Blazing Star Page 7

  Padua was also famous for its scientific excellence. Galileo had been chair of mathematics, and the anatomical theatre and public dissections were legendary. Here, Rochester might well have developed his lifelong interest not only in the sexual aspects of the body but also in its corporeal, transitory nature. For a man who took pleasure in exposing the skull beneath the skin, it seems unthinkable that he was not inspired, and perhaps terrified, by what he saw.

  Eventually, Balfour and Rochester prepared to leave behind Italy’s penetrating academia, excellent wine and filthy inns and returned to Paris in late 1664. Here, Rochester had another reception with Henrietta, where he was entrusted with a letter for Charles II. This simultaneously served as a formal means of introduction to the court at Whitehall and furthered diplomatic relations between France and England, thereby enveloping Rochester in the world of politics. By now seventeen, he was an assured and confident young man, for whom the successes of the grand tour had been a necessary step in his maturity and social and sexual development. His gratitude to Balfour was sincere and generous, to the point that he insisted that Balfour remain for a while as his guest after their return to England.

  When he finally arrived at court for the first time on Christmas Eve 1664 to deliver Henrietta’s letter, a comet blazed through the sky. Visible since 14 December and simultaneously a source of wonder and fear, it was believed to be a portent, although whether for good or ill nobody knew. In a later letter Charles described it as ‘no ordinary star’, perhaps with the intention of flattering his friend Wilmot’s young son by association. Rochester, newly arrived at court and ready to make a name for himself, may have enjoyed the symbolism of a brief, brilliant light making an indelible impression on all who saw it.

  * This was confirmed in spectacularly public fashion in the eighteenth century when Robert Thistlethwayte, then-warden of Wadham, fled to France in 1737 after being accused of making homosexual advances to his student William France.

  On 23 May 1660, with Rochester in the first months of his university career, his sovereign Charles II departed from the Dutch port of Scheveningen, bound for England. On his arrival, he would be acclaimed by Parliament as the lawful and rightful king. The ship that he sailed on had previously been known as the Naseby. Perhaps mindful of the fact that this had been the battle where Charles I’s army had been annihilated, thus effectively ending the Civil War, Charles ordered that its name be changed to the Royal Charles before he sailed. As many as 100,000 people cheered him as he departed, accompanied on board by courtiers, Royalists and the remains of his exiled family. It was undeniably a triumphant occasion, and one that the king, on the cusp of turning thirty, no doubt enjoyed. Yet Charles’s thoughts were not solely of pageantry and pomp. Instead, they turned to vengeance.

  Even after Cromwell had died and his hapless son Tumbledown Dick had taken his place, there was still uncertainty whether a restoration of the monarchy could take place. The various uprisings that the Royalists had coordinated had all failed miserably, in no small part because there was little public appetite for the return of the monarchy. The Commonwealth and Protectorate regimes had been repressive, small-minded and often brutal, but they had become a way of life. ‘Better the devil you know’ was the shrugged response of many to the topsy-turvy complications of government.

  Throughout 1659 and during the early part of 1660, the exiled royal court was a very sorry affair. Fantastical rumours came from England, relating that many cities were on the verge of rising. The closest that these had come to fact was when Sir George Booth, a former Parliamentarian, attempted to coordinate a Royalist uprising in August that year. He was defeated by the Parliamentarian general John Lambert at Winnington Bridge and was reduced to fleeing from the battle disguised as a woman—​but was soon discovered. One observer, a Dr Moore, wrote that Booth’s ‘glorious pretext of a free Parliament and the subjects’ liberty, is all ended under a wench’s petticoat; which makes many conclude him to be rather a fool, knave or coward’. Lambert was subsequently made major-general of all the armed forces in England. It looked as if neo-Cromwellian military rule would become the norm.

  Charles, whose movements over those months took him from one country to another in vain search of money and backing for an attempted coup, could have been forgiven for resigning himself to a peripatetic lifestyle of drifting around Europe, stateless, throneless and powerless. He fell into a deep depression, with the same feelings of impotence and misery that he had experienced after his escape from Worcester in 1651. His only hope of regaining the throne was to enter into an agreement with a military power such as Spain, again offering the undesirable prospect of invading his own country with the backing of foreign money. As 1659 drew to an end, the earlier hope and euphoria brought about by Cromwell’s death ebbed away. However, Charles’s life was typified by sudden reversals of fortune, and 1660 was to be no different. This time, he owed everything to the unlikely figure of General George Monck.

  Monck was initially a supporter of Charles I, but then transferred his allegiance and became an arch-Parliamentarian. While still a Royalist, he was imprisoned in 1644 by Fairfax, changed allegiance, and was then released, in part due to his previous experience fighting in the Irish War, and redeployed to Ireland, where he negotiated an armistice. This, typically, his Parliamentary superiors refused to honour. He was then sent to Scotland, where he was made -commander-in-chief of the army, and then governor, a safe role for an avowed loyalist. His friendship with Cromwell was deep and sincere, and his transferred loyalty to the Protectorate absolute. Tellingly, when Charles II wrote him a letter in 1655 which appeared to suggest that he might be persuaded to change sides once more, Monck had no hesitation in sending Cromwell a copy, who then encouraged him to apprehend Charles should he ever appear in Scotland. There is no reason to doubt that Monck would have done so.

  However, on 1 January 1660, prompted by General John Lambert declaring against the Rump Parliament and in favour of an interim government, a Committee of Safety that he belonged to, Monck’s army left Scotland and began to progress towards London. For what purpose it was initially hard to judge. Charles’s supporter John Mordaunt wrote of Monck’s motives that month that ‘it will be like the last scene of some excellent play, which the most judicious cannot positively say how it will end’. Virtually any option appeared open to him, equipped as he was with a large, powerful and well-trained army. Some speculated that he would ally himself with Lambert and create a military power that would put either of the men in the role of Protector, while others, more optimistically, suggested that he would return to his Royalist origins and declare for Charles II.

  Monck may have been unsure himself what he hoped to achieve by his return to London. Perhaps he would even have sided with Tumbledown Dick, reviving his fortunes with the aid of a loyal army behind him. However, it was not to be. When he encountered Lambert’s forces on his march, there was no grand alliance, nor even a pitched battle. Instead, Monck subsumed Lambert’s confused and chaotic men, who had not been expecting to encounter such a well-armed and trained adversary, into his own ranks and arrived in London on 3 February. Here, he bided his time for a week before playing his hand and asking for the election of a new Parliament. Those in power were hardly in a position to refuse a strong military force, so a new Convention Parliament, mainly Royalist in its construction, was created in March.

  By this point, the recall of Charles seemed an inevitability. Lambert, the most implacable enemy of the crown, was captured (by Robert Whitehall’s old friend Richard Ingoldsby) and sent to the Tower, accused of having plotted to stir up a mutiny, and Booth, divested of his wench’s petticoat, was released. Monck, by now committed to the restoration of Charles as the country’s best means of unifying itself, contacted him secretly and negotiated the basis on which he might return to England as king. Monck knew that Charles’s first instinct might be to attempt to tear England apart with mass persecution of Puritans and Parliamentarians alike, and so the Declar
ation of Breda was agreed in early April 1660. The conditions of this were that Charles would issue a general pardon to those who had opposed him in the Civil War and Interregnum, that all who had bought property confiscated from the Royalists would be allowed to retain it, that religious toleration would be observed, and that the army would become the servant of the crown and be paid monies owed to it in full. Nonetheless, the same Act declared that no public Acts passed by Parliament since 1641 were binding, as they took place without the king’s consent.

  To some extent, Charles’s hands were tied. Had he refused any of the conditions that Monck suggested, his sole chance of a Parliament-approved restoration would have disappeared, and his remaining supporters with it. He lacked money, support, a home or status; even his clothes were threadbare. To be offered them all, even with strings attached, was an opportunity that he could not refuse. However, even with his back against the wall, Charles would not join fully in the ‘free and general pardon’ that Monck asked for, instead specifically exempting ‘such persons as shall hereafter be excepted by parliament’. This set the scene for the revenge that Charles, with Clarendon’s aid, visited upon those who he saw as responsible for his father’s murder, his long exile, and the deaths of many of his friends and supporters.

  Monck, knowing that those who Charles wanted removed from the scene were no friends to him, assented. The Declaration of Breda was made public on 1 May, by which time the ever-fickle Parliament had unanimously approved the king’s restoration. This was helped by a tactful letter that Charles had written to the Commons’ Speaker, in which he claimed that the monarchy and Parliament had a symbiotic relationship and that the powers of each institution ‘were best preserved by preserving the other’. Flattering the ‘wise and dispassionate men and good patriots’, he ended his letter by alluding to his eventful experiences abroad, saying ‘we, and we hope our subjects, shall be the better for what we have seen and suffered’.

  A little humility and tact went a long way. When Charles heard that Parliament had proclaimed him king, he gratefully began making a stately progress from Breda in a grand entourage of over seventy coaches, receiving the Parliamentary commissioners who came armed with enormous sums of money, rumoured to have been at least £50,000 in bills and gold sovereigns. Such were the perks of kingship. Charles, who had been living hand to mouth for years, was overwhelmed at the way in which his fortunes had suddenly changed. He received well-wishers, sycophants and offers of sex by the score. He thanked the first, ignored the second, and was discerning with the third.

  Eventually, he departed on the Royal Charles, accompanied by the commissioners, his family and Clarendon, who had as much of a vested interest in the success of the restoration as Charles did, given the two men’s long history together. The commander of the fleet charged with supervising the king’s return was Edward Montagu, and he had a young assistant, a naval clerk called Samuel Pepys. Pepys had already begun keeping his famous diary, and his entry for 23 May is telling. He writes of ‘infinite shooting off of the guns, and that in a disorder on purpose, which was better than if it had been otherwise’. Still, Charles had been away for nearly a decade. A little pageantry could be tolerated.

  It was on this journey back, Pepys reports, that Charles began to tell the story of his adventures while escaping from Worcester. Pepys notes that he was ‘ready to weep’ as Charles recounted the story of the privations that he had undergone—​‘four nights and three days on foot, every step up to the knees in dirt, with nothing but a green coat and a pair of country breeches on’. Even when he reached France, ‘he looked so poorly that people went into the rooms before he went away, to see whether he had not stolen something or other’. Charles was not sharing these anecdotes in a spirit of light-hearted ribaldry, a happy man excited about resuming his rightful throne. Instead, Charles, described as ‘very active and stirring’ by Pepys, prepared for his future actions by impressing upon his various supporters the torments and sufferings that he had undergone. His father’s fate was notorious, but few knew what had happened to the prince. Now, he was determined to let the world understand, before taking swift and brutal action against his enemies.

  Charles landed in Dover on Friday 25 May 1660, eschewing the ornate boat sent for him to make the final journey to shore by barge. Pepys noted that one of the king’s favoured dogs—​presumably a spaniel—​‘shit the boat, which made us laugh, and me think that a King and all that belong to him are just as others are’. Charles’s ability to connect with his subjects and be ‘just as others are’ proved crucial throughout the early days of his return to England, when the celebrating and joy masked a deeper uncertainty as to whether he would be a wise, kind ruler, or a despot.

  Greeted with, as Pepys put it, ‘all imaginable love and respect’ by Monck, Charles began his journey, greeted with near-hysteria along the way. It was a remarkable volte-face from even a few months before, when it had seemed that the only way for him to present his kingship was through armed insurgency. Now, all was smiles and rejoicing. Aware of the symbolism that his return carried, he first headed to Canterbury, where he inducted Monck, Montagu and two others into the Order of the Garter, pointedly rewarding the former Parliamentarians and loyal Royalists alike, before he entered London on 29 May, his thirtieth birthday.

  Tens of thousands thronged the streets, desperate to see this near-mythical figure. Some were the sons of those who had tried to capture or kill Charles a decade earlier; others were his would-be captors themselves. Yet, as John Evelyn wrote in his diaries:

  all this without one drop of blood, and by that very army, which rebelled against him... such a Restoration was never seen in the mention of any history, ancient or modern... nor so joyful a day, and so bright, ever seen in this nation.

  He could be forgiven his hyperbole, because he was sharing in an event that was the polar opposite of Charles I’s execution a decade before. That had been characterized by judicial violence and met with a chilled, appalled silence. Now, everyone wanted to forget the horror of the past decade and look for something optimistic and fresh. Tellingly, one of the first places that Charles visited was the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall, outside which his father had been executed. With the handsome, charismatic young king eager to mend fences, claiming in a speech that he was ‘set to endeavour by all means for the restoring of this nation to freedom and happiness’, the days of persecution and misery appeared over.

  Of course, they were not. Charles sought to present a calm, jocular exterior, but inside he was hell-bent on revenge against those who had wronged him. The Act of Oblivion and Indemnity that Parliament passed in August 1660 offered a pardon to all who had served against the king, with the sting that it also meant severe punishment for anyone who had been responsible for the regicide of Charles I. The great figures of Cromwell’s government often owed their fortunes and favour to their willingness to be complicit in Charles I’s execution. Initially, seven men were exempted from the general pardon, then more were added as it became convenient for the new regime.

  While Charles took great pains to present himself as rising above petty vindictiveness, allowing Clarendon to deal with much of the politicking and horse-trading between the Commons and the Lords, his true wishes could be discerned in a speech given by Orlando Bridgeman, Chief Justice of the Common Peace, who declared that the blood of Charles I ‘cries for vengeance, and it will never be appeased without a bloody sacrifice’. The accused men represented the crème de la crème of Cromwellian influence, and the result of their trials was a foregone conclusion, with the judges and jury as carefully vetted to ensure the right verdicts as they had been for Charles I’s execution. The fate of Major-General Thomas Harrison, the first to be executed, was typical. The seventeenth of the fifty-nine commissioners to sign Charles I’s death warrant and leader of the anti-Royalist Fifth Monarchist group, he was hanged, drawn and quartered in spectacularly bloody fashion at Charing Cross on 13 October 1660.

  On and on it went. The
regicides made speeches from the gallows in which they defended their actions as arising from principle and called upon God to be their witness. Evelyn called upon the ‘miraculous providence’ of the same God as he saw their bloodied remains prominently displayed in public. Residents of Charing Cross, where many of the executions took place, complained that the smell of gore was making the air putrid.

  Charles made sure that he mixed mercy with harshness. The poet John Milton, who had published pamphlets urging republicanism, such as The Ready and Easy Way to Establishing a Free Commonwealth, had his books burnt and his arrest ordered, but interventions from powerful friends, including the MP and poet Andrew Marvell and the Secretary of State William Morice, saw that he was eventually released from prison, albeit with a steep fine of £150.

  Others were less fortunate. Clarendon saw to it that many of the surviving regicides at home and abroad were killed, whether judicially in England or simply by being assassinated in Europe, as in the case of the Swiss exile John Lisle, murdered in a Lausanne churchyard in 1664. Those who were not thus disposed of were either showily pardoned or, more commonly, imprisoned indefinitely. Charles ensured that he was never associated with any of the extrajudicial executions; possibly he was unaware of them, as Clarendon once noted that it was beneath the dignity of the new king to be seen to engage with his father’s murderers on their level. The hand of vengeance stretched all over the British Isles, and the Scottish turn-coats, as they were seen, were not forgotten, especially those who had once been familiars of Charles. One such man executed in Edinburgh was a Scottish nobleman, Sir Archibald Johnston, Lord Warriston. Captured in France after many travels and driven mad by psychological and probably physical torture, his eventual death was a relief of sorts. His young nephew Gilbert Burnet, who observed his execution, would later write biographies of both Rochester and Charles II.