Early life and military career
The Moncks were one of the oldest gentry families in Devon, having been settled at Potheridge since the twelfth century. Although the family had social pretensions (they claimed descent from the Plantagenets) Sir Thomas Monck’s finances were precarious and were not alleviated by his marriage to the daughter of Sir George Smith, a wealthy Exeter merchant. Nevertheless the young George Monck was initially brought up by his maternal grandfather and Sir Thomas confidently expected that this close personal relationship would result in a substantial legacy to the Monck family at Sir George’s death. Sir George died in 1619 but the expected legacy did not materialize, with the result that Sir Thomas’ finances deteriorated still further, to the point that he had difficulty in satisfying even minor creditors.
It was almost certainly some episode relating to his debts that precipitated a quarrel with John Battyn, under-sheriff of Devon, who was accused of having committed ‘some wrongs’ against Sir Thomas. Since Sir Thomas is known to have been in a debtor’s gaol by January 1626, it seems likely that (as described by Gumble, one of Monck’s earliest biographers) Battyn had reneged on a deal to permit Sir Thomas to appear in public without fear of arrest for debt during Charles I’s passage through Devon in the autumn of 1625. On 30 Sept. 1626 the teenage George Monck, together with his older brother Thomas and John Pollard, avenged Sir Thomas’ humiliation by mounting a vicious and otherwise unprovoked attack on Battyn at an Exeter inn. Although Gumble described the incident as though it were a somewhat minor cudgelling, surviving depositions show that this was a brutal beating in which George Monck played a leading part. He also stabbed the unarmed victim, who later died of his injuries.
George Monck was lucky to avoid trial and conviction for murder especially as the attack clearly violated the clear but unwritten rules of honourable combat, even in terms of combat against a social inferior. Some thought he was more than lucky – that his family’s influence coupled with powerful local interests had connived to protect him. They were probably right: by April 1627 Monck was either in hiding or had fled; by the summer he was serving as an ensign in the company captained by his kinsman Sir Richard Grenville, as part of the expedition against the Isle of Rhé.
Monck became a professional soldier campaigning across Europe until his return to the British Isles in or about 1638.
By the summer of 1646 the royalist cause was clearly lost. On 1 July 1646 the Commons learned that Monck was prepared to take the negative oath and that if discharged from his imprisonment in the Tower would leave the country.
In the aftermath of the execution of Charles I Monck’s actions in Ireland again called his loyalties into question but he was able to explain his conduct to Parliament, and Oliver Cromwell‡ was sufficiently convinced of his reliability to use his services in the invasion of Scotland (1650) and to give him command of a regiment of guards. In 1651, when Cromwell returned to England, Monck was left behind as commander-in-chief of Scotland. He subsequently served with distinction as one of the three generals of the fleet and was returned to Parliament as knight of the shire for Devon in 1653. His services were well rewarded: in 1652 Parliament passed an ordinance granting him the barony of Kinneil, confiscated from James Hamilton, duke of Hamilton [S], which he sold for over £5,000. He did so without guaranteeing the purchaser’s title, allegedly telling him that he must ‘take the hazard of the turn of the times’.
Monck’s loyalty to the Cromwellian regime was demonstrated by his prompt action against potential rebels in his own regiment and by his active promotion of a marriage between his niece, Elizabeth Monck, and Thomas Pride, eldest son and namesake of the regicide colonel who had grown wealthy under the Cromwellian regime.
In 1653 Monck married. In later years this marriage became the topic of much gossip. Despite the poverty of his early life, he was of unquestionable gentry lineage, with pretensions to an aristocratic background. This, together with his wealth and his status as the hero of the Restoration, ensured that his lack of social graces could be interpreted as a bluff, soldierly manner. His wife’s behaviour was treated less kindly: ‘Her former station’ wrote one commentator, ‘shows itself in her manners and dress, being in no way remarkable for elegance or gentility.’
Although it is possible that John Clarges was rather more than a working craftsman, the very fact that a duchess’s father could be described as a farrier was considered risible, and it was widely assumed that her social background was vastly inferior to that of her husband. That the duchess was devoted to the duke was understandable; that the duke should be devoted to the duchess, who was but ‘a plain, homely dowdy’, and that, despite all his bravery in the field, he should be wary of upsetting her, seemed inexplicable.
Architect of the Restoration?
In the confusion and uncertainty that characterized the period after the death of Cromwell, Monck came to be seen as a key figure in any future political settlement. Shortly after the succession of Richard Cromwell‡, John Colepeper, Baron Colepeper, told Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, that ‘the person my eye is chiefly on as able alone to restore the king and not absolutely averse to it, neither in his principles nor in his affections … is Monck’.
Shortly after Booth’s rising, John Lambert‡ expelled Parliament. News of this reached Monck in mid-October 1659. He embarked upon a purge of commissioned and non-commissioned officers whose loyalty could not be relied upon, stating his intention to defend the rights of Parliament and to oppose any attempt to institute government by ‘a single person’, whether king or army officer.
Monck began his march into England in January 1660, arriving in London just over a month later. Cooperation from Henry Fairfax‡, 3rd Lord Fairfax [S], who had agreed to join Monck in opposing a restoration of the king, ensured that no opposition was offered by Lambert’s troops.
At Monck’s suggestion all the forces in London, except his own, were dispersed to new and scattered quarters in order to prevent any attempt at a military coup d’état. On 6 Feb. he addressed Parliament, choosing his words with so much care that ‘most men know not what construction to make of it’.
Monck then presided over several meetings between representatives of the Rump and of the secluded Members, but no agreement was reached. According to Anthony Ashley Cooper, later earl of Shaftesbury, on the night of 20 Feb. he, with Mrs. Monck, her brother, Thomas Clarges‡, John Cloberry,‡ and Ralph Knight‡, sat up arguing with Monck until three in the morning about the need for the immediate readmission of the secluded Members. That Anne Monck had considerable influence over her husband and that she used it in favour of a restoration is highly probable. There were suggestions that the exiled king should make a point of encouraging her.
On 21 Feb. Monck forced the readmission of the secluded Members, thus significantly altering the balance of power in Parliament in favour of the presbyterians. The presbyterians however were divided, and even those who favoured a restoration were determined to make it a conditional one, with a limited monarchy and a moderately puritan religious settlement. In order to achieve this it was necessary to ensure that former cavaliers were disbarred from becoming parliamentary candidates and that if the House of Lords were to meet as part of the new Parliament it should exclude those peers who had been in actual service with the king, the post-1642 creations, and those ‘young lords’ who had been minors in the civil wars.
Even at this stage, Monck was still speaking in favour of a commonwealth and against the restoration of Charles Stuart but all his actions, including a report in early March that he had sent for the keys of the doors to the House of Lords and had set a guard there, were open to widely differing interpretations, including the possibility that, given his claims to royal ancestry, he sought the crown for himself.
was much distracted in my endeavours for the peace and settlement of the nation and put to several and different postures in the managing of them, I being forced to use the force of power to some, and friendship and fair promises of security to others, till I had at last reduced matters to such a consistency that all were removed from command and trust in arms that would not engage to acquiesce in whatsoever the then succeeding Parliament should act.
HMC Portland, iii. 256–7.
In particular he was extremely anxious about the reaction of Charles Fleetwood‡ and Sir Arthur Hesilrige‡. Fleetwood’s allegiance seems to have been secured with minimal promises on Albemarle’s part but Hesilrige’s command of Berwick, Carlisle, Newcastle, and Tynemouth, and his extensive influence over the army, made him a potentially far more dangerous enemy. Monck undertook to secure Hesilrige’s ‘life and estate’ in return for his promise not to interfere with the course of events, and on 19 Mar. Hesilrige submitted peacefully to the new council of state.
Monck, who had consistently refused to receive royalist agents, consented to a private interview with his cousin, the royalist Sir John Granville, later earl of Bath, on 19 Mar. 1660. Granville handed him a letter from the king, written some nine months earlier, and Monck pledged his loyalty to the crown, declaring himself ready ‘to sacrifice my life and fortune in his service’, but even at this late stage of events he was unwilling to commit himself on paper and made Granville take a verbal answer back to the exiled court.
By mid-April it was rumoured that the new Parliament would include a House of Lords.
Whether Monck’s role in the Restoration was one that he planned of his own volition, was in obedience to the wishes of the exiled king, or was simply a reflection of his inability to control events remains a moot point. The presbyterians certainly believed that Monck had betrayed them and this view was probably substantiated still further when, according to Gilbert Burnet, the future bishop of Salisbury, Monck’s objections ensured that there was no discussion of the proposals for a conditional restoration put forward by Matthew Hale‡. Yet once the secluded Members had been readmitted an unconditional restoration became increasingly likely. Monck continued to be wary of military insurrection and ensured that the Declaration of Breda was read and approved by the army and the fleet. His opposition to Hales’s proposals for a conditional restoration and his insistence that the fleet set sail to meet the king as soon as possible seem to have been based in fears that any delay might lead at best to unrest and at worst to renewed rebellion.
The Restoration 1660–1
Even before the Long Parliament finally dissolved itself, Monck had been generously rewarded with office (appointed commander-in-chief of all land forces in the three kingdoms, joint general at sea, and a member of the council of state) and money (a grant of £20,000). With the return of the king, his rewards multiplied still further. The royal family’s gratitude to Monck was obvious from the moment they landed at Dover when Charles II embraced Monck and called him ‘father’ and ‘Whilst all the rest were shouting God Save the King, the duke of Gloucester [Henry*] threw up his hat and cried “God bless General Monk”’. Shortly afterwards Monck was invested with the order of the garter, the honour thus done him being exalted still further by the way in which James, duke of York, personally put the garter on him. Monck’s high standing was further underlined by his physical proximity to the king on the journey to London. Still a mere commoner, he nevertheless sat with the king and his brothers in the royal coach, while George Villiers*, 2nd duke of Buckingham rode in the boot. When the royal party swapped to horses, the king was flanked on his right by his brothers and on his left by Monck; only when they reached London did Monck ride behind the king, and even then he rode with the duke of Buckingham.
One diplomat remarked that Monck was ‘almost revered by the king’ and was ‘the author of the prosperity and repose which these realms at present enjoy’.
Although Monck’s relationship to the Prides was now something of an embarrassment, it did not affect his reputation as the saviour of the monarchy. If the French ambassador were correct, his position may have been strengthened still further by a judicious alliance with Edward Hyde.
He was not of course to remain a commoner long. In July 1660 he was given a dukedom, thus becoming one of only three non-royal dukes in the English peerage. His choice of the title of Albemarle reflected a conscious reference to his supposed Plantagenet origins, although it is perhaps an interesting reflection on the way in which his contemporaries perceived him that they continued to refer to him as the lord general.
After the Restoration, Monck’s reputation as a military man led him to assume something of a policing role both at court and elsewhere. Even at the coronation banquet he had had to intervene to prevent a quarrel between the king’s footmen and the barons of the Cinque Ports. In the autumn of 1660, after a spate of robberies, he arranged for military patrols to protect the approach roads to London; and when fears about highway robberies again became acute in 1667, it was to him that the Commons turned for advice.
In keeping with his newly elevated status Albemarle also received considerable financial rewards – and it was money rather than political power that interested him. He was given grants of land worth £7,000 a year (including Theobalds Park and estates in the duchy of Lancaster), as well as substantial estates in Ireland. Sometime after 1662 he acquired New Hall, a once royal palace in Essex formerly owned by the Buckingham; he was also given the use of the Cockpit in Whitehall as his London residence. 1662 also saw him become one of the original proprietors of Carolina. Meanwhile the Albemarles received costly gifts from members of the royal family, among them a pearl necklace from Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I, said to be worth some £2,500.
Albemarle had a wide range of public commitments and was a member of the inner circle of the council. His wealth and his position at the centre of the new regime ensured his ability to command considerable patronage. His correspondence with Ormond underlines his continuing interest in the Irish land settlement and regularly included patronage requests for a wide range of individuals, an astonishing number of whom were described as kinsmen. Those closest to Albemarle naturally benefited most. His brother, Nicholas, became bishop of Hereford; his brother-in-law, Thomas Clarges‡, received a baronetcy, the lease of Reading Abbey, and a perpetual pension of £500 a year; his trusted officers Ralph Knight and John Cloberry were each knighted and given pensions of £600 a year; his kinsman John Colleton received a baronetcy and the sinecure office of commissioner of wine licences; another kinsman, William Morice‡, was appointed secretary of state; and his cousin Bernard Granville‡ was promised the reversion of the post of groom of the bedchamber.
While Albemarle claimed to have been careful to ensure that his recommendations to the king were restricted to ‘such as have always been faithful to his majesty or instrumental in his restoration’, it was widely suspected that his wife (and by implication the duke himself) was eager to turn the couple’s newfound influence into cash by trading in places. She was said to have demanded £500 from one applicant and in 1664 it was said to be her demand for payment in full rather than over a period of years that led to the collapse of negotiations between Albemarle and Buckingham for the sale of the office of master of the horse.
The extent of Albemarle’s parliamentary patronage is difficult to determine, partly because his landholdings were so scattered, partly because his personal papers do not survive, and partly because he made no attempt to build up an organized personal following. It was perhaps only to be expected that his opinion would be sought in the course of elections to the Convention and it is known that he was instrumental in the election of William Penn but it was after the Restoration and his acquisition of lands, wealth, and offices that his influence became more significant, although his scattered landholdings and consequent lack of a compact territorial base tends to disguise the extent of his authority. His standing in the south-west of England and his friendship with Sir Hugh Pollard‡ may well have been an important factor in the parliamentary management of an area that returned a disproportionate number of Members to the Commons.
Albemarle exercised electoral influence in Essex and Lancashire by virtue of his estates in those counties. Less obviously he probably also exerted some control over elections in the north and east ridings of Yorkshire. He was on good terms with the powerful magnate and lord lieutenant of the North Riding, Thomas Belasyse, 2nd Viscount Fauconberg. As a former Cromwellian collaborator, Fauconberg had good reason to be thankful to Albemarle, who had been instrumental in securing him a royal pardon. Fauconberg’s uncle, John Belasyse, Baron Belasyse, was a Catholic royalist but he too wanted the new government to overlook his links to important figures in the Cromwellian regime. Belasyse was lord lieutenant of the East Riding and governor of Hull, where Albemarle became high steward in 1661 and where he was at least partially successful in protecting the puritan preacher at Trinity Church, Hull (John Shaw) from the enmity of Gilbert Sheldon, bishop of London, later archbishop of Canterbury.
In May 1660, while still a member of the Commons, Monck chaired a meeting of the committee for privileges which discussed the arrangements for the reception of the king. He was introduced to the House of Lords on 13 July 1660 to the apparent delight of the House, which ordered two of its members to wait on the king to thank him for the honour so conferred. Albemarle was immediately nominated to the committee for privileges; thereafter he was a consistently high attender, being present for just under 90 per cent of the remaining sitting days that session, and was named to eight further committees, including those for disbanding the army, the annexation of Dunkirk and Mardike, and the draining of the great level of the fens, in which his connection with the Berties (major landholders in Lincolnshire) may have given him a personal interest. On 30 July Fauconberg’s proxy was registered to him – perhaps because the business of the day was scheduled to include an attempt by the royalist Charles Stanley, 8th earl of Derby, to reclaim lands that his family had lost during the interregnum. Albemarle was almost certainly interested in opposing any claim that threatened to upset the land settlement and Derby was also a political rival in Lancashire. On 27 Aug. he was one of those deputed by the House to recommend its chaplain, Thomas Hodges, to the king for some mark of favour.
By September 1660 his relationship with Hyde seems to have deteriorated; it was now said that his dislike of the chancellor had become obvious.
In October 1660 Albemarle sat on the trials of the regicides at the Old Bailey, alongside the lord mayor, Sandwich, and ‘such a bench of noblemen as hath not been ever seen in England’.
In November 1660 Albemarle intervened to protect his ally Sir John Robinson‡, lieutenant of the Tower, in a dispute about privilege of Parliament, and in the same month he presented the House with an account of the costs of disbanding the army.
It was symptomatic of Albemarle’s reputation as the architect of the Restoration that he became the target, along with the king and York, of an assassination plot. Then, early in January 1661, the instability of the new regime and its need for a military strong man seemed to be underlined by Venner’s rising. In reality the actions of ‘a few desperate enthusiasts … who had first lost their wits before they did their loyalty’ posed little threat, but fears of what might have happened had the rebels been better organized prompted the retention of what was effectively a small standing army, in which Albemarle took command of a troop of guards and a regiment of foot.
Settling the nation 1661-3
Albemarle’s attendance during the 1661–2 session dropped to just under 60 per cent of sitting days. Although he was seriously ill in the summer of 1661, this illness coincided with the recess and so did not affect his attendance.
According to Louis XIV, who insisted that his source of information was impeccable, in September 1661 Albemarle, together with Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey, Henry Pierrepont, marquess of Dorchester, and Ashley, led the opposition to the king’s marriage to Catherine of Braganza (and by implication to the influence of Clarendon). They were supported in this endeavour by Ormond and by George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol.
During 1661 and through into early 1662 rumours of plots and rebellion triggered extensive discussions about ways of ensuring military security, first by the creation of a ‘select’ militia and then by an enlarged standing army. Although little documentary evidence survives, Albemarle must have been deeply involved in these discussions: one of the plans under consideration was drawn up by his secretary and trusted adviser, Sir William Clarke, and on 19 Dec. 1661 he was named as one of the committee to meet with a similar committee from the Commons during the recess to discuss ‘ways of securing the peace of the kingdom’ in the wake of revelations of a plot against the government.
Throughout 1661 Albemarle had almost certainly been involved in the lengthy discussions on the subject of the validity of acts and ordinances that had been passed between 1641 and 1660. When Parliament reconvened in January 1662 after a short Christmas break, he was named to the committee to consider the issues. Although no attendance lists survive, he was almost certainly present at some of the heated discussions that continued throughout January and into early February.
Albemarle was almost certainly also interested in his public capacity in the bill pertaining to the jurisdiction of the court of admiralty, but, as indicated above, he was away from Parliament for much of February and March, so cannot have taken a leading role in the committee’s discussions. Since the business of the House during this period largely concerned the passage of the Act of Uniformity, it is possible that his absence was strategic, but a genuine incapacity through illness is probably more likely. In late February 1662 he was said to be ‘struggling with a churlish ague’ from which he seems to have take a month to recover.
His own bill, confirming the various grants of land that he had received from the king, was piloted through the House during his absence. It is impossible to tell who managed the process but it is perhaps significant that the bill was reported by the reliable government supporter Jerome Weston, 2nd earl of Portland, who had not been named to the committee but who had recently begun to chair a number of important committees. It seems unlikely that Albemarle had left the passage of the bill to chance for later that year he sought a similar bill for confirmation of his Irish estates and was careful to send a copy of the draft to Ormond and to ask him to canvass support for it in both Houses of the Irish Parliament.
Rumours of some sort of estrangement between the king and Albemarle early in the summer of 1662 seem to have been no more than gossip, for fears of unrest in London led in July to his appointment as lord lieutenant of Middlesex, displacing the previous joint lord lieutenants, Thomas Howard, earl of Berkshire, and Richard Sackville, 5th earl of Dorset.
In August 1662, in private discussions with the French ambassador about the sale of Dunkirk, Clarendon made it clear that, although Albemarle was one of the commissioners for the sale, he was not initially party to the negotiations. Albemarle’s opposition to the deal was such that when Sir William Morice was slow in arranging for the documents to be copied, his actions were suspected of being orchestrated by Albemarle as part of a last-ditch attempt to abort the treaty.
During the 1663 session Albemarle was present at nearly 85 per cent of sittings. He was named as usual to the committees for privileges and petitions and to ten others, including some in which he had a clear personal or official interest, such as the preparation of a bill to repeal the acts passed by the 1640 Parliament, the prevention of duels, the care of indigent commissioned officers, and the organization of the militia (which he also chaired). On 21 Mar. he was appointed with Anglesey to attend the king about arranging the return of deeds concerning the right to present to advowsons which had been confiscated from various royalist peers during the civil wars and interregnum. It was perhaps in anticipation of continuing difficulties in Parliament, including continuing attacks on Clarendon by Bristol, that on 24 Mar. Albemarle received the proxy of William Widdrington, 2nd Baron Widdrington. This was an interesting alliance since Widdrington, a former royalist, had no obvious connection to Albemarle other than through his marriage to a member of the Bertie family.
In April 1663 Albemarle and Anglesey were deputed to present the thanks of the House to the king for his response to the petition against Jesuits and Catholic priests, and Albemarle was nominated as a member of the delegation to request that the petition and the king’s response be printed. It is difficult to assess his position at court at this time. He continued to receive financially valuable rewards, including a grant in May 1663 of lands in Carolina.
It seems likely that Albemarle was regarded as an ally by Bristol, who attempted to use him as an intermediary to deliver a letter to the king on 26 June 1663, the very day that Bristol’s involvement in Sir Richard Temple’s offer to secure a supply was revealed to the Commons.
The 2nd Dutch War, 1664-7
During the short 1664 session Albemarle’s attendance dropped to 61 per cent. He was as usual named to the committees for privileges and petitions. When Bristol tried to secure an audience with the king in March, he again chose Albemarle as an intermediary.
By the time that Parliament reconvened for the 1664–5 session the prospect of war with the Dutch had become increasingly likely. Given the combination of his military background and his membership of the Royal Adventurers, it is not surprising that in January 1665 Sir Allen Brodrick‡ identified Albemarle as one of those keen to declare war.
One of the few pieces of information that we have about Albemarle’s activities in this period relates to his adjudication of a dispute about the status of Portland and Sandsfoot castles. His role in settling this disagreement demonstrates not only his continuing importance as a military adviser but also his ability (and willingness) to intervene in local power struggles.
An account of the battle of Lowestoft (3 June 1665) by Sir Thomas Clifford, later Baron Clifford of Chudleigh, indicates that Albemarle was not only present but was struck and bruised by the cannonball that caused the death of Sir William Clarke.
When Albemarle finally arrived in Oxford late in November 1665 it was, according to one observer, to carry the news that the danger of plague was now diminishing and that it would be safe for the king and the court to return to London. Another report rather more credibly insisted that it ‘was to consult about the affairs of the navy in which his grace is known to be particularly necessary’.
For those in the know, Albemarle’s appointment was tantamount to a guarantee of continuing military success: ‘Money comes in freely … upon easier terms than before’, remarked William Sancroft,* [940], later archbishop of Canterbury, ‘upon the great reputation of that good man’, and the government was quick to take advantage of the possibility for easy credit.
In the aftermath of the inconclusive Four Days Battle of June, underlying tensions between York and Albemarle again came to the surface.
Early in September 1666 Albemarle was persuaded to return to London to take charge of arrangements for dealing with what has since become known as the Great Fire of London. The privy council unanimously agreed with the king that civil disorder would follow the devastation of the fire and that Albemarle was the only person with sufficient expertise and credibility to prevent this. It is a telling tribute to the awe in which he was held that he was again seen as the saviour of the nation, able ‘to give the king his kingdom a second time’.
Others thought they discerned an ulterior motive in Albemarle’s recall, which, according to Henry Bennet, Baron (later earl of) Arlington, also had the useful effect of removing the difficulties created by having the navy ‘commanded by two heads, that were in danger of disagreeing’.
In the meantime Albemarle was still very active in Parliament, although feuds at court made him vulnerable to factional backstabbing. Arlington’s secretary told Pepys that ‘my lord general is become mighty low in all people’s opinion … that he hath received several slurs from the king and the duke of York [and] … is grown a drunken sot’.
By the time that the 1666–7 session ended early in February it was already apparent that the government was in disarray over the cost of the war and the collapse of naval finances. Albemarle was believed to have opposed the decision (reputedly made at the suggestion of Sir William Coventry‡) to save money by laying up the great ships in harbour – a decision that contributed to the disaster in the Medway the following June – although in reality he had advised the king that Dutch ships in the Thames could do no harm.
In April Albemarle was said to be indisposed and Pepys remarked that the duke ‘is not well and doth grow crazy’. In this context the word crazy did not carry its modern connotations of actual mental unbalance, for only a month later Pepys was complaining of actions by Albemarle that amounted to a very rational and deliberate attempt at extortion.
After Clarendon, 1667-70
It was perhaps in the hope that Albemarle would assist in his fight against Coventry that Clarendon proposed his name as nominal head of the treasury commission in May 1667. Albemarle’s involvement in the events that led to the fall of Clarendon is by no means straightforward. In June 1667 he was being tipped to act as high constable at any impeachment proceedings.
During the 1667–9 session Albemarle’s attendance dropped to just under 61 per cent. His attendance was high until the spring of 1668 but he was ill and so absent from the House for most of March 1668. Even when he returned in April his attendance that month was somewhat erratic. Thereafter, however, he resumed his normal high levels of attendance until his last illness in November 1669, although, according to Gumble, he had ‘relapsed into his old distempers’ towards the end of 1668 and was neglecting his health in order to fulfil his public duties.
In the course of the autumn Albemarle was named to eight committees, many of which (such as the committees for trade between England and Scotland, for the trial of peers, for assigning exchequer orders, for the banishment of Clarendon, and for public accounts) represented major issues of public policy to which most of those present were also named. In November, according to de Ruvigny, the king, Buckingham, and Albemarle were trying to destroy the ‘third party’ set on foot by Ashley and Anglesey and had decided ‘to get rid of M. the chancellor completely, and vigorously to oppose the plans of those who would like to save him through the dispute they have brought about between the two chambers’. To this end they proposed to make a public protest.
By December 1667, Charles II was said to be holding regular meetings with the Albemarles and Buckingham.
Albemarle’s failure to prevent the duel between Buckingham and Shrewsbury in January 1668 was ascribed to a lack of communication at the centre of government that meant that everything ‘doth fall between two stools’, but barely a month later the relationship between Albemarle and Buckingham was described as ‘a confederacy offensive and defensive’ aimed squarely at Ormond as their common enemy.
With the government still in disarray, Albemarle was appointed one of the commissioners to examine miscarriages of justice in Ireland, and then in September he was named as one of the commissioners to negotiate with the French over the proposed commercial treaty. In late September and early October the French ambassador reported that Albemarle was dissatisfied and that, egged on by his wife, he was demanding the post of lord treasurer.
Albemarle’s health was by now visibly declining. In February 1669 he was said to have ‘grown very apoplectical’ and ‘not like to live long’. For the next six weeks, newsletters and private correspondents provide us with an almost daily commentary on the fluctuating state of his health. Even after the immediate fears for his life had dissipated, regular accounts of his condition continued to appear in newsletters.
Albemarle was present when Parliament reconvened on 19 Oct. 1669; he even held a proxy, that of Richard Vaughan, Baron Vaughan (and 2nd earl of Carbery [I]). He managed just three more attendances before his final illness. According to his early biographers he spent his final months in great discomfort and virtually unable to move, yet he was still involved in public affairs and on 23 Nov. sent his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Clarges, to warn the Commons of the dangers presented by ‘the great resort of dangerous and disaffected persons to this Town’.
Albemarle’s will, made in 1665, was a simple one, leaving the residue of his estate to his son, Christopher, whose ‘tuition and breeding’ were entrusted to his wife and to his close friends Craven, Sir William Morice, Sir John Maynard, Sir Edward Turner,‡ Sir William Doyley,‡ Robert Brown the elder, and John Powell. The will refers to an earlier settlement of lands. Details of this settlement do not survive but it was later alleged that it ensured the descent of Albemarle’s ancestral estates, in case of failure of issue by Christopher Monck, to Albemarle’s niece Frances Moore, with remainder to the daughters of his younger brother Nicholas Monck. Frances Moore’s older sister, Elizabeth Pride, was allegedly cut out of the succession because of her marriage to the son of a regicide but that did not stop her from claiming that she was entitled to the ancestral estates after the 2nd duke’s death under the terms of her own father’s settlement.
Albemarle’s reputation as the regime’s military strongman may have outlived the reality of his abilities but to some his death at a time of acute and continuing political crisis left the government dangerously exposed to disorder and rebellion by ‘fanatics’.
The epithet most often associated with George Monck is ‘honest’ and, in the midst of a dispute about the marriage portion due to Elizabeth Monck, Colonel Pride and his son went out of their way to pin the blame (if any) on Elizabeth Monck’s maternal relatives, assuring the court that George Monck was a man of ‘so great honour and integrity’ that he could not possibly be involved in an attempt to defraud his niece.
Albemarle’s role in the Restoration of Charles II has naturally attracted much historical attention. Since his political papers do not survive and since his communications at the time were necessarily both verbal and secret, historians have found it difficult to reconstruct his intentions with any clarity. His contemporaries also found his intentions difficult to interpret. Even under the best of circumstances Monck was famously taciturn and secretive: ‘He is a silent man’, observed Sir Philip Percivalle in 1647; a decade later he was if anything even more inscrutable: ‘Monck is so dark a man’, wrote Mordaunt in 1660, ‘no perspective can look through him.’
Above all, his actions demonstrate just how anxious he was both to avoid another civil war and to enjoy the fruits of being on the winning side. Idolized in his own time for his undoubted courage, his reliability, and his role in the Restoration, he was nevertheless an unexciting hero, ‘a dull, heavy man’ as Pepys described him.