Authors: Antonia Fraser
Domestically, there was a deliberate attempt to focus nationalist sentiment on Charles’ person by referring to the ancient Kings of Scotland – Fergus and so forth, a line of over a hundred sovereigns – to which Charles was regarded as the natural successor. Fergus had probably not figured greatly in Charles’ fantasies hitherto, but at Christmas Sir James Balfour gave him ‘a great charter’, inscribed with the royal genealogical descent, to assist such reveries.
6
Enormous trouble was taken over the details of the coronation, which was appointed to take place on 1 January 1651 at the Cathedral at Scone. Still, the restraining hand of Presbyterianism was not lacking from the order of the day, or, as the author of an early life of Charles succinctly put it, ‘A fresh farce was now necessary and his Majesty had a principal part to play in it.’
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A committee was formed to draw up the procedure. The King was allowed to wear a prince’s robe of considerable richness, and his train-bearers were taken from among the sons of the nobility – the right-minded members of it. He also sat under a canopy of crimson velvet. But the traditional ceremony of anointing – a crucial part of any previous coronation – was omitted as being sheer superstition.
For at the heart of the ceremony was a contradiction like a canker, and that marred it somewhat, in spite of all the determination to create enough magnificence to illumine a nation. Charles sat on the throne of Scone, as his forefathers had done. But it was noticeable that he received the crown from Argyll and the sceptre from the Earl of Crawford, both Covenanters. Shortly afterwards John Middleton, a leading ‘Malignant’ soldier who wished to return to the Covenanting fold, did penance in sack-cloth – a strange epilogue to a coronation.
Above all, Charles had to endure another of Robert Douglas’ protracted sermons, the delivery of which, as Moderator of the General Assembly, Douglas took to be his due on this occasion. This particular effort was not only lugubrious but at times positively menacing. There were a number of solemn warnings about collapsing monarchies. These could fall for two principal reasons. First, ‘The sins of former kings have made this a tottering crown’; Douglas added that the chief reason for the misfortunes of both Charles
I
and James
VI
and
I
was contained in their attitude to Presbyterianism. Secondly, a crown could simply totter through general troubles and commotions. Thus, ‘A King when he getteth his Crown on his head, should think at the best, it is but a fading crown.’
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It must have come as a pleasant surprise when Douglas announced at last the real theme of the coronation – to cleave the Scottish people to their young King.
At least the royal Household Book for Coronation Day shows some taste for magnificence: a vastly increased amount of meat and partridges was ordered, a total of ten calves’ heads, and twenty-two salmon.
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A quantity of damask napkins had been ordered well ahead, in December, fifty-four of which, for the King’s table alone, were embroidered with ‘CR’ in anticipation of the ceremony.
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And to a certain extent the gambit worked. King Charles made a series of progresses in that part of eastern and northern Scotland not controlled by the Commonwealth troops. At Pittenweem, for example, a coal seaport on the East Fife peninsula, the burgh laid down an elaborate order for his reception, including the ringing of bells from the moment of
his arrival onwards, the wearing of their best apparel by the baillies and their council, and the employment of one of ‘my lord’s best carpets’ to cover the festive table. On this they proposed to keep in readiness ‘of fine flour some great buns and other wheat bread of the best order’, as well as eight or ten gallons of good strong ale. When the King finally left, cannons were fired.
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Elsewhere too he received a fine, even tumultuous reception. His regal peregrinations included visits to all the Fife coastal towns, on to St Andrews and Struthers House, thence back to Perth, north to Aberdeen via Dundee, as well as a tour of the garrisons of Stirling, Inchgarvie and Burntisland. He found time too for the now celebrated national pastime of golf (which had been enjoyed, incidentally, by both Mary Queen of Scots and James
VI
) and a jousting pastime named ‘running at the glove’.
In general, Charles bent every effort to make this new deal towards national unity work. At Aberdeen in February he persuaded the ministers to assist General Middleton in recruitment (now that Middleton had used that sackcloth to purge himself of his previous association with Montrose). That was one coup. Another took place in March, when he persuaded the Scottish Parliament to approve the raising of troops generally in the Highlands. The Engagers were in principle allowed back.
And Charles’ own reputation was growing in the world outside. In March his former tutor Newcastle, then in Antwerp, referred to him in glowing terms: ‘A braver King certainly we have not had since the conquest … his most excellent parts being bred in the school of calamity.’ The character he was beginning to acquire was of one ‘admirably active and intelligent in all his great affairs’ – with only one proviso. He did not care enough for his own safety, being ‘too forward to hazard his person in any attempt against the rebels’.
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Even that was not a disastrous quality in a young prince, who had to conjure unity out of nowhere, virtually unaided, except by the magnetism of his own person.
And Charles showed that his natural talent for diplomacy had not deserted him in these more public displays, in his handling of the delicate matter of Argyll’s daughter, Lady Anne Campbell.
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Argyll’s ambitions in this respect have already been mentioned: when he arrived at Breda the previous year, with a present of six Flanders mares for the King’s coach, one wit suggested that he also intended to unload on the King a seventh mare in the shape of his daughter. In Scotland, undeniably a bachelor, Charles could have found himself in an awkward situation.
It was not a question of the young lady’s own attractions (Ann, Lady Halkett, a Scot herself, spoke up for her valiantly and said that she was as well behaved as anyone at the English court). What was at issue was the demonstrable folly of saddling England with a Scottish Queen, one not even of royal birth, the daughter of Argyll to boot. No possible advantage of Argyll’s patronage could possibly outweigh the solecism of such a match, in terms of Charles’ future in England. And that was after all where the whole Scottish venture was aimed. At the same time it would not do to offend Argyll either – and the power of his position at that time is best illustrated by the fact that Buckingham too dangled after the young lady’s hand. Buckingham’s courtships were always practical, never romantic – witness his ultimate marriage to the great northern heiress and daughter of the Parliamentary general Sir Thomas Fairfax.
For once it was Henrietta Maria who behaved with common sense and judgement, when Charles consulted her on the subject. There was nothing ‘new and extraordinary’ in the notion that such a well-born young lady as the daughter of Argyll should wed a King, tactfully wrote back this descendant of the great Henri Quatre. But was it wise to exclude the English altogether from
consultation
over the question of his marriage? In general, the ‘imprudence or rather the madness’ of Charles’ taking of the Covenant had galvanized the widowed Queen. She warned courtiers who were not Catholics away from her side, saying that she was doing so in order to counterbalance her son’s behaviour. Reasonably enough, she did not wish to forfeit all the Catholic support in Europe. The Argyll marriage project lapsed for lack of encouragement.
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Back in Scotland, the real problem of the time was not the character of the monarch, who was indeed proving himself right royally, nor at this moment even the character of the opposition.
Cromwell, a man of over fifty, in precarious health, had taken the winter in Edinburgh badly: he was struck down again in the spring so severely that he saluted the (English) doctor who cured him with the words, ‘He has plucked me out of the grave!’ The problem was that, for all these progresses, for all this parade of unity, marked by the Scots Parliament appointing the King as commander in March, the people themselves simply did not join up in sufficient numbers to constitute a proper resurgent military force.
For at least a generation the Scottish national fabric had been torn and torn again by religious division. Such rents were not so easily mended. For thirteen years, more or less, the country had been at war, its terrain frequently fought over. The deep human instinct to live at peace, if peace was at all possible, was a much stronger impulse than the shallow new growth of national loyalty implanted by their young King.
Unfortunately there was no way of discovering this unpalatable truth except by trial and failure. In the early summer of 1651 King Charles still rode high. Argyll’s influence diminished, his own authority increased. Charles’ twenty-first birthday, 29 May 1651, was declared in the Scottish Parliament the day of ‘the King’s Majestic Majority’; that evening Fife at least was lit up with congratulatory bonfires, and the ordnance was heard blasting off from Burntisland and other Royalist garrisons. The English heard that Charles was ‘very absolute’ in following ‘his own private counsels’. On 24 June the
Weekly Intelligence
(a Commonwealth gazette) reported that he was ‘higher than his people as much in stature as authority’. And Charles’ enormous physical energy was coming into its own. He thought nothing of riding, two or three times a week, between Stirling and Perth in order to display himself alternately at the head of his forces, and in Parliament. He rode up and down the lines of the army, wearing ‘a soldier’s dress’ of buff, set off by a red sash and his precious George. As to his own commitment, he told them genially that he had only one life to lose.
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The question was rapidly arising: where and in what direction was this life, and indeed this army, to be deployed? The obvious
decision was to march on England. Given that, the possibilities were twofold. Charles could either plan for England immediately or he could wend his way north, and join up firmly with the Highlanders and Royalists there. Having united all available Scottish forces, he could consider further southward action. Both these courses begged the question of the Cromwellian army still in Scotland, centred on Edinburgh and straddled about the south-east and south-west of the country. The Scots, as everyone realized at heart, were in no position to take on the English again after the defeat at Dunbar. Indeed, both courses open to the King presupposed the swelling of their forces by a large number of additional troops – without which they could scarcely hope to suffer anything but a new and even more humiliating version of the Dunbar catastrophe.
It is important to realize that any plan for a direct southward move was based on the illusion of English Royalist help, because this goes far to explain the ultimate failure of the disastrous Worcester expedition. The notion of English Royalist help was an illusion for the grim reason that by 1651 the English Royalist movement was in itself a myth.
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Yet of this the King’s intelligence, such as it was, was quite unaware. Communications had been cut for too long. It was impossible for the King’s advisers, or indeed Charles himself, to appreciate the totality of the hold which a vigilant government now held over England itself. In many ways the country had become like a modern police state, with passes and permissions needed for any form of movement.
The activists fled, their estates confiscated. The feeble (and those disgusted by the King’s taking of the Covenant) compounded. The only Royalists with any sort of liberty were those who had decided to sit out the times until better ones prevailed. These were scarcely the types to risk life and limb to join an invading Scottish army, as it would once again appear to be.
Of Royalist underground conspiracy, about the only movement with any vitality in it was the so-called Western Association; this had been formed, under the cover of a race-meeting in April 1650, by Colonel Francis Wyndham of Somerset and Sir
John Paulet of Hampshire. The sphere of its activities was remote from the vital north-western territories through which a Scottish army must pass to recruit English troops. The northwest was the traditional area of Royalist support, where many of the great magnates, such as the powerful Earl of Derby, had favoured the King. Yet the Northern Association, the alleged sister movement to that of the West Country, has been shown to be non-existent except on paper. An unsuccessful and easily quelled rising in Norfolk in December 1650 further depressed the Royalist spirits.
Back in Scotland however, Dean King reported that the King’s power was absolute: ‘all factions composed, the ambitious defeated, the army cheerful, accomplished, numerous’.
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In June too, most hopeful sign of all, the pernicious Act of Classes was repealed. From the Scottish angle all the prognostications were cheerful. As far as can be made out, it was always the intention of the King to put this mood of optimism to good use and march on England. Strategically, it made as much sense as marching north; besides, there was always the uncertainty as to how long any alliance of former Malignants and present Covenanters would last. Then there was Charles’ undoubted dislike of the Scots, not diminished by the fact that he had successfully united them under his personal banner. To put it mildly, he had no personal inducement to linger in a country which had treated him so ill.
Nevertheless, the Scots themselves were much less certain of the right course to take. At this point, an unexpected upsurge of the Commonwealth fortunes in Scotland transformed the situation. Hitherto the monarchical party had rested, militarily speaking, on the secure base of the Fife peninsula; apparently impregnable to Commonwealth assault, it enabled them to scurry about the north-east with more or less impunity. But on 24 June, at Inverkeithing just north of Edinburgh (close by the site of the modern Forth Bridge), the brilliant young Parliamentary commander John Lambert presented Cromwell with just the victory he needed. It is possible that David Leslie can also be blamed for not sending in enough troops in support. In any case, the bloodshed at Inverkeithing was even more lethal than
that at Dunbar: the proportion of Scots killed in relation to the total force was greater.