The King's Revenge (14 page)

To buy that time, Monck grabbed at an offer of talks from the army grandees. He proposed that each side appoint a three-man
delegation to meet in London to hammer out an agreement. ‘I shall not despair of a happy issue from their endeavours,’ he
wrote to Fleetwood, adding that he was ‘confident your Lordship does not intend by the offer of this mediation to ensnare
us’.
¹⁴

It was Lambert who would be ensnared by the illusory prospect of peace that Monck fostered. He had reached York when he met
the three peace envoys sent by Monck to London. They apparently convinced Lambert of Monck’s sincerity. In a haze of optimism
he ordered the army to hunker down in Newcastle and wait. Bulstrode Whitelocke, then presiding over the Committee of Safety,
warned Lambert not to trust Monck. He sent a dispatch encouraging him ‘to advance with all his forces … to attack him before
he could be better provided’.
¹⁵
According to John Price, ‘if Lambert had not lingered so long at Newcastle, but, with his horse only, advanced … he could
then have met with little or no resistance.’ Instead Lambert waited weeks, and meanwhile his war chest emptied.
¹⁶

Monck’s tactic of keeping peace talks going till he was ready for war and his rival was weakened worked perfectly. Lambert’s
army became icebound and paying them difficult, then impossible. Lambert’s colleagues on the Committee of Safety were so hard
put to raise money from a hostile City of London that they had to raid naval funds. The fleet was ordered to ride offshore
because there was no money to pay off the crews on landing. Lambert’s unpaid army began to melt away. As for Monck, he concentrated
on purging more
of those worrying ‘oppositionists’ among his own men and mounting a highly effective propaganda campaign of leaflets and declarations,
presenting himself as a liberator intent on redeeming the ‘laws and liberties of Parliament’.
¹⁷

While Lambert’s army shivered on the banks of the Tyne, in London Sir Arthur Haselrig and Thomas Scot were stirring again.
After the coup, they formed a secret cabal of members of the old Council of State to plot for Parliament’s return. Their first
move was on 14 November. Taking the view that the Council of State was still in being, making its members the only legitimate
government, they drew up a secret commission appointing Monck commander-in-chief of the armies of England and Scotland, and
awarding him extensive powers. The ferociously worded commission authorised him to ‘kill, and destroy, or by any ways put
to death all such who are in hostility against the Parliament …’ The document, headed ‘Council of State’ and signed ‘Thos.
Scot, President’, was smuggled to Monck in Scotland. He was in no position to make use of it immediately, but he would do
so before the year was out.

Monck was ready to move at the end of December, however, but his intervention was no longer needed. A combination of factors
was destroying the junta. Thanks to the years of war in Europe trade had slumped, and the City of London wouldn’t or couldn’t
lend to the military government. Collection of taxes to pay the army was resisted and London looked increasingly ungovernable.
Mobs of apprentices materialised from nowhere and confronted troopers. Newsletters reported ‘citizens arming themselves …
great disorder … the highest discontents I ever knew’. It was a tinderbox atmosphere that threatened a bloodbath. ‘Divisions
grow worse and worse,’ a correspondent wrote to Monck’s secretary William Clarke. ‘Citizens … expect to be in blood every
hour … fears and jealousies multiply. Nothing will serve the rude multitude but to have a free Parliament.’
¹⁸

Blood did flow after a one-eyed colonel named John Hewson was dispatched to control demonstrating apprentices. Sixty-year-old
Hewson was among several ‘humble’ men whose careers had been
made by the Civil Wars, in which they had proved outstanding soldiers and fought their way up to command a regiment. A shoemaker
by trade, Hewson described himself as beginning life as a ‘child of wrath’ from a ‘wicked and profane family’ before a ‘Godly’
preacher converted him.

Hewson was another regicide. His signature was the eighteenth on Charles I’s death warrant, and he must have guessed that
he would be one of the first targets if the Stuarts ever regained the throne. Now, as London seethed, he made a Stuart return
a little more likely by ordering his troops to fire on stone-throwing apprentices who made the demonstrations very personal
by using old shoes as ammunition to throw at Hewson’s soldiers. Two apprentices were killed and twenty more were injured.
London never forgave Hewson. Six weeks later, a gibbet was erected in Cheapside with a picture depicting Hewson hanging from
it.
¹⁹
The city’s antagonism towards the army would prove crucial in the months to come, and for the fate of the regicides.

The news grew worse: revolt in the fleet, a coup in Ireland and military humiliation in the south. This last item was down
to Arthur Haselrig, who with other Rump leaders contrived to seize the citadel of Portsmouth from the army and then persuade
successive forces sent against them to switch sides. Haselrig announced that if the army persisted in blocking sittings of
Parliament at Westminster, Portsmouth would host the legislature. In the meantime, he marched on London with three thousand
men.

With the crisis deepening, Charles Fleetwood proved a broken reed. The restiveness of those troops who were still loyal demanded
personal appearances and rousing speeches from the commander-in-chief, but ‘he could hardly be prevailed with to go to them.’
When Fleetwood did make an appearance, he would suddenly interrupt himself, go down on his knees and invite the troops to
prayers. He became known for lamenting ‘that God had spit in his face’.
²⁰

The critical moment arrived on 22 December. Events in Portsmouth and London left a group of prominent Presbyterians
worried for their necks, and a deputation went to Bulstrode Whitelocke, Keeper of the Great Seal. They suggested that Fleetwood
be used to finalise a deal with Charles before Monck did. Whitelocke readily agreed. According to his diary he had ‘a long
discourse’ with the commander-in-chief, during which he hammered home the message that ‘all their lives and fortunes would
be at the mercy of the King and his party’ unless terms were agreed in advance. If it was left to Monck they all faced ‘destruction’.
Whitelocke suggested contact be made immediately with Charles in Breda.

The usually hesitant Fleetwood concurred and asked Whitelocke to be the emissary. Whitelocke volunteered to go to Breda that
night. After details were discussed, Whitelocke made to depart, but as he was on his way out he met Harry Vane, John Desborough
and a third officer coming in and he was asked to wait. After about a quarter of an hour Fleetwood emerged from the meeting
with his visitors and ‘in much passion’ told Whitelocke, ‘I cannot do it.’

Whitelocke said, ‘Why?’

Fleetwood answered, ‘These gentlemen have reminded me and it is true that I am engaged not to do any such thing without My
Lord Lambert’s consent.’

Whitelocke rejoined that Lambert was too far away to be consulted on something that had to be ‘instantly acted’.

Fleetwood said, ‘I cannot do it without him.’

Whitelocke: ‘You will ruin yourself and your friends.’

Fleetwood: ‘I cannot help it.’
²¹

Next morning, Fleetwood surrendered the keys of the Houses of Parliament to the Speaker. He gave notice that the guards on
the doors had been withdrawn, and that members ‘might attend the discharge of their duty’. That put the Rump back in power.

Just over a week later, on 2 January 1660, Monck invaded. There was no opposition. His first night in England was spent peacefully
at Wooler, thirty miles into Northumberland. There a messenger from the Speaker of the House caught up with him with a letter
containing news that the Parliament he had sworn to restore was now indeed restored. It conveyed ‘hearty thanks’ to him for
what he had done. The messenger also brought an order to Lambert to withdraw and send his men back to their positions before
the coup.

Had George Monck possessed no hidden agenda, no thought of making himself master of the country for whatever purpose, this
was the moment for him to halt. He did no such thing; there was no order to withdraw in the message and so on his army came.
As yet, he had no authority for an invasion, but he justified his advance on the grounds that Lambert still posed a threat.
Monck wrote to the Speaker that he had ‘intelligence which was certain that Lambert was marching back to London to oppose
your sitting in freedom and honour’ and was raising fresh troops.
²²

In jumpy, rioting London there was a fear of civil war, but it was not to be. Across the country, garrisons were declaring
for Parliament while Lambert’s demoralised army had disintegrated. In the first few days of January a messenger from London
found Lambert at Northallerton, his twelve-thousand-strong army shrunk to himself, two officers and fifty troopers.
²³
This would not, however, be John Lambert’s lowest moment. George Monck had worse to hand out to the would-be Cromwell a few
months later.

On 4 January, Monck reached Morpeth, half a day’s march from Newcastle. There to greet him was the first of hundreds of dignitaries
who would turn out to cheer and petition him at every crossroads on his way south. Invariably he was greeted as a liberator,
the man who had stood up to the army and might restore harmony. At Morpeth it was the Sheriff of Northumberland who led the
local welcome, but a more important emissary was from the City of London. The Lord Mayor had sent William Man, the ceremonial
sword bearer, with a message praying for Monck to deliver a ‘full’ and ‘free’ Parliament. That was code either for the restoration
of MPs excluded by Pride’s Purge or for a new election to fill the empty seats in Parliament – either of which could open
the door to the Stuarts. As yet there was little sign of an upsurge in royalist
support but every sign of public dissatisfaction with the republican government. As ever, Monck himself would not be drawn
on his own aspirations for the country. To all the petitioners awaiting him on the trek to London with the same message he
would reply by restating his commitment to the Commonwealth – and, by implication, to the Rump.

Still no one, Roundhead or Cavalier, knew his real purpose. ‘Monck, no flesh understands,’ wrote John Mordaunt that January.
‘What he really is none knows.’ Pepys made the same judgment. ‘All the world is at a loss to know what Monck will do,’ he
noted.
²⁴
James Butler, Earl of Ormond, advised fellow royalists not to count on Monck as their man. ‘What his further intentions are,
or for whom, I will not so much as guess.’ Monck was a man who had learned during his life that he could best survive by blowing
with the wind. His famed inscrutability stemmed from his fear that he might misread the weather.

The invasion was legalised a few days later. A fulsome letter from the Speaker thanked Monck again for his ‘never to be forgotten
faithful service’ and authorised him ‘as speedily as you can to come to London’. Somewhat astonishingly, given the Rump’s
distrust of the military, the letter gave Monck
carte blanche
as to the size of his invading army. It invited him to bring ‘what forces you think fit to march with or after you’.
²⁵

‘Old George’ ignored the injunction to hurry and took his time. He spent four days in Newcastle and five in York, purging
suspect militia officers and continuing to weed out ‘fanatics’ from his own ranks. In York, he held a long meeting with a
gout-ridden Lord Fairfax, before enjoying the hospitality of the latter’s mansion at Nun Appleton eleven miles away. The great
Civil War leader was now a barely disguised royalist and is said to have pressed on Monck the Stuart case. According to the
French biographer Guizot, ‘Fairfax even urged him to remain at York, and to declare at once for the king.’ Did the guest respond?
Did he, one old soldier to another after a boozy late-night feast, unburden his soul on the matter of the
one question everyone would soon be asking? Given the habitual secrecy of the man it seems unlikely. No outsider was in his
counsel yet.

George Monck’s next obstacle to overcome was the Rump. When he crossed into England over the deeply frozen Tweed, Haselrig,
Scot and the Rump had been back in power a week. The mercurial Sir Harry Vane was no longer among their number; having been
cast into the outer darkness for colluding with the junta, he was about to be banished. His disgrace left Arthur Haselrig,
whose standing had been enhanced by the Portsmouth affair, more than ever the republicans’ leading light. The day after his
arrival Haselrig easily topped the poll of members for a new Council of State. He and Thomas Scot were to dominate the Rump
in what would prove its final months.

The other big beast in the republican ranks, Edmund Ludlow, was now a lone wolf under attack. Six months earlier he had been
appointed military commissioner – commander-in-chief – in Ireland with a larger army behind him than Monck or Fleetwood. Then
came the grandees’ coup in October, which sent him hurrying back from Dublin to London. All that he subsequently achieved
through his attempted bridge-building between army and Parliament was the distrust of both sides. To cap it all, in mid-December
came the coup in Dublin. The castle was seized by pro-Monck officers, and their allies took over strategic centres throughout
the province. An uneasy alliance now controlled the island – on one side a council of officers chaired by the regicide Sir
Hardress Waller, whose life depended on keeping out the Stuarts; on the other two local power-brokers, Sir Charles Coote and
Lord Broghill, both of them in contact with the royalists and intent on bringing the Stuarts back.

In a vain attempt to restore his authority, Ludlow returned to Dublin on 31 December, only to find the city and every other
town except Duncannon in hostile hands. Ludlow spent fruitless days on a man-o’-war outside Duncannon trying to muster support.
Then came news that his Irish enemies had launched treason proceedings
against him in Parliament. He was accused of deserting his post in Ireland and of plotting with the army junta. That sent
him at full speed once more to Westminster to defend himself.