Rebels and Traitors (57 page)

Rupert delayed negotiations until Fairfax broke off discussion.

The ensuing assault was a dangerous and bloody action. The New Model breached the outer walls, then Rainborough’s regiment took Prior’s Hill Fort. First they climbed the walls in a hail of shot, then when their scaling ladders proved too short, they crept in at the portholes and after two hours’ close combat the defenders were massacred. Rupert fell back towards Bristol Castle but when Cromwell’s cavalry charged in, the prince realised his position was hopeless. The Royalists were granted terms, and Okey regained his liberty. The Parliamentarians could not know at the time, but Rupert’s quarrel with the King over his surrender would soon rid them of the prince for good.

Fairfax then sent Colonel Rainborough to besiege Berkeley Castle, the only Royalist stronghold left between Bristol and Gloucester. He stormed it after a three-day bombardment. His regiment were deployed to Corfe Castle but, required for more important duties, they were pulled out. In December they went into quarters at Abingdon, on watch over the Oxford area as a preliminary to the city’s siege. During the city blockade, Rainborough acquired a new sergeant.

Gideon Jukes had been having horse trouble. Never a natural rider, he was ill-suited to be a dragoon, much as he enjoyed it. After his first horse was shot under him at Naseby, the spirited remount he obtained was too strong and conscious of its own superiority. Gideon fought that horse all the way into the west but it finally threw him outside Bristol. His left spur caught, so for a couple of yards he was dragged along, head down. An alert colleague slashed the stirrup, cutting him free. He ended up sprawled in a bush with a dislocated shoulder while the horse galloped off. Ignominiously rescued, Gideon was taken up behind one of his men, as they all chaffed him and called him a dairymaid picked up for a ride to market because she looked good for a roll in a hayrick. An army surgeon took more delight than he thought necessary in wrenching his shoulder back into its socket.

A new horse was allocated by an agent.

A typical ‘dragoon nag’, this was a wry-nosed, sniffling creature that sickened and died after a day and a half. A horse doctor was summoned, far too late.

‘What have you done to this bone-shaker, Sergeant?’

‘He was snotty and hot on arrival’

‘You should have rejected him.’

‘By the time I got a proper look, the agent was long gone. I hoped the sad beast was just spavined.’

The veterinarian stood up from the carcase and gave Gideon a straight look. He believed his equine expertise had given him acute understanding of human nature too. He was observant, certainly; he saw that Gideon was in his light-hearted mood. ‘Have you any real idea what “spavined” means, Sergeant Jukes?’

‘None at all. I gather he didn’t have it?’

‘Bastard strangles,’ diagnosed the solemn expert. Gideon noticed the man was bandy-legged and knotted like a bunch of old rope — possibly the results of being thrown and kicked many times.

‘Bastardy is more serious than honest strangles?’ queried Gideon demurely.

‘Goes around stables like a rat through shit. Mounts will be dropping all along the lines now. Keep your head down, or you’ll cop the blame.’

‘If I can get anyone to help drag him, I’ll try to find a ditch upstream of a Royalist garrison to leave him in.’ Gideon knew cavalrymen and dragoons felt little sentimentality towards their horses. In the midst of battle nobody could afford to stand weeping over the body of a faithful mount. But despite their short time together, he had taken responsibility for his animal. He felt driven to assert this: ‘His name is Sir Rowland.’

‘Rather extravagant?’

‘Least I could do. He had nothing else going for him.’

Not only did Sir Rowland cause an epidemic, but since the horse had been supplied to him by the army, Gideon had to replace it at his own cost. Highly indignant, he pointed out that the army had been cheated by the two-timing agent, who had passed off on them a horse that was only fit to be fed to pigs. This happened so frequently no one got excited. Gideon then claimed that because of their pay arrears, he had no money for a new horse, ‘even a new one of this piss-poor, rib-rattling quality’. He managed by borrowing other men’s mounts, until February. When the next campaign season was about to start, the New Model battened down to finish the Oxford siege and his colonel reviewed the condition of his regiment. First he scrutinised the men’s spiritual and political views; Okey was famous for weeding out anyone who failed to match his own beliefs. Next he inspected their horses. That was bad news for Gideon.

John Okey had come to view Sergeant Gideon Jukes as a slyly subversive character. This Jukes received pamphlets from London, which Okey suspected were seditious; the sergeant passed them on to others once he had read them. He seemed dangerously intrigued by
England’s Birth-right Justified,
by John Lilburne, a man Gideon had heard of in the Eastern Association while he himself was working for Sir Samuel Luke. Colonel Lilburne, though then on good terms with Oliver Cromwell, had not joined the New Model Army but resigned from service because he refused to take the oath of the Covenant. He believed Presbyterianism, with its enforced suppression of all other beliefs, was just as terrible as imposed Catholicism or high Anglicanism.

Saturnine, highly intelligent and passionately argumentative, ‘Freeborn John’ Lilburne had become a prolific political author. He had a history of imprisonment for sedition. In 1637, after a pamphlet critical of bishops, he was pilloried, flogged — two hundred stripes -and imprisoned, becoming a popular hero, but was freed by the Long Parliament. Then early in the war, Royalists captured him; they took him to Oxford where they intended to hang him. Parliament threatened retaliation against its Royalist prisoners; in the nick of time Lilburne was saved when his pregnant wife Elizabeth carried a letter from the Speaker of the House of Commons to the King’s headquarters. Subsequently he was freed in a prisoner-exchange. Now his quarrel was with Parliament.

Lilburne had embarked on a serious campaign for reform. Gideon had found his pamphlet startling. After a dry argument that Parliament’s power should be limited in order to protect individual rights, it went on to denounce a curious mix of monopolies: preaching, as held by the established Church; wool and foreign trade, as controlled by the Merchant Adventurers; and printing. That was what caused Robert Allibone to send this pamphlet to Gideon; it echoed Robert’s long-term loathing of the dead hand of the Stationers’ Company.

Robert wrote that Lilburne had been sentenced by the House of Lords for publishing criticism of the Earl of Manchester; insulting a peer was a serious offence. Despite refusing to recognise the Lords’ right to try him, Lilburne was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, barred from holding civil or military office and fined two thousand pounds. The harsh penalty inspired mass marches, a petition signed by over two thousand citizens of London and a vocal lobby of Parliament.

It also led to the creation of the astonishing political organisation that would be called — by its opponents — the Leveller Party.

This began as a group of radical Londoners with headquarters at the Whalebone Tavern. Lilburne was their nominal head, with other pamphleteers: a master silk-weaver called William Walwyn and Richard Overton, the would-be actor Gideon remembered from
The Triumph of Peace.
Allibone had joined the group. Members paid a small subscription and met in taverns, the closest for Robert being the Nag’s Head in Coleman Street. He spoke highly of Walwyn, a retiring family man, mainly self-taught, whose measured, lucid prose praising reason, toleration and love alarmed his opponents almost as much as it inspired devotees.

Robert said printers were well represented. The group elected officers and their executive committee met three times a week at the Whalebone, though others gathered regularly in various London parishes. Robert sent Gideon an anonymous tract which he reckoned was Walwyn’s and Overton’s collaboration, called
A Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens.
Addressed to the House of Commons, it reminded members that they were representatives of the people. Then its propositions were: absolute religious freedom, a completely free press, the end of monopolies and discriminating taxation, the reforming of unjust laws, and — astonishingly — abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords. Robert Allibone found this exhilarating; Gideon did too, though not in front of his colonel.

Colonel Okey preferred to see his men at prayer meetings. Freedom of conscience is always regarded as a threat to military discipline. Okey viewed nervously the idea that instead of Parliament giving orders to the army, the army might make demands of Parliament.

Since men from the Newport Pagnell garrison were assisting at the siege of Oxford, Colonel Okey suggested the dangerous, horseless Jukes should reattach himself to his old colleagues.

‘Once he takes a dislike, he never lets go. I am screwed and wrung!’ complained Gideon to his brother.

‘Stuff the Newports! Come to us,’ suggested Lambert. ‘Find a place in the sea-greens, Gideon.’ The regiment referred to itself by its colonel’s colours.

‘In your rabble? I heard the governor of Abingdon wrote a distressed plea to Parliament to order your officers back to the regiment because it is so out of control’

Lambert grinned. ‘Six out often of our dear officers sloped off home during the winter break. Some of the lads have been too brisk with requests for provisions and, true, the town complained. Abingdon is of doubtful loyalty. But Rainborough has been empowered to have plunderers shot under martial law’

Articles of War. All commanders have that right.’

‘Well, we are all being polite to Abingdon now, even when our stomachs are rumbling … I am with good lads, Gideon. You would like them, and they you.’

‘Can I transfer between regiments?’

‘It has been known! You went to Okey from Luke,’ scoffed Lambert with his usual disrespect for rules. ‘Remember Sexby? Edward Sexby who was at your wedding?’

‘Do not remind me of my wedding.’

‘Oh I enjoyed it!’ Lambert chortled. ‘Sexby went off to serve under Oliver Cromwell — who was
he? we
innocently wondered at the time … Some relative of Sexby’s, happily for him; they were, and are, extremely close and friendly. By cunning self-advancement, in the New Model, Sexby ended up in Fairfax’s horse. If he can dodge around, so can you, my boy’ Lambert clapped his gloomy brother on the shoulder with a mighty paw, forgetting the shoulder had been dislocated. We are gaining new companies of foot. You can slip in among them — on my recommendation. Of course it means coming down to half pay!’ In the New Model, dragoons were paid one shilling and sixpence a day but infantrymen only eightpence.

‘Half pay hardly counts when pay never turns up.’

‘Oh we shall fix that! Bring your seditious pamphlets,’ instructed Lambert gleefully. ‘Okey’s a prim conservative, and your boys are dullards.
We
are known as the army’s most devoted regiment for prayer, and our colonel is hot for freedom.’

‘Praying?’

And killing.’

Gideon remembered what he had heard about the bitter fighting for Prior’s Hill Fort at Bristol, where Rainborough’s men eventually slew all the defenders; he found it hard to reconcile his companionable, easygoing brother with such bloody slaughter.

‘Well, if six out of ten of your officers have given themselves a home pass, that should ease a discreet transfer behind their backs.’

They will return to us from soft beds and wifely succour, laden with puddings and bottled beer, and there you will be grinning in your short coat… Can’t you get a coat that covers your buttocks, by the way? All will be well. You are not deserting the colours,’ Lambert reassured his tall brother. ‘Bring your snaphance.’

‘It’s a dragoon issue.’

‘Just bring it!’

Arrears were still a problem. As 1646 progressed, the King remained evasive about a settlement, while Parliament viewed the army as redundant. Volunteers were wanted now to reconquer Ireland, but otherwise attempts were made to disband various regiments — if possible without paying them. It was a mean-spirited betrayal of the men who had risked their lives and livelihoods. It was also foolish.

When Parliament pressed for disbandment, the men realised they would lose all rights, and probably the pay they were owed. Those who had ended up far from home needed their money just to fund the return journey. The infantry were due eighteen weeks’ pay the cavalry forty-six. Faced with a debt of over three hundred thousand pounds, Parliament decreed that paying up for only six weeks would be sufficient discharge. Both officers and men stiffened their resistance.

The soldiers began to consider how far they would go in support of their grievances. Many started to think about the wider context — were they merely instruments of Parliament or men who had fought in their own right for issues of personal belief? If so, what sort of world had they fought for? Everyone in the army was also watching the issue of the kingdom’s political settlement. There were concerns about indemnity for actions they might have taken in the war, which could in retrospect be called criminal. They wanted pensions for men who had been too badly wounded to work again and for the widows and orphans of those who had been killed. Some of the soldiers were beginning to demand far more than had ever been subjects’ rights in the past. Contact began between the soldiers and the London radicals, the Levellers.

The King’s personal fate had to be decided, together with how the state would be governed. Until now, most people had assumed the monarchy would survive. But the very questions that had caused a revolt remained undecided: how much authority was the King to have, and how far should the Houses of Parliament be allowed to restrict his actions, his choice of state servants, or his religious and monetary policies? An unforeseen complication was that the New Model Army required a voice — this threatening force of men who were bonded by two years of service together in the field and validated by the Lord’s giving them victory.