by Jordan, Don
Ludlow reacted calmly. Knowing that the strangers no longer occupied the route to the church, he decided he would go to a later service, while taking the precaution of going armed and with other members of the group.
Riordane’s men waited while the townsfolk left church to see if Ludlow would appear. When he failed to do so, the would-be assassins also left the church and were heard to say that their target had not shown up.’20 The townsfolk then saw that the ropes of their boats had been cut. The only people whose boat had not been interfered with were the Savoyard boatmen hired by Riordane. A row broke out and the would-be assassins realised the game was up. They returned to the quayside and rowed off across the lake towards Savoy.
The exact intent of Riordane and his gang is not known. It has been speculated that their intent was to kidnap Ludlow rather than murder him. In the English state papers it is noted that following the foiled raid in Vevey, Riordane submitted a report setting out the case for a new raid in which all the regicides might be ‘reclaimed’.21 He envisaged a complex undertaking in which the king would write to Bern, demanding that the exiles should be given up as ‘parricides’. At the same time, the roads out of Vevey would be guarded (presumably by English agents). If the authorities in Bern refused to comply, the regicides would be taken by force to Savoy.
Riordane did not discuss the difficulties of transporting a group of political prisoners across Europe. The abduction gang would have had to convey their prisoners through France, where the government of Louis XIV would hardly have been pleased to have English political hostages on their soil. All things considered, it seems evident that murder was the sole motive the first time round, and the subsequent plan for a mass kidnapping was simply too difficult, both politically and logistically, to be implemented. Assassination remained the most effective weapon.
The thwarted attack sapped the exiles’ morale. Here was indubitable evidence that their enemies knew where they were and had the ability to strike. Reports, accurate or otherwise, arrived from England that Riordane had been ordered to renew his efforts to murder them. In a bizarre twist, a relative of one of the French members of Riordane’s gang told Ludlow he would try to warn him should his relation attempt anything more.
As 1663 drew to a close, the exiles felt cornered, but alternative places to run to were limited. The authorities in Vevey and Bern considered their options, weighing up whether it might be better for the English group to move to Lausanne or go north to Yverden on the shores of Lake Neuchatel. On the plus side, the choice of Vevey had been vindicated – the size of the town had made the presence of strangers more noticeable. In a larger city, assassins might not be spotted until it was too late.
When all was considered, the people of Vevey decided the fugitives could, if they wished, stay put. Extra precautions were taken. Ludlow’s house stood by the town walls next to one of the gates. A rope was rigged up from a window to the bell above the gateway so that he could ring the bell in an emergency and summon the town militia.
In London, Arlington and Williamson did not give up. The interception of the fugitives’ mail was proving to be difficult. London had a real need to find out whether plots were being hatched between the runaways and their friends at home. The method of discovery would be by the use of double-agents: ‘by inducing some persons of those now in the islands by promise of reward to feign escape and fly to them’.22 In January 1664 came news of the treatment of some of the regicides who had not been executed and who were incarcerated in the Tower. They were to be dispersed around the country for extra security; some were even to be transported overseas. The worst treatment was reserved for Sir Henry Mildmay, George Fleetwood and Augustine Garland (who was said, though he denied it, to have spat in the king’s face as he was led from the court). All three were ordered to be transported to Tangiers. Mildmay was saved the horror of foreign slavery by dying en route at Antwerp. One report has Fleetwood’s wife Hester successfully interceding for him, another has him dying in Tangiers. In the case of Garland, who was in his seventies, the sentence must be seen as a particularly cruel action by Charles.
As the winter of 1663–4 began to bite in Vevey, the English group could only trust to extra vigilance and bad weather for protection. At least one of them, John Lisle, was far from sure this was the best tactic. Lisle was a man with a facility to find difficulty where others saw strength. He found no solace in Ludlow’s reasoning that they had survived attack and would do so again. Lisle felt their current base was compromised. He further reasoned that since the royalists’ number one target was Ludlow, the biggest threat to the longevity of the others was their proximity to him. Lisle resolved to move to Lausanne. The decision would be the death of him.
With tension between Britain and the Dutch once more increasing, London was again concerned about possible alliances between the exiled republicans and the Dutch to plan and carry out an invasion. Shortly after Lisle left, Ludlow heard from his French source that a new plot had been hatched. This time, the assassins would not approach across the lake but would come less ostentatiously on foot, with horses held nearby on which to make a speedy getaway. Ludlow sent word to Lisle and the small group of other English exiles in Lausanne. Eight days after his intelligence, several well-armed men were encountered by one of Vevey’s townsmen, a Monsieur du Moulin, near the lake between Vevey and Lausanne. However, once the group was discovered, nothing further transpired. On 21 July 1664, several Savoyards were spotted in Lausanne, standing by the door of the church attended by Lisle. When neither he nor any other English exiles came to the church, they were heard to curse and ride away.23
By now Lisle no longer thought he was better protected in Lausanne than he had been in Vevey. Royalist agents seemed to be everywhere. A few days after the agents were seen at the church, two suspicious characters lodged at a Vevey inn. The men made off once their presence was noted. As had been arranged under the town’s new security measures, Ludlow was informed of their presence.
On the afternoon of 11 August, Ludlow received dreadful news from Lausanne: Lisle had been murdered. He had been shot on his way to church. From descriptions given by passers-by and those arriving for the service, the assassins were similar to those who had recently been seen at Vevey. They had taken up residence at a Lausanne inn after moving from Vevey about a week before. Their presence had become so noticeable that English émigrés in the town had been warned. In response, Lisle had sent his servants to try to ascertain who the men were but they returned with no firm information. While the strangers remained in town, Lisle was urged to stay at home. Saying his life was in the hands of God, he disregarded the warnings.
Lisle had been so sure of the security of his new billet that he had sent for his wife, Alice, to join him. Neither of them realised that Williamson had opened their mail and now knew exactly where his quarry lived. Of course, Lisle knew that having acted as a legal advisor and judge at the king’s trial could make him a target. He took precautions and used the alias Mr Field – an action negated by his unfortunate habit of wearing his Lord Chancellor’s cloak while walking around the town.24 The ambition and vanity which had taken Lisle to the top had now helped pitch him into the abyss.
That morning, he had left his lodgings and walked to the church near the town gate to hear the morning sermon. It is thought that, due to his friends’ urging, he may have been accompanied by bodyguards. Near the churchyard, several assassins were waiting. When Lisle appeared and walked towards the churchyard, one of them walked up to him and bid him good day, addressing him by name. Whether Lisle responded to the trick or not is unknown. He walked on into the churchyard. His assailant rushed up behind him, reached under his frock coat, pulled out a gun and shot him in the back at point-blank range and in full view of the congregation gathering to enter the church. The weapon the assassin used was a large-bore musketoon, or blunderbuss, designed to fire multiple shots like a shotgun. It was favoured for use at sea, particularly by pirates. Three pistol balls tore into
Lisle’s back. As he crumpled to the ground, the killer ran out of the churchyard to the town gate, where his accomplices waited with horses.
According to some sources, the killer’s accomplices drew swords and briefly fought with Lisle’s bodyguards, the engagement ending once it became clear Lisle had been fatally wounded. The assailants galloped off through the town gate, shouting, ‘Vive le Roi!’25 Official royalist versions claim that Lisle was first called on to surrender, and was shot only when his bodyguards drew their pistols. It is hard to reconcile this with the fact that Lisle was shot in the back. A musketoon was not a weapon to stick in a man’s ribs, like a pistol, to persuade him to come quietly; it was a weapon with which to eviscerate him.
So died Sir John Lisle, aged fifty-four. Before his exile, he had been a senior barrister and an MP, had assisted in organising the trial of Charles I and had sat as a judge, though he did not sign the king’s death warrant. He went on to be a Commissioner of the Great Seal, a member of the Council of State and a Commissioner of the Admiralty. His widow, Alice, already a pariah and known as ‘the regicide’s wife’, lived on in the family home at Moyles Court in Hampshire on the edge of the New Forest. In old age she would face a scandalous trial for treason and be sentenced to death.
Ludlow wrote to his friends in England with the sad news of Lisle’s death. His immediate version of events was understandably at variance with that which emerged later. For example, according to Ludlow, there were two assailants, not three. In London, there was great joy at the court when the news of Lisle’s death arrived.
As with the attempt on the life of Ludlow, there is a tendency to claim that Lisle’s murder was a kidnap attempt gone wrong. Again, it is hard to take this seriously. Even if he had been captured, quite how he would have been put on a horse against his will in a busy street and taken away in broad daylight is hard to comprehend.26
So who were the men who killed Lisle? There is little doubt they were Irish soldiers in the employ of the English crown: Germaine Riordane, or MacCarty, of whom we have already heard; Miles Crowley, or O’Croli, who also went by the name Thomas MacDonnell; and James Fitz Edmund Cotter, or Semus mac Emoin Mhic Choitir. It seems Crowley fired the shot that killed Lisle. Some accounts have it that Cotter, not Riordane, was in charge.
All three assassins were rewarded for their exploits, rather dispelling any view that Charles was against such thuggery (he had, after all, made that arch-promoter of political murder, Silius Titus, commander of the Cinque Ports). O’Croli was given a commission in the English army. Riordane already had a commission, although he was reported to have lost it in 1667 for being a Roman Catholic. In 1670, he surfaced to write to friends of Ludlow, saying he had changed his ways and now wished to serve the Good Old Cause. Ludlow was not impressed. Cotter received a commission in the English army, but ended up in prison on the West Indian island of St Christopher after a misjudged raid went wrong. Upon his release, he returned to England and was sent to spy once more on Ludlow in Vevey in the 1670s. For his pains he was paid a pension of £200, made Marshal of the Leeward Islands and retired to Ireland with a knighthood.
It has been suggested that the assailants were in the employ of the Duchess of Orléans, or that she at least paid for their hire. Although it is known that O’Riordane certainly received money from her, this does not mean the gang were directly controlled by the duchess, or that they received their orders solely from her. She is far more likely to have been the conduit for a policy conducted from London. The fact that Williamson knew via intercepted mail where Lisle and others were living, and that the assassins were afterwards rewarded with appointments and gifts by Charles’s government, strongly indicates that while the action was perhaps controlled via Paris, the instigating orders came from London at the behest of the king. Such an arrangement would have had the added bonus of ‘plausible deniability’, the technique of disguised responsibility so beloved by the CIA and other security agencies in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As Charles’s childhood governor, the Earl of Newcastle, had instructed: Plus ça change.
At the time of Lisle’s death, the search for Edward Whalley and William Goffe was revived on the other side of the Atlantic. Following previous frustrations and failures, the hunt had been largely abandoned since 1661. The fugitives continued to live in their cellar in Milford. Thomas Temple’s promise to ‘hazard his life’ in pursuit of them had helped him become governor of Nova Scotia but it left the fugitives untroubled. Their old cave on Providence Hill lay abandoned to the bears and snakes.
That all changed in the summer of 1664. The king gave the order for an expeditionary force to be sent to New England. Its prime target was the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam on Long Island, which Charles wished to take over in order to create an unbroken wedge of British rule on the north-east seaboard. The force was led by four commissioners and commanded by Colonel Richard Nicholas. They had further orders ‘to apprehend all persons who stand attainted of high treason, and to discover those who have entertained them since the restoration’. It was unnecessary to identify the traitors by name.
Four men-o’-war arrived, carrying four hundred troops and enough firearms and ammunition to equip several hundred more. Whalley and Goffe retired once more to their cave but remained there only for a week or two. One night, a panther screamed outside the entrance. More worryingly, a group of Native Americans chanced upon their hiding place and discovered their bedding, though they did not spot either of the men. Word spread around Milford about their presence. Their benefactors decided to move them to one of the most remote settlements in Massachusetts, an outpost called Hadley, some eighty miles to the north-west on the boundary of Indian territory and ninety miles from the coast. Goffe’s sojourn here would become a legend, and inspire great storytellers on either side of the Atlantic.
Hadley in 1664 was a stockaded village of some fifty Puritan families. The settlers who built it in 1659 chose a site in the tranquil valley of the Connecticut river. It must have seemed to them that they had found the Promised Land. Their little satellite settlement was on an oxbow bend under the shadow of a richly forested mountain. They would discover that they were surrounded by the most fertile soils in New England. The great nineteenth-century landscape artist Thomas Cole would call it ‘Arcadia’ and immortalise the landscape in The Oxbow, an 1833 painting that became as famous in America as Constable’s Haywain in England. After Niagara Falls, Hadley would develop into the most visited holiday site in America.
By pre-arrangement, the fugitives were received by the town’s Puritan minister, John Russell. The Reverend Russell concealed them in an upstairs room. Since the Russells lived right in the middle of the settlement, this seemed an unnecessary risk; however, their luck held. Many decades later, a historian picked up folk memories of searchers from Boston and Redcoats from England arriving in Hadley around 1664, but there is no record that the Russell house ever came under suspicion.
Colonel Nicholas and his troops succeeded in their primary task of ejecting the Dutch, but they found it impossible to persuade the colonists of New England to aid the search for the regicides. Nicholas reported later that when he tried to set up a hearing of complaints in Boston and issued a summons for witnesses, a small mob-cum-delegation appeared and stopped him: ‘The Government sent a herald and trumpeter and 100 people accompanying them to proclaim that the Commissioners should not act in that government nor any persons give obedience,’ he reported, adding that ‘the meeting was dissolved and nothing farther done.’27
The commission had secret instructions from Charles to tread gently with the Massachusetts Puritans. The colonial government had been slow to recognise Charles as king and the British strategy – unusually subtle – was to woo the colony gently back to full allegiance, prior to imposing a new charter. This might explain the failure to take tough action against people suspected of harbouring Whalley and Goffe.
Much of what we know about the fugitives’ lives at this point comes
from the researches nearly a century later of Thomas Harrison, then governor of Massachusetts. He acquired Goffe’s papers – letters and a diary – while compiling a history of the colony published in 1764. The material revealed that the two were sometimes living ‘in terror’. In letters between Goffe and his wife Frances the two tell each other to be careful of betrayal. Given that Frances’ friend Lady Wariston was being betrayed by Robert Johnston, the warnings were timely.
Goffe’s diary revealed that in February 1665, with Colonel Nicholas’s men still in the area, they were joined by a third regicide. This was another military man, John Dixwell, formerly the governor of Dover Castle. Here was a man who took chances. In 1660 he was named as a regicide, but in order to sell as much of his property as possible before it was seized, he had hung on in England almost as long as Edmund Ludlow before fleeing abroad.
Dixwell went to Hanau in Germany and was one of the fugitives George Downing had in his sights in 1661. It is more than likely that he decided to quit Europe and make for America because of the callous betrayal of John Okey and his other friends, whose kidnapping was to have such a profound effect on some of the refugees. Dixwell remained in hiding in the Russell household with his two friends for perhaps two years before deciding to move on.
Whalley and Goffe were not completely hamstrung by their hermitic existence in Hadley. These two clever and energetic men may have lived in fear and have been constantly under cover, but through a front man they went very successfully into business. Their partner was the influential Daniel Gookin, a friend of the two since they had sailed to New England together on the Prudent Mary in May 1660. Copies of the Goffe letters show that he and his father-in-law eventually became sufficiently prosperous to send a message home to England asking their families not to send them any further remittances until they asked for more money. The pair went into stock raising and ‘a little trade with the Indians’. By 1672 they ‘had a stock in New England money of over one hundred pounds, all debts paid’.
