S8 Ep546: ### HEADLINE: CROMWELL’S DEATH AND DOWNING’S SECRET DEAL WITH THE KING SUMMARY:Dennis Sewall recounts the "dummy" funeral of Oliver Cromwell and George Downing’s opportunistic decision to offer state secrets to the exiled King Charles II. GUEST:Dennis Sew

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I'm John Bachelorette, Dennis Sewell, the author of the new book, Cromwell Spy,

from the American colonies to the English Civil War. This is the life of a man named George Downey,

who graduates in the first class effort from Harvard College and then spends the rest of his

life becoming a spy, a diplomat, a rogue, a well-to-do, a man who acquires property.

One of those pieces of property is named for him, Downing Street, and you might recognize that

because there's a very famous address, number 10, Downing. That's the Prime Minister's residence,

and that is Charles Downing, so George Downing. What happens next after the Civil Wars,

after Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector, after Mr. Downing, George Downing,

our American sort of becomes the number one or two agent for Cromwell's England,

and then succession crisis, 1658. Suddenly, the Lord Protector is dead. Is this alarming to our

protagonist, Dennis? Yes, I think it is initially something the shock, but he's the man who

that's incredibly quickly to any kind of misfortune, and he find out if his patron has died,

who is the next patron going to be, he's pretty well in there like shot. What happens in this

time is that Oliver Cromwell dies of a mysterious condition. It's probably sepsis or something similar

to that. He is carried away very fast, and the body, for some reason, cannot really be buried

in the normal way, and it cannot be preserved in the normal way because it smells too bad.

So what happens is that they arrange this elaborate funeral with kind of dummies,

a wax and face and a wooden body and so forth, and parade it through the streets,

dressed in Cromwell's clothes, and the entire country goes through a period of morning and they go,

as they do recently with the well-family, two to Westminster hall, and there is the body under

black cloth, and everybody pays their final respects. Actually it's not Cromwell, it's a dummy.

It's an extraordinary charade, it's a taken place, and this is all put together by the people in

government at the time of the only was one. In order to bring about the kind of quick succession

of Cromwell's son, Richard, was then made the next law protector. Now he has really no qualifications

for this except, in fact, that he is Cromwell's son because he has no experience either as a

soldier on a battlefield or as a politician. So it is either going to work because the men like

Downing and the people around him are going to really be running the country or it is going to

fall to pieces. Right, so we have his military dictatorship that no longer has anyone at the head.

We have competing factions. Downing at this point is looking at his future, his fortune, his family's

fortune, and he's unsure of Richard. He doubts Richard, is that when he begins to think of the other

side? He does support Richard, but you can see that Richard is being undermined by the army,

who are immensely powerful. Downing knows the army, he was in it, he was the chief of intelligence

of it, and the people running it are people that he has served within battle, but he doesn't really

get home with them. And then what are the other options? The other option, as Richard is then

is edge to side, and there is chaos, and there is a certain, to me, a competition between people

who just want to have a conventional republic that they want to sort of model on the Venetian

Republic, or there is talk of amongst the population and large of, well, why not bring back

the monarchy? Why not bring back Charles II? He's never done this any harm. Perhaps it would bring

an end to the war, and then bring an end to chaos, and people begin to think about it perhaps for

the first time. Now the most extraordinary scene I've ever read in English history. Charles II,

Charles II of Scotland, he's the king of Scotland, but he's in Europe. Charles II thinks about

going back and leading his army, and one night a beggar man appears before him at an end,

they've stopped it an end, I believe, you help me here, Dennis. Yes, they are in Holland,

they're just a few miles south of the Hague, near a large country house in which

Charles's sister lives. She is married to the, to the orange family, so the Prince of Orange,

and so she is a Princess of Orange, and Charles isn't allowed in the country through a treaty

with, with Cromwell at the start of agreed that he and other members of the royal family can't come

in there, but he seeks, and he's traveling lights, and he's traveling with just really one aid,

and they put up an end here, and this court here. And so, I suddenly, a beggar man appears,

out of nowhere. A man in a beard, in bin rags, appears at the door, and they introduce himself,

as Cromwell's ambassador at the hey, webs off his beard, sits down, and proposes that he will

provide lots of state secrets and help from inside the establishment, if he could be guaranteed

to keep his job, essentially. He wants to stay as ambassador Holland afterwards, and he wants to

continue on his wife's work of trying to do down the Dutch. So that's the deal he proposes.

Now, whether or not this actual story is true, we don't know. The other half of the story is that

he tells the king that, you know, there are two assassins up the road, and that their proteins

murder him, and the court here is sent out to look, and yes, sure enough, they're too dangerous looking

individuals, vitrying by a tree with swords, and say, maybe they are. There are the variants in

the story that are more plausible, that he essentially put the same deal in different ways through

diplomatic channels, or through another secret meeting with one of the king's chief courtists.

Nobody is entirely sure, but there is a third one, which is used, perhaps as cover, or maybe

the actual way, which is that, down he has seized the papers, compromising papers,

from a man who works as the kind of master of force to the Princess of Orange,

who has been having an affair with one of the king's former mistresses. A mistress, indeed,

who the king had had a child with. So there is a kind of royal baby, illegitimate,

in the hands of this woman, this officer has had an affair with her, and all of his

papers have fallen to downings hands, giving him enormous blackmail power, both over the individual

and in respect of the king and the royal baby. What then happens, according to the other

treaty, is that he said to this man, you know, I've got you, I've got these papers, you must do what I

say, and what I say is that you must go to the king and argue my position and tell him that I will

help him, if he will make certain guarantees to me about my future. And this time, we know that

this sort of might will happen, because there is a reply. One of the kings

called his rights back, and says, Majesty has got this letter, he very pleased that

standing wishes to return to his duty, and he's saying that he'd not only be willing to forgive

his past actions, but he would reward him for anything that he was able to do, by way of

providing secret intelligence and so on. And Downing has put into this pitch that he himself

had never really meant to cause the king any displeasure, that silly ideas that he put into his

head in Massachusetts, and that these foolish notions that the Puritan said infected him with

had been the cause of it all, and he now repudiated them utterly.

Yes, I want to read from the letter about the king back to Downing. This is the man who's

going to be Charles II of England. The king was pleased to show me your letter to him of the

fifth of this month, he writes to Downing, containing the discourse Mr. Downing had with you,

to which he commands me to return his answer, which is that having nothing more in his thoughts and

wishes, that to become according to his duty and the principal author of the peace and happiness

of his people next after God, he, the king, is prepared to receive and encourage all persons

that in their respective capacities and conditions shall be able and willing to contribute towards

so happy a work. And therefore, this is amazing. Without looking back on past deviations or examining

the causes of them, he desires you would assure Mr. Downing to whose person he has no particular

prejudice, and of whose courage he knows not that he had any particular reason to complain,

that he willingly, the king, receives the overture he makes of returning to his duty,

and is not only well pleased to receive services from him, but resolved to reward them.

Dennis, it's flabbergasting. Did Downing want us to see that? Is that why it's preserved?

No, I didn't think so. I think that it was just preserved in the way in which things

fell off and well, then by accident when somebody took the letter home to Ireland, in this case,

as it happens. What the amazing thing is, though, is that this happens

quite late on, not so well, and only weeks later. What happens is that it's all delivered,

it happens, that a deal is done. Downing goes back. He sees that he has lunch with politicians in

a French restaurant called the French Ordinary, they're sharing cross, and he says to them,

look, you know, this is the only way is bringing the king back, and a lot of them bind to it,

and eventually, or let's say eventually, only weeks later, a deal is strong.

The book is Kramas Spy, there's one more episode. Kramas Spy, Dennis Sils, the author,

from the American colonies to the English Civil War, to the King of England, again,

the life of George Downing, I'm John Bassett.

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