OKEY, John (1606-62), of Hackney, Mdx. and Ampthill, Beds.

Parliamentarian soldier, 1606-49

John Okey was born in 1606, a younger son of William Okey, a merchant or tradesman of the parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields in Westminster. Okey may have worked for his father, and he had certainly not moved from his home parish by 1630, when he married Susanne Pearson, who was probably a local girl. Although John Okey’s origins are clear, his profession is not. Okey was probably a ship’s chandler – even, as Edmund Ludlowe II* claimed – a citizen of London, but there is no firm evidence for this in the company records or other contemporary documents, and his position is further obscured by later comments describing him as ‘a stoker in a brewhouse at Islington’, ‘a poor chandler near Lyon Key in Thames Street’ or simply as ‘a tallow-chandler’.23Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 1-2; Peacey, Okey, ch. 1. He cannot have been entirely obscure, however, as at the outbreak of civil war in the summer of 1642, the 36-year old Okey was given the responsible post of quartermaster in the troop of Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, which formed part of the cavalry force of the earl of Bedford in the parliamentarian army under the earl of Essex.24Peacock, Army Lists, 48. He was probably with Brooke at Edgehill in October 1642, but a month later he had been promoted to captain in another regiment – the London dragoons of Colonel Richard Browne II. During the winter of 1642-3, he and his men were stationed at Windsor and Winchester.25SP28/267/2, ff. 37-8. Okey remained with Browne only until February 1643, when he was made captain in Lord Brooke’s foot regiment, and in this capacity he was at Coventry in March, and at the siege of Lichfield in April, when Brooke was killed. Shortly afterwards Okey was sent to Leicester, where he may have remained until the beginning of June, when he became captain of horse in the regiment of Sir Arthur Hesilrige* in the army of Sir William Waller*.26SP28/136/19, f. 14; SP28/267/2, ff. 22-5, 28, 32-3, 36-41; SP28/7/537-43; SP28/17/492; Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 3-4. Okey may have fought at Lansdown and Roundway Down in July 1643; he was certainly involved in the battle of Cropredy Bridge in June; and he was promoted to the rank of major on 7 July 1644.27SP28/267/2, f. 41; Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 4. During the winter of 1644-5 Okey was stationed in Hampshire.28Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 4. Despite his confused early military career, Okey had clearly gained a reputation as a soldier, and he was chosen as colonel of the only dragoon regiment of the New Model army on its foundation in April 1645. Something of Okey’s radicalism may have already been noted at Westminster, and he was on the list of those whose appointments were opposed by the House of Lords.29Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 17.

Parliament’s decisive victory at Naseby on 14 June 1645 made Okey famous. According to his own account of the battle, when the armies were forming up he was ordered by the lieutenant-general of horse, Oliver Cromwell*, ‘with all speed to mount my men and flank our left wing’, a move that allowed his soldiers, ‘shooting and rejoicing’, to pour fire into the royalist cavalry as it advanced; later in the battle the dragoons played a crucial role, remounting to charge the exposed royalist foot, where they ‘took their colours and 500 prisoners besides what we killed’; and as the enemy retreated, Okey continued, ‘I drew up my dragoons and charged the king’s regiment of horse, and they faced about and run away’.30G. Bishop, A More Particular and Exact Relation of the Victory (1645), 4-6 (E.288.38); Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 9-11. After Naseby, Okey joined the offensive into the south west, and his troops were important in the taking of Bath by stealth and Bristol by storm - with Okey being briefly captured ‘by mistake, going to the enemy thinking them to be his friends’ in the latter action.31Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 14; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 375; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 129; Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva, 104, 120. Okey’s regiment was engaged in the blockade of Exeter before joining the New Model’s advance into Cornwall in the early weeks of 1646.32Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 17-20; Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva, 173 In May of that year Okey was one of the senior officers attending the council of war before Oxford, and he returned to London thereafter, in September 1646 marching in the funeral procession of his former general, the 3rd earl of Essex.33Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 21.

In the political crisis of the spring of 1647, Okey was angered by Parliament’s plans to disband the New Model and ship many of its regiments to serve in Ireland. He was present when the officers’ convention met at Saffron Walden on 21-22 March, and was part of a committee to draw up a list of the army’s complaints.34LJ ix. 112-5; Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 32-3; Peacey, Okey, ch. 3. On 27 April he and Colonel John Hewson* were chosen to present to Parliament the Vindication of the Officers of the Army, demanding the settlement of arrears and firm promises of indemnity.35Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 471. Okey again attended the convention of officers at Saffron Walden in May; he was chosen by the council of war to draw up a ‘representation’ to Sir Thomas Fairfax* at the end of that month; and as Presbyterian power in Parliament increased in June 1647 was present at the council of war held at St Albans which decided to begin formal impeachment proceedings against key opponents.36Clarke Pprs. i. 41, 58, 80, 109; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 591. On 5 July Okey was with the army at Reading, and the next day he was one of the senior officers who presented charges to the Commons against the ‘Eleven Members’.37Clarke Pprs. i. 151; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 607. When the New Model subsequently marched on London, Okey went with them, and his regiment was quartered at Fulham on 6 August.38Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 26. On 28 October Okey was named to the army’s committee to take part in what became known as the ‘Putney Debates’, although there is no record of any of his speeches there.39Clarke Pprs. i. 279. It was already clear that although Okey supported the army’s action against the Presbyterian-dominated Parliament, he was no social or religious revolutionary. In religious terms he is perhaps best classified as an Independent, attending the church of William Greenhill at Stepney from the mid-1640s, and supporting the work of another Independent divine, John Canne.40Peacey, Okey, ch. 3. Okey’s generally conservative stance was reflected in that of his regiment, which seems to have been relatively biddable throughout 1647. In the spring Okey’s major and four captains had agreed to serve in Ireland, and were removed and replaced; in June agitators had been elected, but in October the regiment refused to appoint ‘new agents’.41Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. i. 293-5; Clarke Pprs. i. 439; Oxford DNB. Indeed, the dragoons were notably free from the mutinous spirit that overtook some others in the autumn, and in December the officers and soldiers of three troops petitioned Fairfax to protest their loyalty and to denounce the ‘upstart agents’ who had beguiled other units.42Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 931.

In January 1648 Okey joined a number of colonels in presenting to the Commons a declaration in support of the Vote of No Addresses, which banned all further negotiations with the king, proclaiming that they would ‘live and die with the House in the votes past’.43The Kingdomes Weekly Post no. 2 (5-12 Jan. 1648), 15-16 (E.422.24). In May Okey was identified by one critic of the army as one of Cromwell’s ‘cabinet junto’ - one of the army grandees who sought to keep the revolutionary spirit of the army under a tight rein.44M. Nedham, Windsor Projects (1648), 4 (E.442.10). By this time, Okey had again been thrown into military action, when he was ordered to south Wales in support of Colonel Thomas Horton to combat the royalist uprising there. Horton’s position, facing a superior force of royalists around Swansea and Neath, was much improved by Okey’s arrival at the head of six troops.45Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1066. The dragoons played an important part in the parliamentarian victory on 8 May at the battle of St Fagans, and Okey, leading from the front, was lucky to escape serious injury when he was shot through his hat.46Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 29. In his printed account of the battle, Okey emphasised the ‘great advantage’ held by the enemy, and the miraculous nature of the victory: ‘we can truly say that this was the hand of God, we being but a handful in comparison to their great army’.47Okey, A true and Particular Relation of the late Victory (1648), 4-5 (E.441.36). When Cromwell marched into Wales in June, Okey and Horton assisted him in the siege of Pembroke, where it was reported that ‘Colonel Okey’s dragoons did exceeding good service’.48Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 31-2. After the suppression of rebellion in Wales, the regiment was again divided, and Okey led part of it into the north to serve at the siege of Pontefract, and his was one of the regiments that accompanied Cromwell on his march towards London in late November, in the days before Pride’s Purge of Parliament.49Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 707; Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. i. 295. During the ‘Whitehall debates’ in the closing days of December, Okey was more prominent than in earlier meetings. On 18 December he was added to the committee appointed by the general council to meet the Independent divines and discuss the extent of religious toleration.50Clarke Pprs. ii. 136. In discussion on 18, 21 and 26 December, Okey sided with Henry Ireton* against the radical Levellers, and he shared the insistence of the grandees that Parliament should not only be the supreme authority but also the safeguard against political and religious extremism.51Clarke Pprs. ii. 265; B. Taft, ‘Voting lists of the Council of Officers, December 1648’, BIHR lii. 138-54.

Regicide and commonwealthsman, 1649-53

Until January 1649, Okey’s political activity had been exclusively within the army, and invariably he sided with his superiors. On 6 January, however, he was nominated as one of the commissioners to try Charles I, and he went on to attend 16 of the 21 meetings of the commissioners, and all the sessions of the king’s trial, signing the death warrant on 29 January.52Peacey, Okey, ch. 4; A. and O.; Muddiman, Trial of Charles I, 76, 89, 96, 105, 132, 195-229. His motives for king-killing are unclear, but were probably based on his experience of the second civil war: an unnecessary conflict provoked by the king, contrary to God’s judgement against him in the first war.53Peacey, Okey, ch. 4. There is no doubt that Okey was a willing servant of the new commonwealth. In April 1649 lots were drawn to decide which regiments were to accompany Cromwell to Ireland, but as the only dragoons, Okey’s unit was divided, with five troops forming the nucleus of a new regiment sent under the former major, Daniel Abbott*.54Clarke Pprs. ii. 209; Wanklyn, New Model Army, ii. 235. In England, Okey was a prominent enemy of the Leveller element in the army. He presided over the execution of the Leveller martyr, Robert Lockyer, in April.55Gentles, New Model Army, 328. A few weeks later, in May, he played a prominent part in suppressing the wider rising in the midlands, and his dragoons were the first troops to enter Burford in Oxfordshire, where the mutiny came to its bloody conclusion.56Whitelocke, Mems. iii. 34.

On 19 May Okey was among those rewarded with an honorary MA by the University of Oxford.57Al. Ox. The irony of a man of modest background such as Okey defending the status quo was not lost on the anti-government satirists, who added him to the list of New Model officers mocked for their humble origins, with one newsbook in June sneering at the influence of ‘Okey (the chandler)’.58Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 10 (19-26 June 1649), 79 (E.561.17). Okey’s attitude to the Levellers had not changed in September 1649, when he and John Lambert* were sent to quell a further mutiny at Oxford. Okey was one of the officers presiding at the subsequent court martial, and afterwards he was entertained by the university and presented with gloves, as a mark of their respect.59Whitelocke, Mems. iii. 101, 107. By the end of September Okey’s regiment had been dispersed into winter quarters across Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire.60Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 23 (18-25 Sept. 1649), Sig. Z4 (E.574.21). Little is known of Okey’s activities during the winter and spring of 1649-50, although he was apparently in England, as he was ordered to search the house of Sir John Fortescue at Salterton in February 1650.61CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 568.

In July 1650 Okey’s regiment marched north as part of the army led by Oliver Cromwell against the Scots. On the way, he fell into dispute with some of his junior officers, notably Captain Francis Freeman, who, according to Okey, ‘held dangerous tenets … denied the scriptures … and made God the author of sin’. Freeman was forced to retire after the case was brought before Cromwell for adjudication, and he retaliated in a written defence that reveals something of his colonel’s abrasive character: ‘I have seen him sometimes merry with his officers; and sometimes again not an officer durst speak to him; and this verifies an expression that one used of him once in my hearing, that he is either all honey or all [shit]’.62Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 50-6. On Cromwell’s prompting, Freeman was persuaded to resign his commission, and peace was apparently restored to the ranks before the army left Northumberland. After crossing the border, Okey was engaged in the indecisive campaign outside Edinburgh during August, and he was present at the decisive battle of Dunbar on 3 September 1650, although his regiment was probably part of the reserve.63Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 39; Whitelocke, Mems. iii. 229. Nevertheless, the regiment’s service in Scotland had impressed Cromwell, who recommended that it be upgraded from dragoons to cavalry, a promotion approved by the Commons on 29 November.64Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 39; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 362; CJ vi. 503.

After Dunbar, the Scottish campaign stalled as the English forces, unable to bring the main Scottish army to battle, became bogged down in dealing with individual garrisons and occasional guerrilla groups south of the Firth. Okey was involved in some of these skirmishes, and in the new year of 1651 he led a force to the borders, intending to arrest and try the murderers of eight English soldiers near Jedburgh, telling the townsmen, with characteristic severity, that if they did not cooperate, ‘it will all be burnt down’.65Roundhead Officers ed. Akerman, 10. In the summer of 1651 Okey was based at Edinburgh (attending Edward Sexby’s court martial in June), whence he crossed the Firth with Lambert’s expeditionary force, and played an important part in the victory at Inverkeithing in July.66Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 422n, 430-1, 433; Clarke Pprs. v. 29, 31. At the end of July he attended a council of war at Burntisland, when the case of the Presbyterian conspirator, Christopher Love, was debated, and Okey again showed his conservative streak by defending Love ‘tooth and nail’, to the anger of some of his colleagues and ‘the mirth of Major-general Lambert’.67Clarke Pprs. v. 46-7. In August Okey was sent to the south west of Scotland to prevent royalist reinforcements from mustering at Glasgow, Paisley and Irvine, but by the end of the month he had rejoined George Monck* in time for the storming of Dundee, and he also played an important role, working with Major-general Robert Overton, in flushing out Scottish forces from Angus and pushing on to Montrose and as far as Aberdeen, which quickly surrendered.68Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 42, 44-7; Scot. and Commonwealth, ed. Firth, 5, 10, 14-15, 316; Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. i. 298. Okey’s regiment was among several quartered in the north east of Scotland from October, and he was in charge of negotiations with the gentlemen of Angus over winter quarters, warning them brusquely that if he reduced the burden on them and their was any trouble subsequently, ‘by the assistance of God return with treble the forces we take from you, and if ruin comes upon you, thank yourselves’.69Scot. and Commonwealth ed. Firth, 331-2.

Okey returned to England in the winter of 1651-2, leaving his regiment in Scotland.70Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 57. The reasons for his return were primarily personal. In particular, Okey needed to sort out his finances, which had become extremely complicated over the previous few months. On 9 September 1651, Parliament had granted Okey £300 a year from confiscated lands in Scotland, and the Scottish commissioners were ordered to set out these lands in January 1652.71CJ vii. 14a, 77b; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 248. This sum added to his already growing landed interests south of the border. He had purchased his main seat, Barber’s Barn in Hackney, as early as 1647, and in the late 1640s or early 1650s he had acquired the lease of the lordship of Leighton Buzzard, confiscated from the dean and chapter of Windsor.72Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 75, 79. In addition, Okey was responsible for the arrears owing the regiments with which he had served in earlier years, and these were also close to settlement in this period. By November 1651 Brogborough Park and the manors of Ampthill and Milbrook in Bedfordshire had finally been settled in lieu of arrears, and in the following months Okey bought out his soldiers’ interests, to gain full possession by the end of the decade.73E121/1/1, nos. 29, 37; Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 75-8. Similarly, on 6 February 1652, Okey had been appointed trustee for the lands allocated as a reward to Colonel Horton’s brigade, which had fought in south Wales in 1648.74CJ vii. 85b. In March of the same year the purchase of Witham Priory in Somerset, formerly belonging to Sir Ralph Hopton*, was agreed, with Okey acting as one of the trustees on behalf of the brigade.75CCC 2304.

Once his finances were in better order, Okey became involved in the army’s efforts to force the recalcitrant Rump Parliament to hasten the pace of reform. On 12 August 1652 he led a delegation to Parliament from the officers’ council, petitioning for the better selection of ministers and the abolition of tithes, and calling for financial reform.76Ludlow, Mems. i. 348n; Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 58; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 571. In December Cromwell took Okey and others into his confidence, ‘railing … against divers members of the Parliament, affirming that little good could be expected from that body where such men had so great an influence’.77Ludlow, Mems. i. 347. In January 1653 Okey was again involved in an attempt by the general council to put pressure on Parliament, and criticising the delay in calling new elections.78Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 58-9. In February, he was one of those officers who joined a group of Independent ministers in calling for new efforts in the propagation of the gospel, implicitly criticising the Rump’s attempts to bring religious renewal across England.79CJ vii. 259a; Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 58; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 520. Although ‘not of his junto’ at this point, and allegedly concerned at the turn of events, Okey was apparently happy to support Cromwell in the forced closure of the Rump Parliament in April, and it was noted that, after the chamber was cleared, ‘the key with the mace [were] carried away’ by Okey in person.80Ludlow, Mems. i. 356; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 615-6.

Immediately after the closure of the Rump, Okey was involved in the work of the new council that took charge of the government, and on 29 April he was appointed to the committee charged with reform of the postal system.81CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 299; Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 71-3. Although he was active on this committee until June, and was occasionally brought in to assist the council of state thereafter, Okey was not made a member of that council, nor was he selected to sit in the Nominated Assembly from July.82Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 72; CJ vii. 353b; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 1. His absence from these bodies is significant, and reinforces Ludlowe’s story that Okey had begun to question the motives of Cromwell and his friends shortly after the Rump was dissolved.

Colonel Okey, being jealous that the end would be bad, because the means were such as made them justly suspected of hypocrisy, enquired of Colonel [John] Disbrowe* what his [Cromwell’s] meaning was, to give such high commendations to the Parliament when he endeavoured to persuade the officers of the army from petitioning them for a dissolution, and so short a time after to eject them with so much scorn and contempt; who had no other answer to make, but that if ever he [Cromwell] drolled in his life, he had drolled then.83Ludlow, Mems. i. 356.

Opposing Oliver, 1654-8

Okey may have welcomed the collapse of the ‘rule of the saints’, but he can hardly have been satisfied by its replacement, the protectorate. Nevertheless, in the months after its creation in December 1653, he appeared content to cooperate with the new regime to some extent. In February 1654 he was ordered to report on the petition of Colonel Anthony Buller, the former governor of the Scilly Isles, and in the same month he joined Robert Lilburne* in petitioning the council for increased penalties for infringement of the new postal arrangements – an issue referred to Matthew Hale* in the following May.84CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 401, 405; 1654, p. 156. Okey was also officiating at Bedfordshire weddings, in his capacity as justice of the peace, in the spring of 1654; but at the end of May he again travelled north to Scotland, rejoining his regiment at St Johnston (Perth) in June.85Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 61-2, 81. In the next few weeks he played an important part in General George Monck’s* punitive expedition into the Scottish highlands. In July Okey was given the thankless task of chasing the royalist forces under the earl of Atholl around the glens, and even when his men surprised the rebels they could not prevent them from escaping into the mountains.86Roundhead Officers ed. Akerman, 81-2; Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 149. Although a decisive military victory could not be secured by Monck, the Scottish royalists were becoming increasingly exhausted and disillusioned with rebellion, and at the end of August both the earls of Atholl and Glencairn agreed to submit, with Okey signing both sets of peace articles.87Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS L, ff. 56-7; Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 161, 168.

Despite his loyal service in Scotland, and his continued involvement in English affairs, there were signs that Okey was deeply troubled by the protectoral regime. Rumours about him had been circulating since the spring of 1654, with reliable sources in London stating that Okey had been sent for by the protector in early May, ‘having lately spoken some despising language against the present authority’.88Clarke Pprs. v. 181. One royalist source claimed in June that Okey, Matthew Alured*, Robert Overton and others had been cashiered, and ‘discontent in the army is not a little’.89CCSP ii. 380. In late August information was sent to Whitehall from Bedfordshire that two voters, on the way to the county election, had been harangued by Okey’s friend, the Independent divine and former New Model chaplain William Dell, who told them to support Okey and others who were ‘good men’ who opposed tithes and arbitrary taxation.90CSP Dom. 1654, p. 334. Despite pressure from Dell and others, Okey was not elected for Bedfordshire, but shortly afterwards he was returned as the army’s candidate for the Scottish seat of the ‘Linlithgow burghs’ (Linlithgow, Stirling, Culross, Queensferry and St Johnston). The election was delayed, and it was only on 5 September – after the first protectorate Parliament had convened – that Okey prepared to leave Scotland.91Roundhead Officers ed. Akerman, 96. Whether or not he took his seat is unclear. Soon after his departure he was instructed by Monck to assist Major Ralph Knight* and other senior officers in lobbying Cromwell and Lambert to ensure the army in Scotland was well supplied, but there is no record of his involvement in parliamentary affairs in this session, and in October John Baynes in Scotland enquired if Okey had ‘signed the recognition’ and taken his seat, suggesting that he was thought unlikely to do so.92Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVI, unfol.: 6 Sept. 1654; Roundhead Officers ed. Akerman, 103. The secretary of state, John Thurloe*, certainly had his suspicions. His notes of plots and conspiracies in the autumn of 1654 mention the ‘first meeting … at Mr Allen’s house, a merchant in Birchen Lane’ in London in September, where Okey and a number of other officers met to discuss a ‘petition drawn by [John] Wildman*’, and on later occasions plans were drawn up to incite mutiny among various regiments, including Okey’s own, and Okey also promised to use his influence in Bedfordshire to raise a party against the protectorate.93TSP iii. 147-8.

As yet, this was merely rumour and speculation, but on 18 October 1654 a broadsheet, entitled The Humble Petition of Several Colonels of the Army was published.94Gardiner, Commonwealth and Protectorate, iii. 211; B. Taft, ‘The Humble Petition of Several Colonels of the Army: causes, character, and results of military opposition to Cromwell’s Protectorate’, HLQ xlii. 15-41. Signed by Okey and his colleagues Thomas Saunders* and Matthew Alured, and apparently drafted by the former Leveller, John Wildman, the Petition was an outspoken attack on the protectorate as contrary to the ‘fundamental rights and freedoms of the commonwealth’. The new government, it argued, had subordinated the supreme authority of Parliament under the rule of a ‘single person’ and his council, reducing Parliament to a mere cipher, that ‘shall depend upon the will and pleasure of the single person’ who enjoyed the ultimate veto over legislation; and while the parliamentarian army had been the proud guarantors of revolution, they had now become ‘a mercenary army’. Although the colonels protested their personal loyalty to Cromwell, the language used was highly provocative: the protectorate was likened to ‘the tyranny against which we engaged’ in the 1640s; the radical Agreement of the People of 1649 was upheld as an alternative; and the fight between the two was framed as deciding nothing less than ‘the life and death of a good cause’.95The Humble Petition of Several Colonels of the Army (1654, 669.f.19.21); printed in Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 64-6. The Petition was directed not at Cromwell but at the army, and attempts were made to distribute it across the three nations. It had arrived ‘covertly’ in Scotland by the end of October, reaching Okey’s regiment among others, and a copy was sent to London by an alarmed Monck.96Roundhead Officers ed. Akerman, 104; Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 213. According to Ludlowe, Okey’s regiment, ready to mutiny, was prevented only by the intervention of its major, Tobias Bridges.97Ludlow, Mems. i. 406. A month later Thurloe insisted that the colonels ‘were disowned … by the rest of the officers’ but the government’s tough measures against the conspirators suggest that the government had been rattled.98R. Vaughan, The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell (2 vols. 1839), i. 85. Okey was brought before a court martial and refused bail ‘although he did very much insist hereupon’, and during the hearing he obstinately upheld the Petition, saying that ‘he would seal it with his blood’.99Vaughan, Protectorate, i. 85; Clarke Pprs. iii. 10; v. 226-7. By the beginning of December, however, the court martial had narrowly voted to acquit him, and he had ‘submitted himself to his highness’s mercy, which he obtained as to his life, but is dismissed of his command’.100Clarke Pprs. iii. 11, 13; Vaughan, Protectorate, i. 88. Saunders and Alured were also dismissed, but only Alured was put under arrest, and it is probable that Cromwell and his advisers had decided to draw back from making martyrs of them. One report hinted that Cromwell had turned on the charm to win Okey over, and that ‘Colonel Okey and my lord are very well united’, although another allegation (attributed to Alured) that he had bought his freedom by betraying other conspirators, and had ‘undone Major-general Overton and the business’, cannot be corroborated.101Clarke Pprs. v. 229; TSP iii. 64. The conspiracy successfully defused, the army met to reassert its determination to ‘live and die to maintain the government’, while the ‘rebaptised churches’ in Scotland also felt it necessary to distance themselves from Okey’s design.102Vaughan, Protectorate, i. 85; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS L, f. 94. Cromwell and his supporters could breathe again.

Okey was free to retire to Bedfordshire, but he did not relinquish his activity within the local administration. He remained a commissioner for scandalous ministers in the county, and although Parliament had banned him from the assessment commission in December 1654, he was restored to it in June 1657.103A. and O.; CJ vii. 405b. He was also a conscientious magistrate, officiating at numerous weddings over the next four years, beginning with ones at Leighton Buzzard on 9 February 1655, and covering the parishes of Cranfield, Chalgrave and Ampthill.104Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 81-5, 90. He remained in contact with the borough of Bedford: in May 1656 he promised to pay his ‘royalties’ (fee farm rents?) in the town to the corporation, and, according to a later account, he was behind the diversion of the profits of St John’s almshouses to maintain various preachers in Bedford, including John Bunyan.105Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 80, 85. There was at times a political edge to Okey’s local activities, and official suspicion of his activities probably lay behind his removal from the Bedfordshire commission of the peace in 1657.106C231/6, p. 370. In April 1657 he and Dell were implicated in moves to prevent Cromwell from taking the crown, and he was probably one of the authors, as well as a signatory, of The Humble and Serious Testimony of the Bedfordshire churches, which warned that the ‘ very things which we had destroyed, through the good hand of God with us, [were] to be by some attempted to be built up again, both in church and state’, and argued that ‘the form of a commonwealth as opposed to monarchy’ was the best for the safety of the country.107Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 86-7; TSP vi. 229.

Although he remained an implacable critic of the protectorate, firm evidence of Okey’s involvement with conspiracies is surprisingly sparse, despite the fears of the government and the hopes of its enemies. Early in 1655 he was accused of fomenting trouble in the army and later in the year he was seen by the Fifth Monarchists as a potential friend; but it was not until the announcement of a new Parliament, and the approach of elections for the same in the summer of 1656 that governmental suspicions intensified.108TSP iii. 35; Oxford DNB. In July Thurloe received intelligence that Okey and others had gone north to meet John Bradshawe*, ‘who told them that the Long Parliament, though under a force, were the supreme authority in England, and encouraged them in their discontents’.109B. Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men (1972), 114; TSP v. 197. Less plausibly, in the same period there was also talk that Okey had made common cause with the Fifth Monarchists, intending to ‘raise disturbances’, and in late July 1656 the council ordered Serjeant Edward Dendy to arrest Okey for questioning, although he subsequently released without charge, only to be rearrested a month later.110TSP v. 317; CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 581; Clarke Pprs. iii. 69. Despite this heavy-handed attempt at intimidation, Okey tried to seek election for the second protectorate Parliament in August, and it is interesting that he sought a seat not in Bedfordshire but Somerset, possibly as part of a concerted challenge to the government by the commonwealthsmen. This challenge was to fail, as Cromwellians came top of the county poll, leaving even men of local standing, like John Pyne*, with very little support. The clerk did not bother to specify the exact number of votes for Okey’s, merely noting that he received but ‘a few voices’.111D. Underdown, Somerset in the Civil War and Interregnum (1973), 182-3. It was not until the spring that Okey once again came under suspicion. On 11 April 1657 it was again alleged that Okey was in talks with Thomas Harrison I* and others, and that a meeting had been held ‘to reconcile the Fifth Monarchy and the commonwealth party’.112TSP vi. 185; HMC 5th Rep. 163. A day later it was reported that Thomas Venner’s Fifth Monarchist plot had involved Okey and other commonwealthsmen, who were now ‘sent for’, and briefly detained.113Clarke Pprs. iii. 106. More allegations followed. In 1657 Okey reportedly attended the republican club founded by Wildman at the Sign of the Nonsuch in Bow Street, associating with other malcontents like Colonel William Hacker, Henry Marten* and his old colonel, Sir Arthur Hesilrige.114Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 90. In February 1658 Henry Cromwell* had also picked up rumours that ‘Harrison, [John] Carew*, Okey etc have done some new feats’; and two months later Thurloe received further intelligence that the ‘Levellers’, including Okey, were in talks with the royalists abroad.115TSP vi. 790; vii. 98.

Overall, it seems likely that while Okey remained in close contact with the commonwealthsmen he had few, if any, links with the Fifth Monarchists, and it is extremely unlikely that his opposition to the Cromwellian regime led him to flirt with royalism. Above all, it appears that Okey’s primary loyalty remained to the army, and there is little doubt that he continued to be a popular figure among the officer corps in the last months of the protectorate. His stand against the protectorate in 1654 had made him something of a hero among the disgruntled soldiers, and in February 1658 the Colonels’ Petition was reprinted and circulated in London and other parts of England, and had even been sent to Scotland.116TSP vi. 829. In October 1658, after Protector Oliver’s death, it was said that ‘the army endeavour much the restoration of the officers that were turned out by the late protector’, and particularly Okey.117HMC 5th Rep. 172. The new protector, Richard Cromwell*, may have sought a reconciliation, as in November it was reported that Okey had been offered the regiment of the recently deceased Thomas Pride*, but had refused it, insisting that he would only command his old unit.118CCSP iv. 106.

From protectorate to commonwealth, 1659

In January 1659 Okey was elected for the third protectorate Parliament as knight of the shire for Bedfordshire. His career in the Commons began innocuously enough, as he was named to the committee for elections on 28 January.119CJ vii. 594b. On 2 February, however, he was outspoken in defence of an old comrade, Major Lewis Audley*, who was accused of contempt of Parliament, saying that he feared ‘it will be a crime to be an army man. Is the expense of our blood nothing?’, and he made an ‘underhand’ remark about the lawyers in the House which was unfortunately not caught by the ear of the diarist Thomas Burton*.120Burton’s Diary, iii. 41, 43 This was the beginning of a short private campaign to address old grievances. On 3 February Okey supported the release from prison in Jersey of his former confederate in 1654-5, Robert Overton, and argued that a frigate should be provided for his return.121Burton’s Diary, iii. 47. On 5 February he was named to the committee on the petition of the widow of the Leveller, John Lilburne; and three weeks later, when Colonel Robert Bennett* reported from the same committee, advising that the fine levied on Lilburne should be discharged, it was Okey who joined Bennett in arbitrating with those who had been rewarded from the money.122CJ vii. 600a, 608a. Okey could be equally forceful when it came to former royalists, whom he seems to have divided into two camps. On the one hand were men like Edmund Jones, whose election scandalised Okey, demonstrating that ‘Wales was the nursery of the king’s cause’ and necessitating the punishment of the men who elected him.123Burton’s Diary, iii. 235, 238-9. On the other hand, Okey was prepared to be lenient to another crypto-royalist, Robert Danvers alias Villiers, who had proved loyal to Parliament since the end of the first civil war.124Burton’s Diary, iii. 248, 250.

In these individual cases, Okey tended to work with former friends from the army, especially Matthew Alured, who also defended Audley and attacked Jones. Okey and Alured were part of a wider connection, which included other disillusioned former officers, notably John Lambert, and former Rumpers such as Thomas Scot I*. All four worked together on 9 February to encourage Parliament to read a petition, with Okey adding, archly, that ‘I am glad the people do own their representative. It was once very desirable’.125Burton’s Diary, iii. 154. Further evidence of Okey’s involvement in the wider opposition against the protectorate can be found on 7 March, when he joined Luke Robinson, Robert Lilburne, Edmund Ludlowe and Alured in rejecting the report of the committee on the disputed election at New Malden.126Burton’s Diary, iv. 42, 45. In the debate (16 Mar.) on whether Overton should be exonerated, Okey, supported by his old commander, Sir Arthur Hesilrige, denied that Overton had ever plotted against the government, claiming that ‘there was no plot, not for four months before this gentleman was committed’. The main plot was that of Okey, Alured and Saunders: ‘several officers dissatisfied with the breaking of the Long Parliament’, who had ‘chose[n] rather to lay down their commissions than to act up to his [Cromwell’s] design’.127Burton’s Diary, iv. 157. Okey was also drawn into the Scottish debates, perhaps because of his experience of the country, but again there was strong political undercurrent in his contributions. On 17 March he joined Lambert and Alured in calling for the Scottish election writs to be examined; in the debate on the right of the Scots to sit (21 Mar.), Okey objected to ‘reflections’ by John Bence, only to be ‘taken down’ in turn by John Bulkeley, a Presbyterian; and in early April, during the debate on whether to impose fast days on a reluctant Scottish Kirk, he twisted the issue into one of liberty of conscience, stating ambiguously that ‘the most part of the godly people are against imposition’, and adding laconically, ‘leave it free’.128Burton’s Diary, iv. 171, 217, 330-2; Derbs. RO, D258/10/9/2, f. 20. A similar case can perhaps be seen on 13 April, when Okey was named to the committee to consider the petition of the disbanded forces of Lancashire.129CJ vii. 638a. This certainly fitted with Okey’s concern for a fair deal for the soldiery, but it was also politically charged, as the payment of arrears and disbandment of the forces became the main bone of contention between Parliament and the army in the next week. Okey made only a brief contribution to the crucial debate on the army on 18 April, his last recorded intervention before the forcible dissolution of Parliament on 21 April.130Burton’s Diary, iv. 458.

Okey was no doubt deeply involved in the army coup that brought an end to the third protectorate Parliament and, shortly afterwards, to the protectorate itself. He was rewarded on 28 April, when he was given command of the horse regiment formerly commanded by Richard Ingoldsby*.131Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. i. 154. This, and other appointments, were immensely popular among the rank and file, as one newsletter writer reported the next day: ‘there is a hearty owning of both person and things relating to our good old cause and principles; and for a demonstration thereof there was this day received again into the army the Lord Lambert, Colonel Okey, Colonel Saunders … which was done with very much joy and acclamation’.132Clarke Pprs. iii. 195. Okey sat on the council of officers in the last days of April and was also one of those who wrote to Monck on 3 May defending their actions and upholding the ‘good old cause’.133Clarke Pprs. iv. 6; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 509. Although former Cromwellians, such as Charles Fleetwood* and John Disbrowe, were uncertain what the long-term aim might be, Okey was a staunch supporter of a return to the commonwealth. On 6 May the declaration of the army, inviting the Rump MPs to reconvene, was presented to the old Speaker, William Lenthall*, by Okey and other officers.134Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 344-4.

Okey’s other concern in the unstable period following the fall of the protectorate was the army. In early June the restored Rump exonerated Alured from the charges levelled against him in December 1654, and Okey gave evidence on his behalf.135CJ vii. 678b. In the early summer the army was reorganised, and Okey switched commands, taking over his old regiment and replacing Tobias Bridges.136Clarke Pprs. iv. 19. He further cemented his position in the heart of the army interest by his second marriage, on 15 July, to the youthful step-mother of Captain John Blackwell, the treasurer-at-war.137Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 91. Immediately afterwards, as news broke of Sir George Boothe’s* rebellion, a panicky council of state sent Okey to Bristol as governor of the city, warning him to be on his guard, and thereafter placed the cities of Gloucester and Bath in his care.138CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 47, 50, 68; CJ vii. 744b, 747a, 748a, 750a-b, 752b. Okey shared the nervousness of Whitehall, and on 3 August warned of royalist activity on the south west: ‘I expect every day a breaking forth of the cavaliers in or near this place, which is most desperately malignant and disaffected to the present government’.139CCSP iv. 307-8; Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 103-4. After Boothe’s rising had been put down by Lambert, tensions quickly emerged between the army and the commonwealthsmen. Although he was a member of both groups, on balance Okey’s sympathies were with the commonwealth, and he was even instrumental in precipitating the crisis, by revealing to Hesilrige the letter circulated among the officers organising a move against Parliament. It was this revelation that prompted the dismissal of all the senior officers on 12 October, and provoked the army to stage a coup.140CJ vii. 796a-b, Whitelocke, Diary, 534. Okey’s was one of the ‘loyal’ regiments brought to London to defend the Rump Parliament, and when the stand-off ended without bloodshed, he was dismissed from his command by the victorious army interest.141Ludlow, Mems. ii. 136-7, 148; Wariston Diary, iii. 144.

The failure of the attempt to unite the army and the Rump in the summer and autumn of 1659 left Okey adrift. Shunned by his military friends and colleagues, he was forced to work with the commonwealthsmen, who did not entirely trust the man who had pocketed the keys to the Commons in April 1653. For the moment it was politic to keep Okey on board, and he attended various secret meetings of the commonwealthsmen during the late autumn.142R. Hutton, The Restoration (Oxford, 1993), 77; Wariston Diary, iii. 152; The Loyall Scout no. 28 (4-11 Nov. 1659), 218-19 (E.1005.9). On 12 December Okey was involved in the plot to seize the Tower of London, and on its discovery he fled to the safety of the fleet, commanded by Vice-Admiral Lawson. In the days following the army mutinied against Lambert and Fleetwood, and Okey returned to London; on 24 December Okey and Alured were able to muster the troops in London and lead them in submitting to the Speaker; and on 26th, when the Rump sat once more, Okey was made one of the seven commissioners for the army.143CJ vii. 797a; Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. i. 300; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 169; Clarke Pprs. iv. 219-20; Whitelocke, Diary, 553-4. A day later Okey was one of those who barred the Presbyterian secluded Members from retaking their seats in Parliament: an action that would cause him trouble later.144Peacey, Okey, ch. 6. On 12 January 1660 the Rump resolved that Okey was to be restored to command of his regiment, and his commission was passed eight days later.145CJ vii. 805b, 809a, 816b. Any hope on Okey’s part that a new, strong, commonwealth might at last emerge, was compromised by the arrival of George Monck and his army in early February.

Exile and execution, 1660-2

Immediately after Monck’s entry into London, Okey’s troops were removed from London and dispersed across Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire, and on 8 February 1660 the council of state ordered their colonel to return to Bristol and take charge of the garrison there.146Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. i. 300; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 351; Whitelocke, Diary, 569. There are suspicions that this was a move to get Okey out of London, but when he attended Monck prior to departure, ‘and desired to be satisfied of his intentions touching Charles Stuart’, the general promised ‘that he would oppose him to the utmost’.147Ludlow, Mems. ii. 244. The council also reassured him by passing an order indemnifying him from prosecution on 14 February.148CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 363. By this time it was clear that Okey had few allies left. The return of the secluded Members brought back to Parliament those who opposed the commonwealth, and led to Okey being indicted at the upper bench for his part in keeping them out of the House in December.149HMC 7th Rep. 483. At the end of February Monck was receiving worrying reports from Bristol that Okey ‘and the Anabaptistical party’ in the garrison, along with the ‘cabinet fanatic council’ of the corporation were preparing to fortify the city, being ‘highly discontented at the re-admission of the secluded Members’.150HMC Leyborne-Popham, 160-1. It seems unlikely that Okey was planning anything of the sort, and others came to his defence, explaining that ‘he was somewhat disturbed’ on learning of the re-admission, ‘fearing that Charles Stuart would follow’ but decided not to react, instead reassuring the citizens that he would submit to the present government.151HMC Leyborne-Popham, 164. Doubts remained, however, and over the next few weeks Okey’s position was steadily undermined. On 6 March Parliament dismissed him as custos rotulorum of Bedfordshire.152CJ vii. 865b. On 16 March it was reported that Okey’s troops were deserting in droves.153CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 394. At the end of March Okey was removed from his command, and replaced by the more reliable Colonel Rossiter.154Mercurius Politicus no. 614 (29 Mar.-5 Apr. 1660), 1213 (E.182.13, E.195.60). His disgrace was celebrated by one satirist in Colonel John Okie’s Lamentation, which poured scorned on his lowly origins (as ‘a famous brewer’), his reputation as ‘the Rump’s great champion, the defender of the state’, and portrayed him bewailing ‘I murdered Charles the father, I mayn’t endure the son’.155Colonel John Okie’s Lamentation, or a Rumper Cashiered (1660, 669.f.24.48). This was near the bone. By mid-April it was clear that the restoration of the Stuarts – the very thing that Okey dreaded – was only a matter of time. News came to Monck that Okey had gone to Edgehill to join Lambert’s last-ditch stand. On the approach of government forces opposition collapsed, Lambert was arrested at Daventry on 22 April, but Okey escaped.156Whitelocke, Diary, 581; HMC Leyborne-Popham, 177.

Two sources claim that Okey attended Charles II in May 1660 and begged for forgiveness for his part in the regicide, but the story is nevertheless probably apocryphal.157Townshend Diary, i. 39; HMC 5th Rep. 207. After lying low for a few weeks, Okey joined two other regicides, John Barkstead* and Miles Corbett*, in escaping to Holland, then travelling to Hanau near Frankfurt-am-Main. There they remained until March 1662, when they were enticed back to Delft in Holland to meet their wives, and all three were arrested through the ill offices of George Downing*. As they had been convicted of treason in absentia, it only remained to carry out the death sentence. Okey faced death with ‘a sweet, cheerful spirit’ according to one apologist, and upheld ‘the cause of God’, saying that

I do believe in the long run there is not a man that fears the Lord will have any reason to be sorrowful for engaging in that good old cause which I am now to seal with my blood again, as I have many a time done. I am satisfied in my soul that it is a most just and glorious cause as hath been in many years asserted; and although the Lord hath been pleased for the sins of his people, and for a great judgement to the wicked of the three nations, to let it be in respect of the cause as it were the sun setting for a night, yet it will certainly arise the next morning very gloriously.158The Speeches, Discourses and Prayers of Col. John Barkstead, Col. John Okey and Mr Miles Corbet (1662), sig. B, C2v-D.

Okey was taken for execution at Tyburn on 19 April 1662. One witness said that ‘an immense crowd of people’ gathered for the spectacle, and that Okey ‘showed himself very courageous and of good spirits’, giving the people ‘a long oration’.159Jnl. of William Schellinks’ Travels ed. M. Exwood and H.L. Lehmann (1993), 82. After the sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering had been carried out, the king released Okey’s mangled remains for burial, on the grounds that he had expressed remorse for his crimes and had exhorted others to submit to the government.160CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 344. He was taken for burial at the Independent church at Stepney – an event that attracted such huge numbers ‘that it was almost impossible to get through with the body’.161Schellinks’ Travels ed. Exwood and Lehmann, 83. The demonstrations at Okey’s funeral were deeply unsettling for the authorities. The bishop of Derry compared the crowd – which he estimated at 5,000 – unfavourably with the numbers that had been present at the funeral of the bishop of Winchester the day afterwards.162HMC Hastings, iv. 130-1; CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 346. So concerned was the sheriff of Middlesex that he stopped the funeral, ordering that the body be buried instead in the precincts of the Tower of London.163Ludlow, Voyce, 302-3. After his death, Okey’s lands were either returned to their original owners or granted to the duke of York, who re-granted the small estate at Hackney, known at Barber’s Barn, to his widow.164Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. i. 305. Apart from his second wife and her infant daughter, Okey was survived by a son, also John, and a daughter, Susanna, from his first marriage.165Tibbutt, ‘Okey’, 173.