Sword of State: The Remarkable Story of George Monck

by Richard Woodman

  ‘They tender my resignation from the Army. It is what you want, is it not? Then we may marry quietly. I will ask brother Nicholas…’

  ‘No. Not Nicholas. Let us marry elsewhere, not here, in Devon.’

  ‘Where then?’ Monck was irritated. He had hoped to heal the rift with his younger brother who was the incumbent of the parish of Plymtree on the other side of the county, near Exeter. Nicholas had altogether disapproved of his adulterous liaison with Anne whom he considered utterly unsuitable as spouse to a man with even a mere trickle of Plantagenet blood in his veins.

  ‘London.’

  ‘London?’ Monck frowned. ‘Why London? It would be public…’

  ‘Perhaps that is what I want. I have my own ghosts, George. Marriage in London would defy them.’

  *

  During Clarges’ absence in London, he and Anne settled into a comfortable routine in the old house at Potheridge. After dinner one evening, warmed by wine and the fire before which they sat like an old married couple, a rising anxiety about Clarges’ delayed return led their discourse towards politics. Despite their minds turning to the absent Tom, there was no ghost of Nicholas Battyn to keep them company, not even in the cold and shadowy recesses of the hall. There was only the half-heard whisperings of the handful of scandalised servants who, it seemed, could never come to terms with the master’s scarlet woman lording it over them.

  But if Clarges’ careless yet entirely innocent remark raised no ghost, there was anxiety enough in the air, for he had sent a letter explaining he thought it best to delay his return until matters with the Dutch had resolved themselves. England had been at war with the Dutch since the early summer. Even before an official declaration, a naval action had been fought off Dover that May. Monck had been apprised of the details some weeks later when Nehemiah Bourne, whom Monck had met in Scotland, wrote of it to him. Now, Clarges informed him, there had been a second action off Plymouth and there were rumours of a third collision in the Mediterranean. Having in mind Monck’s discretionary instructions, he tarried to determine the outcome of these events, for Monck suspected they might be consequential. He had concealed this anxiety from Anne, though, naturally enough, some passing discussion of the sea-war between England and the Seven Provinces of The Netherlands had occurred.

  ‘What is to become of us all?’ Anne had asked Monck, as she had returned her brother’s letter to her husband back to him after reading it. It was a question men and women were asking up and down a country bereft of a King and as consequentially helpless as a ship without a rudder. It seemed more pressing a problem than the present war, for life without a King and under so shifting a thing as a mere Parliament seemed outside God’s order, a thing without form and therefore destined to perish, being a conceit of man. And now this helplessness seemed to bear the fruit of a war with the Dutch. The Dutch were another Protestant nation who, having fought off God’s ordained Sovereign, the King of Spain, now sought to manage without a monarch. It was not surprising there were those who muttered that without allegiance to Christ’s Vicar-on-earth and thereby bereft of God’s anointed, they were all outcast from Christendom and thereby doomed.

  Although Monck would have none of it, he shrugged his shoulders, acknowledging Anne’s right to her anxiety. A weary expression crossed his rugged features. Anne admired that look; she knew he would explain, not in a patronising manner, but as one equal to another. It was an admission of the confidence he placed in her and it never failed to warm her feelings towards him.

  ‘It is not so much the Dutch,’ he began, ‘they will have to be brought to heel after that filthy business at Amboina in the East Indies – but all in good time. What I cannot stomach is the faction fighting in the Parliament House and, besides that, the differences with the Army where interminable arguments pertain between men who, in all other matters, advertise themselves as reasonable and competent. What matters is what is best for the country and that is often no very complicated matter, though there are those who would make it so.’ He paused, as if despairing of common-sense, baffled by the unnecessary complexity of the situation induced by factionalism and seeking simply a straight-forward explanation to satisfy his rational mind, like a man seeking the firmest ground when standing in a marsh.

  ‘On the one hand we have Parliament, purged but essentially old-fashioned, yet full of its moral authority; on the other the Army, full of piss-and-wind radicalism, conscious of its own physical power. And then, within both, we have smaller factions dead-set not to capitalise on chasing young Charles out of the country and putting the Scots and the Presbyterians back in their place, but to go on fighting among themselves! It is exasperating, truly exasperating! Both sides want power, Parliament arguing it represents the country, the Army that the achievement is all its own and therefore it – and it alone – has the right to act as arbitrator of our national destiny.’

  ‘But who do you think should rule us, Parliament or the Army?’ Anne asked.

  ‘Who do you think should?’ Monck responded pointedly with a bitter laugh. ‘To which side do your instincts incline?’

  ‘Without fear or favour, knowing I am speaking to an Army officer?’

  Monck made a face, rebuking her. ‘Anne. You know I have sent Tom to London resigning my commission. Besides, I seek your mind upon the matter. Set aside the fact of my place, or my past, and tell me truly what you think.’

  ‘Well,’ she said uncertainly, gaining confidence as he sat and listened to her in silence. ‘It seems to me that the Army possesses great power by its existence and that, whatever the virtues of its leaders, the only constancy which can be relied upon is the force of its arms rather than the direction of its policy. It is disciplined but obeys those who lead it, if they have found favour in its eyes; if it is disinclined to obey, then it mutinies in whole or in part and in this lies great danger.’ She paused a moment.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘On the contrary side Parliament might argue that it is capable of self-governance and of, er…’ she hesitated, seeking a word.

  ‘Of revision? Of reformation?’ he suggested.

  ‘Yes, just so,’ she had nodded, picking up the thread of her argument again. ‘That makes it more amenable to reflecting the wishes of the greater part of the people of this country. Many fear that in its opposition to Parliament, the Army acts contrary to the wishes of the people who long only for some end to all this conflict and moither.’

  ‘So, in short, you favour Parliament over the Army?’

  ‘You are displeased with that?’

  Monck shrugged. ‘Not at all; I asked to know your mind,’ he responded with a smile.

  ‘And you, George, what is your mind?’

  ‘Before I answer that, tell me what you would do if, for example, the Parliament desired something the Army opposed…opposed intransigently?’

  ‘Then Parliament should with-hold its pay until the Army comes to heel.’

  Monck had laughed. ‘Ah, that might work if the Parliament paid its soldiers regularly but,’ he shrugged, ‘since it is habitually dilatory in the matter, ’twould be an empty threat. Moreover the Army, like the old King, could simply dismiss the Parliament at the push of a company of pike-men. The members would scramble out of the Chamber like terrified mice, leaving the cats to lick their chops over their leavings…’

  ‘So, you are for the Army,’ Anne had said, surprised and adding, ‘if so, I have judged wrong, but then I really am no politician,’ she concluded in dismissive self-deprecation.

  ‘And I thank God for that!’ Monck had exclaimed with a roar of laughter. ‘Heavens Anne, you have hit the nail four-square.’ He had paused, sobering himself. ‘No,’ he had said, his mood suddenly serious, almost dark. His military mind eschewed the wriggling contortions of Parliamentary debate and the machinations of place-seekers. Monck sought always the simple, straight line towards an objective. His attachment to duty before personal place or gain was ingrained so deep that he had only contempt for those
who, wearing the guise of seeking the public good, sought their own advancement. He did not eschew the riches gained thereby, but considered their deliberate pursuit amoral; what he favoured was proportional and just reward for duties accomplished.

  ‘No, I am not for the Army; I am for the supremacy of Parliament when it has a maturity to carry out its duty. Alas, its imperfections defeat its nobler purpose, yet one can only work with the material to hand and in this it rises – must rise – superior to the Army. If the Army took over and shot every Member who dissented from the Army Council’s current whim, that would further purge the assembly of the Commons and superimpose that whim which is unlikely to carry the country with it so that, having ousted one tyranny in the form of a King, we should be obliged to submit to another in the form of the Army High Command. And since armies tend to submit to a power rooted in strength of character in the absence of a Royal dispensation of commissions, then the strong man imposes his will on all and one has, in effect, a King again.’

  ‘You mean Lambert?’

  ‘God forbid!’ scoffed Monck. ‘I might live with Black Tom Fairfax but he has already shown his goodly sense of righteousness and self-denial in refusing to command against the Scots. No, it would more likely be Cromwell. Oliver is – for all his failings in the field, and they are not many – a man with strong enough convictions to carry the matter off.’

  ‘I…’ Anne frowned, puzzled. ‘I don’t understand where you stand, George. You declare for the Parliament, yet seem to incline towards the Army.’

  ‘In truth, I am myself perplexed,’ he had replied, half-smiling in the candle-light. ‘I see what would be better, but the imperfection of Parliament inclines me to the Army. My instinct tells me to cleave to the one until the time is ripe and the time is not yet come when the matter may be brought to a conclusion in the hands of the other.’

  ‘You mean that the execution of the King and the driving out of the Royalists…’

  ‘The Royalists are not driven out entirely,’ he had interrupted. ‘To find peace in this land they will – like the Catholics – have to be accommodated within the greater body politic.’

  ‘There are those who would have all Royalists and all Catholics put to the sword,’ she had broken in pointedly, recalling his own words, oft uttered, about the folly of not waging war à la outrance.

  ‘Of course,’ Monck had chuckled, entirely forgetting his Irish policy in his concern for England. ‘Such a Biblical solution suits those who rant texts from the Old Testament, but the very act of cutting off their heads only ensures another will grow elsewhere. These people,’ he had said, leaning forward with a sudden change of tone to that of a firm conviction, ‘must be found a place within the Kingdom where they can flourish without fear, and may live with their neighbours…’

  ‘The Kingdom?’ Anne stared at him incredulously at his choice of the word.

  ‘What would you call it? This Nation of ours when it is so riven.’

  ‘Then a King again?’

  Monck had shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps King Oliver but a King Oliver subject to Parliamentary will so that neither the one nor the other may act out of arbitrary principle.’ He uttered that last word with contemptuous emphasis. ‘Was that not how kings were once chosen, by some form of consent among the nobility?’

  ‘I never heard that,’ Anne had said, ‘only that a King must be the son of his father.’

  ‘Aye, and therein lies the root of the problem,’ Monck grumbled. ‘They think God ordains them and that heavenly powers are conferred upon them when, in fact, if they are to be of some purpose to those they rule, they must consider their own people before themselves. That is the very essence of duty, the obligation to the greater good: The submission to the chieftain. The trouble arises when the son holds not the promise and talent of his father; then all crumbles. King James was a fool, but a far wiser fool than his son.’

  Anne had looked puzzled. ‘But Kings are touched by God,’ she had insisted. ‘See how they cured the King’s Evil by the laying on hands.’

  ‘Dost know of anyone cured – permanently cured – of the scrofula?’ Monck asked, his tone sceptical, ‘for I do not.’

  ‘There was a woman in Whitechapel…’

  ‘Did you know her? See her?’ Monck had sat back, planting his hands upon his knees. ‘Come, Anne, you should not be so credulous.’ He had smiled at her, ‘you are too wise a woman for that.’

  Anne basked in his good opinion, smiling to herself and watching Monck stretch out in his chair and mask a yawn with his hand. He shook his head and sat up. ‘As for my own small piece of this Kingdom, I must go and talk to Will Morice tomorrow. There are chestnuts to coppice and I heard there are more trout in the Torridge than anyone has seen for some years.’

  *

  Clarges arrived three days later, his horse clattering into the yard towards sunset. He had had a hard ride and was covered in dust, disposing of a flagon of cider before he had the slightest inclination to greet his sister.

  ‘Where is the General?’ he asked peremptorily as she took his hat.

  ‘Out somewhere with Will Morice. They took horses but said they would be back before dark. Why,’ Anne asked, ‘is there something amiss?’

  ‘There is something afoot, more like,’ Clarges said, a light in his eyes that alarmed Anne. ‘He had better leave matters to Morice again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It is better I speak directly to the General.’

  Anne’s sense of foreboding increased in proportion to her brother’s reticence. Tom’s refusal to confide in her was evidence that she would not welcome what he had to say, and that it was important. She disliked that, knowing it appertained to the world of men and was only to be made known to her at second-hand, a condescension. Only George seemed to regard her as an equal in such matters, but of late it had seemed to her that even he had been nursing some private concerns. She was mulling over this when George himself came stamping into the house, calling for wine and with Will Morice at his heels.

  Monck threw his hat aside, wiped his brow and was remarking upon the heat of the late afternoon before his eyes adjusted to the interior gloom and he realised Clarges was there.

  ‘Tom! I wondered whose horse it was without. How are you?’

  ‘Well enough, General…’

  ‘Oh, cease that,’ Monck laughed. ‘I had enough trouble persuading your sister to call me George. ’Tis an unnecessary conceit to give me rank when I have laid it aside.’

  ‘Thou hast not laid it aside.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They would have none of it, George,’ Clarges responded sharply, aware – as Anne did not – that Monck had been dissembling for weeks. He drew a bundle of papers from the leather satchel he had beside him.

  ‘None of it?’

  Having riffled through his bundle, Clarges held out one broken-sealed sheet of paper. ‘None of it. I am to return this to you…’

  Monck took the proffered paper, looked at it, then at Anne, and then at Clarges. ‘They refused my resignation?’ He frowned with incomprehension as Anne drew her breath in sharply.

  ‘Just so. And I have your orders here.’ Clarges selected a sealed package and held it out to Monck.

  ‘Scotland?’ Monck asked with a hint of anticipation that revealed his preoccupation to the watching Anne.

  ‘No. The Dutch menace – yes. You are to proceed directly to Great Yarmouth and prepare the defences as an attack by sea is apprehended; the anchorage of the road is to be covered by artillery. You are the expert in these matters it seems.’

  ‘Oh!’ Anne put her hand to her mouth, her eyes dilated with disappointment.

  ‘If they have need of me, I thought Scotland again,’ responded Monck, looking at Anne, ‘and with Anne by my side. Not Yarmouth on a piddling commission to place guns…’

  ‘There is more, George,’ Clarges said, indicating the substantial size of the package now in Monck’s hands. ‘And I think it tends to be
something of more moment than Scotland at the present time.’

  ‘What could be of greater importance than Scotland?’ Monck asked, his face registering his own profound disappointment. ‘For God’s sake not Ireland!’

  ‘With the Dutch in the offing? Heavens no! Why the fleet, George. The fleet!’

  ‘The fleet? What in God’s name do I know about ships? Richard Deane is a better man for that service and I should replace him in Scotland…’

  ‘He is nominated for the fleet too…’

  ‘And Scotland?’ Monck persisted, his tone incredulous. ‘Who then is to govern Scotland?’

  ‘Robert Lilburne.’

  ‘Lilburne? God in Heaven, what madness is this? Lilburne is no more than a jumped-up Colonel!’

  ‘It seems he has earned himself a crab-wise promotion,’ Clarges said, wryly adding, ‘I suppose it is something most soldiers hope for.’

  But Monck was not listening and waved Clarges to silence. ‘Wait, wait… is all that is purposed in here?’ he waved the package under Clarges’ nose.

  ‘Not all. I have much of it direct by word of mouth from Master Cromwell.’

  ‘Cromwell? So you saw Cromwell?’

  ‘Aye. He, having heard of my presence in London in your behalf, sought me out and sent for me to the Cockpit, making me party to some matters of confidence touching yourself alone. He said you would require explanation of a private nature.’

  Monck blew his cheeks out and looked at Anne. She had stood stock-still during this rapid exchange between the two men, understanding its implications well enough, if not its details.

  ‘So who are you for, George?’ she asked colouring, a hint of asperity in her tone. ‘Parliament? The Army? Me? Or is it all too much of a mess for even you to decide? Eh?’ And with that she turned on her heel and left the two men staring open-mouthed after her. Then Monck sniffed and said, almost to himself: ‘I must marry.’

  ‘You knew something of this beforehand, did you not?’ Clarges asked now the two men were alone. ‘Hence the framing of my instructions?’ He was about to add, ‘and the temper of your mood,’ but thought better of it and bit his tongue.