The Last Protector Read online

  ‘It was the purest chance, sir,’ Veal said. ‘Or rather Providence ordained it. Roger here happened to catch sight of you in the street. He knew you at once.’

  ‘Trooper Durrell as was, Your Honour,’ Roger Durrell said in a voice like liquid mud. ‘Lord General Fairfax’s lifeguard. Had the honour to serve under you in ’48. Saw Your Honour again at Whitehall in ’57. Never forget a face, sir.’

  ‘I only served in the army for a few months,’ Cromwell said. ‘I’m surprised anyone had time to remember me. And it’s twenty years ago.’

  ‘Roger told me he had seen you,’ Veal continued, ignoring this, ‘and I told His Grace, whom we both have the honour to serve in a confidential capacity. And he sent us to you at once.’

  ‘If Durrell here recognized me, others might,’ Cromwell said, voicing a worry that had been growing in his mind. ‘I’d hoped I was sufficiently changed to pass without notice.’

  ‘As you are, sir, when you wear those green glasses. But remember – Roger caught sight of you when you chanced to have your eyes uncovered. Besides, he has a rare talent for faces.’

  ‘I wonder where you saw me. I try to wear them always.’

  ‘Henrietta Street by Covent Garden, Your Honour,’ Durrell said promptly. ‘You was coming out of a house with a young lady.’

  ‘Ah – you mean my daughter.’ He felt his eyes fill with tears, which were perfectly genuine. ‘I haven’t seen my family since I went abroad. She came up to London to meet me. God bless her.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Mr Veal. ‘Is she staying there?’ He prodded Durrell with his finger. ‘At the sign of the Rose, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, sir. She stays with Mistress Dalton too. But she had a desire to see a friend of her youth, a Mistress Hakesby, and I escorted her to Henrietta Street.’

  To his relief, the answer seemed to satisfy Veal. It might have complicated matters if Cromwell had been forced to admit that Mistress Hakesby was the daughter of the regicide Thomas Lovett, who had fallen to his death in mysterious circumstances in the ruins of St Paul’s Cathedral, soon after the Great Fire.

  They drove on, the coach’s iron-shod wheels scraping and clattering over the stones and slithering in the mud. At Charing Cross the coach swung sharply to the right. It rattled on and turned into Pall Mall. It slowed and came to a halt.

  ‘Where are we?’ Cromwell said, alarmed. ‘I thought you were taking me to the Duke.’

  ‘So we are, sir, so we are.’ Veal pushed aside the leather curtain to look out. ‘But we don’t want to announce your arrival to the world.’

  They descended from the coach and passed through the gate into St James’s Park. It was almost dark, but lanterns marked the lines of the principal paths. Veal and Durrell walked on either side of Cromwell. Their presence was ambiguous: on the face of it, they were protecting him from possible attackers, but they were also preventing him from escaping. They led him along the broad avenue lined with trees towards the garden wall of Wallingford House. There were gates set in it, wide and tall enough for a pair of horsemen riding side by side. A light burned above the archway.

  ‘There, sir,’ said Veal, pointing. ‘A light to lighten our darkness.’

  They were clearly expected. One leaf of the gates swung open as they approached. Two footmen with lanterns were waiting on the other side of the wall. Cromwell had a shadowy impression of a formal garden with the great house looming beyond. Veal and Durrell led him along a flagged walk, with a servant on either side to light their way, until they reached steps up to a broad terrace along the back of the mansion. They passed through a porch and into the house itself.

  ‘This way, sir,’ Veal said, gesturing towards a flight of stairs. ‘His Grace gave orders that his private closet should be prepared for you.’

  He escorted Cromwell up to the first floor and through a long chamber furnished as a library. The closet was at the end. It contained a desk, two chairs and an iron-bound chest. A coal fire burned in the grate, and candles were alight in sconces on the panelled walls. The room’s simplicity was at variance with the lavishness of what he had glimpsed of the rest of the house.

  ‘No one will disturb you here,’ Veal said. ‘His Grace won’t be long. He will know you’re here. Would you care for some wine? Or something to eat?’

  Cromwell declined. He sat by the fire. Veal bowed and left him. Cromwell rarely felt nostalgic for his day as Lord Protector but in those days at least no one had kept him waiting, or at least not until the end when his power was slipping away from him. Despite the warmth of the room, he shivered.

  I have done nothing wrong, he told himself, and the worst the King can do to me is have me thrown in jail for debt. But the words were hollow. In truth he could not pretend that he was as insignificant as he would have liked to have been. He was Oliver’s son and himself the late Lord Protector of England: that gave him a political importance whether he wanted it or not. During the Commonwealth, there were people who thought longingly of the good old days when a king had ruled over them. Since the Restoration, there were people who thought longingly of the Protectorate.

  There were hurried footsteps outside the door. Cromwell rose to his feet as Buckingham burst into the room.

  ‘My dear sir,’ the Duke cried. With great courtesy, he swept off his hat and bowed low. ‘What a pleasure to see you here at last. A thousand pardons for keeping you waiting – I hope my servants have looked after you.’ Buckingham was a big man in any case, but he seemed even larger than nature had made him. In this small room he radiated a vitality that was almost overwhelming. ‘I beg you – let us sit and talk – but first I must thank you, sir, I must thank you from the bottom of my heart.’

  ‘Thank me – why?’

  ‘For freeing me. For granting me life and liberty, the greatest gifts of all. It grieves me greatly that your father and I were not friends. I must confess, when he sent me to the Tower I didn’t think I would escape alive. But when you succeeded as Lord Protector, you allowed me to go free. Indeed, sir, it would not be too much to say that ten years ago you saved my life. I am for ever in your debt.’

  Cromwell remembered the circumstances rather differently. Buckingham, having quarrelled with the King in exile, had come back to England and married Mary, the daughter and heir of General Fairfax. On her part it had been a love match; on his, however, it had clearly been a cynical attempt to win back a large part of his estates, since Parliament had confiscated these from Buckingham and bestowed them on Lord Fairfax. The Lord Protector had responded by placing the Duke under house arrest.

  ‘He’s a turncoat,’ Oliver had said to Richard. ‘I don’t trust him. If a man changes allegiance once, he’ll change it twice. The royal family treated him as one of their own since he was a fatherless child, and now he’s turned his back on them. He’s a rake and libertine, too. Poor Mary Fairfax will rue the day she married him.’

  When Buckingham had broken the terms of his house arrest, he was taken up and sent to the Tower. But the following month, Oliver was dead. The Duke was kept in the Tower, however, though in very comfortable circumstances, all things considered, as befitted a duke who was also General Fairfax’s son-in-law. He had stayed there for nearly six months more, until February 1659, when the Council had decided that he should be released with Fairfax standing bail for £20,000.

  Richard himself had had nothing to do with the matter. During his short Protectorate, he had had far more pressing problems than the fate of a renegade duke who was safely lodged in the Tower. The question of Buckingham’s freedom had been a matter for the Council, not him.

  Then what was this show of gratitude for? Was it possible that Buckingham did not know that he, Richard, had done nothing to secure his release from the Tower? Perhaps the answer didn’t matter. Whatever the truth, there was surely every reason to take advantage of the situation.

  ‘Sir,’ Cromwell said, ‘when God set me briefly in such a high place, I acted as He directed me. I am delighted to find you in such
a flourishing condition.’

  ‘And I to see you back in your native country where you belong. We must celebrate this happy conjunction, must we not? We must drink to it, sir, I insist.’

  Buckingham fetched wine, glasses and biscuits from the cupboard. He toasted Cromwell, and Cromwell could hardly decline to toast the Duke back.

  ‘I know that you find it convenient at present to live on the Continent …’ the Duke said, refilling their glasses.

  ‘That’s tactfully put, sir.’

  ‘But here you are in London, nevertheless, and not a stone’s throw from Whitehall.’

  ‘I have slipped back to England for a week or two to see something of my family,’ Cromwell said. ‘After eight lonely years.’

  ‘Aren’t they living in the country?’

  ‘My daughter Elizabeth has come up to London.’

  ‘You must let me know if I can serve you or your family in any way. Perhaps – I would not mention this if I had not heard something of your circumstances – a trifling loan might smooth your way.’

  Cromwell felt his cheeks grow warm. ‘You’re too kind, sir. But—’

  ‘It would be a positive pleasure to assist you in any way I can,’ Buckingham interrupted. ‘Indeed, I’d invite you and your daughter to stay here for as long as you liked if I didn’t think it might draw attention that both of us might find inconvenient.’ He hesitated, drawing his hand across his forehead in a gesture so graceful it seemed rehearsed. ‘And perhaps there are other reasons why you would not care for that.’

  ‘I don’t follow you, sir.’

  ‘We live in sinful times, I’m afraid, and I myself am but human. Errare humanum est, as Seneca so wisely reminds us. You might not wish to associate with one such as me. Or for your daughter to do so.’

  ‘That cannot be so, sir,’ said Cromwell politely.

  ‘But perhaps you do not know? There was a most unfortunate duel last month …’

  Cromwell nodded. ‘I heard something of it,’ he said. ‘And the circumstances. For a while, the town talked of little else.’

  Buckingham, who had an actor’s trick of amplifying his emotions, looked as if he were on the verge of being overwhelmed by grief. ‘I have sinned, and I grieve for it from the bottom of my heart. In fact, I have invited certain worthy men to join me here tomorrow for a day of penitence and humiliation. My own penitence, first and foremost, and my own humiliation.’

  ‘We all have to repent of something sir.’

  ‘True, sir, very true. As I say, we live in sinful times – and the King’s own court sets the worst example in the world to the Kingdom. But we must be charitable – as you say, we are all sinners, are we not? I cannot but hope that God may find our prayers tomorrow acceptable. I remember Our Lord’s lesson of the widow’s mite, and it gives me hope. Insignificant as we are, we must pray, we must strive to do good, we must repent our sins. So Dr Owen will preach to us tomorrow, and I’m sure it will be most edifying. You remember him? Your father had many dealings with him. Like poor Veal who brought you here, he was ejected from his places after the Restoration, but he is a most godly man.’

  For a moment Cromwell was diverted: ‘Mr Veal is a clergyman? The man who carried me here in the coach?’

  ‘Yes, poor fellow, or so he was. He was an army chaplain after Cambridge, and then he had one of my livings in Yorkshire until he was turned out of it.’

  ‘He wears a sword.’

  ‘Indeed he does. And he knows how to use it in the service of the godly. But I am sure that when this country is a fit place for Christians again, he will beat his sword into a ploughshare, and I shall find him a living again as his reward. So will you come tomorrow, sir? It would mean a great deal to me.’

  Cromwell hesitated. Why should his presence or absence matter to Buckingham one way or the other? There must be more to it, some underlying scheme. On the other hand, he could hardly afford to offend the Duke, who seemed so ready to offer him friendship and money. In the end, he temporized: ‘Surely I would be a danger to you if I came? And I myself would not be safe. If Durrell recognized me, might not others?’

  Buckingham seemed to swell still further. ‘No harm will ever come to you in this house,’ he said. ‘My dear sir, I promise you that on my dear father’s grave. Besides,’ he went on in a more down-to-earth voice, ‘if you wear those glasses, no one will recognize you from Adam. Indeed, I’m greatly surprised that Durrell knew you even when your eyes were uncovered. I hope you won’t mind my saying that you are much changed from what you were, for your sorrows have marked you.’

  ‘I … I’m not entirely convinced that—’

  ‘Promise me you will come and hear Dr Owen. Veal will keep you safe. And afterwards’ – the Duke smiled with great charm – ‘we shall arrange how I may best help you and yours.’

  On Friday morning, I dressed in the glory of my Sunday suit. I left my lodging shortly after nine o’clock. I had not had an answer from Cat Hakesby. Stephen had taken my letter to the Drawing Office early yesterday morning. Presumably I could interpret her silence as meaning that she had seen nothing more of Roger or his master Veal. If I was right, it was good news. But I could not help feeling disappointed.

  I walked along the Strand towards Wallingford House, which lay at the northern end of the Tiltyard between Whitehall and Charing Cross. I had passed its gilded gates thousands of times, but I had never been inside. It was a large building shaped like an E without its central projection and constructed of dark, soot-streaked bricks. The Duke of Buckingham owned several houses in London, including York House, a vast mansion on the river. But he and his father had both chosen to live at Wallingford House, old-fashioned though it was. It was nearer to Whitehall and the King.

  Despite the earliness of the hour, there were already several private coaches in the court beyond the gates, and another was waiting to be admitted. I showed the pass that Williamson had given me. It bore Lord Arlington’s signature. The porters let me through, directing me to the grand double doors in the centre of the building. The hall beyond was thronged by servants in Buckingham’s livery. The Duke surrounded himself with dependants of all sorts, and he liked to make it clear that they belonged to him and no one else. I suspected that many in his household served little function but to project the illusion of their master’s glory by sheer weight of numbers.

  A clerk examined Arlington’s pass, his eyes flickering curiously over my face. Afterwards, two footmen conducted me up a broad staircase. Vast paintings hung on the walls, but their frames had been draped with black silk. Perhaps their subjects might be considered indecent by the pious company gathering here today.

  On the first floor, the servants conducted me to a tall doorway, set in a richly ornamented frame and guarded by two footmen. One of them raised his finger to his lips, desiring me to be silent. He and his fellow threw open the two leaves of the door, releasing a sonorous voice on to the landing.

  ‘Our worst earthly torments are no more than the merest fleabites compared to what awaits the sinners of this world who pass through the portal of hell.’

  The room created an instant impression of size and muted splendour. The Duke, dressed in a magnificent black suit, sat in a high-backed oak armchair at the far end. He was upon a platform raised a foot above the floor. Sitting in lonely state, he was a king in all but name. Beneath his golden peruke, his florid face was still, the heavy features composed into a mask. There were bags under his eyes.

  Everyone else in the room was standing. The preacher, a clergyman with a pale face and tendency to spray spittle in his enthusiasm for his subject, was at one side of the platform, preaching his sermon with the aid of a thick pile of notes. I recognized him, for he was a man whom Williamson kept an eye on: his name was Owen; he was a prominent Independent minister and theologian who had been close to Cromwell under the Commonwealth and much favoured by many officers of the New Model Army. He was still influential, a man with many friends. He was one of those who had been
calling for the Comprehension Bill, which must have brought him together with Buckingham.

  Time passed tediously. Dr Owen was a scholar who believed it his duty to lay before us as many of the fruits of his erudition as he could. Moreover he would sometimes diverge from his notes and plunge into a digression, preaching extempore, waving his arms and striding about the stage. We might be here for hours.

  ‘The devil works among us, invisible as yeast in the bread,’ he was saying. ‘Yea, take heed, lest ye consume him without knowing that ye do it.’

  As for the rest, there must have been at least forty people, all men, in the room, though that was not enough to make it seem overly crowded. Many were clergymen. By their dress, and by their presence here, it was clear that most were inclined towards Presbyterianism, rather than the more traditional forms of worship favoured by the King’s bishops, though some adhered to other forms of nonconformist belief. Other men were the Duke’s more sober friends – among them Sir Robert Holmes, who had acted as his second at his duel with Lord Shrewsbury.

  I stood near the door and listened to Dr Owen outlining the dreadful fate that awaited all of us miserable sinners who were not of the elect. His voice was harsh but monotonous, and I could not help feeling that listening to him was a form of hell in itself. He cast into outer darkness those who had fallen into Satan’s great snare of papism. In particular, he condemned the sinfulness and luxury of the court, where such foul practices flourished. He did not go so far as openly to accuse the King of condoning and encouraging this vast cesspit of evil, but the implication was unavoidable.

  ‘If the tree is rotten,’ he thundered, ‘so is the fruit thereof.’

  I did not for a moment believe that Buckingham hoped this self-inflicted purgatory would bring him spiritual advantage. His motives were altogether more earthly. Much of his political support derived from the Presbyterians and their religious bedfellows. Now, as he attempted to get the King’s business through Parliament and consolidate his power at Whitehall, he needed all the friends he could muster.