London (110 page)

It was a sparkling day under a crystal sky when Sir Henry Ducket took his younger brother downriver to see the king.

It had been Henry’s idea. “You must do credit to the family,” he had insisted, “if you are to be presented to the king.” Henry, therefore, had dressed Julius. Instead of his usual, rather modest clothes, Julius was now sporting a high-waisted, bright scarlet tunic and cape. In place of a simple ruff was a huge, floppy lace collar that came down over his shoulders; his soft leather boots were turned over at the knee; and topping this whole assemblage was a huge-brimmed hat with a great, curling ostrich feather drooping elegantly over the brim. In England, the fashion was known as the ‘cavalier’ style. And it had to be said, with his moustache and beard curled, Julius looked uncommonly well, so much so that his wife, gazing at him with admiration, burst out laughing, tickled his ribs and cried: “Don’t forget, Julius, to come back to me tonight.”

“The only thing wrong,” Henry remarked, “is that your hair should be longer.” His own, in the best court style, flowed over his shoulders. “But you’ll do.”

As two cavaliers, therefore, the Duckets came down the Thames to Greenwich.

“There is nothing to fear,” Henry told him, as they made their way round the old riverside palace. Julius knew this was true; yet all the same, he could not help suddenly groaning: “Oh brother. I am such a rude and simple fellow.”

For, it was beyond question, no English court, not even that of great King Harry, had ever attracted such a galaxy of talent. The court masques were masterpieces. Great European artists like Rubens and Van Dyck came to visit and decided to stay. King Charles himself, despite his modest means, was quietly assembling a collection of paintings – Titians, Raphaels, the Flemish masters – to rival any in Europe. The court was cosmopolitan. And, as if to underline this fact, as they walked up the grassy slope behind the palace and turned to look back, Julius was unexpectedly presented with a sight so lovely that he could only gasp:

“Dear God, was ever anything more perfect?”

The Queen’s House at Greenwich was just being completed. Because the old Tudor buildings were still there to screen it from the river, Julius had hardly been aware of it before. Its designer, the great Inigo Jones, had already completed one other classical masterpiece – the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall, whose ceiling was being painted that very year by Rubens himself. But fine as it was, amidst the clutter of buildings at Whitehall, the Banqueting House did not show to the same advantage as this.

For the Queen’s House was perfect. Set by itself in the outer wall of the old palace gardens, and facing up the park, this gleaming white, Italianate villa, just two storeys high, with three sets of windows at the centre and two each side, looked so neat, so classically perfect, that you might have supposed it was a little model for some casket to exhibit a silversmith’s art. “Oh dear,” Julius murmured again, “I am such a rustic fellow.” At which moment he turned to see, not twenty yards away, the king.

King Charles advanced. Dressed neatly in a tunic of yellow silk, he was also wearing a wide-brimmed hat which, as they hastily made their bows, he politely doffed in reply. He was accompanied by a group of gentlemen and of ladies in long, full-bodied silk dresses. He walked easily, carrying a golden-topped stick. But as he reached them Julius realized that he was tiny. He hardly came up to Julius’s shoulder. Yet he was the most aristocratic personage Julius had ever encountered in his life. Everything about the king was as neat as the little gem of a building behind them.

“As it is a fine day,” he said pleasantly, “let us speak here,” and leading the two men to a grassy knoll where an oak tree provided shade, he stood courteously to listen.

At first Julius stumbled a little with his words as he tried to explain his idea for the royal loan. But gradually he began to gain confidence; and this was helped by the king. If, for instance, Julius through nervousness failed to make a point clearly, King Charles would gently say: “Forgive me, Master Ducket, I have not quite understood . . .” Julius also noticed that the king himself had a slight stammer, which was rather reassuring.

What impressed Julius most was something he could not pin down: there was in this small, scrupulously polite, rather shy man, an almost magical quality that set him apart. It was the royal Stuart charm. And by the time he was finished he found himself thinking: this man truly is not like other men; he is touched, with royalty, by God. Even if he be wrong, he is indisputably my royal and anointed king, and I will follow him.

King Charles, having heard him out carefully, seemed interested. He agreed that he should maintain good relations with the city, and was intrigued by this novel way of encouraging Londoners to lend. “This shall be discussed further,” he promised Julius. “Such new methods may have much to recommend them. We do not fear innovation. Though of course,” he added with a smile to Henry, “We must also consider what already lies within our prerogative.”

It had been, both the brothers felt, a very satisfactory day.

So Julius was a little surprised that autumn when, having heard nothing more of his proposals, he learned that the king had sent to London and the major ports for Ship Money. This contribution of the sea towns towards the cost of the fleet was an ancient and perfectly legal tax, but unpopular. Before Christmas however, King Charles had levied it on all the inland towns as well. “Which is unheard of,” Henry admitted. “Though the king claims it’s within his prerogative.” And then at the start of 1635, King Charles through the royal court of Star Chamber, charged the city of London with mismanagement of its Ulster plantation. “He has confiscated everything,” Henry announced, “and fined the city seventy thousand pounds. It is,” he remarked wryly, “one way to raise money.”

Within weeks, the king’s commissioners were asking how much the city would pay to secure a pardon. The city erupted. “It’s certainly cunning,” Henry said. “The king is still within his prerogative.”

But poor Julius remained mystified. How was it possible, after listening so carefully to his proposal, and after agreeing upon the importance of London’s good will, for this mild, sweet-mannered king to do such a thing? Half the merchants in the city were now swearing they would never lend to him again. And even Julius had to remind himself more than once:

“He is still my anointed king.”

How fortunate she was, Martha thought, to have the respectable Mrs Wheeler to keep an eye on her husband while they were apart. It was Dogget who had first introduced them years before, when they had met her in Cheapside. “This lady comes from Virginia, Martha,” he had explained. She learned that Mrs Wheeler had taken pleasant lodgings in Blackfriars; and a few days later she noticed Meredith politely bow as she passed which, little as she liked Meredith, indicated that the lady must be respectable.

Mrs Wheeler was a good listener. If she did speak, it was always sensible and to the point. Martha had only once known her sound frivolous: one day, after she had been explaining to Mrs Wheeler the evils of the theatre, Martha had shortly afterwards come upon her and Dogget laughing together; but when Martha had asked why, after a moment’s hesitation she had told her a story that seemed hardly funny at all. Martha supposed that Mrs Wheeler had no great sense of humour.

Mrs Wheeler had become a friend of the whole family. When Dogget’s younger son became sick, it was she who came to help Martha sit through the night with him. When Martha’s own daughter wanted to become a sempstress, it was Mrs Wheeler, showing an unexpected skill, who taught her most of what she needed. Once, when she asked her if she ever thought of marrying again, Mrs Wheeler only laughed: “I can do well enough without a man.” And Martha felt she could quite understand. “A husband is a duty,” she agreed.

But one thing she loved to talk to Mrs Wheeler about was America. She could listen by the hour. Always the questions took the same form; after listening politely to a few details of Virginia, she would ask: “And Massachusetts. What did you hear of Massachusetts?”

The fabled, promised land. Martha had never given up her quest. She might say of the
Mayflower
: “Perhaps it was as well we did not go” – for over half the pilgrims who made that fateful voyage had perished within a year – but the dream of the godly commune, the shining city, had never faded from her mind. And indeed, in recent years it was not just in the mind of Martha: many Englishmen saw in that dream no mere hope but a very pleasant reality. The reason could be summed up in two words: Laud and Winthrop.

There could not be any doubt, it seemed to Martha, that Archbishop Laud must be a very wicked man. His grip upon London had increased with every year that passed. One by one the parishes were brought into line. Many clergymen resigned.

“What happened,” Martha could well ask, “to the Reformation?”

Not only that: he was worldly. When he rode into London, he came with a train of fine gentlemen, with lackeys riding before who cried: “Clear the path, make way for the lord Bishop”, as though he were a medieval cardinal. He was on the king’s council; he had virtual control of the treasury. “Laud and the king are one and the same,” men said. But even this worldly pomp did not shock Martha as much as his sacrilege.

“Keep ye the Sabbath.” Every good Puritan did. But the king and his bishop allowed sports and games, ladies were permitted to wear finery; once she had even seen some young people dancing around a maypole, and complained to the Church authorities. Nobody cared.

No wonder then if, seeing such outrages, she and countless Puritans like her had longed for a blessed means of escape.

This Winthrop had provided. The Massachusetts colony had continued growing even more rapidly than Virginia; Puritans who had hesitated to take to the seas before were gaining confidence. Word came back with every returning ship: “Truly it is a godly commune.”

How Martha yearned to go. The first of her friends to leave were people she had prayed with since her childhood. By 1634 many of her friends had gone. “But you will follow us one day, Martha,” they assured her. In 1636, she saw not a ship, but a small flotilla at Wapping, all bound for America. The trickle of emigration was turning into a flood. When Sir Henry had ironically remarked to Julius that Laud was a good friend to Massachusetts, he had spoken more truly than even he realized. Laud and the king might think they were only losing some troublemakers, but in fact during these and the next few years puritan ships were to ferry away no less than 2 per cent of England’s entire population to America’s eastern coast.

Sometimes she would speak to her family about it, and Dogget would mutter that they were too old. But, as she gently reminded him, they were both still only in their fifties, and people far older than that were making the voyage. Dogget’s younger son, who did not seem to know what he wanted to do, was agreeable. As for the elder son, the reports coming back of the cod catches were so astonishing that he had declared: “I’ll go if you do.” But the person who held Martha back, strangely enough was Gideon – or rather, to be precise, his wife.

Martha had always tried to love the girl. She prayed about it often. Yet she could not quite overcome a certain sense of disappointment. Gideon’s wife had given him nothing except girls. They came, with monotonous regularity, every two years. They were given, as might be expected, the virtuous names that Puritans so favoured; and each mildly expressed the family’s mounting exasperation about their sex. First Charity, then Hope; then Faith, Patience and finally, when still the awaited son had not arrived, Perseverance. But the thing most difficult to bear was her sickness.

The sickness of Gideon’s wife was a curious thing. It seemed to strike her whenever Martha and Gideon broached the subject of America. Its nature was never specified but, as Mrs Wheeler remarked to Martha one day: “She is exactly sick enough not to travel.”

Then, to everyone’s surprise, at the very end of 1636 Gideon’s wife gave birth to a boy. So great was the family’s joy that they cast about for a name that would express their gratitude to the Lord. And at last Martha came up with a striking solution. One winter’s morning a rather astonished Meredith held the infant at the font, and with a wry glance at the family announced: “I baptize thee: O Be Joyful.”

Instead of a name, Puritans would sometimes take an entire phrase from their beloved Bible. It was a clear expression of Puritan loyalty, yet one that even Laud could hardly do anything about. And so O Be Joyful Carpenter, Gideon’s son, entered the world.

Gideon’s wife could now relax. The first four years of any infant’s life were by far the most dangerous. Having delivered herself of such a precious burden, she knew very well that, for some years at least, not even Martha would suggest that O Be Joyful should be risked on the long sea voyage. She became quite healthy.

It was a great surprise to her family, and not least to herself when, in the summer of 1637, Martha performed a criminal act. The sight she had witnessed had finally driven her conscience beyond all endurance, as it had enraged all London.

Although a gentleman and a scholar, Master William Prynne, most people agreed, was a contentious fellow. Three years earlier, he had written a pamphlet against the theatre which King Charles considered an insult to his wife, who was then engaged in some court theatricals. Prynne was sentenced to have his nose split and his ears cut off in the public stocks. Martha was outraged, but there was no public disturbance.

In 1637 however, Prynne was in trouble again, this time for writing against the desecration of the Sabbath by sports and, more dangerous still, for urging that bishops should be abolished. “He shall go to the stocks again,” the king’s court declared. “Even the stumps of his ears shall be ripped out; and then he shall go to perpetual prison.”

“Is all free speech forbidden, then?” the Londoners demanded. “If the king and Laud treat him like this, what will they do to us, who agree with every word he says?”

The day of the punishment itself was a sunny summer’s day, 30 June. Drawn along Cheapside in a cart, the tall figure of Prynne, horribly disfigured yet obviously once a handsome man, stood proud and unbowed. “The more I am beat down,” he had once declared, “the more I am raised up.” And so it was now. A huge crowd cheered him all the way. They threw flowers into the cart. And when the loathsome sentence was carried out, a roar of rage arose that echoed round the city walls and could be heard from Shoreditch to Southwark. Martha returned, trembling.