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  ‘Old Rowley'

  AVery Private Life

  of Charles II

  Dennis Wheatley

  ‘Old Rowley' tells the story of England’s favourite king, Charles II.

  In writing this book, Dennis Wheatley has missed nothing. He is a master at evoking atmosphere and is at his brilliant best in this fascinating biography which recounts Charles’s years in exile, his triumphant return in 1660, and the golden years of his reign.

  We meet the King attending to the affairs of state with ladies on either arm; we go ‘wenching’ with his courtiers; we excitedly follow him, disguised, working in servants’ halls up and down the country and hiding in the famous oak tree. And we also meet the artless, charming Nell— orange-seller, actress, companion to the famous and mistress to the Merry Monarch himself. ‘Old Rowley’.

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  First published 1933

  The Lymington edition 1967

  This Arrow edition 1969

  This book is published at a net price and

  supplied subject to the Publishers Association

  Standard Condition of Sale registered under

  the Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1966

  Made and printed in Great Britain by The Anchor Press Ltd Tip tree, Essex

  09 001400 6

  Dedication

  ‘It maketh me only the more ready to serve thee, with all the vigour that time hath left me, and all the loyalty that no time can take away.’

  James Butler, Duke of Ormonde and Viceroy of Ireland. In a letter to Charles II acknowledging a warning of a plot to force his resignation, after an intimate knowledge of his master, as Child, Prince, Exile and King, for Fifty Years.

  ‘Give me ten thousand good and loyal soldiers and subjects and I will soon drive all these rogues forth out of my Kingdom.’

  Charles II, after his defeat at Worcester.

  Thus, with these excellent sentiments before me, I offer this book to those loyal friends who stood by me in 1932.

  Dennis Wheatley

  Contents

  One

  The Reason why King ‘went on his Travels’

  Two

  The Scottish Adventure and ‘Worcester Fight’

  Three

  The Making of a Cynic

  Four

  The Heady Wine of Great Inheritance

  Five

  The Power behind the Throne

  Six

  The Snarling Pack

  Seven

  The Verdict of the People

  Eight

  The Apotheosis

  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

  One

  The Reason why King ‘went on his Travels’

  The Victorian Age being eminently Puritanical, it is not surprising that both Charles I and Charles II should have suffered at the hands of its historians. Most of us left our schools with the former docketed in our minds as a weak and stupid man, led into the oppression of his people by evil counsellors, a tyrant unfitted to govern, and one possessing most of the attributes of a really bad King. An impression which is only coloured by a sentimental regard engendered by the portraits of Van Dyck —where we see him as a handsome, melancholy man— and a knowledge of his tragic end.

  Fortunately for those of us whose interest has survived the arctic-douche of school-taught history, original sources are available, and we are able to readjust our views.

  The elder Charles may have been weak, but he certainly was not a tyrant, and with regard to his personality there are two points which our school books omit to mention—and upon which the portraits of the Dutch Master are necessarily silent. In his youth he was cursed with a nervous stutter, a disability which he never quite got over, and later, although of pious habit, he was considered to be the most foul-mouthed man in his kingdom.

  We may imagine him, then, at the age of twenty-nine, a little after one o’clock on the afternoon of May 29th, 1630, exclaiming to his friend and counsellor Thomas Wentworth:

  ‘B-B-By my-------- b-beard, Tom! --------- my eyes, if ’tis not another b-b-boy! ’

  While in the adjoining room, or more probably the same apartment, for in those days all Royal Accouche- ments were actually witnessed by the principal persons of the State, Henrietta Maria had ceased her screaming and given birth to the dark-faced infant later to be known as Charles II—or, as his lewd and loving subjects preferred to call him, ‘Old Rowley’, the sobriquet being culled from the famous stallion of that name, owing to the obvious similarity of their masculine vigour.

  Of the infancy of Charles II, little is recorded that is of interest, except that he had a strange and unaccountable fondness for a wooden billet, without which in his arms he would never go abroad, nor lie down in his bed. A characteristic which he maintained throughout his later life, excepting only that the consistency of the billet became changed for something of a softer nature.

  In his early youth he was much at Hampton Court and Windsor, where the tedium of exercises in theology with old Brian Duppa, Bishop of Chichester, and in arithmetic with the famous mathematician Hobbs, was often lightened by excursions on the river. Something of his love of idle dreaming in after years may perhaps be attributed to those long summer afternoons of drowsy heat, when the Royal children in their gilded barge listened to the lapping of the waters in the quiet reaches of the Upper Thames.

  From his father, who was the greatest art connoisseur in the Europe of his day, he must have derived much of his love of elegance and beauty—and it is not difficult to trace other outstanding qualities of his character to his grandparents.

  From King James I he derived that enquiring mind which led to his lifelong interest in science and letters. From Jamie’s wife, the gay and beautiful Anne of Denmark, his love of masques, company, and entertainments of every kind. From his maternal grandmother, the Italian Marie de Medici, the subtle brain and devious policy with which he held his own among the pitfalls of the Restoration—and from her husband, the brave and gallant Henry of Navarre, his personal courage, his astute statesmanship, and his amorous propensities.

  It is said that Charles was a quick, intelligent child, and there is no knowing what pearls of wisdom may not have fallen on his youthful ears from men such as Sir Thomas Browne, Izaak Walton, Herrick and Edmund Waller, all of whom were visitors to his father’s court. Inigo Jones and his son-in-law John Webb would also have been well known to the boy, and those famous architects doubtless did much to pave the way that was to lead him later to be so munificent a patron to their successor Wren and the decorator Grinling Gibbons.

  One fears, however, that more of the time which he ..pent in the company of his parents was employed in listening to discourses on the religious problems of the day. Such, for example, as the burning question which agitated the whole of the three Kingdoms, as to whether the table with the sacraments should be placed at the east end of the church or in the middle—and doubtless he was glad enough to escape into the garden for a good game of pirates or Red Indians with his small companions.

  Among the latter was George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, whose father had fallen by the hand of the assassin Felton seven months after his son was bom. George was some two years older than Charles and of a merry, frolicsome disposition. With his wild and reckless nature, we may be sure that he led the younger boy into many a scrape, but it is probable that Charles needed little leading.

  At the age of eight we find Charles receiving a letter from the Queen—a woman whose dark good looks were
somewhat marred by her protruding teeth—upon the horrid subject of medicine. ‘Charles, I am sore,’ she writes, ‘that I must begin my first letter with chiding you because I heere that you will not take your phisick,’ and Charles, already, it seems, showing some signs of budding wit, writes to his tutor, the Earl of Newcastle, upon the same subject, ‘I would not have you take too much phisick, for it doth allwaies make me worse, and I think it will do the like with you.’

  No finer governor than Newcastle could have been chosen for the boy. He was the finest horseman of his day, a great lover of music and had abundance of sound common sense. Two excellent precepts of his to Charles survive: ‘Put money in thy purse and keep it’, and ‘Study men—not books’. The former it was not in Charles’ nature to carry out, but from the latter no man derived more profit.

  It was the Queen’s delight to train him ‘to a wonderful civility’, and in his later life he never failed in a most perfect courtesy in his dealings with every class of people. By this time, however, Henrietta Maria had more serious things to think of, for the troubles of the Royal Family were about to begin in earnest.

  The mismanagement by the magnificent Buckingham in the early years of the reign had caused the lowering of our prestige abroad and the growth of discontent at home; but by his death, Charles had become free to choose his own ministers.

  Archbishop Laud and Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, were the two men to whom he entrusted the destinies of the State. Both were able men, and both acted entirely in concurrence with the King’s own views. Their duty, as all three saw it, was to stem the tide of Sectarian Nonconformity which had become a definite menace to the established religion of the land.

  In this they came immediately into conflict with Parliament, and it is well at this juncture to consider just what the House of Commons was at that date.

  Not more than one out of every hundred of the population had an actual voice in the election of the Members, and therefore they could no more be said actually to represent the country than the nobles at court or a mass meeting of unemployed watermen. They were simply a body of men drawn from a certain strata of society.

  A considerable number of them were small country gentry whose families had been in the forefront of the revolt against Rome, and who were therefore filled with a Calvinistic fire. An equally large number, since the factor of commerce had now begun to enter seriously into the problems of the country, were engaged in trade or banking. The banking interests, it is well known, have always been largely in Quaker hands, and so it was a natural corollary that the Zealots and Industrials should become fused into a solid block to resist the policy of the Crown.

  Such men as John Hampden unquestionably did much to establish the liberties of the English people by their staunch resistance of abuses, but it should be remembered that those abuses were no personal tyrannies introduced by Charles—they were forms of government inherited from a line of sovereigns, including Henry VIII and Elizabeth, whom we have been taught to regard as great.

  Yet if the more honest of the Commons had the good of the people at heart, so also had the King. Time after time we find him legislating to protect the common people from the profiteers—butchers, bakers, brewers, drapers, gardeners, jewellers, and inn-holders, to name but a few, all came up against his ordinances to prevent fraud and ensure fair standards of weight and quality to the consumer. It was indeed very largely his anxiety to ensure a decent standard of living to the masses which gained him the bitter enmity of the capitalist classes and lost him his throne.

  His kindly thought for his poorer subjects is well expressed in the proclamation by which he repealed the Lord’s Day Observance Act. ‘If these times be taken from them, the meaner sort who labour all the weeke should have no recreation at all to refresh their spirits, and therefore we do order that after attending prayers, every man shall be allowed to amuse himself in any decent way which he may choose.’ His people got their Sunday games, but the measure earned him the undying hatred of the Puritans.

  The war therefore was waged by the middle-class capitalists, who wished for greater opportunities to put money in their pockets and to force their stricter form of worship on the country—against the Court, who desired to maintain its ancient privileges and enforce the doctrine of the Established Church.

  A little before Charles II was eight years old, the Scottish Bishops drew up a new prayer book under the auspices of Laud. The Scots rejected the book and many thousands of them signed a National Covenant, swearing to resist the enforcement of it with their lives. By March, 1639, they had taken up arms and under the leadership of Leslie surprised Edinburgh Castle. This was the opening scene of the Grand Rebellion.

  A few months later a settlement was reached, but by the following year they were in revolt again, and this time crossed the Tweed in force. Charles took the field against them, but after a certain amount of marching and countermarching the quarrel was patched up, and he dashed south to attend to his affairs in London.

  In November, 1640, he summoned the ‘Long’ Parliament, which proved to be his doom, and its first action was the impeachment of his Minister, Strafford. The Earl defended himself nobly and well, the impeachment broke down and a bill of attainder was introduced. To become a death warrant it needed the King’s signature, and at first he refused to sign. The results were tumultuous assemblies in London, constant deputations from the Parliament, and a thousand insults flung against the Queen, who, as a foreigner and a Frenchwoman, was considered to be Charles’ evil genius. Young Charles, who was then ten years old, must have heard the howling of the mob beneath the palace windows. Open threats were made against the persons of the Royal Family, and after days of terrible indecision the King yielded, sending his loyal servant to the scaffold.

  That he was under grievous pressure at the time we see from his own words, ‘If my own person were in danger, I would gladly venture it to save Lord Strafford’s life—but seeing that my wife, children, and all my kingdom are concerned in it—I am forced to give way to it,’ and no one has ever accused this King of cowardice at least.

  The tragedy of the sacrifice was its futility. Parliament had tasted blood and it only served to whet their appetite for more. Laud and Finch were immediately impeached, and measure after measure hurried through the Commons during the following year, until, in the early summer of 1642, the King felt that, unless his authority was to be lost completely, he must make a definite stand.

  Accordingly he visited the House in person for the purpose of arresting the five most fractious members, but the attempt was a failure, for they had been warned in time and gone into hiding. Parliament took refuge in the precincts of the City and on June 10th the King left London, never to return until seven years later he entered it a prisoner.

  His eldest son, a rather fat-faced boy of twelve, with dark hair curling at the ends, rode in his train; also his second son, James, Duke of York, who was then nine years of age. Henrietta Maria, as a daughter of France, retired to the Court of her nativity.

  The King, having been refused admission to Hull, which closed its gates against him in sympathy with Parliament, went to York. There he began to collect his forces; then moving south, and having had the words emblazoned upon it—‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’, he raised the Royal Standard at Nottingham on August 23rd, 1642.

  A rough disposition of the parties can be gathered by dividing the Kingdom with a line from Southampton to Hull. Parliament drew its principal support from the towfis and counties to the east of this, while those to the west stood mainly for the King.

  Two months later the first collision between the opposing forces took place at Edge Hill, and the two boys witnessed the battle from a neighbouring eminence. They had been placed in the care of no less interesting a person than the famous Dr. Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, and owing to his studious nature received their baptism of fire. A large cannon ball bounding by at fifty miles an hour recalled him from
his book to his responsibilities, and he quickly removed his charges to a safer distance.

  The battle was indecisive, but during the night the Parliamentarians withdrew and the way was left open for the King to advance on Oxford, which he proceeded to occupy, and which became his main headquarters for a number of years.

  During the first year of hostilities, fortune favoured the Royalist Cause, but Cromwell, who was then by no means so important as he was later to become, had been busy in the Eastern Counties raising and training his Ironsides, who afterwards played so large a part in the Parliamentary victories.

  Young Buckingham, as may be imagined, was wholeheartedly for the King. He showed conspicuous gallantry in storming the Parliamentary stronghold of Lichfield, for which piece of bravery Parliament promptly confiscated his estates, but that they were not unreasonably bitter at this time is shown by their generosity in, returning his lands to him on the plea that he was only sixteen years of age. He was with the Court at Oxford for some time, where his mad pranks infuriated the elderly Dons, but in 1646 he went on the ‘Grand Tour’, and most of his time during the next two years was spent in Rome and Florence.

  The Civil War had quickly spread to the other Kingdoms, but towards the end of 1643 the tide had begun to turn in favour of Parliament. The loyal Ormonde was forced to conclude an armistice in Ireland, and although the gallant Montrose counselled fighting on, the King entered into negotiations with the rebel Scots through Hamilton.

  The fanaticism of the Covenanters was at the root of the trouble throughout the whole of the Civil War. They had been the first to take up arms against the King, and it was they who sold him to his enemies in the end. In this instance they were still negotiating with Charles when they entered into an alliance with the English Parliament, the latter agreeing to accept the Covenant.