Royalist Agents, Conspirators and Spies

by Geoffrey Smith

  In the summer of 1645 Bampfield was in London, appearing as a penitent Delinquent Cavalier before the Committee for Compounding at Goldsmith’s Hall to settle his composition fine. According to the account in his Apology, for which there is no independent corroboration, he then travelled to Oxford to offer his services to the king, who at the end of the year ordered him to return to London with orders ‘to penetrate as far as possible into the designs of the two parties in Parliament [the Independents and the Presbyterians] in relation to his majesty’s person and authority’. Having accomplished this mission, Bampfield made his return journey disguised in his groom’s clothes, travelling with a carrier to Thame and ‘thence on foot to Oxford’, a form of travel very similar to that employed by Berkenhead and Royston’s distributors of Mercurius Aulicus. Having made himself known to the Governor, Sir Thomas Glemham, who had failed to penetrate his disguise, Bampfield was ordered to prepare himself for a secret meeting with the king the following night.88

  According to Bampfield’s account, ‘about eight of the clock the next evening’ he had a private meeting with the king and Secretary Nicholas. Having discussed Bampfield’s written report on his mission, in which he advised against any dealings with Cromwell and the Independents, Charles delivered ‘new instructions concerning divers eminent persons of the Presbyterian party, with letters to two of the chief and to a great and wise lady who was in extraordinary credit and had much influence upon the transactions of those times’. Having been charged with these ‘new instructions, letters, and all things expedient for his service’, Bampfield was dispatched back to London.89

  Although there is no external evidence to support this account, the editors of the Apology accept that it is ‘soundly based’. The circumstantial detail, the dates and the persons Bampfield claimed to have encountered at Oxford fit the facts. Bampfield’s two missions to London, which must have taken place between November 1645 and March 1646, were during a period when both the king and the queen, working through a number of agents, ranging from accredited envoys like Montereul to more shadowy figures like Fleming, Murray and Ashburnham, were working to reach a settlement with the Scots Covenanters and their English Presbyterian allies. The ‘eminent persons’ who were the intended recipients of the letters Bampfield carried back to London have not been identified, but one likely candidate is the ex-royal favourite the Earl of Holland, now trying to work his passage back into favour but undecided as to what port to head for, while ‘the great and wise lady’ was probably that inveterate dabbler in intrigue Lucy, Countess of Carlisle.90

  Bampfield never had the opportunity to return to Oxford to report the results of his second mission to London. The English Civil War was almost over. The king’s letters at this time reveal his uneasiness and uncertainty as to what policy to follow and his frustration at his increasing isolation as Fairfax’s army closed in on Oxford and the normal lines of communication for the royalists were cut. The interception of letters, what Charles called ‘the obstruction of passages’, is a common complaint in his correspondence.91 After weeks of delays, changes of mind and deep reservations about trusting the Covenanters, at the beginning of April Montereul was sent to the Scottish camp to prepare for what the king expected, or at least hoped, would be an honourable reception.92 The one piece of good news he received at this time was of the successful flight of Prince Charles from Pendennis Castle in Cornwall to Jersey via the Scilly Islands. Among the prince’s followers who accompanied him into exile was Henry Seymour, one of his grooms of the bedchamber, who was just beginning the career that would make him one of the most resourceful and courageous of the agents who served the Stuart cause.93 Among his entourage who remained in England was the young Sir John Grenville, whose father had been killed leading the Cornish army at Lansdown, and who was to become one of the leaders of royalist conspiracy against the Commonwealth.94 Although the Prince of Wales had escaped, his brother James, Duke of York was left behind in Oxford when on 27 April the king slipped away from his war-time capital, attended only by John Ashburnham and Michael Hudson, one of his chaplains. Despite all the clandestine approaches, no formal agreement had been reached with the Scots, and when the king arrived suddenly at their camp outside Newark he soon discovered that, as he informed the queen, he had put himself into the hands of a pack of ‘abominably relapsed rogues’ who treated him not as a guest, much less as their venerated monarch, but as their prisoner. Two months later Sir Thomas Glemham surrendered Oxford to Fairfax’s New Model Army.95 The English Civil War was effectively, if not quite technically, over, but the role of royalist agents was, if anything, to become even more important if the Stuart cause were to continue to be upheld when the king’s armies in England had all been defeated.

  1 For the failure of royalist designs on Hull and Lincoln, see Gardiner, Civil War, i, 141–2, 160–64.

  2 Edward J. Cowan, Montrose for Covenant and King (London, 1977), pp. 136–45; Scott, Politics and War, pp. 60–61; Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration, pp. 127–31.

  3 Scott Wheeler, ‘Four armies in Ireland’, pp. 44–8, in Jane H. Ohlmeyer (ed.), Ireland: From Independence to Occupation 1641–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

  4 Clarendon, Rebellion, v, 441; Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration, pp. 120–26.

  5 Ibid., p. 127.

  6 Ibid., pp. 129–30; Clarendon, Rebellion, vii, 405–6; David Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Scotland, 1644–1651 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1977, 2003), pp. 1–5; David Stevenson, Highland Warrior: Alasdair MacColla and the Civil Wars (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1980), pp. 95, 102–4; Cowan, Montrose, pp. 144–5, 154.

  7 Stevenson, Highland Warrior; the quotation is from p. v.

  8 A copy of the Queen’s Letter from the Hague in Holland (London, March 1642).

  9 Steve Murdoch, Britain, Denmark-Norway and the House of Stuart 1603–1660: A Diplomatic and Military Analysis (Edinburgh: Tuckwell Press, 2003), pp. 118–19.

  10 LJ, v, 411; Gardiner, Civil War, i, 39; Murdoch, Britain and Denmark-Norway, p. 121; Steve Murdoch and David Worthington, ‘Henderson, Sir John (fl. 1632–1658)’, ODNB, 2004, accessed 17 March 2010; ODNB (Cochran).

  11 John Ashburnham, Narrative, Appendix, p. xix; Murdoch, Britain and Denmark-Norway, pp. 121, 124.

  12 Cregan, ‘An Irish Cavalier: Daniel O’Neill in the Civil Wars 1642–51’, pp. 104–7; Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert, ii, 82.

  13 Carte, Letters and Papers, i, 26.

  14 Clarendon, Rebellion, ii, 111; viii, 268–76.

  15 For valuable discussions of the extent to which Charles relied on the advice of personal confidants rather than on his official ministers and counsellors, see Ian Roy, ‘The Royalist Council of War’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, vol. xxxv (1962), 151–68, and David Scott, ‘Counsel and cabal in the king’s party, 1642–1646’, in McElligott and Smith (eds), Royalists and Royalism, pp. 112–22.

  16 Carte, Life of Ormond, vi, 115–16. See also Scott, ‘Counsel and cabal in the king’s party’, p. 119.

  17 For an assessment of the extent of Digby’s responsibility for the military downfall of the royalist cause, see Ian Roy, ‘George Digby, Royalist intrigue and the collapse of the cause’, in Ian Gentles, John Morrill and Blair Worden (eds), Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 68–90.

  18 The disparaging term is Ormond’s, but for an impressive list of negative opinions of Antrim, both by contemporaries and by historians, see Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration, pp. 1–3. For O’Neill’s instructions and responsibilities, see Bod.L. Carte MS 13, fos 162, 166; Carte, Life of Ormond, vi, 32, 122; Clarendon, Rebellion, viii, 270–71; Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration, p. 132.

  19 Clarendon, Rebellion, viii, 270.

  20 Richard Bagwell, Ireland under the Stuarts and during the Interregnum, 2 vols (London: Longmans, Green, 1909), ii, 61; Cowan, Montrose, p. 145.

  21 The Military Scribe, 26 M
arch–2 April 1644, no. 6, p. 43; Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration, pp. 132–3.

  22 J. T. Gilbert (ed.), A Contemporary History of Affairs in Ireland from 1641 to 1652, 3 vols (Dublin: Irish Archaeological Society, 1879), i, 569–70.

  23 Carte, Life of Ormond, vi, 21.

  24 Mark Napier (ed.), Memorials of Montrose and his Times, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Maitland Club, 1848–50), ii, 122; Cowan, Montrose, pp. 145–51; Royle, The British Civil War, pp. 312–13.

  25 Murdoch, Britain and Denmark-Norway, p. 125.

  26 Kathrin Zickermann, ‘Briteannia ist mein Patria: Scotsmen and the ‘British Community in Hamburg’, in Alexia Grosjean and Steve Murdoch (eds), Scottish Communities Abroad in the Early Modern Period (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2005), pp. 263–5.

  27 Murdoch, Britain and Denmark-Norway, pp. 125–6.

  28 Ibid., pp. 121, 124.

  29 Stevenson, Highland Warrior, pp. 106–9; Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration, pp. 138–46.

  30 Estimates of the intended size of the army to be raised for service in England range from 1,000 to 10,000 men, depending on the source; Gilbert, Contemporary History, i, pp. 569–72; Carte, Life of Ormond, vi, 42; Cregan, ‘Daniel O’Neill in the Civil Wars’, p. 113; Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration, pp. 129–30, 132–3.

  31 Carte, Life of Ormond, vi, 133; Gilbert, Contemporary History, i, 569–72.

  32 Ibid., vi, 46; Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration, pp. 133–5.

  33 Gilbert, Contemporary History, i, 584.

  34 Bod.L. Carte MS 10, fo. 317. See also Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration, p. 142.

  35 Carte, Life of Ormond, vi, 133–5; Stevenson, Highland Warrior, pp. 105–6; Cregan, ‘Daniel O’Neill in the Civil Wars’, p. 115.

  36 Cited in Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration, p. 145. See also ibid., pp. 141, 143–4; Stevenson, Highland Warrior, pp. 105–6, 109–12, 114–18, 120.

  37 Sir Charles Petrie (ed.), The Letters, Speeches and Proclamations of King Charles I (London: Cassell, 1935), p. 134 (Charles to Ormond, 12 March 1644).

  38 Letter-Book of Sir William Brereton, ed. R. N. Dore (Manchester: Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1983–84), i, 515–16.

  39 Gilbert, Contemporary History, i, 569–72. See also Roy, ‘George Digby, Royalist intrigue and the collapse of the cause’, p. 79.

  40 Carte, Life of Ormond, vi, 149.

  41 For Barry, see William Kelly, ‘John Barry: An Irish Catholic Royalist in the 1640s’, in Micheál Ó Siochrú (ed.), Kingdoms in Crisis: Ireland in the 1640s (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), esp. pp. 151–7. For Barry’s employment as a courier by Ormond, see Gilbert, Contemporary History, i, 181–3, 190, 282, 611.

  42 Carte, Life of Ormond, v, 543.

  43 For Stephens, see Geoffrey Smith, The Cavaliers in Exile, 1640–1660 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 43–4, and below.

  44 Carte, Life of Ormond, vi, 165.

  45 Ibid., vi, 150–52, 167; Carte, Letters and Papers, i, 63, 80–81: ‘All is governed by P. Rupert who grows a great courtier’ (Trevor to Ormond, 25 May 1645); ibid., i, 90. See also Scott, ‘Counsel and cabal in the king’s party’, pp. 124–7. Prince Rupert was created Duke of Cumberland by Charles I.

  46 The Lord Digby’s Cabinet and Dr Goff’s Negotiations (London, 16 March 1646), Thomason 54:E.329 (15), p. 41; Murdoch, Britain and Denmark-Norway, pp. 127–8; Roy, ‘George Digby’, p. 79.

  47 Aubrey, Brief Lives, p. 187.

  48 Digby’s Cabinet, p. 40; Roy, ‘George Digby’, p. 80. Michael Foster, ‘Digby, Sir Kenelm (1603–1665)’, ODNB, September 2004, online edn, January 2009, accessed 19 March 2010.

  49 Quotation from C. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957), p. 273. For Clarendon’s opinion of Goffe, see Rebellion, xi, 31, 32.

  50 Digby’s Cabinet, pp. 403; Thomas Cooper, ‘Goffe, Stephen (1606–1681)’, rev. Jerome Bertram, ODNB, 2004, accessed 17 March 2010; Caroline M. Hibbard, ‘Henrietta Maria (1609–1669)’, ODNB, September 2004, online edn, January 2008, accessed 19 March 2010; Roy, ‘George Digby’, pp. 80–81.

  51 A letter sent by Mr Henry Jarmin to Mr William Murray (26 January 1643), Thomason/15:E.86 (12).

  52 The King’s Cabinet Opened: Pacquets of secret Letters and Papers written with the King’s own Hand and taken in his Cabinet at Naseby Field, 14 June, printed in William Oldys (ed.), Harleian Miscellany (London, 1811), v. 7, 544–59. A selection of Digby’s papers and correspondence, captured at Sherburn in Elmet, north Yorkshire, on 15 October, was printed in London, March 1646, as The Lord Digby’s Cabinet and Dr Goff’s Negotiations, Together with His Majestie’s, the Queen’s and the Lord Jermin’s and other Letters, taken at the Battle of Sherbern in Yorkshire, pp. 1–68. See also CSPD, 1644–45, pp. 371–6, 429–31; CSPD, 1645–47, pp. 55–60.

  53 John Bruce (ed.), Charles I in 1646: Letters of King Charles I to Queen Henrietta Maria (London: Camden Society, 1856), pp. 1, 12–13; CSPD, 1644–45, p. 429.

  54 Digby’s Cabinet, p. 40.

  55 Ibid., p. 49 (Fitzwilliam to Digby, 16 July 1645). For Byron, see Newman, Royalist Officers, p. 55.

  56 For Jermyn’s opinion of Davenant, see CSPD, 1644–45, p. 430.

  57 Clarendon, Rebellion, v, 212, 214; xii, 60.

  58 Ibid., xii, 60; CSPD, 1644–45, pp. 372–3.

  59 Henning, House of Commons, 1660–1690, ii, 134–5; CSPD, 1635–36, p. 433; CSPD, 1636–37, p. 303; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, pp. 188, 200, 291.

  60 Davenant, the Poet Laureate, was very much one of the queen’s circle. Elliot was a groom of the privy chamber to Charles I, appointed a groom of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales in 1644. Murray was a groom of the bedchamber to Charles I. Poley and Cornwallis were gentleman ushers of the privy chamber to Charles I, and in Poley’s case, also to Charles II; ‘Memorials preserved at Bruges of Charles II’s residence in that City’, Archaeologia, vol. 35 (London, 1853), 337; NA, SP 29/26/768; ‘A list of the department of the Lord Chamberlain of the Household, autumn, 1663’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, vol. 19 (1942–43), 15; HMC, Pepys MSS, 70, p. 255; Henning, House of Commons 1660–1690, ii, 134–5; ODNB (Davenant and Murray).

  61 For examples, see The King’s Cabinet Opened, pp. 548, 550, 551–2, 554, 558, 652–3.

  62 See Scott, ‘Counsel and cabal in the king’s party’, pp. 112–27; Roy, ‘The Royalist Council of War’, 164–8; Roy, ‘George Digby’, pp. 83–7.

  63 CSPD, 1644, pp. 243, 258; CSPD, 1644–45, pp. 371–2, 374, 376, 430.

  64 The King’s Cabinet Opened, pp. 534–6, 551.

  65 Carte, Life of Ormond, v, 7–8. For Glamorgan’s mission to Ireland, see Wedgwood, King’s War, pp. 317–19, 534–8; John Lowe, ‘The Glamorgan mission to Ireland 1645–6’, Studia Hibernica, vol. 4 (1964), pp. 155–96; Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration, pp. 163–4; Royle, British Civil War, pp. 334, 368–80; Stephen K. Roberts, ‘Somerset, Edward, second marquess of Worcester (d. 1667)’, ODNB, September 2004, online edn, May 2006, accessed 17 March 2010.

  66 Roy, ‘George Digby’, p. 79; Wedgwood, King’s War, p. 317; Royle, British Civil War, p. 334; ODNB.

  67 Digby’s Cabinet, pp. 44–6, 49–51, 56. For Fitzwilliam, see Newman, Royalist Officers, p. 133.

  68 A copy of the instructions was among Digby’s papers captured at Sherburn; Digby’s Cabinet, pp. 48–9. The instructions are also printed in CSPD, 1645, pp. 617–18. See also Gilbert, Contemporary History, i, 655 (Charles to Ormond, 26 June 1645).

  69 Cited in Royle, British Civil War, p. 368. See also ibid., p. 377; Gardiner, Civil War, iii, 52–4.

  70 Newman, Royalist Officers, p. 133; Gilbert, Contemporary History, i, 656, 667, 671, 693, 700–701, 710; Bagwell, Ireland under the Stuarts, ii, 198; ODNB (Glamorgan).

  71 Cowan, Montrose, pp. 233–8; Stevenson, Highland Warrior, pp. 212–17.

  72 Carte, Letters and Papers, i, 80.

  73 Baillie, Letters and Journals, ii, 310. For an informed discussion of exactly how
much money, arms and ammunition was sent by Denmark to the royalists during the first Civil War, see Murdoch, Britain and Denmark-Norway, pp. 121–30, 141–3.

  74 Ibid., p. 128.

  75 Digby’s Cabinet, pp. 40–43, 52–5; Aubrey, Brief Lives, p. 187; Roy, ‘George Digby’, pp. 79–80; ODNB (Sir Kenelm Digby).

  76 Digby’s Cabinet, pp. 40–43, 44–7, 51–3; The King’s Cabinet Opened, pp. 547–9; CSPD, 1644–45, pp. 371–2, 429–31; CSPD, 1645, pp. 388–9; Roy, ‘George Digby’, pp. 80–2; ODNB (Stephen Goffe).