Rebels and Traitors (102 page)

Lovell made a scathing assessment of these cliques: their hopes were ridiculous, their disorder was dire. He despised them for working against one another, for their piss-poor judgement and lamentable lack of security. Typically, he attached himself to none of them. However, he did offer his services. Charles II always played the innocent, but from the start of his exile after the battle of Worcester he had used loyal friends to organise underhand designs. Lovell was told in confidence that Lord Cottingham and Sir Edward Hyde were behind the murders of two Commonwealth diplomats, Isaac Dorislaus at The Hague and Anthony Ascham in Madrid, with the King’s connivance. He learned that his friend Edmund Treves was in the party that killed Dorislaus. He also heard Edmund later died at Worcester. He was surprised how much the waste of that good young life depressed him.

Hyde was very much still active in intrigue, though many cavaliers despised him as an over-ambitious careerist. Lovell hated Hyde. But also dabbling with secret work was Sir Marmaduke Langdale. Langdale had been one of Charles I’s premier commanders. A long-faced, lean-figured, old-school cavalier, he had operated mainly in the north, a regular opponent of the Fairfaxes. He formed the Northern Horse from the relics of Lord Newcastle’s broken troops after Marston Moor but they were defeated at Naseby. In the second civil war Langdale was crushed by Cromwell at the battle of Preston and captured; he escaped in various disguises, including that of a milkmaid. Now permanently excluded from England by Parliament, Sir Marmaduke Langdale was a member of Charles II’s council in exile.

It was with Langdale that Orlando Lovell condescended to work. Langdale viewed him with fair regard. As a man of action, Lovell was experienced, physical, energetic, cool-headed and brave-hearted, a strong swordsman and an accurate shot. His mental skills included his ability to assess the enemy and, to a lesser extent, operational planning. Though a truculent follower, he made a terse but efficient leader. His supreme talent was to be devious. He was so good at that because he enjoyed it so much. Lovell would make a rabid plotter.

The plan hatched with Langdale was that Lovell would go across to England and resume normal life. He would pose as a penitent returning from exile; he would recover his estates, give false oaths of loyalty, establish himself somewhere convenient, recruit and report back on conditions. For this, his easiest disguise would be to live once again with his wife; he could use the regular Royalist claim, that he had come back to England ‘to settle his family’.

At the moment when Lovell first landed in Hampshire, Juliana was still reluctant to believe he was dead. She was doggedly waiting to hear from him and would have taken up their old family life, wherever and however Lovell suggested. Had he found her, Lovell’s plan would have worked.

So he landed in Hampshire. When he looked around his home county, he could see much damage but signs of recovery. True, war had had permanent effects. Large tracts of forest had been felled, stolen by locals for fuel or more recently commandeered by Parliament for shipbuilding; swathes of great trees, a whole generation, were lost for ever. Farms had decayed too, but they were now slowly being reclaimed for crops and livestock. Cattle and horses were now bred again. Prices were stabilising, fences were rebuilt, buildings that had been damaged beyond repair were pulled down for tidiness and to reuse their materials. Country-born, Orlando Lovell noticed these things. He had been born into the landowning class and was disgusted by the suffering imposed on the land by long years of war. His heart hardened against the rulers of the Commonwealth, whom he saw as responsible for the destruction.

In Hampshire, he was infuriated to find that his own meagre estates had never been returned to him after Juliana helped him compound for pardon. They were forfeited to Parliament. Worse, his property had been snapped up, at a knock-down price, by one of many astute speculators who were grabbing Royalist land: his own land agent, John Jolley. Lovell would never see the money; it went to pay Parliamentary soldiers.

When Jolley admitted this outrage, he only escaped injury because they were in a tavern with people watching — people who might report a trouble-making Royalist. Jolley informed the incensed Lovell that an information had been laid against him by somebody unknown. He had been proscribed by Parliament; designated ‘dangerous and disaffected’; ordered into banishment. If caught, he would be imprisoned. He faced a firing-squad or the gallows.

Lovell disappeared fast, before he could be betrayed. In Hampshire he could trust no one. He had intended to try to see his father, but this was likely to go badly so he did not wait to do it. He had learned one other thing from John Jolley: Juliana and their two sons were at Lewisham. Lovell travelled there, but he found tenants in possession. He did not approach them. Had he done so, and had he tracked down Juliana to Shoe Lane, he would not have been too late. She would not — could not — have turned away her husband. She had not yet gone looking for a printer. So if Lovell lost her, it was due to his own inertia.

Fearing that trouble might follow him from Hampshire, Lovell burrowed into hiding in London. Much of the news there was of the trial of the Leveller, John Lilburne, who had returned to England from exile in Bruges; he claimed that Cromwell’s dismissing the Rump had rendered his banishment invalid. His old ally Richard Overton tried to get him a good lawyer and attended daily. The jury would find Lilburne not guilty; he would try to obtain a writ of habeas corpus but would be put in the Tower again anyway.

During this highly charged trial, John Thurloe took over sole management of the intelligence service for Cromwell. Around the same time, intuition warned Colonel Orlando Lovell that he was being watched. Immediately he packed, changed his coat and his hairstyle, sold his horse for more than he had paid for it, left his lodging through an inconspicuous alley and escaped back to the Continent.

Not all plotters against the Commonwealth were Royalists. This was the problem Thurloe had to face. If the Commonwealth failed, it was likely to be because so much time and energy had to be given to countering dissent, both abroad and at home. At home the most dangerous dissenter was Edward Sexby.

Orlando Lovell’s ship back to France crossed one that was returning to England with Sexby, whose history was becoming bizarre. He had just spent months in Bordeaux, among elements of the Fronde rebellion against the French monarchy — a rebellion that had been more farcical than fanatical, more striking for its in-fighting among aristocrats than for any serious reconsideration of social order. Sexby was at the high point of a career that had bucketed through promotion, special service, court-martial and cashiering, after which he was sent to France with four associates, a thousand pounds and a special brief to
‘find out things, prevent danger and create an interest’.

He took himself to Bordeaux as a self-appointed political adviser, producing for the Frondeurs a document called
L’Accord du Peuple,
crudely adapted from the Levellers’ manifesto. Sexby had hopes of Bordeaux where, unlike the general carnival elsewhere, craftsmen had banded in a commune to declare a republic. The Fronde was really an odd, half-hearted amalgam; fashionable loaves and hats had been created in the shape of street-urchins’ catapults or frondes
’
, several beautiful duchesses had intrigued with contemptible lovers and the usual misery had been inflicted on the poor. Then this hotchpotch movement faded fast. The commune in Bordeaux caved in. They opened their gates to royal troops. Threatened with arrest, Edward Sexby climbed out over the city walls by night.

His mission had undoubtedly been dangerous. One of his companions was captured and tortured to death. Sexby returned home, put in a stupendous expenses claim, then made a lofty attempt to set himself up as foreign policy adviser to Cromwell. He suggested a top-secret expedition to gain a British foothold in France, perhaps at La Rochelle. When Cromwell rejected this, Sexby turned bitterly against Cromwell. As Gideon Jukes had noted years before, being sidelined had never suited him.

The stage was now set for Edward Sexby’s extraordinary career as Cromwell’s implacable enemy.

Whether Oliver Cromwell was a hypocrite or simply pragmatic, in December 1653 he was forced to accept that, after the Rump departed, even its successor, the carefully vetted Barebones Parliament, did not work. Cromwell assumed the title of Lord Protector. He would be an absolute ruler, though he refused to consider the offer of the crown. His enemies mocked this rejection, though it was probably genuine. Many old allies were horrified. Old enemies saw this as their chance.

The Protectorate not only gave a focus for manic Royalist intrigue, it also led to opposition at home from religious and political radicals. Fifth Monarchists and Baptists fulminated. Levellers would bitterly oppose rule by one man, whether he called himself Protector or King. All of them sought Cromwell’s removal. Sexby, too, was now busy at that work.

John Thurloe’s intelligence service set about tracking every set of dissidents. To do so, the spymaster drew on any possible resources, encouraging turncoats and bribing double agents. In December 1653 as the Protectorate began, Richard Overton, the Leveller, who only a few months before had been stalwartly supporting John Lilburne at his trial, was paid twenty pounds by Thurloe. This substantial sum was an inducement to report on the activities of Edward Sexby.

It was suspected Overton might renege. An attempt was made, therefore, to recruit someone to monitor
his
activities — one candidate being Lambert Jukes, whose wife knew the wife of Overton. A doubt hung over Lambert, as a convicted Ranter. Even more likely to move in Overton’s circles, because he was a printer and Overton constantly wrote pamphlets, was Lambert’s brother, Gideon Jukes. He had a sound New Model Army record, and sometimes wrote for the official Parliamentary publisher, Marchamont Nedham. Nedham had connections with Thurloe and it was he who made informal approaches to Gideon.

This Nedham had a mixed history as a publisher and editor, though Gideon found him fairly congenial. In the ’40s, Nedham had published
Mercurius Britannicus,
the Parliamentary response to Royalist propaganda, and after Naseby he printed the King’s incriminating papers. He changed sides dramatically over the execution — but while under sentence of death in Newgate, his old love for Parliament was reborn by magic. Ever since, he had championed the need for all parties to submit to the Commonwealth’s government, in order to achieve social stability.

As the official propagandist, Nedham was paid a salary, though when he set up the state news-sheet
Mercurius Politicus,
he also supported it financially by taking in paid advertisements for a sister periodical called
The Public Adviser;
its regular news of houses and shops for sale, medical prescriptions and apprenticeships offered for gentlemen’s sons seemed to Gideon a cheerful indication that life was getting back to normal after years of war. Nedham had a famously jocular style as editor, with superb contacts and correspondents. His official licenser was John Milton, also a contributor, who held a post with the Council of State, having oversight of foreign documents. Other collaborators were also poets, John Dryden and Andrew Marvell.

Gideon had been first introduced to Marchamont Nedham by Robert Allibone in 1651, when
Mercurius Politicus
was about a year old. He found Nedham a short, hawk-nosed, intense, lively character, whose long black hair and two earrings gave him a raffish appearance. Gideon liked him more than Robert did, so it was only after Robert’s death that Gideon wrote occasional pieces for him. He approved of the man’s belief in separation of church and state; his dedication to freedom of conscience; even his eagerness — so much despised by others — to make publishing pay Gideon did not disapprove of that and, for him, Nedham’s relationship with the secret service also held spice. He knew the editor worked very closely with John Thurloe. It was logical. They used each other’s networks of correspondents. By drawing on Thurloe’s intelligence, Nedham obtained reports that were rightly seen as making
Mercurius Politicus
the only news worth reading.

Marchamont Nedham tried to recruit Gideon to spy on Richard Overton. Gideon wriggled, saying he had just become attached to a lady and was settling himself domestically. He smiled a little to think that the spymaster’s office was unaware of his real acquaintance with Overton — the man who had once lured him into his dotterel suit in
The Triumph of Peace …

Eventually he agreed the request. ‘I shall need time to track him down —’ Gideon rather hoped this would prove impossible.

‘Covent Garden,’ replied Nedham immediately. ‘He lodges in Bedford Street with a Colonel Wetton.’