Rebels and Traitors (70 page)

Out of the Parliamentarians’ bitterness at being forced to fight again came a long-lasting controversy. They believed the surrender terms were fair: ordinary soldiers and townspeople were granted quarter; when the Parliamentary infantry marched in, no harm was done to them, they were given warm clothing and food. Prisoners of war received miserable rations, but that was still more than the starving people of Colchester had lived on for weeks. In fact few prisoners would make it home safely; for them, they would learn, quarter entailed being shut up in churches, then marched long distances across the country. Many of the three thousand private soldiers would be shipped to the sugar plantations in Barbados or imprisoned in remote prisons from which few ever emerged; their officers were sent to the galleys until friends and relatives ransomed them.

The commanders were treated differently. Nobles were to be sent to be dealt with by Parliament; Lord Capel eventually went to the block, though Lord Norwich, the nominal leader of the revolt, was spared. Sir Charles Lucas, Sir George Lisle, the so-called Sir Bernard Gascoigne and Colonel Farre were put to the mercy’ of their opposing general. This was a technical term which meant Fairfax could decide what to do with them. It gave no guarantees. He was famous for chivalry in such situations — though this time he was harder, because Sir Charles Lucas had surrendered to him personally, and given his parole not to fight Parliament again, after the battle of Marston Moor.

An immediate Council of War was held in the Town Hall. Henry Ireton presided. Fairfax did not attend, but left the judgment to his officers. The four Royalist leaders were briskly condemned to death.

Farre escaped. ‘Sir Bernard Gascoigne’ was discovered to be an Italian citizen; rather than cause diplomatic offence, his life was spared. Lucas and Lisle were shot by firing squad. Fairfax’s three most senior officers, Ireton, Whalley and Rainborough, formally witnessed this execution.

Gideon approved the verdict and the deaths of Lisle and Lucas. If assigned the task, he would willingly have been one of the firing squad. Like all the exhausted Parliamentarians, he wanted a brisk end to their trouble. They were tired of endangering their lives and frustrated by having to impose burdens on the civilian population, for whose rights to peace and prosperity they had fought. They hated the King and his supporters for stirring up a revolt when peace had been at hand.

There were military reasons for ordering these executions, reasons sanctioned by the rules of war: the Royalists had insisted on prolonging the siege, causing unnecessary hardship, especially to civilians. Lucas had broken his parole, and was also accused of executing enemy prisoners on more than one occasion; at the Council of War, ordinary soldiers gave evidence against him. Fairfax would always maintain that these men had put themselves in the position of soldiers of fortune. They earned their fate. The severity of their punishment warned others not to take up arms. That only Lucas and Lisle were shot seemed a display of restraint.

But Royalists regarded this execution as cold-blooded murder. It was to have tragic repercussions.

A month after Colchester fell, the Tower Guards were ordered north on a special mission. Their colonel initially remained in London, organising pay. Rainborough’s regiment had been sent to attend to a last pocket of Royalist resistance: Pontefract Castle. This stronghold, known as ‘the Key to the North’, had been captured by a group of cavaliers who pretended to be delivering beds to the Parliamentary garrison. They had ensconced themselves with enough food to last twelve months. Since Colchester, the Royalists had no hope of mercy and were dug in for a long, desperate siege.

Their sojourn so far was not entirely miserable. Their besieger was Sir Henry Cholmeley, a snobbish, insular Yorkshire gentleman, an acquaintance of most of them and old friend to quite a few. Although he fought for Parliament, his brother fought for the King; they had remained on civil terms. He posed no serious threat to the Royalists in the castle. He knew them and they knew him. They were more loyal to one another as Yorkshiremen than to any outsiders. They therefore conducted activities like a local fête. They fraternised. They parleyed. They allowed each other to come and go at will. Cholmeley maintained a leaguer around the castle, but it was as loose as could be. It was said that he supplied the castle with mutton throughout the siege.

When Colonel Rainborough caught up with his regiment at Doncaster, he said that on the road between London and St Albans he had survived an ambush by three well-mounted Royalists. He fought them off. As sporadic outbursts of rebellion were put down, some Royalists were turning themselves into highwaymen. However, there was also talk of a death-list against senior Parliamentarians, and for his part in the execution of Lucas and Lisle, Rainborough could have been targeted.

The situation in Yorkshire was extremely tricky. The arrival of six companies of Londoners, led by a seafaring republican, all speaking in Thames-side accents (apart from a significant group from Massachusetts, where Rainborough had relatives), was never likely to go well. They might have felt out of place — had not Londoners believed everywhere belonged to them. In response, the locals adopted their own swagger. Though they should have worked as colleagues, the Tower Guards received no welcome from Sir Henry Cholmeley, who was outraged to find Rainborough appointed his superior — a much younger colonel, even though one who had a serious reputation. As a member of Parliament himself, Cholmeley refused to step aside and could not readily be sidelined. He had told his local County Committee he would accept no one less than Cromwell over him, and they had written to offer Cromwell the job. This undermined Rainborough locally, if not with his men.

The colonel could hardly take the regiment up to Pontefract Castle if Cholmeley was liable to start fisticuffs while rejoicing cavaliers smoked their pipes and gawped from the battlements. Rainborough’s men were ready to knock seven bells out of Cholmeley’s Yorkshire militia at breakfast, then deal with the cavaliers by dinner time — they regarded both with equal disdain — but for Parliamentarians to fight one another was unacceptable. It would give Rainborough’s enemies yet another complaint. He had to tread carefully. His troops were 170 miles from London now and needed logistical support.

This was a wealthy part of South Yorkshire, full of rich men impressed with their own family histories, men who owned vast estates where their ancestors had built huge homes, far enough from London to think itself the centre of the world. It was an area of expensive horse-breeding, and horse-racing, which even then in its infancy was a royal sport. Pontefract was famous for its deep, soft loam, where for miles around sweet liquorice root grew and was made into medicinal cakes, good remedies for coughs and stomach diseases. Doncaster, where Rainborough made his temporary headquarters, had been loyal to the King; the King had honoured the town and the inhabitants were not to be trusted.

The military situation was deplorable. The enemy ranged at will over a ten-mile area, merrily flouting Cholmeley’s siege of Pontefract Castle. Cavaliers plundered the countryside; they took prisoners, whom they held to ransom, rounded up oxen and other booty, then rode back into the castle, happy as freebooters. At Scarborough on the coast, the Royalists captured a pinnace, a small two-masted ship used as an inshore tender, which provided quantities of supplies for them. Meanwhile, Cholmeley’s Parliamentarians were levying demands on the reluctant local population, causing great hardship. Equally repressive were the cavaliers, whose vicious extortion reputedly brought in thirty thousand pounds a month.

After reconnaissance — Gideon rode around as one of the scouts -Rainborough wrote to Fairfax, dwelling lightly on his personal strife with Sir Henry Cholmeley but asking to be excused this command. He offered to carry on only if he was provided with proper reinforcements and supplies. While he waited for an answer, he remained at Doncaster. He kept two companies with him in the town, billeting the rest, as was customary, in outside districts to spread the burden for the locals.

The cavaliers from the castle boldly continued their habit of raiding, or ‘beating up’ enemy quarters. At a village six miles from Pontefract they killed a Captain Layton and two others from Rainborough’s regiment, with more men wounded or taken prisoner. Next day, Cholmeley’s militia met the enemy at a horse-fair, drank with them, and gravely exchanged toasts: ‘Here’s to thee, Brother Roundhead!’

‘I thank you, Brother Cavalier!’

On Captain Layton’s death, Rainborough bumped up Gideon Jukes to officer level. It was a long jump to captain, but not without precedent. When he gave Gideon his commission, the colonel drew comparisons with the Leveller Edward Sexby. He had resigned from army service, but somehow turned up at the battle of Preston; he was still so trusted by Cromwell that he was employed as the official messenger to take news of the victory to Parliament — for which he received a hundred pounds’ reward. Subsequently
he
was commissioned as a captain, then even made governor of Portland in Dorset.

Gideon’s new troop was one of those quartered in outlying villages. He wondered afterwards whether, had he remained a scout, he might have spotted what was happening and things might have turned out differently. But on the night of the 28th of October, a Saturday, a terrible event occurred. Gideon was in Doncaster, conducting routine business with the regimental major. Major Wilkes was in gloomy mood, frustrated by Sir Henry Cholmeley’s lackadaisical maintenance of the leaguer. He confirmed that Rainborough was still waiting for orders from Fairfax or Cromwell, so the regiment would continue to keep its distance here, which was about ten miles from Pontefract.

Gideon nearly went back to his troop that night, but Wilkes had grumbled on at length and darkness fell early at the end of October in the north. He stayed at the house where Wilkes was quartered, though he went out by himself to obtain supper at an inn. He chose one called the Hinde, which he found in French Gate, not as gracious inside as it looked from the street, though he stuck with it rather than turn back out into the cold. A few of the regiment’s soldiers were drinking there, fellows with whom he had never felt great affinity. His meal was indifferent; he had a feeling he was being watched; a woman kept trying to meet his eye in a way he did not like. Since Lacy, Gideon distrusted all women and of course he believed that for officers to deal with whores was reprehensible — it undermined discipline and failed to set a good moral standard (Gideon knew this was pompous but he had not been a field officer long enough to relax). When he was asked at the Hinde if he wanted a bedchamber, he thought he knew what that meant. He was glad to say he had lodgings elsewhere.

Back in the streets he met one of the files of men on guard duty, at that point patrolling without an officer. They said the town guard that night was commanded by Captain-Lieutenant John Smith, the senior captain, who led Rainborough’s own company; Rainborough had inherited Smith from his predecessor, one of the officers who had been shot dead at Colchester with suspected poisoned bullets. Gideon knew little enough about Smith, though he seemed too ready to complain about others. He was a Maidstone man, which did not impress a Londoner.

Conscious of his responsibilities, Captain Jukes ordered the unsupervised soldiers to be careful in their watch. Still unsure of himself in command, it continued to surprise him that they stiffened up obediently. ‘Captain Smith will be around to see all is well.’

‘Oh he will!’ the men assured Gideon, in the sardonic voices soldiers use to decry unpopular superiors. He had no reason to assume they meant Smith was dilatory. He assumed they just needed taking in hand. That was Smith’s job.

The soldiers moved on. Gideon strode in the other direction, trying to walk like a man who knew where he was going. Of course he got lost. Mistakenly he found himself near St Sepulchre’s Gate in the south of the town, where a man who was carrying a Bible rather ostentatiously told him his way back. ‘Major Wilkes is at a house near Colonel Rainborough, who lodges opposite the Cross and the Shambles,’ the man added knowingly.

‘I believe he does.’ Gideon played it down for security reasons. He said his thanks, walked back up St Sepulchre’s to Barter Gate, crossed over, found the major’s house, and stretched out on a settle in the warm kitchen. The household were asleep, Major Wilkes long since snoring in his chamber upstairs, which was a senior officer’s entitlement. Gideon had a hard bed, but better than open country; he stewed happily in the close room with his boots off until morning.

Everything changed when Captain Smith arrived.

The first Gideon knew was waking to angry voices. He heard a rumpus upstairs. There must be an alarm.

He pulled on his boots and grabbed his weapons. As he ran to the upper floor, he detected real horror in the major’s voice. Smith, whose whine Gideon recognised, was making self-righteous excuses. As Gideon tumbled into the room, Major Wilkes stormed accusingly, ‘You are an accessory to it!’ He was pulling on a boot, in his haste tangling his toes in mismanaged boot-hose. Seeing Gideon, he cried out despairingly, ‘Colonel Rainborough is murdered! He lies dead in the street, basely betrayed by Cholmeley and this man!’