Royalist Agents, Conspirators and Spies

by Geoffrey Smith

  1 CClSP, ii, 69.

  2 Clarendon, Rebellion, xiii, 3; CClSP, ii, 74; CSPD, 1650, p. 309.

  3 Baillie, Letters and Journals, iii, 127–8. See also Royle, British Civil Wars, pp. 591–3.

  4 Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 140–7; Ronald Hutton, ‘Maitland, John, duke of Lauderdale (1616–1682)’, ODNB, September 2004, online edn, May 2006, accessed 21 March 2010; Edward M. Furgol, ‘Middleton, John, first earl of Middleton (c. 1608–1674)’, ODNB, 2004, accessed 21 March 2010; David Stevenson, ‘Lindsay, Alexander, first earl of Balcarres (1618–1659)’, ODNB, September 2004, online edn, October 2006, accessed 21 March 2010.

  5 Quoted in Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, p. 152. For the battle of Dunbar, see ibid., pp. 147–9; John Kenyon, The Civil Wars of England (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988), pp. 213–15; Royle, British Civil War, pp. 578–84.

  6 Mercurius Politicus, no. 15, 12–19 September 1650, 230, quoted in Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, p. 238. See also ibid., pp. 148–9.

  7 Clarendon, Rebellion, xiii, 47; ClSP, iii, 119. There are various spellings of Fraiser’s name.

  8 CClSP, ii, 69; Antonia Fraser, King Charles II (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979), pp. 96–7; Hutton, Charles II, pp. 56–7.

  9 NP, i, 151 (Hatton to Nicholas, Paris, 1 November 1649); Clarendon, Rebellion, xiii, 48.

  10 CSPD, 1650, p. 321; Hutton, Charles II, p. 57.

  11 Clarendon, Rebellion, xiii, 48; Gardiner, Charles II and Scotland, p. 151. For the Start, see Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 152–5; Hutton, Charles II, pp. 56–7; Eva Scott, The King in Exile, 1646–1654 (London: Constable, 1905), pp. 189–90. For Progers, see Smith, Cavaliers in Exile, p. 128–30.

  12 NP, i, 219, 227, 228.

  13 T. Brown (ed.), Miscellanea Aulica, or a Collection of State Treatises (London, 1702), pp. 152–3 (Cowley to Bennet, 18 November 1650); NP, i, 206.

  14 BL Egerton MS 2534 (Nicholas Papers), fos 49, 50; NP, i, 207–8, 254; Brown, Miscellanea Aulica, p. 149; CSPD, 1650, p. 320.

  15 Mercurius Politicus, no. 15, 12–19 September 1650, p. 230.

  16 Quotations from Fraser, King Charles II, p. 98.

  17 Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 162–5; Hutton, Charles II, pp. 59–61.

  18 NP, i, 208; ii, 29. Graves’s career in some ways paralleled that of Titus: service for Parliament in the Civil War, disillusionment at the rise of the Independents and the New Model Army, and withdrawal into exile to join Charles at Breda, whom he then accompanied to Scotland. See F. A. Bates (ed.), Graves’ Memoirs of the Civil War (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1927), pp. xxiii–iv, 80, 91.

  19 Bod.L. Carte MS 29, fo. 172; Carte, Letters and Papers, i, 407–8; Bampfield’s Apology, pp. 159–60, 163; NP, i, 208.

  20 Ibid., 222, 227, 228, 235; Carte, Letters and Papers, i, 407–8; Bates, Graves’ Memoirs, p. 87.

  21 In her Memoirs Anne Murray describes a meeting with the ‘very handsome, extremely obliging’ Lady Anne Campbell, whose ‘behaviour and dress was equal to anything I had seen in the court of England’. Murray was probably aware of the plans for that lady; Halkett and Fanshawe Memoirs, pp. 51–3, 56–7, 62–3, 68. For Charles Seton, second Earl of Dunfermline, see ibid., pp. 52–4; Brown, ‘Courtiers and Cavaliers’, pp. 174–5. For Sir Robert Moray, see A. Robertson, The Life of Sir Robert Moray, 1608–1673 (London, 1922); David Allan, ‘Moray, Sir Robert (1608/9?–1673)’, ODNB, September 2004, online edn, October 2007, accessed 21 March 2010.

  22 See the trial of Christopher Love in A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings upon High Treason (London, 1730–), 8 vols, ii, 83–4, 93, 95, 103.

  23 Gardiner, Charles II and Scotland, pp. 94–100; NP, i, 176; Underdown, pp. 28–32.

  24 HMC, Portland MSS, i, 576–7; Underdown, pp. 33, 48.

  25 Ibid., pp. 45–6.

  26 HMC, Portland MSS, i, 578–80; Gardiner, Charles II and Scotland, p. 4; CSPD, 1650, p. 321, 437; Carte, Letters and Papers, ii, 29; Underdown, pp. 40–41, 43–5.

  27 Quoted in ODNB (Christopher Love).

  28 The letters seem to have been entrusted to servants of Titus and Bampfield and to ‘Percy’s man’, Mason. Titus seems to have made clandestine visits to London from Holland, but not from Scotland. Understandably, Bampfield was not prepared to risk returning to England at this time; Bampfield’s Apology, pp. 158–9; HMC, Portland MSS, i, 577, 579, 582–3, 585, 590; A Complete Collection of State Trials, ii, 84, 89, 93, 95; ODNB (Christopher Love).

  29 NP, i, 231–2; Carte, Letters and Papers, i, 390; Underdown, p. 48.

  30 John Stoye, Europe Unfolding, 1648–1688 (London: Fontana, 1969), p. 135.

  31 Underdown, pp. 46–7, 62.

  32 HMC, Portland MSS, i, 576–603.

  33 NP, i, 237 (Nicholas to Richard Harding, 18 April 1651). See also ibid., 238–39’; HMC, Portland MSS, i, 576–604.

  34 Ibid., 576–85; Underdown, pp. 47–9.

  35 State Trials and Proceedings upon High Treason, ii, 83–183, esp. pp. 83–107.

  36 Bampfield’s Apology, pp. 158–9.; HMC, Portland MSS, i, 584–5; State Trials and Proceedings, ii, 83, 84, 89, 94; ODNB (Christopher Love).

  37 Ibid.

  38 For the military progress of Cromwell’s army in Scotland, see Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 172–4; Royle, British Civil War, pp. 593–6.

  39 Mercurius Politicus, no. 46, 17–24 April 1652, p. 738; NP, i, 225; Carte, Letters and Papers, ii, 43.

  40 See, for example, Mercurius Politicus, no. 46, p. 743.

  41 NP, i, 254–5; Carte, Letters and Papers, ii, 13; Mercurius Politicus, no. 46, p. 746.

  42 Carte, Letters and Papers, i, 463; ibid., ii, 29.

  43 Ibid., i, 390 (O’Neill to Marchioness of Ormond, wrongly dated), 463.

  44 Ibid., ii, 31–2. In the letter O’Neill refers to ‘expresses’ being sent to Holland and Ireland. The wealth of letters from Scotland at this time surviving in the Ormond and Nicholas papers is sufficient evidence that the lines of communication were not cut by the forces of the Commonwealth.

  45 Cary, Memorials of the Great Civil War (1842), ii, 305, quoted in Cregan, ‘Daniel O’Neill in the Civil Wars’, p. 132.

  46 NP, i, 205–6.

  47 Ibid., 238; Halkett and Fanshawe Memoirs, pp. 67–9; Bampfield’s Apology, pp. 160–61; Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 174–6.

  48 Smith, Cavaliers in Exile, pp. 85–6.

  49 CSPD, 1651, pp. 48, 432, 478–9; CSPD, 1651–52, pp. 175, 376, 488.

  50 For a contemporary account of the battle, see Mercurius Politicus, no. 12, 4–11 September 1651, pp. 1,052–5. For lists of prisoners, see CSPD, 1651, pp. 432, 478. See also Royle, British Civil War, pp. 596–603.

  51 Clarendon, Rebellion, xiii, 80; Allan Fea, After Worcester Fight (London, 1894), Boscobel Tract no. 11, p. 73; CSPD, 1651–52, p. 558; ODNB (David Leslie, first Lord Newark).

  52 For the best recent account, in which there is a brief passing mention of Blague, see Richard Ollard, The Escape of Charles II after the Battle of Worcester (London: Robinson, 2002).

  53 CSPD, 1651, pp. 432, 437, 478–9.

  54 CSPD, 1649–50, p. 39.

  55 NP, i, p. 279; HMC, Ormonde MSS, 56, N.S., i, 230.

  56 Murdoch, Britain and Denmark-Norway, pp. 157, 165, 167, 173,

  57 For Killigrew’s embassy in Venice, see Smith, Cavaliers in Exile, pp. 84–5.

  58 NP, i, 276 (Nicholas to Seymour, 6 October 1651), 278 (Nicholas to Hyde, 21 October 1651).

  59 T. H. Lister, The Life and Administration of Edward, first Earl of Clarendon, 3 vols (London, 1837–38), iii, 63; CSPD, 1652–53, pp. 25, 28, 94; CSPD, 1655, pp. 204, 508.

  60 HMC, 6th Report, pp. 427, 431.

  61 CSPD, 1652–53, p. 229; CSPD, 1653–54, pp. 60, 90, 270, 273; CSPD, 1655–56, p. 582; CSPD, 1656–57, pp. 82, 421; TSP, v, 315; Murdoch, Britain and Denmark-Norway, pp. 157–8; ODNB (Cochrane).

  62 Q
uoted in Scott, King in Exile, p. 438.

  63 For expressions of Nicholas’s belief that his presence was ‘very unacceptable to the Queen’, see Carte, Letters and Papers, ii, 20–21, 35, 36; ClSP, iii, 65; NP, i, 156, 205, 277, 279–80, 283, 285.

  64 HMC, Ormonde MSS, 56, N.S., i, 230.

  65 For Taaffe, see Timothy Crist (ed.), Charles II to Lord Taaffe: Letters in Exile (Cambridge: Rampant Lions Press, 1974); Stevenson, Highland Warrier, pp. 248–55; Hutton, Charles II, pp. 77, 123–4; Pádraig Lenihan, ‘Taaffe, Theobald, first earl of Carlingford (d. 1667)’, ODNB, 2004, online edn, May 2005, accessed 22 March 2010.

  66 Clarendon, Rebellion, xiii, 83.

  67 BL MS Fairfax 32, fo. 182. Quoted in Smith, Cavaliers in Exile, pp. 60–61. For Thomas Paulden, see Somers Tracts (London, 1812), vii, 3–4, 8–9; Captain Thomas Paulden, ‘The Taking of Pontefract: A Letter to a Friend’. For the death of Rainsborough at the hands of ‘Captain Paulden’s party of horse’, see CClSP, i, 444. The identity of ‘the person of great quality’ is unclear, but it was probably either the Duke of Buckingham or Sir Marmaduke Langdale. According to the Somers Tracts, it was Buckingham, an identification supported by the evidence of one of Thurloe’s informers, Francis Corker (TSP, i, 712–19). But the Paulden brothers also went on several clandestine missions to England on behalf of Sir Marmaduke Langdale. A Captain Paulden, serving under Langdale, was captured at Naseby, and the brother Timothy, who was killed at Wigan in 1651 in the campaign that culminated in the battle of Worcester, had probably also served under Langdale; Andrew T. Hopper, ‘Paulden, Thomas (1625–1702x10)’, ODNB, 2004, accessed 21 March 2010; HMC, Hodgkin MSS, p. 115.

  68 NP, i, 303. Lieutenant-Colonel Sir William Leighton was a professional soldier with a distinguished military record from the Civil Wars. He fought at Edgehill and Naseby, and was in the garrison of Colchester in 1648. In rank, title and military experience he was very much Armorer’s superior officer; Newman, Royalist Officers, p. 230.

  69 Symonds, Diary of the Marches of the Royal Army, pp. 172, 249, 256; CSPD, 1645–47, p. 456; W. J. Farrow, The Great Civil War in Shropshire 1642–1649 (Shrewsbury: Wilding, 1926), pp. 85, 88, 91–2; ODNB (Nicholas Armorer).

  70 The ‘fatal day’ is Clarendon’s term; see Clarendon, Rebellion, xiii, 83.

  71 For Carnaby, Davison and Walters, see Underdown, pp. 89, 139–40; Newman, Royalist Officers, pp. 61, 397.

  72 Underdown, pp. 56–63.

  73 Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 174–6; Royle, British Civil War, pp. 606–10; ODNB (Balcarres); David Stevenson, ‘Cunningham, William, eighth earl of Glencairn (1610/1–1664)’, ODNB, 2004, accessed 22 March 2010.

  74 Clarendon, Rebellion, xiii, 108, 138; CClSP, ii, 142, 157.

  75 Ibid., 188.

  76 CSPD, 1651–52, p. 571.

  77 Halkett and Fanshawe Memoirs, p. 68.

  78 NP, ii, 6–7; Scotland and the Commonwealth, pp. xlv–xlvi, 85; Bampfield’s Apology, pp. 160–62.

  79 ‘Thomas Scot’s Account of His Actions as Intelligencer during the Commonwealth’, ed. C. H. Firth, EHR (1897), p. 119. See also Bampfield’s Apology, p. 162.

  80 Clarendon, Rebellion, viii, 10; Bampfield’s Apology, pp. 162–6.

  81 In lists of the royal household compiled in 1654, 1655 and 1657, Titus is not included. He reappears as a groom of the bedchamber in the list drawn up by Nicholas on the eve of the Restoration in 1660. See Bod.L. Clarendon MS 49, fo. 107; NA, SP Domestic, Interregnum, 18/158/10; 29/26/78; Archaeologia, vol. xxxv, 336–7.

  82 CClSP, iii, 189–90 (Titus to Hyde, 24 October 1656).

  83 Although Oliver Cromwell left Ireland in 1650 and Scotland in 1651, the term ‘Cromwellian conquest’ is used by historians to refer to the entire episode of the English subjugation of the two countries, even though the general was no longer present in person; see Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, ch. 5; Ó Siochrú, God’s Executioner.

  84 By far the best recent account of what royalist exiles usually referred to as ‘the Duke of Lorraine’s business’ is in ibid., pp. 162–91.

  85 Carte, Life of Ormond, vi, 567. For the involvement of Henrietta Maria in ‘the Duke of Lorraine’s business’, see HMC, 4th Report and Appendix, pp. 568–9; Ó Siochrú, God’s Executioner, pp. 175, 182–3.

  86 Ibid., pp. 176–8; Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Ireland Independent: confederate foreign policy and international relations during the mid-seventeenth century’, in Ireland: From Independence to Occupation, pp. 105–7.

  87 HMC, Portland MS, i, 563–4; Crist, Charles to Lord Taaffe, p. 8.

  88 NA SP Foreign (France), 78/113/24; HMC, 4th Report, Appendix, p. 569; NP, i, 243–4; Ó Siochrú, God’s Executioner, pp. 181–4; Ohlmeyer, ‘Ireland Independent’, p. 106.

  89 HMC, 4th Report, Appendix, p. 569.

  90 ClSP, iii, 88, 108 (Hyde to Nicholas, 15 August and 26 October, 1652).

  91 For the factions at the exiled court in Paris, see Hutton, Charles II, pp. 72–4; Smith, Cavaliers in Exile, pp. 116–19. For a list of ‘the lords and gentlemen that follow the court’, see NA, SP/26/78.

  92 In theory, Charles had a pension of 6,000 livres tournois per months, paid irregularly and considered to be inadequate in any case; ClSP, iii, 102; Scott, King in Exile, p. 430.

  93 ClSP, iii, 69–70, 102.

  94 Ibid., 69; NP, i, 314–15.

  95 Underdown, pp. 64–5.

  96 For release and banishment of the Earl of Kellie and Lord Grandison, see CSPD, 1654, p. 273; CSPD, 1655, p. 307; CSPD, 1655–56, pp. 63, 576. For release of Sir Richard Fanshawe, see CSPD, 1651–52, pp. 105, 229, 473, 509; Halkett and Fanshawe Memoirs, pp. 134–5.

  97 CSPD, 1651–52, p. 105; ODNB (Middleton); Andrew Warmington, ‘Massey, Sir Edward (1604x9–1674)’, ODNB, September 2004, online edn, January 2008, accessed 22 March 2010.

  98 CSPD, 1651–52, p. 83; CSPD, 1652–53, pp. 126, 216, 223; Fea, The Flight of the King, p. 82; Newman, Royalist Officers, p. 31.

  99 CSPD, 1651–52, pp. 59, 93, 383.

  100 NP, i, 314–15.

  101 CSPD, 1652–53, p. 206; Underdown, p. 65.

  102 ‘A brief Relation of the Affairs of England’, ed. C. H. Firth, EHR, vol. viii (1893), 529–32.

  103 Ibid., p. 530.

  Chapter 7

  A Tangle of Knots 1653–1655

  The Sealed Knot still meet, with an intention to design somewhat for Mr Cross [the king] his service, which when it comes to any maturity, a discreet chapman shall be sent over, as you appoint.

  Edward Villiers to Sir Edward Hyde, 2 February 1654

  The letters [from Cologne] say that Lord Gerard, Blague … Herbert Price, Sir Marmaduke Langdale and Dr Fraser set up for one knot hopeful to increase.

  Lord Hatton in Paris to Sir Edward Nicholas, 1 January 1655

  Six weeks after Daniel O’Neill’s return to Paris from his intelligence gathering mission in London, Oliver Cromwell and the New Model Army expelled the Rump. The authority of this shrunken and purged remnant of the Long Parliament was succeeded by the short-lived experiment of the Nominated Parliament (also known as the Parliament of Saints and as Barebone’s Parliament, after the unforgettable name of one of its Puritan members, Praise-God Barebon). This experiment was the product of the also short-lived period of co-operation between the essentially conservative Cromwell and the far more radical Harrison. In December the Nominated Parliament dissolved itself, and under the terms of a fairly hastily written constitution, the Instrument of Government, its authority was replaced by that of the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. The expulsion of the Rump and the failure of the Nominated Parliament also led to a purge of officials who had held offices under these regimes and their replacement by hopefully loyal and committed Cromwellians. For royalist agents, the most significant feature of this purge was that the regicide Thomas Scot, an ardent republican, lost his responsibility for counter-security and intelligence. He was replaced by the formidable John Thurloe, the range of whose responsibilities and in
fluence was enlarged by the additional authority of his offices of Secretary of State and Postmaster-General.1

  Seymour’s mission to collect money and O’Neill’s to gather intelligence were the forerunners to a slow but gradual revival of royalist activity. This was a development that for the next five years Secretary Thurloe would attempt to prevent, employing a range of weapons in his campaigns to frustrate the Cavaliers’ various designs. One of his most frequently used weapons was a heavy reliance on intelligence from spies and informers; and one of the most voluble suppliers of intelligence on the plots of the Cavaliers and the movements of royalist agents was Colonel Joseph Bampfield. In the middle of 1652 Bampfield was still regarded by the Commonwealth authorities, who issued a warrant for his arrest in August, as a royalist agent. But by the time he left Scotland twelve months later as an emissary of Moray, Balcarres and the clan chieftains who had risen in the Highlands against the occupying English forces, he was on the point, if he had not already done so, of changing sides.2

  After the demoralising impact of ‘the fatal day’ of Worcester, followed by the completion of the Commonwealth conquests of Ireland and Scotland, the first real sign of a revival of royalist activity was the rising in the Highlands. A resurgence of royalism was only one element in this insurrection. There was also opposition to the presence of an English army of occupation, resistance to the Commonwealth’s policy of reducing the hereditary jurisdictions of the nobility and clan chieftains, many of whom had served in the armies that had invaded England in 1648 and 1651, and resentment at the attempts to limit the authority of the Kirk. These various grievances all combined to transform the occasional outbreaks of lawlessness, attacks on isolated garrisons and horse stealing raids committed by a few scattered bands of raiders from the Highlands, into a full-scale insurrection.3 In March 1653 Charles commissioned William Cunningham, eighth Earl of Glencairn the interim commander-in-chief until the arrival of Lieutenant-General Middleton – back in exile after his escape from the Tower – to command the Highlanders. Glencairn, who was related to the Hamilton brothers, was a Lowlander, a moderate Covenanter in his early years who had gradually, like many others, swung towards royalism after the conclusion of the first Civil War. This transfer of his allegiance had earned him the enmity of the Kirk regime, which deprived him of all his public offices and even annulled the 1488 patent that had created his earldom. Understandably, this treatment only confirmed and strengthened Glencairn’s royalism, and early in 1653 his offer to provide leadership and support for the scattered bands still opposing English troops in the Highlands was accepted by the king.4