Wheatley, Dennis - Novel 20 Read online

  Parliament brought Laud to trial, but found themselves in considerable difficulty since all his actions had had the approval and sanction of the King. In desperation they urged that even if no one of his acts could be proved to be treasonable, in bulk they must be so. Upon which counsel for the defence exclaimed with spirit, ‘I cry you mercy—’tis the first time that an hundred black rabbits did make one black horse,’ but his logic was unavailing, a bill of attainder was passed, this time without the sanction of the King, and Laud followed Strafford to the block on Tower Hill.

  It was during these dark days early in 1644 that young Charles and James, sick unto death of living in the cramped quarters of an Oxford college, asked their father when they might go home again—and he replied so sadly, ‘Alas, my poor children, I have no home to go to.’

  In March that year, the King sent Charles for safety into the West Country, and although he was then only fourteen, he was made the head of an organization to treat with Parliament, but his overtures were unsuccessful.

  In the summer, Leslie with his Scots joined Fairfax in the Northern Counties and the Royalists began to lose ground in that area, then in July, having united forces with Cromwell and Manchester, the Roundheads inflicted a crashing defeat upon the Cavaliers under Newcastle and the too dashing Prince Rupert, at Marston Moor near York. A further defeat of the Royalists followed at Newbury in October.

  In 1645, the Parliamentary Army was completely reorganized and Oliver Cromwell definitely came to the front as its principal commander. In the June of that year, his new levies, strongly seasoned with his now veteran Ironsides, inflicted a final and decisive defeat upon all that was left of the King’s organized forces at Naseby. The rest of the year and the spring of the next were spent in quelling such last scattered forces of the Crown as still offered a desperate resistance up and down the country. So ends the first Civil War.

  Charles, a little before his sixteenth birthday, was compelled to seek safety in the Scilly Isles, and in March started upon those travels which were not to have a successful ending until more than fourteen years later.

  Parliament sent him a polite note, suggesting that if he cared to return to England they would ‘appoint a place where he could live securely’, but the dark, good-looking young stripling and his advisers were doubtless adequately informed regarding the legend of the spider and the fly. A polite but ambiguous reply was therefore despatched to His Majesty’s Most Untrustworthy Commons. After six weeks in the Scillies he removed to Jersey and thence to join his mother at the Court of France.

  The residence of the Queen and her daughter, the little Henrietta, at the latter, does little honour to the French. The great Cardinal, de Richelieu, was dead; and in his room the miserly Italian—Mazarin—had become the allpowerful Minister to the Queen Regent, Anne of Austria, if not actually her husband by a secret marriage. Owing to his parsimony the English Queen suffered virtual destitution. She was housed in rooms almost lacking in furniture, and, during the winter, was often without a fire or even sufficient blankets for the beds.

  It may be said in palliation, however, that this niggardliness was not solely directed against the English refugees, since Mazarin, who controlled everything, allowed the young King Louis XIV and his brother Phillip only one pair of stockings apiece at a time, and the boys complained that they ‘could not lie comfortable in bed because the sheets were so patched and darned’. Moreover, the fact that Henrietta Maria was the daughter of Henri IV of France did not make her any the less difficult and troublesome a guest.

  For Charles, it is probable that there were compensations in this, his first visit to the French capital. Perhaps the blood of his amorous grandfather the ‘vert galant’ was stirring in his veins, or perhaps it was just Paris—in May. In- any case it seems more than likely that somewhere about this time he first sampled those joys which were ever afterwards to be his ruling passion.

  It may be that the younger Charles was toying in pleasant dalliance with some flushed young French girl at the very moment when the elder surrendered his person into the keeping of the Scots at Newcastle, since this event took place in the May of that same year.

  In September a vote was taken ‘that the King should be disposed of as both Houses of Parliament shall s(ee fit’, and on January 30th, 1647, he was sold by^Jus countrymen to the English Commissioners. He was taken to Holmby House in Northamptonshire, and there seized in the following June, upon the instigation of Cromwell who feared to leave his person in the hands of the Moderates, by one Cornet Joyce, formerly a tailor. From Holmby House the King was conveyed to Hampton Court, thence he escaped to the Isle of Wight and took refuge in Carisbrooke Castle, but he might have spared himself the pains of his flight. Robin Hammond, the governor of Carisbrooke, was ‘Dear Robin’ to Cromwell and could be trusted to see that the King did not escape further afield.

  In January, 1648, a suggestion was made to impeach the King and the second Civil War burst into flame. Laud’s execution had shocked and horrified all those who still clung to the Established Church. He was after all a prelate, and they knew him moreover to be ah honest man. In addition the Army was now definitely becoming the ruling power and England has ever been averse to a military dictatorship.

  Sympathy was expressed on all sides for the King. A large portion of the Fleet rebelled against the Parliament, the Scottish Cavaliers invaded England from the North, and both Kent and Essex took up arms to save His Majesty.

  It was probably in order to be in closer touch with the Royalist portion of the Navy that the younger Charles left Paris for the Hague, but his removal from the French capital was expedited by Mazarin and the fact that his mother ruled him with a rod of iron. She even seized upon the allowance which the French Government had reluctantly made him, and doled him out a few pennies pocket money at a time, so that it was said of him, ‘He hath not ten pistoles which he can call his own.’

  Cromwell was too firmly seated in the saddle by this time for the Royalist cause to have much chance of permanent success. The mutiny in the Fleet was quelled, the loyal Scots defeated at Preston in August, Colchester captured after a truly heroic resistance, and the risings in the South speedily crushed.

  In a forlorn hope the Earl of Holland raised the Standard of the King in Surrey, but the Cavaliers were routed and dispersed, Buckingham and his brother Francis Villiers were among them, the latter meeting his death in a skirmish near Nonsuch. The Duke escaped, but nearly lost his life by an accident, the low branch of a tree catching his helmet and completely reversing it upon his head, so that he would have died of strangulation but for the prompt aid of his servant.

  Later he took refuge in a house which was soon after surrounded by the enemy. With desperate courage he ordered the gates to be flung open, galloped at full tilt out of the courtyard, killed the commander of the Parliamentary troops, hacked his way through the rest, and escaped unharmed to the coast; afterwards joining Charles who was hovering with a few loyal ships in the Channel.

  At the end of the year the King was taken to Windsor, and in January ’49 a high court was set up to judge him. He appeared before his accusers on the 20th of the month, and demanded to know by what authority they had brought him to trial.

  ‘In the name of Parliament assembled and all the good people of England,’ was the reply of Bradshaw, the president of the tribunal.

  Lady Fairfax, the wife of the Parliamentary General, who was present as a spectator, sprang to her feet and cried, ‘It is a lie! Not a half—nay, not a quarter of the people of England.’

  That she spoke truly was evidenced by the fact that before they could bring the King to trial, even his old enemy the Parliament, from which all men of moderate views had long since withdrawn, had to be purged by Colonel Pride of no less than two-thirds of its remaining members. So that it was now a mockery of its former self and only consisted of some half hundred embittered Puritans.

  The Royalist reaction had come too late and the sympathies of the great mass
of the nation were of little avail. As in the case of all Revolutions, power had passed into the hands of a small group of Extremists and the King was doomed.

  He answered his accusers with quiet majesty, ‘It is not my case alone, it is the freedom and liberties of the people of England—and do you pretend what you will, I stand more for their liberties. For if power without law may make laws—I do not know what subject he is in England, who may be sure of his life, or anything that he calls his own.’

  After that bold declaration his dignity forbade that he should plead or endeavour to defend himself before what he considered to be the arbitrary tribunal of his enemies.

  Charles at the Hague did the only thing that lay in his power. He sent a blank sheet of paper with his signature and seal attached, that they might make what terms they would upon it, if only they would spare his father’s life— but nothing could turn the fanatics from their purpose.

  Where our War Office stands now, then stood the old Palace of Whitehall, and from a first floor window of it, upon the winter morning of January 30th, 1649, the King stepped out into the drifting snowflakes that swirled about the black-draped scaffold. As he went so bravely to his tragic end, every blind was drawn; and strange as it may seem, although he had been condemned as tyrant —traitor—murderer, the streets were thronged—not with a howling mob thirsting for his blood—but with a silent and a weeping people.

  Two

  The Scottish Adventure and ‘ Worcester Fight’

  During the spring of ’49 Charles remained at the Hague, and in those months preceding his nineteenth birthday, two events of major importance took place. He lost his father and begot a son.

  The child, afterwards the ill-fated James, Duke of Monmouth, was born on April 9th at Rotterdam, the mother being Lucy Walter, or Mrs. Barlow, as it seems she preferred to be called.

  She was a lovely brown-haired Welsh girl, with beautiful eyes and fair white skin, plump and amorous— but a fool. She was Charles’ first great passion and he loved her very dearly, so much so that there are strong grounds for supposing that he actually married her. Fuller, Bishop of Lincoln, often affirmed that he had performed the ceremony, and an innkeeper at Liege swore that the marriage took place and was consummated at his house, he and his wife being ‘eye and ear witnesses of it’. Yet Charles himself sturdily denied this in after years.

  There is little doubt but that Lucy was a slut. Charles had first met her during his stay in Wales, and she followed him to the Hague with the deliberate intention of becoming his mistress. She had already been living with Colonel Robert Sidney, and in fact Monmouth bore such a striking resemblance to the Colonel that many people believed the latter to be the father of the child. The resemblance proves nothing, and Charles himself appears to have been perfectly satisfied that Monmouth was his son, but Lucy’s infidelities became so flagrantly open when the King was in Scotland, that he was compelled to abandon her on his return.

  Her reign may have been brief but at least we may assume that while it lasted she did much to take the young King’s thoughts off his troubles, and that in later years he was able to recall with pleasure those happy days, wrested from the conflicting councils of his advisers, when with her for company he picnicked in the shady glades of Den Bosch, or on the nearby beach at Scheveningen.

  His principal counsellor at this time, and one who was to continue so for many years to come, was Edward Hyde, a stalwart Wiltshireman and able lawyer, who afterwards became Earl of Clarendon, and in his declining years indited the many volumes that constitute his History of the Great Rebellion.

  Buckingham was also with the King. His estates had been confiscated again, but Parliament had allowed his faithful steward Traylman to remain at York House, the Duke’s great London mansion; and since Traylman employed himself in smuggling out of the country a large portion of the magnificent collection of pictures which had been gathered together by the first Duke, George, unlike so many of the others for whom the King had to provide, managed to support himself upon the proceeds of these treasures during his exile.

  The Dutch Government, fearing to embroil themselves with Cromwell, intimated to Charles that they were considerably embarrassed by his presence, he therefore left the Hague in June, proceeding in the leisurely fashion of the time, by way of Rotterdam, Breda, Antwerp, and Brussels, to Paris. In the French capital he found himself an equally unwelcome guest, and Jersey being the only portion of his dominions which still held for the Crown, he took ship thither, arriving in September.

  Something of the financial difficulties which were a source of constant anxiety to him during the whole of his exile, may be judged from the fact that he arrived in the Island with a court of some three hundred people, and only three hundred pistoles wherewith to pay the passage of them all.

  Ormonde meanwhile had once more raised the Standard of the King in Ireland, and Cromwell arrived to crush the revolt in July. By the time Charles reached Jersey, his Irish Royalist had been defeated and the Lord Protector had begun his savage progress of extermination.

  The Civil War in England had been remarkably free from the partisan acts of barbarity which make such terrible reading in those annals concerning the internecine strife of other nations. In Ireland, however, it was a very different matter. From the time of the massacre at Drogheda in September until the following spring, Cromwell marched through the land, hanging, burning, and slaughtering with an incredible ferocity. If any extenuation can be pleaded it must be upon the grounds that in this instance he was fighting against the detested ‘Papists’, who to a man of his deep religious convictions were definitely not human, but the very emissaries of hell.

  The King’s second stay in Jersey, like his first, was brief. News was received that Parliament was fitting out a powerful fleet to bring the island into subjection, so Charles was forced to take ship once more. After a great storm in which he narrowly escaped being wrecked, he landed in France, and hurrying through that inhospitable country, sought refuge in Breda, where he had previously been so well received.

  The Scots had proclaimed him King at Edinburgh within a week of his father’s death, but Argyll and the Covenanters still controlled the country. A premature attempt by the Scottish Cavaliers to regain Scotland for the King was defeated in the following year, and their great leader, the gallant Montrose, having sought shelter with the Macleod of Assynt, was sold by him and paraded through the streets of Edinburgh on May 21st, 1650, on his way to execution.

  The Covenanters, however, were greatly disappointed in the English Parliament. The victorious Commons were beginning to dispute among themselves, and the old Industrialist party, now called ‘Independents’, whose ranks contained most of the Army Commanders who had fought in the late war, were definitely gaining the upper hand. It occurred to the Covenanters that if they could gain possession of the person of Charles, they might yet be able to assist their allies the Zealots to overthrow the ‘Independents’, and force their stricter morality on the land.

  A deputation of Scottish Commissioners therefore arrived at the Hague with an invitation for the King to place himself in their hands, and were received with becoming gravity. The bottles of Rhenish and Schnapps were pushed in the cupboard, Lucy was told that she must get herself a dress with a higher neck, and the collection of scalliwags, opportunists, and serious loyalists who composed the Court, proceeded to listen to a number of sermons of unusual length.

  The fact that the Covenanters had just killed his devoted servant Montrose, together with their previous conduct, naturally made Charles extremely sceptical of their new found loyalty, and the conditions which they proposed were harsh in the extreme. He knew too that they only wished to use him for their own ends, but, after having listened to much conflicting advice from his council, he decided to take a chance on being able to use them for his.

  It may well be that the words of his grandfather, Henri IV of France, recurred to him at that time, for was it not the wily Bernais who in a very similar
situation decided to pacify his rebellious subjects once and for all by declaring, ‘Ah, well—Paris is worth a mass.’

  In June 1650, therefore, Charles arrived in Scotland, ostensibly at all events a meek and sober member of the Kirk. Knowing as he must have done the completely alien nature of this dour folk to the natural gaiety of his twenty years, the fact that he ever went on this adventure shows his determination to leave no chance untried which might regain his Crown.

  Had he ever been brought to trial for the undoubted immorality of his later years, no fair-minded jury could have failed to make a recommendation to mercy, in consideration of that incredible time which he spent in Scotland. Indeed, had he actually served a sentence of imprisonment his situation could hardly have been worse, for his life was ordered as strictly as that of any Benedictine monk. The long-faced elders would not even allow him to walk abroad on the Sabbath, spies were set about his person to report the least attempt at merriment or joke—cards and dancing were forbidden and fast-days observed with such rigour that the poor young man was compelled to listen to no less than six sermons in a single day. Yet such was his tact and patience, that apart from one outbreak, he bore it all with apparent equanimity, while preparing in secret his principal design.

  While the Covenanters connived at Buckingham’s dissolute course of life because he agreed to advise the King to rely wholly upon their guidance, and sent deputations to Charles, to reprove him, and request that he ‘at least close the window’, when he was found in converse with a wench, the King was steadily gaining adherents among the Moderates by his personal charm, and succeeded in getting them to crown him at Scone in January, 1651. He now felt himself strong enough to dispense with the treacherous Argyll, and proceeded to manoeuvre the Scottish Army into some semblance of activity.