The King's Revenge (12 page)

With information coming from England that the time was right to carry out an invasion, Charles and Hyde implored the Spanish
to prepare a fleet to sail as soon as possible. Rumours and intelligence flashed back and forth across the Channel, and both
sides jockeyed for the initiative. The Protectorate ordered all Catholics and royalists to leave London and stay at least
five miles from the city. Then in March, the Sealed Knot and the Action Party received devastating news: the Spanish would
not send a fleet. Despite this, the round-up of activists continued, with more royalists and Fifth Monarchists arrested. A
court was convened to try the royalists. In June two were beheaded and in July three were hanged, drawn and quartered.

By now, Cromwell’s health, always brittle, had deteriorated due to the malarial fever that had plagued him for more than twenty
years. One weekend in August when he was feeling better he went riding at Hampton Court. The Quaker George Fox described him
as looking ‘like a dead man’.
²⁷

September 1658—October 1659

Death finally caught up with Oliver Cromwell on a muggy summer afternoon in 1658. He died in a bedchamber in the crumbling
glory of Whitehall Palace within hailing distance of the spot where the king had been beheaded almost a decade earlier. A
bout of malaria that finally saw him relapse into a semi-conscious fever put paid to this most formidable of Englishmen. Cromwell
had survived myriad battles, intrigues and assassination plots only to be laid low by an insect. He breathed his last on 3
September. It was on this date that, eight years before, he had won the Battle of Dunbar, his most stunning victory of the
Civil Wars, while on the same day a year later he had crushed the royalists at Worcester and thus brought the wars to an end.
Understandably he knew the date as ‘a happy day’.

As Cromwell whispered his final incoherent words, England was buffeted by a fearsome gale that uprooted trees, blew down buildings
and tossed ships on to the shore. The howls of wind and the roars of thunder over Whitehall were said to be the sounds of
the Devil taking Cromwell’s soul to hell. It was put about that to win at Dunbar and Worcester he had mortgaged his soul to
Satan, who had returned on the anniversary of those victories to call in the debt.
¹

With the Lord Protector’s death, God or Satan had claimed the souls of fifteen of the sixty-nine judges in the king’s trial.
The most prominent of the other dead judges was Henry Ireton, Cromwell’s tireless son-in-law, who outlived Charles by just
over two years, dying of fever while campaigning in Ireland. One more of the king’s judges would soon be joining them – Thomas
Pride, whose troops had notoriously purged Parliament of MPs opposed to putting their king on trial back in 1649. Pride died
within three weeks of his hero, Cromwell.

The Cromwellian establishment laid on an awesome state funeral modelled on that of Charles I’s father, James. The event radiated
power and solemnity. It began with the lying in state at Somerset House, once the residence of Charles’s queen, Henrietta
Maria. Cromwell’s corpse – a stinking mess after a botched attempt to embalm it – could not be displayed, so a life-sized
figure carved in wood was used, the face moulded in wax. The effigy lay on a raised plinth dressed as a king in ermine, lace
and velvet and spattered in gold ornament. According to the official account ‘in the right-hand was a scepter; in the left,
a globe … Behind the head was placed a rich chair of tissued gold, whereon was placed an Imperial crown, which lay high, that
the people might behold it.’
²

On the day of the funeral the crown was placed on the effigy’s head and the figure was borne out to a velvet-shrouded catafalque
for the procession to Westminster Abbey. One of the pall bearers, Bulstrode Whitelocke, spied ‘infinite’ crowds jammed behind
the lines of soldiers stretching along the route in their new red coats. Such was the draw of the event that people reportedly
came from as far as the Orkney Islands to view the Protector’s last journey.
³
The Knight Marshal of England headed the procession on horseback, bearing a black truncheon tipped at both ends with gold.
Behind him were more mounted marshals, then, according to an account given to Parliament, forty lines of ‘poor men in gowns’,
followed by hundreds of ‘inferior servants’, lines of drummers, dignitaries, officials of the court, commissioners, ecclesiastics,
flagmen, stewards,
officers of the army, and finally the rows of naval and military detachments seen at every state funeral to this day.
⁴

Among the chief mourners were some of the most prominent of the military men who had sat in judgment of the king in 1649.
They included the stern Puritan William Goffe, a major-general whom Cromwell had entrusted with the government of Berkshire,
Hampshire and Sussex during his ill-judged experiment with military rule; Colonel ‘Dick’ Ingoldsby, Cromwell’s easy-going
cousin, the loyalest of the loyal according to Richard Cromwell; and Colonel John Barkstead, governor of the Tower of London,
a feared and not a particularly savoury individual. Of these, Ingoldsby would play the most decisive role in the next two
years, tossing away all vestiges of that reputation for loyalty.

Notably absent were the ‘Commonwealthsmen’, the uncompromising republicans who had been among Cromwell’s closest collaborators
in the Civil Wars, but who had parted company with him when he abolished the Commonwealth. The Fifth Monarchy leader General
Thomas Harrison boycotted the funeral, as did the religious radical Sir Harry Vane and Edmund Ludlow. The only former allies
from the ranks of leading republicans who did turn out were the sharp-tongued Sir Arthur Haselrig, who was one of the five
MPs Charles had tried to arrest on the eve of the first Civil War, and the Cheshire lawyer John Bradshaw, president of the
High Court of Justice that tried the king. Among royalists, Bradshaw was after Cromwell the most reviled of all the king’s
judges. His hectoring attitude to Charles during the trial remained a perpetual source of fury for them. Bradshaw exhibited
‘all the pride, impudence, and superciliousness imaginable’, wrote Edward Hyde, who might equally have been describing the
lifetime characteristics of the king whom Bradshaw was trying. By 1658 Bradshaw was an ill man, but he still had a year to
live; Haselrig, not far behind Bradshaw in the pantheon of royalist hate figures, would survive for a further year.
⁵

Royalists were predictably venomous about the funeral. The poet Abraham Cowley bemoaned ‘the folly and trouble of all public
pageantry’ and sneered at this particular example: ‘Methought it somewhat represented the life of him for whom it was made:
much noise, much tumult, much expense, much magnificence, much vainglory. Briefly a great show and yet after all this an ill
sight.’
⁶

It is a fair assumption that Cromwell’s departure prompted wild celebration in Charles’s court in exile. This notoriously
riotous establishment had recently relocated to Brussels, in the Spanish Netherlands. The embittered Cavaliers who comprised
much of the court must have exulted at the death of the man who had bested them on so many fields. The news was brought to
Charles as he was playing tennis. An aide arrived shouting ‘The devil is dead!’ One imagines Charles’s courtiers gathered
before the delighted prince, toasting him many times over at the news that ‘the devil’ was no more, their single regret being
that one of their own was not the agent of Cromwell’s death.

Their hopes of a restoration lay in the expected inadequacies of Cromwell’s nominated successor, his uninspiring son Richard.
Few sons could have been more different from a father than the gentle, kindly Richard, who blanched at the thought of bloodshed
and hadn’t even commanded a platoon. The generals referred derisively to him as ‘the young gentleman’. In anticipation that
Richard would not last long in his appointed role, a confident call to arms was drafted in Brussels for Charles by his secretary
of state, Sir Edward Nicholas. This denounced the new Protector and commanded all men ‘of what[ever] condition, quality, religion,
interest or persuasion … immediately to put themselves into arms and to resist, oppose and destroy the said usurper Richard
Cromwell’. The declaration promised a free pardon to all former opponents who would pledge allegiance ‘except the murderers
of the King our father of ever blessed memory’.

The declaration was never issued. Whatever the doubts about Richard, England was hardly seething for change and certainly
was far from ready for the return of the Stuarts. The historian N. H. Keeble writes: ‘Many were coming to recognise that in
significant
respects the experience of Cromwellian rule was more liberal and humane than that of Charles I, particularly in the quite
exceptionally generous policy of religious toleration, its allowance of an unusual degree of freedom of the press and its
aspiration to reform the law.’ Keeble concludes, ‘All the indications were that the Protectorate would survive.’
⁷

Charles’s Chancellor Edward Hyde would not have disagreed. His analysis must have made grim reading for his royal master.
Reviewing the situation from Brussels, Hyde wrote, ‘We have not yet found the advantage by Cromwell’s death as we reasonably
hoped … Nay rather we are the worse for it and the less esteemed, people imagining by the great calm that has followed that
the nation is united.’ He added despairingly: ‘In truth the King hath very few friends.’ Revisiting that period some years
later, he recalled that ‘the king’s condition never looked so hopeless, so desperate’.
⁸

In these pessimistic circumstances Cavaliers were told to wait and hope. ‘We know very well that this good change must be
attended with other alterations before any eminent fruit will appear to the King,’ wrote Hyde. ‘His Majesty doth not expect
that his friends should do any rash thing for him.’

There was one cloud darkening the Protectorate sky and uncovering a shaft of light for Charles – the army. Phrases like ‘seething
discontent’ and ‘badly demoralised’ come to mind in attempting to describe the mood of the New Model Army in 1659. Oliver
Cromwell had moulded it into the most formidable force in Europe, but he had left a legacy of unresolved grievances at every
level that ate away at morale. Senior commanders were restless over their own loss of influence in government. Junior officers
resented the repeated purges of their peers. And most dangerous of all, the ranks were mutinous over a huge build-up in back
pay. This mix of grievances was fertile soil for the preachifying ideologues who dotted the army – Fifth Monarchy men, that
new religious breed, the Quakers, and followers of a profusion of dissident sects such as the Ranters. The army was a nightmare
to control.

As Protector, Richard was constitutionally commander-in-chief. Within days of his assumption of office, the two most senior
generals, Charles Fleetwood and John Desborough – both of whom had married into the Cromwell family – were angling to wrest
command of the army from Richard and vest it in Fleetwood. They aimed at complete army independence from the civil power,
a state within a state. In the autumn, army petitions and mass meetings pushed the cause. However, the much-despised Richard
fought the generals off. He surprised everyone by confronting restless troops and delivering thundering speeches. The words
were probably written by John Thurloe, but they had the men cheering Richard Cromwell. Bolstered by this success, Richard
took another brave – but ultimately disastrous – step. In need of money and hoping to reinforce his legitimacy as Protector
through a parliamentary vote, he announced an election. This was to open the door for all his enemies, not least Charles Stuart.
⁹

Three substantial groupings emerged from the election. The largest, at up to 170 seats, was the so-called Court Party, Cromwellians
led by Oliver’s workhorse secretary of state John Thurloe. Next was an amorphous group of around a hundred neutrals, mostly
Presbyterians of various political hues, some ranged for and some against the Protectorate. Among them were what Edward Hyde
called ‘masked royalists’, men who hid their monarchist views and were expected by such as Hyde to embarrass and impede the
Cromwellians. Last, although anything but least, were fifty or so republicans hell-bent on pulling down the Cromwellian constitution
and reinstalling the republic. Among them were seven unapologetic regicides including Edmund Ludlow and Thomas Scot, as well
as Sir Arthur Haselrig and Sir Harry Vane.

Top military figures secured seats too. The cavalry leader John Okey – whose battlefield skill had rescued the parliamentary
cause at the Battle of Naseby – was joined by the ambitious John Lambert and Lord Fairfax, the old war hero. Fairfax took
to posting himself
next to Haselrig in the House, which might have been understood as suggesting that the republicans had a mightily influential
ally. Few would have suspected that before the year was out Fairfax would be plotting to bring back the monarchy; indeed perhaps
the man himself would have disbelieved it.

The Parliament lasted eighty-six days. It was a roller-coaster ride of filibuster and obstruction as the republicans, led
by Haselrig and Vane, attempted to tear off the Protector’s wings and make the case for a return of the Commonwealth. Legislation
confirming Richard’s powers was repeatedly stalled, and progress was held up on tackling major problems, principal among them
army pay. At the same time the Commons was becoming a forum for antimilitary sentiment as Presbyterians and closet royalists
unloosed their resentment at the years of military rule. One jibe against an old comrade-in-arms provoked John Okey to complain,
‘I see it will be a crime to be an army man. Is the expense of our blood nothing?’
¹⁰

Tensions between army and Parliament increased sharply in March after a parliamentary committee began to investigate specific
allegations against army grandees. The most heinous of these was the shipping of some eighty suspected royalists into slavery
in Jamaica without trial after the Penruddock uprising. Republicans and royalists joined in condemnation of the affair.

The crunch came in April. The General Council of Officers presented Richard with a petition demanding support for the ‘Good
Old Cause’ and for Cavalier elements to be rooted out of the army, arrears of pay to be settled and steps taken to root out
‘wickedness’. This was a scarcely veiled attack on Richard’s conservative councillors. It was followed by more of the same
at an emotional day of army fasting and prayer, with sermons delivered by radical republican ministers Hugh Peters and John
Owen.

A day later, at a meeting of five hundred officers, John Desborough proposed an oath declaring the justice of the execution
of Charles I. Instead, on 18 April Richard ordered the officers’
council to dissolve and its members to disperse. From a Cromwell it was a feeble gesture – and the officers refused to obey.