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

by Jordan, Don

  Monck told Price ‘that he was resolved to commission the whole Scotch nation against Parliament and the army and all before he would be taken tamely by them’.7 The General had not lost his caution: as Smith made ready to depart for Leith, Monck disappeared, only to rush back to recall Smith and the declaration. He wanted everything to be put on hold till receipt of the post in the morning, which would bring news from the battlefronts. Price protested. There should be no delay, he insisted. At which the General ‘laid his hands on my shoulders, frowned and paused and then in some anger spake thus: What Mr Price, wilt thou thus bring my neck to the block … and ruin our whole design by engaging too rashly.’

  The post brought news of Lambert’s victory at Winnington Bridge and of the poor turnout among other insurrectionists. Monck immediately faced about. The dispatch to Parliament and the proclamation appear to have been destroyed. Edinburgh Castle and Leith were left undisturbed and Monck put the fear of God into his brother as to what would happen if ever he talked. According to Nicholas, he was warned by Monck that ‘if ever this business was discovered [revealed] by him or Sir John Grenville he would do his best to ruin both of them.’8

  A few nights afterwards, Monck’s officers held a thanksgiving dinner to celebrate the victory of their comrades in England. Monck, the guest of honour, led the toasts. For a long time no one, either among his own men or in the government, would be given cause to doubt his loyalty to Parliament.

  For Charles, there were more setbacks after the disappointments of August. He dispatched the dependable Marquis of Ormond to Paris to try to raise support from Cardinal Mazarin and decided to travel south himself to Spain to remind the Spanish of their promised help. In France, the Cardinal slapped down Ormond before he could complete his flowery introduction, saying, ‘I know that there is a King of England exiled from his kingdom. I know all his misfortunes so it is useless to tell me any more. I can do nothing for him.’

  As for Spain, Charles arranged to rendezvous with Ormond at Fuenterrabia on the Franco-Spanish border. Negotiations were under way there between France and Spain to end the Thirty Years’ War and it was hoped that Charles would make his presence felt. Instead, at this crucial moment, he went on holiday, vanishing en route to Spain in early September along with two companions. He was out of touch with Hyde and everyone else for nearly three months. Surfacing in November, he wrote to Hyde explaining that they had been unable to go by sea because of the weather and so had travelled by coach and horse. He had obviously had a splendid time, describing ‘the pleasant accidents of the journey and not one ill one to any of our company, hardly as much as the fall of a horse … By all reports I did expect ill cheer and worse lying, and hitherto we have found both the beds and especially the meat very good.’9

  Sir Edward Nicholas, a dry stick, was not amused. ‘Reputation’, he told Ormond, ‘is the interest of princes … and he has lost much of it by his unseasonable delay.’ The Spanish were hospitable when Charles arrived, but all that he left with was a sum of money to help him back to Brussels.10

  George Monck had kept his head down for the two months following the Booth fiasco. Then on 18 October the news reached him of the new coup mounted by the army grandees. Monck responded with a virtual declaration of war on the military junta. In a letter to Speaker Lenthall he wrote, ‘I am resolved, by the grace and assistance of God, as a true Englishman to stand to and assert the liberty and authority of Parliament.’11 He also wrote to his opposite number in Ireland, Edmund Ludlow, asking for his support, a letter Ludlow did not know about for months.

  Monck acted quickly. The great garrisons of Edinburgh and nearby Leith were secured by his men, parties were dispatched to take Berwick and Newcastle and a purge of officers began. Colonels, majors and captains said to be of dubious fidelity to Parliament were summoned to meetings, only to find themselves arrested en route or cashiered on arrival. Monck’s men were ordered to stop short at the border but there was no doubt that Monck was seriously preparing to invade.

  His fellow generals, not expecting such belligerency, were both placatory and defiant. In his reply to a terse letter from Monck, Lambert wrote, ‘Nothing seems more desirable than to have a good understanding and union among ourselves.’ Charles Fleetwood, the nervous and gentlemanly commander-in-chief in England, wrote: ‘My Lord, I love and honour you but give me leave to say, no man of sober principles throughout this Nation will otherwise interpret this action of yours then [sic] a way to bring Charles Stewart [sic] amongst us again.’12

  Centuries later, historians cannot agree on whether or not the restoration of the Stuarts was Monck’s intention from the moment he opposed the junta. At the end of October, the Committee of Safety dispatched Lambert to stop Monck, just as he had stopped Sir George Booth. On 4 November, Lambert headed north with an army of Ironsides. The confidence of a victor must have coursed through him, especially when it was clear that he far outnumbered his opponent. All told, he had mustered twelve thousand troops after picking up militiamen on the way. Monck had only about five thousand men, and was especially lacking in cavalry. He was lacking in trust too. Despite the purges, there were too many Anabaptists for Monck’s liking among his officers and men, and too many with loyalties to the army rather than to him. Monck told his brother-in-law that there were still some 140 ‘oppositionists’ among his officers. He needed a minimum of six weeks to replace them and reshape the army. Then he would be ready.13

  To buy that time, Monck grabbed at an offer of talks from the army grandees. He proposed that each side appoint a three-man delegation to meet in London to hammer out an agreement. ‘I shall not despair of a happy issue from their endeavours,’ he wrote to Fleetwood, adding that he was ‘confident your Lordship does not intend by the offer of this mediation to ensnare us’.14

  It was Lambert who would be ensnared by the illusory prospect of peace that Monck fostered. He had reached York when he met the three peace envoys sent by Monck to London. They apparently convinced Lambert of Monck’s sincerity. In a haze of optimism he ordered the army to hunker down in Newcastle and wait. Bulstrode Whitelocke, then presiding over the Committee of Safety, warned Lambert not to trust Monck. He sent a dispatch encouraging him ‘to advance with all his forces … to attack him before he could be better provided’.15 According to John Price, ‘if Lambert had not lingered so long at Newcastle, but, with his horse only, advanced … he could then have met with little or no resistance.’ Instead Lambert waited weeks, and meanwhile his war chest emptied.16

  Monck’s tactic of keeping peace talks going till he was ready for war and his rival was weakened worked perfectly. Lambert’s army became icebound and paying them difficult, then impossible. Lambert’s colleagues on the Committee of Safety were so hard put to raise money from a hostile City of London that they had to raid naval funds. The fleet was ordered to ride offshore because there was no money to pay off the crews on landing. Lambert’s unpaid army began to melt away. As for Monck, he concentrated on purging more of those worrying ‘oppositionists’ among his own men and mounting a highly effective propaganda campaign of leaflets and declarations, presenting himself as a liberator intent on redeeming the ‘laws and liberties of Parliament’.17

  While Lambert’s army shivered on the banks of the Tyne, in London Sir Arthur Haselrig and Thomas Scot were stirring again. After the coup, they formed a secret cabal of members of the old Council of State to plot for Parliament’s return. Their first move was on 14 November. Taking the view that the Council of State was still in being, making its members the only legitimate government, they drew up a secret commission appointing Monck commander-in-chief of the armies of England and Scotland, and awarding him extensive powers. The ferociously worded commission authorised him to ‘kill, and destroy, or by any ways put to death all such who are in hostility against the Parliament …’ The document, headed ‘Council of State’ and signed ‘Thos. Scot, President’, was smuggled to Monck in Scotland. He was in no position to make use of it immediately, bu
t he would do so before the year was out.

  Monck was ready to move at the end of December, however, but his intervention was no longer needed. A combination of factors was destroying the junta. Thanks to the years of war in Europe trade had slumped, and the City of London wouldn’t or couldn’t lend to the military government. Collection of taxes to pay the army was resisted and London looked increasingly ungovernable. Mobs of apprentices materialised from nowhere and confronted troopers. Newsletters reported ‘citizens arming themselves … great disorder … the highest discontents I ever knew’. It was a tinderbox atmosphere that threatened a bloodbath. ‘Divisions grow worse and worse,’ a correspondent wrote to Monck’s secretary William Clarke. ‘Citizens … expect to be in blood every hour … fears and jealousies multiply. Nothing will serve the rude multitude but to have a free Parliament.’18

  Blood did flow after a one-eyed colonel named John Hewson was dispatched to control demonstrating apprentices. Sixty-year-old Hewson was among several ‘humble’ men whose careers had been made by the Civil Wars, in which they had proved outstanding soldiers and fought their way up to command a regiment. A shoemaker by trade, Hewson described himself as beginning life as a ‘child of wrath’ from a ‘wicked and profane family’ before a ‘Godly’ preacher converted him.

  Hewson was another regicide. His signature was the eighteenth on Charles I’s death warrant, and he must have guessed that he would be one of the first targets if the Stuarts ever regained the throne. Now, as London seethed, he made a Stuart return a little more likely by ordering his troops to fire on stone-throwing apprentices who made the demonstrations very personal by using old shoes as ammunition to throw at Hewson’s soldiers. Two apprentices were killed and twenty more were injured. London never forgave Hewson. Six weeks later, a gibbet was erected in Cheapside with a picture depicting Hewson hanging from it.19 The city’s antagonism towards the army would prove crucial in the months to come, and for the fate of the regicides.

  The news grew worse: revolt in the fleet, a coup in Ireland and military humiliation in the south. This last item was down to Arthur Haselrig, who with other Rump leaders contrived to seize the citadel of Portsmouth from the army and then persuade successive forces sent against them to switch sides. Haselrig announced that if the army persisted in blocking sittings of Parliament at Westminster, Portsmouth would host the legislature. In the meantime, he marched on London with three thousand men.

  With the crisis deepening, Charles Fleetwood proved a broken reed. The restiveness of those troops who were still loyal demanded personal appearances and rousing speeches from the commander-in-chief, but ‘he could hardly be prevailed with to go to them.’ When Fleetwood did make an appearance, he would suddenly interrupt himself, go down on his knees and invite the troops to prayers. He became known for lamenting ‘that God had spit in his face’.20

  The critical moment arrived on 22 December. Events in Portsmouth and London left a group of prominent Presbyterians worried for their necks, and a deputation went to Bulstrode Whitelocke, Keeper of the Great Seal. They suggested that Fleetwood be used to finalise a deal with Charles before Monck did. Whitelocke readily agreed. According to his diary he had ‘a long discourse’ with the commander-in-chief, during which he hammered home the message that ‘all their lives and fortunes would be at the mercy of the King and his party’ unless terms were agreed in advance. If it was left to Monck they all faced ‘destruction’. Whitelocke suggested contact be made immediately with Charles in Breda.

  The usually hesitant Fleetwood concurred and asked Whitelocke to be the emissary. Whitelocke volunteered to go to Breda that night. After details were discussed, Whitelocke made to depart, but as he was on his way out he met Harry Vane, John Desborough and a third officer coming in and he was asked to wait. After about a quarter of an hour Fleetwood emerged from the meeting with his visitors and ‘in much passion’ told Whitelocke, ‘I cannot do it.’

  Whitelocke said, ‘Why?’

  Fleetwood answered, ‘These gentlemen have reminded me and it is true that I am engaged not to do any such thing without My Lord Lambert’s consent.’

  Whitelocke rejoined that Lambert was too far away to be consulted on something that had to be ‘instantly acted’.

  Fleetwood said, ‘I cannot do it without him.’

  Whitelocke: ‘You will ruin yourself and your friends.’

  Fleetwood: ‘I cannot help it.’21

  Next morning, Fleetwood surrendered the keys of the Houses of Parliament to the Speaker. He gave notice that the guards on the doors had been withdrawn, and that members ‘might attend the discharge of their duty’. That put the Rump back in power.

  Just over a week later, on 2 January 1660, Monck invaded. There was no opposition. His first night in England was spent peacefully at Wooler, thirty miles into Northumberland. There a messenger from the Speaker of the House caught up with him with a letter containing news that the Parliament he had sworn to restore was now indeed restored. It conveyed ‘hearty thanks’ to him for what he had done. The messenger also brought an order to Lambert to withdraw and send his men back to their positions before the coup.

  Had George Monck possessed no hidden agenda, no thought of making himself master of the country for whatever purpose, this was the moment for him to halt. He did no such thing; there was no order to withdraw in the message and so on his army came. As yet, he had no authority for an invasion, but he justified his advance on the grounds that Lambert still posed a threat. Monck wrote to the Speaker that he had ‘intelligence which was certain that Lambert was marching back to London to oppose your sitting in freedom and honour’ and was raising fresh troops.22

  In jumpy, rioting London there was a fear of civil war, but it was not to be. Across the country, garrisons were declaring for Parliament while Lambert’s demoralised army had disintegrated. In the first few days of January a messenger from London found Lambert at Northallerton, his twelve-thousand-strong army shrunk to himself, two officers and fifty troopers.23 This would not, however, be John Lambert’s lowest moment. George Monck had worse to hand out to the would-be Cromwell a few months later.

  On 4 January, Monck reached Morpeth, half a day’s march from Newcastle. There to greet him was the first of hundreds of dignitaries who would turn out to cheer and petition him at every crossroads on his way south. Invariably he was greeted as a liberator, the man who had stood up to the army and might restore harmony. At Morpeth it was the Sheriff of Northumberland who led the local welcome, but a more important emissary was from the City of London. The Lord Mayor had sent William Man, the ceremonial sword bearer, with a message praying for Monck to deliver a ‘full’ and ‘free’ Parliament. That was code either for the restoration of MPs excluded by Pride’s Purge or for a new election to fill the empty seats in Parliament – either of which could open the door to the Stuarts. As yet there was little sign of an upsurge in royalist support but every sign of public dissatisfaction with the republican government. As ever, Monck himself would not be drawn on his own aspirations for the country. To all the petitioners awaiting him on the trek to London with the same message he would reply by restating his commitment to the Commonwealth – and, by implication, to the Rump.

  Still no one, Roundhead or Cavalier, knew his real purpose. ‘Monck, no flesh understands,’ wrote John Mordaunt that January. ‘What he really is none knows.’ Pepys made the same judgment. ‘All the world is at a loss to know what Monck will do,’ he noted.24 James Butler, Earl of Ormond, advised fellow royalists not to count on Monck as their man. ‘What his further intentions are, or for whom, I will not so much as guess.’ Monck was a man who had learned during his life that he could best survive by blowing with the wind. His famed inscrutability stemmed from his fear that he might misread the weather.

  The invasion was legalised a few days later. A fulsome letter from the Speaker thanked Monck again for his ‘never to be forgotten faithful service’ and authorised him ‘as speedily as you can to come to London’. Somewhat
astonishingly, given the Rump’s distrust of the military, the letter gave Monck carte blanche as to the size of his invading army. It invited him to bring ‘what forces you think fit to march with or after you’.25

  ‘Old George’ ignored the injunction to hurry and took his time. He spent four days in Newcastle and five in York, purging suspect militia officers and continuing to weed out ‘fanatics’ from his own ranks. In York, he held a long meeting with a gout-ridden Lord Fairfax, before enjoying the hospitality of the latter’s mansion at Nun Appleton eleven miles away. The great Civil War leader was now a barely disguised royalist and is said to have pressed on Monck the Stuart case. According to the French biographer Guizot, ‘Fairfax even urged him to remain at York, and to declare at once for the king.’ Did the guest respond? Did he, one old soldier to another after a boozy late-night feast, unburden his soul on the matter of the one question everyone would soon be asking? Given the habitual secrecy of the man it seems unlikely. No outsider was in his counsel yet.

  George Monck’s next obstacle to overcome was the Rump. When he crossed into England over the deeply frozen Tweed, Haselrig, Scot and the Rump had been back in power a week. The mercurial Sir Harry Vane was no longer among their number; having been cast into the outer darkness for colluding with the junta, he was about to be banished. His disgrace left Arthur Haselrig, whose standing had been enhanced by the Portsmouth affair, more than ever the republicans’ leading light. The day after his arrival Haselrig easily topped the poll of members for a new Council of State. He and Thomas Scot were to dominate the Rump in what would prove its final months.

  The other big beast in the republican ranks, Edmund Ludlow, was now a lone wolf under attack. Six months earlier he had been appointed military commissioner – commander-in-chief – in Ireland with a larger army behind him than Monck or Fleetwood. Then came the grandees’ coup in October, which sent him hurrying back from Dublin to London. All that he subsequently achieved through his attempted bridge-building between army and Parliament was the distrust of both sides. To cap it all, in mid-December came the coup in Dublin. The castle was seized by pro-Monck officers, and their allies took over strategic centres throughout the province. An uneasy alliance now controlled the island – on one side a council of officers chaired by the regicide Sir Hardress Waller, whose life depended on keeping out the Stuarts; on the other two local power-brokers, Sir Charles Coote and Lord Broghill, both of them in contact with the royalists and intent on bringing the Stuarts back.