A Conspiracy of Violence

Historical Note

When Charles II made his triumphal return to England after a twelve-year exile, he was relatively forgiving of the men who had supported the Commonwealth. The only crime he could not overlook was the execution of his father. Hence the fifty-nine men who had signed the order for his beheading, along with a handful who had played significant roles in the old king’s trial, were in deep trouble. Some were already dead from natural causes, while others gave themselves up and appealed to his mercy. Others still escaped abroad, where a few were murdered by vengeful Royalists, and the rest lived in nervous obscurity.

In a distasteful piece of skulduggery, three men were hauled from their Dutch sanctuaries in March 1662 by a one-time Parliamentarian called Sir George Downing. The Dutch authorities were shocked by Downing’s actions, and were reluctant to give the order for Sir John Barkstead, John Okey and Miles Corbet to be extradited to England. Downing applied considerable pressure, and they relented unwillingly. Within a month of their return, Barkstead, Okey and Corbet were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, and Barkstead’s head was displayed outside the Tower of London. If Downing thought this would gain him popularity among Royalists, he was sadly mistaken. Samuel Pepys notes in his diary that ‘all the world takes notice of him for a most ungratefull villaine for his pains’ (17 April 1662).

In autumn of that same year, another series of events is written in Pepys’s diary. On 30 October, he records with great excitement that treasure worth seven thousand pounds had been buried in the Tower, and that his patron, the Earl of Sandwich, was to have two thousand of it. A man named Mr [Thomas] Wade of Axe Yard, who came up with the story, was to have a finder’s fee of two thousand, while the King was to have the remaining three thousand. Pepys met Wade, a man called Mr [Robert] Lee (or Leigh) and one Captain [Philip] Evett in a tavern named the Dolphin, where they planned their strategy. Sir John Robinson, Lieutenant of the Tower and Lord Mayor of London, encouraged the men to dig wherever they wanted.

The first attempt revealed nothing, but, undaunted, they returned two days later and tried again. By now, Pepys was becoming sceptical. He had learned from Wade that the hoard had been hidden by the executed regicide Barkstead, when he had held the office of Lieutenant of the Tower, and that a female servant had helped him pack it into butter firkins. She had not seen it buried, but Barkstead had told her where he intended to leave it, on the understanding that she should have it if he was not in a position to claim it himself later. Two more searches were made before Pepys and his companions gave up in disgust. Other people have looked for the treasure since, but to no avail. Perhaps Pepys was correct in assuming it was never there.

Most of the people in this story actually existed. John Thurloe was Cromwell’s Secretary of State, Spymaster General and loyal friend. He was consulted about British foreign policy after the fall of the Commonwealth, and lived in quiet obscurity at Lincoln’s Inn until his death in 1668. He was always regarded with suspicion, though, and there were reports to the new government that he was engaged in secret meetings with seven men, including his kinsman Colonel John Clarke. These were said to have taken place in the home of a man called Gervaise Bennet. Thurloe’s sister is thought to have been called Sarah, and parish records indicate she may have married a man called John Dalton. Thurloe lost two children, who died in infancy in the 1650s.

Sir Richard Ingoldsby was one regicide who managed to escape retribution, and who even contrived to have himself knighted. He made the unlikely claim that his cousin Cromwell had grabbed his hand and made his signature on the old king’s death warrant against his will – although there is nothing in the writing on the original document to suggest this – and the King believed him. John Hewson, a one-eyed religious fanatic, escaped overseas, and there are conflicting accounts about where and when he died. The same is true of Sir Michael Livesay, who was at one point a commissioner for the armed forces; some witnesses say he died soon after the Restoration, while others claim to have seen him some years later. The real fates of Hewson and Livesay remain a mystery.

William and Robert Leybourn were booksellers, whose shop was in Monkwell Street in Cripplegate. In the late 1660s, William was the surveyor employed to work on Ogilvy and Morgan’s famous post-Fire map of London, now republished as The A – Z of Restoration London. Sir John Kelyng spent time in prison during the Commonwealth, and, when he emerged, it was as a rabidly devoted servant of the King. He presided at the trial of the writer John Bunyon, and was later lampooned by Bunyon as ‘Lord Hategood’. Kelyng also headed the official inquiry into the Great Fire of 1666. Sir Edward Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon, was the King’s Lord Chancellor until his fall from grace in the late 1660s, after which he went abroad and wrote a rather bitter history of his times.

The regicide Thomas Chaloner (1595–1661) was the third son of the famous Elizabethan naturalist, also named Thomas Chaloner (1561–1615). The older Chaloner married twice and sired eighteen children, and opened alum mines on his Yorkshire estates, but these were later confiscated by Charles I. It was probably the dispute over the mines’ revenues that led the family to support Cromwell during the civil wars, and encouraged the younger Chaloner to sign Charles’s death warrant and act as one of his judges. He was exempted from the pardon issued by Charles II at the Restoration, and fled to Holland, where he died the following year. He was a colourful figure in the drab days of the Commonwealth, who played practical jokes and was publicly denounced as a drunkard by Cromwell. Little is known about his last days in the pretty Dutch town of Middelburg, although one biographer claimed he died in abject poverty.