Happy and Glorious

The Revolution of 1688

Michael I Wilson

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780750957991
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia militare e marittima

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 is a story of intrigue, plot and counter-plot, religious rivalry and nationalist fervour. It tells of the stubborn and bigoted king, James II, in conflict with his subjects – a conflict in which he was finally forced to put aside his crown, making way for his daughter, Mary, and her husband William of Orange. Less than thirty years after Charles II had been restored to the throne, a king was once more deposed (although this time with rather less bloodshed), effectively creating the form of government that we have today. After the Revolution it was no longer possible for British monarchs to ride roughshod over the wishes of their people or to impose religion upon them. Yet, as well as creating a constitutional monarchy, the Revolution also led in time to such events as the Jacobite Rebellions in Scotland and the Orange Order marches in Northern Ireland. This book tells the story of those momentous days and sets them against the turbulent backdrop of seventeenth-century life.

1

WAR ON THE HIGH SEAS

It was 6 February 1685. In his bedroom overlooking the Thames, in the rambling old Palace of Whitehall, King Charles II lay dying. In common with the other private apartments in the Palace, the room was not grand but quite small and dark; now it was also noticeably stuffy, owing to the crowd of churchmen, courtiers, officials and servants who had pressed their way in to witness their king’s last hours. With typical irony he begged their collective pardon for taking ‘such an unconscionable long time a-dying’, and faintly voiced a plea on behalf of his best-known mistress Nell Gwynn which today is no less poignant for being so familiar –‘don’t let poor Nelly starve!’

Four days earlier, on 2 February, Charles had been unexpectedly laid low by a stroke. He had already suffered one in 1681 which, while not incapacitating him, had certainly taken its toll. From then onwards he spent more time away from London, mainly at Newmarket or Windsor, enjoying hawking, racing and theatricals. His relationships with his various mistresses grew less tempestuous, and he became absorbed in new building projects at Whitehall, Greenwich and Winchester. However, at New Year 1685 there was no sign of any impending crisis. Indeed, on the evening of Sunday 25 January the diarist John Evelyn, on a visit to Whitehall, was scandalised to find the king publicly toying with no less than three of his mistresses (Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland, Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, and Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin), whilst around him his roistering courtiers gambled away huge sums of money.1

And now, for the pleasure-loving, politically devious Charles, such scenes of unashamed debauchery were over. As he lay patiently waiting for death whilst enduring the various drastic treatments prescribed by his doctors, his queen – the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza, originally a neglected and slightly pathetic figure – sent word that she was too upset to visit him and asking his forgiveness for anything she might have done in the past to distress or offend him. (If ever there was a case of the boot being on the other foot, this was surely it.) In contrast, his brother James, Duke of York and heir to the throne, scarcely left the bedside where he knelt weeping continuously. It could be said that his tears, though certainly genuine, were also prophetic, in view of the distress and misery that he was not only about to suffer himself, but would also inflict upon many of his subjects. Before setting out to trace the steps which led to this sad state of public affairs it may be rewarding, in these first chapters, to consider the main events of James’ earlier years, as a means of evaluating his developing character.

He was born on 14 October 1633, the second of Charles I’s three sons, and was created Duke of York immediately after baptism. Four years later he was painted by Van Dyck in a group portrait with his brother Charles and his sisters, a solemn child still in petticoats – for at this time boys were not ‘breeched’ until the age of 5 or 6. His childhood, which was passed mainly in the now vanished palace of Richmond, came to an abrupt end in 1642 with the onset of the Civil War. He accompanied his father Charles I in the early campaigning, and together with the younger Charles received an early baptism of fire at the indecisive Battle of Edgehill.

After Edgehill James went with his father to Oxford, which became the Royalist headquarters and centre of court life for the next four years. The king and his entourage took over Christchurch, whilst Merton was allotted to the queen, Henrietta Maria. Although James may well have benefited from instruction or tutoring from some of the resident academics, the atmosphere of Oxford at that time was hardly conducive to study. Never a large town, Oxford was now filled to bursting point with an influx of courtiers, soldiers, servants and associated hangers-on, supplemented by large numbers of horses and pack-animals in need of extra fodder and stabling. Inevitably such conditions bred disease. The situation was briefly but tellingly described by Lady Anne Fanshawe, then a girl of 18:

We had the perpetual discourse of losing and gaining towns and men; at the windows the sad spectacle of war, sometimes plague, sometimes sickness of other kinds, by reason of so many people being packed together, as I believe there never was before of that quality; always want; yet I must needs say that most bore it with a martyr-like cheerfulness.2

At first, to the young Duke of York life in Oxford no doubt had a frisson, an air of suppressed excitement welcome to an active 11-year-old, if less so to the adults around him. Four years later, when his father abandoned the cause and fled to Scotland in May 1646, things looked altogether bleaker to the adolescent James, who now found himself taken back in custody to St James’s Palace in London, in the care of the Earl of Northumberland. The conditions were not severe, and James was allowed on several occasions to visit his father at Hampton Court, where the king – having been handed over by the Scots – was now the prisoner of the army. At these meetings (which do not seem to have been very closely monitored), Charles urged James not only to support his brother the younger Charles – now safely in France – but also to do his utmost to try to escape, and to join his mother and brother there. In 1647 James did indeed plot an escape, but a coded letter which he had written was seized and the plot was foiled. No action was taken against him, but he had to promise not to make any other attempts to run away. This promise, like many another still to come, he did not keep.

At St James’s Palace he shared his quarters with his brother Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and his younger sister Elizabeth, aged 7 and 13 respectively. On 20 April 1648, whilst playing a game of hide-and-seek with them in the labyrinthine rooms of the Palace, lax security enabled James to make a pre-planned escape into nearby St James’s Park, where a Royalist soldier of fortune, Colonel Joseph Bampfield (acting under covert instructions from Charles I), was waiting to spirit him away to a safe house near London Bridge. From here, now convincingly disguised as a girl, James made it down the Thames to Tilbury and thence in a small Dutch ship to the Netherlands, where he was happily received by his elder sister Mary. At the age of 12 Mary had married Prince William of Orange on 2 May 1641 in London, and she had joined her husband at The Hague in the following year.

James was growing up to be a handsome young man. Although ominously obstinate and self-opinionated, he was also brave and resourceful, qualities which stood him in good stead after the execution of his father in January 1649. For four years he moved around Europe – to Paris and St Germain-en-Laye to be with his mother Queen Henrietta Maria, to his sister at The Hague, to Jersey with his brother Charles (who made him governor of the island, a post which he occupied for almost a year), to his aunt Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, at Rhenen near Arnhem. On the whole it was not a happy time. There was tension between the new King Charles and their mother Henrietta Maria, and James at first found it difficult to decide to which of them he owed his allegiance. The queen’s strong Catholicism was also an issue, although she does not seem to have put direct pressure on James to convert. A political turning point was reached with the defeat of Charles at the Battle of Worcester in the autumn of 1651, following his attempt to regain the English Crown with the help of the Scots, who had already crowned him their own king at Scone. For some time after the battle there was no news of him, but at last he reappeared in France, to the great joy of his family.

But the rejoicings were tempered by gloom and a general sense that the outlook for the Stuarts was now bleak indeed. It seemed they were condemned to be losers, and impoverished ones at that. Prompted by the need to make some money, James sought the permission of his brother and their mother to turn soldier. They agreed, and in 1652 he embarked on a military career, serving first in France in the army of the celebrated Marshal Turenne until 1655. His was no carefully protected behind-the-lines staff post; on the contrary, he saw considerable action and was often in personal danger. His reward was the friendship and admiration of Turenne and promotion to the rank of lieutenant general at the age of 20, the youngest of eight of Turenne’s officers to hold that rank.

Political expediency now forced King Charles to move out of France and into Flanders, and to seek the support of the Spanish in helping him to regain his throne. He set up his court first in Bruges and later in Brussels, and in 1656 ordered the Duke of York to join him. James did so with reluctance, and there was further tension between the brothers. An argument over James’ choice of a secretary (Sir John Berkeley) was resolved when he was allowed to keep the secretary, provided he himself joined the Spanish army. He did so in 1657, though without much enthusiasm, as he correctly foresaw that this would bring him into actual conflict with his friend and mentor Turenne. This was indeed what happened, especially at the battle which was fought between the French and the Spanish on 14 June 1658 amongst the sand-dunes of Dunkirk. James personally led two cavalry charges, but both failed and he was forced to retreat. Just as before, when he had been with Turenne, he exposed himself recklessly to injury or even death, and it seems that on more than one occasion he was saved only by his stout and serviceable armour. Whatever his faults, he well deserved Sir William Coventry’s later description of him (relayed by Samuel Pepys in his Diary, 4 June 1664) as ‘a man naturally martial to the hottest degree’.

Oliver Cromwell died on 3 September 1658, and news of this event galvanised the exiled court at Brussels, to which James was now attached. Cromwell’s successor, his son Richard – known as ‘Tumbledown Dick’ – had no stomach for the job and resigned his office after a year. However, in the febrile atmosphere of Brussels, plots of invasions launched from France and uprisings encouraged at home came to nothing, and hope was replaced by despondency. Yet, as so often in the course of history, the darkest hour presaged the dawn, and in the later months of 1659 events in England began to move rapidly towards change. Antagonism between the army and the discredited Rump Parliament had reached a pitch that threatened to spill over into anarchy. In Scotland, the general commanding the Parliamentary forces there, George Monck – a strong believer in the supremacy of civil over military power – watched with concern as the Commonwealth unravelled, and decided to take matters into his own hands. On 1 January 1660, as Samuel Pepys sat down to make the first-ever entry in his famous Diary, Monck crossed the River Tweed into England at the head of his well-disciplined troops and made his way down to London, where he took immediate and decisive steps to restore the authority of Parliament and so stabilise the volatile situation. At the end of April an official invitation was sent to King Charles from the new Parliament, asking him to return to England and assume the Crown.

A flotilla of ships set out for The Hague to bring the new monarch home. It was headed by the flagship Naseby, which carried the admiral in charge of the whole operation. This was Sir Edward Mountagu – a former Cromwellian politician and seafarer who had now convincingly switched sides – and amongst his immediate entourage was his young cousin and confidential secretary Samuel Pepys, not long appointed (13 March) and now relishing his first experience of being at the very centre of important events. For his part in the king’s return Mountagu was created Earl of Sandwich and a Knight of the Garter, but although he is always respectfully identified as ‘my Lord’ in his kinsman’s Diary, the usage predates his ennoblement. In fact important figures in the Commonwealth were often given the title purely as a matter of courtesy, and Pepys was only following custom.

On 22 May the Duke of York arrived on board the Naseby for a visit of inspection, together with his younger brother Henry; they made a handsome and resplendent pair, ‘the Duke of York in yellow trimmings, the Duke of Gloucester in grey and red,’ reported Pepys. (Sadly, Henry was to die of smallpox only four months later, aged 20.) The Duke of York had already been confirmed in office as Lord High Admiral, a title which had been bestowed on him as a child – despite his tender years – by his father. He returned to England in another ship, the London, while the king himself sailed on the Naseby, now newly renamed the Royal Charles. Charles II landed at Dover on 25 May and entered London on 29 May – his 30th birthday. Samuel Pepys was not on hand to record the pageantry, being still at Dover with the fleet, but his fellow-diarist John Evelyn was there and caught something of the excitement; he saw the king ride into town:

with a Triumph of above 20,000 horse and foot, brandishing their swords and shouting with unexpressable joy; the ways straw’d with flowers, the bells ringing, the streets hung with tapestry, fountains running with wine … the windows and balconies all set with ladies, trumpets, music, and myriads of people flocking the streets and was as far as Rochester, so as they were 7 hours in passing the City … I stood in the Strand, and beheld it, and blessed God.

Riding near his brother in the procession, the Duke of York was probably no less elated. Conscious too of his position as Lord High Admiral, it was not long before he began to assert his authority in this new role. The navy which Charles II inherited from the failed Commonwealth experiment was large and well equipped, yet not so good that it could not be further improved, and the Lord High Admiral took a close interest in these developments.

By early July 1660 he had already set out his ideas on the shape of naval administration, in particular the setting up of a seven-man Navy Board, of whom the most active, efficient and energetic was the Clerk of the Acts (i.e. secretary), Samuel Pepys, now appointed at the strikingly youthful age of 27. The appointment was made at the suggestion of Lord Sandwich, and the duke soon realised that in Pepys he had got a bargain; he congratulated the earl, who passed on the good news: ‘He did tell me how much I was beholding to the Duke of York, who did yesterday of his own accord … thank him for one person brought into the Navy, naming myself, and much more to my commendation, which is the greatest comfort and encouragement that ever I had in my life’ (Diary, 8 October 1662).

James took his duties seriously, chairing the weekly meetings of the newly constituted Board and drawing up regulations for the fleet, including one which optimistically docked a day’s pay from any sailor heard cursing or swearing, and another ordering up to twelve lashes for anyone ‘who pisseth on the decks’.3 Pepys, who began by being somewhat in awe of him (‘till now [I] did ever fear to meet him’ – 4 March 1664), soon came to admire his powers of organisation, and was in turn obviously held high in the duke’s estimation, to the point at which James was even prepared to take advice from the Clerk of the Acts. On 24 July 1668 Pepys recorded a momentous meeting with his chief:

After the Duke of York was ready, he called me to his closet, and there I did long and largely show him the weakness of our office, and did give him advice … which he did take mighty well, and desired me to draw up what I would have him write to the office. I did lay open the whole failings of the office, and how it was his duty to find them and to find fault with them, as Admiral … which he agreed to – and seemed much to rely on what I said.

However, administrative matters, while important, were not enough to satisfy the soldierly instincts of the Lord High Admiral, and it was not long before James sought an opportunity to prove himself as a leader in naval as well as in land warfare. At that time little distinction was made between the conduct of battles on land or sea, or indeed those who directed them. The title of General-at-Sea was given to naval officers better known for their military prowess on land, such as Charles II’s nephew Prince Rupert or the Duke of Albemarle (the newly-ennobled General Monck).

THE WRITTEN WORD

Nowadays the names of the great Elizabethan writers are widely known, and their work is still generally appreciated, read and performed. Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser and their contemporaries need no introduction to today’s students, readers and theatre audiences. Identifying the literary figures of the later seventeenth century might seem at first sight less easy, but in fact three of them, though equally well known, tend to be passed over because they were not writing in the usual fields of drama or poetry. Two were diarists and another penned a powerful religious work whilst in a prison cell. They were Samuel Pepys, John Evelyn and John Bunyan.

Some critics would argue that a diary cannot really qualify as literature. Pepys proves them wrong. For narrative flow, a cast of larger-than-life characters, keen observation of human nature, a wide range of emotions and a solid historical background, he has provided us with a work of genius, worthy to stand on a par with all the other great novels. Except, of cours...