Add MS 29869

An account by Sir John Berkeley, later 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton (bap. 1607, d. 1678) of his role attending on Charles I in 1647. The account includes the negotiations between Charles I and the New Model Army, the King's escape from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight, his negotiations there with the Scots and Parliament, and his failure to escape from the Isle.

The text alludes to the disaster of the Second Civil War in 1648 (f. 17r), but otherwise there is no explicit foreshadowing of events. Nevertheless, a central theme is the failure of the King to escape to France, and the piece makes most sense as an account written in self-justification amongst the royalist exiles. It was probably written early in 1651: in April Sir Edward Nicholas wrote to his fellow exile Lord Hatton to 'pray get a sight of Sir John Berkley's relation of that unhappy business of the King's going to the Isle of Wight ... I am now told that Sir John Berkley intends to print that his relation' (The Nicholas Papers: The Correspondence of Sir Edward Nicholas, ed. G.F. Warner, Camden Society, 4 vols, new series vols 40, 50, 57, 3rd series vol 31 [1886-1920], I, 233).

The account was posthumously published as Memoirs of Sir John Berkley, containing an account of his negotiation with Lieutenant General Cromwel, Commissary General Ireton, and other officers of the army, for restoring King Charles the First to the exercise of the government of England (London: printed by J. Darby in Bartholomew-Close, for A. Baldwin in Warwicklane, 1699), STC: B1971; ESTC: R4022. A second edition followed in 1702, ESTC, T39132.

Add MS 29869 has no contemporary title. It is written in a fair mid-17th century hand. It is one of two manuscript copies known to survive: the other, now in Dr Williams's Library, was acquired by an Englishman in Geneva in March 1662 or 1663.

The text of the British Library manuscript and the printed account are essentially the same. There is one small but key difference which gives a further hint as to provenance. Where Berkeley notes how he had been introduced (in June 1647) to '2 general Officers whom I dare not name, because they are obnoxious to the present Power', a marginal gloss in the scribe's hand offers three names: 'Stanes Watson or Rich' (f. 5r). There may be uncertainty on the scribe's part about who Berkeley precisely meant, but these are the names which would ring true to somebody with more knowledge about the politics of the New Model Army in 1647 and its negotiations than is in the text alone - William Stane (Commissary-General of Musters), Leon Watson (Scoutmaster-General) and Colonel Nathaniel Rich. They are precisely the three officers singled out by John Lilburne to Oliver Cromwell in June 1647 as not to be trusted (John Lilburne, Ionahs cry out of the whales belly, London, 1647, p. 8). Watson and Stane were also linked to the negotiations with the King.