Killers of the King

by Charles Spencer

  Hutchinson knew Cooper was an intimate of Monck’s, and asked him what his all-powerful friend’s aims were. It was a crucial enquiry, wrote Lucy Hutchinson, in order that ‘both he and others might consider their safety, who were likely to be given up for a public sacrifice. Whereupon Cooper denied to the death any intention besides a commonwealth. “But,” said he, with the greatest semblance of reality that can be put on, “if the violence of the people should bring the King upon us, let me be damned, body and soul, if ever I see a hair of any man’s head touched, or a penny of any man’s estate, upon this quarrel.” ’8 Colonel Hutchinson passed this reassuring message on to several of his fellows. However, it was quickly clear that things would not be as Cooper had claimed.

  Parliament was dismissed in mid-April 1660. Some of the sitting regicides were not prepared to go quietly. ‘Upon the last day of our sitting,’ Major General Browne, the lord mayor elect, recalled later, ‘Mr Scott seeing the House must break, said, “Their heads must be laid to the block if there were a new Parliament, for I confess I had a hand in the putting the King to death, and I desire all the world may take notice of it, and I desire when I die it may be written on my tomb. I do not repent of any thing I have done; if it were to do, I could do it again.” ’ When it became clear that these appeals had been ignored, and that this Parliament would cease to be, Thomas Scott added, ‘Being it is your pleasure to have it so, I know not how to hinder it; but when that is done, I know not where to hide this hated head of mine.’9 Hearing of plans to assassinate him, Scott fled abroad, in disguise.

  There was widespread joy at the Long Parliament’s eventual passing, and excitement that a new order would emerge in its place. Army officers who had committed all to the cause looked with disgruntled distaste at public celebrations marking the change. Some involved bonfires on which, with simple symbolism, rumps of beef were burnt. At the same time insults were directed at an overbearing military, finally brought low.

  Colonel Hacker, who had been the commanding officer on the scaffold at Charles’s execution, was at this point stationed with his regiment in Nottingham. The taunting his troops received from the young men of the town, who beat drums and paraded in a mock military manner, tipped over into aggression when Hacker’s troops moved to confiscate their instruments and banners. Forty of Hacker’s men were hurt in the resulting hail of thrown stones. His troops opened fire, killing two onlookers: one was an ageing academic, the other a respected munitions officer from Nottingham Castle’s wartime garrison. The violent clash between the army and the local people had claimed the life of a man who had risked all for Parliament – slain by his former comrades-in-arms.

  In the face of this chaos, Nottingham’s Presbyterian preachers now openly called for the restoration of the Stuart royal line: it at least promised a return to stability. When Hacker learnt of this, he led his men in a plundering spree against those he considered disloyal. It was only the intervention of the regicide Colonel Hutchinson, whose family had strong local interests, that prevented Hacker turning his raid into a bloodbath.

  Augustine Garland, who had also sat in judgment of the King, would later refer to this time as one ‘when the Government was . . . tossed, and turned, and tumbled, and I know not what’.10 As anarchy threatened the nation, Monck began to communicate in earnest with the Prince of Wales. He advised Charles to move from the Spanish Netherlands to Dutch territory, since communications from an enemy Catholic land would not endear him to politicians in London. Monck also highlighted the key issues that the Prince needed to address if a royal restoration was to become palatable. Charles had expected that he would need to agree to severe limitations on his royal powers, such as his father had faced during his final negotiations on the Isle of Wight, but he instead found Monck preoccupied less by concessions and more by the need for reassurances.

  In April 1660, Charles addressed these points from his Dutch quarters, in letters that were edited into the Declaration of Breda. This was a proclamation skilfully constructed by Charles’s key advisers, promising religious toleration, recognition of property rights and pay for the military. More specifically, ‘a liberty to tender consciences’ was reserved for those whose faith did not disturb the peace. Meanwhile any who had materially benefited under the Commonwealth would keep possession of estates accumulated during and since the Civil Wars. Equally importantly, there was a commitment to meet arrears for those soldiers who acknowledged Monck’s command. The Declaration was, essentially, an acknowledgement that retribution was impossible, when so many people had stood against the Crown during the previous two decades:

  And to the end that fear of punishment may not engage any, conscious to themselves of what is past, to a perseverance in guilt for the future, by opposing the quiet and happiness of their country, in the restoration of King, Peers and people to their just, ancient and fundamental rights, we do, by these presents, declare, that we do grant a free and general pardon, which we are ready, upon demand, to pass under our Great Seal of England, to all our subjects, of what degree or quality so ever, who, within forty days after the publishing hereof, shall lay hold upon this our grace and favour, and shall, by any public act, declare their doing so, and that they return to the loyalty and obedience of good subjects . . .

  The next words in the declaration were less straightforward:

  . . . excepting only such persons as shall hereafter be excepted by Parliament, those only to be excepted.

  Then, the Declaration returned to tones of comforting clemency:

  Let all our subjects, how faulty so ever, rely upon the word of a King, solemnly given by this present declaration, that no crime whatsoever, committed against us or our royal father before the publication of this, shall ever rise in judgment, or be brought in question, against any of them, to the least endamagement of them, either in their lives, liberties or estates or (as far forth as lies in our power) so much as to the prejudice of their reputations, by any reproach or term of distinction from the rest of our best subjects; we desiring and ordaining that henceforth all notes of discord, separation and difference of parties be utterly abolished among all our subjects, whom we invite and conjure to a perfect union among themselves, under our protection, for the resettlement of our just rights and theirs in a free Parliament, by which, upon the word of a King, we will be advised.11

  It was a general reconciliation, with problematic passages for those involved in Charles I’s trial and execution: in particular the ominous words ‘as far forth as lies in our power’, and ‘a free Parliament . . . by which . . . we will be advised’. The Prince of Wales was guaranteeing his kingly forgiveness, emblazoned with the Great Seal of England; yet he was quietly making it clear that a new Parliament would of course have its own views on matters, which he would be forced to listen to, and act on. While the majority of those who had acted against the Crown, and profited from its fall, could rest easy, there remained scope for Royalist revenge against the most extreme Parliamentarians – clearly, though they were not named, those responsible for the late King’s beheading. For these, forgiveness was intimated, rather than guaranteed.

  Three weeks after the declaration was made, a ‘free’ Parliament was formed, one that was not called by the King (for there was none), but was rather summoned by the will of the people. It was known as the Convention Parliament, and it immediately accepted Charles’s reassurances, even declaring that he had been King since the moment of his father’s execution.

  The ruthlessness that Cromwell had exhibited in Ireland, and to a lesser extent in Scotland, had rarely been glimpsed during his rule of England. One of the new King’s greatest confidants, Clarendon, conceded that the Lord Protector

  was not a man of blood, and totally declined Machiavelli’s method, which prescribes upon any alteration of a government, as a thing absolutely necessary, to cut off all the heads of those, and extirpate their families, who are friends to the old. And it was confidently reported, that in the council of officers it was more than
once proposed that there might be a general massacre of all the royal party, as the only expedient to secure the government, but Cromwell would never consent to it; it may be, out of too much contempt for his enemies.12

  Whatever the reason, Cromwell had allowed a large body of Royalists to survive. The prince and his court were left to live unmolested in exile; prominent Royalists, courtiers and men of power had also been allowed to flee abroad. Cowed and humiliated by their banishment during his Protectorate, they were eager not only to restore the Stuart line but also to avenge the years of defeat, and the death of their King.

  These men formed a clear majority in the Convention Parliament. They granted the new King generous sums of money, and invited him to return to England. Six days later the large bronze of Charles I was erected once more in the Guildhall, and the emblems of the Commonwealth were removed from public view. The City of London proclaimed its duty to Charles, as did the navy. Charles’s courtiers dryly noted the large number of Englishmen arriving in Breda, falling over themselves to parade their loyalty to a man they had ignored for so long. Now came gifts of gold, with which Charles was able to pay his cash-starved retainers. There were also, Clarendon recalled, ‘some being employed to procure pardons for those who thought themselves in danger’.13 The Earl of Northampton spoke on behalf of Colonel Ingoldsby, Lambert’s captor, passing on Ingoldsby’s wish that: ‘your pardon and forgiveness of his former errors are all that he aimed at’.14

  Ingoldsby was clever to get in an early good word on his behalf. The Convention Parliament was quick to settle its gaze on the regicides, and made its view clear. On 14 May, with the King’s return imminent, the Commons resolved, ‘That all those Persons who sat in Judgment upon the late King’s Majesty, when the Sentence was pronounced for his Condemnation, be forthwith secured.’15

  When, at the end of May, Charles Stuart was conveyed back to England, it was not on the Naseby, the newly built flagship of the Commonwealth navy, but on the renamed HMS Royal Charles, the laurel-crowned figurehead of Oliver Cromwell having been removed before she set sail for the Dutch coast. As the King disembarked at Dover, he was accompanied, amongst others, by the diarist Pepys and the former Parliamentarian Sir Harbottle Grimston, who had signed the document asking Charles to return. England was, Charles and his retinue quickly appreciated, in a frenzy of Royalist fervour. The vast majority were determined to do anything they could to demonstrate their passionate loyalty to the Crown. It was an opportune time for vengeance. The King came first for the lawyers John Cook, Andrew Broughton, John Phelps and Edward Dendy, as well as for the two masked executioners, whose identity remained a mystery. At the same time, for completeness’s sake, the Commons asked for a full list of all the King’s judges.

  Cook, the former solicitor general, was summoned from Ireland to answer for his actions. He set off under guard, accompanied by his wife Mary. Cook claimed he was happy to be leaving a country where the people were more interested in drinking and swearing than in religious devotion. However, he was shocked by his rough reception in England, where he estimated he was cursed a thousand times on his journey from Chester to London. On arriving in the capital, on 18 June, he was placed in an open cart along with three soldiers accused of high treason: two of the army officers who had overseen the royal beheading, and William Hewlet, who was suspected of wielding the axe. They were all committed to the Tower of London.

  Meanwhile, four of those to be condemned for the late King’s execution were named: Bradshaw, Oliver Cromwell, Ireton and Pride – a quartet of the dead. Major General Thomas Harrison was the first among the surviving regicides to be selected for punishment. He was readily linked with the King’s death. At the same time many of the members would not forgive his helping Cromwell to turn them out of the Commons. Tales circulated, alleging that Harrison had treated the King with great rudeness on his final humiliating journey from the Isle of Wight to Windsor and London.

  It was seven years since the peak of Harrison’s power, when, at Cromwell’s bidding, he had forced Speaker Lenthall from his chair. Harrison’s uncompromising Fifth Monarchy beliefs, together with his disillusionment and clashes with Cromwell, had made the intervening years difficult: he had been imprisoned four times during the six years of the Protectorate.

  By the spring of 1660, Harrison’s life was a simple, pious, domestic one. He lived in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, with his wife Mary. Their three offspring had died in childhood. Harrison had not been called on by Lambert, during his failed rebellion. Neither, more surprisingly, had he followed General Charles Fleetwood: long ago he had served with distinction as a major in Fleetwood’s regiment. Only forty-four years old now, Harrison’s spells in prison, together with the many wounds he had received in battle, added to the agony of the loss of his children, left him an ailing, sidelined relic from the days of hot contest – military and political.

  But Harrison remained as uncompromising as ever in his beliefs, refusing to apologise for his past, or to counter the ever-increasing likelihood that he would be forced to pay for them with his life and possessions. He stayed strong in his religious fervour, a pamphlet of the time recording his chief occupation as being, ‘Looking for the immediate reign of our Saviour upon Earth.’16 It was a lonely but heartfelt vigil.

  Harrison was warned that he would soon be taken prisoner but, as Ludlow recorded, he refused ‘to withdraw himself from his house, accounting such an action to be a desertion of the cause in which he had engaged’.17 At the end of April they came for him, a body of militia under Colonel John Bowyer, an influential member of the Convention Parliament. They confiscated his weapons, sent his impounded horses to the Royal Mews in London, and took him into custody.

  So important was news of the detention of this leading regicide, that it was the first piece of business for the Commons to consider after its opening prayers on 11 May 1660. The members resolved that Harrison ‘be delivered by the Officers and Soldiers who have him in Custody to the Charge of such Person or Persons as shall be appointed by the lord general to receive him’.18 He was sent to the Tower of London, where he was kept ‘close prisoner’, bound in leg irons and chains, forbidden from receiving visitors or legal advice, with guards in his cell at all times to prevent suicide or escape. He was attended by a solitary servant who had to share his master’s misery.

  The charge would be high treason, a capital offence. Harrison was not only certain he would be put to death, but – after it was swiftly confirmed that he would not be considered for mercy – seemed to relish the prospect. He felt sure he would be returning to Earth in 1666, serving God in his army of the Second Coming with the pious fidelity and courage he knew had been his trademark during his country’s Civil Wars.

  Throughout the spring and summer of 1660 the Commons heard almost daily reports of the regicides’ actions as they faced the possibility of condemnation.

  On 20 May a letter from the Earl of Winchelsea was read out, stating that he had captured one of the King’s judges, Sir Henry Mildmay, as he and his servants tried to board a ship in the Channel port of Rye. Mildmay had been a prominent courtier to the previous Stuart kings, James and Charles I. His responsibilities to them included custody of the royal Jewel House, and he exploited his positions aggressively enough to set the foundation of a considerable fortune. However, his Puritanism put him at odds with Charles before the Civil War broke: Mildmay was a Congregationalist, who acted as patron to clerics of a similar creed, including Leonard Hoar, a president of Harvard College (where Mildmay’s son was educated). During the fighting, Sir Henry assisted Thomas Scott’s intelligence service. After its conclusion, Mildmay sat as a judge at the royal trial in 1649: he was a less than diligent attendee, but was involved with the preliminary committee work. For the capture of an unpopular turncoat, Lord Winchelsea was thanked, and his soldiers rewarded. Mildmay’s progress to the coast led to a parliamentary order, ‘to the end that none of those who are ordered to be apprehended, as having sat in Judgmen
t upon the late King’s Majesty, may make Escape beyond the Seas’.19

  Gregory Clements had been a more conscientious judge of the late King, attending all four days of his trial, and entering his signature on the death warrant: it had been written in, apparently over an erased name. Clements had had a chequered life, mainly as a merchant, working in India as a young man (where he was dismissed from a good job for bad behaviour), before making a fortune trading with the American colonies. His business interests extended from new ventures in the Bahamas, to the accumulation of a large estate in Ireland. While in England he bought up a patchwork of confiscated Church and Royalist lands. ‘He had no good elocution,’ conceded Edmund Ludlow, a political ally, ‘but his apprehension and judgment were not to be despised.’20

  Clements had been dismissed from the Commons in May 1652, damned in the eyes of pious colleagues after being caught in flagrante with a maidservant – the sexual transgression was recorded as ‘carriage offensive and scandalous to Parliament’.21 For eight years he had cleverly tended his financial affairs, accumulating a fortune out of the public view. But when the Stuarts returned he knew his actions of eleven years earlier would be looked upon with a critical eye, and so he went into hiding. He settled in a ‘mean house in Purple Lane near Gray’s Inn’.22 The Royalists learnt he was in that area, but did not know exactly where to find him. In the end, his expensive tastes betrayed him: when particularly fine food was seen being delivered to his modest address, the authorities surrounded the house, before forcing their way in to conduct a search.

  The problem was, none of those present knew Clements by sight. They therefore took the suspicious man that they found in the house for interview by the militia’s local commissioners. The one examining official there who recognised the suspect was an acquaintance of Clements, who wished him no harm. After a short interview this officer told his colleagues that he did not know who the man before them was, but he certainly was not Clements. ‘But as he was about to withdraw,’ it was recorded, ‘it happn’d that a blind man who had crowded into the room, and was acquainted with the voice of Mr Clement [sic], which was very remarkable, desired he might be called in again; and demanded, if he was not Mr Gregory Clement.’23 The commissioners insisted that he answer the blind man’s question, at which Clements admitted his true identity. He was sent to the Tower.