of secrets that would embarrass the new government; his insurance policy collected over his many years as England’s chief spymaster. It is Charles Fleetwood I fear for most, whatever my anger at his betrayal, and there is an anxious time when his name is on the draft list of those who are to be exceptions to the indemnity promised to all. It is only thanks to the intercession of his friends in the House of Lords that at the last moment, his name is removed from the list. He is not to be punished but his public life is over as he is disabled for life from holding any office of trust.

  And Dick? His is the saddest, most painful loss of all. As he feared, Parliament does not honour its promise to pay his official debts and he is hounded by credito
rs. Faced with an angry mob of merchants already banging at his door and the prospect of the king’s men not far behind, Dick leaves in the middle of the night for the Continent. He goes into the unknown, into a solitary exile, leaving his children and his wife Dorothy, even now heavy with another child. He goes where we cannot follow and I fear I will never see him again.

  I am truly off the stage now. The princess who once danced as Venus is not even in the wings or watching the performance from the cheapest seats in the theatre. I am outside in the cold with no prospect of a ticket. I wonder sometimes if the new king ever thinks of me: the puritan princess he once sought for his bride, now living as just another one of his forgotten subjects. I long for the meaning my life once had and cannot help searching desperately for a new one, even as I feel myself slipping into obscurity. The more I am buried, the more I scramble for connections, living within the lines of the letters from my family and the pages of books, searching for answers in the distant past. Where Father used to look to God’s Providence for guidance, I look for man’s past choices: his triumphs, his mistakes, his ability to survive and to prosper against all odds.

  With no power of my own, I do not want to know what terrible things are happening in London. Yet snippets of news reach me when I cannot avoid them: in the conversation of Thomas’s family at breakfast or whispered by the servants who clean my room. And so, come autumn, I hear of the trials and grisly executions of the brave men whom the new king accuses of killing his father – the men who had known they took their lives in their hands when they signed King Charles I’s death warrant over ten years ago. Where they had sent the king to a solemn, respectful death, they in their turn die in the carnival atmosphere of a bear-baiting.

  To the gutter press they are ‘regicides’ deserving of the hideous death of hanging, drawing and quartering. But to me they are heroes – the bravest men I could imagine. And they wear their bravery to the end: owning their actions honourably at their trials despite the court placing the executioner nearby to unsettle them; explaining that as they had acted truly for God and their country, they are not ashamed to be punished now as their enemies see fit; always believing that the Good Old Cause would live again. When the millenarian Major-General Thomas Harrison is dragged to his death on the hurdle, even the most hostile journalists report his cheerfulness, steadiness of mind, contempt of death and magnanimity. I am as proud of these men – these brothers-in-arms of my father – as if I were daughter to each of them. For the first time in my life I am relieved that Father is dead and beyond the hangman’s reach.