Notes which Thurloe prepared for the Council of State about these plots indicated the wide range of his espionage. Long witness statements gave names, places where meetings had been held, lists of regiments which might mutiny. Actual conversations were reported: 'Overton and Wildman spoke together of their dislike of things, but no design was laid..' Thurloe knew far more than the various plotters ever seemed to realise. But he did not know enough.
Edward Sexby was openly intent on destroying Cromwell. Arresting Sexby became a priority. In February, a correspondent in the West Country reported that Sexby had been in Somerset, 'talking about a rising'. Two days later came a report from Exeter, addressed to the Protector, on efforts to preserve the peace: 'I also acquainted Your Highness that I had not been careless in making the most curious search after Sexby, having had parties out after him both in Devonshire and Dorsetshire..'
The searches failed. Soon Sexby showed just how cunning and influential he was: in March he was thought to be staying with a Captain Arthur in Weymouth, 'a man esteemed of no good principle'. Weymouth was close to Portland, where Sexby had been governor, and where he had used his charm to make firm friends throughout the community. He had acquired a mistress, Mrs Elizabeth Ford, a woman of quick wits and spirit. She became suspicious when a soldier came to the house, disguised as a yokel and pretending to have letters for Sexby. Mrs Ford raised the alarm; the mayor and the castle governor took into custody the very soldiers sent to arrest Sexby. Their spurious grounds were that the militiamen were attempting to deprive a freeborn Englishman of his liberty whilst they had no written warrant…
Sexby fled. He was next heard of in Antwerp.
Ports were watched. Customs officers carried out surveillance. They needed their wits. As Sexby escaped, other suspicious parties tried to enter England. Passengers in a ship bringing an ambassador from the King of Poland were a particular nightmare. One man not in the ambassador's accredited party loudly reviled the officers, saying they had no authority to question or seize him. As this troublemaker was secured, four shifty young Dutchmen queued to be interrogated.
'Gerrit Pauw, aged twenty-two; I am related to important Dutchmen and have come to England to see the country and learn English.'
A quiet man, waiting patiently, caught the customs officer's eye sympathetically. The officials were harassed by the diplomatic courtesies required for the Polish ambassador, bemused by the dozy Dutch boys, and desperate to keep pegs on a known Royalist — one Matthew Hutchin, also arrived in the same ship, who said he was carrying letters to Lord Newport at his house — a house to which Royalists in exile regularly sent correspondence — which Thurloe's agents routinely intercepted.
'Dirck Simonse, aged twenty. I am a gentleman living in the Hague. I have come to see fashions and learn English…'
The person still waiting was about thirty-six years, with a beard, quietly dressed. He tipped his black beaver hat with a nod, as if the busy officers knew him — an honest Englishman, the kind of diffident insider who can always pass through customs without paying duty.
'Cornelius Van Dyke, aged twenty, a chandler's son. I have come to see fashions, learn English — and to spend my money'
The quiet man picked up his bag, as if gently moving forward in the queue. He and the officer exchanged weary smiles over these youthful travellers, who wanted fun without parental supervision, probably hoping English girls were easy..
Merit Johhes, a Frieslander, aged thirty-four..' Jerit wanted to see fashions and learn English, but he had complicated matters by bringing over two trunks of linen and apparel. The linen he intended to sell, he claimed, if he could get a market for it; otherwise he would carry it back again, or make use of it himself… This was an extreme nuisance because the trunks had to be tediously searched.
By the time that was over, the officers saw the quiet Englishman had slipped past them and made his way ashore without being questioned.
Once he left Gravesend, Orlando Lovell — for it was he — burrowed into anonymity in Kent. He was now increasingly trusted by Langdale and had been asked to assess the situation for the Earl of Rochester, who had entered the country to lead a revolt which they feared was compromised. Lovell found it all too true.
As a Hants man, Lovell placed much of the blame on Kent. Although some of its secret byways reminded him of Hampshire, he deplored this large, insular county where every man was more concerned with his own property first and, if pushed, Kent second, with no love for the kingdom in general at all. There were no great lords to provide leadership and the people did not even like each other. As well as the famous disputes between Men of Kent and Kentishmen, the High Weald hated the Low Weald, the marsh folk were thought peculiar by everybody, and the Isle of Thanet was so lawless some had proposed splitting it off as a tiny county by itself. Intermarried families in their agricultural manors had knuckled down under Parliament for much of the first civil war, only rising en masse in 1648 as a reaction to harsh penalties and interference. Lovell had been there then.
What Lovell remembered of those depressing weeks were desertions, separations, fouled-up actions in stinking old castles and endless angry conversations with mediocre men who could neither take nor give orders, all countrymen who were just longing to sneak away to check on their cows and their field boundaries.
Now he was back in Kent, and when he set about investigating the intended arms network, Lovell had a shock. He was amazed how extensively the Protector's agents had uncovered the arrangements. They had already seized weapons and apprehended collaborators. Lovell had to watch his step. Soon he discovered just how the expensively funded exercise had come to grief. He raged at the carelessness.
This time the Action Party had intended to arm troops all around the country, hoping that concerted risings in many places might stretch the Parliamentary army. Naturally they wanted surprise. 'And tossed it away!' growled Lovell, in despair. The idea had been ambitious — too ambitious for the fools into whose care it was placed.
Buying and distribution had been unsophisticated. Some weapons were to be imported, but correspondence revealed the ships and their landing places. Royalists had innocently written letters via the ordinary post service. They used ridiculous pseudonyms and labelled papers, 'Leave this at the post-house until called for' — just begging for some under-occupied postmaster to start wondering.
Gunsmiths in London had been asked to supply large numbers of weapons, on flimsy excuses: 'Lord Willoughby has a plantation to the south-west of Barbados called Savannah, with six hundred men in it; and they are sending a ship with arms and other commodities'. Lovell fumed; Willoughby of Parham, an old cavalier, must be just waiting for arrest after that fiasco. Other stories fed to gunsmiths were equally ludicrous: crackpot talk, for example, of buying commodities for a scheme to supply mulberry trees for silk-growing in Virginia… Worse, having established their cover, the Royalist agents had not even stuck to it, but confessed to the gunsmiths that they wanted false bills of lading in order to baffle government enquiries — and that all this was a tarradiddle because in reality there was a design to bring Charles II into England..
A gunsmith might drink the King's health as he took cavalier money, but once he was examined by Spymaster Thurloe, loyalty to Charles flew out of the window.
Transportation was bungled grotesquely. Ordinary county carriers were hired to take hampers and boxes to the homes of known cavaliers; these purported to contain wine bottles, saddles, or ladies' gowns. But the boxes were brand-new, specially constructed efforts in bright white deal, shrieking that they were the length and size of a bundle of muskets. They were incredibly heavy, sometimes too heavy for a carter's horses. The carriers, who were all under observation by Thurloe's agents, naturally swore they had no idea what was in the boxes. One, the Birmingham carrier, dodged interrogation as long he could, getting his brother to provide a list of items he had moved from London to the Midlands; this admitted to several hundredweight of mystery packages but tried to confuse the issue with 'Two firkins of soap for Mr Porter of Bromsgrove, and twenty-one fishes, fifteen whereof were for the informant, and six for the carrier's own use…'. If the carriers refused to confess what they had been asked to do, maids or porters in the inns where goods were stored in London eagerly informed on them.