Free A Gambling Man: Charles II's Restoration Game by Jenny Uglow

the damage was done. The only good financial brain in the Irish administration was Orrery’s, and he fumed at this incompetence, especially at the inadequate payments to his own Munster troops. A man who was always unable to keep still, or to keep quiet, he complained constantly to Ormond in lengthy letters, which Ormond brushed off with late, short replies. At the same time, Orrery began to build up a close relationship with Buckingham, and seeing this, scenting danger, Ormond came hot-foot to Whitehall in May 1668, to make sure nothing would happen behind his back. A month later Orrery also arrived, to prepare a direct attack.
    Charles set up a commission of inquiry into the Irish finances, its members drawn from both factions. Anglesey’s accounts were criticised and his fudging answers led Charles to suspend him as navy treasurer (another convenient cleansing of the Navy Board.) When Anglesey rashly challenged the King’s right to dismiss him, Charles immediately removed him from the Privy Council and banished him from court. (Unlike Coventry, Anglesey chose to serve the court side in parliament, and was reinstated on the council two years later.) In the vacant post of treasurer to the navy, Charles appointed not one but two new commissioners, balancing both camps: Arlington’s candidate, Sir Charles Lyttleton, and Buckingham’s supporter, Osborne. When the two men came to kiss the king’s hand at court, Pepys was careful not to join the throng surrounding them, ‘that I might not be seen to look either way’. 9
    With Anglesey gone, attention turned to Ormond himself. Charles had always admired the duke, and was fond of him, but his staunch support of Clarendon and his lordly ways with Orrery and Buckingham did him no favours. In Ireland itself, there was no doubt that his record in some respects was good. Apart from scattered instances, he had kept the country peaceful and had shown true concern for the welfare of the Irish. After the disaster of the Cattle Bill, he helped Irish farmers turn to ‘salt beef, butter and sheep’, which led to a brisk trade with the colonies and the continent, and he banned imports of linen from Scotland, thus spurring the local linen trade. He also persuaded Charles to assign the Dublin government some of the prize money from captured ships, and urged the Privy Council to allow Irish merchants freedom of trade. 10 But Ormond’s manner had not made him popular. His regal lifestyle in Dublin, his part in implementing the unpopular land settlement, his tolerance of Catholic worship and his use of his son Ossory as a deputy when he himself was away in England, all made people feel that he saw Ireland as a fiefdom, to be ruled solely by the Butler family.
    Ormond’s dismissal as Lord Lieutenant soon seemed inevitable, although his allies in parliament tried to mount a pre-emptive attack on Orrery, who was fiercely defended by the Buckingham group. To save his pride, Charles softened the blow by saying that Ormond’s advice was now needed at Whitehall as Lord Steward, and by giving him a seat on the inner committee of foreign affairs. 11 The new Lord Lieutenant was the ineffective Lord Robartes, ‘a sullen and morose man’, who was attached to no faction, but upset everyone in Dublin by his cynicism, severity and lack of tact. 12 He lasted less than a year before he was replaced by the older, genial Lord Berkeley. Ormond remained out of favour during the next decade, and deeply in debt, but he maintained a dignified calm until he was needed, being recalled to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant again in 1677.
     
    As far as Ireland was concerned, with Ormond gone, Charles could feel secure that there would be no over-mighty subject in charge. The opposite was true of Scotland, where Lauderdale was now increasing his power. Lauderdale was a passionate, if self-serving, Scottish patriot, but paradoxically, for that very reason he was also a ferociously loyal supporter of the crown. His aim was