Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration

by Antonia Fraser

  It was not that the King was indifferent towards his friends’ sufferings – far from it. But his official means of support were virtually non-existent. Jermyn had secured a nominal pension of £6,000 from the French government in February 1652 in order to end the King’s maddening dependence on his mother. That sounded generous enough. But the pension was very seldom paid. Charles was thrust back on Loyalist contributions from England, a declining source of supply and surrounded by danger for those who tried to collect it. Privateers in the channel provided little joy: those from the Breton ports, while paying lip service to a tithe due to the English King, got away with what they could. The haven of Jersey had surrendered to the Commonwealth in December 1651. There was only the remote hope of rich privateering prizes to be provided by Prince Rupert from the West Indies.

  It is against this background that the piteous pleas of the courtiers should be seen. And it would all get worse.

  Under the circumstances, the propagandist charges that Charles was extravagant, wanton with money, make ironic reading. Had the King wished to outshine the sun itself in munificence, he would still have had absolutely no opportunity to do so. He was still living under his mother’s roof at the Louvre. As he wrote to Rupert in the West Indies shortly before he left France, ‘I am sure I am not only without money but have been compelled to borrow all that I have spent these three months’12 – and these were necessary expenses of the sheer act of living.

  Hyde laid his own charges that the young King, robbed of a sphere of proper action, became idle and pleasure-loving. How he nagged! The King did not write letters, the King did not attend to business, the King did this (bad) and did not do that (even worse). In short, he found that Charles’ character had not been improved by adversity. ‘God send us quickly from this place, for surely this lazy kind of life does nobody any good!’ he exclaimed.13 But it was not Paris and some fantasy existence of pleasure which was to blame, but an enforced life of disappointment.

  Hyde’s temperament was not improved by adversity either. He looked for some explanation of their continued trials – much as a Calvinist might have done – and found it in the King’s lack of moral fibre, his inattention to the strict matter of the business. Charles was in effect the scapegoat. Hyde was in a more generous and a more accurate mood when he wrote, ‘If you knew the miserable life the King leads, and how he is used, you would believe that he acts his own part not amiss; nor is it enough to say that it is his own fault….’14

  It was no wonder that by the summer of 1653 Charles had fallen ill with a fever. Its exact nature was undiagnosed, except that he had to have blood let five times. But in view of the fact that contemporaries commented on his depression and withdrawal, one may suppose it to have been at least partly psychosomatic in origin, one of those fevers which the healthy Charles would have shrugged off without difficulty, but now laid him painfully low.

  Relief, when it came, came in the form of change, rather than any true lightening of the situation. Nevertheless, to the King a change – any change – was obviously beneficial after the darkness into which he had been plunged at the French Court. As the steps of the diplomatic dance in which Protector and Cardinal were involved quickened, it suddenly suited the French to be rid of their dependent. Having been at times cozened by Mazarin, at times virtually imprisoned by him, Charles now found himself offered what his heart most desired – the full payment of his French pension – on condition that he left the country within ten days.

  The gesture had very little grace about it: the French made it clear that the step was a necessary preparation for an English alliance. Nor was the departure of the King particularly ceremonious: he travelled on horseback, having put his coach-horses into ‘a light cart’ to convey his clothes and bedding. It was not quite the abject wretchedness of the post-Worcester period, but it was far from the state of a reigning monarch. Hyde wrote of his departure that ‘the King is now as low as to human understanding as he can be’.15 Yet at least Charles, literally putting the French Court, with its frustrations and chicaneries, behind him, had hope. And he was once more on his own, without his mother. As the years drew on and their differences increased, her presence aroused in him a combination of profound irritation and melancholy affection, which he was glad to avoid.

  Indeed, first at Spa and then at Aachen for a month or two Charles actually found life rather fun. The decision to go to Spa was not of course taken from a very wide choice: Holland would not have him, and the various territories within and around the Holy Roman Empire, on the borders of the Spanish Netherlands, offered the best alternative.

  At Spa, the impoverished little band whistled to keep up their spirits, and, as descriptions of their life show, to a certain extent succeeded. It was high summer. All the afternoon the courtiers would dance, then take supper, then dance again in the evening light in the meadows: ‘I think the air makes them indefatigable’ was one comment.16 The inclement weather, which was supposed to have affected the famous mineral waters of the Spa, obviously did not spoil this rustic fun. And the weather did not prevent salubrious bathing in Caesar’s Bath.

  One of the chief dancers was Theobald Lord Taaffe, an Anglo-Irish peer who had fought with Ormonde in the late 1640s. He had not done particularly well militarily, but he had later joined Charles in Paris, where, according to the Cardinal de Retz, he had become ‘Great Chamberlain, Valet de Chambre, Clerk of the Kitchen, Cup Bearer and all’ to the King – in short, that kind of necessary mixture of courtier, agent and boon companion of which all Kings stand in need, particularly those without proper courts. Taaffe had something else in common with his master – a relationship with Lucy Walter. He was probably the father of her second child, Mary Walter.17 In Brussels Taaffe negotiated with the Duke of Lorraine, mortgaging the Fort of Duncannon to him on Charles’ behalf for funds; there was also a proposal to marry James to one of the Duke of Lorraine’s illegitimate children, and pop the pair of them on an independent throne in Ireland.

  Apart from his usefulness as a confidant, Taaffe’s chief value to the King was in his Catholicism. He could thus be used as an intermediary with the Pope or with the Catholic Count of Neuburg, without the potentate feeling insulted. Certainly Taaffe enjoyed a close and warm friendship with his sovereign throughout nearly all the years of exile (only clouded over towards the end, when Taaffe killed Sir William Keith in a duel over a tennis bet – for Charles maintained very strict anti-duelling rules). As much as anyone, Taaffe understood exactly what depressions, disappointments – and pleasures – marked the long exile of King Charles II.

  As Taaffe danced, and on occasion waxed ‘poetical’, the more stable side of Charles’ entourage was represented by the Marquess of Ormonde. And the mimic court was further gilded by the arrival of Mary Princess of Orange. Brother and sister occupied the two chief hotels at the Spa with their suites. Their mutual devotion was the subject of sentimental and approving comment, while Mary’s widowed status involved her in various romantic rumours, including the notion that she might now marry her cousin Prince Rupert. There were other rumours too – that another eligible lady, the eccentric Queen Christina of Sweden, might join them. It was just as well the Royalists were unaware that the Swedish Queen was also somewhere in her strange heart sighing after Oliver Cromwell, professing herself ‘vestra amica Christina’ and treasuring the Protector’s portrait.

  Brother and sister went to Aachen. On 7 September the King, all in black, with white silk stockings and the ever-present colour of the Garter, visited the Cathedral of Charlemagne at the invitation of the Canons. Mary kissed the skull and hand of the great Emperor, and Charles measured his sword against his own. There was plenty of mirth and dancing and drinking. It was all very jolly and apparently carefree and gracious at the same time. Charles was described as winning universal regard by his ‘affable and free carriage’. It was left to an English spy to write a secret report to John Thurloe, Cromwell’s Secretary of State and master of the Protectoral intellig
ence network: ‘For all his dancing, I believe he [the King] has a heavy heart.’18

  By the beginning of autumn that was undoubtedly true. The upsurge of optimism consequent on departure from France had waned. The courtiers’ obsessional interest in their own poverty had taken over from their gaiety: Aachen was described as ‘a most expenseful place’, at five pence a night for a bed.19 Their complaints about local prices and their own lack of cash remind one of the sufferings of British travellers denied foreign currency after the Second World War.

  When the King and his sister decided to pass on to Cologne in early October it was because they hoped that this free archbishopric, owing no allegiance to the Emperor, would provide the right base for their next step – whatever that might be.

  On the surface all went well. Mary discovered ‘a very fair and curious house, full of decent rooms and pleasant gardens’ for their lodging. The City Magistrates presented silver pots and wine to fill the pots. There were receptions for the royal brother and sister at the local Jesuit College, where young boys sang to them with great sweetness, and at convents round about. The natives being so friendly, and pressing them to stay, Charles graciously acceded to their invitation, and decided to take up residence in the city. The courtiers, ignoring the fact that very soon wages were owing to them all and there was little or no hope of payment, were once again resolutely cheerful: ‘We are as brave and eat as well and are as jocund, as if we were in all plenty, so confident we are of God’s continuance in his wonderful Providence towards us.’20

  Charles himself also described an existence in Cologne which recalls that of the exiled Duke in As You Like It, fleeting the time carelessly in the Forest of Arden: ‘Despite lack of money we dance and play as if we have taken the Plate-Fleet,’ he wrote. As Charles told his aunt Elizabeth of Bohemia in one of his wry, joking letters, they had only two lacks: ‘the one for want of fiddlers, the other for somebody both to teach and assist at dancing the new dances’. Otherwise all was perfection. Charles also ordered clothes, a sword, and a quantity of shoes (his obsession): three black and three coloured pairs from a Paris shoemaker, and six more from one in Flanders.21

  But Sir Edward Nicholas’ stoicism and the King’s good cheer cannot conceal the fact that one of Charles’ main reasons for picking on Cologne was its convenience as a collecting station for the money granted to him by the Imperial Diet. And that money proved as difficult to elicit as the French pension…. The Elector of Cologne only paid up ‘his small quota’, as Hyde described it, after an importunity ‘unfit to have been pressed upon any other prince or gentleman’.22 Furthermore, the Elector excused himself from paying an official call on Charles on the chilly grounds of ‘ill-health’. The warmth of the City Magistrates was not paralleled by that of the Princes.

  When the Count of Neuburg invited King Charles and Princess Mary to Düsseldorf, they accepted with alacrity. On 29 October they repaired there by water, floating down the Rhine in a kind of Siegfried idyll. At the end of the journey the Count and Countess awaited them, surrounded by a full assembly of their court with many an elaborate ceremony and repast to follow. For instance, twenty-two tables and sixty-eight dishes were designated for the evening banquet – one hopes that the starving English courtiers of Cologne revelled in the experience. There was music, new to their ears but delightful all the same, and the Count, who prided himself on his civilized way of life, did not even drink too much (unlike some other Germans of their experience).

  It was unfortunate that the taste and elegance of the Count was not matched by that of his wife Elizabeth Amalia of Hesse Darmstadt: Charles had already declared himself against the notion of marrying a German wife – ‘I hate Princesses of cold northern countries’23 – and the Countess did little to dissuade him from his prejudice. Having no French, she decided to take no part in the festivities, but sat in an ungraciously lumpen manner throughout the banquet.

  From Düsseldorf King Charles and Princess Mary ventured daringly a little way into the Spanish Netherlands, although Charles had no permission to do so. Then it was back to Cologne, where, after the Düsseldorf jaunt, the rest of the winter passed somewhat sadly and even sourly. The Elector still did not call. Charles studied French, studied Italian, hunted and – walked. He had no coach. He walked in the walled city. One of Thurloe’s spies described him walking ceaselessly in the icy weather, bare-headed through this city which, originally a little paradise, had become an open prison. And of course the quarrels had broken out all over again among his advisers.

  Under the circumstances, it was natural for all concerned with the royal fortunes to cast their eyes anew at England, since the near prospect was so unsatisfying. After only a few months Cologne was as stale as any other refuge. Temperamentally, Charles liked Germany no better than he liked the northern princesses. Years later, when the King was told that the widowed Duchesse de Châtillon, his lovely Bablon, was going to remarry and live in Germany, he observed with feeling, ‘If she knew the country, that’s to say, the way of living there and the people, so well as I do, she would suffer very much in France before she would change countries.’24

  In England after 1653 some kind of revival of Royalist spirit had at last taken place. In November 1653 King Charles gave the first written credentials to an organization terming itself the Sealed Knot, as the official organ of Royalist conspiracy in England.25 It had always been Hyde’s contention that the King was not only most likely to be restored from within England, but also most beneficially – thus the stain of foreign aid would not be seen on his royal robe. But it was also part of Hyde’s policy, with which the King heartily agreed, that the English rising, when it came, should be a co-ordinated once-and-for-all affair. The Sealed Knot was given its commission as much to hold in check other unplanned and thus doomed risings, as to set in motion its own.

  The trouble was that the English conspirators were as disunited at home as the English Court abroad. The Sealed Knot could not prevent the eruption of two irresponsible plots in the summer of 1654, that of Gerard and the so-called Ship Tavern Plot.

  When a splinter group, calling themselves the Action Party, decided to plan a major coup for the spring of 1655, the King found himself in a highly awkward and even embarrassing situation as regards the Sealed Knot. First, he was well aware that without the active participation of the Knot the rising was hardly likely to succeed. Secondly, the leading members of the Knot declined to take part, unless actually ordered to do so by the King. Thirdly, the Action Party made it clear that they intended to go ahead in any case, with or without the Knot.

  This embarrassment culminated in the disastrous events of the spring of 1655. As the King paced round icy and far-off Cologne, he was compelled to receive the mission of an agitated member of the Action Party, Thomas Ross, who arrived at the end of January and implored him to give his group the royal support. This put Charles in a quandary. He outlined it succinctly to the Knot representatives. How could he order the Sealed Knot to go against its own military judgement? On the other hand, ‘nor can it be reasonable for me to hinder them [i.e. the Action Party] from moving, who believe themselves ready for it….’ He concluded gloomily to the Knot members: ‘And yet I cannot look for any great success, if whilst they stir, you sit still.’26

  With hindsight it is easy to see that the King’s eventual course of action did nothing to mitigate the conspirators’ difficulties. He instructed Daniel O’Neill to negotiate between the two parties, to try and work out some agreement between themselves; he also despatched the new Lord Rochester (the former Lord Wilmot) to England. What Charles failed to do was provide some kind of firm authority which all sides would respect. Ormonde, who was at Antwerp, and sent emissaries from both conspiratorial factions, slightly favoured the Action Party, but was well aware of the need for a positive decision from the King, ‘else it would be the certain loss of those that shall appear, and the very probable destruction of those that hold off’.27

  Yet Charles’ indecision �
�� which is what it amounted to – reflected only too accurately his cut-off state, the impossibility of reaching any kind of major conclusion about a country of whose conditions he remained lamentably ignorant. In this sense, it is difficult to criticize the King too harshly. All one can do is note a creeping vacillation in the nature and policies of King Charles from 1655 onwards. Nicholas called this vacillation ‘The fatal custom of his family’.28 This is unjust. For the first twenty-four years of his life we have seen in King Charles a decisive, even heroically active, character: now this new strain of inaction develops to complicate what was originally a comparatively simple nature. Its genesis in the tense conditions of exile is easily understood. But it is a further ironic fact, as we shall see, that in exile the King did as well by inaction as by action – taking the long view.

  However, that consoling notion was not available to the wretched conspirators of March 1655. Nothing happened at all in Leicestershire or Staffordshire (where plans collapsed). These conspirators were the lucky ones. In the North too nothing of any great consequence happened, except that Rochester arrived, and had to make yet another escape from the British Isles once it was realized that the government had the insurrection well in hand. The rising itself was officially postponed – except that the news did not reach the West.

  There Colonel John Penruddock, a member of the Action Party, did enter Salisbury and seized the town on 12 March. The rumour – incorrect – of Leveller participation in the rising had the unfortunate effect of spurring on the government to vengeance without assisting the conspirators. This merely gave the Protectoral government an excellent excuse for repression via a much-increased militia, once they had put the rising down with comparative lack of effort. Indeed, the regime of the Major-Generals, a military rule by districts instituted in England shortly afterwards, was happily attributed by the government to the necessities imposed by the Penruddock Rising. Yet the Rising never posed the faintest danger to the established regime: what with the infiltration of the Sealed Knot organization by government spies and the quarrels of the English Court abroad, there was little to fear. The prejudices of the latter included the refusal to employ the Catholic Sir Marmaduke Langdale in Yorkshire, although he was a person of much influence there, and a noted soldier.