Royalist Agents, Conspirators and Spies
Page 22
23 Sir Hugh Cholmley, Memoirs of Sir Hugh Cholmley, Kt and Bt (privately printed, 1787), p. 75; Smith, Cavaliers in Exile, pp. 23–5; Hardacre, Royalists during the Puritan Revolution, pp. 64–5.
24 CSPD, 1649–50, p. 561; Bampfield’s Apology, pp. 80, 136.
25 CSPD, 1649–50, pp. 441, 447; Halkett and Fanshawe Memoirs, p. 43; Bampfield’s Apology, pp. 136–7.
26 Bod.L. Carte MS 24, fo. 770; ClSP, ii, 467, 476.
27 Ó Siochrú, God’s Executioner, pp. 70–79.
28 Gilbert, Contemporary History, ii, 237–8, 240, 261.
29 Ibid., iii, 385; Casway, Owen Roe O’Neill, pp. 254–9; Cregan, ‘Daniel O’Neill in the Civil Wars’, 127–8.
30 Gilbert, Contemporary History, ii, 277. For a recent balanced and scholarly account of the capture of Drogheda and the controversies surrounding that event, see Ó Siochrú, God’s Executioner, pp. 81–90.
31 Gilbert, Contemporary History, ii, 297; 299; Cregan, ‘Daniel O’Neill in the Civil Wars’, pp. 127–8; Casway, Owen Roe O’Neill, pp. 257–62.
32 ClSP, ii, 526 (Hyde to Toby Mathew, Madrid, 18 March 1650).
33 CSPD, 1644, pp. 195–6; CSPD, 1645–47, p. 57; H. F. M. Simpson (ed.), ‘Civil War Papers, 1643–1650’, in Miscellany of the Scottish Historical Society, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1893–1919), vol. i, 144–5, 154, 159, 162, 169; HMC, Pepys MSS (London, 1911), pp. 218–19, 230, 246, 259; S. R. Gardiner (ed.), Letters and Papers Illustrating the Relations between Charles II and Scotland (Edinburgh: Scottish Historical Society, 1894), pp. 124–6; Murdoch, Britain and Denmark-Norway, pp. 150–53.
34 For James Kettler, Duke of Courland and brother-in-law of the Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg, see Simpson, ‘Civil War Papers’, p. 145.
35 HMC, Pepys MSS, p. 273, quoted in Peacey, ‘Order and Disorder in Europe’, pp. 960–61.
36 Zickermann, ‘Briteannia ist mein Patria’, p. 265; Peacey, ‘Order and Disorder in Europe’, pp. 961–3.
37 CSPD, 1649–50, pp. 269–71.
38 Napier, Memorials of Montrose, ii, 392, 417–20; Simpson, ‘Civil War Papers’, pp. 169, 173; Murdoch, Britain and Denmark-Norway, pp. 150–3; Cowan, Montrose, pp. 262, 272.
39 Ibid., pp. 154–5; J. N. M. Maclean, ‘Montrose’s preparations for the invasion of Scotland, and Royalist missions to Sweden, 1649–1651’, in R. Hatton and M. Anderson (eds), Studies in Diplomatic History (Harlow: Longman, 1970), p. 10.
40 Simpson, ‘Civil War Papers’, pp. 200–201. The replacement envoys could not necessarily be depended on not to be provocative either. One, William, Lord Crofts, a personal friend of Charles II, was a notable duellist, and the other, the equerry William Armorer, possessed a fiery temper. For Crofts, see Hutton, Charles II, pp. 73, 122. For Armorer, see below, note 61.
41 Murdoch, Britain and Denmark-Norway, pp. 157–8.
42 ClSP, ii, 467, 469–70, 475–6; Cowan, Montrose, pp. 265–9; Hutton, Charles II, pp. 37–9. The view that the factions at the exiled court – Old Royalists, Louvrians, or Swordmen – can be readily identified and distinguished by their membership and their policies is misleading. Factions were fluid and muddled, groups forming and re-forming over different issues, their membership shaped by many factors including changing personal relationships. See Smith, Cavaliers in Exile, pp. 26–7, 124–5; Hutton, Charles II, pp. 40–41; Underdown, pp. 10–12.
43 ClSP, ii, 424 (Commissioners of the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland to the Prince of Wales, 17 October 1648).
44 Gardiner, Charles II and Scotland, pp. 29–30.
45 Shortage of money and a hostile Dutch reaction to the behaviour of the wilder and more licentious exiles, most notoriously demonstrated by the murder of the Commonwealth’s envoy, Isaac Dorislaus, were significant factors in Charles’s decision to leave The Hague. See Hutton, Charles II, pp. 38–9; Peacey, ‘Order and Disorder in Europe’, pp. 954–7.
46 CSPD, 1650, p. 320.
47 G. R. Balleine, All for the King: The Life Story of Sir Philip Carteret (St Helier: Société Jersiaise, 1976), pp. 34, 36–7, 78; ODNB (Titus).
48 BL Add. MS 15,858, fo. 58; NP, i, 118. In the household of Charles II, William Armorer was an equerry and Edward Progers a groom of the bedchamber; NA, SP 29/26/78; Smith, Cavaliers in Exile, pp. 122, 128–9.
49 Carte, Letters and Papers, i, 337–8. Secretary Robert Long, writing to Ormond from Jersey in October, also referred to Seymour as ‘a person of confidence and known integrity’; see S. Elliott Hoskins, Charles II in the Channel Islands, 2 vols (London, 1854), ii, 329–30.
50 Alfred Harbage, Sir William Davenant: Poet Venturer, 1606–1668 (New York: Octagon, 1971), pp. 110–12; Wilcher, Writing of Royalism, pp. 317, 319.
51 Carte, Letters and Papers, i, 339–40; Carte, Ormond, ii, 86–7, 106–7; Hoskins, Charles II in the Channel Islands, ii, 331, 338, 344–5.
52 Underdown, pp. 18–22.
53 BL MS Egerton 1533, fo. 18; 2542, fos 17, 26; CSPD, 1649–50, p. 505; Maclean, ‘Montrose’s preparations’, pp. 11–20; Hutton, Charles II, pp. 43–5.
54 Most, but not all. Major Humphrey Boswell has much in common with many of the agents who became active as spies and conspirators during the 1650s.
55 This description fits for the most part the desperadoes who murdered the Commonwealth’s envoys Isaac Dorislaus at The Hague in May 1649, and Anthony Ascham in Madrid in June 1650. See Peacey, ‘Order and Disorder in Europe’, pp. 956–7, 966–9.
56 CSPD, 1660–61, p. 556; Underdown, p. 28.
57 For Whitley and Gerard, see Newman, Royalist Officers, pp. 151, 409; Archaeologia, 35, 338n.; Ronald Hutton, The Royalist War Effort, 1642–1646 (London: Longman, 1982), pp. 138–40; ODNB (Gerard).
58 BL MS Egerton 2542, fos 14–15; CSPD, 1650, p. 204; Underdown, p. 11.
59 For an excellent discussion of the drawn-out and complex negotiations with Charles IV of Lorraine during this period, see Ó Siochrú, God’s Executioner, pp. 165–82.
60 Hutton, Charles II, pp. 34–5, 470–71. For Killigrew’s embassy to Venice, see Smith, Cavaliers in Exile, pp. 84–5.
61 TSP, iv, 122 (Henry Manning? to Thurloe, 30 October 1655). For examples of Armorer’s bad temper, see ibid., iv, 122; CSPD, 1657–58, pp. 165–6, 292; Smith, Cavaliers in Exile, p. 122. For his missions to Denmark and Courland, see Simpson, ‘Civil War Papers’, pp. 200–201; HMC, 13th Report, Portland MSS, Appendix 1, p. 595.
62 For Elliot’s instructions, see HMC, Hodgkin MSS, pp. 120–21. For his attitude to Scots and his factional allegiance, see CSPD, 1639, p. 139; Clarendon, Rebellion, v, 214; ibid., xii, 60; NP, i, 305; Carte, Letters and Papers, ii, 306–7. An undated letter from Elliot to Charles at about this time indicates that he believed he had lost royal favour and hoped to recover it; Hodgkin MSS, p. 121.
63 Lewis Trethewey to William Edgeman, Jersey, 4 November 1649, quoted in Hoskins, Charles II in the Channel Islands, ii, 344.
64 Gilbert, Contemporary History, ii, 347, 354–5; Casway, Owen Roe O’Neill, pp. 264–5; Cregan, ‘Daniel O’Neill in the Civil Wars’, pp. 128–9.
65 Quoted in Ó Siochrú, God’s Executioner, p. 135.
66 Ibid., pp. 137–9; Casway, Owen Roe O’Neill, p. 266.
67 Carte, Letters and Papers, i, 384–5 (O’Neill to Marchioness of Ormond, 12 October 1650).
68 Clarendon, Rebellion, viii, 268.
69 Gilbert, Contemporary History, ii, 492–3.
70 ClSP, ii, 424, 475, 476, 479, 530–31; Clarendon, Rebellion, xii, 120–5; Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 121–35; Cowan, Montrose, pp. 272–81; Hutton, Charles II, pp. 37–41, 44–6; R. W. Harris, Clarendon and the English Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983), pp. 193–5. See, for example, the intelligence dispatch to the Council of State from The Hague on 30 May, reporting that ‘the Lord Hopton is retired to Utrecht … and some others are ready to follow in discontent of the agreement with the Scots’; Gardiner, Charles II and Scotland, p. 115.
7
1 Cowan, Montrose, pp. 278–9, 284–98; Murdoch, Britain, Denmark and the Stuarts, p. 156.
72 There is no reliable direct evidence as to exactly when Murray and Fleming left Breda, whether at any stage they travelled together and when they arrived in Edinburgh. There is certainly considerable disagreement over the extent to which the different sets of instructions demonstrate any negligence, selfishness, cynicism or duplicity by Charles II. For excellent discussions of the problem of dating and reconciling the different letters, what Ronald Hutton calls ‘an insoluble puzzle’, see Hutton, Charles II, pp. 46–7, 474–5; Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 138–9, 235–6. For the letters and instructions to Fleming, see Maitland Club Miscellany, II, ii, 472–81; Napier, Memorials of Montrose, ii, 428; Gardiner, Charles II and Scotland, pp. 124–6.
73 For Cochrane’s apparent abandonment of the Stuart cause at this time, see Murdoch, Britain and Denmark-Norway, pp. 157–8.
74 For Keynes, see Newman, Royalist Officers, p. 214; Underdown, p. 29; Smith, Cavaliers in Exile, pp. 85–6. For John Seymour, see Mary Coate (ed.), The Letter-Book of John, Viscount Mordaunt, 1658–1660 (London: Camden Society, 1945), p. 163n.; HMC, Portland MSS, i (1891), 576–7; CClSP, iii, 267, 408–9; CCC, iii, 2,063. For Trelawney, see Newman, Royalist Officers, p. 376. For the Western Association, see Underdown, pp. 28–35.
75 Ibid., pp. 35–41.
76 HMC, Portland MSS, i, 576–82; Gardiner, Charles II and Scotland, pp. 4, 114; Underdown, pp. 36, 40–41.
77 Cowan, Montrose, pp. 297, 299.
78 NP, i, 207–8, 254–5; CClSP, ii, 69.
79 Clarendon, Rebellion, xiii, 3; Geoffrey Smith, ‘Long, Dangerous and Expensive Journeys: The Grooms of the Bedchamber at Charles II’s Court in Exile’, Early Modern Literary Studies (August 2007), p. 6; Cregan, ‘Daniel O’Neill in the Civil Wars’, p. 131.
80 Bampfield’s Apology, pp. 80, 137, 158–9; NP, i, 208, 237; CSPD, 1650, p. 265, 288.
Chapter 6
A Fading Crown 1650–1653
A King when he getteth his Crown on his head, should think at the best it is but a fading crown.
Robert Douglas, Moderator of the Scots General Assembly, to Charles II
at his coronation as King of Scots, 1 January 1651
There is no talk of Presbyterian nor Royalist at present.
Daniel O’Neill, ‘A brief Relation of the Affairs of England as they stand at Present’,
an intelligence report presented to Sir Edward Hyde, 10 March 1653
The ship carrying Charles and his followers arrived in the Moray Firth in the last week of June. Having stalled for weeks, at the last minute Charles finally succumbed to relentless pressure and reluctantly signed both the Solemn League and Covenant and the National Covenant before being permitted to disembark and make a leisurely progress to Falkland Palace. The king’s desire to put himself at the head of an inclusive and broad royalist movement, embracing English Cavaliers and Presbyterians, Irish Confederates, Scottish Montrosians, Engagers and Covenanters, had been frustrated by the Kirk party’s leaders, who were horrified by both the character and the past records of many of the king’s companions.
The Commissioners of the General Assembly, waiting to welcome Charles to Falkland Palace, wasted no time in ‘urging the removal from his presence of all malignant and profane persons, the coming of many of whom in his company into the kingdom is a great ground of stumbling to God’s people’.1
Prominent among the ‘malignant and profane persons’ whose removal from the king’s presence was demanded was Daniel O’Neill. Although he had just been confirmed in his place as a groom of the bedchamber to the king, this did not save him from arrest. According to Clarendon, O’Neill was arrested ‘for being an Irishman and having been in arms on the late King’s behalf’; this loyal servant of the monarchy had now achieved the dubious distinction of being confined in prison in all three Stuart kingdoms. Although there was ‘some discourse of putting him to death’, on this occasion O’Neill’s imprisonment was relatively brief. On 15 August he was ordered by the Committee of Estates to leave Scotland within eight days. He was forbidden to attend the court or ‘hold communication with any malignant person about the same, nor return to Scotland without a pass from the Parliament, Committee of Estates or Secret Council, upon pain of death’. By the end of August O’Neill was back at The Hague, but Scotland had not yet seen the last of him.2
O’Neill’s forced return to Holland was merely one of a number of journeys by royalist agents at this time. Some were involuntary as a consequence of their being banished, but others were on the king’s business, as Charles manoeuvred to establish some freedom of action, to gain some independence from the stultifying presence of Argyll and the lords and ministers of the Kirk. As the Presbyterian minister Robert Baillie lamented, Scotland at this time, – ‘Kirk, State and Army’ – was riven with ‘divisions and jealousies’.3 The Kirk party’s rule was threatened from several directions. Prominent Engagers, like Hamilton, Callendar and General John Middleton, a Covenanter who had once campaigned effectively against Montrose but was now denied a command in an army systematically and repeatedly purged of ‘profane malignants’, showed themselves increasingly willing to challenge the dominant position of Argyll. Middleton was to demonstrate that he was even prepared to encourage the traditionally royalist Gordons, allies of Montrose against whom he had once fought, to raise a revolt against the regime. Occupying an ill-defined and shifting moderate position between Argyll and the Kirk party on the one hand and the Engagers and royalists on the other were a number of other influential figures, notably Lauderdale and Alexander, Lord Lindsay. Lauderdale, one of the signatories of the Engagement at Carisbrooke, had not yet travelled quite as far towards a position of unconditional royalism as had Hamilton and Middleton. Like Middleton, Lindsay had also fought against Montrose, but with much less success, and had been in the delegation that negotiated unsuccessfully the Newcastle Propositions with Charles I in 1646. But, like much else in Scotland at this time, Lindsay’s ground was shifting, in his case away from Argyll and towards the king.4
Then, on Sunday 22 July, a choice of day condemned by the outraged Scottish clergy, Cromwell led his army across the Tweed into Scotland. For the second time in two years the army of the Kirk regime’s one-time allies was advancing on Edinburgh in what was intended to be a pre-emptive strike to prevent Charles establishing himself securely in Scotland as a preliminary to a royalist invasion of England.
Cromwell’s army, as it moved slowly up the east coast from Berwick, was supported by an English fleet whose presence greatly increased the dangers for those agents trying to maintain by sea the lines of communication between Charles and those two prominent backers of his expedition, Henrietta Maria and William II of Orange. The outbreak of war between the Commonwealth and the Kirk had also increased the urgency of planning a royalist rising in England, while at the same time it made the direction of conspiracy, whether from Charles in Scotland or from the Continent, more hazardous. On 3 September the Kirk’s army under David Leslie, which, although Engagers and Malignants had been expelled from its ranks, still considerably outnumbered the English, was decisively defeated at Dunbar, a victory that brought as much satisfaction to Charles as it did to Cromwell. Indeed Charles, rendered desperate by his treatment, had been considering a flight back to Holland. On the day of the battle he wrote to William of Orange requesting that the prince send ‘a smack or a herring buss with five or six men’ to Montrose harbour, on the pretext of providing transport for one of the king’s messengers, but if necessary, to provide a means of escape for the king himself. The plea indicates not only the degree of the king’s desperation, but also the precarious nature of the shipping royalist agents relied on when they travelled between Scotland and the Continent.5
Cromwell’s victory at Dunbar and the English occupation of Edinburgh transformed the situation. In the words of Marchamont Nedham’s Mercurius Politicus: ‘now the Kirk-party are down, the
Scotch Cavaliers will begin to show their teeth again, and then what will become of the Covenant?’6 Although still closely supervised and constantly harangued, prayed over and lectured, his pastimes criticised and most of his more congenial companions banished from his presence, Charles now sought to exploit the divisions and jealousies so deplored by Baillie. His supporters were a heterogeneous collection, in some cases more notable for their differences from each other than for their loyalty to the Stuart monarchy. There were the traditional northern loyalists, the Gordons and some of the Highland clans; the Engagers, led by Hamilton and Callendar but regarded with suspicion by the Kirk and purged from the army; moderate, influential Covenanters like Lauderdale and Lindsay, who was created Earl of Balcarres in January 1651; adventurous English Cavaliers, attracted to Scotland by the prospect of a revival there of Stuart fortunes, and royalist and Presbyterian plotters in England. All these different groups and individuals needed to be encouraged and their activities co-ordinated. And this had to be done in a country fighting a war against an invading army and despite the hostility and suspicion of the government of the Kirk party.
The expulsion of notorious Malignants like O’Neill from his little court reduced the availability of reliable agents on whom Charles could depend. Communication with the now resurgent northern royalists, for example, was largely left to his court physician, Alexander Fraiser. Possessed, according to Clarendon in his History of the Rebellion, of an ‘unquiet and over-active spirit’, Fraiser was always a fairly controversial figure in the exiled court. In his private correspondence with Nicholas, Hyde was more outspoken, calling him ‘the maddest fool alive’.7 A Presbyterian whose loudly expressed support for the Scots alliance had enabled him to maintain his position when so many other members of the household had been banished, Fraiser somehow retained over his long career the personal support of the king.8
Despite being what one of Secretary Nicholas’s correspondents sarcastically called one of the ‘chief saints in the Presbyterian Calendar and devotion’, Fraiser seems in Scotland to have switched his loyalties away from the Kirk party and onto the Engager leaders and the royalists, and to have encouraged Charles in the desperate venture that came to be known as ‘the Start’.9 The slippery behaviour of the king’s physician is one more example of the volatility and fluidity of allegiance characteristic of Scottish politics at this period. For what was planned was a serious rising by the northern clans against the Kirk’s government, to be led by Lewis Gordon, Marquess of Huntly, other clan chieftains and Middleton, who were to be joined at their rendezvous outside Perth by the king. What drove Charles to a last-minute approval of this desperate and ill-prepared plan was the decision of the Committee of Estates at the beginning of October to maintain the Kirk’s extraordinary predeliction for purges and to carry out a further series of expulsions of members of his household.10