The King's Revenge: Charles II and the Greatest Manhunt in British History

by Jordan, Don

  In its final form, the Instrument gave executive power to the Lord Protector, supported by a Council of State which the Protector did not appoint. This executive power was separated from the legislature, a reformed single-house Parliament to be elected every three years, with the power to pass laws and to levy taxes for a standing army. Religious toleration was permitted, with exceptions for Roman Catholics and those guilty of licentious behaviour – a reference to extreme sects thought to condone immoral sexual activity.

  Importantly, the constitution set out for the first time a binding legal framework for the laws and taxes imposed upon the people: ‘That the laws shall not be altered, suspended, abrogated, or repealed, nor any new law made, nor any tax, charge, or imposition laid upon the people, but by common consent in Parliament …’3

  Although this was a considerable advance on anything that had gone before, for the radicals, with their wider agenda of social and political change, it was not nearly enough. The fact that executive powers rested with the Protector was anathema.

  Unsurprisingly, some of the plots against the Protectorate, and the Protector, had more substance or were better organised than others. Royalist plotters fell into two main camps: those who felt it best to organise and bide their time and those who wished to bring about an uprising immediately.

  The Sealed Knot was most definitely in the former category. It was set up by Charles II in 1653 as a secret society of aristocrats expressly to nurture royalist resistance.4 It reported to Charles through Edward Hyde, who ran a small number of messengers slipping between England and the Continent. Both Hyde and the main members of the Knot were cautious men. On 2 February 1654, one of its members, Edward Villiers, wrote to Hyde in Paris: ‘The Sealed Knot still meet with an intention to design somewhat for his service.’5 In other words, the Knot was discussing insurrection or assassination, but had no actual plans to report. The Knot communicated by letters written in code. These were often intercepted by John Thurloe and the contents deciphered by a new type of specialist – the code-breaker.

  There were probably only three founding members of the Sealed Knot. Their appointment came directly from Charles, who wrote in code asking them to ‘make another venture in trade’.6 Lord Belasyse was the second son of Thomas, Lord Fauconberg, and was related to both Fairfax and Lambert. At the outbreak of war, he had fought on the king’s side, like his father and brother. In 1644 he was defeated in battle by Fairfax at Bradford and at Selby by Lambert.

  John Russell was the third son of the Earl of Bedford. He had fought at Naseby, where he was wounded. While there was no doubting Russell’s allegiance to the crown, his elder brother William (who became the 5th Earl) changed sides between Parliament and king with bewildering regularity.

  The third of the founding members, Sir Richard Willys, was a professional soldier who had fought on the Continent before returning to join Charles I’s campaigns against the Scots and again during the first Civil War. His membership of the Sealed Knot was unexpected because he had once challenged Belasyse to a duel.

  There were three other members: alongside Edward Villiers were Lord Loughborough and Sir William Compton, the latter described by Samuel Pepys as ‘one of the worthiest men and best officers … of the best temper, valour, abilities of mind, integrity, birth, fine person and diligence …’

  Despite the excellent Cavalier credentials of its members, the Sealed Knot proved to be so tightly bound that it could move neither against the Protectorate nor the Protector. Hyde said the Knot ‘would not engage in any absurd and desperate attempt’.7

  The truth was that the Sealed Knot was too languid to plot – or at least to do so vigorously. It met irregularly and did very little except vigorously enquire around the estates of old royalist families as to whether they would be prepared to answer the call if and when it came. Charles had inadvertently created a turkey.

  It was hardly surprising, then, that in 1654 a secret proclamation appeared in Charles’s name, offering £550 a year and a knighthood to anyone who would kill ‘a certain base mechanic fellow called Oliver Cromwell’. The purpose was clear: wilder men should take up the challenge.8 Edward Hyde was later to claim that he and the Earl of Ormond had vetoed such outrageous ventures.

  At around the same time as the Knot was formed, another set of plotters came together. Because of the timing, it was often thought the two groups were somehow connected,9 but the men who met in the Ship Tavern in Old Bailey in the City of London could not have been more different from the genteel members of the Sealed Knot. Their reckless and drunken wrangling brought them to the attention of Thurloe’s agents.

  Among those plotters arrested in February 1654 was one Roger Coates, who admitted the existence of a plot. Coates was turned by Thurloe and paid £12 for his information, with more promised later. Fanciful pictures were painted of the nature of the plot. There was supposedly a grand council composed of eminent and proven Cavaliers including Lord Loughborough, a member of the Sealed Knot. The grand council existed only in the minds of the conspirators. Loughborough later managed to convince the State Council he had nothing to do with the Ship Tavern group.

  However, two names mentioned by the conspirators made Thurloe sit up. The first was that of Roger Whitley, a brother-in-law of Lord Gerard who was a senior figure in the circle of Charles II’s cousin, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a military expert. The second was John Gerard, a cousin of Lord Gerard, also with connections to Prince Rupert. The participation of the Gerards indicated that this conspiracy might possibly have been set up in direct opposition to the Sealed Knot. It could be that Prince Rupert was trying to prove he was better than Hyde.

  Thurloe rounded up conspirators but let them go without trial over the following months.10 No sooner had that plot subsided than a second one arose in its place, also involving the Gerard cousins but this time much more serious.

  In Paris, three English soldiers of fortune went to see Roger Whitley and John Gerard with a scheme to kill Cromwell and bring down the Protectorate. Thomas Henshaw and his half-brother, John Wiseman, had fought for foreign princes, while the third, Colonel John Fitzjames, had previously been employed by the Commonwealth. Their scheme was taken to Prince Rupert and Lord Gerard. John Gerard and Henshaw then sailed for England.

  As befitted a king in all but name, Cromwell had moved into Whitehall Palace. It was common knowledge that every Saturday morning he left Whitehall to spend the weekend at Hampton Court. The plan was that Cromwell and his mounted escort of thirty men would be surprised in a narrow street, and that in the melee the Lord Protector would be shot down. The ambush was set for 13 May.

  On the appointed day, Cromwell changed his plans. He did not ride out of the palace at Whitehall but instead set off by boat to Chelsea, where he alighted and rode the rest of the way. Meanwhile, his would-be assassins waited and waited. When the penny dropped they went home. Undaunted, they planned to make another attempt a few weeks later. This time they intended to shoot Cromwell at prayer in his chapel in Whitehall. On the morning allotted for the operation, several key conspirators were arrested. A well-prepared trawl around the capital resulted in dozens being detained. Henshaw escaped to France but Gerard was arrested and taken to the Tower.

  Thurloe’s intelligence operation had triumphed. It transpired that the general calibre of those involved in the enterprise was low. Henshaw had failed to gain support among the gentry, while even the Londoners involved were mostly apprentices, with an odd assortment of co-conspirators including a brewer, a schoolmaster and a blind clergyman.11

  The government-controlled news sheets went wild: the plot was all that London wished to read about. There were reports in the Weekly Intelligencer and Mercurius Politicus.12 Thurloe interrogated the conspirators. Gerard denied all knowledge of the plot. Others were not so reticent. A Leveller named John Wildman, who had colluded with the royalists, confessed. As they made their statements, Thurloe would have marvelled at their naivety:

  The Examination of N
icholas Watson, barber:

  Saith, That upon sunday was seven-night, there came to him one Thomas Barnes … told him, that there was a design against the lord protector and this present government, and divers gentlemen were engaged in it; and that three or four thousand men were listed already to that purpose; that they intended to make an attempt upon the lord protector’s person, either at dinner, or as he went to Hampton-court; and at the same time would surprise the guards at Whitehall, which he said was easy to do … and for that purpose a new suit was given him, and a belt worth five or six pounds.13

  Due to the discrepancy between the serious nature of the plot and the rather pathetic nature of many of the plotters, very few were actually charged. However, the authorities continued to round up suspects in what became an intelligence-gathering exercise. Members of the Sealed Knot, including Sir Richard Willys and Edward Villiers, were arrested and held in the Tower. At the conclusion of the security sweep, only three conspirators were arraigned for trial: John Gerard, Peter Vowell and Somerset Fox. The court hearing made sensational headlines for the news sheets and a special account was rushed to the presses to satisfy demand.14

  The trial took place in the Painted Chamber. The court heard from many of the conspirators how they had plotted to overthrow the government and install Charles as monarch. As the attorney-general, Edward Prideaux, set out the case, there grew an inescapable sense that agents provocateurs had been at work. Henshaw, who had fled, was the chief suspect.15 He had promised his fellow plotters the backing of unrealistic numbers of continental troops: ‘Mr. Hinshaw declared to his confederates here in England what overtures had been with Charles Stuart and that Prince Rupert had engaged to send ten thousand Scots, English, and French, and the Duke of York to come with them to land in Sussex, and other places …’ 16 The assertion that Charles’s brother James would come with an invasion force was clearly designed to stiffen the resolve of the deluded conspirators.

  The reality was very different, as Henshaw himself well knew:

  John Wharton was sworn, who said, he keeps a Victualling house in Black Fryers, and that a Gentleman, a stranger, came to him, and asked him if hee would serve the King, and fell in discourse about his calling; that he told him he had marryed a poor widow: And that the Gentleman told him that if the Design went on, he might have money enough, and said that hee would find him better imployment. The Gentlemans name, hee said, was Hinshaw.

  The verdict was a foregone conclusion. Gerard, Vowell and Fox were executed on 10 July. Several conspirators were ‘Barbadosed’ – sent off as slaves to an almost certain death in the sugar plantations. According to one of Thurloe’s agents the king was well aware of what was planned and had sanctioned it.17

  The foiling of the Gerard plot had huge consequences. Public sentiment swayed towards Cromwell. The lid was firmly screwed down on dissent and the Sealed Knot all but unravelled. Willys was arrested and, blaming his old enemy Belasyse for betraying him to Thurloe, challenged Belasyse to another duel. Once again, the two men never drew a sword nor fired a pistol. According to Edward Hyde, the dissent that broke out in the Sealed Knot rendered it even less active than before.18 Perhaps it had been Thurloe’s intention to exaggerate the threat in order to destabilise the Knot and win public support for the Protectorate.

  With the Sealed Knot infuriatingly inactive, Charles decided to listen to those advocating an immediate uprising. He was now twenty-four years old, three years had passed since he had sailed away from Shoreham, and his life was passing him by. If he was ever to have revenge, ever to gain the throne, something had to be done – and done quickly. A new underground movement in England seemed to present the answer. Unlike the Sealed Knot, the Action Party was designed not to be run by aristocrats, but by a group of well-connected and ambitious gentry.

  Chief among these was a veteran of the Civil Wars, Sir John Grenville. He had entered the first Civil War at the age of fourteen in 1642 as a lieutenant in his father’s regiment. Following the Battle of Newbury, he became a courtier to the Prince of Wales and one of his closest friends and advisors. After surrendering the Scilly Isles to a parliamentarian fleet in 1651, he elected to live in England, having given his word he would withdraw from active pro-royalist activity.

  In late 1654, the Action Party persuaded Charles of the possibility of a successful rising across England. There were rumours that a major parliamentary figure such as Fairfax would defect. This was not so very far-fetched, for Fairfax and Grenville were second cousins and Grenville had been attempting to woo the general into his camp. Fairfax proved infuriatingly hard to entice. The Action Party’s plans took a serious knock when its arms supply network was infiltrated by Thurloe’s men and various arms dumps were raided. In February 1655, Charles decided it was now or never. To ensure maximum support, a truce between the Sealed Knot and the Action Party was imperative. Charles sent an emissary, Daniel O’Neill, to mediate. He was picked up by agents of the Protectorate as soon as he landed in England and thrown in Dover Castle.

  Confusion grew up as to when exactly the uprising was to take place. The same month, a group of Cavaliers turned up for a rendezvous in Salisbury only to discover they were too early. They dispersed, but not before they had alerted the authorities that rebellion was in the air. Several leading royalists were arrested and held for interrogation, weakening the incipient rebellion.

  Despite the setbacks, Charles stuck to his plan: leaving Cologne, where he was currently based, he moved to the coastal town of Middelburg in the Netherlands, ready to cross to England once the rising took hold. The date for the uprising was set for 8 March. With hindsight, one can see that Charles must have been receiving very optimistic reports from England.

  On the day Charles left Cologne, another key figure in the plan left the city and went to England. This was the quarrelsome Henry Wilmot. For all his faults, Wilmot had pluck – he had accompanied Charles on his flight from Worcester and had sailed with him from Shoreham on board the Surprise in 1651. The escape sealed their friendship and Charles made Wilmot the Earl of Rochester the following year.

  From the moment Rochester landed at Margate and made for London, hardly anything went right. One of the few occasions for optimism was when Daniel O’Neill escaped from Dover Castle. After that, there was little to cheer. Thurloe’s agents discovered arms caches in London and several conspirators were arrested. As a result, defences at the Tower and other strategic points were strengthened. Rochester realised that London could no longer be the focal point of the uprising. He headed north, believing York was ready to declare for the king. He was greatly mistaken; when he and a hundred or so Cavaliers assembled on Marston Moor, the city was unimpressed and kept the gates closed. The conspirators fled. In Cheshire, Nottinghamshire and Northumberland, uprisings also failed.

  In the south, the conspiracy took a more serious turn. Rochester had brought with him a soldier of fortune named Sir Joseph Wagstaffe, known to be brutally effective. Wagstaffe was ordered to team up with Colonel John Penruddock, a Cavalier from Wiltshire, and launch an attack on Winchester, where the assizes were in session.* This plan was modified when the conspirators learned the judges were about to wrap up their hearings in Winchester and head for Salisbury.

  In the early hours of 12 March, Penruddock and Wagstaffe led a troop of several hundred men into Salisbury.† They occupied the square, took over stables and entered the jail, releasing prisoners who agreed to join them. The High Sheriff of Wiltshire and the assize judges were taken prisoner from their beds. Wagstaffe was for making an example of them by hanging them in the square, but Penruddock intervened. The rebels erected their standard over the town but then appeared to lose all sense of purpose. Taking the high sheriff along as a hostage, they marched out of Salisbury and through the towns of Blandford, Sherborne and Yeovil, calling upon the people to rise up and accompany them. They met with little enthusiasm.

  When word spread of the daring but strangely futile raid on Salisbury, the militias in surroun
ding towns were called up. Cromwell ordered his brother-in-law, Major-General John Desborough, to crush Penruddock’s rebellion. Desborough was one of England’s most accomplished military commanders. He immediately instigated military rule in the south-east, linking local militias and army units into a single network. He then set off in pursuit at the head of an army. As he headed further west into Devon, Penruddock must have known the game was up. Without any great strategic plan, he made for Barnstaple, a royalist town.

  Penruddock’s force stopped at the village of South Molton, nine miles to the east of Barnstaple. As the insurgents ate and rested their horses, they were surprised by a troop of cavalry that had made speed from Exeter. In a scrappy fight and chase through the village, most of Penruddock’s men broke and fled. Wagstaffe galloped off with them but Penruddock fought until there was no point in continuing and surrendered.

  Along with twenty-five other conspirators, Penruddock was charged with treason. A special court was set up in Exeter. Among the judges was the lawyer John Lisle, who was a close supporter of Oliver Cromwell, had helped draw up the sentence against Charles and had acted as a legal advisor to the court. He went on to advise on the Commonwealth constitution and sat on the committee that decided on the membership of the Council of State. The fact that such a heavyweight figure was drafted in showed the significance of the trial. Penruddock argued he could not be guilty of treason as Cromwell had not been appointed Lord Protector by Parliament. This excellent legal point cut no ice with Lisle and his fellow judges. They sentenced Penruddock to death.