Rebels and Traitors (82 page)

With the King dead, soldier Levellers as well as civilians had realised the execution merely gave the army grandees uncontrolled power. They had installed a republic, yet would ignore the Levellers’ constitutional programme. Paying arrears, providing for the wounded and their dependants, and protecting soldiers from enforced service abroad also still remained a low priority.

Eight troopers had petitioned Fairfax to restore the original Council of the Army, with its regimental Agitators. The response was to court-martial five and subject them to the painful punishment called ‘riding the wooden horse’. The civilian Richard Overton, who for once was not in prison, greeted this with a celebrated pamphlet likening the soldiers to foxes cruelly hunted down by beagles. Alone among the Leveller leaders, Overton approved the trial and execution of the King; he called it the finest piece of justice that was ever had in England.

A month later, part of Lockyer’s troop was stationed in Bishopsgate. Radicals among them were already fired up, as the planned expedition to Ireland gave them a focus. The Levellers believed that the native Irish Catholics had the same right to their own land and to self-determination as the English — an opinion in which they were virtually isolated. Their ideals forbade travelling across international boundaries. Soldiers saw themselves as volunteers who could only be sent abroad with their own consent. Cromwell’s intended expedition was gunpoint imperialism. The Levellers believed that any man might refuse to obey commands that were incompatible with his ideas of reason and justice.

When they were ordered to leave their quarters, thirty of Whalley’s men seized their colours and barricaded themselves into the Bull Inn in Bishopsgate Street. When their captain tried to carry off the flag, Lockyer and others hung onto it. Colonel Whalley arrived on the scene to be told that the mutineers only wanted their arrears, to pay for their quarter before they left London. Money was promised, therefore, though not enough. A large crowd of civilians gathered and threatened a riot, but were dispersed by loyal soldiers. Next morning Fairfax and Cromwell turned up. Lockyer and fourteen others were arrested. In their subsequent trial, six were condemned to death, of whom Fairfax pardoned five. Lockyer was picked out as the ringleader.

A group of women with radical sympathies had petitioned for the release of the four civilian Levellers. ‘We were instructed’, said Anne Jukes, by now a veteran of such demonstrations, ‘to go home and wash dishes.’ Gideon heard the anger in her voice and saw Lambert cringing. We answered back that because of the war, we
have
no dishes!’

Robert Lockyer was brought to St Paul’s Churchyard to face a regimental firing squad. Gideon went there in sympathy, though he could hardly bear to watch. If he had stayed in the army, this could so easily have been him.

Lockyer was twenty-three. His brave departure was deeply moving. He declared he was not afraid to look death in the face and regretted that he was to die for so small a thing as a dispute over pay, after fighting eight long years for the freedom and liberties of his country. As the firing party lined up, heckled by Lockyer’s supporters, the grandees were terrified that this mutiny might lead to a popular uprising in the City.

Disdaining a blindfold, Lockyer stared out the six musketeers. He reminded them they had all fought together for a common aim. He willed them to spare him, as his brothers in arms, saying that their obedience to superior orders would not acquit them of murder. They shuffled with unease. Gideon saw with miserable sympathy that the troubled men could well refuse their duties. He remembered how he had thought at Colchester that, if chosen, he would cheerfully have joined the firing squad that shot Lucas and Lisle. Here, he was in agony for the musketeers. He knew this was wrong. But he saw, too, that the grandees had no other course. There was no solution to the impasse. The Leveller movement was unravelling.

Then Colonel Okey, who was said to have already lost his temper at the court martial, angrily distributed Lockyer’s coat, boots and belt amongst the squad. Being soldiers, booty won them over. In his shirt, Lockyer prayed his last prayers and gave the appointed signal by raising both arms. Immediately he crumpled beneath the bullets.

At Lockyer’s funeral, which Gideon attended, three thousand people followed the hearse, walking in total silence from Smithfield, through the City, to the New Church at Moorfields. On the coffin lay a naked sword and bunches of bloodstained rosemary. Sea-green ribbons were worn by mourners. Six trumpets sounded a knell. Lockyer’s horse, draped in mourning, was led behind the coffin — a privilege normally reserved to a commander-in-chief. As the Leveller news-sheet, the
Moderate,
pointed out, this was a remarkable tribute for a private trooper.

A month later more trouble flared. Twelve hundred men, who had been assembled for Ireland, mutinied. As they camped at Burford in Oxfordshire, Fairfax and Cromwell mounted a surprise night attack. Resistance was brief. Several mutineers were killed. Most either surrendered or fled without much bloodshed, the rest being imprisoned in Burford Church for four days. Three ringleaders were shot against the church wall. For his part at Burford, Colonel Okey received a curious reward: he was made a Master of Arts of Oxford University.

Parliamentary forces crushed a further uprising which William Thompson, a friend and protégé of Lilburne, had inspired. Again the rebels were routed, with Cornet Thompson dying in a desperate action near Wellingborough. Military unrest then faded. By August Cromwell finally embarked for Ireland with the soldiers he needed. The civilian Levellers were still in jail, their enormous outpouring of pamphlets about to dribble to a close. Their supporters declined in disappointment.

Some took up more radical beliefs. As Lambert struggled to come to terms with life after the civil war, Anne sought refuge in a completely different community. She joined a group who were calling themselves True Levellers.

One day Gideon came home from the print shop and found his brother in a state of outraged hysteria. ‘My wife has run off with some other man!’

‘Calm yourself,’ urged Gideon, relieved that he knew Robert Allibone had been working quietly at the shop all day. From conversations with Anne, Gideon realised where she had really gone and why. ‘Your wife has a group of friends who say the world is a common treasury. They say that if the people band together in self-sufficient communities, the ruling class must either join in or starve because there will be no labourers for hire. Meanwhile the common people can support themselves and enjoy true liberty.’

‘She has run away to anarchy!’

‘No, she has run away to St George’s Hill in Surrey snapped Gideon. ‘She has gone to plant beans, carrots and parsnips.’

Lambert threw himself across the kitchen table, with his head in his hands. ‘Then I would rather she was an adulteress!’ he decided bitterly.

To be a Royalist in the Commonwealth — whether by belief or because you were your husband’s wife — had serious disadvantages. Sittings of the House of Commons were full of debates about Delinquents: how to secure their estates or extract their fines, and whether to execute, exile or pardon them. It was a time of retribution — but also a time when many Royalists came home and buckled down to living as best they could under the new Commonwealth. Not so Orlando Lovell. For the next six months after the King’s execution, his wife never heard a word from him.

Then, at the beginning of June, Juliana was surprised by a visitor. As she returned home from a nearby farm, bearing the kitchen staples of milk, cream and eggs, she saw a lone horseman ride up to the house. He had bulky baggage packs strapped behind him, and was dressed in a plain suit buttoned to the neck like a respectable traveller, yet she could see he was heavily armed with a sword, pistols hung at his saddle, plus a poleaxe and what could be a musket-barrel protruding from his pack. Wide-topped riding boots and a broad-brimmed hat with an ostrich plume spoke of his being, not a wandering minister or land agent, but a cavalier. From his build and demeanour, it was not Lovell. Lovell never looked furtive either; this man kept looking back behind him anxiously.

Juliana felt extreme alarm. She had left Tom and Val playing in the orchard; she was afraid they would have heard hoofbeats and might run to investigate. As she approached cautiously, the rider noticed her; he dismounted, exclaiming, ‘Juliana!’

When he swept off his hat and made a gallant bow, she saw his red hair. It was Edmund Treves. He seemed as startled as she was.

Juliana hurried him indoors. The boys came in and were greeted. Tom thought he remembered Edmund from their trip to Hampshire. Val asked his usual question: Are you my father?’

They laughed it off. ‘No, Valentine, this is your
god
father.’

Juliana sat Edmund down and produced food for everyone, reserving her curiosity until a quieter moment. The boys accepted her warning that Edmund was exhausted by travel, so eventually she persuaded them to go to bed. As she tucked the children in, both were highly excited, hoping that the arrival of a cavalier — any cavalier — meant their father might also come. Juliana had curiously mixed feelings.

She made preparations for her guest, moving her own things from her room. She would sleep with the boys, while Edmund could take her bed. She had no other space to give him.

When she went downstairs she could tell he had been weighing up how frugally she lived in this tiny dwelling: her lack of possessions, how carefully she had to measure out food, the cheap wooden bowls she served it in. More realistic than he would have been once, Edmund did not waste time on naïve expressions of horror, but simply asked curtly, Are you managing?’

‘By the skin of my teeth.’

‘Your lads look healthy’

‘They are thriving. They have never known any different, not that they can remember … They long to see Orlando. Any visitor raises their hopes.’ Juliana let her despair show as she relaxed with Edmund at her kitchen hearth. ‘I have a little parlour, or we can talk here with the pans bubbling. This is where I often sit once the light goes. The fire gives some comfort on lonely evenings.’

Edmund inclined his head and stayed put. Perhaps he realised that if they moved to the parlour they would have to carry their chairs with them.

Juliana quietly let herself enjoy the luxuries of adult company and old friendship. Edmund Treves must be in his late twenties now. It was seven years since he was a witness at her wedding and over three since Juliana last saw him, in the gloomy months after Naseby before Lovell took her to Pelham Hall.

Had Edmund aged? After spotting only old scars, Juliana decided he had merely become much quieter. Had she? Edmund would be too polite to say.

She braced herself. ‘Have you brought me bad news, Edmund?’

He looked surprised. Juliana now became certain that Edmund Treves had not expected to discover her here — and he was deep in some trouble of his own. In her usual frank way, she tackled her suspicions: ‘I suspect you have been in this little house before, my friend. You lived here with my secretive husband, while he was stirring up rebellion in Kent. Tell me the truth, Edmund,’ she said sternly. ‘Was Lovell here, and were you with him?’

Edmund’s brow cleared. He obediently confessed what she had already worked out: Lovell and a group of men had stayed there last year. Edmund was recruited to join them. Lovell had been made a colonel and, using Sir Lysander Pelham’s money, raised a troop for the rebellion. ‘You must have known!’ marvelled Edmund, still something of an innocent. ‘Lovell, of course, had the house as your dowry — I believe he found it somewhat smaller than we once supposed!’

‘This house’, Juliana returned crisply, ‘was my
father’s
property. Still, Papa died at Colchester so Lovell can come back here and lord it as soon as he likes … If he still lives?’ she tried out again on Edmund.

He gave her a swift, sweet smile, eager as always to dispel anxiety for her. ‘Oh be sure he does. I saw him alive in January’

‘Tell me!’ Juliana ordered. ‘Go back to the beginning.’

In 1648, Lovell and his troop had assembled here. They took part in the Kent fighting, and were driven out of Maidstone by Fairfax. After reconnoitring at Rochester, where many men deserted them, a large group followed Lord Norwich towards London, but Lovell peeled off from the old commander. He had despised Norwich’s son, the debauched Lord Goring, though Goring at least could fight when he was sober; the professional Lovell would not take orders from an ancient nobleman who had never engaged in war. He and Treves went with a group that captured the castles at Walmer, Sandwich and Deal, castles which guarded the naval anchorage called the Downs. Fairfax left a Parliamentary force to besiege them. Eventually, while Fairfax was on the other side of the Thames attempting to take Colchester, the Prince of Wales appeared off the coast with a little fleet. Prince Charles tried to relieve the castles, to build a bridgehead through which England could be invaded. His attempt at an amphibious landing with fifteen hundred men was repulsed by stiff enemy opposition. However, Lovell and Treves broke out and managed to get themselves aboard one of the ships.