Take Courage (49 page)

A Commission was appointed by the Parliament to bring the King to trial; Lord Fairfax, again, accepted nomination upon it, hoping to moderate its course. But after the first two or three sittings he perceived that the most of its members meant, not merely to try, but to execute the King; as soon as he found this, he stayed away.

All this I heard many years later, when we visited Lord Fairfax in his old age. We heard then too of the King's trial, of how when Lord Fairfax's name was called in court as one of the Commissioners, a voice cried out:

“He has more wit than to be here!”

And of how, when the King was required to answer to the charge in the name of the Parliament and good people of England, the same voice cried out:

“No, nor half the people!”

There was a stir in the court, and an officer went up into the gallery whence the voice came, to demand silence. But he stuttered and blushed and backed away when he got there, for the voice was the voice of Lady Fairfax.

I always smile to myself, in spite of the sadness of the occasion, when I think of this; the action is so in keeping with the character of Lady Fairfax—I can see her, hear her, in the performing of it.

But if Lord Fairfax stayed away, Cromwell pushed the trial on, and so Charles Stuart, the Chief Delinquent, the Man of Blood, was tried and condemned and executed.

John, in later days, talked much of this matter to Lord Fairfax, who said he had deeply considered an armed attempt to stop the execution—his own regiment would have followed him anywhere on any errand—but then he saw such an attempt would merely cause useless bloodshed, and desisted. He exerted himself to get the execution postponed, hoping that time would calm the fanatics' passions, but his attempts were fruitless; the act which he abhorred took place.

Well, I have read and heard much of Charles's execution. I have read paeans of joy, from the fanatics of our party; I have read, later, howls of execration, exaltation of the King
into a blessed martyr, from the party of the King's son. I have read about Charles's blue silk shirt, and his princely demeanour, and his Bishop, and his Bible; I have seen the place of his execution; I have heard how Lord Fairfax, going to transact Army business in Whitehall that day, met the King's coffin covered with a black pall, and started and stammered at the sight. But to me, mention of the King's execution brings to my mind first of all this picture: old Giles sobbing with his head down on the kitchen table, and then lifting his faded old face to me with the tears thick on it, and wailing:

“I will never cut hair or beard again! They have killed my King. I will never cut my beard again, Penninah!” wept the old man bitterly, over and over, and would not be comforted.

A few months later, Parliament enacted that England should henceforth be a Commonwealth, a Free State, governed by Parliament alone, without any King or House of Lords. This act should have been the crown of all our hopes, a noble triumph of freedom, the beginning of a better life; but for me it was spoiled—it seemed drenched in the King's unnecessary blood and old Giles's tears.

Violence breeds violence; set an example, and it will be followed.

Cromwell and his friends beheaded King Charles for not being a republican; barely a quarter of the year had passed before some parts of the army violently mutinied against Cromwell and his friends for not being republican enough. These men, “Levellers” they called them, desired to have perfect freedom, not only in politics but in goods; they wished the fruits of the earth to be shared freely by all men, thus putting all men on a common level. I own I had a kindly feeling for them, for it has ever seemed to me a bitter injustice that some of us should lie soft and others so uneasily; nay, I have even at times been hard put to it to reconcile these earthly inequalities with the excellent goodness of God. Besides, since we had taken up arms to free ourselves from persecution, we could hardly blame these men for taking up arms in a similar cause. To me it has always seemed that a man's beliefs are between himself and God, and he hath a right to live after those beliefs if he chooses, provided always that he does not break the peace. But John did not see these Levellers so; he knew the men and disliked them as contentious, brawling, fanatical peace-breakers ; moreover, I have noticed that mutiny in an army is regarded by all men, though not by women, as inexcusable, deserving only to be put down instantly and punished with death. (Few women, I think, believe in their hearts that any crime short of murder deserves death.) At this time the Royalists had stirred up the Irish to revolt, and Cromwell was to take an army into Ireland to crush them;
the men being tired of service, lots were drawn to decide which regiments were to go there, and some of those drawn were not very contented; then the doctrines of these Levellers, and pamphlets circulated amongst them called
England's New Chains Discovered
, hitting at the Parliament, worked on their discontent and struck it into flame. The opponents you have defeated, the friends you cannot satisfy, the Army looming, ready to either hand—the forces preventing peace after victory are ever the same.

This mutiny blew up in London first, and a trooper was shot for it in Paul's Churchyard; then it broke out again somewhere in the southern parts of England, Oxfordshire I think. Fairfax and Cromwell hurried thither, and caught the mutineers resting, their horses out to grass, in a little village with a church and a bridge, sloping up a steep hill. The mutineers were tried by court-martial and condemned to be shot, and three of them were shot to death, the others being placed on the leads of the church to see. Two of them, as I remember, expressed repentance, but the third made not the least acknowledgement of error; he pulled off his doublet himself, and himself bade the soldiers appointed to shoot, to do their duty, looking them in the face till they gave fire, without any show of fear. The next one brought out expressed his penitence, and Lord Fairfax pardoned him, and no more were shot, but only scolded and reduced. But this pardon did not help our poor Sarah, indeed it made her more bitter, I believe; for her Denton was the last of the three Corporals shot, the one who stripped his own doublet and stared unwinkingly at the soldiers as they fired.

“Black Tom shot him to death!” wailed Sarah to me, when she had heard the sad story from one of the husband's friends who returned wounded to Bradford later that year. “Why didn't he begin pardoning 'em one sooner? Why did he shoot my lad? Him that's fought all these seven years—Black Tom knew him well enough! Why pardon the next man and shoot my lad?”

I could find nothing to say to this; for it seemed to me that very likely that
next man
owed his pardon and his
life to Sarah's husband. I imagined Lord Fairfax standing by with a stern set face, hating the executions but setting a check on the natural workings of his heart. And then one of the doomed Corporals is Denton, a Yorkshireman, a man of Bradford, who had fought for the cause, as Sarah said, for seven long years. John had often told me how tender-hearted the Lord General was to those of Yorkshire birth; when he went over the General's accounts, he said, with him each week, he was often moved to smile at the many entries of charities to Yorkshire folk he found there.
To an old Yorkshire man, four pence,
John would read out:
to a poor woman from Yorkshire, two shillings
. The General would sit through this with his colour a little raised and his eyelids down; and at the end, sometimes he would pass these entries stiffly by without a word, sometimes he would laugh and say: “Shouldst s-s-sew up my pockets, Jack, when thou hear'st a voice from Yorksh-sh-ire.” And this same General saw Denton brought out and shot; his hearty Yorkshire voice would sound no more. Yes, I think the next Corporal owed his life to Denton. But I did not say this to Sarah; it could bring her no lightening of her pain, but rather make it a heavier burden.

I remember as I left her cottage, where I had been to console her when we heard the news, it was just the time when the Grammar School loosed, and as I walked down Church Bank and crossed the beck I saw my Chris at play. He was running along the top of a somewhat dilapidated wall, five or six feet high, which bounded the school; when he reached the space of the gateway he sprang in the air, so that my heart turned over to see him; however, he came down nimbly on the wall the other side. His head was up, his red-gold hair tossing, he was laughing and somehow sparkling all over his face, and a dozen or so other lads were running along below him, shouting up admiringly. One or two tried to imitate him, climbed up the wall and ran along bravely enough, and even hurled themselves across the gateway, but they wavered and scrambled, none was so sure-footed, so full of grace and fire, as he. Chris
saw me from afar, for his eyes were as keen as a hawk's; he waved with a gallant air but he did not come to me, continuing along the wall round the corner of the school, instead.

I was half-way up Little Holroyd Lane when he overtook me, coming springing up the hill with his straight slender body poised on a light and daring foot. He thrust his hand into the crook of my arm and then took it away again, which was very like my Chris, for he was always something wild in his ways and liked not to be chained down. He could not endure caresses, save from me, and withdrew himself courteously but decidedly if any dared to lay a hand—and many did, for its rich gold drew them—on his head. For this reason he was at odds with Sarah, who would have doted on him if he would have let her. He walked along beside me contentedly now, however, kicking up the fallen leaves in a manner very detrimental to his shoes—for which I did not rebuke him—and whistling in a very clear pure tone.

“What hast learned at school to-day, Chris?” said I playing the mother.

“Oh—well—I don't know. Arithmetic, I think,” said Chris. “No—'twas some kind of Latin.”

“Chris, Chris!” said I, laughing.

Chris laughed too, a clear golden peal; then, suddenly seeing one of the Little Holroyd sheepdogs, a big curly grey-and-white animal with long hair in its eyes, peering through the hedge at us, he shouted and sprang towards it; in another minute the pair were rushing up and down the field, the big dog barking and Chris laughing, both very joyously. My son returned to me again at the turning into The Breck, flushed and breathless, and at once began an account, very serious and detailed, of a marbles match he had played that day in the forenoon, in which he had won four marbles. He took them out of his pocket to show me

“But there are only three, Chris,” said I.

He flushed and bounded off into the laithe—to see the milking, he called over his shoulder, but truly, as I guessed,
to escape telling me he had given away the fourth marble. He had a very generous, tender heart, and was apt to give away his possessions—too apt, Sam said once, scolding him—to those less favoured by fortune than himself.

“Charity is a duty,” said Thomas gravely, defending him.

“Aye,” said Sam: “but there's reason in all things, Thomas.”

At both these remarks Chris screwed up his nose in a derisive grimace, as if he had tasted a sour apple.

Our two elder lads were growing fast towards manhood. Thomas was now a tall dark serious youth; he had gained strength and put on weight during the last two years, and had a fine earnest young face, not handsome, but not without dignity. He went off to Cambridge this year or early next, I do not quite remember; he became a student at Clare Hall under David, and David was very well pleased indeed with his progress. He studied with far more than ordinary industry, said David, and had a capacious soul, of admirable natural parts, which if well cultivated would make him into a very accurate and wide-ranging scholar. John took great pride and joy in Thomas, who was—as I realised now though I had forgotten it, David seeming so much a member of The Breck family—the first Thorpe to attend a University. From the first we destined him, as indeed he destined himself, for the ministry, and he went towards that goal unerringly.

Sam too, though only in his early teens as yet, was such a big lad, so shrewd and so scrawny, and with his voice broken and a grown-up manner of talking, that he seemed ready to go out into the world if that were planned for him. He became urgent with his father about this time to apprentice him to some cloth merchant in York or London, especially London; and when John asked me hesitatingly what I thought of the project, I supported it. Not that I wished to lose Sam, God knows. It is hard for a mother to part from any of her children, and I was especially sorry for Sam to go. He was so brisk and hearty, there was such
a lively jesting air about him; though an honest decent virtuous lad enough, he enjoyed the pleasures of life and was not afraid to say so, praising anything particularly good to eat or drink which I set before him, such as my mutton pies, and noticing if I wore fresh cuffs on my dress. Besides, Sam and I had been very near and dear to each other during the hard years when John was away; God knows I could never have brought us safe through those years without my Sam. But I saw it must be so; I saw he must go. I remembered how John and old Mr. Thorpe used to get across with each other in the old days when John was growing to manhood and taking the cloth business on himself, and I saw it would be the same with Sam and John. Already Sam had notions of his own about cloth and its marketing; already he was apt to say: “But, Father, that was before the war; 'tis not so now.” Sam was apt, too, to recount things which had happened during the war, himself and his mother being the actors therein, while John was away—it was all in the innocence of his fresh young heart, most surely, yet I thought I saw a shade of jealousy sometimes cross his father's face.

So I let Sam go, for his good and John's; he was a lad would marry and settle young, I judged, and always be well able to take care of himself and stand on his own feet. John found two good openings for him with merchants, one in London and one in York, and gave him his choice; Sam chose London, rather to my surprise. I had thought he would prefer to stay in Yorkshire, he being very fond of his own place and apt to scoff at folk with different manners and speech; indeed I believe he chose London largely because Lord Fairfax was there. If it were so, he was fated to meet disappointment. However, at the time he did not know this. He was apprenticed to a merchant in Blackwell Hall, and went off with the London carrier very cheerfully—after giving us all a hearty kiss and running back to give me and Chris another—vowing that he would soon be a merchant himself, and sell all his father's cloth for a very high price, and wear a furred gown. He took one
of Lord Fairfax's boots with him, very carefully wrapped, but as a great favour left us the other.