CHAPTER XIV.
HIS RETURN TO ENGLAND—IMPRISONMENT, AND LIBERATION—HIS “CENTURY”—PECUNIARY DIFFICULTIES—PETITIONS—AT CHARLES THE SECOND’S CORONATION—LORD HERBERT.
We find that in the House of Commons, on the 14th of March, 1648, “The persons reported to be banished, and their estates confiscated, being fourteen in number, were every one particularly put to the question;” when it was resolved, &c. “That Charles Stuart, eldest son of the late King, be one of that number; also James Stuart, his second son;” then follow the Earls of Bristol, and Newcastle, along with Witherington, Digby, Musgrave, Langdale, Greenvill, and Dodington. After which it was—
“Resolved, &c. That the Earl of Worcester be one other of that number.” Likewise were added the names of Winter, Culpepper, Byron, the Duke of Buckingham; and finally, “all that have been plotting, designing, or assisting, in the Irish rebellion,” shall be proscribed, as enemies and traitors to the Commonwealth; and shall “die without mercy, wherever they shall be found within the limits of this nation; and their estates employed for the use of the Commonwealth.”[57]
It appears, on the authority of Dr. White Kennet,[58] the historian, that while Charles the Second was a refugee in the Court of France, the King of France, Louis XIV., was in himself disposed not only to assist, but if possible to restore the royal family of England. His commanding minister, the Cardinal Mazarine, however, was always averse to any such measure; so that all the exiled prince could do was to send abroad his envoys and agents, to solicit for justice and relief, although without effect, as the result proved. He sent to England, says Kennet, “the noble Marquis of Worcester for private intelligence as well as for supplies; but the Marquis was taken up prisoner in London, and committed to the Tower in September[?]; where he was threatened with a speedy trial, and worse punished with a long confinement.”
We are brought by this circumstance to an interesting period in the adventurous life of the Marquis of Worcester. His visit to England was every way extraordinary for its boldness or apparent recklessness; as he was a marked man, one who could have no reason for expecting to be able to conciliate the reigning power, which had already stigmatized him as an “enemy and traitor to the Commonwealth,” his estates to be confiscated, and himself, wherever taken, doomed to “die without any mercy whatever.”
The Marquis’s son sat in the Cromwellian Parliament; Cromwell enjoyed the Monmouthshire estates of the Marquis, to the value of £2500 per annum, and allowed Lord Herbert a pretty liberal income. From Edinburgh, Cromwell wrote on the 12th of April, 1651, a letter to his wife:—“My dearest, Beware of my Lord Herbert his resort to your house; if he do so may occasion scandal, as if I were bargaining with him: indeed be wise; you know my meaning.”[A][23]
The Marquis might have some private object in view, equally with that of serving his prince, and might have been better assured than history determines, that his life, at all events, would be safe. It is stated in the History of the Tower,[6] in noticing the Marquis of Worcester being added to the number of distinguished persons confined there in 1652, that the wants and distresses to which he had been subjected on the continent had driven him to seek shelter in his own country.
BIRD’S-EYE VIEW FROM MAP OF LONDON, 1658.