Both men had recently lost fathers to whom they were close, and they met in November – probably at Oliver’s funeral at Westminster Abbey. Cooke was still remembered as a hero of the revolution: a silver medal had been struck in his honour and he was placed (with Cromwell and Bradshawe) in the regicidal triumvirate whom Charles II could never forgive. He had done the state signal service in Munster, where few of its lawyers were prepared to venture. He had not become identified with anti-protectorate republicans, and had maintained good relations with Oliver Cromwell who had directed him to return to work in Munster in 1658. His agreement then had been on condition that he would not serve on the Upper Bench until law was fused with equity. What changed his mind? The appointment of his old friend William Steele as its Chancellor, in charge of the Equity division, may have somewhat allayed his concerns. Or he may have needed the money – and there is a hint of this in his first letter of acceptance, written to Henry on 1 February 1659, which notes that the Protector had agreed that despite his absence he could receive his salary for the previous year.2 But John Cooke had never gone against his conscience for the sake of money, and emphasises that his acceptance had to be subject to ‘whether my poor weak wife be able to travel or not’.3 Frances was in the last stage of tubercular illness, and her only journey now – as her husband must have realised – would be to the grave. She must have expired in that bitter winter, shortly after Cooke had signalled to Henry his willingness to accept the appointment. Her death freed him for more work in Ireland – a place, he told Henry, ‘which I love best of any upon earth, God having cast my lot there’.
It was a delicate situation, however, for Henry Cromwell was not his unalloyed admirer. There is irritation in Henry’s letter to his brother, the Protector, in January, warning that ‘a total failure of justice’ would ensue unless a fit judge were appointed to the Upper Bench. He noted testily that Richard had recently commissioned Justice Cooke ‘yet he has not since that time been in this nation, and that, when he had the like commission formerly, he was not satisfied to act therein’.4 Cooke arranged for a mutual friend to deliver a glowing reference, written by Richard himself, and wrote again to Henry, explaining that he could not return earlier, owing to his father’s death and his wife’s consumption, but promising that ‘my future diligence may in some measure make recompense for my too long absence, which I beseech your Lordship to pardon and excuse’.5 It is likely that he left Leicestershire shortly after the simple burial service for Frances, and took his place on the Upper Bench at the beginning of the Easter term, 1659. There was time, however, to talk and pray with Mary Chawnor, a member of their congregation whose companionship had helped him through the deaths of Isaac and Frances. By the year’s end, she joined him in Ireland and became his second wife.6
Cooke had never been interested in playing politics and his departure spared him the unedifying sight of the backstabbing and power-jostling that enveloped Richard Cromwell’s new Parliament. Haselrig led the old Independents in a powerful attack on the protectorate. He pointed out (with some historical force) that the problem with the Humble Petition and Advice was that it required one man to be the judge of necessity – the vice of the ship-money decision. This republican onslaught was supported by elements in the army and by religious independents: Congregationalists, Baptists and the increasing number of Quakers. Richard could still count on the protectorate’s general popularity and reputation for stability – his father’s legacy – although after four years the institution had set down no firm roots. But Fleetwood came under pressure from his middle ranks as a result of clever manoeuvring by Haselrig. So the son-in-law decided to pull the carpet from under the son. On 21 April Fleetwood forced Richard to dissolve Parliament. A council of officers – led by Fleetwood and Desborough and including Lambert – formed a provisional government, ignoring Richard and negotiating directly with the Parliamentarians they most respected – Vane and Ludlow – for a way out of the impasse. They wanted law reform, a guarantee of respect from Parliament, and a golden handshake for Richard Cromwell to go quietly.
These Christian soldiers then hit upon the notion that the way forward to democracy was to reconvene the Rump – that ‘Long Parliament’ first elected in 1642, purged in 1648 and dissolved by Cromwell in 1653. The sense of this decision has eluded historians – nostalgia must have played a part, and an inability to think of anything better. It was a step backwards and not forwards, but there was no time to be lost. In May they all reconvened: the good old boys summoned to deliver the Good Old Cause. Bradshawe, dying from the ravages of malaria (‘the ague’, common in England at the time), was brought back to the Council, and Cooke’s old friend Ludlow was dispatched to govern Ireland in place of Henry Cromwell, who resigned out of brotherly solidarity with Richard. This political upheaval awoke the dozy conspirators of the Sealed Knot, who planned summer uprisings with John Mordaunt actively recruiting for the King. He had some success amongst the Presbyterian gentry, who had supported the protectorate under the Cromwells but were dismayed by the return of their old Puritan foes in the Rump and prepared to join a rebellion to urge the return of a ‘free parliament’ – i.e. the House of Commons before it was purged by Colonel Pride. The rising itself, under Sir George Booth, was an uncoordinated disaster, easily put down by Lambert. Booth escaped in the disguise of a lady’s maid, only to be arrested at an inn when he aroused suspicions by arranging to have a shave. He was taken to the Tower, to await his trial for treason.
The Rumpers thought themselves secure. But they had made the mistake of dispensing with Thurloe’s services, so that consummate public servant was not around in the autumn to read the danger signals, notably the Presbyterian disaffection, the ‘moral panic’ amongst the gentry over the Rump’s toleration of Quakers, and the siren slogan now heard from all sides – a demand for a ‘full and free Parliament’. Fresh elections on the old and narrow franchise would produce many MPs who might prefer to bring back the King. It may have been about this time – August 1659 – that the royalists managed to hook their biggest fish. Their secret offers of vast wealth and additional titles had fallen on the deaf ears of Fairfax (who had wealth and titles enough, as well as severe gout) and Lambert, a godly republican at heart. But for the somewhat plebeian General Monck – unlettered, married to his cook, a good soldier without political principles or philosophy – the offer of a dukedom and the massive sum of £100,000 each year for the rest of his life may have been an irresistible bribe to rejoin those for whom he had fought in the first place. Cromwell’s death and Fairfax’s abdication had freed him of undertakings given to them personally when they recruited him after Nantwich, and he had always been a royalist at heart – he claimed to have in his genes a touch of the Plantagenets. The evidence that he succumbed at this point is strong but not conclusive. At any event, Monck soon began to rid his force of republicans and remodel his troops, all the while assuring Haselrig and Scot, leaders of the Rump, that he would support them in their increasingly hot quarrels with Fleetwood and the army officers in London.
The Rump needed to keep the army on side and prepare a workable exit strategy for its own dissolution and fresh elections on a wider franchise, having produced a proper constitution which would entrench the fundamentals of the revolution and block any enthusiasm in the new Commons for a return to monarchical government. But Haselrig, to whom most blame for the collapse of the republic must attach, was obsessed with making the military subservient to the civil power – a foolish point to press whilst Parliament was dependent upon military support. On the army side, Fleetwood owed his advance to nepotism (the son-in-law also rises) and was devoid of political imagination while Desborough was a dunderhead: they were understandably angered by Parliament’s provocations, but they did disastrously overreact.
What happened, in short, was that into George Monck’s unpredictable hands, Haselrig delivered England. Emboldened by Monck’s secret promise that he would support the Rump against the London army, Haselrig led
Parliament in a vote to cashier Lambert, Desborough and other senior officers. The London army responded by cashiering the Rump: it dissolved Parliament and set up a ‘Committee of Safety’ to run the country. By breaking with Parliament, the legitimate authority supported (however lukewarmly) by many officers, tradesmen and professionals, Fleetwood and the army leaders split their own ranks: eventually their Committee of Safety found loyalty only from the more extreme republicans (mainly Baptists and Quakers) and from realpolitik politicians like Ludlow and Vane and Whitelocke who saw a quasi-military dictatorship as the lesser evil, for the time being, to a freely elected Parliament which would bring back the King. Neither side at this point had a leader capable of greatness. Lambert alone had Cromwellian potential, and in November the Committee of Safety sent him north to confront General Monck, who had been putting his army on a war footing and was now, thanks to the purblind Haselrig, the real power in the land. He was preparing to fight – but in whose interests other than his own?
The only possible beneficiary was in Brussels. Charles II heard of these developments from Edward Hyde, who had been tirelessly corresponding (under the pseudonym Sarah Fairfax) with a network of agents in England, Scotland and Ireland. They were as mystified as everyone else over the turn of events, but it boded well for those Cooke called ‘the malignants’ – the bad old cause. Bradshawe died, declaring that he would convict Charles again if he had to,7 and he was buried at Westminster Abbey with much pomp and heraldry. But his funeral, in November, saw the first outbreak of ‘jeering books’ and ballads sold in the London streets, savagely celebrating the death of a ‘king-killing murderer’ and an ‘infernal saint’. It was the first sign that underneath the rock of the republic a vengeful monster was waiting to tear public men to pieces.
These were dog days, the saddest, John Cooke reflected, that he could remember in the ‘poor shaken and shattered’ nations, which were slipping towards anarchy. The law courts in both countries adjourned until constitutional authority became clear; there were street demonstrations for a free Parliament and London goldsmiths moved their gold offshore.8 A new constitution, Cooke thought, was the only way forward now, through the thickets of religious differences which would never be settled. He accompanied his good friend Colonel Ludlow to the boat that would take him back to England to mediate between the Rump and the Committee of Safety – he was a member of both.9 Afterwards, it has been conjectured that Cooke penned a public broadsheet, headed simply ‘MAGNA CHARTA’ and signed ‘J. C.’.10 It called upon the authorities to appoint seventy of the most experienced, righteous and tolerant men to form a great council, which would in turn elect twenty-one members to form a council of state to run the government and defend the country. Its most important work would be to draw up ‘substantial laws relating to liberty and freedom’ which would become ‘fundamentals’ incapable of alteration by representatives in Parliament. This idea was, in effect, for a Bill of Rights – a set of constitutional guarantees which the courts would uphold by striking down, as null and void, any antipathetic legislation passed by MPs. Cooke, if the pamphleteer, was long before his time – Britain did not adopt a Bill of Rights for another 350 years and even now it is not entrenched against the whim of Parliamentary majorities. The broadsheet had other interesting proposals about the appointment of poor persons of good character as Justices of the Peace (a radical notion at a time when this powerful office was reserved for the wealthiest men in each parish) and the use of judges and JPs as mediators, attempting to resolve disputes before they came to public trial (a reform introduced by the Court Practice Rules in 2000). Most fundamentally, this Magna Charta offered a paraphrase of clause 29 of Magna Carta:
That none of the freeborn people of these nations shall be arrested, imprisoned, banished, condemned or sentenced to the loss of life, limb, estate or liberty, or be in any other way molested or distracted, after a very short fixed time, but by a lawful judgement of his peers or by virtue of and according to some known approved or published law or laws of these nations.
The drafting was pedantic, but the principle was hallowed. The time was soon coming when it would not avail John Cooke. The Committee of Safety was unpopular and the Rump was sitting indignantly in exile at Portsmouth. Their respective leaders, Fleetwood and Haselrig, had to find, and urgently, a respectable means of governing the republic and entrenching its values. Otherwise – as ‘J C’ warned – the ‘relics and props of corrupt monarchy’ were waiting to take their place.
In the meantime, for a nation weary of post-Cromwellian politicking and civil strife, General Monck appeared on the horizon as a deus ex machina. He faced down Lambert when their forces met at Berwick in December: Lambert’s men preferred to talk rather than fight with their numerically superior old colleagues. Monck’s talk at this point was simply to demand the restoration of the Rump and the abolition of the Committee of Safety – an impeccably constitutional position supported by Montague, who had been allowed to go into retirement after the suspicion (all too true) that he had ‘gone over’. So had Sir Charles Coote – whom Ireton never trusted – and Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle) son of the Earl of Cork and an instinctive royalist. They began to isolate the Committee of Safety supporters in the Irish army ranks. Their coup against Ludlow and the committee in Dublin and other major towns in December resulted in a declaration in favour of ‘the Rump’, but in the streets the cry was for fresh elections for a ‘free Parliament’ – which as wise men knew (but nobody said) would bring back the King. When news of the Dublin coup reached Edinburgh on 26 December, Monck saluted it with cannons and sent his congratulations.11 Army officers in Dublin condemned Ludlow – their absent commander-in-chief, who set sail for Ireland immediately, to dispute the allegations and to reclaim command.
In England, meanwhile, astute supporters of the ‘Good Old Cause’ started to worry. Already, straws were in the wind: John Evelyn, that well-connected royalist, contacted his old schoolfriend Colonel Morley, the Lieutenant of the Tower, inviting him to join a conspiracy to bring in the King. (Morley declined: he could not believe that Monck would turn traitor.12) Chief Justice Oliver St John, always most anxious about his own safety, began to make overtures to known royalist agents and to profess his support for a ‘free Parliament’.13 Whitelocke, the most self-preserving of the great lawyers, let into the secret by his Presbyterian friends that Monck planned to bring back the King, rushed to Fleetwood to suggest that they should both make immediate overtures to Charles II, so that they and not Monck would get the credit for his restoration. Fleetwood was not so base as to agree, although by this time his Committee of Safety had so little support that he had no alternative but to disband it and bring back Parliament.
So it was that the Rump, with all the flouncing tragi-comedy of an aged actress making her positively last appearance at a Christmas panto, began its final run. Haselrig, deluded to the end, was beside himself with excitement – ‘very jocund and high’ (according to Whitelocke) as he addressed the restored MPs on 29 December, persuading them to remove all the officers who had been loyal to Lambert – which was exactly what Monck wanted. The Rump, assured by Haselrig of his loyalty, declared Monck the commander-in-chief of all armies in England and Scotland and dismissed Lambert, the only officer who could conceivably defeat him. Parliament did not invite him to enter England, or approve his march to London. But George Monck was coming, whether they were ready or not.
Monck’s progress took a month – in a politic manoeuvre he diverted to Yorkshire to obtain Fairfax’s blessing. The gout-ridden general gave it: his daughter, to Cromwell’s disapprobation, had married the second Duke of Buckingham, a Stuart stalwart like his father, but he was kept out of sight while the general declared his support for a ‘free Parliament’. It was important for Monck’s double bluff to keep most people guessing about his real intentions and the excitement was palpable in London in January as the King’s restoration – unthinkable a few weeks before – became a whispered possibility and then, on con
templation, perhaps the best prospect of security, so long as it could be engineered without another civil war. The city council, meanwhile, was threatening a tax strike, the Parliament had not healed its fight with Fleetwood, and its speaker, Lenthall, was on politic sick leave. A street ballad said it all and everyone was singing it:
Monck under a hood, not understood,
The city pulls in their horns;
The speaker is out and sick of the gout
And the Parliament sits upon thorns.14
Absence had made most hearts grow fonder of the Stuarts: Charles II was an unknown quality but more impressive in prospect as a ruler than Haselrig or Richard Cromwell, now out of his wits and deeply in debt, wandering about Whitehall (where he could give his creditors the slip) lamenting ‘Who should a man trust, if he may not trust to a brother or an uncle?’15 London’s intellectuals still fervently debated the ideal shape of a republic at the Rota Club, held at the Turks Head coffee house near Westminster Pier,16 but the real question was whether Charles II could be brought back as a constitutional rather than an absolute monarch – in other words, how the hard-fought democratic gains of the past eighteen years could be preserved in a constitution with ‘something of monarchy’ in it. But amid the delusions of Haselrig, the equivocation of Lambert and the stealth of Monck, this question was barely faced – until it was too late to prevent everything of monarchy.
Monck arrived in London with his army in early February and took only a few days to weigh the Rump. Any second thoughts about supporting it were quickly dispelled by its behaviour, at first by ordering him to arrest the city councillors who were urging a tax strike (which he did, prompting Haselrig’s exultation ‘All is our own. He will be honest’) and then by proposing to take away his supreme command and forcing him to share it with a number of MPs, including Haselrig. Even if Monck had not sold out already, this threat to his own position would have been the last straw. His plan was exquisitely ironic: to restore autocracy through a democratic process. Restoring the Rump had merely been his first stage. Step Two would be to bring back the MPs ‘secluded’ by Pride’s Purge; Step Three: to rely on these secluded members to make safe appointments to all positions of power; and then Step Four: to have the Parliament call fresh elections on the old franchise, which limited the vote to landholders and gentry. Step Five: the new Parliament with its predicted Presbyterian pro-royalist majority would invite Charles II back as King. The assumption – at least of the Presbyterian worthies who connived to achieve this result – was that Charles II would accept the terms they had negotiated with his father at Newport. They did not realise that the popular momentum they had started might end with the election of a royalist majority, in favour of an unconditional restoration.
The Tyrannicide Brief Page 34
