Murder on High Holborn (48 page)

‘His egotistical machinations caused the deaths of three hundred sailors, Strange, Quelch, Snowflake, Scarface Roberts, Manning, half the Sanhedrin, Atkinson, Ursula, Sherwin…’

‘Actually, Wiseman says Sherwin died of natural causes, if a pickled liver can be deemed natural. He just slipped away over his ale, and it was unfortunate that you happened to be the one to discover his body.’

The bells stopped for the ringers to catch their breath, and instead came the sound of Thurloe’s fellow benchers singing hymns in Lincoln’s Inn’s chapel. They bellowed gustily about the Resurrection, and Chaloner’s thoughts returned again to the Fifth Monarchists.

‘I half wish the Last Millennium had come today,’ he said. ‘It is something of an anticlimax to find everything the same.’

‘Religious sentiments, Thomas?’ asked Thurloe mildly. ‘That is unlike you.’

‘Maybe I am just tired of people trying to kill me – Lambe, Eliza, Lawson, Ursula, Atkinson, Scott, Manning, Leving, Rupert—’

‘Rupert?’ echoed Thurloe, startled. ‘I sincerely doubt he would bother with you.’

‘He gave me a gun that did not work and sent me off to tackle Atkinson and Ursula alone.’

‘Guns are unpredictable, Tom, as you often say yourself. It was unfortunate that his failed to go off when you needed it, but I doubt it was deliberate.’

‘Of course it was deliberate! He is a soldier, and should know how to load a gun properly. He wanted me dead because I know about his cannon. If Wiseman had not been on hand, he would have let me drown.’

‘But you were laying hold of Ursula and Atkinson for him – two people who were a lot more dangerous than you could ever be.’

‘The palace guards would have picked them off – they were sitting ducks on the river. But Rupert hoped I would die in the struggle, too, and thus draw a line under the whole affair.’

‘Perhaps you are right – it sounds like his thinking. Clarendon would have been livid, though. Has he reinstated you yet?’

Chaloner nodded unhappily. ‘Although people now wonder why I have been so suddenly forgiven, and there is a rumour that I blackmailed him into taking me back.’

Thurloe smiled. ‘Such a reputation will do you no harm at White Hall. But the Earl usually finds you some overseas errand once you have been home a week or two, and by the time you return folk will have forgotten all about the Tsar’s jewels.’

‘Unfortunately, he wants me to stay here this time,’ said Chaloner gloomily. ‘Which is awkward, as I need not only to avoid Rupert, but some of Hannah’s creditors – at least until we have some money to pay them what they are owed.’

‘Then I have a solution. One of Cromwell’s sons is experiencing some difficulties deep in the Fens, and he is dear to me for his father’s sake. You are the only one I trust to help him.’

Chaloner brightened. ‘When do I leave?’

Leving was not particularly concerned to find himself in the Tower. He was a useful commodity, and powerful men would soon hire his services again. And if not, he would buy his freedom by producing a register of every Fifth Monarchist in the country.

Of course, it would be bulked up with names that should not be there, like Scott and Chaloner, who had never professed any support for the millenarians. But it would serve them right to be arrested and executed with the rest of them. After all, how dare Scott make off with the secret of Rupert’s guns? And how dare Chaloner take the credit for defeating Ursula and Atkinson? He, Leving, had been the one monitoring them, and although he had not guessed they were double-crossing the Spymaster, that was beside the point.

He sipped the excellent claret that Buckingham had sent to sweeten his time in prison, and smiled. The Duke would not allow his faithful servant to languish too long in a dismal cell, and the wine was proof of it.

He walked to the bed and lay down, suddenly weary. He took the wine with him, and had another gulp. It really was very good, and he was aware of a pleasant lethargy creeping over him. He would repay
all
his enemies with that list, and the slate would be wiped clean.

As he lay there, staring at the ceiling, he became aware that his legs felt oddly heavy, and they ached. He tried to turn over, but did not have the strength, What was the matter with him? Was he ill? Then a horrifying thought occurred to him. What if Buckingham did not want to continue their alliance, and had put something in the bottle to bring it to an end? But surely the Duke would not harm a loyal servant? Leving was still wondering as he slipped slowly into death.

It would have been impossible for Charles II to return to his throne in 1660 and expect to be universally accepted. Hence Joseph Williamson, who ran the country’s intelligence network, was constantly alert for trouble. And there was plenty of it, particularly in the early years of the Restoration. One such plot occurred in the north in 1663, and caused something of a stir because it involved such a large number of people. Among them were a stockinger named John Atkinson, a Fifth Monarchist named Nathaniel Strange, and Roger Jones, alleged author of an infamous underground pamphlet entitled
Mene Tekel, or the Downfall of Tyranny.

Prompt action saw the Northern Plot foiled, and many of its perpetrators were arrested. One was William Leving, and Williamson was quick to take advantage of the situation by making him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Leving gratefully accepted Williamson’s terms, and was allowed to ‘escape’ to track down and trap those rebels who had managed to evade custody. He travelled to London, where he fell in with Atkinson (who did indeed have a kinsman named Grisley Pate), eventually betraying him to Williamson. There is evidence to suggest that Atkinson was also ‘turned’ but played false, accepting the traitor’s penny with no real intention of harming his Cause.

Leving turned to highway robbery in 1665, but was no better at this than he was at rebellion. He was arrested and taken to York, where he wrote a plaintive letter to Williamson begging for help. Williamson responded by transferring him to Newgate, where it is likely that they brokered another agreement, because he was suddenly sent back to York to testify in the trial of Jones and Atkinson. He was poisoned in his cell before he could do it.

Leving’s murder has never been solved. Some historians believe that Atkinson was responsible. Others have highlighted a peculiar relationship between Leving and Buckingham, and suggest that the Duke was the villain, aiming to prevent details of their association from being made public. Either is possible, but unless more evidence comes to light, the mystery will remain.

The Fifth Monarchists saw the execution of Charles I as the first step in ridding Britain of earthly rulers, to clear the way for ‘King Jesus’. Needless to say their expectations were dashed when Charles II was crowned, and they staged a rebellion in 1661, known as the Venner Uprising. A number of leaders were executed or arrested, forcing the movement underground, where it limped along for a few more years before sliding into obscurity. It was probably never very large, and Thurloe did indeed describe its members as ‘worms who thought they could thresh mountains’. It was largely London-based, but its leaders claimed a national following some ten thousand strong.

Active members in the 1660s included Strange, who was a Baptist pastor described by contemporaries as ‘a rash and heady person’; a watchmaker named Richard Quelch; Timothy Roberts; Thomas Glasse; Henry Tucker; John Venner; and Sarah Trapnel, a visionary who was imprisoned for her beliefs and writings. She had a sister named Ursula Adman, who was arrested in 1669 for holding Fifth Monarchy meetings in her house. Roberts and Strange died in 1665, and Tucker was executed in 1666. They proposed that the Kingdom of Christ should be ruled by a Sanhedrin (comprising themselves, naturally), and a plot in 1665 really did aim to kill the King, seize the Tower, ignite London, establish a republic and redistribute all private property.

Hatton Garden was the scene of several bloody incidents involving the persecution of Catholics, and a strange legend grew up around Elizabeth Hatton, wife to the nephew of the man who built Hatton House. She was alleged to have been torn to pieces in a place that came to be called Bleeding Heart Alley. As with many such tales, it evolved from an aggregation of incidents and people, including one Alice Fanshaw, who married into the Hatton family and was suspected of making pacts with the devil. Elizabeth died quite peacefully in 1646.

Other incidents in
Murder on High Holborn
have also been taken from actual events. Three men were hanged for stealing five hundred pounds from the treasury in Taunton for the purposes of rebellion, while Buckingham’s father did have a sorcerer-physician named Dr Lambe, who was torn to pieces by an angry mob in 1628.

Paul Ferine and John Duncombe were Grooms of the Robes in 1660, but neither held the post for long, Duncombe leaving after only ten days. Thomas Odowde and Richard Hubbert were courtiers, and both died in 1665. Peter Pett was Commissioner of the Royal Dockyard at Chatham, and was said to be corrupt; Samuel Pepys’s diary is full of contemptuous references to him. Richard Wiseman, Surgeon to the King, was appointed Master of the Company of Barber-Surgeons in 1665.

John Scott was one of the seventeenth century’s more colourful characters. An inveterate liar and opportunist, he was involved in many schemes to make himself rich, most of which failed. He claimed to have been transported to New Amsterdam for cutting the girdles of Parliamentarian war horses. He returned to England in the 1660s, offering his services as a mapmaker, and styled himself Cartographer Royal; his American wife Dorothea promptly divorced him for desertion.

It was on this visit that he fell into company with Edward Manning, described in reports as ‘fat and grave’. Manning had met Edward Sherwin, a disaffected engineer from Prince Rupert’s Temple Mills gun factory (where John Browne was a foreman), and the three of them decided to sell the secret of Rupert’s cannon to the highest bidder.

We cannot be sure exactly what Rupert had designed, only that it involved ‘turning and annealing’ iron in such a way as to give it all the advantages of brass. The Prince fancied himself as an inventor, and had already worked on improvements to other weapons, as well as a particular kind of exploding glass – ‘Prince Rupert’s Drops’. The method of making the guns was kept in strictest secrecy, but they were probably expensive to make and never did make him rich, although he did patent his metal and the process of making artillery with it.

Various shenanigans followed as Scott, Manning and Sherwin flirted with Georges Pellissary, treasurer of the French navy, all trying to cheat and double-cross each other. The upshot was that the French spent a large sum of money to pay for a prototype, but it never materialised and the project fizzled out – although not before Manning and Scott had decided that the gunmetal would do rather nicely for making counterfeit coins.

Manning and Sherwin fade into oblivion at this point, but Scott went on to other adventures. He was the man largely responsible for the arrest of Samuel Pepys in 1679. The accusations were malicious nonsense on Scott’s part, and an investigation by Pepys proved it. Scott was never punished for his perfidy, though; he slipped away to the Caribbean where he became Speaker of the Montserrat Assembly and died in 1704.

War with the United Provinces of the Netherlands was officially declared on 22 February 1665. Thus when HMS
London
exploded on 7 March 1665, it was regarded as a significant setback. Pepys wrote in his diary that three hundred people were killed, with only twenty-four surviving the blast.

She had been travelling up the Thames to collect Sir John Lawson (actually a Vice-Admiral rather than an Admiral), who was to take her to join the Channel Fleet, and a number of his relations were on board. The cause of the explosion was unknown, although as a man-of-war, she would have been carrying gunpowder. One theory is that a sailor was careless with a candle. However, she has recently been the subject of a marine excavation, and if she survives the attentions of unscrupulous treasure hunters, perhaps we shall have answers at last.

Lawson was a ‘tarpaulin’, a man who had grown up with the sea and knew its ways. He was a lively character, whose rough tongue, low birth and lack of formal education led many to underestimate him. He was not a skilled politician, and recklessly consorted with fanatical sects like Fifth Monarchists. Various strokes of luck in his early career led him to assume that God approved of what he was doing, although his good fortune abandoned him at the Battle of Lowestoft in June 1665. He was wounded in the knee, and died shortly thereafter of gangrene.