King Charles II (32 page)

T
here was a short burst of wild but foolish rejoicing when the news of Cromwell’s death on 3 September 1658 reached the Netherlands. Some people who should have known better danced in the streets. For one wonderful moment it did seem as though that ‘extraordinary act of providence’ referred to by Hyde had actually arrived to save them all. In France Cardinal Mazarin forgot himself sufficiently to refer to Cromwell as ‘the dead monster’; he also hinted to Queen Henrietta Maria that the Anglo-French treaty might be running out.

This warmth proved ephemeral. An express letter from Bristol to Hyde, breaking the news, arrived marked ‘cito, cito, cito’: but there was in fact no hurry.
¹
About the most significant effect of the Protector’s sudden death – he died after a short period of illness, and the Royalists in Europe were taken unawares – was to forward the suit of King Charles to his ‘best friend’ Princess Henrietta Catharine. For a moment the Dowager Princess of Orange, like Cardinal Mazarin, seemed in danger of losing her head. She fondly imagined that from a penniless émigré her daughter’s admirer had been transformed into a powerful monarch just about to embark for his kingdom.

King Charles himself did not let the opportunity slip. He
proposed immediately. Henrietta Catharine became ill with emotion. The news of the betrothal, as it was tacitly allowed to be, had the side-effect of infuriating Mary Princes of Orange. She was still smarting under Charles’ denunciation of her romance with the young Harry Jermyn. Besides, it would have meant Mary yielding precedence to her sister-in-law as Queen of England, and the subject of precedence, as we have seen, always aroused a great deal of proprietorial anguish in Mary’s breast.
^fn1

As it turned out, Mary had little need to worry. By November the Dowager Princess, in common with the rest of Europe (and Cardinal Mazarin), had realized her mistake: King Charles found coolness where once there had been ardour. Early next year, a ‘new gallant’ for Henrietta Catharine made his appearance: John George of Anhalt-Dessau. She subsequently married him, evidently finding no unconquerable aversion to this particular person. Towards her own behaviour, the King was philosophical as well as generous. He told Taaffe that his fondness for her inspired in him a real wish for her true happiness. He had convinced himself that Henrietta Catharine loved her prince, and would not interfere. Towards her mother he showed less tolerance, referring to her privately as ‘an old strumpet’ and suggesting in even cruder terms that the Dowager Princess had resented his lack of attentions to herself.
²

The news of the Protector’s death did not merely fail to crown Charles’ efforts as a romantic lover, it also ushered in an even more extraordinary phase in a life already full of paradox. Nineteen months were to pass between the death of Oliver and the restoration of Charles. To those abroad, including the King, who had no means of knowing in advance at what hour the final curtain was destined to be rung down on revolutionary England, if at all, the last act seemed interminable.

The first figure to occupy the stage vacated by Oliver was his son Richard Cromwell. Theoretically chosen by his father’s dying
voice, Richard was immediately confirmed in his new position by the Council of State; Protector Richard was thus easily and uncontroversially substituted for Protector Oliver. Like the sons of Charlemagne, Richard Cromwell was a
fainéant
, a weak plant who had grown up thinly in the shadow of the strong stem of his father. He had taken refuge from the challenge of his father’s personality early on in a kind of gentle wastrel’s incompetence. Finance was never Richard’s strong point: when the time came for him to step down from his Protectoral eminence, one of his chief reasons for not wishing to leave the precincts of the Palace of Whitehall was because they conferred immunity from arrest for debt.

But he was not a bad man, and therefore not a bad figurehead for the English state as it now stood. There were a number of dramas to be played out before any true desire for the return of the Stuarts could be anticipated. Shortly after the elder Protector’s death, Nicholas wrote to King Charles that he was pleased to hear ‘the rebels endeavour to set up Cromwell’s son rather than a republic’.
³
That was a wise observation. The return of a republic would indeed have been a far more sinister development.

Yet at the time a pervasive hopelessness spread like a wide, calm surface of water over the shifting sands of the King’s affairs. The death of Cromwell had broken this surface with a sudden sharp splash. Now even the ripples caused by it appeared to have died away. The real trouble was the strange tranquillity which settled over England, as Hyde put it: ‘the same or a greater calm in the kingdom than had been before’.
⁴
This serenity was attested on all sides, both Royalist and Cromwellian.

Sir George Downing, the Ambassador at The Hague, thought that the death had come just too soon for the various foreign conspirators, perhaps two months too soon. But Thurloe, writing in England, used the same language as Hyde: ‘There is not a dog that wags his tongue, so great a calm are we in.’
⁵
It was this public lethargy which was disastrous for the King’s prospects in Europe. Now, if ever, was the psychological moment for Charles to prove to Spain that there existed a vast body of popular support to welcome him in England, should he reach its
shores. But he could not point to any manifestations of unrest.

So Spain did not move. In one of his speeches to the Parliament of 1658, Cromwell had referred to a great army and navy of a foreign power, threatening them on behalf of the ‘King of Scots … drawn down towards the waterside, ready to be shipped for England’. But there the Spanish fleet in Flanders remained. There were vague discussions of help from minor powers, like the Elector of Brandenburg and the Duke of Saxe-Lauenberg; perhaps Dunkirk would declare for the King, and perhaps Marshal Turenne would head a force for the invasion of England. But in general, French, Spanish and German princes were not inclined to contemplate any form of Stuart crusade until their peace was established; the Treaty of the Pyrenees between France and Spain was not signed until May 1659. The gloom of the situation may be judged by the fact that Charles was even proposed for
Lambert
’s daughter – the Cromwell ‘princesses’ were by now both married.
⁶

The next stirring came, as before, from within England herself. But it was not an ‘extraordinary act of providence’, as the death of Cromwell had been – merely an inevitable development of the
fainéant
Protectorate set up under Richard. By January 1659 a body of Army officers, including Lambert and Oliver Cromwell’s son-in-law, Fleetwood, and his brother-in-law, Desborough, had come to feel in themselves rather than in Richard the source of the true power in England. Those opposed to them caused a Parliament to be summoned, sometimes known as Richard’s Parliament. In this assembly, republicans, Presbyterians, and secret Royalists jostled with each other: from the other side of the water the King had at least managed to encourage some secret Royalists to put themselves up for election.

At the same time no one, certainly not King Charles nor the Royalist conspirators within England, dreamed that the time for military invasion had passed. In March of the same year John Mordaunt was given permission to form a new action group, to the annoyance of the Sealed Knot. Once again the King’s presence in England, that magic talisman to which such powers were attributed, was being demanded. With quarrels between
the rival conspirators, indecision from Charles, foreign missions, English intrigues, and a good deal of governmental counter-intelligence, it seemed that the whole dreary cycle was taking place all over again. And with the same lack of success.

The Protectoral Parliament was dissolved on 22 April. Protector Richard was transformed into Tumbledown Dick and slipped away to silence and exile in his turn. A Council of State became the new titular head of the government. A slightly desperate expedient, the return of the Rump Parliament – elected, in its original form, an unbelievable nineteen years previously – was employed. But desperation did not imply in any sense a return to monarchy. It is notable that at this critical juncture nobody suggested for a moment recourse to Charles Stuart, down by the waterside across the English channel. Yet exactly twelve months later he would be gladly, even ecstatically, summoned. So the dramatic story of the Restoration continued to unfold without forfeiting its surprise and tension.

The vital element in this summer’s royal plans was deemed to be the army of King Charles, not the reappearance of the Rump. He now had as many as 2,500 men with him in the Low Countries, the effect of the new military organization following the Spanish treaty. Mordaunt paid the King a flying visit at Brussels in June. Unfortunately, it was clear that there was considerable opposition to Mordaunt within the Royalist ranks. Brodrick, who ran the so-called New Cavalier party, disliked Mordaunt; Mordaunt in return described Brodrick, no doubt accurately, as ‘sadly given to drink’. Nevertheless, Mordaunt did succeed in his mission: he persuaded the King that things were sufficiently advanced in England. As a result, Charles assured Mordaunt on 24 June: ‘I do therefore resolve that myself or one of my brothers, or both of us will (with God’s blessing) be with you as soon as you shall desire.’ He would sail on 11 July.
⁷

At this point the question of the treachery of Sir William Willys, one of the founders of the Sealed Knot, and probably its secret betrayer ever since, reared its ugly head. Obviously Willys could not have acted as a double-agent for quite so long without suspicions being aroused. But the timing of the charges against him in July was particularly bad. An open placard on the
subject in London caused every kind of dissension, accusation and counter-accusation to be aired. It was the very worst atmosphere in which to plan, let alone carry out, a complicated rising, depending on co-ordination throughout the country. The King suspended judgement while enquiries were made. The date for his arrival was postponed till August.

The motives of Willys, an ultra-ambivalent man in an ambivalent time, as well as the extent of his treachery, continue to baffle.
⁸
There was however much soundness in the argument which Willys used against this particular rising: it would unite the common people
against
the King, rather than causing them to rise on his behalf; especially since it was harvest time, and no sensible man would want to run the risk of starving in the winter, whoever was in power. But the eventual course of the rising showed that, like the Bourbons after the French Revolution, the Royalists in England had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing since their last disastrous concerted effort of 1655.

Once again the affair went off half-cock. It became popularly known by the name of Sir George Booth, because his force, easily put down by Lambert at Chester, was all that properly featured of the various para-military bodies promised. But Booth himself had not hitherto been a Royalist. Shades of 1655! This time King Charles took himself to Calais, for his impending departure. The Sealed Knot sulked. Rows, not only in England, but also with Hyde abroad, played their damaging role. By 9 September Jermyn was writing to Ormonde that the news from England was ‘not only worse than we looked for, but even as ill as we could have imagined’. About the same date two other Royalists agreed that ‘Hope cleaveth to the bottom of the box, and is not easily shaken out.’
⁹
The only good thing to be noted about the abortive Booth’s rising was that, although the government speedily clapped the leaders in prison, they did not bother with the severe penalties of previous years.

To that extent, conditions in England were ameliorating. But of course lack of repression can signify lack of threat, as well as lack of confidence. It was a point not lost on contemporary observers.

King Charles, disillusioned yet again, resolved to seek his fortune in Spain herself. Perhaps he could galvanize that long-promised assistance by his presence. He was unaware that the single man who would play the most crucial part in his restoration had already come to a private conclusion which favoured the return of the monarchy.

George Monck was a professional soldier, who, being born in 1608, belonged more properly to the generation of King Charles
I
than to that of his son. Not only had the army been in a large measure his career, but he also took his high standards of order and efficiency from the conventional military ideals. In Scotland, where he not only held down but positively governed the Scots with his Cromwellian army, his rule was both wise and firm. He had not benefited personally from confiscated Royalist and church land in England and had thus no financial stake in the continuation of the Protectorate: Monck had been loyal to Oliver Cromwell. He would have been loyal to Richard too, had he considered that the younger Protector had any capacity for maintaining within England that law and order which he found so precious. As Monck expressed it, ‘Richard forsook himself, else I had never failed my promise to his father or regard to his memory.’ It is the contention of Monck’s latest biographer that in August 1659 Monck had already reached a decision.
¹⁰
If England was not to dissolve into chaos once more (and Monck of course had both lived and fought through the Civil War), what he thought of as ‘the old order’ – that is, the King in Parliament – must be restored. It would be six months before Monck gave any public sign of this decision: yet in order to explain the suddenness of the events of 1660 one is forced to the conclusion that by the autumn of 1659 not only Monck but also some of the other leaders, and even more of the ordinary people, were in their heart of hearts beginning to explore this possibility.

For all his age, Monck represented a new type of man. Here was no regicide. Monck had played no part whatsoever in the death of King Charles
I
. He had not signed the warrant, nor been a member of the High Court of Justice which condemned Charles
I
. This was important. The feelings of Charles
II
on the
subject of his father’s murder had been passionate and were to remain so. As we shall see, he made no attempt to disguise the fact, and the penalties paid by the regicides after the Restoration were virtually the only area where the incoming King’s vengeance went to work. Even in the dire straits of 1655 Charles refused to meet his cousin the Elector Palatine at Frankfurt, because the Elector had deserted his father. The incident occurred at the theatre, where the English royal party turned on their heels. Afterwards this was considered ‘unnatural strangeness’ on the part of Charles.
¹¹
But it showed the depth of his obsession.