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

by Jordan, Don

  Acting on the royalist agent’s prompting, Coote tracked down five men who had been involved in some way in the king’s trial and were now in Ireland: prosecuting counsel John Cook, judge John Jones and the army officers Hercules Huncks, Robert Phayre and Matthew Tomlinson, who had been on duty guarding the king. The five were quietly seized by Coote’s men. There appears to have been no legal sanction for the arrests but all were held in Athlone or Dublin preparatory to being sent to England.

  The star catch was fifty-two-year-old John Cook, the brilliant legalist who had compiled the indictment of the king and served as lead prosecutor at the trial. Charles’s refusal to recognise the court meant that Cook’s role had been confined to reading out the indictment to the seated monarch. Nevertheless, he was probably top of the royalist hate list now that John Bradshaw was dead. Charles had once included him with Cromwell and Bradshaw as men who were ‘incapable of forgiveness’. Ironically, Cook had just written – though anonymously – a pamphlet defending his friend Edmund Ludlow from charges of treason and attacking Coote, whose ‘design must be first to bring in the excluded members from 1648 and then – ding dong bells – will come in king, lords and commons’.4

  Another military figure from the king’s trial soon ended up in Coote’s dungeons too. This was Sir Hardress Waller, whose signature was eleventh on the death warrant. The senior figure in the Council of Officers in Ireland, Waller had watched developments in England with mounting alarm. He tried to persuade the officers’ council to declare against readmitting the secluded members. The officers turned him down. In some desperation Waller formed a plan to seize his opponents but was betrayed. Waller and his supporters were forced to barricade themselves in Dublin Castle.

  Next day, while the defenders of the castle prepared for an attack, the Council of Officers called for the immediate admission of the secluded members. It was a huge psychological blow against the Rump and in favour of the Stuarts. The day after that, a convention organised by Coote’s rival Lord Broghill endorsed the officers’ declaration and the Dublin Castle garrison gave Hardress Waller up. He was held at Athlone, together with John Cook and the four others seized by Coote. They would remain in confinement in Ireland for months before being briefly released, then arrested again.

  In England, George Monck’s decision to reverse Pride’s Purge and readmit the secluded members ushered in a brief new era in which members of the Rump were bit players and Parliament was controlled by Presbyterian grandees. These were the men who had fought against Charles I alongside the Rump but who, believing that a deal could be done, had negotiated the Treaty of Newport.

  The terms of the treaty had involved parliamentary control of the military and the right of Parliament to nominate the great offices of state, the king’s councillors and the judges, and to raise taxes, if need be without permission of the king. The Presbyterian grandees, men like the Earls of Manchester and Newcastle, believed they could bring back the king’s son on the same terms. After taking their seats on 22 February the Presbyterians wasted no time. They fulfilled a commitment to Monck by appointing him supreme commander of the armies of England, Scotland and Ireland, with the title Lord General. They then turned the legislative clock back nearly a dozen years, annulling over a period of twenty-six days much of the most radical legislation passed since 1649 – including the orders legitimising the purge of the House and their own exclusion. Presbyterianism was established as the state religion. The Westminster Assembly’s Confession of Faith was imposed as standard doctrine and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 tying England to Scotland’s form of Presbyterianism was reinstituted. And, crucially, the declaration of fidelity that required new members to pledge loyalty to a government ‘without King or House of Lords’ was abolished.

  All this had to be achieved quickly because of the deal with Monck, which obliged the Presbyterians to keep the Long Parliament going to allow enough time to prepare for the election of a ‘free’ Parliament. They set themselves 16 March as the date for dissolution of the Parliament they had striven so long to enter.

  After the secluded members’ first dramatic appearance in the House, Haselrig, followed by Scot, had stormed out and hours later led a delegation to confront George Monck. According to Edmund Ludlow, the fat little man was as civil as ever and treated them to more protestations of loyalty to the Commonwealth. He explained feebly that he had let the secluded members in to get them off his back – ‘free himself from their importunity’ was Ludlow’s phrase – and insisted he would ensure they did no damage. Charles would be kept out. As Ludlow reports it, Monck took off his gloves at this juncture, grasped Haselrig by the hand and said, ‘I do here protest to you, in the presence of all these gentlemen, that I will oppose to the utmost the setting up of Charles Stuart, a single person, or a house of peers.’

  Yet the direction in which the country was travelling was unmistakable. The growth of royalism was signposted daily. ‘Everybody now drinks the King’s health without any fear, whereas before it was very private that a man dare do it,’ Pepys observed.5

  The differing fates of the two men who had rebelled against Parliament and fought each other at Winnington Bridge just six months back offered a more personal sign of the times. On 22 February Sir George Booth, the Presbyterian leader of the crypto-royalist revolt in August, was released on a bail of £5000. Nine days later John Lambert appeared before the Council of State and was told to pay four times as much, £20,000, as a security for his freedom. Lambert was reputed to be a wealthy man but he was unable to find £20,000 and was sent to the Tower.

  In the first week of March there was speculation about the return of Richard Cromwell. Edward Montague, Samuel Pepys’ patron and number two at the Admiralty, let drop to Pepys that ‘there was great endeavours to bring in the Protector again’. The exiled court picked up the same gossip. There was talk too of offering Monck the crown. According to one account, republican leaders had pressed the proposal on him but he had refused. Some of the regicides among them were seemingly promoting the idea that anyone was preferable to Charles Stuart.

  There were desperate republican attempts to reverse the tide. Propagandists poured out pamphlets, tracts and broadsides warning against the Stuarts. Puritan preachers like Barebone, Peters and Owen prayed for the godly to unite in the Good Old Cause and Edmund Ludlow’s republican comrades plotted an uprising.

  Predictably, the most powerful warning came from the Secretary for Foreign Tongues. John Milton switched for a moment from composing his masterpiece Paradise Lost and at the end of February thundered out six thousand horrified words on the prospects of a restored monarchy. The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth threatened, ‘if we return to kingship, and soon repent, as undoubtedly we shall, when we begin to find the old encroachments coming on by little and little … we may be forced perhaps to fight over again all that we have fought, and spend over again all that we have spent.’ The poet was no democrat in the modern sense of the word. But he implored the citizenry not to backslide into autocracy and with uncanny accuracy forecast the decadence England would invite if it said yes to Charles: ‘a culture of servile deference to a King who must be adored like a demi-god with a dissolute and haughty court about him, of vast expense and luxury, masques and revels … among the perpetual bowings and cringings of an abject people’. The poet sent a letter to George Monck enclosing a copy and a summary of the tract. It is not known whether the General replied, or if he even read it.

  The booksellers in St Paul’s Churchyard were equally well fed by the royalist propagandists. It was still too risky to call openly for a restoration, but the streets were flooded with lampoons of the Rump and broadsides calling for a free Parliament, which everyone knew meant a Stuart restoration. Prynne alone published more than twenty pamphlets in 1660, mostly against the Rump. According to Thomas Rugge’s Diurnal (daily diary), ‘Rump ballads’ were being given ‘for nothing to poore Girles for to sell’.6

  Significantly, ro
yalist literature downplayed vengeance. When a group of royalist gentry in Worcestershire daringly published a tract in favour of monarchy, they declared that they had no thought of revenge and wished only for peace and unity. Royalists in other counties began issuing honeyed declarations. Later, when the restoration had been secretly agreed, a declaration signed by ten earls, four viscounts, five lords and a host of baronets, knights and squires denied any thoughts of vengeance. That would change completely, and soon.

  On Saturday 17 March, three weeks after George Monck had taken Sir Arthur Haselrig by the hand and reiterated his fidelity to the Commonwealth, the General met the royalist agent Sir John Grenville late at night in his chambers in St James’s Palace. Having employed Monck’s brother Nicholas as a go-between during the Booth uprising, this time Sir John gained access to Monck himself through Sir William Morrice, a kinsman and aide of the General whom a contemporary described as his ‘elbow-Counsellor’. Morrice persuaded the General to receive Grenville secretly and escorted him into Monck’s chamber.7

  Grenville brought Monck the same offer as that conveyed the previous August. In return for effecting a restoration, Monck was again promised £100,000 a year to distribute as he liked between himself and the army, along with the choice of any high office he liked – Grenville suggested Lord High Constable. As with the earlier offer, the details were passed by word of mouth. All that was written down was a short message: ‘I cannot think you wish me ill, for you have no reason so to do; and the good I expect from you will bring so great a benefit to your country and to yourself, that I cannot think you will decline my interest.’ Charles had written a commission to Greenville, which perhaps he was also supposed to show to the General, and which perhaps he did: ‘I am confident that George Monck can have no malice in his heart against me, nor has done anything against me which I cannot easily pardon’, it read; ‘and it is in his power to do me so great service, that I cannot easily reward; but I will do all I can.’

  Monck’s response was unequivocal. According to notes of the conversation which Grenville transcribed later, ‘he pledged his life’ to the king. Monck then called in Morrice, who had been told to wait outside. From then on Monck would use his kinsman as an ‘indirect and deniable channel to the royal court’. Deep into the night the three men discussed the way to effect a restoration. Monck appears to have counselled against Charles indulging in open displays of vengefulness such as had characterised earlier proclamations issued in his name. He suggested that Charles forestall people’s fears by promising a free and general pardon to all who swore allegiance to him. He advised the king to counter other fears by confirming land settlements made since the wars and proclaiming freedom of conscience. Monck told Grenville to write it all down but also to commit it to memory. The meeting then broke up.

  The following Monday they met again, and Monck checked that Grenville had memorised every detail before taking the paper from him and burning it. He insisted that no one else save Charles himself should know about the meeting. Grenville was then packed off to Brussels with Monck’s proposals. He took with him Monck’s assurance that ‘his consistent object had been the King’s restoration’, an account accepted by his admirers ever since.8

  Grenville was now launched on weeks of secret negotiation, shuttling between Monck and Charles as plans for the restoration matured. The only outward sign that something was moving was Charles’s abrupt departure from Brussels and relocation in Breda in the Dutch Republic. This move was made on the advice of Monck, who counselled him against remaining in the Spanish Netherlands while England was still at war with Spain.

  Given the temper of the army, Monck’s insistence on security was understandable. Monck had launched a new purge in the officer ranks soon after arriving in London, getting rid of radicals like Francis Hacker. He had also replaced distrusted regiments in London with his own men. But the army, and indeed the navy, still bulged with republican sectarians, and crucially remained deeply imbued with hatred for the Stuarts. As a correspondent put it in a letter to Prince Charles dated 20 March, ‘the army is not yet in a state to hear your name publicly.’9 Monck himself would later refer to being ‘involved in many and great difficulties’ because of the republicanism of the army.

  Monck’s most persistent army opponent was now John Okey, another of the king’s judges. Active in marshalling army opposition when the Presbyterians dropped the requirement on members to sign an engagement against single-person rule, Okey also led opposition to a new Militia Bill which invested command of the militia in local dignitaries and revived old fears that the army was to be disbanded. On 8 March he appeared at the head of a delegation of officers presenting a remonstrance to Monck. This was accompanied by talk of officers mounting another ‘interruption’ like Lambert’s six months earlier. It caused ‘a general damp over men’s minds and faces’, remarked Pepys.10 ‘They were high [angry] on both sides’, a royalist noted. ‘It is feared we shall have some combustions.’11

  The furore soon abated. Monck, aware as ever of what he could get away with, felt strong enough to slap Okey and the officers down. In Clarendon’s words, ‘He told them that he brought them not out of Scotland for his nor the Parliament’s counsel, that for his part he should obey the Parliament and they should do the same.’12 He followed up with a general command to officers to return to their regiments and banned them from holding political meetings. Thus he closed down what had been treasured as a right since the first Civil War. Pepys sighed in relief. ‘I was told, that the General had put a stop to it, so all was well again.’13

  Shortly afterwards, Monck took the final step to control of the military. He circulated a declaration for officers to sign in which they promised obedience to whatever Parliament decreed. Okey was among the minority who refused to sign. But officers from forty regiments did sign it. Remarkably, the deeply political New Model Army had been taken almost out of politics.

  Publicly, Monck continued to reiterate his commitment to a Commonwealth. Such was his apparent sincerity that royalists became convinced that he was at heart a republican. ‘Monck is, God knows,’ a correspondent complained to Hyde. ‘He comes once a day into the Council of State. Time will discover whether he be a wise man or a fool. He lately wished his right hand might rot off if he were reconcileable to the King.’14

  Among republicans fearing the personal consequences of a vengeful monarchy, the talk was of mounting a coup. Edmund Ludlow’s memoirs reveal that from late February he and other increasingly panicked republicans were discussing military intervention. His memoirs admit that the plotters came together not just ‘for the public interest’ but also because of the ‘dangerous condition of their affairs and … their own preservation’. Ludlow proposed calling together members of the Rump’s old Council of State and raising rebellion in their name. He revealed that he already had the promised backing of two regiments in the Home Counties and a commitment from Herbert Morley, commandant of the Tower. He also had hopes of John Lawson and the fleet. By mid-March the plot had reached the stage of attempting to raise money. ‘A considerable party of those who had been engaged against the King’ agreed to contribute money for troops, Ludlow recalled. However, the plot stopped there. It was scuppered because, it seems, Sir Arthur Haselrig had sold the pass.

  Slingsby Bethel, a member of the Council of State, was sent to Haselrig’s chambers with plans for the uprising. When he arrived he found Haselrig with his head in his hands moaning, ‘We are undone.’ If George Monck is to be believed – and in this instance he may not have lied – Haselrig had concluded a Faustian pact with the General. The story was detailed in a sensational letter Monck wrote to the Speaker many months later when Haselrig was facing execution. He claimed that Haselrig’s friends had asked him to write it to save his life. It described an agreement by which Haselrig was to get out of Monck’s way in return for his life. According to the letter, some time after the secluded members were readmitted to the House, Sir Arthur had concluded that a Stuart r
estoration was inevitable and had come to beg for Monck’s protection. He told Monck that a restoration would mean ‘ruin to his person, family, and fortune’. Monck, it seems, was only too happy to help if that would put Haselrig out of the game. ‘At this conjuncture in time,’ he wrote, ‘no man was so capable to obstruct my designs as Sr Arthur Hasilrig.’ He explained that Haselrig had under his immediate command ‘the government of Berwick, Carlisle, Newcastle, and Tynmouth, with a regiment of foot and one of the best regiments of horse in the Army’. Moreover, Haselrig had the biggest hand in selecting officers during a massive purge in the army the previous year and so had a huge ‘influence upon all the rest of the regiments in England’.15

  George Monck’s price for saving the republican leader was Sir Arthur’s retirement from the fray. ‘I told him that if he would engage to me to go home to his own house and live quietly there, I would undertake to secure his life and estate; whereupon he did so engage.’

  Haselrig’s despair seems to have been the signal for others to give up hope. Ludlow writes:

  Mr. Scot also informed me, that he had lost all hopes of getting such a number of our council of state together, as should be necessary to put in execution the design which I had proposed; and that, having notice that the new council of state had resolved to seize his person, he designed to retire into the country, as well to secure himself, as to endeavour to be elected into the ensuing convention … These things put me in further doubt of my own safety, and moved me to provide for myself as well as I could. To that end I seldom lay at my own house after Mr. Scot’s departure from London.

  Scot managed one more republican trumpet blast before he departed. The day before the Long Parliament finally dissolved itself, Presbyterian MP John Crew moved that the House bear witness against the ‘horrid murder of the king’. One member who plainly feared that fingers might be pointing at him protested that he had neither hand nor heart in the king’s death. A furious row over monarchy developed and, disastrously for him, Thomas Scot was unable to keep his sharp tongue out of it. In a speech justifying the trial he declared: ‘Though I know not where to hide my head at this time, yet I dare not refuse to own that not only my hand, but my heart also, was in that action.’ He concluded by declaring that he should desire no greater honour in this world than that the following inscription might be engraved on his tomb: ‘Here lieth one who had a hand and a heart in the execution of Charles Stuart, late King of England.’ He was announcing his own death warrant and obviously realised it.