Sword of State: The Remarkable Story of George Monck

by Richard Woodman

  Pett looked mortified and near to tears as he called in one of the attending boats, transferring into it with Brouncker.

  ‘Have we any vessels with guns mounted?’ Monck asked Spragge.

  The admiral pointed out four ships lying at a single anchor off Hoo Ness. ‘The Matthias, the Unity, the Carolus Quintus and the Mary; they constitute my entire commissioned squadron. They are, however, only half-manned for want of seamen,’ he added bitterly.

  Monck was fingering the map and looked up again. ‘They cover the chain at Gillingham?’

  ‘They would, if it were properly in place, Your Grace. The Unity is posted to lie upon the seaward side, the other three within the boom. They have springs on their cables and may bring what guns can be worked to guard the boom should the enemy seek to force it.’

  ‘God’s blood! Why is the boom not yet in place?’

  Spragge sagged under his fatigue; he did not lack courage, only sleep and he stared at Monck with red-rimmed eyes. ‘Your Grace, as I intimated with regard to the great ships and your orders thereupon, I cannot get that co-operation from the Dockyard that is requisite. The numbers of seamen available are too few, the Unity is full of one hundred and fifty poor silly lads and country fellows raw from the fields. The Mary likewise. The Dockyard labourers are the most numerous but they are under Pett’s orders and defy mine, Pett is, as you remarked, more concerned with his traps; you are the only man who can pull this shambles to any order. I regret my own dereliction, the loss of Sheerness, but even there we were short of –’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Monck said impatiently. ‘Such matters will be enquired into later.’

  It was clear to Monck that Spragge had been let down at every point. No doubt his defeat at Sheerness had been caused by the paucity of men as much as the inadequacies of the defences. The first worm of despair was uncoiling in Monck’s guts.

  ‘Well, let us see,’ said Monck, rallying.

  They boarded the Matthias and Monck called the ship’s company together. ‘You are to deter the approach of the Dutch with all your energies,’ he told them as they shifted from one foot to the other. Their mood of disaffection was palpable. ‘Or answer at the peril of your lives.’

  Their commander called for three cheers and Monck and his party went over the side to a feeble acclamation. They visited the other vessels with much the same effect. Then Monck had them pulled back upstream to land at Upnor Castle. Here they discovered the defences short of ammunition and the pitifully small garrison grumbling openly about a lack of pay. Monck told them to hold their tongues and to stand to their duty. He would see about their pay when the crisis was over.

  ‘You’ll save yerself the wages of the dead!’ one of them called out, ‘which will avail my wife fuck-all!’

  ‘I shall pay you from mine own pocket sir!’ Monck retorted, turning to his Secretary. ‘Pray have a list of the garrison given to my Clerk, Master Lock.’

  It was clear to Monck that the castle, instead of being kept in a posture of defence, had been used as a comfortable residence by its commander, Sir Edward Scott. Monck remarked the gardens, but disdained to pass more than the minimum of requisite orders to Scott, who appeared embarrassed by the behaviour of his men, leaving Monck to return, simmering with supressed fury, to the barge. Monck indicated another of the ships, where matters were even less propitious. Here, aboard the Royal Oak, was near flagrant mutiny, for the men drew about the inspecting party, their looks menacing, their fear of an enemy attack and of their own exposure plainly obvious.

  Monck strode in among them and suddenly found himself confronted by a man whose face seemed distantly familiar. ‘I know thee,’ he said, staring at the bluff figure of the seaman.

  ‘I know thee, too, Milord. Thou wert Monck the King-maker that is now Albemarle the King’s arse-licker.’ Monck swung his cane, striking the fellow’s left leg.

  ‘Christ!’ The man fell to one knee.

  ‘You are Harris, are you not?’ Monck snarled as the injured man’s mates gathered round, menacing Monck with their fists.

  Spragge called out a warning and drew his sword: ‘They have knives, Your Grace, have a care.’

  ‘I do not fear these fellows,’ Monck said, shouldering his way deeper into them and catching the eyes of first one and then another as he did so. ‘We fought together as we shall fight again. They are noble when their blood-lust is up. The trouble lies with Able Seaman Harris who hath a mouth larger than a saker’s muzzle, though it resembles his arse for ’tis shit that he spouts. I have bested him before, in Whitehall, and then I promised him his pay which was then wanting but which afterwards he received.’ Monck spun round and levelled his cane at Harris as the man got to his feet rubbing his bruised knee, ‘did you not, Master Harris? Eh?’

  Harris was discomfited; his mates enjoyed the Lord-General’s foul language and were not going to pass up what seemed like the promise of much needed back-pay.

  ‘Shall we be paid, sir?’ someone asked.

  ‘Aye, but only if you do your duty this day and thereafter until the Dutch have been driven from our shores.’ Monck paused. ‘Have you food and ale?’

  ‘No, Milord, we have not.’

  ‘Then Harris had better accompany me and I shall order something from the town. Send a boat in an hour.’

  And with that they left the Royal Oak and Monck sat in the barge staring at the red-faced seaman as he nursed his battered knee.

  ‘D’you wish for a surgeon, Harris?’ Monck asked.

  ‘Better a pension,’ Harris responded.

  ‘You do not lack spirit, I must say.’ Monck turned to Spragge. ‘Have this man made a Yeoman of Sheets, Sir Edward. I owe him something.’

  Again they passed the Royal Charles. Monck could not bring himself to go on board. Three hundred yards farther on, they came across Pett in his boat, running a heavy rope from the sixty-gun Vanguard to the dock-head by which means she could be hauled into safety when the tide served.

  ‘Master Pett,’ Monck called out, his voice cracking with anger. ‘Do you first secure the Royal Charles. Her position at the downstream trot leaves her vulnerable.’

  ‘Your Grace, I cannot. I have no more boats other than those ordered by Lord Middleton to ferry powder and shot into Upnor Castle. God grant that the guns from there can cover your flag-ship. The Dutch must force the boom to take her…’

  ‘It seems they have already passed the block-ships and the boom at Sheerness!’ Monck bellowed back. ‘Think thee this will prove more satisfactory?’

  ‘I will move the Monmouth, Your Grace.’ Spragge offered. ‘She is best placed and better manned than most.’

  ‘Very well. Do you see to it.’

  The boats drifted apart and, at Spragge’s nod, the oarsmen bent again to their task.

  ‘’Tis a great pity we cannot effect more,’ Monck remarked grimly, ‘but the boom must be raised at all costs. I shall insist at that whatever the cost!’

  ‘Your Grace, the apparent dereliction is not entirely the fault of the Dockyard officers. Pett’s plea must carry some weight,’ Spragge said earnestly in low tones, mitigating his earlier accusation but further deepening Monck’s suspicions. ‘We have been promised funds and men, yet neither have been forthcoming. This man’s case,’ Spragge indicated Harris, ‘is typical.’

  At the head of the King’s stairs they were met by Brouncker. ‘Do you draft a requisition for bread, cheese and ale to be bought in the town and distributed among all the ships manned for defence. This man,’ Monck indicated Harris, ‘will see to its distribution. The account is to be rendered to me.’ Monck turned to the hobbling seaman now standing uncomfortably among his social superiors.

  ‘D’you go now with Master Brouncker, Harris. He will see you and your fellows fed. And desist from that ridiculous limp or I shall strike you again to justify your conduct.’

  And to the astonishment of all but Monck, Harris grinned and made an awkward little bow. ‘Milord…’ he murmured.

 
‘He will tell his grand-children that Monck, the King’s arse-licker, beat him twice in his life,’ Monck remarked to no-one in particular, ‘but he will do his duty when called upon.’

  Ashore and back in Pett’s house, Monck called for a list of the moored ships, directing Spragge to move several more downstream as block-ships, scuttling them in the fairway to better protect the remainder.

  ‘Then you may take some rest, Sir Edward. I shall see to the placing of the boom.’

  The following morning he called another meeting and was alarmed to learn from Spragge that not only were the block-ships not yet in place but the Dutch were tiding up the river on the flood.

  ‘How many ships did we bring into the dock on the last high-water, Master Pett?’

  ‘Three, Your Grace.’ Pett did not look up from the papers under his nose.

  ‘And the Vanguard?’

  Still downcast, Pett shook his head. ‘She took the ground, just off the dock-head, the shoal is new…’

  ‘God’s blood!’

  ‘We have not the resources, Your Grace!’

  But the conversation ended there and they all looked at each other. Through the open window, borne on a fresh breeze from the north-east, came the noise of cannon-fire.

  *

  Monck stood at the head of four companies of his Coldstreamers behind a battery of ill-served guns. He leaned upon his cane, exhausted after a sleepless night. Immediately behind him, a handful of orderly officers stood at their horses’ heads, his own charger among them, cropping the grass even as the guns along the river’s bank boomed their pitiful defiance.

  He already knew the Dutch had taken the forty-four gun Unity and all her pitiful farm-boys. Then De Ruyter – for Monck now knew the identity of the Dutch Commander-in-Chief – had sent a disgraced Dutch officer named Jan van Brakel in the forty-gun Viede with two fire-ships packed with gun-powder to destroy the boom off Gillingham. Even as the English watched, Van Brakel blew apart the boom which Monck himself had so assiduously drawn across the river the previous evening. Then, indifferent to the guns of the Matthias, the Carolus Quintus and the Mary, Van Brakel led several smaller craft and heavily manned boats towards the helplessly moored men-of-war. The Dutch boats, laden with tar, oil-barrels, oiled oakum and other inflammables, picked their quarry. Van Brakel boarded and took the Carolus Quintus, turning her guns upon the English defences so that their shot ploughed up the turf not far from Monck’s position.

  A ball furrowed the sod at Monck’s feet and so terrified the horses that they reared up and one broke free to bolt off into the darkness.

  ‘Come away, Your Grace, come away! ’Tis too dangerous here!’ An orderly officer urged forward by Lock was tugging at Monck’s sleeve. Monck shrugged him off; he was shaking with rage.

  ‘If I feared a ball, sir, I should have long since quitted the profession of soldier. Would that one of these would take me in honour, than that I should live to explain this damnable disaster to the King!’

  Monck’s words were lost in a deafening explosion; it needed no-one to explain that a magazine had been detonated.

  Then Lock was at his elbow. ‘If you will not come away, Your Grace, you had better know that the word has just now arrived from Admiral Spragge that they are boarding the Royal Charles.’

  ‘No, by God, they cannot!’ There was agony in the old man’s voice. ‘My horse, Matthew, here, directly.’

  Monck’s bay charger was brought up and Lock and the orderly who brought it offered their shoulders to enable Monck to mount. He grasped his cane like a riding-whip and dug spurs into the stallion’s flanks, tugging the horse’s head round and heading for a low bluff that hid from view that part of the river-bank opposite the mooring of his former flag-ship, Hurriedly Lock and two staff officers dashed after him.

  Monck rounded the bend and drew rein, staring at the appalling sight before him. Men were running past in disorder and the ruins of one of the batteries told where a small party of Dutch had landed, driven off the gunners and fired the magazine.

  ‘Hold those bastards!’ Monck roared, indicating the fleeing English artillerymen. But he paid the fugitives no further attention, looking instead at the river now crowded with Dutch boats. He recognised among them the ornate barges of several admirals, one of which lay alongside the Royal Charles. Even as the astonished and outraged Monck watched, Dutch colours were hoisted above the flag-ship’s stern and the standard of a Dutch admiral was run-up to the top of the lower main-mast. A fight was in progress for the possession of the Monmouth which had been cut loose of her moorings and was drifting upstream on the flood-tide, only to run foul of the grounded Mary which was, within minutes, set ablaze.

  As the day wore on and the tide turned, several of the Dutch ships took the ground, but the fire they steadfastly maintained deterred any attempt the English might make to take advantage of them. Such was the wretched situation and lack of either infantry or seamen, that the best that could be accomplished was a constant plying of the guns in the batteries. Satisfied that no landing would be made that night, Monck sent the best of his Guards to assist with the guns, and spent much of the dark hours moving between one battery and another, watching as the Medway’s oily surface prickled with the dancing reflections of an increasing conflagration. Now the dark hulks of the laid-up ships were black, back-lit by fire, row-after-row of them, the pride of England. Half a pistol-shot distant lay the flashing guns of the small Dutch frigates and armed yachts that had followed Van Barkel beyond the shattered boom while all about them moved the dark spots of Dutch pulling-boats busy about the work of destruction.

  ‘Where… where is the Monmouth?’ he asked, casting about and turning to the two officers. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘We do not know, Your Grace. These matters are outside…’

  Turning his charger’s head he kicked it into a walk. ‘There is nothing further we can do, gentlemen,’ he said tonelessly, riding between his two orderly officers. ‘Nothing.’

  *

  ‘Where is the Monmouth?’ Monck asked of the assembled company as he strode into Commissioner Pett’s dining-room at five the following morning.

  ‘She is safe, Your Grace, and anchored upstream,’ Pett explained.

  ‘Safe? Safe! And upstream?’ Monck slammed his cane down upon the table. ‘By the Lord God, that she is safe brings me no comfort, Master Pett! She was supposed to stand guard over the Royal Charles!’

  Pett, Spragge, Brouncker, Middleton and Lock hung their heads, unwilling to confront the enraged Monck as he stood at the head of the table.

  ‘What did they do aboard the Unity, eh? One hundred and fifty fools… And what did they do from Upnor Castle, eh, but fart against the enemy’s thunder…and the Matthias set alight without a fight, likewise the Charles the Fifth…’

  ‘Your Grace,’ put in Spragge consolingly, ‘the Loyal London, the Royal Oak and the Royal James are undamaged…’

  ‘There are also sixteen other men-o’-war as yet untouched, Your Grace,’ offered Brouncker.

  ‘Well, that is something. Nothing further must be lost. D’you hear me? Nothing!’ Monck paused then, turning to Spragge, he added, ‘the London, the James and the Oak must be scuttled where they lie since they cannot be moved.’ Next he addressed Middleton. ‘Last night I ordered up guns from The Tower that were already at Rochester. We can move them in and reinforce all the batteries. See that Scott at Upnor has more powder and shot. My Lord Middleton, have you troops sufficient to reinforce him?’

  ‘Perhaps fifty men wi’ match-locks.’

  ‘Twenty artillerists would be better but do what you can. Send an armed party into Chatham. Seize every man and boy to help, you have my authority upon the matter and Master Lock will give it thee in writing. Now, since fate has granted us the three great ships, let us be about our business and salvage what honour we may.’

  Monck leaned over the table to point at the chart. ‘Sir Edward, do you sink two of the frigates, those least likely to be of fu
rther service, here… and here…’

  ‘Shall I scuttle the other sixteen unhurt vessels too, Your Grace?’

  ‘Aye, see to it.’

  The meeting dispersed as they went about their duties, energised by Monck’s plan. All that terrible day Monck toiled, riding from one gun-battery to another, placing the guns himself and directing the fields of fire each was to cover. His lack of men troubled him most, though he did what he could, detaching more of his Coldstreamers to direct the guns. Sure of himself where artillery was concerned, he left Spragge to venture afloat and move from one ship to another, exhorting the seamen and the wretched officers placed over them. He sent word across the river to encourage Sir Edward Scott in Upnor, making no reference to the pathetic showing of the previous day in the hope that the garrison commander would redeem himself.

  Within hours, as the tide served, the Dutch came on again, their grounded ships refloated, their several admirals’ barges flaunting their flags as cool as if in the Texelstroom off Den Helder. By mid-morning, Dutch fire-ships were seen coming up with the tide, but on this occasion they were met with a savage fire from both sides of the river, that from the ramparts of Upnor Castle being particularly fierce. This and the presence of the additional block-ships scuttled by Spragge dissuaded the Dutch from pressing their attack above Upnor, once their primary objective had been achieved, that of setting on fire the three great battleships that sat immobile on the river’s bed. To this end they acted with a determined courage that drew Monck’s reluctant admiration.

  As the Dutch withdrew, Monck, who had spent the period of the attack directing the guns on the Chatham bank, ordered several of the best-served to limber up and sent down the river’s southern bank. Accompanied by what Horse was available, the Dutch were fired upon from every vantage point as they fell downstream but with them they took their greatest prize, the Royal Charles.