The posthumous influence of Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford on political developments at the civil-war royalist court has recently begun to attract historians’ attention.Footnote 1 What has not, however, been noted is its probable conveyance through Strafford's surviving right-hand man. Sir George Radcliffe was present at the court at Oxford between 1643 and 1646. In that time he maintained contact with a number of leading royalists, among them George Lord Digby, who was made a secretary of state in October 1643, and the marquis of Ormond, appointed as lord lieutenant of Ireland a month later.Footnote 2 Radcliffe's first biographer, the cleric and local topographer T. D. Whitaker, boldly claimed that he still ‘acted as Secretary for Ireland’.Footnote 3 This article argues that, while Whitaker clearly overstated Radcliffe's role at Oxford and indeed misunderstood his role in Strafford's government, Radcliffe was reasonably well informed of sensitive political developments. He clearly considered himself able to advise Ormond on a number of matters, advice influenced to a great extent by his experience in Strafford's administration and informed by his dealings with Digby and others. The conduct of Irish affairs at Oxford was, therefore, being observed and discussed by a man who had, in the previous decade, served at the very heart of the Irish government.
Radcliffe's surviving correspondence also sheds light on political activity at Oxford. Admittedly, he held no political office and had only occasional audiences with the king; he was dependent, therefore, upon privy councillors, not always identified, for news of affairs. Much of what he wrote reflected his situation as an essentially second-level, albeit highly experienced, figure at the Oxford court and is worth studying for its perspective on important developments. And although Radcliffe had little to say directly about political associations at court, his letters do provide some insight into how the two secretaries of state handled Irish affairs, notably how Secretary Nicholas attempted to communicate his opinions on sensitive matters to the lord lieutenant. They show that Radcliffe saw fit to work with whichever secretary he considered best placed or most willing to further Ormond's interests. They serve as a reminder that political associations were more fluid than has sometimes been asserted. His correspondence also suggests, however, that Radcliffe recognised ‘Digby's capture of the king's Irish policy during 1644’, and that his discussions with the secretary provided a means by which the late lord deputy's influence made itself felt at Oxford.Footnote 4
Radcliffe's comments on the privy council's failure to respond effectively to the Confederate proposals of 1644 should also be seen in this context. Sir George understood and advocated the king's need for timely and significant military assistance from Ireland. His response to the reported reluctance of privy councillors to advise Charles to make the requisite concessions reflected both Strafford's willingness to employ forceful intervention in support of royal authority and his tendency to portray dissenting opinions as disloyal. Radcliffe's presence in Oxford was doubtless unwelcome to those who regarded Strafford's style of government as partly, or mostly, to blame for the problems facing the king, but his knowledge and experience might well have been useful to those who accepted the need to deploy Irish Catholic troops in the English conflict.
I
George Radcliffe had been an integral part of Strafford's administration, having acted as his legal counsel since the late 1610s, married his cousin, and shared his imprisonment for refusing the forced loan, before serving under him in the Council of the North as the king's attorney. In January 1633 Radcliffe went to Ireland ahead of the new lord deputy with his full confidence and the king's instructions to the lords justices to support Radcliffe in his work. He was rapidly sworn of the council and knighted, but not granted a key office: Strafford evidently wanted to employ Radcliffe in a more flexible, wide-ranging manner, given that the very suitable post of attorney general went to another Yorkshireman, Richard Osbaldeston, in 1636.Footnote 5 Radcliffe worked on a very broad range of business – legal, financial, commercial, ecclesiastical – and he was sent to England several times on the lord deputy's behalf.Footnote 6 Perhaps of most importance was Radcliffe's ability and willingness to employ his ‘ingenious legal trickery’ and skills in the ‘detection of technicalities and loopholes [in which] he was unmatched in his day’ in the service of the English administration against both Catholics and, more damagingly, leading Protestants.Footnote 7 He was reported to have engaged in systematic threatening of M.P.s in the parliaments of 1634–5 and 1640 to secure support for government measures and, in the absence of Strafford, to have overseen the returns of M.P.s in 1640.Footnote 8 Sir George was identified so closely with Strafford's work that when accusations of intimidation of M.P.s were raised in Strafford's trial and the earl pointed out that he had not then been in Ireland, John Pym remarked that ‘the Spirit of my lord of Strafford could move in Sir George Radcliffe, wheresoever it was spoken’, drawing attention to the exceptional closeness of their working relationship.Footnote 9 Viscount Valentia's comment in 1647 that ‘Sir J[ohn] T[emple] would be another Radcliffe but he wants his capacity’ made a similar point.Footnote 10 It is difficult to argue with Whitaker's assessment of him as having ‘Under this administration … ample scope for the display of his talents as a man of business and activity: for if Wentworth were the head, he was the right hand; almost all the details of government being conducted by him.’Footnote 11
Radcliffe continued to play a key role in the Irish administration as the situation worsened in the autumn of 1640.Footnote 12 He was required by Strafford, now lord lieutenant, to convey instructions to their cousin Christopher Wandesford, Strafford's successor as lord deputy, in a manner that underlined the trust Strafford placed in Radcliffe.Footnote 13 Radcliffe took control of the Dublin council's correspondence with Strafford, adding marginal notes shared with Wandesford but not with their fellow councillors.Footnote 14 Days after Strafford's arrest, he was summoned to England and ordered to appear before the House of Commons. He was subsequently imprisoned and subjected to impeachment proceedings in an attempt to prevent him assisting the lord lieutenant.Footnote 15
Radcliffe's impeachment can be read as part of a programme of action by Irish M.P.s against Strafford's supporters and servants: John Bramhall, bishop of Derry, Lord Chancellor Richard Bolton, and Lord Chief Justice Gerard Lowther were also subject to impeachment proceedings in Dublin. Strafford's steward, Joshua Carpenter and his secretary, Thomas Little, were punished for their role in enforcing the tobacco and linen yarn monopolies, and the secretary of state, Sir Philip Mainwaring, was targeted by Sir Brian O'Neill in June 1641.Footnote 16 But Radcliffe appears to have been regarded with particular hostility at Westminster, and no doubt also in Dublin, largely because of the length and exceptional closeness of his relationship with Strafford and perhaps also because he had played a prominent role in a controversial revenue-raising scheme in August 1640 and was therefore associated with the questionable measures designed to finance the king's actions against the Covenanters.Footnote 17 In contrast to the ‘well-natured’ Wandesford, whose daughter noted the affection towards him demonstrated at his funeral, Radcliffe appears to have shared something of Strafford's tough, abrasive character.Footnote 18 It is not difficult, then, to understand why he, more than any other figure, continued to attract hostility long after Strafford's downfall.
Despite the setting aside of impeachment articles against Radcliffe after Strafford's execution in May 1641, he remained in custody for at least another year, although this did not prevent him from communicating with those close to the late earl.Footnote 19 Following Radcliffe's release in the summer or autumn of 1642 it is possible that he returned home to Overthorp in the parish of Thornhill, near Wakefield, but, if he did so, developments in early 1643 would have made it difficult for him to remain there.Footnote 20 Unlike Strafford's brother, Sir George Wentworth, who returned to Ireland, supporting Ormond on the Dublin council and as provost-marshall of Leinster,Footnote 21 Radcliffe chose not to go back to Ireland where his property was under Confederate control following the 1641 rebellion. He went to the king's court at Oxford during the summer of 1643, possibly as early as June, and renewed his acquaintance with University College, where his son, several cousins and assorted Saviles and Wentworths had also gone, reflecting its – and his – Yorkshire connections. Radcliffe's donation of £100 in 1635 towards the building of the quad, as well as his legal work on the college's behalf, presumably ensured him a warm welcome, and the quite large sums of money that he spent in college suggest that he was living relatively comfortably, perhaps entertaining visitors.Footnote 22 Radcliffe's creation as doctor of law by the university in October might have been prompted by rumours then circulating in London that he would be appointed ‘Lord Chancellor of the ould greate Seale’, and he was reported as being ‘much in business & listen'd unto’ at Oxford.Footnote 23 Radcliffe picked up his correspondence with Ormond at about the same time.Footnote 24
It is possible that Radcliffe went to Oxford because, realistically, he had few other options, if any. Once there, the devoted service he had given to Strafford would have commended him, if not endeared him, to the king and he was unlikely to have been turned away. The presence in the city of men he knew well such as Mainwaring, who, according to his own account, served the king by receiving some revenues; James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh; Francis, Lord Cottington, and his cousin Thomas Radcliffe, a fellow of University College, doubtless provided him with good company.Footnote 25 However, given the overcrowded and unpleasant conditions existing in Oxford, which killed off the governor of the city, his old friend Sir William Pennyman, and his correspondence with Ormond, it would seem likely that he went purposefully, perhaps expecting that he would be employed by the king in important and secretive Irish business.Footnote 26 In the event, his largely positive reception was not followed by preferment to office, although the king was still holding out the hope of future employment for him as late as February 1645.Footnote 27
That Radcliffe entered into a correspondence with Ormond is not surprising. The marquis had been on very good terms with Strafford and his closest associates, apparently most of all with Christopher Wandesford whom he had helped to secure the O'Brennan lands in Idough, Kilkenny and whose widow he assisted during the 1640s.Footnote 28 But it was Radcliffe who had urged the new deputy to establish associations with prominent figures in Ireland and, in particular, to befriend Ormond.Footnote 29 Strafford's administration had sought to win the support of a group of Old English Protestant peers who would constitute an important counterweight to the previously dominant New English planters headed by the earl of Cork. Ormond was the most prominent member of this group which was anxious to assert its Englishness in the face of a growing attitude that the king's Old English subjects were best seen as Irish; in other words, less than trustworthy. As David Edwards has argued, an alliance with Ormond provided the lord deputy with the opportunity to strengthen his authority over an important Catholic territory.Footnote 30 For his part, Ormond grasped the opportunity to cooperate with the new administration, aiming to improve his financial circumstances and establish clear ownership of his estate.Footnote 31 It has been argued that he was less cooperative with the Dublin administration following the outbreak of rebellion in Scotland and did not share Strafford's confidence that the Scots could be beaten; if he was carefully distancing himself from Strafford's government this was not apparent to Strafford or indeed Radcliffe.Footnote 32 An obvious choice, given his status, to command the Irish army in the lord deputy's name, Ormond was also Strafford's preferred successor to the deputyship of Ireland following Wandesford's death in December 1640.Footnote 33 In February 1641 Ormond had tried to counter the Irish parliament's call for the right to pursue impeachment proceedings against Radcliffe, Bramhall, Bolton and Lowther.Footnote 34 And while he was aware that Radcliffe was not regarded favourably by all his associates, their friendship lasted into the 1650s.Footnote 35
II
By the time Radcliffe began corresponding from Oxford, Ormond had witnessed the outbreak of rebellion in Ulster and its extension into the Pale.Footnote 36 He had experienced serious difficulties in mounting an effective counter-attack, exacerbated by poor relations with the lords justices and the outbreak of civil war in England in the summer of 1642.Footnote 37 Nor was it an easy task to implement the king's commission of April 1643 requiring him to negotiate a temporary truce with the Confederation, given Protestant objections.Footnote 38 The truce of September 1643 brought differences over how to handle the crisis in Ireland into sharp focus: the response from Westminster was to condemn the cessation and call on Protestant forces to continue military action. The king's government argued instead that the truce was the only realistic step given Westminster's failure to provide adequate resources, playing down the inevitability of either the renewal of war or participation in negotiations with the Confederation, and indeed the advantage the king expected to gain from the return of troops to England.Footnote 39 The cessation provided the context in which Charles decided to replace the lords justices with Ormond as lord lieutenant. Radcliffe was evidently aware of this impending promotion, and the earlier part of their correspondence reveals Radcliffe to have been very industrious on Ormond's behalf and grateful for the lord lieutenant's favour towards himself and other former members of Strafford's household.
At the beginning of Ormond's lieutenancy Radcliffe was given work to do, overseeing work on the commission authorising the lord lieutenant to command the forces to be transported to England following the truce. He received instructions personally from the king and informed Ormond of his objections to the draft and the amendments he had secured, based on his knowledge of similar commissions.Footnote 40 At the same time, his correspondence with Ormond reveals an acute concern to protect Ormond's authority, intervening, even before the lord lieutenant's commission had been issued, to secure his right to appoint to a vacant customer's post.Footnote 41 Radcliffe tried to hold up suits for several civilian posts until he knew Ormond's wishes, very much aware of the weight Strafford had placed on this a decade earlier and in accordance with the marquis's belief that deserving Irishmen, particularly Protestants, be rewarded.Footnote 42 He also ventured to warn the lord lieutenant against travelling to England in late 1643, advice that might well have been informed by his understanding of the difficulties that Strafford's government had run into once the head of the administration was no longer physically present in the country. According to Radcliffe, ‘the peace and security of that kingdome dependes much upon your person and presence’.Footnote 43 In fact, Ormond was struggling to maintain the truce, as Protestant officers remained dissatisfied with its terms and expected a renewal of military action. As Robert Armstrong has noted, their concern also stemmed from the king's willingness to permit representatives of the Confederation to travel to Oxford.Footnote 44 Added to the challenges facing Ormond was the king's decision to countenance the plans of Randal MacDonnell, earl of Antrim to raise Confederate troops and invade Scotland in order to lessen the impact of the parliamentary–Covenanter alliance.Footnote 45
In January 1644 Radcliffe was the first to warn Ormond that Antrim had left the court and departed for Ireland.Footnote 46 Antrim, married to the widow of Charles's favourite, the duke of Buckingham, had previously offered to intervene in the Scottish rebellion by making war on one of the leading Covenanters. Charles had found his propositions attractive and requested that Strafford furnish him with weaponry; the then lord deputy had resisted the arming of Ulster Catholics and tried to discredit Antrim's plan. In 1643 Antrim was planning to go ahead with a similar venture; it was eventually carried out the following year – with much success.Footnote 47 While Radcliffe could write little, not having been informed exactly what Antrim's intentions were, he nevertheless fulfilled an important role as conduit for advice that ministers preferred not to express in their own communications with Ormond. A rather cryptic comment from Secretary Nicholas was passed on this way: ‘Yow will have many thinges recommended from the king and others. Doe not just the contrary, but forbeare a little till you have returned a civil answere, and then doe what you will: but let no letters put you from your own way.’Footnote 48 This should probably be read in the context of Antrim's return to Ireland, given Digby's comments to Ormond that ‘my lord Antrym's propositions, carrying such appareances and probabilityes with them, could not totally be withstood; yett I am confident he hath not obteyned any power that can be of essenciall inconvenience or of deminution to your lordship’.Footnote 49 Digby's words formed a rather unconvincing assurance that Antrim's work would support rather than threaten the efforts of the lord lieutenant to secure a peace that would be honourable for the king and neither hostile to Protestant interests nor a threat to Ormond's own standing.
For Radcliffe, Antrim and his propositions constituted an unpleasant reminder of the pressure placed on Strafford in 1638–9 to support what were perceived by the lord deputy and his associates to be very dangerous schemes, threatening to undermine his authority and prompting him to seek protection by consulting members of the Irish council without permission.Footnote 50 It was hardly necessary now for Radcliffe to express his opinions on the matter to Ormond, but in any case the lord lieutenant urged him to write little on the subject at present, acutely aware of the controversial proposition, which he rejected, to assist Antrim's expedition by placing an important Ulster port in Confederate control.Footnote 51 Radcliffe doubtless agreed with, and may indeed have influenced, the sceptical remark of Digby following the secretary's receipt of a long, ciphered dispatch from Antrim and O'Neill, ‘wherein all that I can read without cypher seemes to promis wonders’.Footnote 52 Jane Ohlmeyer has argued that Digby's concern that Antrim would attempt to resurrect the influence over Ulster that his maternal grandfather, Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone had enjoyed half a century earlier was indeed more broadly shared at the Oxford court, but that, contrary to Radcliffe's belief, Ormond and Antrim had, at least by the autumn of 1644, managed to develop an effective working relationship.Footnote 53 Radcliffe's reports to the lord lieutenant were valuable for their swift relaying of important news and inclusion of Secretary Nicholas's advice. However, Ormond's warning to Radcliffe to say little on the subject underlines the problematic nature of their relationship. Useful though he could be, Radcliffe was also a very recognisable representative of Strafford's administration, a fact that discouraged the lord lieutenant, and indeed also the king, from drawing more extensively on his knowledge and abilities.
Another unwelcome development in early 1644 was the king's decision to grant the presidency of Munster to the earl of Portland, the son of his former lord treasurer, who, it was suspected, would then sell it to the second earl of Cork. In doing so, the king offended the acting governor of Munster, Murrough O'Brien, Lord Inchiquin, who was already questioning his allegiance to the royalist cause, and ignored Ormond's recommendation that offices be used to strengthen the loyalty of leading Irishmen. Both Radcliffe and Nicholas understood the serious consequences of such a decision and attempted to obstruct it, Radcliffe passing on the secretary's advice to ‘write plainely hither that lord Inchiquin is necessary for that place’. Sir George had evidently been trying to find out the origins of Portland's claim, presumably to ascertain the strength of the king's commitment to it. The king's apparent unwillingness to risk upsetting courtiers and his rejection of an opportunity to make a strategically significant appointment was no doubt profoundly depressing for both Nicholas and Radcliffe.Footnote 54
Radcliffe's correspondence with Ormond offers a glimpse of the workings of the two secretaries of state on important Irish matters. From early on in his secretaryship, Digby was responsible for the bulk of Irish correspondence, particularly on sensitive subjects. Nicholas, however, continued to write formally to Ormond, reporting the king's response to the lord lieutenant's letters and including news of the Oxford parliament and military developments, and he received some dispatches from Ormond and the Irish council, including those dealing with charges brought against Lord Justice Sir William Parsons and three other councillors.Footnote 55 In May 1644 he told Ormond that he would not write about the state of negotiations with the Confederate agents ‘because order is taken that acount of it shal be given you by lord Digbye’.Footnote 56 Rather than express himself in his own letters he seems to have conveyed his opinions to Ormond via Radcliffe. When Radcliffe advised Ormond not to leave Ireland in late 1643, he noted that his opinion was shared by an unnamed friend of the marquis. A subsequent letter contains the phrase ‘a very good friend … that dares not write soe himselfe’ in reference to Secretary Nicholas and it seems at least possible that Nicholas was meant here as well.Footnote 57 When Nicholas spoke to Radcliffe on the subject of the presidency of Munster he was careful to insist that Radcliffe make it clear to Ormond that he was not to be identified by the lord lieutenant as the source of the information: Ormond must give the impression that he had heard it ‘commonly reported’.Footnote 58 While Nicholas and Radcliffe seem to have held very similar opinions regarding the most appropriate person to fill this office, on other matters their views diverged. Nicholas's recommendation of George Goodman as a possible agent for Ormond was not supported by Radcliffe.Footnote 59 And on the more significant matter of the treaty with the Confederacy, Radcliffe found himself more closely aligned with the views of the other secretary.
Lord Digby seems also to have been with Radcliffe quite frequently, sharing information with him and perhaps seeking his advice. Radcliffe responded, eager to display his greater knowledge of the workings of the Irish government to Digby, and quick to act when the patronage rights of the lord lieutenant had been overlooked.Footnote 60 Radcliffe and Digby seem to have held very similar views on the extent to which the king should satisfy the demands of the Confederate commissioners.Footnote 61 The secretary evidently made an effort to present himself as an admirer of the lord lieutenant, causing Radcliffe in March 1644 to write that ‘My lo. Digby is passionately in love with you’.Footnote 62 Sir George's comments to Ormond during the early summer of 1644 show that he understood that Digby was privy to sensitive discussions from which Nicholas was excluded.Footnote 63 But Radcliffe had not abandoned Nicholas: in February 1645 he advised Ormond to send copies of intercepted correspondence to Nicholas, rather than Digby.Footnote 64 During his time at Oxford Radcliffe seems to have managed to maintain effective relationships with both secretaries in his efforts to further Ormond's interests. There is no hint during the Oxford years of the poor opinion that Nicholas was later to hold of him.Footnote 65
III
In the spring of 1644 the Oxford court became the scene of highly sensitive, and ultimately frustrated, attempts to bring about peace in Ireland. The Confederate delegation, led by Ormond's brother-in-law, Lord Muskerry, was followed by members of the Dublin council, called by the king, and a group of parliamentary agents representing Protestant interests. As Armstrong has noted, the king's interest focused on the possibility of securing substantial military support from Ireland to enable him to achieve victory in England, vital since John Pym's successful negotiation of the Solemn League and Covenant with the Scots the previous autumn. Charles's difficulty lay in the fact that significant concessions to the Catholic Confederation could in themselves damage support for his cause.Footnote 66 The Confederation's proposals formed the basis of the discussions at a sub-committee of the privy council and were drawn partly from the work of the lawyer Patrick Darcy with whom Radcliffe had crossed swords in the previous decade over Strafford's plantation of Galway. Their main demands were freedom of worship and equal access to public office for Catholics, and the removal of English parliamentary jurisdiction over Irish affairs. While the last point obviously appealed to the king, he was cautioned by his Dublin councillors that the free parliament demanded by the Confederation would inevitably be an almost entirely Catholic body given the Confederate dominance of local government. Both Protestant delegations strongly rejected the Confederate demands, arguing for a continuation of anti-Catholic legislation, an extension of plantations and the payment by the Confederation of reparations for damage to property since the October 1641 uprising. Both considered that they had been treated poorly, not being permitted sufficient time to study and respond to the Confederate proposals. The Catholic agents had, in contrast, apparently enjoyed easier and regular access to the king.Footnote 67
One source that appears to have attracted little attention in this context is the register book of the privy council from 1640 to 1645. It contains mostly very brief, uninformative entries from 1642 onwards, but two longer passages from the spring of 1644 concern the king's discussions in council with ‘certain Gentlemen attending his Majestie as Agents for the Protestants’.Footnote 68 They suggest that the king's strategy, such as it was, appears to have been to try to force Charles Coote and his colleagues to acknowledge the necessity of entering into negotiations with the Confederation, given his inability at present to protect his Protestant subjects in Ireland. On 9 May the delegation was required to consider whether the Protestant population could make war effectively following the ending of the peace, forbidden as they were from communicating and cooperating with Covenanter forces in Ulster. The king's irritation at William Ridgeway's request for time to consider the question prompted a more careful response from Coote which acknowledged both the present incapacity of the Irish Protestants and the king's inability to assist them. Coote concluded, however, with the crucial point: ‘but that some kind of peace could be as dangerous and destructive to them as the warre, and that it would be even as good to perish with the sword in the hand’.Footnote 69 Armed with the king's assurance that he would ‘give way to noe condicions of that dangerous nature’, the delegation was required to study a copy of the Confederate proposals and return their opinion speedily. They were also told to consider how a war could be resourced should the peace negotiations fail.Footnote 70
Four days later, the agents presented their written answer to the king and council which, in the king's opinion, was not in accordance with his direction but was instead ‘a direct diametricall opposition, to all or moste of the things by them proposed’.Footnote 71 The report of the discussion ends rather abruptly, following the agents’ insistence that Muskerry could be forced to moderate the Confederation's demands, and their acknowledgement – pressed from them again by the king – that ‘the Protestants are of themselves unable and destitute of meanes to subsist longer in warre’.Footnote 72 It is not clear whether further meetings took place, with or without the king, but aware of the extent of the Protestant agents’ hostility to the Confederation's proposals, and the serious concerns of his Dublin councillors, Charles made no major concessions before ordering Ormond to take forward negotiations in Ireland.Footnote 73
Radcliffe's letters to Ormond on the subject of the negotiations display his reaction to his exclusion from them and the extent to which his views chimed with those of Secretary Digby. They also prompt questions about the broader conduct of politics at the Oxford court on the extent to which the privy council was functioning as an effective body and the roles and significance of ‘unsworn counsellors’. Radcliffe was clearly incensed that he could not participate in the negotiations, understanding that Sir Brian O'Neill – one of the leading Irish parliamentary opponents of Strafford's supporters, but more recently the recipient of a baronetcy – had persuaded Lord Muskerry and his colleagues to request it. If his report was accurate, it suggests an assumption on the behalf of the commissioners that the king would have sought Radcliffe's advice.Footnote 74 One of Ormond's other correspondents, Arthur Trevor, was careful to note Radcliffe's ‘very violent’ response to the arrival of the Confederate commissioners, indicating that there was some interest in Sir George's views.Footnote 75 His opinion seems to have been very similar to that of Digby, who adopted an initially aggressive attitude to try to force the commissioners to moderate their demands.Footnote 76 As he was not admitted to the discussions Radcliffe was, therefore, dependent upon others, primarily Digby, for news of progress, although he was receiving other, less favourable reports. His assessment at this early stage was broadly positive: he was aware that Digby was prepared to try to move these negotiations forward and he evidently shared Digby's view that an agreement was possible.Footnote 77
By the early summer, however, his assessment had changed, focusing on two points which he understood to be very significant. First, Radcliffe claimed that the Protestant agents’ demands for security were so extreme that it would be impossible to reach a resolution satisfactory to all parties, an assessment that reflected the view of the king's Irish committee and indicates some knowledge of the discussions in the privy council on 9 and 13 May. Secondly, the majority of the king's councillors were allegedly unwilling to advise him on the proposed Irish treaty.Footnote 78 He later expanded on this particular concern: ‘most of the lords of the counsell thought not fit to advise the kinge to doe that, which in their private opinions they thought he must doe for the necessity of his affaires. A great prejudice to the king to doe that which his counsell durst not avow.’Footnote 79
It is difficult to know why Radcliffe chose to comment in these terms on the ‘private opinions’ of privy councillors. His comments suggest some knowledge of them, although Cottington and Sir John Culpeper were possibly the only ones to whom he could have been referring from among those who attended at least one of the recorded meetings of the council in May 1644.Footnote 80 These two, however, alongside Digby, did constitute half of the ‘junto’ set up by the king in 1643: Radcliffe's comments might reflect their perceived greater importance and indeed his appreciation of Cottington's past political association with Strafford, his extensive experience in government and indeed his crypto-Catholicism.Footnote 81 The attention that parliamentarian newsletter writers paid to Digby's significance in both royalist politics and discourse has been noted by Jerome de Groot.Footnote 82 Culpeper is, in some respects, less easy to include, given his apparent commitment to more moderate courses during 1643–4. His willingness to advocate significant religious concessions towards the Scots in 1646 and the queen's generally very good opinion of him suggests, however, that he understood the need to secure military support from Ireland. He is included in David Scott's list of those who ‘had absorbed the key lesson of the Personal rule (and of Strafford's lieutenancy of Ireland in particular) and of the Civil War itself … the indispensability of a standing, centrally-paid army’.Footnote 83
Radcliffe's views of the majority of the council were not positive even before the start of the treaty negotiations. Discussing Lord Ranelagh's efforts to secure a seat on the Dublin Council, he had remarked that ‘A wise man said here on another subject, that the king had fools enough of his privy council allready’.Footnote 84 His later claim that councillors feared to advise the king on what they understood to be necessary chimed with Digby's more extensive comments to Ormond: ‘The truth of the case is this: every body that is faithfull to the kinge's interests apprehendes the necessitye of a peace, both for the preservation of the protestants in Ireland, and the support of our affayres heer; but every body alsoe is seeking … to cast of the councell of graunting the Irish any thinge at all to his neighbour’. Digby had perhaps reflected more carefully than Radcliffe on the causes of this reluctance. He acknowledged what he termed ‘the danger of scandal’ that would follow any publicly-acknowledged concessions, and indeed his belief that the king was wary of granting them privately. Changing circumstances might bring about a shift in opinion, referring to ‘the ill effects which any concession to the Irish catholicks at this time may have upon the affections of the people here’, but there was nothing in the secretary's letter to suggest that this might be imminent.Footnote 85 And indeed the voicing of ‘scandalous’ suggestions could have very serious consequences for individual councillors as the circulation of Secretary Vane's notes of the meeting of the Scottish committee on 5 May 1640 had shown.Footnote 86
Privy councillors were not willing, therefore, publicly at least, to advise the king to prioritise the securing of military support from Ireland. It is, however, important to consider whether Charles was advised to do so by his ‘unsworn counsellors’; those who were understood by contemporaries as enjoying a high degree of access to the king and whom he appeared to trust. As David Scott has emphasised, Ashburnham and Porter both enjoyed ready access to the king via their positions as grooms of the bedchamber.Footnote 87 Ashburnham's influence was clearly recognised by Radcliffe when he offered to secure his support for Ormond, describing him as ‘a great lover of the church in the right protestant way, in very great credit with our maister, and, I believe, a very honest man’. Radcliffe's choice of Ashburnham is interesting, given that he had not previously mentioned him. The wording of his comment indicates that he did not know him and there is no evidence of any acquaintance between Strafford and Ashburnham in the previous decade; the suggestion probably stemmed from Radcliffe's discussions with Secretary Nicholas, whose good friend Ashburnham was; it does not appear to have been prompted by a shared viewpoint as Ashburnham seems to have been no more willing to advocate concessions to the Confederate agents than the majority of privy councillors.Footnote 88 Porter was possibly of greater significance in Irish affairs, as Scott has noted, and indeed held a long-standing interest in the Irish customs revenues, having kept up a correspondence with Strafford during the previous decade. His later involvement in Glamorgan's venture strongly suggests that he would have been a powerful advocate for concessions.Footnote 89
The most powerful promoter of concessions appears, however, to have been the queen, seeing the conclusion of a peace, ideally supported by the papacy, as the necessary response to the threat from the Covenanters.Footnote 90 She was willing to write personally to Muskerry to try to persuade the agents to set aside their key demands until the king was better able to accede to them. She was assisted by Henry, Lord Jermyn, her lord chamberlain and treasurer, recognised while at Oxford as an influential figure and relied on at times by the queen to write or to cipher her correspondence.Footnote 91 Those in favour of agreeing religious concessions all recognised the need for the king to secure substantial military support, but differed in their attitude to such concessions. For Henrietta Maria, the Irish negotiations provided an opportunity, if handled carefully, of forwarding the Catholic cause in at least one of her husband's kingdoms. Digby's position, however, appears to have been an extension – seen as necessary in such difficult circumstances – of what Archbishop James Ussher reported as having been Strafford's policy in the previous decade: tolerating Catholicism by delaying efforts to secure conformity with the Anglican faith until he was able to ‘goe thorough with the worke’.Footnote 92 If this was an accurate representation of Strafford's approach, the late lord deputy had been willing to risk criticism for departing from his predecessors’ policy of harassing Catholics, preferring to prioritise other matters, particularly finance.Footnote 93 Admittedly, the concessions expected by the Confederate commissioners amounted to much more than an informal toleration of religion, as Radcliffe noted. It should be borne in mind, however, that important concessions to Catholic landowners embodied in the so-called ‘Graces’ of 1628, also negotiated during a period of warfare, had not actually been implemented by the English government before they were formally set aside by Strafford's administration in 1634.Footnote 94 Radcliffe's initial belief that a deal was possible probably stems from his confidence that the commissioners’ demands could have been moderated through firm negotiation and, in the longer term, either never fully implemented or, at least in part, reversed.
Secretary Digby's attitude towards the negotiations also reflects the importance that Strafford had placed on military strength. As David Scott has noted, the question of whether or not to draw on Catholic armed support had become pressing by early 1644,Footnote 95 but it was one which the late lord deputy had faced in 1640. His response had been to order the creation of an additional army, composed largely of Catholic troops, that was intended to take part in the king's attempt to suppress the Covenanters.Footnote 96 From the outset of his administration Strafford had devoted careful attention to the size and quality of the existing Irish army, proposing in the summer of 1638 to establish a military academy in Ireland to provide a force that could be used wherever Charles required.Footnote 97 His belligerent comments in the wake of the dissolution of the Short Parliament further underlined his belief in the need for armed force.Footnote 98 And although his willingness to recruit and deploy Irish Catholics should be seen as a response to the rebellious actions of the Scots, both Conrad Russell and Ronald Asch have noted that Strafford made little attempt to remove the suspicion that this force might be used in England.Footnote 99
IV
Radcliffe thought it imperative that the king secure substantial military assistance to enable him to achieve a convincing victory. With this in mind he believed in the need for a treaty with the Confederation despite the damage that would be done to the constitutional and legal work of the previous decade; the need to reassert the king's authority in England was paramount. Radcliffe must also have recognised that in the event of the king's defeat he was unlikely to be allowed to live in England undisturbed, and he was in fact refused a pardon in the two major parliamentary sets of propositions to the king, at Uxbridge in 1644–5 and Newcastle in 1646.Footnote 100 Negotiations with the Confederate commissioners were, therefore, of vital importance to Radcliffe in several respects, hence his belief that concessions had to be made. But perhaps it is more likely that he misinterpreted the deep hostility of most privy councillors to the idea of concessions to the Catholic faith as a cowardly desire not to be associated with this most sensitive of matters, stemming from the fear of potential retribution. It would not be at all surprising that Strafford's right-hand man should view the king's councillors in this way. It also suggests that he responded positively to Digby's interpretation of developments, and possibly also to the secretary's tendency to present himself as a lone figure in government, bravely tackling difficult situations – an image that would have been very familiar to Radcliffe.Footnote 101
Radcliffe's portrait of a king let down by weak councillors might reflect an understandably cautious approach to writing about Charles's handling of this matter, but given that he was prepared to make such forthright comments about his advisers it is possible that he was unaware of the king's own ambivalence. He was alarmed at the prospect of the negotiations being thrust into Ormond's hands: ‘I hope it is not intended that your excellence shall take the thorne out of his majestye's foote, and put it in [your] owne’.Footnote 102 Given his anxiety about the burden of the negotiations being handed over to Ormond, it would be interesting to know how much Radcliffe knew about the lord lieutenant's less than positive response to Confederate approaches and the often contradictory nature of the king's orders.Footnote 103
The departure from Oxford of the Confederate delegation was followed shortly after by the royalist defeat at Marston Moor. Radcliffe's increasingly despondent tone focused on splits in the royalist camp: the continuing problems over the presidency of Munster and Rupert's animosity towards Digby and other figures. He had nothing constructive to report regarding his own work on Ormond's behalf: his efforts to do something for Inchiquin were fruitless. Once again he prayed for peace. The tone of his correspondence might reflect a growing appreciation that he had no purposeful role at Oxford, but it does seem also to stem from a belief that the king's fortunes did not look good. With little prospect of a substantial body of troops arriving from Ireland in the near future to help counter the impact of the Scots in the north of England he could not see any significant sign of improvement.Footnote 104 As none of his correspondence from the spring and early summer of 1645 has survived it is not possible to know whether news of Montrose's success in the Highlands encouraged him as it did the king.Footnote 105
During the autumn and winter of 1644, and through the following year, Ormond struggled to reconcile the king's instructions to conclude a settlement with the Confederation with the need to prevent the collapse of Protestant support for the crown.Footnote 106 One of Radcliffe's former colleagues, Lord Chancellor Bolton, formed part of Ormond's negotiating team,Footnote 107 while, in Oxford, Radcliffe was not given access to Ormond's dispatches or any other information on Irish affairs. His report of an audience with the king early in 1645 indicated that Charles understood that he needed to avoid being seen to consult Radcliffe. The king had told him that he ‘trusted no gentleman in England more wth many full expressions, but that [he] must not imploy [me] for a little while, till some thinge I knew not what bee over’.Footnote 108 Given the timing of this interview it seems likely that the king was referring to the Uxbridge negotiations – unless of course he had nothing particular in mind and wanted to let him down gently. He then disappeared from the record until 1647, by which time he was living in France where he spent the majority of his remaining years.
V
What, then, did Radcliffe make of the handling of Irish affairs at the Oxford court and how significant was his presence there? His belief that it was necessary to deploy Irish Catholic military assistance in the king's war effort in England reflected the emphasis that Strafford had placed on armed force and his willingness to recruit Catholics during the Scottish crisis. It explains his attitude towards the most important of the developments commented upon in his letters to Ormond, the negotiations at Oxford with the Confederate commissioners, which he appears to have viewed very differently from the majority of privy councillors and, probably unbeknown to him, from Ormond. Other matters were depressingly familiar and of great concern to him: he regretted the threat to the lord lieutenant's authority in the countenancing of the marquis of Antrim's plans, and the rejection of an opportunity to try to win over an important and influential regional figure in favour of a courtier.Footnote 109
Radcliffe was initially very active on Ormond's behalf, motivated by the expectation that the king would find meaningful employment for him. He evidently worked with both secretaries of state as circumstances demanded, recognising the experience and knowledge of Nicholas and the vigour and energy of Digby. Well before the end of his time at Oxford he was, however, deeply frustrated by his inability to achieve anything substantial on behalf of Ormond. His efforts to protect the lord lieutenant's patronage rights were no doubt appreciated, but this must have been of small comfort to a man whose first months in Oxford had been marked by rumours of his impending promotion to the office of lord chancellor. The king seems not to have asked to see Radcliffe more than occasionally, did not promote him to office or include him in formal discussions. His political significance lies in his usefulness as a knowledgeable, experienced administrator who was closely identified with the forceful politics of the recent Irish administration. His correspondence with Ormond casts light on his meetings with Secretary Digby, suggesting conversations in which Radcliffe could have explored the strengths, and perhaps reflected upon the weaknesses, of Strafford's work.Footnote 110 More broadly, Radcliffe's activities at the Oxford court serve as a reminder of the importance of essentially second-level figures in the conduct of politics.
It is not the case that Radcliffe had slipped into obscurity: he was listed prominently among those refused pardons in both the Uxbridge and Newcastle propositions, suggesting that his close association with Strafford had not been forgotten. An abiding hatred of the late lord lieutenant had refocused on Sir George.Footnote 111 The king evidently considered it unwise to employ him publicly in the handling of Irish affairs and so Radcliffe's discussion of Irish affairs remained largely dependent upon what he could glean from others. For a man who had been at the very centre of Irish government a few years earlier this must have been a source of immense disappointment.
