Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration

by Antonia Fraser

  8 This extended much further east from the present haven, making the Hove Basin his most probable point of embarkation.13

  9 In 1977, the Year of the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, a commemorative yacht race was organized between Brighton and Fécamp to celebrate the escape of King Charles II, sponsored by the Old Ship Hotel, Brighton, and the Sussex Yacht Club.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Difficult Game

  ‘They, who will not believe anything to be reasonably designed, except it be successfully executed, had need of a less difficult game to play than mine is.’

  Charles II, June 1653

  The King who arrived back at the court of France at the end of October 1651 was so emaciated, and even dirty, that people generally failed to recognize him. In Rouen he had at first been taken for a vagrant. Then Dr Earle, his old tutor, who happened to be in the town, hurried to his hotel. Looking at Charles blankly, he asked to be conducted before the King. From his mother’s favourite, Lord Jermyn, Charles received the first clean shirt to come his way since the garment given to him at Moseley by Father Huddleston.

  After the first rapturous welcome, Charles was described as both ‘sad and sombre’.1 The cheerfulness which he assumed, against his inclinations, only lasted a few days. After that people noticed that he often fell very silent. There was indeed very little to comfort him at the French Court, to say nothing of his troubled thoughts wending backwards to those he had left behind in England. He could not even describe their courage in full for fear of endangering them further; it was not until after the Restoration that the full amazing story was told. Above all, he could not help them. As a result, the English government were slow to be convinced of the truth of his whereabouts – as late as 29 October the King was rumoured lost at sea. By November the official Commonwealth line, to explain away the unfortunate truth of his escape, was expressed in a sneering poster: this showed the King as ‘a Fool on Horseback, riding backwards, turning his face every way in fears’, weighed down by a full pouch of the Pope’s money round his waist.

  So much for the facts, which still impress us with their gallantry. Charles himself wrote gloomily to Jane Lane a year later (she had escaped to become lady-in-waiting to Charles’ sister, the Princess of Orange). He deplored his inability to express his gratitude in some practical form, despite her need: ‘I believe it troubles me more that I cannot do it yet, than it does you.’2

  France herself was in the throes of the second civil war of the ‘princely’ Fronde, which had broken out in September. Basically, it was a struggle for power between Cardinal Mazarin and the superior nobility, led once again by the Prince de Condé. One such inconclusive struggle had already occupied most of 1650, following the earlier disturbance of the ‘Parliamentary’ Fronde. As a result, the French royal family was in a state of alarm and tension, which spread to all its dependents, including Queen Henrietta Maria. That in turn affected Charles. His mother’s mood was grim. Since Charles had no alternative but to live off her charity, and she lived off the charity of the Cardinal de Retz, she made a note of exactly what his meals cost her: ‘The very first night’s supper which the King ate with the Queen began the account….’3 The result was that, when Charles did eventually get a grant of sorts, he found that he owed much of it to his mother.

  There was always the Grande Mademoiselle. Time had not treated her kindly – physically, at any rate – and Charles had grown up into a handsome, if penniless and homeless, man. This was no longer the uncouth boy who had been edged towards her by his mother, as Viola had been compelled to duel with Sir Andrew Aguecheek by Sir Toby Belch. His conversation was more beguiling too. Mademoiselle shuddered deliciously at Charles’ tales of the uncouth life in Scotland, and how bored he had been by it all. Imagine an existence where to play the fiddle was a crime! And ‘there was not a woman to be seen’. Under the circumstances, she was inclined to overlook his unfashionably cropped hair and ‘a great deal of beard’.4

  Mazarin continued to handle the situation adroitly, lest this wealthy French prize fall into the hands of the suppliant English. Whenever Mademoiselle grew too warm towards her cousin the English King, Mazarin was every ready to dangle the infinitely more magnificent prospect of her cousin the French king. Louis XIV had reached his thirteenth birthday – his majority – on 5 September 1651: he was thus in theory marriageable. But it was to be the war of the Fronde, not her romance with Charles, which proved the personal nemesis of Mademoiselle.

  The arrival of the majority of Louis XIV also meant that both sides in this expensive and attritious French Civil War, Mazarin and Condé, could claim to act on his behalf. Charles II too was drawn into the struggle, although not precisely in the manner in which he would have desired. Unlike his younger brother, the Duke of York, there could be no question of the English King joining the army of the great Marshal Turenne and going into the field against Condé. Handsome, energetic James, tired of kicking his heels near his mother, applied for some active post. The courtiers were nervous whether his participation would further prejudice the position of the Stuarts – by identifying them in advance with one side or the other, when their one pathetic aim was to be on the winning side. In the end James was granted permission, on condition that it was a purely personal gesture.

  James departed from Paris to serve in the French Army, having had to borrow money to buy his equipment, and embarked on what was probably the happiest adventure of his life – several years of active military service. He was a natural soldier, easy, practical and talented. One can understand how at this point Hyde regarded James as a more hopeful character than his elder brother, condemned to stay behind in Paris for an infinitely less agreeable life of poverty and negotiation. Charles’ situation in the spring of 1652 was ‘the most painful that can be imagined’ – at least, that was how it would be described in James’ memoirs.5 The sufferings of mother and son at the Louvre were acute. They were not even receiving the French money on which they so much depended, and they had no-one else to approach. Meanwhile the ordinary people of Paris surrounding them, who sympathized with the Condé faction rather than with that of the Cardinal, were openly indignant that the Duke of York was serving with the King’s army under Turenne.

  At the behest of the Duke of Lorraine, Charles undertook an unenviable task. This was to negotiate with the King of France. The Spanish had attempted to employ the changeable Duke against Turenne. Charles managed to bring the Duke of Lorraine to the French Court at Melun. There he secured the withdrawal of the Duke from the Spanish interest. But, having performed this service and returned to Paris, Charles found himself in the power of Condé, who had taken triumphant charge of the capital. Here, Charles’ intervention made him extremely unpopular. Condé forthwith ordered Charles away and out of the city to Saint-Germain, and, having no funds whatever, he could not refuse. In this way Charles formed part of the French royal cortège, seated on a hill outside Paris, which witnessed the reduction of the city by Turenne on behalf of the young King Louis. Inside Paris poor Mademoiselle had seen her opportunity at last for achieving the gloire for which she had surely been born: dressed in a soldier’s costume, heroic, splendidly cheerful, she whirled amongst Condé’s troops, their Amazon and their inspiration. But none of this prevented Turenne from taking back the capital. Although it was Mademoiselle’s personal intervention, as she proudly related, which saved Condé’s life, her disgrace with the orthodox French Court was total. Louis XIV, a quiet boy rapidly turning into a man with a long memory, never forgave her.

  By the autumn of 1652 the French Court was once more installed in Paris.

  And now – at long last – would the French royal family redeem their promises and assist their poor English cousins? Regrettably, the answer was, as before, tangled in the webs of international diplomacy. Sir Edward Nicholas made a gloomy prognostication of the French King’s intentions, ‘notwithstanding all his fair words and kingly promises to our gallant Master’. Nicholas was to be proved right
.6

  *

  It was a sad truth that the status of Charles II amidst the crowned heads and other leaders of Europe was declining all the time. The summer of 1652 had seen the outbreak of a war between the England of the Commonwealth and the Dutch. Naturally Charles tried to prise some advantage out of this, beginning with the suggestion that he might come on a personal mission to the United Provinces. But the Dutch, for all their problems with the Commonwealth, had reason to regard the Stuart connection warily.

  One of the cruel blows of fate which had befallen the Stuart family shortly after the Scottish catastrophe of Dunbar was the death of Mary’s husband William II. He died in November 1650, at the age of twenty-four. Six days later Mary gave birth to a son, another William, the heir to the House of Orange (and also of course within the Stuart succession). The guardianship of this baby produced an instant quarrel between the various interested parties in the United Provinces. As has been noted, the inheritance of the House of Orange was a complicated matter. The role of Stadtholder was not in theory hereditary, and thus evaporated on the death of William II. Yet the baby William inherited certain other specific rights and possessions, including a firm hold on the government of the province of Zeeland: this automatically made his guardianship of consequence in the politics of his country. The fact that these hereditary possessions of Orange were encumbered with debt did not rob them of their potential for the future.

  In the prolonged squabble over the guardianship the Princess of Orange, Mary Stuart, and the Dowager Princess, Amalia von Solms, allowed themselves to be fatally divided by their own jealousies and rivalries. Wiser heads might have realized that it was imperative for the House of Orange to present a united front, if it was to preserve any kind of power in the United Provinces in the future, against the rising independence of the Estates. In the end Mary, the Dowager Princess Amalia and the Elector of Brandenburg (husband of Princess Louise Henrietta of Orange) were appointed co-guardians; but not before the Dowager Princess had carefully denigrated Mary by suggesting that she herself, not Mary, stood for the nationalist aspirations of the Dutch. It was a damaging charge to make at this juncture against a member of the vulnerable Stuart family.

  In the summer of 1652, therefore, it is understandable that the Dutch were in no hurry to accept Charles’ offer of assistance against the Commonwealth. What assistance, after all, could he provide? His few ships were away in the West Indies, under Prince Rupert, privateering with a view to filling his coffers if he could. He had neither money nor troops. None of Charles’ increasingly desperate suggestions met with favour. Could he perhaps join the Dutch Navy, and help them to victory or ‘perish in the attempt’?7 Could he head a squadron of ships on their behalf? But it was made clear that his presence amidst the Dutch would be an embarrassment and there was no money to raise a squadron. The King of England was in the position of an extra chess-piece, superfluous to the requirements of the game; he could not even get onto the board.

  Furthermore, Charles himself held no brief for the Dutch Calvinists. And it was a fact that the obvious spiritual links between the Dutch and the Commonwealth, like those between the Commonwealth and the Covenanters, would always work to his disadvantage, even without this personal disinclination. As it was, stories that he was approaching the Pope for aid did not help the Dutch to regard him with any greater favour.

  Hyde, Acting Secretary of State since 1651, expressed an aspect of this unpalatable truth: he was not wise enough to judge which would be best for them, ‘that the Dutch should beat the English or the English the Dutch’.8 To look ahead, this natural accord of new Dutch leaders and new English ones reached its most cruel expression – for the Stuarts – when terms were finally discussed between the two countries at the beginning of 1654. The consequent peace was damaging enough from Charles’ point of view. But one of the conditions was the ‘seclusion’ of the House of Orange from the government. This condition was originally imposed by Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England since the previous December. But the Dutch, wishing to take very opportunity to humiliate the House of Orange, as one of their number told the French Ambassador, joined gladly in the scheme.9 As a result, Mary Princess of Orange, who had seemed back in the late forties the member of the Stuart family most likely to protect all the rest, was transformed into yet another distressed and protesting royal personage.

  Of course, there remained Scotland. The price of Worcester – total defeat at the hands of the English – had been immediate occupation of the country. Legalization of this occupation followed, then union of the two countries, imposed from England. The situation was naturally inimical to many of the Scots, foremost amongst them the Highlanders, whose geographical situation enabled them to breathe defiance with virtual impunity if they so wished. There was however a considerable gap between Highland defiance and a royal triumph based on Highland action (as the past had already sufficiently demonstrated). A rising in the Highlands in the summer of 1652 proved once more abortive. The King wrote in disgust of the lethargy of the Highlanders, who, having promised to invade England, merely captured Inverness and then preferred to sleep in their own beds.

  The real question about all these Scottish ventures was whether the leadership was to be local or imposed by the King from a distance; and, if the latter, a further question arose as to how local loyalties were to be stimulated, local feuds stifled. The appointment of John Middleton to the Highland command was along the right lines. Middleton had held command at Worcester and been imprisoned thereafter. He escaped from prison, wearing his wife’s clothes, and rejoined the King. Middleton was an attractive character and a good commander. It was not his fault if the Highlanders failed to rise in abundant numbers.

  The appointment of the Earl of Glencairn to a temporary overall command in the summer of 1653 was not such a wise move on the part of the King. He had once more straddled the Scots with a divided authority: the last thing they needed, in view of their own natural differences. Glencairn, unlike Middleton, was at the King’s side. There was the renewed question of a Scottish expedition, to be sure, but with it the renewed problem – when should Glencairn sail, and, above all, when was the appropriate moment for the King himself to throw his weight into the fray?

  In June 1653 Hyde was convinced that if ‘no more probable adventure’ offered itself, the King would go for Scotland.10 Yet Charles did not set out. It is true that at this point Cardinal Mazarin still held Charles in a clamp; he would neither release him nor assist him. Nevertheless, the fact has to be faced that Charles was by now profoundly sceptical about the Scots, their capacity to implement their own promises, their ability to bring any kind of victory to his advantage out of their bleak and feudacious country. Therefore any possible Highland rising was born suffering from the disease of the King’s secret disbelief – a condition which divided command did not help.

  Nor can one criticize Charles for this conviction. As he had pointed out after Worcester, the Scots had not stuck by him in battle and were unlikely to do so when he was on the run; the same argument could be applied to a King in exile – the Scots were hardly likely to aid him whom they had failed to restore after his formal coronation at Scone. It was true that the English occupation, under the briskly iron rule of Colonel Robert, assisted the popularity of the absent Royalists. But there was no guarantee that this popularity would survive their actual appearance, since it had waned so many times before.

  When this latest Highland rising did get under way, its progress confirmed these gloomy suppositions. There was a brief moment of glory when Middleton, the more experienced soldier, regained supreme command from Glencairn. But the treasured ability to form a proper Highland army and, having formed it, to lead it anywhere other than round and round the Highlands, was possessed by neither man. Help from abroad remained crucial. Might the Dutch come to the rescue? But by April 1654 the Dutch were no longer at war with the English Commonwealth. So hopes dwindled and ended with Middleton’s defeat at Dalnaspidal in J
uly 1654.

  Meanwhile in England itself the elevation of Oliver Cromwell to the quasi-royal rank of Lord Protector was another blow to the prestige of the uncrowned King. The position of Protector was one which had its roots in English history – both Somerset and Hertford had occupied it. After Cromwell’s assumption of the role, the Protectoral State replaced that of the Commonwealth. It was a far more conventional concept. Negotiations between England and the various European powers were eased as a result.

  France had indulged in a semi-official representation in England from late 1652 onwards in the shape of a clever, adaptable envoy, Antoine de Bordeaux. As the French Court settled back into its usual state of complacency, as the Cardinal resumed the reins of power twitched from his hands during the war of the Fronde, the melancholy observers of the exiled Royalist set began to suspect that yet another blow might be in store for them: the alliance of France and Commonwealth England. It would be the death-knell to Royalist hopes in France. Yet there was really nothing that King Charles, penniless, depressed and helpless, could do to avert it. He was thrust back on a series of diplomatic missions and enquiries – to the Danes, to Hamburg, Danzig, Poland, Queen Christina of Sweden, the German Diet and so forth – which, totted up, might win a prize for optimism and persistence, but achieved little positive result.

  Money remained the key to absolutely everything, in the absence of the practical support of the great powers. Lack of money caused at least one mission to be withdrawn, since the emissary could not be supported. Already by 1652 the lack of money was chronic. The letters of the courtiers surrounding Charles began to be filled with the most poignant details of their penury. The childish jubilation of Richard Bellings on a mission to Ratisbon in April 1653, at having Christmas plum porridge, mince-pies, bakemeats and brawn, illustrates how low their expectations had become.11