Act of Oblivion, page 25
‘That’s the signal,’ said Downing. ‘I’ll tell the men.’ He started to move away.
‘Wait,’ called Nayler, refocusing his spyglass. ‘There is a third.’
On Nayler’s instructions, Kicke had extended an additional invitation, to Miles Corbet, living just outside Amsterdam, asking if he wished to meet his comrades. And here he came, by the look of it, as Nayler had anticipated he would, unable in his loneliness to resist – a stooped figure walking from the opposite direction to the others, moving slowly as befitted a man of nearly seventy. The door opened to admit him, and he too was swallowed up in the darkness.
‘Now?’ asked Downing.
His eagerness to betray his friends was something else Nayler found insufferable.
‘Let them shed their coats and pistols, Sir George, and take a cup of wine. It will be their last, after all.’
They waited another half-hour before going downstairs to gather the men. One soldier carried a sack of hand and leg irons; another had a lantern on the end of a pole. Downing drew his gun; Nayler did the same. Together the raiding party stepped out into the empty street. As they crossed the little bridge over the canal, Nayler felt the familiar tension in his chest.
By arrangement, Kicke had left the front door unlocked. Downing pushed his way to the front of the arrest party. He meant to take the credit, Nayler thought: his dispatch to Clarendon was probably already drafted. Downing turned and put a finger to his fleshy lips. The men moved silently into the hall. From the room to their right came the sound of voices. When they were all assembled, Downing turned the handle and threw wide the door.
The regicides were sitting with Kicke by a blazing fire, drinking beer and smoking pipes. The expressions of shock and terror on their faces as the soldiers poured in and they recognised Downing were to be fixed in Nayler’s memory for a long time. The elderly Corbet fell to the floor and had some sort of seizure, his bony frame jerking and rattling on the polished boards like a marionette; it was difficult to attach the manacles. Within five minutes, it was over. Looking at the prisoners as they were led away, Nayler felt – for this one night at least – some brief relief from the nagging torment that he hadn’t managed to do the same to Whalley and Goffe.
It was to be several days before Nayler had the chance to interrogate the prisoners.
As word of their capture spread, a crowd of local sympathisers gathered outside the prison. A petition for their release was laid before the courts. It took all of Downing’s bullying guile, and some hefty bribes, before the extradition warrant was approved and the captives were transferred to Nayler’s custody. At two o’clock on the following Tuesday morning, they were escorted by the English soldiers through the deserted streets to a barge and rowed to the Blackamoor in Rotterdam, where they were taken down to the hold and placed in chains in separate cabins. The next morning, the ship weighed anchor, and Nayler went below decks to inspect his haul.
Miles Corbet he scarcely bothered with – a spindly lawyer, a committee man, he had not fought in the Civil War and had spent most of Cromwell’s regime as an administrator in Ireland. He claimed never to have met either Whalley or Goffe, apart from in Westminster Hall at the King’s trial and afterwards in the Painted Chamber, where the death warrant was signed. Nayler was inclined to believe him.
Barkstead and Okey were a different matter.
As Lieutenant of the Tower, Barkstead had been notorious for his harshness and avarice, and as Deputy Major General in London he had imposed a rigid Puritan regime, demolishing the Globe theatre, rounding up hundreds of prostitutes and exiling many to America, pulling down all the maypoles, closing the Bankside bear garden, and forbidding the traditional merriment of Shrove Tuesday. The soldiers knew all about him and had treated him roughly: his face was puffy from repeated beatings and his nose looked to be broken.
More interesting to Nayler was the fact that Barkstead had risen to the rank of colonel in the New Model Army and had fought alongside Whalley at the siege of Colchester in the summer of ’48, when the surrendering royalist commanders, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, had been given a summary trial. Barkstead, Whalley and Henry Ireton had all been involved in passing their death sentence. When General Lucas had protested – ‘It was never known that men were killed in cold blood before’ – Whalley was said to have responded, ‘Sir, I shall answer you for that,’ and had reminded him of the fourteen surrendering Roundhead soldiers who had been hanged at Woodhouse in Wiltshire. The exchange had been extensively reported in the Royalist press. ‘After this, six dragoons with firelocks discharged at him; and after his falling, Sir George Lisle having kissed him, was also shot to death.’
Barkstead claimed to have no memory of the incident.
‘But Whalley was a friend of yours?’ Nayler had brought in a three-legged stool to sit upon, so that he might question him in comfort. Barkstead was chained to the ship’s hull.
‘He was.’
‘When did you see him last?’
Barkstead thought it over. ‘Two years ago.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘I cannot tell you.’
‘Cannot, or will not?’
‘Cannot.’
‘I have evidence he came to Holland last year.’
‘If he did, I have no knowledge of it.’
‘Perhaps you have forgotten. I can call in some of my men to stir your memory.’
There was a flash of fear in Barkstead’s eyes, but then the old soldier within the broken frame braced himself. ‘You may beat me all you wish. My answer will not change. Colonel Whalley’s whereabouts are unknown to me. I am only glad to hear that he is still at liberty.’
Nayler briefly considered administering the beating himself, then decided it wasn’t worth it. He picked up his stool and lamp and went to the next cell, where Colonel Okey was huddled in the corner. Okey had commanded the regiment of dragoons at Naseby that had helped turn the battle in Parliament’s favour. He must have known Whalley well. Nayler decided to try a different tack. He placed his lamp on the floor and sat on the stool. ‘Now, Colonel Okey, how goes it with you?’
‘As well as it can for a man who has been foully betrayed by one he trusted.’
‘I can well understand your feelings. Downing is a rogue with the morals of a whore. I am sorry for what he did to you.’
‘Can you “well understand” it? I doubt it. That man was my chaplain. He lodged in my house. I raised him up from nothing.’
‘It saddens me to see you in this state.’ Nayler leaned forwards. ‘I could ease your conditions – perhaps allow you up on deck to take the air.’
‘You wish to make a bargain with me? Spare yourself the effort. I have nothing to offer in return.’
‘Just a little information is all I require. Colonel Whalley and Colonel Goffe – these men were friends of yours?’
‘Goffe not really – too much the radical and the mystic for my taste. But Ned Whalley I knew well.’
‘Tell me of him.’
‘A good officer. Cromwell’s man through and through. That was both his fortune and his curse.’
‘In what way his curse?’
‘He traded his judgement for his position. He became Cromwell’s creature. Did you know he was one of those who urged Oliver to become king? That was how rotten the Commonwealth became.’
‘He is in Holland, I believe.’
Okey stared at him for a moment, then started to laugh. ‘Now I see your game. Downing was my Judas, and I am to be the same for Whalley. And all so I can go up on deck and put some colour in my cheeks before I am hanged and quartered.’
‘But he is said to be on the Continent. If so, he must have tried to seek you out.’
‘I last saw Ned Whalley hiding in a ditch near Daventry when General Lambert was captured and the republic died. That was nigh on two years ago. Since then – nothing. Although I tell you frankly, Mr Nayler, I would not betray him even if I had seen him last week, so you may take that answer as you will. Now perhaps you would leave me to my prayers. I have a long journey to make to meet my God, and not much time to prepare for it.’
Nayler contemplated him with reluctant respect. They were hard men even in their present pitiful state. Little wonder they had won the war. Once again he picked up his stool, but this time on his way to the upper deck he ordered the commander of the guard to allow each of the prisoners half an hour of fresh air, under strict supervision.
The Blackamoor dropped anchor in the Thames estuary at Gravesend on the morning of Sunday 16 March. Mr Pepys of the Navy Board, on Hyde’s orders, sent a barge to meet it, and the three regicides were transferred to the vessel’s enclosed cabin at the stern. The gilded benches inside were upholstered in crimson velvet, for the comfort of the officers of the Admiralty. Corbet, Barkstead and Okey in their chains made incongruous passengers. The guards sat in the forward open section with the sailors who were manning the oars. The blades dipped. The barge moved off. After a few minutes, Nayler found the spectacle of the prisoners, and even more the clink of their fetters whenever they moved, so depressing that he went outside to join them.
They reached the Tower at dusk. The regicides were pushed and hauled up the green-slimed steps beyond Traitors’ Gate, and as Barkstead passed him, Nayler couldn’t resist remarking that he supposed that for him it was a homecoming, ‘although to less comfortable apartments than you were used to, I fear’. Afterwards, the barge let him off at the jetty of Essex House, and he strolled through the gardens to spend the evening in his chambers.
The next morning, he went direct to Whitehall Palace, where Samuel Nokes was clutching a file and waiting to congratulate him. After Nayler had taken his seat at his desk and described the arrests, Nokes said, ‘And did you discover any intelligence regarding Whalley and Goffe?’
Was it his imagination, or was his secretary gently mocking him? ‘No, Mr Nokes, I did not, although I fancy from your smile that you may have done.’
Nokes opened his file. ‘Do you recall the merchant, Samuel Wilson, we suspected of carrying secret messages between the Puritans in London and America?’
‘Of course. I was the one who ordered a watch be put on him.’
‘Whilst you were in Holland, I discovered that his ship was about to sail and arranged for it to be searched. We discovered a great many subversive newsbooks, religious tracts and suchlike hidden in the cargo. Wilson is now in custody and swears he had no knowledge of them or where they came from.’
‘And how does this concern Whalley and Goffe?’
‘There was also this.’ He laid a thick letter in front of Nayler.
‘Reverend Davenport,’ said Nayler. ‘Now there is a piece of work.’ He skimmed the pages – a litany of complaints about government oppression of the Puritans, and various items of tittle-tattle hostile to the King – until he reached the end. ‘Signed “D. G.”. Who is he?’
‘The meaning of the initials is unclear. But judging by the contents, he is a Puritan minister, advanced in years, who at one time lived with Davenport.’
‘William Hooke?’
‘That is my belief. He describes a meeting with Governor Winthrop and some prominent men from New Haven two Sundays ago that seems to have gone badly. And you might care to look more closely at the very last part.’
The writing was tiny, the lines crammed close together to save paper, but easy enough to decipher. I pray, salute my relations you mentioned in one of your last, & acquaint them with as much of this as you think fit. Tell them our friends here are well.
Nayler looked up at Nokes. ‘His relations? That would be Whalley and Goffe?’
‘Almost certainly. Whalley is his brother-in-law, Goffe his nephew by marriage. The “friends” most likely include Frances Goffe. Folded into the letter was a second message.’
He handed over the note with, most unusually for him, something like a flourish. It was in a very different hand – uneducated, almost childish.
‘One of our agents reported that a woman visited Wilson’s house the day before he was due to sail. She was described as in her twenties, thin and poor-looking. But clearly no fool – she eluded our agent, who lost her in the city.’
‘Frances Goffe,’ said Nayler. He raised the note to his nostrils and sniffed it. Sarah used to sprinkle her love letters with perfume, but Frances’s paper had no scent. Of course, it wouldn’t: she was a good Puritan wife.
‘Do we know where she is living?’
‘She was in Swan Alley with the Hookes, but they must have got wind of Wilson’s arrest. They have moved again.’
Nayler struck the table in frustration.
He dealt briskly with the correspondence that had piled up in his absence and went next to Worcester House to see the Lord Chancellor to report on the events in Delft. When he had finished, he added, ‘And we have fresh intelligence that Whalley and Goffe are still in America, almost certainly in New Haven, still living under the protection of Davenport and his friends.’
‘I thought you said they might be in Holland?’
‘I believed there was a chance. But it seems we must direct our efforts back to America.’
‘What do you propose?’
‘I have come to the view that Secretary Morice was correct. The task demands a full expedition. No more reliance on a local search party. We must sail to New Haven and take the place to pieces until they agree to give them up.’
‘We? Who would command this adventure?’
‘I would go again myself, if you would permit me, only this time I would stay until the job was done.’
‘Whalley and Goffe,’ groaned Hyde. ‘Whalley and Goffe. I have warned you once already. You are in danger of becoming a bore on the matter. When these three regicides from Holland are done with, we shall have executed thirteen men.’ Nayler started to protest, but Hyde raised his hand. ‘It is enough, Mr Nayler. The temper of the times has changed. People are growing sick of the spectacle. We are in danger of turning murderers into martyrs. If Whalley and Goffe fall into our hands, naturally they must pay the price the law demands. But I absolutely forbid you to waste any more of the country’s resources on this fruitless endeavour. I make myself clear?’
‘Of course, my lord.’
But even as Nayler bowed his way out of the room, his fertile mind was turning over the matter of Whalley and Goffe and how he might devise some fresh means to ensnare them.
The date of the triple execution was fixed for 19 April – a Saturday, to ensure the largest possible attendance. By early morning, the slopes around Tyburn were filled with tens of thousands of spectators and the usual attendant entourage of stallholders offering beer and rum, oysters and pastries and the like. Parents lifted children onto their shoulders for a better view. Nayler supervised, and it did not look to him as though there was much waning of enthusiasm among the London crowd for blood and gore.
The numbers were so huge that the sledges bearing the condemned men could not get through and they had to walk the last part of the way to the scaffold – Okey first, then half an hour later Barkstead, who got the loudest jeers, and finally Corbet. The prisoners clambered up onto the cart beneath the scaffold, their wigs were removed, and the nooses were put around their necks. The braziers heating the iron implements shone merrily in the spring sunshine. They made their speeches – Okey taking a final swipe at Downing (‘one who was formerly my chaplain that did pursue me to the very death’) and urging the crowd to support the King – then Barkstead cried out, ‘Lord Jesus, receive our souls!’ as the horse was smacked on the hindquarters, the cart trundled forwards, and they were left swinging in a row.
But crowds are curious creatures, with their own distinctive character – no two alike, in Nayler’s experience. As the executioner started on his butchery, a strange silence fell over Tyburn, and Nayler saw that Hyde was right: people were indeed sick of it. They started to drift away long before the quartering and the boiling of the heads. And the following day, when the various parts of Okey’s body were returned to his family for a Christian burial in recognition of his repentance, an immense throng turned out for the funeral in Stepney, so large that the service had to be abandoned for fear of civil disorder and his remains were secretly interred within the precincts of the Tower.
The following Monday, when Nayler walked to the Privy Council corridor, Hyde was already waiting for him.
‘Did I not warn you this might happen? We had to move His Majesty to Hampton Court yesterday for his safety. No more executions. Henceforth, if we locate a regicide, we should dispatch them by other means.’
Nayler looked at him in surprise. ‘You wish me to send assassins overseas to kill them?’
‘Why not? As long as it cannot be traced back to us.’
Nayler continued to convene his intelligence group throughout that spring and summer. News of the seizures of Barkstead, Corbet and Okey had driven the exiles into a frightened silence. Two more were reported by Downing to have died. Valentine Walton, who had been married to Cromwell’s sister and who had ended his days scraping a living as a gardener, had revealed his identity with his dying breath. Thomas Challoner, it turned out, had passed away in Middelburg more than a year earlier. That left only seven of the signatories of the death warrant still alive: Edmund Ludlow, living in Vevey in Switzerland under the pseudonym Edmund Phillips, and William Say, also in Vevey, both protected by the Swiss canton of Berne; Michael Livesey, said to be somewhere in Rotterdam; Daniel Blagrave, sighted in Aachen, in Germany; and Whalley and Goffe in America. The whereabouts of John Dixwell, former governor of Dover Castle, were no longer known.
Fifty-two expunged out of fifty-nine, whether by execution, natural causes or life imprisonment, with just one man – Ingoldsby – pardoned, was a respectable tally. Still, Nayler chafed at the thought of a job not yet done. He spent hours contemplating his chart of regicides, now black with crossed-out names. The Lord Chancellor was right: assassination was the only realistic means of erasing the rest. However, although that might be possible on the continent of Europe, which teemed with English agents and former soldiers looking for employment, where would he find such men in America? The more he considered the problem, the more convinced he became that Whalley and Goffe could be dealt with only by a military expedition. But Hyde would never change his mind and countenance such a costly venture simply to hunt down the two colonels – so what could be done?
