"The Bloody Man"
- Thread starter EdT
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True enough. Although it does leave the English with the awkward question of what the hell they're going to do with Scotland now, especially given how costly fully pacifying it looks like it will be.
Interesting stuff, not a subject I know much about and I can't wait to learn more. If M is anything like Sexby, I imagine he must be quite interesting company.
Speaking of which, I forget, but does Lilburne actually hold any official position at the moment? He was certainly never elected to the Long Parliament OTL after all.
And if you feel like answering questions, may I ask what Milton is up to TTL? If I recall correctly, he was fairly prominent among the Commonwealthsmen OTL.
No argument here. The Fronde (or Frondes) is (or are) one (or two) of the most complicated, baffling bits of civil strife in history.
Which is probably why Louis and Mazarin wound up ahead at the end of it. The people forgot what it was they were fighting for in the first place.
I quite agree. Really, as important as the Glorious Revolution is, it needs the Civil War to happen--I'd argue this is the fundamental shift in English--and British--history that sets it on the path to creating parliamentary government as we know it.
Isn't the NMA quite a bit smaller ITTL, to start with?
IIRC the "English Revolution" was actually a fairly popular label for the whole period for a while there.
"Darth Agnan" is one of the parts of why I'm enjoying this TL (despite being a Royalist writer, and thinking that Rupert is somewhat flanderized in this TL).
An awesome "what could have been 20 Years After".
It’s certainly a possibility. Some sort of conspiracy does seem to have happened around the events leading up to the King’s death, and Blood is the sort who might end up entangled in it. Mind you, we never saw what Edward Sexby was up to in the North prior to tracking Blood down, so he’s another candidate. It’s not as if there aren’t still quite a few followers of the Prophet around either; and nobody ever worked out what happened to Anna Trapnel, so it could be she’s pulling the strings somewhere.
I’m not sure they’ve thought that far ahead; could be that the best option is to declare victory and get out, but doing so runs the risk of having to repeat the exercise a couple of years down the road…
Lilburne is currently a member of the Council of State, which is all a bit ad hoc; needless to say, he’s very keen to be elected, albeit preferably to a highly reformed parliament.
We’ll actually be dropping in on Milton quite soon. Suffice to say he’s up to his usual mix of propagandising and diplomacy.
Mostly it’s a supply issue. IOTL Cromwell’s invasion was well planned, well-funded and was launched from an England that had the benefit of a few years of peace to recover itself, and even then he struggled to pull it off; ITTL the New Model Army is six months off a major campaign, the whole campaign was a hurried expedient, London is still being rebuilt and everyone involved is that much hungrier. Thankfully, the Scots are much weaker ITTL too thanks to their internal divisions; if the New Model Army of TTL invaded OTL Scotland they’d have been splatted, as Cromwell almost was himself.
Indeed; and it’s difficult enough getting my head round OTL without then having to remember where I’d got to in my own head about how things change!
Quite so, and the period was just as much a revolution in Irish and Scottish history as English. While all three were eventually crushed, the Commonwealth, the Covenanting State and the Irish Confederacy were all revolutionary and all integral to the later development of their respective nations. The Glorious Revolution is really a coda by comparison.
Has he done the 'I should definitely be able to divorce my wife' pamphlet yet?
Milton. Great poet. Awful prat.
"We are fighting for the rights of Parlement!"
"What are the rights of Parlement again, sir?"
"They're... it's... Oh, you know what I'm talking about!"
"Not really, sir. People just started putting up barricades, and well, it's generally best to follow the crowd on these matters. That's my motto, anyway..."
"Huzzah! The rights of the nobility shall not be infringed! Fellow Fronders--understand we stand BY you, but not necessarily with you!"
"So... these are our allies?"
"...Maybe...?"
Though still damn important in its own right.
Also, I don't know if I'd say the Commonwealth was "crushed" so much as it committed a long, and complicated suicide...
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Chapter 36
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(Taken from “Scotland and the Revolution” by Ernest Gomshall, Picador 1946)
“It is difficult for a modern observer to appreciate quite how suddenly and savagely the underpinning principles of the Covenanting movement were ripped apart by the triple disasters of the battle of Holyrood, King James’ arrival in Ireland, and his apparent appointment of the Duke of Lorraine as Viceroy. Even one of these occurrences would have rocked the Scotland and the Kirk to its very core; the combination of all three was utterly devastating.
For all the bleakness of the military and political outlook, the Scottish crisis was really a spiritual one of massive proportions. The rout of the Scottish army was not just a military setback; it was a powerful religious victory for the New Model Army, who had marched into battle crying “For the Lord of Hosts”, but ended it proclaiming the much more definitive “God is with us!”[1]. After Holyrood, many Scots found it hard to disagree that God was indeed with the English; the town clerk of Lanark wrote that “our way in the Covenant was not what it ought to have been; and after some getting it laid to heart I was challenged for my engaging therein and resolved to never again adhere to a course of action based upon the judgement of others”[2]. Another, anonymous pamphleteer went further, attacking Scotland’s church and Government as carrying out their actions “under the pretence of good patriots”, while actually “lying in their bastard hatching uncleanness” for concealing that actually “their interest is worldly and not Spiritual, and hath the Mark of the Beast upon it.”[3] Even the Kirk was not immune from the soul-searching, after Holyrood a day of public humiliation and repentance was promulgated across Scotland, although the Commissioners of the General Assembly were quick to instruct their congregations to examine their own lives and carnal activities rather than dwell on any potential Godly judgement against the Covenant.
Cracks had appeared in the previously ironclad moral certainty of the Covenanting movement; what turned these doubts into existential crisis was the King’s arrival in Ireland. The hopes that Scots had invested in King James were always utterly unrealistic. In truth, the new King was just as unlikely to willingly sign the Covenant as his father, although his age and position perhaps made him more likely to buckle under pressure. Yet this fact did not make the disappointment and anger any less severe. The King’s decision to abandon Scotland and engage with the Irish Confederates vindicated every accusation levelled at him by English Agitators; here was proof positive of the Monarch’s association with “Malignancy and Popery”, rendered even more grossly provocative by his apparent appointment of the Duke of Lorraine, a militant Catholic, as Viceroy. “Where can a more desperate and Jesuited Prince, or a more declared enemy to Protestants be found out?” asked a Parliamentary pamphlet. For the Kirk, which if anything was even more virulently anti-Catholic than their English counterparts, the Duke’s appointment was an almost incomprehensible betrayal.
The status of the Monarch in Scotland had previously always been uncontested. When the Scottish armies marched against the King’s supporters, their banners still read “For King and Covenant”, and Scottish tracts had always protested utter loyalty to the King, if not his commands. The Covenanters had expended astonishing amounts of effort over the course of a decade to convert Charles I to their cause, and despite his complete unwillingness to do anything rather than string them along, their faith that he would eventually embrace the Covenant never wavered. Incorporation of Kingship in a in a covenant between God and a nation makes the nation culpable for the personal sins of the King, and therefore liable to suffer accordingly. A sermon preached by Patrick Gillespie in Glasgow perfectly captured this concept; “The King’s sin becomes the Kingdom’s sin, insofar as it is not mourned for, and repented of”[4]. This doctrine had its limits however, and in apparently choosing to consort with Papists over the Righteous, King James stretched it to breaking point.
Not everyone believed that the Kingdom only suffered thanks to the sins of the King, however. Even before Holyrood, in March 1648, an anonymous tract entitled “The Declaration of the poor opprest Commons of Scotland” was published, probably in Aberdeen. The tract aimed a broadside squarely at the gentry and Kirk; “We can find no records in Scripture nor historie of no nation under heaven can shoe that ever yr hes beene a people so opprest, bornen down and trampled over as we these many years past by our fellow subjects”, it lamented, going on to express the traitorous sentiment that English rule would be preferable to the present regime, so long as nothing was imposed on Scotland that would “molest consciences”[5]. Another pamphlet quoted the book of Samuel at length, musing on the “the clear evidences of the Lord’s controversy with the person of the King”, and concluding that by investing their hopes in James Stuart, Scotland had controverted God’s idea and made the same mistake as Israel in asking the Prophet Samuel to crown them a ruler[6].
At first, this dissent was carefully hidden; but as news of the calamities spread it began to be expressed openly and violently. An early sign of what was to come was seen around May Day in the village of Auchterarder, in Perthshire. Having been commanded to preach against the English Independents, the local minister, John Graham refused. “How can we speak against sectaries,” he asked, “seeing we are the most abominable sect in all the world because of our government?” When the local Kirk elders attempted to eject him from his Parish for malignancy, Graham’s wife gathered a group of local women, who armed themselves with clubs and launched a full scale riot, forcing the astonished Kirkmen to flee for their lives[7]. Tellingly, although the General Congregation retaliated by passing a resolution condemning the entire fairer sex as “wicked”, there were no further attempts to depose Graham. The disturbance recalled an earlier, highly dangerous precedent; as the Mercurius Civicus noted, “The Kirkmen look upon this as a very ominous disaster, that the women, who began with the Bishops in the years 1638 and 1639, should likewise now begin with them...”[8]”
(Taken from “The British Revolution” by Richard Moore, Miskatonic University Press 1937) )
“When the victorious John Lambert entered a deserted Edinburgh on the afternoon of April 29th 1648, he anticipated a long campaign; as he wrote to the Council of State, “give thanks to Providence; but know that there is still much to be done.” In the days after the victory, the Army Council quickly set about cementing their position. Thomas Harrison was sent out to capture Leith and reoccupy the port of Musselburgh, while Ireton took the English cavalry westwards to reduce some of the fortified houses west of the capital. Charles Fleetwood was allotted a more sensitive mission; because the thousands of unwounded Scots prisoners taken during the previous day’s rout could not be fed or freed, he was to march them back to England, where they would be somebody else’s problem[9]. Lambert’s next priority was the reduction of Edinburgh Castle, which dominated the city. This was a serious problem. Lord Warriston had no intention of surrendering or even negotiating at this point, yet the castle was utterly impregnable. The Army Council realised, with increasing discomfort, that there was only one solution; the New Model Army would have to be split in two, one part being left behind in the Scottish capital to continue the siege and the other marching westwards to continue the campaign[10].
At the forefront of the Army Council’s mind at this point was the army of the Western Association. During the winter of 1647 the Remonstrants, realising that the Earl of Leven’s army had the capacity to crush them were it to return north of the border, decided to raise an ideologically pure force of their own, one with no Royalist connections at all. Their mechanism to accomplish this was the Western Association, modelled on the English parliamentary associations that had been the foundation of the New Model Army[11]. Throughout the early months of 1648 Colonel Archibald Strachen and Sir John Chisely had been levying and training men, predominantly from Glasgow and Paisley; as spring wore on, the new force was massing at Hamilton. On May Day, by which point the King’s arrival in Ireland had become widely known in the region, the Scots abandoned their camp and began to march westwards; they met the New Model Army at Harthill, on the border between Lanarkshire and Lothian, two days later…”
****
Harthill,
Lanarkshire, May 1648)
A watery sun shone down as a group of horsemen rode past the great coal pit of Harthill. From the other side of the stream, a muddy thing the locals called the How Burn, John Lambert watched them come and frowned. Let us hope they mean to talk, not to threaten; I would rather not fight this day. He had enough men to defeat the army facing him, that was true; but not as many as he would like. I can beat the Scots here, he mused, but at what cost? Victory is meaningless if we are hurt enough in the process to force us to withdraw.
The parleying party splashed across the ford and approached. Their leader, a solemn man with a neatly clipped beard and a receding hairline, stirred vague memories in Lambert, but he could not quite place him.
“Good afternoon, sir. You have prospered, I see; when last we met, we were both mere Colonels, yet now you have risen to Captain-General.”
Lambert paused for a second, concentrating on the man’s voice; then he broke into a broad smile, remembering, and held out his hand. “Colonel Strachan! It has been some time. I believe the last time I saw you was on the field at Longdon?”
The Scotsman leant across and shook Lambert’s outstretched hand, nodding. “Aye, sir, it was indeed. I fought in the centre; a bloody day, all told, but by the grace of God a victorious one.”
He paused, gesturing over Lambert’s shoulder towards the Englishman’s force, which had arrayed itself on the northern slope of the valley, using the spoil heaps as cover. “It is good to cast eyes upon the New Model Army once again.”
Lambert inclined his head, intrigued. Interesting. It seems that there may be no fight today. He held out his own arm out towards the Scottish force.
“You have not been idle either, I see,” he said, conversationally. “You have raised an impressive host of your own.”
Strachan looked genuinely touched. “It is a small force,” he conceded, “but a Godly one. I took Gideon as my inspiration, sir; better a few of the righteous than ten times that number of reprobates.”
Let us cut to the chase, Lambert thought. “We have found the same, Colonel, in our recent campaign against the King. Yet I am sure you did not seek me out solely to debate military tactics. It seems to me that we have much to discuss; we both find ourselves engaged against foes in this land, when our true foes gather across the water.”
The Scotsman’s face darkened. “Aye, they do indeed. I am no friend to the King, sir, but even I am shocked by his malignancy. He is at one with the Beast; was it not written in the Good Book that ‘ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day?’”
He paused, gathering himself. “We have fought alongside each other before, sir; I gave three years of my life to preserve England from the tyranny of the King. Now, it seems you may be able to render my country a similar service. Shall we take up the Godly cause together once again?”
Lambert sighed in relief. “I think, Colonel, that we should talk in more comfort. May I offer you some refreshment in my command tent?”
The Scotsman nodded, and Lambert turned his horse back towards camp, feeling optimistic for the first time since he crossed the Tweed four weeks earlier. We may just get out of this yet.
(Taken from “Scotland and the Revolution” by Ernest Gomshall, Picador 1946) )
While the Army Council and the Remonstrants negotiated, the Scottish Kirk was in a state of complete crisis. The trickle of ‘malignants’ that had begun in the early days of the year were rapidly becoming a flood and General Assembly’s attempts to stamp out dissent simply made things worse, as local congregations tended to support their expelled Ministers rather than accept their nominated replacements. A new breed of Scottish Independents were emerging; they were known as the Protesters[12].
Just as with the English Independents, their Scottish equivalents were a diverse group united more by a newly-discovered desire for religious tolerance than any political or theological programme. The Kirk’s intolerance for political dissent provided many of their number; in 1647 and 1648 many Ministers were expelled from the Kirk for a variety of ‘malignancies’ but then continued to preach with the support of their congregation in direct opposition to the General Assembly. Others left the Kirk voluntarily and set up their own congregations; the majority of these did so at their own accord, but some were converted by the missionary activity of the chaplains travelling with the New Model Army. Perhaps the most successful of these preachers was Nicholas Lockyer, who proselytised tirelessly in Lowland Scotland during the New Model Army’s campaign there and then travelled northwards to Aberdeen, where he famously argued that just as the first Christian churches gathered “out of the Church of the Jewes”, so should Godly Scots removed themselves from the Idolatrous Kirk. “Come away and leave them, separate yourselves, says the Lord” he said, quoting 2 Corinthians 6:17, “Touch nothing unclean. Then I shall accept you.”[13]
While Lockyer’s arguments were not radically new in relation to the Presbyterian-Independent debate in England, they were completely unknown in Scotland. The General Assembly of the Kirk had banned all books related to Independency in early 1647, but in shielding the souls of their congregations in this way, they had also rendered their own Ministers incapable of repelling the latest theological arguments against Presbytry developed by Independent theologians like Hooker, Cotton and Norton. As English books brought north by the New Model Army flooded the country, the Kirk found itself in ever more dire straits. Scotland was not just defeated militarily; it was losing the theological war too, and decisively…”
****
Peacocke Inn
Westminster, April 1648)
Thomas Blood yawned and scratched his jaw as he leant back in his chair. “You could at least buy me a drink while we wait,” he remarked, casually. Beside him, Edward Sexby glowered at him.
“Silence,” he spat, and Blood sniggered. “They will be here soon.”
Blood shrugged. In truth, he was feeling as confident as he had done since capture; although he had been blindfolded for the last stage of his arrival in London, he recognised the room in which he was being held. He was in the upper part of the Peacocke, an unprepossessing inn overlooking St James’ Park and wedged awkwardly between Whitehall Palace and the London home of the late John Hampden. He had not arrived through the main entrance though; instead they had made it to the room through a confusing series of passages he had only dimly glimpsed through the cloth of the blindfold. He had heard that the Hampden mansion had recently been bought by Sir John Downing, a fellow Anglo-Irishman and a member of the Council of State; evidently he has ordered some structural renovations, he thought.
Blood was about to needle Sexby again when the door opened and three men walked into the room. One was fleshy and middle-aged, running to fat; the other might have been handsome, were it not for his cadaverous sunken cheekbones and pallid complexion. Not a well man, Blood thought, seeing his uncertain gait and the way his hand constantly strayed to the wall for reassurance. It was the final newcomer, though, that caught his attention; he was younger than the others, and had a flintiness in his eyes that suggested intelligence married to complete ruthlessness. Two men of letters and their practical colleague, he thought; I will need to be careful of him.
Blood stood, respectfully. “Welcome to the Peacocke, sirs!” he exclaimed; something that, to his immense gratification, caused the fat man to start violently.
“Vat is the meaning of zis?” he demanded of Sexby in a strong German accent; before Blood’s captor could respond, the hard-faced man give a half smile and held his hand up. “It is of no concern. Sexby will have followed his instructions to the letter; the Colonel’s deduction as to his location merely demonstrates why he will be of use to us in the coming months.” He pulled out a chair from the table and then gently took the hand of the sallow man, leading his hand to its back and helping him down. Blood saw his clouded eyes and realised that he must be half-blind.
“I have enjoyed the theatre, sirs,” he began, “but now I think you should tell me what you want from me.” As he spoke, with a flash of panic he suddenly thought of the previous year, and the St Katherine Dock- do they know? Is this punishment?- but then dismissed the notion. If punishment was the goal, Sexby would simply have shot him back in Lancashire.
The sallow man brightened at the question. “My name is Joh-“ the hard-faced man cleared his throat pointedly- “Ah. Yes. You can call me ‘M’”. He smiled, as if at a joke, and Blood saw the other men glare at him.
“We are the Kuklos,” ‘M’ continued, “the Invisible Circle, the hidden eyes of the Commonwealth. Few know of our existence; fewer realise what we have accomplished in the cause of freedom. We have work for you, Colonel. But first, you must be marked.”
“Roll up your sleeve,” the hard-faced one commanded.
Blood rolled his eyes. “More theatrics?”
Sexby placed the barrel of his pistol in the other man’s back. “Just do what you’re told.”
Blood carefully pulled his sleeve up to expose his forearm. The hard-faced man nodded at the German, who rummaged around in his pocket for a second. Blood’s eyes widened at the sight of the large needle that emerged.
‘M’ regarded him through his clouded eyes. “Tell me Colonel,” he said, conversationally, “have you ever heard of a French nun named Jeanne des Anges? She was quite well-known about a decade ago. She was possessed by several demons, or so the story goes; they brought in a Jesuit to exorcise her, and when he drove the spirits out, each one left a mark on her skin where they left the body. These were not marks of the beast; quite the reverse! Rather they were symbols of Christ’s victory over evil; they showed that those who bore them was a righteous soul.”
The hard-faced man grunted in amusement. “We shall make an exception, in your case.”
‘M’ fumbled with his cuff, showing an increasingly perplexed Blood a small, faded symbol inscribed into the skin just above his wrist. “Our agents bear a mark on their person. You make a cut, and fill it with indelible dye. It heals, but leaves a permanent mark. A small thing, but enough to establish their bonafides. It is the mark of Tubal Cain. If you see this symbol, you know allies are at hand.”
Blood looked at the mark for a second. “So you are agent 007.” ‘M’ smiled, and shook his head.
“We are all 007, Colonel. The uninitiated merely see a number, but the enlightened will know better, for you see the mark was the cipher of the great and learned Dr Dee, intelligencer to Queen Elizabeth.” He squinted as his cloudy eyes struggled to focus on the symbol. “See. These are a representation of the secret eyes that guard the Commonwealth. And what is the last figure? Well, it is a holy number in itself of course, but really it is a representation of who we serve and what surmounts all. England.”
Blood looked up at the other men, by now completely lost. “How in God’s name does that represent England?”
The hard-faced man sniggered; ‘M’ sighed, clearly saddened by Blood’s lack of learning. “The symbol,” he explained patiently, “is an expression of the letter ‘E’ in the angelic language of Enochian. It is a bond, Colonel. A holy bond.”
The German moved forward with the needle and began to pass it through a candle; Blood, desperate to continue the conversation, leant forward towards ‘M’. "So what is it you would have me do?”
“We would have you return home,” ‘M’ said. “There are many Royalists in Ireland, and a mixed rabble they are; part papists, part fugitives, and part savages.”
The hard-faced man listened to Blood’s howl as the hot needle was pressed into his flesh, and grinned. “We think you will blend in perfectly,” he said.
***
(Taken from “The Wars of the Five Kingdoms” by James Price, Miskatonic University Press 1947) )
“Civil wars have a certain rhythm. In England five years earlier, Parliament was forced to endure a ‘Royalist Spring’, while the following year the Scots suffered their own springtime nightmare against the rampant armies of the Earl of Montrose. Now across the sea, the Dutch Regents had an ‘Orange Spring’ with which to contend. The first and most bitter blow was the humiliating defeat of the Staatsarmee at Hillegersberg in early March 1648; the Stadtholder inflicted a stinging reverse on the army that the States had spent the winter assembling so painstakingly and forced it to flee behind the walls of Rotterdam, which was promptly put under siege. The States-General had hardly had time to digest this news before word came of a fresh disaster. As April dawned, the Orangist admiral Maarten Tromp had led a daring raid on one of the merchant convoys organised to supply Amsterdam, catching it off Nordwijk, capturing seven merchantmen and destroying three. If Holland lost control of the sea, then the war was lost; and as Witte De With bluntly told the States-General, “We have lost the sea until we have other ships”[14]. Faced with defeat on all fronts, the States-General desperately cast around for options. Just as with the English Parliament in 1643, the Regents found that their best hope was for external assistance; and just as Parliament found the only place it could turn was to the Scots, the States-General had no option but to turn to the fledgling English Commonwealth. England’s Council of State had no love for the Stadtholder, who had done so much to assist his father-in-law Charles I, and had a desperate need for foreign, Protestant recognition. The Orangist blockade on Amsterdam was almost as damaging to the English economy as it was to the Regents; English intervention would not only reopen the interrupted flow of trade between Amsterdam and London, but also deny the newly-proclaimed King James a place of safety from which to plot further invasions of the British Isles.
Once the States-General decided to embark on their new pro-English policy, events moved swiftly. The first step was recognition of the Commonwealth; something that London had already moved to facilitate. The Council of State immediately appointed Henry Lawrence and Isaac Dorislaus[15] as envoys extraordinary to the Dutch Republic and to take steps to hasten their departure. In fact, the Stages-General were pushing at an open door; although outwardly, the envoys had been entrusted with the task of establishing friendly relations with the anti-Orangist Party in Amsterdam; in reality, however, their true mission was to “enter into a more strict and intimate alliance and union” with the Dutch…”
****
Peacocke Inn
Westminster, April 1648)
Edward Sexby sipped his pint and smiled as he remembered Blood’s screams earlier that afternoon. It had been a poor recompense for five days of travelling with the man, in truth; but a soul had to derive pleasure where he could. He was long gone now, slung on a ship bound first to Dunkirk, then to Cork or Dublin; his superiors had also departed to whatever other business occupied their attention. The Invisible Circle was only one of his concerns, however; his true master sat across from him at the table, working his way through a sheaf of densely printed papers and occasionally making notes in the margins. Sexby leant over, took the bottle of sack and refilled his glass; normally he detested anything that smacked of servility, for he was no man’s servant, but this was different. This was Freeborn John.
John Lilburne could have occupied rooms in the vacant opulence of Whitehall Palace, if he desired; instead, he had refused to stay anywhere that smacked of privilege, and instead conducted his business from the upper floor of the Peacocke whenever he was not needed elsewhere. Sexby was his informal conduit to the intelligencers, but he was more than that; the Secretary of State used him as a representative of the common man when he needed to gauge the popularity of certain measures.
Lilburne gestured to the sheaf of pamphlets on the table. “Do you speak the Dutch tongue, Edward?” he asked; Sexby shook his head, and the other man shrugged.
“A shame. Perhaps you should learn? You might have found these pamphlets interesting. They speak of freedom- “True Freedom”, they call it - of a union of free Republics tied together by bonds of friendship and trust, rather than by an oppressive sovereign or Monarch. The dream of liberty is not merely an English concern. All men have the same desires in this regard, whether they be Englishmen, Dutchmen, or Scotsmen. Even Papists dream of freedom, damned and misguided though they may be. And is it not the duty of the man who has secured his own freedom to help break the chains of his fellows?”
Sexby pursed his lips. “Is that not what we are engaged in with the Scots, John? I would have thought this was charity enough for the present; and even this is to preserve our own liberty as much as it is to extend it to Scotland.”
Lilburne nodded. “It is indeed, Edward. So few of us enjoy real liberty; yet what are we to do when our neighbours, who have fought far longer than we for freedom from tyranny, risk subjugation? Should we not render them assistance if we are able?”
He rummaged through his papers and extracted a couple, which he brandished at Sexby. “I shall tell you a secret, Edward. You may know that we have sent a mission to the Hollanders. Publically, they are merely to secure recognition of our Commonwealth by the States-General.”
Sexby raised an eyebrow, cautiously. So this is what he has been busy doing these last few weeks. “and privately?” he asked.
Lilburne beamed. “Privately, I have exchanged a number of confidential correspondences with the Grand Pensionary of Holland, Master De Witt. As a result of these discussions I have authorised our ambassadors to make the Hollanders a grand offer, to our mutual benefit; if they accept, we shall reach across the ocean and assist our brothers in their struggle for freedom with ships and men.”
Sexby frowned. You had better not have exchanged everything for a mess of pottage in a fit of idealism, Freeborn John. “Forgive me for speaking bluntly, John,” he said, carefully “but what do we gain from such an action? Any troops that cross to Holland will weaken our efforts in Scotland and Ireland.”
Lilburne smiled. “What do we gain, my friend? There is the resumption of trade, of course, but that is only a minor prize. For we stand to gain Holland itself! The Grand Pensionary has indicated that in exchange for our assistance, the States of Holland- and the States of his allies- will agree to form a new Union with England- not the United Provinces, but the United Republics! And it will be more than just Dutchmen and Englishmen in this new power; even now I have agents speaking to and assisting those who would see freedom extended to the shores of France. I believe you speak the language from your time in Dunkirk?”
How in God’s name does he know about that episode? Sexby swallowed, then sighed. “I do indeed, John.”
Lilburne drained his glass. “Excellent. In that case, I have a task for you. Now listen very carefully; I shall say this only once…”
_____________________________________________
[1] This was the case IOTL after Dunbar; Providence was hugely important to both the English and Scottish worldview, and military success was as much about God’s will as force of arms.
[2] Similar sentiments were expressed IOTL after Dunbar.
[3] Such extreme criticism of the Kirk only became apparent IOTL after the exile of Charles II, but ITTL Scotland’s spiritual crisis is all the greater.
[4] Gillespie said much the same IOTL.
[5] Similar tracts circulated in 1650 and 1651 IOTL; Aberdeen, and Marischal college in particular, seems to have been a hotbed of anti-kirk sentiment.
[6] IOTL this was one of Cromwell’s theological arguments against the Covenant, but ITTL the Scots come up with it themselves.
[7] Dunning saw a similar riot IOTL in the 1650s. Doubtless many of the rioters were men in drag, as was the universal tradition.
[8] Women were at the forefront of the early Covenanting movement, which was famously started by Jenny Geddes’ angry stool-throwing protest at the imposition of the Prayer Book.
[9] The survivors of Dunbar were treated in a similar way IOTL; while most escaped on the march back to England, as late as 1653 there was still a miserable group of them stuck in a prison ship on the Thames and used as indentured labour.
[10] This is pretty much what Cromwell had to do IOTL, and led to the English campaign in Scotland bogging down.
[11] The Association existed IOTL and was very much a Scottish attempt to replicate the New Model Army.
[12] This was the case IOTL too, although Scottish Independency emerged in a slightly less organic way there; ITTL, the kirk’s crisis is so intense that things happen rather more quickly.
[13] Lockyer was highly successful in OTL too; to the extent that five years after he left Scotland Robert Baillie still cursed him as “that asse Lockier”
[14] This was De With’s assessment during the first Anglo-Dutch war IOTL, and is no less pertinent here ITTL.
[15] Lawrence and Dorislaus were both Parliamentarian figures IOTL, and both had close connections with the Dutch Republic; Lawrence had lived in Holland for most of the 1630s, while Dorislaus had been born in Leiden. IOTL Lawrence, who knew Cromwell quite well, served as the President of the Council of State for several years during the Protectorate; Dorislaus was sent on a mission to Amsterdam to organise an Alliance with the Dutch, and was murdered there by Royalist agents in 1649.
Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD. And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee.
1 Samuel 8: 4-8.
1 Samuel 8: 4-8.
_____________________________________________
(Taken from “Scotland and the Revolution” by Ernest Gomshall, Picador 1946)
“It is difficult for a modern observer to appreciate quite how suddenly and savagely the underpinning principles of the Covenanting movement were ripped apart by the triple disasters of the battle of Holyrood, King James’ arrival in Ireland, and his apparent appointment of the Duke of Lorraine as Viceroy. Even one of these occurrences would have rocked the Scotland and the Kirk to its very core; the combination of all three was utterly devastating.
For all the bleakness of the military and political outlook, the Scottish crisis was really a spiritual one of massive proportions. The rout of the Scottish army was not just a military setback; it was a powerful religious victory for the New Model Army, who had marched into battle crying “For the Lord of Hosts”, but ended it proclaiming the much more definitive “God is with us!”[1]. After Holyrood, many Scots found it hard to disagree that God was indeed with the English; the town clerk of Lanark wrote that “our way in the Covenant was not what it ought to have been; and after some getting it laid to heart I was challenged for my engaging therein and resolved to never again adhere to a course of action based upon the judgement of others”[2]. Another, anonymous pamphleteer went further, attacking Scotland’s church and Government as carrying out their actions “under the pretence of good patriots”, while actually “lying in their bastard hatching uncleanness” for concealing that actually “their interest is worldly and not Spiritual, and hath the Mark of the Beast upon it.”[3] Even the Kirk was not immune from the soul-searching, after Holyrood a day of public humiliation and repentance was promulgated across Scotland, although the Commissioners of the General Assembly were quick to instruct their congregations to examine their own lives and carnal activities rather than dwell on any potential Godly judgement against the Covenant.
Cracks had appeared in the previously ironclad moral certainty of the Covenanting movement; what turned these doubts into existential crisis was the King’s arrival in Ireland. The hopes that Scots had invested in King James were always utterly unrealistic. In truth, the new King was just as unlikely to willingly sign the Covenant as his father, although his age and position perhaps made him more likely to buckle under pressure. Yet this fact did not make the disappointment and anger any less severe. The King’s decision to abandon Scotland and engage with the Irish Confederates vindicated every accusation levelled at him by English Agitators; here was proof positive of the Monarch’s association with “Malignancy and Popery”, rendered even more grossly provocative by his apparent appointment of the Duke of Lorraine, a militant Catholic, as Viceroy. “Where can a more desperate and Jesuited Prince, or a more declared enemy to Protestants be found out?” asked a Parliamentary pamphlet. For the Kirk, which if anything was even more virulently anti-Catholic than their English counterparts, the Duke’s appointment was an almost incomprehensible betrayal.
The status of the Monarch in Scotland had previously always been uncontested. When the Scottish armies marched against the King’s supporters, their banners still read “For King and Covenant”, and Scottish tracts had always protested utter loyalty to the King, if not his commands. The Covenanters had expended astonishing amounts of effort over the course of a decade to convert Charles I to their cause, and despite his complete unwillingness to do anything rather than string them along, their faith that he would eventually embrace the Covenant never wavered. Incorporation of Kingship in a in a covenant between God and a nation makes the nation culpable for the personal sins of the King, and therefore liable to suffer accordingly. A sermon preached by Patrick Gillespie in Glasgow perfectly captured this concept; “The King’s sin becomes the Kingdom’s sin, insofar as it is not mourned for, and repented of”[4]. This doctrine had its limits however, and in apparently choosing to consort with Papists over the Righteous, King James stretched it to breaking point.
Not everyone believed that the Kingdom only suffered thanks to the sins of the King, however. Even before Holyrood, in March 1648, an anonymous tract entitled “The Declaration of the poor opprest Commons of Scotland” was published, probably in Aberdeen. The tract aimed a broadside squarely at the gentry and Kirk; “We can find no records in Scripture nor historie of no nation under heaven can shoe that ever yr hes beene a people so opprest, bornen down and trampled over as we these many years past by our fellow subjects”, it lamented, going on to express the traitorous sentiment that English rule would be preferable to the present regime, so long as nothing was imposed on Scotland that would “molest consciences”[5]. Another pamphlet quoted the book of Samuel at length, musing on the “the clear evidences of the Lord’s controversy with the person of the King”, and concluding that by investing their hopes in James Stuart, Scotland had controverted God’s idea and made the same mistake as Israel in asking the Prophet Samuel to crown them a ruler[6].
At first, this dissent was carefully hidden; but as news of the calamities spread it began to be expressed openly and violently. An early sign of what was to come was seen around May Day in the village of Auchterarder, in Perthshire. Having been commanded to preach against the English Independents, the local minister, John Graham refused. “How can we speak against sectaries,” he asked, “seeing we are the most abominable sect in all the world because of our government?” When the local Kirk elders attempted to eject him from his Parish for malignancy, Graham’s wife gathered a group of local women, who armed themselves with clubs and launched a full scale riot, forcing the astonished Kirkmen to flee for their lives[7]. Tellingly, although the General Congregation retaliated by passing a resolution condemning the entire fairer sex as “wicked”, there were no further attempts to depose Graham. The disturbance recalled an earlier, highly dangerous precedent; as the Mercurius Civicus noted, “The Kirkmen look upon this as a very ominous disaster, that the women, who began with the Bishops in the years 1638 and 1639, should likewise now begin with them...”[8]”
(Taken from “The British Revolution” by Richard Moore, Miskatonic University Press 1937) )
“When the victorious John Lambert entered a deserted Edinburgh on the afternoon of April 29th 1648, he anticipated a long campaign; as he wrote to the Council of State, “give thanks to Providence; but know that there is still much to be done.” In the days after the victory, the Army Council quickly set about cementing their position. Thomas Harrison was sent out to capture Leith and reoccupy the port of Musselburgh, while Ireton took the English cavalry westwards to reduce some of the fortified houses west of the capital. Charles Fleetwood was allotted a more sensitive mission; because the thousands of unwounded Scots prisoners taken during the previous day’s rout could not be fed or freed, he was to march them back to England, where they would be somebody else’s problem[9]. Lambert’s next priority was the reduction of Edinburgh Castle, which dominated the city. This was a serious problem. Lord Warriston had no intention of surrendering or even negotiating at this point, yet the castle was utterly impregnable. The Army Council realised, with increasing discomfort, that there was only one solution; the New Model Army would have to be split in two, one part being left behind in the Scottish capital to continue the siege and the other marching westwards to continue the campaign[10].
At the forefront of the Army Council’s mind at this point was the army of the Western Association. During the winter of 1647 the Remonstrants, realising that the Earl of Leven’s army had the capacity to crush them were it to return north of the border, decided to raise an ideologically pure force of their own, one with no Royalist connections at all. Their mechanism to accomplish this was the Western Association, modelled on the English parliamentary associations that had been the foundation of the New Model Army[11]. Throughout the early months of 1648 Colonel Archibald Strachen and Sir John Chisely had been levying and training men, predominantly from Glasgow and Paisley; as spring wore on, the new force was massing at Hamilton. On May Day, by which point the King’s arrival in Ireland had become widely known in the region, the Scots abandoned their camp and began to march westwards; they met the New Model Army at Harthill, on the border between Lanarkshire and Lothian, two days later…”
****
Harthill,
Lanarkshire, May 1648)
A watery sun shone down as a group of horsemen rode past the great coal pit of Harthill. From the other side of the stream, a muddy thing the locals called the How Burn, John Lambert watched them come and frowned. Let us hope they mean to talk, not to threaten; I would rather not fight this day. He had enough men to defeat the army facing him, that was true; but not as many as he would like. I can beat the Scots here, he mused, but at what cost? Victory is meaningless if we are hurt enough in the process to force us to withdraw.
The parleying party splashed across the ford and approached. Their leader, a solemn man with a neatly clipped beard and a receding hairline, stirred vague memories in Lambert, but he could not quite place him.
“Good afternoon, sir. You have prospered, I see; when last we met, we were both mere Colonels, yet now you have risen to Captain-General.”
Lambert paused for a second, concentrating on the man’s voice; then he broke into a broad smile, remembering, and held out his hand. “Colonel Strachan! It has been some time. I believe the last time I saw you was on the field at Longdon?”
The Scotsman leant across and shook Lambert’s outstretched hand, nodding. “Aye, sir, it was indeed. I fought in the centre; a bloody day, all told, but by the grace of God a victorious one.”
He paused, gesturing over Lambert’s shoulder towards the Englishman’s force, which had arrayed itself on the northern slope of the valley, using the spoil heaps as cover. “It is good to cast eyes upon the New Model Army once again.”
Lambert inclined his head, intrigued. Interesting. It seems that there may be no fight today. He held out his own arm out towards the Scottish force.
“You have not been idle either, I see,” he said, conversationally. “You have raised an impressive host of your own.”
Strachan looked genuinely touched. “It is a small force,” he conceded, “but a Godly one. I took Gideon as my inspiration, sir; better a few of the righteous than ten times that number of reprobates.”
Let us cut to the chase, Lambert thought. “We have found the same, Colonel, in our recent campaign against the King. Yet I am sure you did not seek me out solely to debate military tactics. It seems to me that we have much to discuss; we both find ourselves engaged against foes in this land, when our true foes gather across the water.”
The Scotsman’s face darkened. “Aye, they do indeed. I am no friend to the King, sir, but even I am shocked by his malignancy. He is at one with the Beast; was it not written in the Good Book that ‘ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day?’”
He paused, gathering himself. “We have fought alongside each other before, sir; I gave three years of my life to preserve England from the tyranny of the King. Now, it seems you may be able to render my country a similar service. Shall we take up the Godly cause together once again?”
Lambert sighed in relief. “I think, Colonel, that we should talk in more comfort. May I offer you some refreshment in my command tent?”
The Scotsman nodded, and Lambert turned his horse back towards camp, feeling optimistic for the first time since he crossed the Tweed four weeks earlier. We may just get out of this yet.
(Taken from “Scotland and the Revolution” by Ernest Gomshall, Picador 1946) )
While the Army Council and the Remonstrants negotiated, the Scottish Kirk was in a state of complete crisis. The trickle of ‘malignants’ that had begun in the early days of the year were rapidly becoming a flood and General Assembly’s attempts to stamp out dissent simply made things worse, as local congregations tended to support their expelled Ministers rather than accept their nominated replacements. A new breed of Scottish Independents were emerging; they were known as the Protesters[12].
Just as with the English Independents, their Scottish equivalents were a diverse group united more by a newly-discovered desire for religious tolerance than any political or theological programme. The Kirk’s intolerance for political dissent provided many of their number; in 1647 and 1648 many Ministers were expelled from the Kirk for a variety of ‘malignancies’ but then continued to preach with the support of their congregation in direct opposition to the General Assembly. Others left the Kirk voluntarily and set up their own congregations; the majority of these did so at their own accord, but some were converted by the missionary activity of the chaplains travelling with the New Model Army. Perhaps the most successful of these preachers was Nicholas Lockyer, who proselytised tirelessly in Lowland Scotland during the New Model Army’s campaign there and then travelled northwards to Aberdeen, where he famously argued that just as the first Christian churches gathered “out of the Church of the Jewes”, so should Godly Scots removed themselves from the Idolatrous Kirk. “Come away and leave them, separate yourselves, says the Lord” he said, quoting 2 Corinthians 6:17, “Touch nothing unclean. Then I shall accept you.”[13]
While Lockyer’s arguments were not radically new in relation to the Presbyterian-Independent debate in England, they were completely unknown in Scotland. The General Assembly of the Kirk had banned all books related to Independency in early 1647, but in shielding the souls of their congregations in this way, they had also rendered their own Ministers incapable of repelling the latest theological arguments against Presbytry developed by Independent theologians like Hooker, Cotton and Norton. As English books brought north by the New Model Army flooded the country, the Kirk found itself in ever more dire straits. Scotland was not just defeated militarily; it was losing the theological war too, and decisively…”
****
Peacocke Inn
Westminster, April 1648)
Thomas Blood yawned and scratched his jaw as he leant back in his chair. “You could at least buy me a drink while we wait,” he remarked, casually. Beside him, Edward Sexby glowered at him.
“Silence,” he spat, and Blood sniggered. “They will be here soon.”
Blood shrugged. In truth, he was feeling as confident as he had done since capture; although he had been blindfolded for the last stage of his arrival in London, he recognised the room in which he was being held. He was in the upper part of the Peacocke, an unprepossessing inn overlooking St James’ Park and wedged awkwardly between Whitehall Palace and the London home of the late John Hampden. He had not arrived through the main entrance though; instead they had made it to the room through a confusing series of passages he had only dimly glimpsed through the cloth of the blindfold. He had heard that the Hampden mansion had recently been bought by Sir John Downing, a fellow Anglo-Irishman and a member of the Council of State; evidently he has ordered some structural renovations, he thought.
Blood was about to needle Sexby again when the door opened and three men walked into the room. One was fleshy and middle-aged, running to fat; the other might have been handsome, were it not for his cadaverous sunken cheekbones and pallid complexion. Not a well man, Blood thought, seeing his uncertain gait and the way his hand constantly strayed to the wall for reassurance. It was the final newcomer, though, that caught his attention; he was younger than the others, and had a flintiness in his eyes that suggested intelligence married to complete ruthlessness. Two men of letters and their practical colleague, he thought; I will need to be careful of him.
Blood stood, respectfully. “Welcome to the Peacocke, sirs!” he exclaimed; something that, to his immense gratification, caused the fat man to start violently.
“Vat is the meaning of zis?” he demanded of Sexby in a strong German accent; before Blood’s captor could respond, the hard-faced man give a half smile and held his hand up. “It is of no concern. Sexby will have followed his instructions to the letter; the Colonel’s deduction as to his location merely demonstrates why he will be of use to us in the coming months.” He pulled out a chair from the table and then gently took the hand of the sallow man, leading his hand to its back and helping him down. Blood saw his clouded eyes and realised that he must be half-blind.
“I have enjoyed the theatre, sirs,” he began, “but now I think you should tell me what you want from me.” As he spoke, with a flash of panic he suddenly thought of the previous year, and the St Katherine Dock- do they know? Is this punishment?- but then dismissed the notion. If punishment was the goal, Sexby would simply have shot him back in Lancashire.
The sallow man brightened at the question. “My name is Joh-“ the hard-faced man cleared his throat pointedly- “Ah. Yes. You can call me ‘M’”. He smiled, as if at a joke, and Blood saw the other men glare at him.
“We are the Kuklos,” ‘M’ continued, “the Invisible Circle, the hidden eyes of the Commonwealth. Few know of our existence; fewer realise what we have accomplished in the cause of freedom. We have work for you, Colonel. But first, you must be marked.”
“Roll up your sleeve,” the hard-faced one commanded.
Blood rolled his eyes. “More theatrics?”
Sexby placed the barrel of his pistol in the other man’s back. “Just do what you’re told.”
Blood carefully pulled his sleeve up to expose his forearm. The hard-faced man nodded at the German, who rummaged around in his pocket for a second. Blood’s eyes widened at the sight of the large needle that emerged.
‘M’ regarded him through his clouded eyes. “Tell me Colonel,” he said, conversationally, “have you ever heard of a French nun named Jeanne des Anges? She was quite well-known about a decade ago. She was possessed by several demons, or so the story goes; they brought in a Jesuit to exorcise her, and when he drove the spirits out, each one left a mark on her skin where they left the body. These were not marks of the beast; quite the reverse! Rather they were symbols of Christ’s victory over evil; they showed that those who bore them was a righteous soul.”
The hard-faced man grunted in amusement. “We shall make an exception, in your case.”
‘M’ fumbled with his cuff, showing an increasingly perplexed Blood a small, faded symbol inscribed into the skin just above his wrist. “Our agents bear a mark on their person. You make a cut, and fill it with indelible dye. It heals, but leaves a permanent mark. A small thing, but enough to establish their bonafides. It is the mark of Tubal Cain. If you see this symbol, you know allies are at hand.”
Blood looked at the mark for a second. “So you are agent 007.” ‘M’ smiled, and shook his head.
“We are all 007, Colonel. The uninitiated merely see a number, but the enlightened will know better, for you see the mark was the cipher of the great and learned Dr Dee, intelligencer to Queen Elizabeth.” He squinted as his cloudy eyes struggled to focus on the symbol. “See. These are a representation of the secret eyes that guard the Commonwealth. And what is the last figure? Well, it is a holy number in itself of course, but really it is a representation of who we serve and what surmounts all. England.”
Blood looked up at the other men, by now completely lost. “How in God’s name does that represent England?”
The hard-faced man sniggered; ‘M’ sighed, clearly saddened by Blood’s lack of learning. “The symbol,” he explained patiently, “is an expression of the letter ‘E’ in the angelic language of Enochian. It is a bond, Colonel. A holy bond.”
The German moved forward with the needle and began to pass it through a candle; Blood, desperate to continue the conversation, leant forward towards ‘M’. "So what is it you would have me do?”
“We would have you return home,” ‘M’ said. “There are many Royalists in Ireland, and a mixed rabble they are; part papists, part fugitives, and part savages.”
The hard-faced man listened to Blood’s howl as the hot needle was pressed into his flesh, and grinned. “We think you will blend in perfectly,” he said.
***
(Taken from “The Wars of the Five Kingdoms” by James Price, Miskatonic University Press 1947) )
“Civil wars have a certain rhythm. In England five years earlier, Parliament was forced to endure a ‘Royalist Spring’, while the following year the Scots suffered their own springtime nightmare against the rampant armies of the Earl of Montrose. Now across the sea, the Dutch Regents had an ‘Orange Spring’ with which to contend. The first and most bitter blow was the humiliating defeat of the Staatsarmee at Hillegersberg in early March 1648; the Stadtholder inflicted a stinging reverse on the army that the States had spent the winter assembling so painstakingly and forced it to flee behind the walls of Rotterdam, which was promptly put under siege. The States-General had hardly had time to digest this news before word came of a fresh disaster. As April dawned, the Orangist admiral Maarten Tromp had led a daring raid on one of the merchant convoys organised to supply Amsterdam, catching it off Nordwijk, capturing seven merchantmen and destroying three. If Holland lost control of the sea, then the war was lost; and as Witte De With bluntly told the States-General, “We have lost the sea until we have other ships”[14]. Faced with defeat on all fronts, the States-General desperately cast around for options. Just as with the English Parliament in 1643, the Regents found that their best hope was for external assistance; and just as Parliament found the only place it could turn was to the Scots, the States-General had no option but to turn to the fledgling English Commonwealth. England’s Council of State had no love for the Stadtholder, who had done so much to assist his father-in-law Charles I, and had a desperate need for foreign, Protestant recognition. The Orangist blockade on Amsterdam was almost as damaging to the English economy as it was to the Regents; English intervention would not only reopen the interrupted flow of trade between Amsterdam and London, but also deny the newly-proclaimed King James a place of safety from which to plot further invasions of the British Isles.
Once the States-General decided to embark on their new pro-English policy, events moved swiftly. The first step was recognition of the Commonwealth; something that London had already moved to facilitate. The Council of State immediately appointed Henry Lawrence and Isaac Dorislaus[15] as envoys extraordinary to the Dutch Republic and to take steps to hasten their departure. In fact, the Stages-General were pushing at an open door; although outwardly, the envoys had been entrusted with the task of establishing friendly relations with the anti-Orangist Party in Amsterdam; in reality, however, their true mission was to “enter into a more strict and intimate alliance and union” with the Dutch…”
****
Peacocke Inn
Westminster, April 1648)
Edward Sexby sipped his pint and smiled as he remembered Blood’s screams earlier that afternoon. It had been a poor recompense for five days of travelling with the man, in truth; but a soul had to derive pleasure where he could. He was long gone now, slung on a ship bound first to Dunkirk, then to Cork or Dublin; his superiors had also departed to whatever other business occupied their attention. The Invisible Circle was only one of his concerns, however; his true master sat across from him at the table, working his way through a sheaf of densely printed papers and occasionally making notes in the margins. Sexby leant over, took the bottle of sack and refilled his glass; normally he detested anything that smacked of servility, for he was no man’s servant, but this was different. This was Freeborn John.
John Lilburne could have occupied rooms in the vacant opulence of Whitehall Palace, if he desired; instead, he had refused to stay anywhere that smacked of privilege, and instead conducted his business from the upper floor of the Peacocke whenever he was not needed elsewhere. Sexby was his informal conduit to the intelligencers, but he was more than that; the Secretary of State used him as a representative of the common man when he needed to gauge the popularity of certain measures.
Lilburne gestured to the sheaf of pamphlets on the table. “Do you speak the Dutch tongue, Edward?” he asked; Sexby shook his head, and the other man shrugged.
“A shame. Perhaps you should learn? You might have found these pamphlets interesting. They speak of freedom- “True Freedom”, they call it - of a union of free Republics tied together by bonds of friendship and trust, rather than by an oppressive sovereign or Monarch. The dream of liberty is not merely an English concern. All men have the same desires in this regard, whether they be Englishmen, Dutchmen, or Scotsmen. Even Papists dream of freedom, damned and misguided though they may be. And is it not the duty of the man who has secured his own freedom to help break the chains of his fellows?”
Sexby pursed his lips. “Is that not what we are engaged in with the Scots, John? I would have thought this was charity enough for the present; and even this is to preserve our own liberty as much as it is to extend it to Scotland.”
Lilburne nodded. “It is indeed, Edward. So few of us enjoy real liberty; yet what are we to do when our neighbours, who have fought far longer than we for freedom from tyranny, risk subjugation? Should we not render them assistance if we are able?”
He rummaged through his papers and extracted a couple, which he brandished at Sexby. “I shall tell you a secret, Edward. You may know that we have sent a mission to the Hollanders. Publically, they are merely to secure recognition of our Commonwealth by the States-General.”
Sexby raised an eyebrow, cautiously. So this is what he has been busy doing these last few weeks. “and privately?” he asked.
Lilburne beamed. “Privately, I have exchanged a number of confidential correspondences with the Grand Pensionary of Holland, Master De Witt. As a result of these discussions I have authorised our ambassadors to make the Hollanders a grand offer, to our mutual benefit; if they accept, we shall reach across the ocean and assist our brothers in their struggle for freedom with ships and men.”
Sexby frowned. You had better not have exchanged everything for a mess of pottage in a fit of idealism, Freeborn John. “Forgive me for speaking bluntly, John,” he said, carefully “but what do we gain from such an action? Any troops that cross to Holland will weaken our efforts in Scotland and Ireland.”
Lilburne smiled. “What do we gain, my friend? There is the resumption of trade, of course, but that is only a minor prize. For we stand to gain Holland itself! The Grand Pensionary has indicated that in exchange for our assistance, the States of Holland- and the States of his allies- will agree to form a new Union with England- not the United Provinces, but the United Republics! And it will be more than just Dutchmen and Englishmen in this new power; even now I have agents speaking to and assisting those who would see freedom extended to the shores of France. I believe you speak the language from your time in Dunkirk?”
How in God’s name does he know about that episode? Sexby swallowed, then sighed. “I do indeed, John.”
Lilburne drained his glass. “Excellent. In that case, I have a task for you. Now listen very carefully; I shall say this only once…”
_____________________________________________
[1] This was the case IOTL after Dunbar; Providence was hugely important to both the English and Scottish worldview, and military success was as much about God’s will as force of arms.
[2] Similar sentiments were expressed IOTL after Dunbar.
[3] Such extreme criticism of the Kirk only became apparent IOTL after the exile of Charles II, but ITTL Scotland’s spiritual crisis is all the greater.
[4] Gillespie said much the same IOTL.
[5] Similar tracts circulated in 1650 and 1651 IOTL; Aberdeen, and Marischal college in particular, seems to have been a hotbed of anti-kirk sentiment.
[6] IOTL this was one of Cromwell’s theological arguments against the Covenant, but ITTL the Scots come up with it themselves.
[7] Dunning saw a similar riot IOTL in the 1650s. Doubtless many of the rioters were men in drag, as was the universal tradition.
[8] Women were at the forefront of the early Covenanting movement, which was famously started by Jenny Geddes’ angry stool-throwing protest at the imposition of the Prayer Book.
[9] The survivors of Dunbar were treated in a similar way IOTL; while most escaped on the march back to England, as late as 1653 there was still a miserable group of them stuck in a prison ship on the Thames and used as indentured labour.
[10] This is pretty much what Cromwell had to do IOTL, and led to the English campaign in Scotland bogging down.
[11] The Association existed IOTL and was very much a Scottish attempt to replicate the New Model Army.
[12] This was the case IOTL too, although Scottish Independency emerged in a slightly less organic way there; ITTL, the kirk’s crisis is so intense that things happen rather more quickly.
[13] Lockyer was highly successful in OTL too; to the extent that five years after he left Scotland Robert Baillie still cursed him as “that asse Lockier”
[14] This was De With’s assessment during the first Anglo-Dutch war IOTL, and is no less pertinent here ITTL.
[15] Lawrence and Dorislaus were both Parliamentarian figures IOTL, and both had close connections with the Dutch Republic; Lawrence had lived in Holland for most of the 1630s, while Dorislaus had been born in Leiden. IOTL Lawrence, who knew Cromwell quite well, served as the President of the Council of State for several years during the Protectorate; Dorislaus was sent on a mission to Amsterdam to organise an Alliance with the Dutch, and was murdered there by Royalist agents in 1649.
A wonderful update! The collapse of the Kirk is very sudden--and realistic. Interesting, though, that they thought Lorraine was actually Viceroy; Henrietta Maria has indeed made a grievous mistake.
Blood, Thomas Blood. Lovely way to combine Bond with Enochian mysticism and seventeenth-century stuff. And Kuklos is the originating term for the KKK--very clever indeed.
And the United Republics idea is unveiled! A most Glorious Revolution for a most glorious Anglo-Dutch union!
Invading France, however, is a terrible idea...
Blood, Thomas Blood. Lovely way to combine Bond with Enochian mysticism and seventeenth-century stuff. And Kuklos is the originating term for the KKK--very clever indeed.
And the United Republics idea is unveiled! A most Glorious Revolution for a most glorious Anglo-Dutch union!
Invading France, however, is a terrible idea...
A new Chapter 36, ehh?
So is the old one now Chapter 37, or....?
And just to make it clear--great work, as always.
So is the old one now Chapter 37, or....?
And just to make it clear--great work, as always.
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Japhy
Banned
I shouldn't be surprised that the Commonwealth is aiming to expand outside of the British Isles, especially after Naples, but I'll admit Union with Republics on the continent is still dramatic and exciting, one wonders if this won't be a dangerous overreach though as Selby fears.
Also as always loved the bit with Blood. The seemingly forced explanation of the 007 moniker was great. Also, was that a Flashman reference?
In regards to Ireland lastly, I'll certainly be interested in seeing the relationship between the Yong King and his Viceroy-who-would-be-King. It will be interesting to see if the even more multi-sided Irish leadership of TTL will be able to find common ground in the face of the coming Anglo-Scottish invasion or if the divisions will doom them in a manner akin to what just happened to the Scottish defense.
And finally, as always, Thank you Ed for the great work.
Also as always loved the bit with Blood. The seemingly forced explanation of the 007 moniker was great. Also, was that a Flashman reference?
In regards to Ireland lastly, I'll certainly be interested in seeing the relationship between the Yong King and his Viceroy-who-would-be-King. It will be interesting to see if the even more multi-sided Irish leadership of TTL will be able to find common ground in the face of the coming Anglo-Scottish invasion or if the divisions will doom them in a manner akin to what just happened to the Scottish defense.
And finally, as always, Thank you Ed for the great work.
I don't know that there's a writer on this board who writes better, more interesting British-centric timelines than EdT, quite honestly.
Sulemain
Banned
So we've got a United Republics of the Dutch and English founded on the principles of liberty and tolerance, a secret service based around mysticism, the Kirk collapsing and an invasion of France? This is going to be awesome.
I do like the Anglo-Dutch Union. Perhaps leading to a merge of fleets, armies, and Companies? An Anglo-Dutch East Indies Company would be a force to be reckoned with.
I do like the Anglo-Dutch Union. Perhaps leading to a merge of fleets, armies, and Companies? An Anglo-Dutch East Indies Company would be a force to be reckoned with.
Never get involved in a land war in France (until the industrial revolution hits full force, and even then it's risky).
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