Andrew Green was producer of Random
Edition on BBC Radio 4, in which the stories
were taken from archive newspapersJacobus Houbraken’s engraving of General John Lambert, whose utter opposition
to the Restoration saw him spend the last 20 years of his life a prisonerBRIDGEMAN IMAGES
battle at Daventry (where the opposing
forces finally clashed).
“Only 350 troops turn up to support
Lambert,” says Lambert’s biographer,
David Farr. “They’re vastly outnumbered
by government troops. Lambert’s forces
disintegrate. The story is that Lambert’s
fine Arabian steed gets bogged down in the
muddy ground, and he’s easily rounded
up.” Lambert was to spend the rest of his
days a prisoner.
Other reports in the Intelligencer reveal
that the new administration’s words
weren’t always matched by its actions:
The House ordered the thanks of this
House to be given to Mr Calamy... and MrBaxter for their great pains in carrying on
the works of preaching and praying before
the House at St Margaret’s Westminster.
Edmund Calamy and Richard Baxter were
leading Presbyterian members of the
reformed Anglican church, Puritans
devoted to preaching and scripture, while
loathing bishops, cathedrals and ceremony.
The cruel irony is that their subsequent
stories reveal the fragility of Charles II’s
promises of “liberty to tender consciences”.
“That statement in the Declaration of
Breda wasn’t worth the paper it was written
on,” says Restoration historian Ronald
Hutton. “Most of the nation was tired of
Puritanism. A thoroughly intolerant newHouse of Commons was to outlaw all
forms of religion that weren’t High
Anglican. Calamy and Baxter attempted
to carry on preaching, but ended up in
prison as a result.”Pragmatic prison sentences
There was more pragmatism in the
Restoration regime’s treatment of the
regicides – men who had signed the
death warrant of Charles I. One of
them, Sir Hardress Waller, turns up on
the pages of the Intelligencer. Having
until now been engaged in “managing
the affairs of Ireland” he is reported
as having...
...the leave of the Council [of State] to
follow his private occasions, provided he
shall appear before the Council when they
shall desire the same.
In fact, Waller fled to France before
surrendering in the hope that repentance
would save his head (and guts). Though
condemned to death, his sentence was
commuted to life imprisonment.
The treatment of the regicides wasn’t
uniformly savage, says Penelope Corfield
of Royal Holloway, University of London,
even if the executions that were effected
proved indescribably gory. “The general
idea was to encourage the bitterness of
divisive civil war to die down. If individual
regicides were ready to express regret and
play within the system in future, they
didn’t suffer the extreme penalty. The
authorities only went after the regicides
that fled or wouldn’t accept the authority
of the king as restored. Amazingly, one
plan suggested for Charles while he was
in exile was that he should marry the
daughter of John Lambert, the stalwart of
the republican cause!”
Weighty issues, then, at a dramatic and
hugely significant turning point in British
history. However, the great thing about
newspapers is that there are usually
unobtrusive corners that show life going
on as normal even in stirring times. In the
Intelligencer, the ads say it all. How’s this- all you master chefs – for a cookbook
surely worth restoring to favour:
The Accomplisht Cook, the Mystery
of the Whole Art of Cookery, revealed in
a more perfect method than hath been
publisht in any language; expert and ready
ways for dressing Flesh, Fish and Fowl...
with other a la mode curiosities ...
approved by the many years experience
of Robert May.