Charles the King (16 page)

“He'll never have the chance, please God,” he answered. “Our son will never be a disinherited wanderer, begging from relatives.”

When the dancing was over, the King and Queen rose, and Charles beckoned his nephews to join them. They stayed on in the hall for a short time, moving among the crowd of courtiers.

The brothers were not popular among the English. Carl was a nuisance and a self-seeker, and there were too many interested men surrounded Charles, bleeding him of favours and stealing his revenues, to welcome a foreign robber to the band. But they hated Rupert most of all. Nobody could accuse him of filling his pockets or trying to turn his kinship to the King to a profit. Nobody could bring out any fault against him except that he was bumptious to everyone, rough and aggressive with the men and indifferent to the women, and that he shadowed his uncle and aunt like a hired bodyguard, daring anything or any person to attack them. The Princes were leaving, and in that Court of winding passages and communicating rooms, the word was passed from mouth to mouth as soon as the Queen of Bohemia's letter was opened by the Queen. There were few secrets at Whitehall; everyone spied on their own behalf, and it was unfortunate for Charles that he had never encouraged spying or rewarded an informer, because the intriguers and gossips were working against him.

Henrietta and the King were too concerned with each other to develop genuine friendships among those who served them; their happiness had made them smug, and the perfection of their married life aroused envy instead of admiration. Everything had gone too well for them, and it was only human that so many of the men and women who were outside the tight little circle of dancing companions and dilettantes should begin to wish for adversity.

But there was no sign of it. England was at peace, and so was Ireland under the absolute dictatorship of Wentworth. The power of the Bishops was increasing under Laud, who used the Ecclesiastical Court of High Commission to discipline unruly parsons who deviated from the Book of Common Prayer and replace them with men of the Archbishop's views. It was no longer safe to denounce the King and Queen from the pulpit or to advise honest citizens they need not pay their taxes. The penalty was imprisonment, and if the King's Court of the Star Chamber did not punish a culprit sufficiently, the Court of High Commission intervened.

The King had instituted a new tax under the heading of Ship Money to maintain the fleet. He was determined that the rotten ships and untrained crews which had brought such shame on the Navy at Cadiz and La Rochelle should be replaced by an efficient force. The original tax had been imposed by Elizabeth Tudor on the coastal counties; Charles and his advisers saw no reason why the whole country should not contribute, and they made Ship Money obligatory to every county in England. Nobody wanted to pay. And a member of the last Parliament went to prison and offered to stand trial.

John Hampden was immensely rich; he had spent the last seven years travelling between his estates in Buckinghamshire and his house in London, where he had regular meetings with his friends and Parliamentary associates and which was the rendezvous of the leading Puritans in the city and surrounding counties. When Hampden was sent to prison, his house was still open, and there, one evening towards the end of January, three peers, the Earl of Warwick and the Lords Say and Brooke, were conferring with John Pym, and a distant cousin of Hampden's who had come up from Huntingdonshire.

Oliver Cromwell was not an important member of the group of men sitting in Hampden's room overlooking the Strand gardens. He was a gentleman by birth, but he had only sat in the last Parliament, and he was inclined to come to these meetings and say very little. He was a big man, ugly and blunt-featured, with an untidy appearance and very plain, old-fashioned clothes, a fond husband and a stern but just father to his five children. He had spent his life on his small country estate and served as a Justice of the Peace; it was a quiet, obscure existence, and he had been content with it until his late thirties, when he became afflicted with fits of depression and nightmares so terrible that he became afraid to go to sleep. Now he showed no sign of the mental crisis which had brought him close to insanity. He had lived as a sober, conscientious man, taking his guidance from the Bible, until the sense of guilt and oppression of the Puritan belief began to unhinge his mind. Evil had pressed in upon him, stifling every human joy, until the sunlight itself appeared as an affront to the terrible God of the Scriptures, and his own inactivity in the face of Evil became an abominable crime. He suffered and wrestled with mental demons, and emerged from it outwardly unchanged. But his mind was warped with zeal; he prayed and agonized like a mediæval saint and when the depression left him and he could rest through the night without fear he had made his dedication to reform his fellow men by any means that offered. The first means was a seat in the Commons of 1628 where the righteous were opposing the will of an idolatrous King. He had made little impression in that Parliament; only those who knew him well, like Hampden, appreciated his intelligence and fanaticism and introduced him to the highest levels of Puritan society. Now Hampden was in prison, the martyr of the King's injustice and disregard of the law.

If a judge could be found honest enough to acquit him, the King's demand for Ship Money could be defied by the rest of the country. Illegal taxation was bad enough in the eyes of the men sitting together on that wet January evening. They were all men of property some actively engaged in business partnership in the Caribbean, where their ships preyed on the Spaniards and traded in slaves, neither occupations offending the sensitive consciences which considered the masques and entertainments at Whitehall as abominations of the Devil. But the worst crime of all was the King's attempt to standardize the Church of England under one service and in obedience to the Bishops, and to permit his Archbishop of Canterbury to introduce Romish rituals and practices and force Puritan clergy to profane themselves or lose their livings.

And now he had directed the Church Assembly of Scotland to accept the English Book of Common Prayer and forbidden all other forms of worship.

John Pym was loudest and longest in his denunciation. He was thick set, rather a stout man, with grey hair cut short above his collar and shrewd brown eyes. He was astonishingly able, a born administrator, and a rousing speaker.

“We all know,” he said, “what iniquities the King is committing in our own country. We also know of the orders sent to our brethren in Scotland. Well, my lord and gentlemen, I have had word that the King's Book has been rejected by the Scottish Kirk. The first reading at St. Giles caused a riot, and the people have signed petitions all over the country refusing to change their service to the idolatrous trumpery practised at Lambeth and Whitehall. My informant assures me,” he added triumphantly, “that the nobility and the gentry are united with the rest of the Scottish people. The King's Scottish Council has fled from Edinburgh to Holyrood, and the Book has been suspended.”

“Thank God,” the Earl of Warwick exclaimed. “We must send messages of support. Who are the leaders of our brethren at Edinburgh?”

“The Duke of Montrose and the Earl of Rothes,” Pym said. “They have sworn never to accept the Book and submit to the King's ordinance. At last, at last, my Lords, there is a gleam in the sky for the eyes of honest men to see. And it comes from Scotland, where there are no priests cavorting at liberty, free to poison men's soul and commit them to everlasting damnation!”

Cromwell raised his large head and made his first remark of the evening.

“We should take care in dealing with the Scots,” he said. “I do not trust them.”

“That is a rash judgment,” Lord Say turned towards him. He thought Cromwell a boor and resented his intrusion. “Proceed, Pym.”

The lawyer's bright little eyes rested upon his audience. “For nearly ten years we have been silenced by the King because we spoke out against his usurpation of our rights. We have been silent as a body but he cannot silence the discontent and apprehension of his entire people. And now part of that people, the people of Scotland, have found an opportunity of speaking out. They are in rebellion against the King's authority. It is our duty to see that they are encouraged to resist him to the limit.”

Cromwell was listening, his head bent, his hands spread out awkwardly on his knees. He saw the direction of Pym's argument faster and further than anyone else in the room. He could have said in one short sentence what the professional rabble-rouser was saying with so many embellishments. If Scotland rebelled against the King, the King would probably make the fatal mistake of trying to subdue it by force. And with one half of the British Isles in arms against the other, he would have to call a Parliament to meet the cost.

“We can send assurances of our support,” the Earl of Warwick said.

“We can do better; we can send money, if there is any question of resistance with troops.” Cromwell made his second remark, and looked round at them obstinately. He felt their surprise at his temerity, and Lord Say was looking at his collar which he considered it a useless vanity to change when it was dirty. He had often felt shy and clumsy in their presence because they were courtiers and men of wealth and education, but the matter was too important to let his diffidence stand in the way of the cause. He had something of value to contribute and nobody was going to stop him.

“The King will never go to war,” Warwick said shortly. “He will capitulate and withdraw the Book.”

“You misunderstand the King, it seems to me.” Cromwell's voice became strong, almost aggressive in the effort to assert his views. “The King believes himself inspired by God to rule this kingdom and dictate every detail of our lives. He will never withdraw the Book without admitting his own principle to be a false one. If Scotland resists, he will set out to subdue Scotland. He has had his way for ten years; he has forgotten how to withdraw anything. There will be a war. And then there will be a Parliament. That's all the care I have in the affairs of Scotland, now or at any future time. If this comes about, it will be the first real service they have ever done to England.”

“As you say,” Pym said quickly. He was annoyed at being interrupted and annoyed that Cromwell had distracted the attention from himself. “As you say, sir, and doubtless you are right. For the moment there is nothing we can do but send our message of support and wait to see what happens.” He moved his chair a little closer to the Earl of Warwick and began speaking to him in a low voice. After a few minutes Cromwell got up and excused himself and walked out into the muddy streets back to his lodging in the City.

The Court was at Greenwich and Henrietta was sitting with her ladies in the Queen's apartments, trying to distract her mind from the anxiety of the political situation and the approach of yet another confinement. She felt extremely well during her pregnancies; her energy and her dislike of rest troubled the King who could not persuade her to care for herself properly and often brought an angry rebuke upon himself when he tried to restrain her. They were about to be separated for the first time in their married life, and this would be a matter of weeks or even months, depending upon the speed with which his army overcame the rebels in Scotland. Henrietta was not a wife who confined herself to pleasure and domesticity; she had always taken an active interest in the affairs of the Kingdom and never hesitated to advise the King. She was one of the few people close to him who had disapproved of the Prayer Book composed by Laud, and the only one who had dared to say so to his face. Charles had been pained and disappointed when she threw it down with an exclamation of contempt. To him it was beautiful in its uniformity and it embodied the best features of the Reformed religion with all the stately ritual of the Church of Rome. He had expected his wife to be sympathetic; he had hoped the similarities to her own faith would show her yet again that he was not a bigot and that his Church and not hers was the true means of offering perfect worship. Henrietta thought it was a muddled travesty, borrowing shamelessly from the ancient faith, and, with unusual foresight, she imagined how offensive it would be to the mass of his subjects across the Scottish border whose religion was as bleak and barbaric as the Puritan creed in England.

It would cause nothing but trouble, she said, and it lacked the virtue of being the truth. They had come very close to quarrelling about the Prayer Book; in the end he took it away from her and the subject was avoided for some weeks. Henrietta forgot about it; Laud was always shut up with the King and very few of his Council knew what they were discussing.

But the time had come when he could not conceal either his plan or the disastrous situation which had arisen from it. Scotland was in armed revolt, and at last the Council, for months bedevilled by rumours and officially in ignorance, had to be summoned and informed in full. And now, thanks to the meddling of that bumptious old churchman and the obstinacy of Charles, England and Scotland were at war. It was inconceivable to Henrietta that Charles should have allowed his zeal for his Church to have led him into such a danger; it was incredible that he should have forgotten the lesson learnt during the war with France, that his only hope of ruling without Parliament was to keep his country at peace. She blamed him, but it was human to blame Laud more. And now, while Charles prepared his army to march into Scotland, Henrietta had sent for the Archbishop.

She put down her sewing and stared round the room; immediately her ladies paused, waiting for some instruction, and Lucy Carlisle watched her cynically. The Countess hated her and the King more than ever. The Queen's dainty figure was swollen with her pregnancy; the royal nurseries were full of crying children and the lovers flirted and pretended to bicker and held hands in public as if they had not got a care or a responsibility in the world. They might cleave together, but the ground was cracking under their feet. She had made her prophecy to Wentworth and at last she could see it beginning to come true.