‘God forbid it should come to that’: the feud between Colonel Molesworth and Major-General O'Brien in Portugal, 1663

Abstract

The court martial of Guy Molesworth began on 19 February 1663 in the Portuguese town of Moura. Three days later, having taken evidence from numerous officers and men of the 'English' Brigade (which was in fact Anglo-Irish), the presiding panel found the former royalist colonel guilty of speaking reproachful words against Charles II and disobeying his superiors. Molesworth was sentenced to death.1 The condemned man had made several enemies during his short time in Portugal - not least among them Major- General Christopher O'Brien, commanding the Brigade in the absence of his brother, the Earl of Inchiquin. After a lifetime of soldiering in Europe and the British Isles, followed by equally hazardous escapades in the British Atlantic, Molesworth seemed destined for an ignominious end. However, well before the court martial had been convened the colonel had alerted his personal network of friends and relatives in Whitehall and Lisbon. Influential allies were thus already fighting to save him - at a mounting cost not only to their own political careers but also to international relations between England and Portugal.With some notable exceptions, particularly as regards relations between England and the Netherlands,2 the study of Charles II's foreign policy has tended to be overshadowed in recent decades by an impressive procession of books and articles which have significantly revised our understanding of domestic issues within the British kingdoms.3 Much, therefore, has changed since Ronald Hutton observed that neglect of the 1660s had caused the history of the English Revolution to read 'like a marvellous story with the last chapter missing'; yet there is still much to explore.4 Steven Pincus's work on the formulation of English foreign policy, and studies by Atlantic scholars such as Carla Pestana have highlighted the benefits of considering early modern English (or increasingly British) domestic issues in a wider international setting.5 There have been a number of works on Anglo-Portuguese relations during the Restoration period, but only two published studies of the Anglo-Irish Brigade, in 1960 and 1975 respectively.6 But as the events surrounding Molesworth's court martial will demonstrate, far from being out of sight and out of mind the Anglo-Irish Brigade was an acutely sensitive issue, and had a wider significance in English politics than has hitherto been appreciated. In order to answer the questions arising from the events in Portugal, however, both the events and their central character must be viewed in context. The changing political environment and the personal circumstances which moulded Molesworth's career led him to a death sentence in Moura, but ultimately provided him with a way out.In February 1635 the teenage Guy Molesworth and William Garfoote of the Inner Temple in London were convicted of harassing fellow students and attempting to provoke a duel. The eldest son of wealthy Northamptonshire gentry, Molesworth was able to deposit £500 as surety for future good behaviour. But by June he was again observed taunting a victim in the street and boasting that he cared nothing for his bond. He was charged with contempt of court, upon which his father sent him away to Europe to learn the art of soldiering in the army of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar.7Molesworth proved a capable officer. In 1639, by now a company commander, he obtained permission to return home to England to join forces being raised by Charles I to repress Scotland.8 He was in England by January 1640, when he visited his brother-in-law Gervase Holles in Lincolnshire, and served as captain-lieutenant in the Earl of Northumberland's regiment during the second Bishops' War.9 In 1641 he was allotted a foot company in forces bound for Ireland. He arrived there in March 1642 under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel George Monck, and was soon promoted to major.10In 1643, when the King began to recall regiments to serve in the royalist army in England, Monck was arrested on suspicion of harbouring parliamentarian sympathies. …