The King's Revenge (36 page)

Whalley and Goffe were not completely hamstrung by their hermitic existence in Hadley. These two clever and energetic men
may have lived in fear and have been constantly under cover, but through a front man they went very successfully into business.
Their partner was the influential Daniel Gookin, a friend of the two since they had sailed to New England together on the
Prudent Mary
in May 1660. Copies of the Goffe letters show that he and his father-in-law eventually became sufficiently prosperous to
send a message home to England asking their families not to send them any further remittances until they asked for more money.
The pair went into stock raising and ‘a little trade with the Indians’. By 1672 they ‘had a stock in New England money of
over one hundred pounds, all debts paid’.

In 1665, Colonel Nicholas discovered the connection between Gookin and the ‘traitors’ Whalley and Goffe. The regicides’ whereabouts
continued to mystify him. He issued an order to seize stock nominally owned by Gookin. Using the rights embodied in the colony’s
charter, Gookin blocked the seizure.

Dixwell moved to nearby New Haven and decided to dice with fate by living openly as a settler. He possibly calculated that
the risk for him was low because the authorities in London had no idea where he had fled to. If so, he was correct. Under
the alias James Davids, he married and, after his first wife died, married again. He raised a family and lived as a free man
and a respected member of the community for another quarter of a century. Only on his death
bed did he reveal his identity. He asked that no monument be erected at his grave ‘lest his enemies might dishonour his ashes’.
A simple gravestone was erected, inscribed with his initials – ‘J. D. Esq.’ – his age and the time of his death.

As for his friends in exile, one of them would become an American legend.

1665–1692

Following the death of John Lisle, life for the exiles was filled with tension. Several decided to leave Switzerland for Germany;
they included William Say, who tried to persuade Edmund Ludlow to go with him. Ludlow refused to budge, reasoning that there
was no point in spending life on the run, always looking over one’s shoulder. Meanwhile, Algernon Sidney was trying to stay
at least one step ahead of the assassins on his trail. Although not excepted from the Act of Oblivion, it was clear that his
remarks in favour of the trial of Charles I, together with his publicly stated antipathy to monarchy, placed him high on Charles
II’s list of enemies.

During the next few years, the government in London was to rank Sidney and Ludlow as the most dangerous fugitives at large
in Europe. They continued to be prime targets for royalist assassination squads. Of the two, Sidney was the more actively
threatening. At the end of 1664, he was moving fitfully through northern Europe in search of support for an invasion plan.
Early the next year, he settled at Augsburg in Germany where once more an attempt was made on
his life. In April, a group of assassins tracked him down and planned to kill him. The squad was led by Andrew White, one
of three Irish brothers who had become soldiers of fortune before taking up the precarious trade of secret agent. Sidney avoided
White’s bullet or knife purely by chance – leaving for the Netherlands the day before the planned assassination. It was becoming
clear to Sidney that his name was on a secret death list.

Sidney’s invasion plans boiled down to gaining support in the Netherlands – both from the exile community there and from the
government. The political climate in the Netherlands convinced many of the exiles that at long last the tide was turning in
their favour. In 1665, skirmishing between England and the Dutch Republic had turned into outright war. For republicans like
Sidney, this was a chance to get one of the few republics in Europe on their side to destroy the English monarchy. There even
existed what might form the basis of an invasion force. The Dutch army had an English regiment, created from the remnants
of English regiments that had served the Dutch until the outbreak of war in 1665.
^*
The majority had returned home, but some were left behind who agreed to sign a pledge of allegiance to the Dutch Republic.
With luck and persuasion, this Anglo-Dutch regiment might form the backbone of an army with which to invade England. William
Say suggested the time had come to ‘feel the pulse of ye Dutch, touching their uniting with ye honest party in England against
Charles Stewart’.
¹
He wrote to Sidney and they made for Holland, hoping to build up support for an Anglo-Dutch republican pact.

In The Hague, Sidney brought all his charm and persuasive powers to work on Johan de Witt, assuring him that English officers
and men would rally to the venture. De Witt was ambivalent. Like Ludlow, he had a long memory and recalled the beatings the
Dutch
fleet had taken at the hands of Admiral Blake and the Commonwealth navy. De Witt worried that by helping to create a new English
Commonwealth he might be preparing the ground for the ruin of Holland.

De Witt was unconvinced that the English exiles could deliver on their promises. He saw Sidney as a whipper-up of intrigue
but not a man to lead an army. The man they needed was Ludlow. Ludlow had attained something like mythical status – largely
by dint of keeping his head down for several years and thereby becoming the object of much speculation. From the moment he
had left England, he was the subject of lurid press reports naming him as the leader of just about every plot, real or imaginary.
From the shores of Lake Geneva, Ludlow remained sceptical. He had mistrusted the Dutch ever since de Witt had allowed George
Downing to abduct three of his fellow judges and make a mockery of the Netherlands’ lauded policy of political asylum.

Sidney wrote furious letters urging Ludlow to come to Holland. William Say, Slingsby Bethel and John Phelps all wrote too.
The band of would-be rebels in Holland was growing. Even Cornet Joyce was in Holland, having come over with his family in
1660. Although not excluded from the Act of Oblivion, George Joyce knew his role in taking Charles I into army captivity would
never be forgiven. As a lieutenant-colonel, he was just the sort of man a group of insurrectionists could do with in their
ranks.

While the exiles were gathering and plotting in Europe, England suffered a series of disasters. Bubonic plague took hold in
London in 1665 and killed a hundred thousand people. This was followed by the great fire that swept through the city and destroyed
it. When the fire took hold, Charles was swept up in the immediacy of the disaster. His youthful love of action returned and
he launched himself into the fray. Abandoning his cosseted life, he engaged in the struggle to deal with the fire. Together
with his brother James, he directed attempts to contain the blaze until it was too late. Only when all was lost did he retreat
from the stricken city. This was Charles at his best:
the fireman, the reactive man of action. Afterwards he relapsed into his more habitual mode of dreamer, excited by Christopher
Wren’s plans for rebuilding the city and St Paul’s Cathedral. The notion of creating the sublime from disaster suited the
king’s mindset better than did the more difficult flux of political life.

With anti-monarchists still active on the Continent, the government felt it had to concoct some manner of dealing with the
threat they posed. To make the best of a difficult task, it was decided that Charles would issue a form of amnesty with a
threat attached: sixteen named revolutionaries and anti-monarchists should return to England immediately or suffer the penalty
of being attainted for treason. Two key men on the list were former New Model Army hard men Thomas Kelsey and John Desborough.
Kelsey was a Fifth Monarchist major-general strongly opposed to the Stuart monarchy, or any monarchy. Desborough, the former
republican major-general who had shown his muscle in bullying Richard Cromwell out of office, had gone to Holland determined
to lead an insurrection.

Also on the list were William Scot, the son of the executed regicide and Cromwellian spymaster Thomas Scot, and Dr Edward
Richardson, the cleric and leader of the doomed Yorkshire uprising. Three names originally on the list were struck off after
lobbying: Sir James Harrington, who had been a judge in the king’s trial, Oliver St John, the lawyer and diplomat who had
first risen to notice in 1640 urging Parliament to overturn Charles’s ship money tax, and Algernon Sidney. Richard Cromwell’s
name was kept off the list by his wife who lobbied the court, saying that if her husband returned to England his creditors
would bankrupt him.

Unsurprisingly, Ludlow was not on the list. The plotters continued to turn to him for the leadership he was loath to give.
De Witt decided to make an offer to test the resolve of the English opposition. He would put up £10,000 to raise an army of
four thousand men to launch an invasion which was to land at Newcastle. There was one condition – Ludlow had to lead the invasion.
When Say wrote to
Ludlow telling him of this, the veteran general remained unconvinced.

Meanwhile, Charles II’s spymaster set a honey trap aimed at one of the exiles. The chosen agent was the royalist spy and future
celebrated writer Aphra Behn. Her target was William Scot, with whom Behn was reputed to have had an affair at an English
sugar plantation in Suriname in 1663 when aged twenty-three.
^*
Three years later, Behn was sent to Antwerp in an attempt to rekindle their affair and recruit Scot as an agent. In preparation
for her mission, spymaster Joseph Williamson gave her the code name Astrea. In the time-honoured way of managing secret agents,
Astrea was kept on a very tight financial rein.

In August 1666, she reported she had made contact with Scot, who was in an English regiment and based in Antwerp. Scot was
given the code name Celadon. According to Behn, he agreed to spy for the English crown. ‘Though at first shy, he became by
arguments extremely willing to undertake the service …’
²

Scot was playing a dangerous game and may have been a double agent, working for both London and The Hague. Among the English
living in Holland were royalist sympathisers who would be more than happy to kill a republican spy. Behn discovered that a
Cavalier named Coney was threatening to murder Scot. She reported that Coney ‘boasts as if he were the King’s right hand’
but spoke ‘such rhodomontades’ (vain boasting) she was unsure if he could be trusted.
³
Wisely, Scot moved from Antwerp to Rotterdam, the heartland of much of English republican activity.

Within a few weeks, Scot was proving a useful source. In mid-September he wrote to Behn that Sidney was ‘in great esteem with
De Witt’ and that a parliamentarian captain named Thomas Woodman was offering to sink ships in the Thames to hinder the English
fleet.
⁴
He next wrote to report that he had visited a Quaker exile and found several other renegades there including John Phelps,
the former clerk to the regicide court. He judged that ‘something is brewing.’

Scot next sent word to Charles’s spymaster Joseph Williamson that the plan was to raise an army of twenty thousand men. Despite
their fervour, the exiles’ plans were making little progress. The problem was that Ludlow would not take part without cast-iron
assurances from the Dutch that they would hold to their offer of support, while the Dutch would not make those assurances
unless Ludlow was willing to lead.

Ludlow stubbornly refused to commit himself, saying: ‘truly to me, the Lord by his providences speaks to his people rather
fitter for suffering than action.’
⁵
Without Ludlow, the invasion plan from Holland was dead.

There was another blow to hopes of insurrection: Desborough took advantage of Charles’s call to come home. He returned to
England, was imprisoned in the Tower for a year and then allowed to retire, derided by royalists, despaired of by republicans
and mocked in Samuel Butler’s satire
Hudibras
.

A month after Desborough’s return home, the government in London relaxed. Secretary of State William Arlington was told, ‘There
should be no great danger of uprisings now that the most dangerous men were secured.’
⁶

William Scot revised his opinion of the threat from Holland. On 14 September 1666, he wrote to Aphra Behn that he thought
‘the fanatics’ need not be feared ‘if due caution observed’.
⁷
Within a week, Scot learned that all his work had paid off: he had been pardoned. According to Behn, he was ‘overjoyed’.

In spite of all her work, Aphra Behn was never paid. After a spell in debtors’ prison, she took to writing to support herself.
Her first book was
Oroonoko
, a novel about exotic lovers in exile.

The exiles now became further embroiled in the murky world of European power politics. Just as the Dutch had toyed with using
the exiles in their war with the English, the French now tried to do the same. In January 1666, an officer in the service
of the French had
visited Ludlow in Vevey to propose an alliance between the English radicals and the French and Dutch. The idea behind this
was obviously to explore combining their forces against the English crown. Substantial funds were reportedly available. Ludlow
responded diplomatically: ‘If any just and honourable way should be proposed for the restitution of the republic in England
… I would hazard my life in that service.’
⁸

Ludlow learned that de Witt wanted him to go to Paris with Sidney to conclude a formal treaty with Louis XIV, to which Louis
was said to have agreed in principle. Sidney travelled to Paris, where he hit a major snag: Ludlow refused to follow him.
The indefatigable Sidney nevertheless managed to secure an audience with the Sun King. He asked Louis for 100,000 francs.
Louis countered by offering 20,000 francs, with more to come when Ludlow was seen to be on board. Once Ludlow made it clear
he would have nothing to do with the French, Sidney’s English supporters fell away like leaves in autumn and the exiles’ dreams
of England slipped into eternal winter.

With all chance of their revolution ended, Ludlow, the leader who refused to lead, turned to writing what he called a ‘history’
that would be ‘as true as the gospel’.
⁹
In disappointment, Sidney also turned from action to writing. His major works on republican theory, though a significant
influence on the American founding fathers, would not be published in his lifetime.

As Charles’s reign moved into its second decade, he continued to seek out new mistresses with which to divert himself. He
had long enjoyed the theatre, both for its entertainment value and as a means to see new young actresses he might fancy. One
actress he had often spent time with was Nell Gwyn, a former prostitute who had become a theatrical star by virtue of her
intelligence, talent and wit. Though not a great beauty, she had a vivacity and style that captivated her audience and she
became the most celebrated actress of her age. In 1669, the king made her his mistress. In comparison to the greed and scheming
of more aristocratic mistresses
such as Barbara Villiers, Nell Gwyn had the advantage of not requiring so much money to be expended upon her; nor was she
involved in the poisonous intrigue at court. A bawdy rhyme summed up her appeal:

Nell had one other advantage – she was genuinely fond of Charles and never asked him for anything. In turn, the king seems
to have been fond of her and installed her in a mansion in Pall Mall so he could walk from the palace to her front door. Once
he was safely behind Nell’s door, the king could lower his guard. While plotting a risky secret treaty with France
^*
in the hope of at last gaining from Louis XIV the independent income he craved, Charles was able to relax into a simpler
world with the uneducated actress from Coal Yard Alley.