Rebels and Traitors (68 page)

As soon as Fairfax arrived, he attempted to storm the town, but the defenders resisted. They could not escape because their men were mainly infantry and Parliamentary cavalry would cut them to pieces. Suffolk Trained Bands, supporting Fairfax, were blocking all the roads north. Royalist ships attempting to bring supplies up the River Colne were beaten back, then three Parliamentarian ships arrived from Harwich. Fairfax’s troops seized the local harbour.

It began to rain. Fairfax sat down to starve out Colchester, in what would become a long, bitter and terrible siege. Juliana pored over the news as the town of her birth began to suffer. Fairfax had neither the men nor the equipment for a snap break-in. Grimly he encircled Colchester with ten forts, connected by rudimentary walls. The defenders fired the suburbs. Sallies out were made by the Royalists, which involved fierce fighting. The rain came down incessantly, until the countryside flooded. Conditions inside the town worsened.

Oliver Cromwell and John Lambert tailed the invading Scottish through the north of England. They defeated the Scots in a running rout near Preston over two days in August. When this was reported in Colchester, the Royalist leaders decided to break out and escape or perish; without horses the idea was hopeless and their soldiers mutinied. The town surrendered to Fairfax.

There were vivid news-sheets.

Juliana read them with mounting despair. Bread had run out. The imprisoned inhabitants had eaten horseflesh, then dogs and cats, and finally rats. Royalist leaders kept secret from the suffering townsfolk any favourable surrender terms Fairfax offered, until he had arrows shot over the walls, wrapped in papers that gave details. There was bad feeling as the people pleaded with Lord Norwich to surrender but he would not submit. Juliana thought of rats, envisaging all too clearly their size, their intelligent knowing eyes, and their frightful squeals if trapped … She had terrible dreams. She considered her options desperately, then made up her mind. The Pelham women were amazed when their unwelcome guest from Sir Lysander’s farmhouse came in obvious agitation to tell them that she had to leave.

‘I must urgently go to Colchester.’

‘Why madam, this cannot be sensible or safe — but do you think that your husband was there and has been captured?’

‘I have to go. My family lived at Colchester. Someone of mine was in the town — someone who cannot have borne those conditions …’

For the first time, the Pelhams saw Juliana Lovell lose her serene control. Tears rushed into her eyes; her lip trembled. When Bessy felt moved to go to her, Juliana could not immediately speak but pressed one hand over her mouth and shook with distress. Years of absence and silence had finally become too much for her.

‘Oh Mistress Lovell, whatever is it? Who do you know at Colchester?’

‘Germain Carlill. A frail old man whose wits left him years ago, and the good woman who takes care of him.’ Juliana took a breath and forced herself not to break down. ‘He is my father,’ she said.

The New Model Army bitterly resented the second civil war. When the Leveller mutinies were overturned by Fairfax at Ware, the Jukes brothers, like most of their colleagues, grudgingly succumbed. They both admired the Lord General’s personal courage and energy, and they wanted to trust his assurance that the army’s grievances would be addressed. Whatever attractions new republican ideas held, they needed their back pay; mutiny was a sure way to lose it. The King’s escape and the onset of the second civil war depressed them deeply. Both Jukes now burned with republican ideals, Gideon through Robert Allibone’s influence and because of what he had heard at Putney, and Lambert because his wife Anne had become embroiled with the civilian Levellers. The new Royalist revolt put all their hopes on hold.

Levellers refrained from political activity during the uprising. If these revolts succeeded, five years of fighting and misery would have been in vain. There would be no chance of political reform. The King, who had learned nothing about compromise, would plunge them back into the same conditions that started the first civil war.

New Model soldiers were frustrated that they had to endure more fighting. For London soldiers, this was almost unbearable; their yearning for home had been exacerbated when Rainborough led their four regiments into the city. They had all worn laurel leaves in their hats that day as a sign of victory — yet it was no joyful homecoming. It was torture to be so near their houses and their loved ones, yet to be kept in arms in quarters. Even so, only a few men deserted. Most, like Gideon and Lambert, felt they had now risked too much to give up.

During that brief stay in London, friends and family made attempts to visit them. Seeing familiar faces was a joy, though deeply unsettling. The troops settled back into their military routine afterwards, wondering how much longer it would have to continue and feeling homesick with a new piquancy.

Robert Allibone had come looking for Gideon. He brought Anne to see Lambert. They all hoped that soon the brothers would be able to give up soldiering. They wanted a settlement, peace and the men’s return. They managed several meetings, though Gideon felt that none went well. Rifts had opened. Lambert and he had always assumed that once they were discharged, they would quickly refamiliarise themselves with normality at home and work. Now doubts set in. Maybe civilian life held problems. People at home seemed to have changed. Of course they had changed themselves too, though they were mainly unaware of it.

Although Gideon and Robert had corresponded all along, Robert’s behaviour seemed oddly remote when they met. Gideon suspected guilt. On one visit, the apprentice Amyas came. Amyas, whom Gideon remembered as a raw boy in his teens, was now a strapping young man and only a few months from finishing his apprenticeship. Nothing was said, but it was clear that if Gideon did not soon rejoin the business, Amyas would take his place as Robert’s partner. Robert was embarrassed, but he was working hard for the Levellers and relied on Amyas’s help. So long as nobody could guess when Gideon would leave the army, decisions might have to be taken without him.

Parthenope Jukes had died, without her sons even knowing. For Lambert, who had lived in their parents’ house almost all his life, it was now
his
house, the shop and business his too — making his return so much more urgent. However, Lambert was in trouble with Anne. Gideon read the signs. They all managed to dine together one night, but he found it uncomfortable with Anne and Lambert quarrelsome. Afterwards, Lambert remained tetchy, as if he had had a shock. Anne had managed the grocery business for over three years without him. Like other women landed with businesses, she did it well. But when her husband asked for progress reports she seemed unwilling to discuss anything; it went down badly with the jealous Lambert. Gideon foresaw deep strife when his brother returned home and expected to take charge. He would be grateful for what Anne had done in his absence — but he would make no concessions. Anne probably realised already that her position would drastically alter. She could not relish being exiled back to the kitchen, not after her emergence as a woman with spending power, authority to enter into contracts and employer’s rights over their servers in the shop.

It was no surprise to Gideon that his brother applied to transfer back to London. As Lieutenant of the Tower of London, Fairfax was forming his own Guard, a regiment of six companies, which would secure the Tower, its arsenal and its important political prisoners, using men Fairfax trusted. That was the original plan, although the Royalist uprising soon altered it.

Given his London associations and his service record, Lambert Jukes’s request for a move was granted. He thought that he was going home. His hope was short-lived. The second civil war took the Tower Guard first on long marches into Kent, then to Colchester.

Gideon had remained behind in the New Model temporarily. Colonel Rainborough’s regiment was, on Rainborough’s appointment as vice-admiral, given to Richard Deane, a change Gideon did not welcome. All the regiment was hostile because Deane had been Oliver Cromwell’s preferred candidate for vice-admiral; the men had heard that Cromwell actually made a surreptitious attempt to block Rainborough’s appointment. Deane may have been innocent in this; he had served at sea under Rainborough’s father and Thomas had been a witness at his wedding, so there was no bad feeling between them. Cromwell held political reservations about Rainborough. Rainborough was no man’s protégé and open stress appeared between them.

While the Admiralty Committee were discussing the appointment, a captain in Rainborough’s regiment overheard a furious quarrel behind closed doors. He came back full of indignation and gossip, so the awkwardness became common knowledge. Gideon already associated Cromwell with the Grandees’ opposition to the Levellers. When Deane was given the regiment, he too asked for a transfer. Fairfax was still building up troop numbers in London, so it was allowed. Deane and the regiment went with Cromwell into Wales. Gideon followed his brother to London.

He caught up with the Tower Guard just as they went on forced marches into Kent. After the short, fierce campaign there, Gideon found himself besieging Colchester. The Parliamentarians were in a hard, angry mood. They were sick of war, exasperated that the King had stirred up further fighting while they were trying to make a decent settlement, determined to end the conflict once and for all.

This turned out to be the longest and most terrible siege ever conducted on English soil. It was necessary because Colchester was so close to London. Fairfax dared not leave such a substantial enemy force only two days’ march away from the city. The Royalists, who were said to number 5,000, had seized and brought with them, as hostages, Parliament’s entire Essex County Committee; the prisoners’ fates also had to be considered.

The Royalists had superior numbers and at first they held genuine hopes that uprisings would flourish throughout the country, with the Scots bringing an invasion army south to join up with them. If the Royalists broke out and took London, they stood a good chance of obliterating Parliament, the New Model Army, the Levellers and all that had been won. Fairfax was stuck. He and his men were just as much prisoners of the situation as the rebels. So long as Lord Norwich, Lord Capel, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle held them here, they were prevented from deploying their forces and their artillery anywhere else.

The local situation became deeply unhappy. The fugitives had been admitted to Colchester by the mayor because they swore they would only stay a few days. Besides, Sir Charles Lucas was a Colchester man; it still counted. They had ended up here on the urging of Lucas — a single-minded military man, who was generally thought so unpleasant that the civilians said enduring him was worse than enduring the siege. He had little sympathy with the townspeople, who had raided and plundered his house at the start of the war. Until now Colchester, a prosperous textile town, had loyally supported Parliament although it lay outside the main fields of action and avoided trouble. To have this siege wished upon them at this late stage was cruel. The townspeople were constantly at odds with their unwelcome, frequently boorish house guests.

Outside, the besiegers hated to be forced to impose terrible suffering on their own supporters. Deserting Royalist soldiers were promised an amnesty, yet civilians could not be permitted to leave. The essence of starving a garrison into surrender was to keep as many mouths as possible needing to be fed, to increase the pressure.

A siege was bad enough when hungry soldiers and civilians were on the same side; inside Colchester their antagonism worsened a fraught situation. The soldiers had first call on food, to keep them fit to fight; civilians were just a drain on resources — though they could be a source of supplies. Colchester homes were stripped of thatch to feed military animals. Houses were roughly searched, their pantries and store cupboards stripped bare. As the siege progressed, people congregated outside the commanders’ headquarters agitating to share the soldiers’ food; to stall a riot, horsemeat had to be handed out to them, but it was clear the garrison took precedence and inflammatory stories circulated that the commanders were dining on beef washed down with good wine every night. Constant tension seethed as those commanders refused to surrender while the townsfolk were all the time begging them to accept Fairfax’s terms. Week after week passed while Lord Norwich and the other commanders convinced themselves they would soon be relieved by the Scots or others.