The agents who were employed on the king’s business may have failed in their various plots and schemes, but their resourcefulness and persistence helped to keep the Stuart cause alive, while their activities did much to create the atmosphere of insecurity and instability that is such an important feature of the period, not only of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, but also of the regime of the restored monarchy that succeeded it. As Alan Marshall has pointed out, plots and intrigues were an important part of political life. To plan the overthrow of governments by conspiracy and rebellion had been a major objective of the leaders of the royalist party for fifteen or more years. At the Restoration, Charles II and his principal ministers understandably allowed these deep-seated experiences and attitudes to shape the character of their defence of a new and insecure regime that they believed to be threatened from a number of different directions.47
Daniel O’Neill did not live to see much of the plots and risings that erupted throughout the tumultuous reign of Charles II. He continued to be employed occasionally on missions, escorting Mary of Orange to England at the end of 1660, and also acting as Ormond’s chief intelligencer at Whitehall.48 His talent for court intrigue was also given full scope in the complex manoeuvres that resulted in the replacement as Secretary of State of the elderly Sir Edward Nicholas, no friend of O’Neill’s, by the young and ambitious Sir Henry Bennet, who was very much a friend of the Irishman. According to Clarendon’s account of the episode, it was all ‘procured or rather signified’ by O’Neill ‘without the privity of the Chancellor or of either of the secretaries of state’.49
Ormond did not have for long the benefit of his old and loyal friend’s sharp and cynical observations on the goings-on at the court of Charles II. O’Neill fell ill during 1664, apparently of some kind of stomach ulcer, or possibly cancer. In his will drawn up on 4 October he specified bequests to his ‘dear friend Colonel William Legge’ and his ‘dear friend Edward Progers’, two old associates in the long underground war against Parliament and Commonwealth. He died at his lodgings in Whitehall on 24 October. That night Charles II wrote to tell his beloved sister Henrietta Anne (Minette), Duchess of Orleans, that ‘poor Oneale died this afternoon of an ulcer in his guts; he was as honest a man as ever lived; I am sure I have lost a very good servant by it’.50 Many royal servants worked as agents, envoys, messengers, conspirators, spies and intelligencers in the Stuart cause, and few were as long-serving, as resourceful or eventually as well rewarded as the ‘Infallible Subtle’ Daniel O’Neill. But Charles’s epitaph for him may serve for them all.
1 Halkett and Fanshawe Memoirs, pp. 140–41.
2 HMC, 10th Report, Sutherland MSS, Appendix (London, 1876), pp. 145, 150, 207; Baker, Chronicle of the Kings of England, p. 711.
3 Mordaunt’s ambitions extended to the position of first gentleman of the bedchamber, or even to the second secretaryship of state, vacant as a result of the dismissal of Bristol in 1659; LBM, 130–31; ODNB.
4 Recent works that have done much to remedy this neglect of royalists and royalism include David L. Smith, Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c. 1640–1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Jerome de Groot, Royalist Identities (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Robert Wilcher, The Writing of Royalism, 1628–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Florence S. Memegalos, George Goring (1608–1657): Caroline Courtier and Royalist General (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Jason McElligott and David L. Smith (eds), Royalists and Royalism during the English Civil Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Jason McElligott and David L. Smith (eds), Royalists and Royalism during the Interregnum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), and the essays by David Scott and Anthony Milton in John Adamson (ed.), The English Civil War: Conflict and Contexts, 1640–49 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
5 Clarendon, Rebellion, vii, 276.
6 Carte, Life of Ormond, vi, 276–7.
7 ClSP, iii, 348; CClSP, iv, 358, 382.
8 TSP, iv, 834.
9 TSP, i, 713–19; CClSP, iv, 188, 247, 251, 258, 341, 354 and passim; Underdown, pp. 207–8.
10 Clarendon, Rebellion, xii, 24.
11 TSP, iv, 131.
12 See Adamson, The Noble Revolt, for a masterly exposition of this viewpoint.
13 Hardacre, Royalists in the Puritan Revolution, p. 81;; Miner, Cavalier Mode, pp. 187, 282–8; Wilcher, Writing of Royalism, p. 333; quotation from works of Katherine Philips. See also ibid., pp. 311, 330–32,
14 Halkett and Fanshawe Memoirs, p. 136.
15 Correspondence of Bishop Brian Duppa and Sir Justinian Isham, 1650–1660, ed. Sir Gyles Isham (Northampton: Northamptonshire Record Society, 1955), pp. 14–15, 110, 113, 178–9.
16 NP, i, 276.
17 ‘Settlement I fear is not in some men’s minds, nor ever will be’; Thurloe to Henry Cromwell, 3 March 1657, quoted in G. E. Aylmer (ed.), The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement 1646–1660 (London: Macmillan, 1972), p. 1.
18 Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. W. C. Abbott, 4 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937–47), iii, 624; TSP, iv, 132.
19 HMC, 10th Report, Braye MSS, p. 211.
20 NP, i, 278.
21 ODNB; Ham House, pp. 62–9.
22 Clarendon, Rebellion, xii, 22; ODNB.
23 CSPD, 1652–53, pp. 168, 206; CSPD, 1655, pp. 225, 390.
24 Clarendon, Rebellion, xv, 99–102; Firth, Last Years of Protectorate, ii, 76–80.
25 For discussions of this controversial subject, see Hardacre, Royalists during the Puritan Revolution, pp. 145–51; Hutton, Restoration, pp. 126–35; Hutton, Charles II, pp. 142–51; Keeble, Restoration; Paul Seaward, The Cavalier Parliament and the Reconstruction of the Old Regime 1661–1667 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 196–209; Smith, Cavaliers in Exile, pp. 178–91; Underdown, pp. 333–8.
26 ODNB; Underdown, p. 334.
27 LBM, xx–xxi; ODNB.
28 NA, SP 29/26/78; ‘A list of the department of the Lord Chamberlain of the Household, autumn 1663’, BIHR, vol. 19 (1942–43), 15.
29 NA, SP 29/26/78; ‘A list of the department of the Lord Chamberlain of the Household, autumn 1663’, 15–16, 19, 20; Edward Chamberlayne, Angliae Notitia or the Present State of England, vol. 1 (London, 1671); Firebrace, Honest Harry, pp. 203–11; Henning, House of Commons 1660–90, ii, 134–5; Christopher Clay, Public finance and Private Wealth: The Career of Sir Stephen Fox, 1627–1716 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 275. For appointments to household positions and the grants of pensions and annuities, see also CSPD, 1660–61, pp. 74, 75, 313, 339, 405, 522, 556; CSPD, 1661–62, pp. 62, 78, 150, 366, 577; CSPD, 1663–64, pp. 158, 202, 630.
30 For the careers of Barwick and Allestree after the Restoration, see articles in ODNB. For Mews, see Andrew M. Coleby, ‘Mews, Peter (1619–1706)’, ODNB, 2004; online edn, January 2008, accessed 24 March 2010.
31 CSPD, 1660–61, pp. 75; CSPD, 1661–62, p. 368; Thomas Cooper, ‘Compton, Sir William (1625–1663)’, rev. Martyn Bennett, ODNB, 2004, online edn, January 2008, accessed 24 March 2010; Ian Roy, ‘Legge, William (1607/8–1670)’, ODNB, 2004, accessed 24 March 2010.
32 CSP, Ireland, 1660–62, pp. 530–31, 590; CSP, Ireland, 1663–65, pp. 244, 268, 301, 499–500, 640, 645–6; CSP, Ireland, 1666–69, p. 308; CSP, Ireland, 1669–70, p. 74; HMC, Ormonde MSS, i, 239, 256; ibid., ii, 186.
33 Halkett and Fanshawe Memoirs, p. 144.
34 CSPD, 1660–61, pp. 445, 554; Archaeologia, vol. xxxv, 337n.
35 CSPD, 1665–66, pp. 382, 573; CSPD, 1666–67, p. 227; Newman, Royalist Officers, pp. 61, 145.
36 CSPD, 1660–61, p. 93; CSPD, 1661–62, p. 528.
37 Bampfield’s Apology, p. 87; CSPD, 1660–61, pp. 171, 600; Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage, p. 171. In fact, Bampfield was released after about fourteen months in the Tower, to resume his career as a spy, sometimes for the English government against the Dutch, and then vice versa, for the Dutch republican regime of
Jan de Witt against English and Orangist interests. His extraordinary career, which included service in the Dutch army and a further term of imprisonment at The Hague, ended with his obscure death in Leeuwarden in the Netherlands in 1685. For his later career, see Bampfield’s Apology, pp. 188–237; Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage, pp. 169–74; ODNB.
38 CSPD, 1660–61, pp. 369, 432, 439, 504; CSPD, 1661–62, pp. 47, 571; Cregan, ‘O’Neill in Exile and Restoration’, pp. 64–5.
39 CSP, Ireland, 1660–62, p. 295.
40 CSPD, 1663–64, pp. 91, 102, 106, 122; Aylmer, Crown’s Servants, pp. 38–9, 86.
41 The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews, 11 vols (London: HarperCollins, 1970), vol. 5, 304; Cregan, ‘O’Neill in Exile and Restoration’, pp. 66–7.; ODNB (Katherine Stanhope, Daniel O’Neill).
42 HMC, 4th Report, i, 166–7; Adamson, Noble Revolt, pp. 397–8.
43 Fraser, King Charles II, p. 142.
44 TSP, ii, 599.
45 Bod.L. Clarendon MS 66, fo. 147.
46 Baker, Chronicle of the Kings of England with Continuation by Edward Phillips, p. 670.
47 Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage, pp. 8–16.
48 CSPD, 1660–61, p. 259. The Carte MSS 32–34 in the Bodleian Library contain a large number of O’Neill’s lively and frank letters to Ormond.
49 The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 3 vols (Oxford, 1827), ii, 199, 226–7.
50 For O’Neill’s will and quotation from Charles II, see Cregan, ‘O’Neill in Exile and Restoration’, pp. 72, 76–7.
Select Bibliography
Manuscript Sources
Bodleian Library, Oxford
Carte MSS (Ormond papers)
Clarendon MSS
Fairfax MSS
Rawlinson MSS A15–65 (Thurloe papers)
British Library, London
Additional MSS 18 980–82 (Miscellaneous papers, including correspondence of Prince Rupert and Lord Digby)
Additional MSS 4156–8 (Thurloe papers)
Additional MS 4180 (Nicholas papers)
Egerton MSS 2534–7, 2542–3, 2546, 2550 (Nicholas papers)
National Archives, Kew
SP 18 (State Papers, Domestic, interregnum)
SP 28–9 (State Papers, Domestic, Charles II)
SP 77 (State Papers, Foreign, Flanders)
SP 78 (State Papers, Foreign, France)
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Calendars
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Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1640–1665, ed. M. A. E. Green (London, 1875–86)
Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1603–1665, ed. C. W. Russell, J. P. Prendergast and R. P. Mahaffy (London, 1870–1910)
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Correspondence, Diaries and Memoirs
Ashburnham, John, Narrative of his Attendance on King Charles I (London, 1830)
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Gilbert, Sir J. T. (ed.), A Contemporary History of Affairs in Ireland from 1641 to 1652, 3 vols (Dublin: Irish Archaeological Society, 1879)
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Loftis, John (ed.), The Memoirs of Anne, Lady Halkett and Ann, Lady Fanshawe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979)
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Historical Manuscript Commission Reports
4th Report and Appendix (material on army plots; depositions concerning the Incident; travels of agents; negotiations with Duke of Lorraine)
5th Report (material on O’Neill and army plots)
6th Report (material on Cochrane)
8th Report (material on Fleming’s negotiations with Scots army officers)
10th Report, Braye MSS (Mordaunt correspondence); Story Maskelyne MSS (material on Progers)
11th Report, Hamilton MSS (material on Fleming’s missions)
12th Report (material on O’Neill)
55th Report, Various Collections (correspondence of exiled royalists)
De Lisle and Dudley MSS (material on army plots)
Duke of Ormond MSS, old series; new series (Ormond papers)
Duke of Portland MSS (Coke’s depositions; material on negotiations with Duke of Lorraine)
Hodgkin MSS (Elliot’s mission to Portugal)
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