The King's Revenge: Charles II and the Greatest Manhunt in British History
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Sir William wrote to Charles’s spy chief, Lord Arlington, that he had failed despite pursuing Joyce ‘with all imaginable zeal and diligence’. Arlington, a confidant of the king (he was one of only two courtiers who knew of Charles’s secret intention to convert to Roman Catholicism to secure a pact with France), replied that he suspected ‘there was foul play as well as difficulty of form in the hindering’ of Temple’s mission. Having involved two such senior and trusted members of his circle in the task to capture Joyce, Charles would have been disappointed at their failure. Unfortunately for us, none of his courtiers thought to commit details of their king’s true feelings to print. Samuel Pepys was sadly in orbit in a lower social circle, just below those who circled around Charles himself.
Following the Joyce debacle, attempts to capture or assassinate the fugitive regicides began to slip down the royal agenda. Pressing domestic issues included questions over the succession, for although Charles had by now fathered many male children, none of them were the offspring of the queen. His heir was therefore his brother James, Duke of York, who was openly Catholic. If this were not enough, word leaked out of the king’s secret pact with the ancient enemy, France. In 1677, partially to help quell public anxiety over his Protestant identity, Charles arranged the marriage of his niece Mary to William of Orange.
That same year, Algernon Sidney scented the political wind blowing from England and decided to end his exile. All would go well until six years after his return, when he was swept up in an extraordinary conspiracy which culminated in his death. A plot was hatched to ambush and kill Charles II and his brother James on their way home from the races. Among those arrested for alleged involvement were the most prominent of the king’s political opponents. Through his friendship with one of them, Sidney was also arrested, and was tried for treason on very flimsy evidence – Sidney complained it came from only one witness. The prosecution’s response was that it had another source – the manuscript of Sidney’s unpublished republican writings.11 The court argued that his words were an ‘overt act’ – putting Sidney in the bizarre situation of having become his own chief prosecution witness.12 He was beheaded on 7 December 1683.
On 5 February 1685 the king had a seizure and died at the age of fifty-four. He was succeeded by his brother James, a Roman Catholic. Four months later, Charles’s eldest illegitimate son, James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth, launched a rebellion. Scott was the son of Lucy Walter, Charles’s first love. His rebellion was crushed at the Battle of Sedgemoor.
Following the uprising there was one last act of vengeance against a relative of one of the regicides. The widow of the assassinated regicide John Lisle was condemned to death for harbouring one of the Duke of Monmouth’s supporters. The officer who led the search for the fugitive hidden by Lady Lisle had an axe to grind. His father, John Penruddock, had been executed following a treason trial presided over by Lady Lisle’s husband John in 1655. Alice Lisle was beheaded in Winchester on 2 September, so completing the tragic history of the Lisles, husband and wife. By the 1680s there were few of the regicides or of their pursuers left.
The regicide William Cawley died at Vevey in 1667, followed there is 1671 by fellow regicide Cornelius Holland and, three years later, by the former sergeant-at-arms Edward Dendy. By now, the little community in Vevey was becoming very small and its members very old. Nicholas Love had lived on until 1682, while Andrew Broughton succumbed to old age five years later.
Of the other runaways, Thomas Challoner, the fifty-fourth signatory to the king’s death warrant, had escaped to Middelburg in the Netherlands, only to die there in August 1660. Valentine Walton escaped retribution to die in Hanau, Germany, in 1661. Sir Michael Livesey died in the Netherlands in 1665, where William Say died the following year. Daniel Blagrave died in Aachen in 1668. George Joyce was last heard of in the Netherlands with Sir William Temple’s failed attempt to kidnap him. Perhaps he moved into deeper obscurity to avoid further attempts on his liberty.
In all, twenty regicides and their associates were executed. Many escaped that fate by the skin of their teeth. Edmund Ludlow and others had several close shaves in Switzerland, George Downing’s agents narrowly missed capturing John Hewson and George Joyce in the Netherlands, and in America, Goffe, Whalley and Dixwell only evaded an exhaustive manhunt thanks to the help of Puritan settlers.
Of the regicides who remained in England, two evaded execution due to ill health. Sir John Bourchier was too ill in 1660 to be put on trial and died later that year, while Vincent Potter was sentenced to death but died before the sentence could be carried out. Many more were thrown in prison for the rest of their lives.
Some of the latter had been sentenced to death but reprieved. Sir Hardress Waller escaped the scaffold thanks to the intercession of his cousin Sir William Waller, who changed sides after the wars to support the royalist faction during the Commonwealth and Protectorate. Sir Hardress died imprisoned on Jersey in 1666. Henry Smith, an ardent republican, was reprieved after pleading ‘youthful ignorance’ and sentenced to imprisonment for life, dying in Jersey around 1668. Robert Tichborne, a London merchant who helped organise the king’s trial, was reprieved for having interceded to save the lives of Cavaliers condemned to death during the Protectorate. He died in the Tower in 1682.
Others who were sentenced to life imprisonment included Owen Rowe, who died in the Tower on Christmas Day 1661; Peter Temple, who died in the Tower two years later; Colonel John Hutchinson, who died in Sandown Castle in 1664; and Harry Marten, the republican bon viveur who was imprisoned in Chepstow Castle where, attended by the love of his life, Mary Ward, he died in 1680.
The most illustrious of the supporters of the regicides, John Milton, died peacefully at home in London in 1674. He continues to be one of the most lauded of poets and is considered to be as quintessentially English as the monarchy itself.
And what of the men who pursued the regicides? Charles II converted to Catholicism on his death bed in 1685, having left no legitimate male heir. Heneage Finch died the year before the king; William Prynne died in 1669; George Monck, the most eminent of the century’s turncoats, died in 1670; George Downing, who turned a lesser though useful coat, in 1684; and Richard Ingoldsby, who turned his coat to save his skin, died in 1685. James II outlived them all. Having been deposed from the English throne by William of Orange in 1688, he died peacefully at his chateau at St-Germain-en-Laye near Paris fifteen years later.
While both enemies and friends dropped away, Edmund Ludlow lived on by the shore of Lake Geneva with his wife Elizabeth. In 1688, following the Glorious Revolution – a term he would have hated for being entirely erroneous – he felt it was at last safe to return home. Almost immediately, he was recognised and denounced as a regicide. A proposal was made in Parliament to have him arrested. So, at the age of seventy-two, Ludlow escaped once more and sailed away for the last time. Four years later, in 1692, with Elizabeth by his side, he died in his bed at 49 Rue du Lac – the last of the regicides.
All that now remains of the little group of Englishmen and women who once lived in the pretty town by Lake Geneva are their graves and some memorials in the church of St Martin, the very church to which Ludlow once walked while carrying a sword, in fear of a king’s revenge.
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EPILOGUE:
THE LEGACY OF THE REGICIDES
If Britain did have a ‘Glorious Revolution’, it took place not in 1688–9 but forty years earlier in 1649. On that date, the rule of an absolutist king was ended and the supremacy of Parliament was established. At the same time, the rule of law was confirmed and wider social freedoms than ever before granted, censorship lifted and relative freedom of worship assured. Despite a generally bad press, the regicides were men of principle who stood for many of the liberties that today we take for granted. The Glorious Revolution merely restored some of what the men who judged Charles I had achieved. Modern Britain has much to thank them for.
The trial of Charles I grew out of the exasperation of
men who wanted his powers to be tempered by a representative Parliament that could make laws and raise taxes. This was the constitutional monarchy drawn up by John Lambert and Henry Ireton in 1647 and turned down flat by the king. Due to Charles’s desire to raise taxes as he wished and to rule without Parliament (‘Call no Parliaments’, his father James I had advised), two bruising wars were fought between 1642 and 1648. Constitutional reform – rather than hatred of the king himself – was at the heart of the programme proposed by those who opposed the king. Finally, the conflicts led to Britain’s first and only written constitution.
The king’s judges were an odd coalition: hereditary landowners, parliamentarians, professional soldiers, lawyers, businessmen. Holding a broad sweep of political and religious views, from the conservative to the revolutionary, they ranged from those who, like Cromwell and his son-in-law Henry Ireton, tried to achieve a working relationship with Charles I to republicans like Edmund Ludlow and Harry Marten who sympathised with giving the vote to working men. Thanks to the intransigence of the king, England ended up with a republic even though what had been fought for was a monarchy with powers circumscribed by Parliament.
Whatever their individual views, the regicides as a body held that people had the right to worship as they chose (though, being sons of the Reformation, they were strongly opposed both to the papacy and bishops). They believed men had a duty to work together within society to improve the lot of mankind. An absolutist king clinging to notions of divine prerogative and an unreformed religion was seen as inimical to progress.
The regicides have bequeathed a series of reforms which underpin a good deal of the structure of Britain today. Thanks to John Lambert, we have the blueprint for today’s political system. In 1653 he created Britain’s only written constitution, in which the Lord Protector was advised by a Council of State and all legislation had to be passed by Parliament – how similar to today’s parliamentary democracy with Cabinet government this is.
They had much to offer on the legal front. First, they reasserted the freedoms established under Magna Carta and common law. Through freedom of speech and the rule of law they ensured that the people had the sort of rights and freedoms that have developed into a modern liberal democracy.
At a more specific legal level, thanks to John Bradshaw and John Cook, a defendant in court had the right not to incriminate himself the right to silence. Cook proposed the ‘cab rank’ rule for barristers, by which advocates had the duty to take a case, and he proposed a scheme to fund cases for the poor – an early form of legal aid. Both these reforms survive today, ensuring that society’s poorest can obtain legal representation. During the Commonwealth, English was made the language of the courts and of the law books. Cook also proposed reforms of a social nature, including the introduction of free health care for the poor.
On the wider political front, the writings of Algernon Sidney, that convert to the regicide cause, enthused John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and helped inspire the American Constitution. Though derided in their own land, in America the men who judged the king and found him wanting are lauded as apostles of liberty.
What would they make of modern Britain? They would marvel that the monarchy has been stripped of all active power but is kept on largely for ceremonial purposes. They would exult in the manner in which orderly elections are held and how defeated governments give way without violence. They would be astounded that women and even the unemployed have the vote. One would like to think that once they saw how well this broad enfranchisement appears to work, they would become reconciled to it.
Coming from an age of political fervour, they would be saddened at how few of the electorate bother to vote. At first they would be baffled by the common complaint that all the main political parties are somehow ‘all the same’. On closer inspection, the regicides would notice there was something in this and wonder if it might be due to the fact that guiding moral principles now play so little part in politics.
One aspect of British public life would cause them immense concern – that there is hardly ever a mention of God. They would be dismayed to learn that the only avowedly religious prime minister of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Tony Blair, is a convert to Catholicism.
So, the seventeenth-century regicides, puritanical, often brutal, yet defiantly reformist, would find much to like and much to criticise. They would see that an excellent job has been made of building on the foundations they put down in the seventeenth century but notice there are still some flaws in the design. They would certainly like to make a few suggestions.
And what of the king’s revenge? As British history is habitually told via the stories of kings and queens, tales of Charles II and his wonderfully corrupt and licentious court have unfairly obscured the histories of the men who killed a king in order to let freedom live. As John Cook wrote shortly before he was executed: ‘We fought for the public good and would have enfranchised the people and secured the welfare of the whole groaning creation if the nation had not more delighted in servitude than in freedom.’
APPENDIX I: THE REGICIDES
AND THEIR FATE
The following is a list of all fifty-nine signatories to the warrant ordering the execution of Charles I (popularly known as the death warrant) in the order their signatures appear. The absence of a date of birth indicates it is not known. Where no cause of death is indicated, it should be taken as natural causes.
John Bradshaw: bap. 1602, lawyer, President of the High Court of Justice, died 1659; following the restoration, his body was dug up for posthumous symbolic execution in 1661
Thomas Grey: Baron Grey of Groby, born 1622, died 1657
Oliver Cromwell: b. 1599, soldier, politician, Lord Protector (1653-8), died 1658; posthumous symbolic execution 1661
Edward Whalley: major-general; fled to New England and died in exile 1674/5
Sir Michael Livesey: b. 1614, politician; fled to Netherlands and died in exile 1665(?)
John Okey: bap. 1606, soldier; fled to Germany 1660; captured in the Netherlands by George Downing; forcibly returned to England in 1661 and executed 1662
Sir John Danvers: b. 1584/5, politician, died 1655
Sir John Bourchier: b. 1595, politician; declared too ill for trial, died 1660
Henry Ireton: bap. 1611, major-general and political theorist; died of fever on campaign in Ireland 1651; posthumous symbolic execution 1661
Sir Thomas Mauleverer: bap. 1599, politician, died 1655
Sir Hardress Waller: b. 1604, army officer; sentenced to death 1660; sentence commuted to life imprisonment; died Mount Orgueil Castle, Jersey, 1666
John Blakiston: bap. 1603, politician, died 1649
John Hutchinson: bap. 1615, army officer; pardoned 1660 but after being implicated in 1663 Yorkshire rebellion was imprisoned in Sandown Castle, Kent, where he died in 1664
William Goffe: major-general; fled to New England 1660 and died in exile 1679(?)
Thomas Pride: army officer, died 1658; marked for posthumous execution but body left undisturbed
Peter Temple: bap. 1599, soldier and politician, sentenced to death 1660; sentence commuted to life; died in the Tower 1663
Thomas Harrison: bap. 1616, army officer and Fifth Monarchist leader, executed 1660
John Hewson: shoemaker, army officer, governor of Dublin; fled to Amsterdam 1660 and died in exile 1661-2(?)
Henry Smith: b. 1619/20, politician, sentenced to death 1660; commuted to life imprisonment; died Gorey Castle, Jersey, in or after 1668
Sir Peregrine Pelham: bap. 1602, politician, died 1650
Richard Deane: bap. 1610, army and naval officer; killed in action during naval Battle of Solebay against the Dutch 1653; following the restoration his body was disinterred and buried in a communal pit
Robert Tichborne: b. 1610/11, politician, sentenced to death 1660; sentence commuted; died in the Tower 1682
Humphrey Edwards: b. 1582, politician, died 1658
Daniel Blagrave:
bap. 1603, politician; fled to Aachen in 1660 and died in exile 1668(?)
Owen Rowe: b. 1592/3, merchant, sentenced to death; died in the Tower before sentence confirmed 1661.
William Purefoy: b. 1580(?), politician, died 1659
Adrian Scroop: b. 1601, army officer, executed 1660
James Temple: b. 1606, politician; sentenced to life imprisonment on Jersey, where he died 1674(?)
Augustine Garland: b. 1603, lawyer and politician; though sentenced to death in 1660, he was transported to Tangiers; it is not known if an order for him to be returned and imprisoned in Southsea Castle was carried out; died in or after 1677
Edmund Ludlow: b. 1616/17(?), army general and politician; escaped to the Continent 1660, died Vevey, Switzerland, 1692
Henry (Harry) Marten: b. 1601/2; politician; sentenced to life imprisonment and died Chepstow Castle, 1680
Vincent Potter: b. 1614, army officer; sentenced to death 1660; died in the Tower before sentence could be carried out, probably in 1661
Sir William Constable: bap. 1590, army officer, died 1655; disinterred after the restoration and his body thrown into a communal pit
*Richard Ingoldsby: bap. 1617, army officer, politician; was pardoned and made a Knight of the Bath by Charles II for his role in capturing parliamentarian general John Lambert in 1660; died 1685
William Cawley: bap. 1602, politician; escaped to Switzerland and died 1667
John Barkstead: escaped to Germany 1660; seized in the Netherlands, forcibly returned to England and executed 1662
Isaac Ewer: army officer, died 1650/1