Pepys waited outside the Lord High Admiral’s chamber. It was a closed meeting, just the Duke and Downing, no attendants.
It was no secret that Downing had been pressing hard for another war with the Dutch. Pepys had confided to his diary: The King is not able to set out five ships at this present without great difficulty, we neither having money, credit, nor stores. He wanted desperately to focus the Duke’s attention on this lamentable but inescapable reality. His brother, the King, was bleeding the Exchequer white with the extravagances of his merry court.
The door opened. Downing emerged: forty-one, corpulent, suspicious eyes that seemed to look at you sideways, cruel smile, blue-tinted periwig.
“Ah, the evitable Mr. Pep-iss.”
Pepys fell in beside him as they walked to Downing’s carriage. They’d known each other for fifteen years. Downing had been chief judge at Pepys’s school examination, awarding him a scholarship to Cambridge. Downing found it witty to mispronounce Pepys’s surname, instead of the correct “Peeps.”
“I trust my lord’s meeting with my Lord High Admiral was satisfactory?”
“Very. I am as ever impressed with his grace’s grasp of affairs, naval and otherwise.”
“And are we to have another war with Holland?”
“What, Sam—no badinage today? You know how I enjoy our chin-wags.”
They reached Sir George’s carriage. Downing gestured for Pepys to climb in. The carriage started on its way to Downing’s house in Whitehall, abutting St. James’s Park.
His lordship was in a frisky mood, which always accentuated his air of malevolence. There was no softness to Downing. Some ascribed this to his being New England born and bred. He was notoriously mean with his money, of which he possessed a great deal. He maintained his aged mother in wretched poverty.
“War,” Downing said idly. “Did the Duke and I talk of war? Let me see. There may have been some mention of war. We talked about so many things.”
“If I may, my lord—the Navy is simply not equipped. It would be calamitous to embark on—”
“Yes, Sam. All in good time. In omnibus negotiis prius quam aggrediare, adhibenda est preparatio diligens.”
Pepys couldn’t be flummoxed by extracts from Cicero.
“ ‘In all matters before beginning,’ ” he translated, “ ‘a diligent preparation must be made.’ From the De Officiis, I believe.”
“A lump of sugar for my clever boy. Was I not perspicacious to promote your career? My eye for talent is peerless.”
He liked a bit of groveling, Downing. Pepys was content to acquiesce if it would get him heard on the catastrophic consequences of starting a war with Holland.
“I should be shearing sheep, were it not for my lord’s generous patronage.”
Downing stared at his protégé, trying to decide if he was being flippant.
“You overstate. No, you’d be in your father’s tailor shop. But as it happens, the Duke and I spent most of our time on another subject. New England.”
New England was of no great interest to Pepys, except as a potential source of timber for the Navy’s warships.
“The Duke informs me his brother the King is much vexed by his colonies there. Since his restoration, they have been conducting themselves very sourly. But then”—Downing smirked—“the Puritan saints have always been sour.”
Downing’s family had emigrated there from Ireland. Downing was in the first class of the Harvard College in Boston. His first cousin, John Winthrop, was Governor of the Connecticut Colony.
“Massachusetts has been minting its own coinage,” Downing said.
“Is that not contrary to law?”
“Very contrary. They also chafe at his majesty’s recent missive constraining their persecution of the Quakers.”
“We persecute Quakers here.” Pepys shrugged. He disapproved of it, privately. “Just yesterday I saw twenty of them being marched off to jail, clapped in chains.” He stopped himself from adding, Poor lambs. “Why does his majesty not approve persecuting them in New England?”
“The New Englanders’ zeal was somewhat extreme. When Endecott hanged the Dyer wench in Boston four years ago it apparently left a bitter residue. Three other Quaker women caused a fuss and got sentenced to be tied to the cart and whipped naked through ten towns. Ten! A bit harsh, arguably. Left a trail of bloody snow for miles. Finally, the local magistrate at the next town said enough and cut them loose. Queer lot, Quakers. But if his majesty tells his colonial governors to stop killing them, then stop killing them they must. And get on with it. At a practical level, if we want the Quakers here to emigrate, we ought to make New England more hospitable to them. Or at least less lethal.”
“Quite.”
“The Puritans despise them almost as much as they do papists. They are convinced his majesty and his brother the Duke are secretly Roman. That his real purpose in protecting the Quakers is to give him cover to protect Catholics. Under the guise of ‘general toleration.’ ”
Pepys trod carefully in these matters. His wife was Huguenot, but she often remarked—in front of others, for which Pepys boxed her ears—that she intended to die in the Catholic faith.
“The New Haven Colony is the worst,” Downing went on. “They left Massachusetts because it wasn’t strict enough for them. Can you imagine? Not strict enough! I spent years in Massachusetts, and let me tell you, it was plenty strict.”
“So I’ve heard.” New England sounded very grim to Pepys.
“It was New Haven protected two of the regicide judges, Whalley and Goffe. We tried to get them in ’61. But they hid them. Gave the hunters a jolly runaround. It was most brazen. His majesty has not forgotten it. I’ve half a mind to have another go at finding them and bringing them to justice.”
“If it’s been three years, surely the trail’s gone cold by now?”
“Oh,” Downing said, “I shouldn’t expect to catch them. My purpose would be otherwise.”
“How so?”
“To annoy them. Let them know his majesty still remembers their lack of fealty.”
Pepys smiled. “Seems rather gentle. Surely better to tax them than vex them.”
“Oh, no. I think it would unsettle them no end to remind them of his majesty’s authority. Nothing vexes a Puritan more than superior authority. It’s why they left England in the first place. And now, the monarch has returned. It’s put them in a terrible funk. Their hopes for heaven on earth died with Cromwell.” Downing seemed quite taken with his idea. “In the name of his majesty, open up! We seek the regicides Whalley and Goffe! I can see their long faces. It would be quite . . . sporting.”
“I expect his majesty would find it so.”
“The King is droll. I think it might amuse him.”
Pepys suddenly found himself saying, “If you decide to proceed, I’ve just the man for you.”
“Ah?”
Pepys had to keep from laughing. “Well, if the idea is to annoy them, I can’t think of a better person. The one I have in mind has a genuine talent for annoyance. Genius, even.”
The carriage had reached Charing Cross. Ten of the regicides had met their fate here in October 1660 after the return of the King. The stench of their burnt bowels finally became so noisome that the locals appealed to the Crown to move future executions elsewhere.