The King's Revenge (33 page)

Two and a half years on the run had left Wariston a wreck of a man who was now showing all the signs of dementia. But family
pleas to stop his appearance because of his health were ignored and on 8 July he went before Parliament. He was ‘so disordered
both in body and mind, that it was a reproach to a government to proceed against him’, wrote his nephew, Gilbert Burnet, Bishop
of Salisbury. ‘His memory was so gone that he did not know his own children … It was apparent that age, hardship, and danger,
had done their work effectually on his iron nerves, and the intrepid advocate of the covenant exhibited the mental imbecility
of an idiot.’
¹⁶

Wariston’s family lobbied to save him and offered the usual bribes to those close to the king. It was futile. Bishop Burnet
wrote, ‘We solicited all the hungry courtiers. Many that had a great mind to our money tried what could be done but they all
found it was a thing too big for them to meddle with.’
¹⁷

Like Argyll two years before, Wariston was executed at Edinburgh’s Mercat Cross. He had to be helped to haul himself up the
ladder onto the scaffold but once there recovered his wits sufficiently to read out a speech denying all responsibility for
Charles I’s death. Royalists claimed he had faked senility in an attempt to save his life. Presbyterians referred to the notorious
rape by the young king and claimed Wariston was a victim of Charles’s vindictiveness. ‘The real cause of his death’, wrote
James Aikman, was ‘our king’s personal hatred’ following the dressing-down given to him by Wariston after the incident. ‘This
the king could never forgive’.
¹⁸

1663–1665

The abduction and execution of Barkstead, Corbet and Okey filled the fugitive regicides with dread. Royalist spies were active
across the Continent, making kidnapping or death a possibility at any time. Worse still, most of the regicides suspected –
some were even certain – that royalist agents knew where they lived. The murders of Ascham and Dorislaus – though they had
happened more than a decade before – were recalled with a shudder. The exiled regicides felt like hunted animals. It was no
way to live, yet it was the only way to live.

The fugitives were keenly aware of the activity of royalist agents, with both sides’ antennae twitching for reports of the
other’s movements. Despite the appeal of Holland and Germany, most of the fugitives chose Switzerland. The country had an
attraction as a centre of the Protestant Reformation, with several cantons and cities – notably Zurich, Geneva, Bern and Basel
– having been early adopters of the new theology. When the reformist priest John Calvin left France, he had moved first to
Basel and then Geneva. Prior to the Civil Wars, several of the regicides had travelled to Geneva and had been enthusiastic
about its democratic government, its Calvinist
history and the present-day teachings of reformist theologians such as John Deodati, who had entranced John Milton and John
Cook.

By the beginning of 1663, Switzerland was home to William Cawley, Cornelius Holland, John Lisle, Nicholas Love, William Say,
Edward Dendy and the two unfortunate clerks to the Court of Justice, Andrew Broughton and John Phelps. The linchpin of the
group became Edmund Ludlow, the man around whom so much hope was pinned for a counter-strike against Charles II. Ludlow was
a relatively recent arrival in Switzerland, having spent the best part of two years travelling across Europe.

Basic survival was a major preoccupation for most of the runaways. Few of them spoke any foreign languages. Some had more
access to money than others, but even the wealthy found it difficult to extract funds from estates under threat of sequestration.
Some would be forced to throw themselves on the charity of their foreign hosts. Others turned to trade. For magnates like
William Cawley, finance was not a problem. During the first Civil War, he had been very active in his local county committee,
charged with seizing and selling royalist property. In subsequent years he became a property speculator, opportunistically
buying and selling former royalist estates, and grew immensely rich.

From his writings, we know something of how Ludlow managed. He had, he says, a supply of cash with him from England, and he
had arranged for money to be available to him through European bankers. Not only did Ludlow have friends and contacts across
northern Europe, he had a great ally at home in England. This was his wife, Elizabeth, an able and persuasive individual in
her own right.
¹
Elizabeth was undoubtedly Ludlow’s main lifeline as he progressed through the Continent and into his new life, no doubt helping
to maintain channels for funds as he went. Ludlow was so well organised that when he arrived in Geneva he received by post
a bill of exchange allowing him to draw on more funds, even though he had no immediate need for them, having so much left
over from his initial reserve.
²

He travelled to Switzerland accompanied by another person, whom he doesn’t name but may have been John Phelps. On the way
through Europe, he occasionally received news sheets from home, keeping him up to date with events in England. Several times
he learned he had been captured;
Mercurius Politicus
once claimed, ‘we hear it from very good hands he is already in custody.’
³

When Ludlow received the sobering news of the trial and execution of Harrison, Carew, Scot and the other regicides, it was
a terrible blow. The deaths of friends such as John Cook hit hard, and so too did the betrayal of the Good Old Cause by men
such as Denzil Holles, the Earl of Manchester and George Monck, now sitting in judgment and sentencing their old allies to
die. When the trial ended, one of the judges, Sir Harbottle Grimston, had made a speech in which he railed against the regicides
who had escaped. According to Grimston, there wasn’t a plot afoot in England without Ludlow being at the head of it – in fact,
Ludlow had recently been about to seize the Tower with a force of 2500 men.
⁴
(The previous year, the royalist spy Joseph Bampfield had claimed that Ludlow and Desborough were ready to lead a rebellion
to coincide with the king’s coronation.) It was another demonstration of how propaganda can foreshadow violent action. Royalist
secret agents were already tracking the regicides in Europe.

Following the show trial and executions in London, the exiles in Geneva began to feel uneasy. The city lay in a most precarious
geographical position, surrounded by French territory except for the wedge of Lake Geneva that sliced in from the north-east.
The refugees’ greatest fear was that Charles II might use his influence in Paris to persuade France to bring pressure on the
small city state to give up its guests, just as Downing had successfully brought pressure to bear on the Netherlands.

As the group’s natural leader, Ludlow took it upon himself to obtain assurances from Geneva’s ruling councillors, known as
syndics, regarding their safety. None of the refugees spoke French, so Ludlow asked his landlord to intercede with a senior
councillor,
Monsieur Voisin, on their behalf. Ludlow’s man did not come back with the cast-iron guarantees they had hoped for. Instead,
he brought promises of help: ‘if any letters should come into his hands concerning us, he would give us timely notice, but
if such a thing would fall out in the night, he would cause the water-gate, of which he always kept the key, to be opened
for our escape, and if we should be obliged to depart by day, we would have a safe passage through any of the city gates that
we should choose …’
⁵

To these assurances, Voisin made one further promise: that when his fellow senior syndic Monsieur Dupain came back from a
visit to Bern, they would discuss the exiles’ safety. Ludlow thought their hosts were doing all they could in trying circumstances.
Not all his colleagues agreed. Lisle saw things through a lawyer’s eyes and wanted absolute guarantees. Cawley backed him
up. As a result of their protestations, the regicides were advised to present their case in person before the entire body
of syndics.

This was not at all what Ludlow wanted. As he expected, the presentation was a disaster. One of the syndics, a Monsieur Let,
was owed money by Charles II and now saw his repayment put in jeopardy by the presence of English fugitives. The council told
the Englishmen to withdraw their application, which was to be reconsidered once the fuss had died down. Ludlow and the rest
were in a worse situation than before. They had no option but to find another city to take them.

By late spring in 1662, all three regicides, Ludlow, Lisle and Cawley, were in Lausanne, in the canton of Bern. They had not
been there long before they received wretched news – Sir Harry Vane had been executed for treason following a trial that was
all too similar in style to the great show trials of autumn 1660.
^*
Ludlow
said of Vane that he possessed ‘the highest perfection, a quick and ready apprehension, a strong and tenacious memory, a profound
and penetrating judgement, a just and noble eloquence, with an easy and graceful manner of speaking’. These sentiments were
echoed by Edward Hyde, even though as Charles’s Lord Chancellor he was Vane’s political opponent: ‘He was, indeed, a man of
extraordinary parts; a pleasant wit, a great understanding, which pierced into and discerned the purpose of other men with
wonderful sagacity.’
⁶
Charles’s decision to order Vane’s death despite all these attributes – or perhaps because of them, as he was ‘too dangerous’
to be allowed to live – was a sad example of cruel political expediency.

This repugnant act of revenge upon a man who had had nothing whatever to do with the death of Charles I had a profound effect
upon the exiles. It demonstrated that Charles II and Parliament would stop at nothing to cut off political opposition, even
if it meant manipulating the law to have an innocent man executed. Any lingering hope the Puritan exiles may have had that
the royal desire for revenge would soon abate was dashed. Their chances of ever returning home receded far into the distant
future.

Meanwhile, other threats against the monarchy were reported in the London press. According to one report, Ludlow was behind
a scheme to kill both the king and George Monck, now the Duke of Albemarle. Several thousand unemployed soldiers of the old
army were ready, it was said, to march on the City of London, the Tower and Whitehall. According to Ludlow, this was a plot
organised by
agents provocateurs
– known at the time as ‘trepanners’ – as an excuse for rounding up Commonwealth sympathisers. The resultant clampdown led
to yet more mass arrests and several executions. The chief organiser, a man named Bradley, was let off. He seems to have been
in reality the chief trepanner. News sheets claimed that the authorities had been so close to seizing Ludlow that they had
taken his cloak and slippers.

Despite the make-believe, Charles and his ministers had genuine concerns about possible uprisings. The reversal of his promise
to
allow freedom of conscience regarding religion had gone down badly and the new restrictions were openly defied in churches
up and down the country. The execution of Harry Vane was poorly received, even by many royalists. Pepys said of the feeling
against the king, ‘they do much cry up the manner of Sir H Vane’s death, and he [the king] deserves it.’ To make matters worse,
Charles had fallen out with his new wife Catherine of Braganza on their honeymoon, while the people had turned against her
on seeing her attend her mother-in-law’s old Catholic chapel, which had been done up and reopened. To the people, this did
not reflect well on Charles, with rumours flying about his own religious affiliation.

In Lausanne, matters were taking a more serious turn. According to Ludlow’s memoirs, a plot was hatched to assassinate him.
As the memoirs tell it, the sum of 10,000 crowns was offered via the Duchess of Orléans to a ‘person of quality’ who lived
in or around Lausanne for his murder. The duchess was Henrietta Anne, Charles’s favourite sister, who had recorded her father’s
words to her on the eve of his execution, now married to the openly homosexual Philippe, brother to Charles XIV. It was unlikely
that Henrietta, a cultured and flirtatious member of the French court, would have instigated such a plot unaided. Nor is there
any way of knowing if the plot really existed; however, in the light of the events that followed, it is not impossible. If
it did exist, it seems likely that it originated within the court of Charles II.
⁷

In the autumn of 1662, the English group at Lausanne grew rapidly in numbers. Ludlow’s stature was undoubtedly a draw to others,
but more important was the knowledge that the Canton of Bern had offered official protection. During September and October,
seven more exiles arrived.
^*
With John Phelps probably
already in Lausanne, the total number of resident fugitives was now at least twelve.

Several of the new arrivals, including William Say, the lawyer and legislator, had passed through the city of Bern. There
they made contact with the eminent English-speaking clergyman Johann Heinrich Hummel, who welcomed them and passed on the
information that more of their group could be found at Lausanne; and so they travelled on. Once they had arrived in Lausanne
and made contact with their fellow countrymen it was decided a letter of thanks should be sent to Hummel and the canton authorities.
The reply they received was not what they expected. They were advised to relocate to Vevey, a pretty but relatively obscure
town some twenty miles further east along the shores of Lake Geneva. The Bern authorities wanted to help but they didn’t want
it widely known that they were doing so.

Six of the exiles – Ludlow, Say, Lisle, Bethel, Cawley and Holland – elected to go to Vevey. Among those who decided to stay
behind were Phelps and Colonel Bisco who, though not a regicide, felt he was under threat at home as he had taken up arms
against Monck. Their reason for remaining sheds further light on the financial pressures the fugitives were under. According
to Ludlow, these two had bought goods at Geneva and elsewhere and wished to see if they could sell those goods in Germany
and Holland so as to ‘improve the stock of money they had’.
⁸

At Vevey, the magistrates and council greeted the exiles with great ceremony, praising them for their sufferings in the service
of liberty. It seemed the exiles had finally found what they sought: political asylum. One of the members of the town council,
a Monsieur Dubois, gave them a house in which to stay. It was on the edge of the town by the lake, beside the town walls;
its slightly isolated position made the approach of any suspicious characters easier to spot. We know that Ludlow continued
to reside in Dubois’s house but, given the numbers of individuals involved, we must assume the regicides moved into a number
of residences, though there is no record of their living arrangements.

In the autumn of 1663, Algernon Sidney came to call on Ludlow at his new home at 47 Rue du Lac. An aristocratic war hero who
had been seriously wounded at the decisive battle of Marston Moor while leading a cavalry charge, Sidney was also a political
theorist whose thinking underwent a profound change during the Commonwealth and Protectorate. Sidney had been appointed as
one of the king’s judges in 1649, but refused to serve, stating in one of his many famous phrases that ‘first, the king could
be tried by no man; secondly, that no man could be tried by that court.’
⁹
By 1659 he had changed his mind, calling the king’s execution ‘the justest and bravest act’.
¹⁰
As a republican, Sidney was an ardent foe of Oliver Cromwell. When Charles II gained the throne he was overseas on diplomatic
duty. Given his republican views, he decided to stay away.