SOLDIER WHO RESTORED A KING

Press, 11 June 1977, Page 15

SOLDIER WHO RESTORED A KING

General Monck. By Maurice Ashley. Jonathan Cape. 254 pp. Biblio- _. S'aphy, notes and index. $17.90. The Cavaliers. By Mark Bence-Jones. Constable. 195 pp. Bibliography and index. $13.85. (Reviewed by Naylor Hillary) i-cnetal George Monck is alwavs flccrded a lew lines at the end of anv history of the English Civil Wars. As Governor of Scotland on behalf of he lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, it was Monck who marched an army to london after the lord Protector’s death and engineered the peaceful restoration of Charles II in J 660. I he simple statement of what he did conceals the remarkable achievement involved in a country rent bv civil disturbances for almost 20 years Before Monck acted fresh violence and threats of new civil wars threatened England. Scotland, and Ireland. Once ' vas esta blished in London with oObe troops including his own new Coldstream Guard,” all was cairn. Charles came home to the cheers of a loyal population. The armed forces jtere reduced; reprisals against the King s enemies were remarkably light — and Monck became Duke of Albermarle and one of the richest men m Europe. Mr Ashley set out to discover why one of Cromwell's most trusted supporters should have undone all that the Cromwellian Commonwealth stood tor. Earlier English historians have provided a bewildering variety of answers. Monck had fought for Charles 15 years earlier and had only gone over to serve Parliament after capture and a spell in the Tower of London, Perhaps he had remained a secret monarchist all along? Or did he intend to use his efficient army of occupation tn Scotland to make himself a king? And did he only give up the attempt when he saw the depth of feeling reappearing for the Stuarts? Or was he bribed with promises of wealth, power and titles? For these lures certainly appealed to his wife, a rather common milliner whom he had lured away from her husband while he was in the Tower.

Monck himself is little help to historians. He was a taciturn figure, ready to listen to others but seldom offering opinions himself. The answer

to the Monck enigma, for this careful biographer, is less dramatic and more sensible than most which see him motivated either by blind greed or by a Machiavellian craft out of character with his bluff, soldierly manner.

Monck, when Cromwell died, was probably the most highly respected military commander in the British Isles, with a reputation built up over 30 years of devotion to the welfare of his troops and loyalty to his superiors, l ike other great professional soldiers he held firmly to the doctrine that the armv was subordinate to the civil power. He abhorred military rule, even when he was forced to practise it in Ulster and Scotland.

Rut this professional attitude carries with it a corrollary too easily forgotten: for the army to serve the civil power there must he an established civil authority to serve. If there is not, it may be necessary for the army to create it, to call back De Gaulle or to manufacture a President Nasser, to take two recent examples. This was Monck’s situation in 1659. Amid the rivalries after Cromwell died, the three kingdoms of the British Isles were close to anarchy. Monck commanded a substantial organised force, Joyal to himself. He, in turn, sought a civil master, but he had to be sure that the master he chose would enjoy popular support and would not merely use Monck’s army in new civil strife.

In Monck’s slow progress from Edinburgh to London, and in some weeks in the capital arranging new. free elections for Parliament, he realised that only the exiled Charles II could be such a power, above the factions. Monck recalled the King and carried the population with him. The Stuarts, indeed, had reason to be grateful, but so did the country rescued from the brink of new civil turmoil. A footnote: Monck did not. retire to enjoy his new riches and power after the Restoration. He was soon at sea, fighting the Dutch; he stayed in l ondon as the King's representative v. hen the Court fled during the Great Plague of 1665; he became something like “civil defence controller” after the Great Fire of London in 1666. To the last he was a brave, loyal and tenacious soldier. He deserves more than

a few sentences in any account of seventeenth-century Britain. “The Cavaliers” is a much more modest foray into Civil War biography. A dozen or more outstanding figures on the Royalist side each receives a brief essay. Most of them are a world away from General Monck in their manners and attitudes. Mr Bence-Jones, like hundreds of writers before him, has found it impossible to resist the romantic Jure of Prince Rupert, the Marquis of Montrose, and Lord Falkland.

They were remarkable characters, helped by a time which provided a sweeping stage for spectacular deeds, Prince Rupert was a soldier at 13, a general at 23. Lord Falkland, friend and patron of poets and philosophers, made himself a scholar and soldier of fortune and died at 34 in a hopeless cavalry foray at the Battle of Newbury. Some said he courted death in despair at his country’s sufferings. James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, came closest of all to the Renaissance ideal of the complete man. Soldier, scholar, poet, and devout Christian, he was flawed only by an egotistical belief in his own destiny. He held a Highland army together for the Royalist cause, only to be betrayed and to end on a scaffold at Edinburgh at 37. The Duke of Newcastle, quixotic tutor to Charles 11. lived on credit in exile and wrote a book on horsemanship. He lost. £1 million in the King’s cause, a vast sum in those times. As author he was overshadowed by his wife Margaret, 40 years his junior, who dressed fantastically, kept maids beside her while she slept in case she awoke with a brilliant thought to dictate, and can fairly claim to be the first woman writer of distinction in English. Some of this hook’s most charming anecdotes concern the remarkable women who served the Royalist cause. The Puritans, to their own loss, insisted that women should be submissive. The Royalists did not, and from Queen Henrietta Maria downwards they are found under fire, holding besieged castles, rallying troops of retainers, and defying overwhelming odds. They bring a flash of colour to this otherwise slight contribution to the vast literature of the English Civil War.