XII - Exile

Summary

After the Restoration the estates which the regicides had purchased privately were granted to the Duke of York, who in this way came into possession of Barbers Barn, Okey’s Hackney residence, and of a fourth part of the Lordship of Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire in which Okey had an interest. In 1663, however, the Duke of York by indenture gave up his right in the Barbers Barn property to Okey’s widow, Mary. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the property came into the possession of Conrad Loddiges and formed part of his famous nurseries. Today the site is covered by St. Thomas’ Place, a drab row of villas overlooking a worn stretch of grass where some broken and defaced tombstones still remain. Something of the history of Barbers Barn, however, remains in the names of two roads in the immediate neighbourhood—Darnley Road, with its memory of Lady Margaret Douglas, mother of Lord Darnley, the unfortunate second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots : and Loddiges Road* with its memory of the gardens and nurseries of a Hackney that is no more. The crown lands of Ampthill and Brogborough reverted to the Crown and Bedfordshire saw no more of the fiery Colonel. In August 1660, Robert Ford petitioned for an order to take possession of the remaining part of His Majesty’s house at Newmarket, pointing out that he had been made housekeeper by Charles I but had been put out by Okey and others, who had pulled down the greater part of the house and had put in persons to inhabit the remainder. In October 1660, Oliver Vaughan, a brewer, petitioned for the grant of the remainder of a lease of tenements in Old Street, held of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital on rental of £24, which lease had fallen into the hands of Charles II by Okey’s attainder. From the records of St. Bartholomew’s we learn that on 17 September, 1660, it was ordered that “the Clerk leave out of the list of governors to be read at Christ’s Hospital, St. Matthew’s Day, Colonel Gravenor, Aiderman Ireton, Colonel Okey, and Mr. Moyer; and it is ordered that Colonel Okey and Aiderman Ireton be hereafter wholly left out and omitted in the table of governors’ names.