King Charles II (12 page)

This problem of the price of the Scottish help was already
central to the question of the restoration of the English monarchy. As has been seen, Hyde had been ruminating unhappily over it in Jersey. It would continue to dominate Royalist counsels until the defeat of Worcester put an end to the dream.

Was the price – the taking of the Oath of Covenant – too high? Hyde, devoted son of the Church of England, always thought that it was. Like most pre-war English politicians, he disliked the Scots and did not trust them: an understandable point of view. When an emissary came from the Scots to test the reaction of the Prince of Wales to the Covenant, Hyde, still in Jersey, issued a stern directive: the price
was
too high.

The trouble was that King Charles
I
did not by any means maintain such a stern posture in his own dealings with the Scots. With hindsight and with history’s more profound knowledge of his character, one is able to see that the King never indicated that the price was too high for one very good reason – because he had no intention of paying it. His restoration to power was for him an end in itself; from that, all blessings would flow, including the supreme blessing of declaring that all previous commitments, made to secure this position, would not now have to be honoured. Henrietta Maria did not find the price too high, simply because she did not understand the currency in which it would be paid. She did not take these strange Scottish oaths and covenants, which she barely bothered to comprehend, particularly seriously. It has been noted that quite early on she was urging her husband to entertain the notion of Scottish help.

By December the King’s secret negotiations with Hamilton’s party were moving towards that point where a Scottish army of rescue was proposed. A new undercover ‘Engagement’ was signed on 26 December by the King and the Scottish commissioners on the Isle of Wight. The King promised to condemn all those Independent non-conformist sects detested equally by the ‘Engagers’ and their Covenanter comrades. Presbyterianism was to be established for three years.

Abroad however the line was still taken that the Scots were but one possible arrow in the royal quiver, particularly in view of the fact that communications with the King on the Isle of Wight were sparse and unreliable. France, for all her family
connections, was failing to show herself a noble champion, and the outbreak of the so-called ‘Parliamentary’ war of the Fronde in October 1648 would effectively put an end to hope in that direction. But France was not the only country in Europe where the Stuarts could claim cousinage. There was also Holland.

Here the eldest sister of Charles, Mary, and her youthful husband, the Prince of Orange, were loyally anxious to help her distressed father. Gradually the English exiles of independent mind were drifting away from the polite complications represented by France to the more vigorous possibilities now open to them in Holland and Flanders.

Yet here too the Prince of Orange was much restricted by his own circumstances in the aid he could propose for his father-in-law. His position as Stadtholder of Holland remained ambivalent: he was not, for example, an independent monarch of the rank of his father-in-law or even of some of the German princely rulers. Holland was only one of those provinces which together constituted the United Provinces of the Dutch Netherlands, each of which had its own Stadtholder. William was thus responsible to the States of Holland. On the other hand, those Princes of Orange who were appointed Captain General and Admiral General were also responsible to the States-General: this body was made up of delegations appointed by each province.

In 1647 Mary’s husband William
II
succeeded his father, the talented Frederick Henry, at the age of twenty-one. Not all the Dutch approved of the help which the new Stadtholder wished to give his father-in-law. A Dutch counsellor would bewail the ‘English labyrinth’ in which it was feared the Prince of Orange would involve them through the fatal Stuart marriage – and with some reason.
⁸
Besides which, the Scottish Covenanters, not the Stuart Episcopalians, were temperamentally the natural allies of the Protestant Dutch. Nevertheless, William, together with the Duke of Lorraine, raised troops on his father-in-law’s behalf – between five hundred and a thousand men – and encamped them at Borkum; he also chartered and equipped some ships at Amsterdam, and spent money buying munitions for the Scottish army.

It was natural under the circumstances that, like the other young and spirited Royalists, Charles Prince of Wales should prefer the prospect of action based on Holland to inaction based on France. By the beginning of 1648 Henrietta Maria herself had come round to that point of view and, still treating her son as one who could be despatched hither and thither without too much consultation, sent him off to Calais on the French border, to await developments. But here Mazarin stepped in once more and obstinately blocked the young Prince’s progress. He must not leave France.

It was a time of exceptional frustration for Charles.

Meanwhile in England some at least of the Army and Parliamentary leaders were becoming ruefully aware of the underhand nature of their King. Very few in either category had abandoned the notion of a monarchy as such: negotiations with the King consisted in advancing various expedients for limiting his powers, and trying to work out some practical way in which his alleged tyranny could be held in check. As a result, certain members of the House of Commons decided to explore the notion of transferring the royal role into the hands of the Prince of Wales. Little was really known of Charles in England at this point: might he not prove more amenable to the idea of monarchy limited in its powers by Parliament? The answer from Charles was of course a firm negative – thereafter when these expedients were explored by Parliament it would be in terms of the younger princes: James, even Henry.

When rumours of the King’s secret agreement with the Scots leaked out, the Army and the Independents in Parliament were together confirmed in their disgust. Negotiations with the King were formally broken off at the beginning of the year when a Vote of No Addresses was passed by Parliament.

In the meantime the King’s intrigues appeared to have had a successful outcome: they had combined Royalists and Presbyterians in a further outbreak of fighting, which began with a Royalist insurrection in Wales and culminated in a Scottish invasion. This, the Second Civil War, was blamed by the Army leaders on the King’s double-dealing: he earned from them the unpleasant sobriquet of ‘the man of blood’. Charles’ position
was made clear by the fact that commissions were issued in his name to various Royalist commanders, including Langdale in the north and Byron in the north-west. A signature was however still the sole measure of contribution by the unhappy Prince.

By now the Engagers in Scotland were longing equally for the
éclat
of the Prince’s presence. Charles, the boy who, at the age of twelve, had drawn his sword at Edgehill and shouted, ‘I fear them not!’, was still kept prudently in reserve, like a weapon of uncertain provenance.

Nevertheless, the moment of decision could not be much longer delayed. On 9 March a heated debate took place in the Prince’s Council. The Queen had given way and agreed to his departure. Hyde’s known views were overruled.

At the end of the meeting ‘the Prince’s resolution was taken without more ceremony to come into Scotland’. By 23 March his offer was known in Edinburgh and on 1 May the Duke of Hamilton, the Earl Lauderdale and three other Engagers formally requested the arrival of the Prince of Wales. On 30 May Charles himself wrote back in the most flattering terms that he was ‘inexpressibly desirous of himself and impatient to be amongst them’.
⁹

Nevertheless, the Prince of Wales did not arrive in Scotland. By August, when the Scottish army passed lumberingly into England, he had still not arrived. His part in the Second Civil War was totally, not to say fatally, mismanaged by his elders and advisers.

What now transpired, put briefly (although the expression of it was not brief at the time), was the re-emergence of all the old worries in Royalist circles about the Scots. Instead of permitting the Prince to depart, his advisers sent off renewed cautious enquiries concerning the use of an English prayer book in his private devotions, and similar questions which were surely of little import compared to the vast issue at stake – the defeat of the Parliamentary Army.

Perhaps it might after all be better to despatch the Prince to Ireland. … The old mildew of indecision concerning the relative merits of Scotland and Ireland as a jumping-off ground continued
to blight the Royalist counsels during this critical summer. Yet a realistic appraisal of the Irish situation should have made its relative weakness clear.

Ireland was full of armies. The island itself was inhabited by an enormous variety of factions, in which religion and ethnic origin made many weird combinations – there were Anglican English, Anglican Anglo-Irish, Catholic Anglo-Irish, Catholic Irish and Presbyterian Scots, and that was not the end of it. Nearly all these bodies were represented at one time or another by an army, or at least combined into a military force. The presence of the Papal Nuncio further complicated matters by inspiring the view, at any rate in the breasts of Catholics, that Papal money might be enlisted. But the Pope, like the Presbyterians, demanded religious concessions.

Ireland was therefore a quagmire during this period, rather than the sort of solid ground from which a counter-offensive could be launched. Yet still the Royalists dithered and would not commit themselves to Scotland.

On 25 June Cardinal Mazarin, with the shadow of the impending war and the Fronde athwart him, released Charles. He had by now too many troubles of his own to wish to add to them by the presence of the English Prince of Wales. Now, if ever, was the moment at which Charles should have joined the Scottish Engagers under their leader the Duke of Hamilton. The Scots were about to invade England with a vast but ill-equipped army – it lacked any artillery, for instance. The propaganda value of the presence of the Prince of Wales at its head would have been immense, as the Scots themselves fully realized. It would have enabled this force to present itself as a monarchical army of liberation – rather than an invading body of England’s unpopular neighbours, the Scots.

But Charles, on leaving France, had been re-routed to Holland by the news that part of the English fleet had revolted against Parliament. At first this seemed a wonderful portent of good things to come. At Helvoetsluys Charles found the rebellious sailors, and also his younger brother James, whom he had not encountered for over three years, since he left Oxford. Alas, the revolt of these ships proved an excessive blessing in terms of
Charles’ fortunes. Not only did it provide an additional and fatal motive for delay in joining the Scottish army. It also provoked a coolness between the royal brothers which the Prince of Wales could well have done without, dependent as he was on his family for support.

The trouble was that the disaffected sailors turned out to be rebelling against naval discipline, law and order, rather than against Parliament itself. Yet already James, with joy, had placed himself at their head. Despite its rashness, one can at least sympathize with this action on the part of the fifteen-year-old Duke of York. He was after all titular High Admiral. James was here enjoying his first measure of liberty since his dramatic escape from Parliamentary captivity in April. He had carried out that escape, dressed in woman’s clothes, specifically to avoid being used as a pawn against his father and elder brother, which had been Parliament’s hope after Charles rejected their approaches. It was natural to wish to spread his wings. The revolt of the fleet offered the perfect opportunity.

But these wings his elder brother now proceeded smartly to clip. James was ejected from his self-appointed post of admiral ‘much to his mortification’. He complained sulkily that he was once more being treated as a prisoner ‘and not trusted with himself’.
¹⁰
Even more to the point, Charles sent packing a Colonel Bampfylde. This doubtful character, who had aided James in his escape, was now intriguing to put him in Charles’ place; James would then sail the fleet on his own responsibility. The brothers had been extremely close as children, devoted companions in boyhood, sharing the intimacies of such experiences as Edgehill and the tricky Court years at Oxford. It was regrettable that this new phase in their relationship, when they met for the first time as adults, opened under a cloud.

Charles’ precise attitude to his brother James is one of the most fascinating conundrums both of his own nature and of his reign. From 1649 onwards James was only a heartbeat away from the throne, such as it was. Just as Parliament had turned from the vision of a pliant Prince of Wales to that of an accommodating Duke of York, there would always be the danger of others during the years of exile toying with the same fantasy.
Rumours of Charles’ illness and death always brought the provident and the toadies scurrying to James’ side. It was sad but inevitable that Charles’ new relationship with his brother had to be built upon suspicion as well as affection.

The fleet, which had arrived ‘full of anger, hatred and disdain’, was restored to discipline.
¹¹
Lord Willoughby of Parham, who had the advantage of being a Presbyterian, was made Vice-Admiral. It was now time to resume the original plan of sailing for Scotland. Money and supplies continued to present difficulties and the Dutch were not in a particularly generous mood. Nevertheless, on 17 July Charles set sail and by 24 July the fleet was off Yarmouth.

Meanwhile, matters had already progressed in the north. Hamilton had actually crossed the border on 8 July. The Covenanters however did not join him and remained in Scotland, like so many Achilles sulking in their tents. In the absence of the Prince of Wales, gleeful Parliamentary propaganda put exactly that xenophobic construction upon the expedition which the wiser Royalists dreaded. The Parliamentary newspaper
Mercurius Britannicus
was able to write disdainfully of the Scots bringing ‘their lice and Presbytery amongst us’.
¹²
Mere words of scorn might not have harmed the royal cause overmuch: the trouble was that northern Royalists, acting on the same anti-Scottish principle, simply did not join in with the so-called Scottish army of liberation as had been expected. The Scottish army’s reputation for plunder, as it zig-zagged uneasily south, completed the disastrous picture. Rumours that the Scots would be rewarded with good English lands for their efforts were readily believed.