To keep abreast of the ‘real’ news, suppressed by the government, the Harleys tried to get hold of printed news-sheets called corantoes and of manuscript news-sheets, called separates, which reported such events as speeches in Parliament and state trials. Sixteen-year-old Ned kept Brilliana supplied with separates during the Short Parliament. But personal letters were still the main source of news. The risk that they might be intercepted encouraged writers to be circumspect, however. Brilliana warned Ned about this risk: ‘when you write by the carrier, write nothing but what any may see, for many times the letters miscarry’. Some letter-writers used codes (Charles was especially fond of them). But the practice increased both paranoia and a sense that one was surrounded by spies and foes, plotting. Brilliana was delighted to hear of the abolition of the Court of High Commission, which had been the instrument of silencing many godly ministers, but not everyone in Herefordshire or the Marches was equally delighted to see godliness return. Brampton’s own vicar, Gower, reported glumly that ‘the vulgar comfort themselves with assured confidence that the bishops will get up again. I tell you but the language of Babel’s bricklayers’, while Thomas Harley, in Brampton, reported to his brother Ned in London that ‘some men jeer and cast forth reproachful words against the Parliament, and others that might forward the work of the Parliament are very backward’.
When Parliament went into brief recess in September 1641 Robert returned to Brampton and tried to enforce the Commons’ resolution to remove all crucifixes and images from churches, not only purifying his own church at Brampton, but all those in surrounding villages. At Leintwardine he broke the windows and smashed the glass with a hammer, throwing it into the Terne ‘in imitation of King Asa 2 Chron 15:16 who threw the images into the brook Kidron’, but at Aymestrey the minister and the parishioners withstood him. Harley wrote angrily to churchwardens in Leominster asking why they had failed to take down the crosses he had seen passing the church.
For most of 1642 to 1644, Robert was away from home, serving as an MP at Westminster. In his absence his wife Brilliana took charge of the Harley estates. She disliked it when he was away because she felt miserably isolated: writing to Ned, she complained that ‘now your father is away, you know I have nobody that I can speak to’. But she knew it was her duty. Robert Harley often criticized her management: ‘what is done in your father’s estate pleases him not, so that I wish myself with all my heart in London, and then your father might be a witness of what is spent: but if your father think it best for me to be in the country, I am well pleased with what he shall think best’. This sounds submissive, but the note of anger is unmistakable.
For Brilliana her connectedness with her son became a way to imagine herself escaping from the dangers that enclosed her more and more tightly. In theory, Oxford was a world that Robert knew and she didn’t, a man’s world. Robert had been to Oxford, to Oriel College in 1597, graduating with a BA in 1599; his tutor Cadwallader Owen was a powerful godly influence on the young man. Robert was also in charge of the boys’ education, searching for a tutor for them in 1631, but they were eventually sent away to school, to Shrewsbury. Ned went up to Oxford in 1638, just before his fourteenth birthday. He went to Magdalen Hall, where the principal John Wilkinson was a solid Calvinist, and where he would be taught by another staunch Puritan, Edward Perkins. Brilliana, however, took a strong interest in Ned’s godly tutors. She was worried when William Whately died and his living became vacant; she feared they might lose the services of Mr Perkins, too, since ‘as soon as any man come to ripeness of judgement and holiness he is taken away, and so they still glean the garden of the ripe grapes and leave the sour ones behind’. She also worried, like any other mother seeing a child off to university, that he would be exposed to moral danger. She wrote in a letter, ‘now I fear you will both see and hear men of nobility and excellent parts of nature abandon themselves to swearing and that odious sin of drunkenness’. Robert also wrote that ‘the universities do too much abound with such pigs’. The larger world beyond the family was menacing. But it was also enticing. Brilliana’s letters betray twin yearnings; to enclose Ned in the safety of family holiness, and to catch a glimpse of his larger world through him. She sent him reams of advice and torrents of home-made medicines:
13 November 1638. I beseech the Lord to bless you with those choice blessings of his spirit, which none but his dear elect are partakers of. I have sent you some juice of liquorice, which you may keep to make use of, if you should have a cold.
17 November 1638. I am glad you find a want of that ministry you did enjoy: Labour to keep a fresh desire after the sincere milk of the word, and then in good time you shall enjoy that blessing again.
She worried all the time about Ned’s health and well-being: ‘Pray send me one of your socks, to make you new ones by’, she wrote; and ‘You did well to take some balsam; it is a most sovereign thing, and I purpose, if it please God, to write you the virtues of it’. Sometimes she was tentative: ‘Dear Ned, if you would have anything, send me word; or if I thought it a cold pie, or such a thing, would be any pleasure to you, I would send it to you. But your father says you care not for it, and Mrs Pierson tells me when her son was at Oxford, and she sent him such things, he prayed her that she would not’ (14 December 1638). But at heart she was a generous provider. She also kept her husband supplied, writing that ‘I have sent your father a snipe pie and a teal pie, and a collar of brawn, or else I had sent you something this week’ (December 1640).
She also liked to supply spiritual food. She urged holy books on Ned, as part of their literary discussions: ‘I believe, before this, you have read some part of Mr Calvin; send me word how you like him.’ With almost every letter a present or a small piece of advice arrives: ‘I have sent you a little purse with some small money in it, all the pence I had, that you may have a penny to give a poor body and a pair of gloves; not that I think you have not better in Oxford, but that you may sometimes remember her, that seldom has you out of my thoughts.’
Ned also sent her things, including books. She wrote to thank him: ‘I thank you for The Man in the Moon. I had heard of the book, but not seen it; by as much as I have looked upon, I find it is some kind of Don Quixote. I would willingly have the French book you write me word of; but if it can be had, I desire it in French’ (30 November 1638).
The Man in the Moon was an imaginative choice. It was actually an early work of science fiction: the hero, Gonzales, is on his way home from Spain when he falls ill, and is put ashore on a desert island. Here he soon trains a pair of swans to be his servants, and eventually through the use of complex machinery they fly him to the moon, where he finds an ideal society in which there is no war, no hunger, a cure for all illnesses. This society does not lack hierarchy, however; there is a system based on height, and the king is the tallest man. There’s an element of Swiftian satire of learning, but also a critique of contemporary politics; if Ned sent his mother this book, it shows that she was herself an adventurous and curious reader, interested in unfeminine topics like political theory. It is also suggestive that Brilliana knew about Don Quixote, that great debunking of the chivalrous romances to which Charles and Henrietta and their court were so addicted.
But Brilliana was no bluestocking; she was keen on the emerging commodity culture of the late 1630s, and wanted to furnish Brampton in style. She often asked Ned to shop for her: ‘If there be any good looking glasses in Oxford choose me one about the bigness of that I use to dress me in, if you remember it … All my fruit dishes are broken; therefore good Ned, if there be any such blue and white dishes as I used to have for fruit, buy me some; they are not porcelain, nor are they of the ordinary metal of blue and white dishes’ (19 November 1639).
Another fashionable commodity was news: ‘I should be glad to hear from you how the King went to Parliament’ (23 April 1640). Brilliana didn’t only ask for news: she passed it on eagerly, showing that her choices were based on a careful attempt to keep abreast of things. She wrote
to Ned about the army gathering for the war against the Scots (3 July 1640). She liked to pass on news from others to Ned; ‘The last night I heard from your father. He saw Mr Prynne and Mr Burton come into London; they were met with 2000 horse and 150 Scotch, and the men wore rosemary that met them.’ Rosemary for remembrance.
In the end Ned did not stay at Magdalen long enough to take a degree. He left Oxford in November 1640 to witness the opening of the Long Parliament. At first his visit was prolonged because an outbreak of plague in Oxford made it risky to return to Magdalen, and then events in London proved exciting enough to make a return to Oxford seem futile. Imaginatively, and eager to hear his news, Brilliana supported his stay in London. Meanwhile the education of her younger sons became more and more problematic. The other children had a tutor, Richard Symonds, who fell in with a group of separatists in 1639 and left with his wife. They then had a schoolteacher called Mr Ballam, who was sick a good deal, so that the boys ‘lose their time very much’. Tom was ‘as busy as can be about the Parliament and holds intelligence with all that will give him true notice of things’, while Robin was restless ‘and cares not to know how it goes in the Parliament’. He preferred the company of the servants, to his mother’s dismay. He was also subject to fits, possibly epileptic. Brilliana tried to take the boys’ education in hand herself, making them do Latin translation, but managed to persuade them to do ‘but a little’. She did try sending them to school with the curate William Voyle, at nearby Llanfairwaterdine, but they had to come home almost at once because the food was uneatable. Eventually, by May 1642 she suggested the boys be sent to Oxford. Luckily, Robert Harley refused, for they would have had a difficult time in what was shortly to become the Royalist capital. Instead, Ned joined the forces of Sir William Waller in May 1643, and persuaded Brilliana to let Robin join too in June. The younger children – Tom, Dorothy, and Margaret, and their cousin Edward Smith – stayed at Brampton Bryan.
Brilliana was delighted by the fall of the bishops, especially Laud: in March 1641 she wrote gleefully: ‘I am glad the bishops begin to fall and hope it will be with them as it was with Haman; when he began to fall, he fell indeed.’ Brilliana is identifying the Protestant English Church with the Jews, the Chosen People, and perhaps with Esther, their saviour. Odd though it may sound, she may be thinking of embroidery; she was a keen needlewoman, and for many gentry women embroidery allowed a self-expression not really possible elsewhere. Judith, Esther and Susanna were all favourite Civil War subjects; women could see themselves as saviours of their nations. Later she wrote, ‘I much rejoice that it is come so far that the bishops and all their train is voted against. I trust in God they will be enacted against, which I long to hear, and I pray God take all those things away which have so long offended’ (5 June 1641). When finally reform came to Hereford, she was delighted: ‘they have turned the table in the cathedral [so it became a plain communion table turned west-east] and taken away the copes and basins and all such things [Laudian innovations]. I hope they begin to see that the Lord is about to purge his church of all such inventions of men’ (17 February 1642). She was also pleased by the fall of Strafford, but thought he ‘died like a Seneca [a righteous pagan] but not like one who had tasted the mystery of godliness’ (21 May 1641).
Yet despite all this, Brilliana typifies the moderate Parliamentarians who hoped that the king might be persuaded to listen to Parliament. While asking Robert to get some arms and powder for local Puritans (23 April 1642) she also wrote piously that ‘the Lord in his mercy make them one, and in his good time incline the king to be fully assured in the faithful counsel of the parliament’ (29 April 1642).
Despite her close-knit immediate family, Brilliana’s wider circle of kin was divided: her brother-in-law Pelham wrote to her that he had gone to York to join the king. ‘I think now that my dear sister was taken away that she might not see that which would grieve her heart’, she wrote despondently on 17 May 1642. She was also divided from her locale, which was largely Royalist. Frightening demonstrations began to happen in Herefordshire. ‘At Ludlow they set up a maypole, and a thing like a head on it, and so they did at Croft, and gathered a great many about it, and shot at it in derision of roundheads. At Ludlow they abused Mr Buge’s son very much, and are so insolent that they durst not leave their house to come to the fast. I acknowledge I do not think myself safe where I am, I lose the comfort of your father’s company, and am in but little safety, but that my trust is in God’, she wrote on 4 June 1642. At the county fair, where Brilliana had to go to sell some horses, she was again afraid: ‘I thank God it has passed quietly, but I was something afraid, because they are grown so insolent. I hope this night will be as quiet as the day has been’, she wrote on 11 June 1642. Evidently Robert told her not to worry so, because she wrote obediently (but without agreement) to Ned on 20 June 1642, ‘Since your father thinks Herefordshire as safe as any other country, I will think so too; but when I considered how long I had been from him, and how this country was affected, my desire to see your father, and my care to be in a place of safety, made me earnestly desire to come up to London. But since it is not your father’s will, I will lay aside that desire.’ So far she wrote as Brilliana the good wife, but as she continues she reminds Ned forcibly of the precariousness of her position. Immediately afterwards she tells the story of a godly preacher: ‘This day Mr Davis came from Hereford, where he went to preach, by the entreaty of some in the town, and this befell him: when he had ended his prayer before the sermon, which he was short in, because he was 10th to tire them, two men went out of the church and cried “pray God bless the King; this man does not pray for the king”. Upon which, before he read his text, he told them, that ministers had that liberty, to pray before or after the sermon for the church and state. For all that, they went to the bells and rang, and a great many went to the churchyard and cried “roundhead”. In the afternoon they would not let him preach; so he went to the cathedral. Those that had any goodness were much troubled and wept much.’
More fears were aroused by 24 June 1642: ‘Mr William Littleton being at Ludlow last week, as he came out of the church, a man came to him and looked him in the face and cried “roundhead”. He gave the fellow a good box of the ear, and stepped to one that had a cudgel and took it from him and beat him soundly. They say, they are now more quiet in Ludlow.’ And Brilliana knew that some of her neighbours were on the opposite side. The committed Royalist Sir William Croft, she wrote, came to see me: he never asked how your father did; spoke slightly, and stayed but a little. I hear that he has commanded the beacon new furnished, and new pitch put into it. I have sent to enquire after it; if it be so I will send your father word.’
Brilliana and her house at Brampton were now alone in increasingly hostile territory, as dislikes deepened into divisions, sides became visible and were chosen. Shropshire and Worcestershire, to the north of Brampton, became by degrees staunchly Royalist, while the Welsh counties in the west were also dominated by the king’s supporters. The nearest Parliamentarian garrison to Brampton was Gloucester, and although Brilliana tried to stay in touch with its commander it was too far away to give her much practical help. Parliamentarians in Herefordshire began to seek safety elsewhere. John Tombes felt that his wife and children were no longer safe: ‘the barbarous rage and violence of the people so increased’.
Brilliana began to prepare for the trouble she knew was coming. She was especially offended that the people in Herefordshire and Shropshire appeared not to appreciate Robert Harley: ‘at first when I saw how outrageously this county carried themselves against your father, my anger was so up, and my sorrow, that I had hardly any patience to stay. But now, I have well considered, that if I go away I shall leave all that your father has to the prey of our enemies, which they would be glad of; so that, and please God, I purpose to stay as long as it is possible, if I live. This is my resolution, without your father contradict it. I have received this night the hamper with the powder and match, but I have not yet
the muskets, but will enquire after them’, she wrote on 2 July 1642. In two days’ time she wrote again to tell Robert by bearer that the king had sent a commission to twelve of the justices to settle the militia. To Ned she wrote despondently that ‘Your father they are grown to hate … My dear Ned, I am not afraid, but sure I am, that we are a despised company.’ By 8 July she was reporting still more militia activity: ‘they threaten poor Brampton’, she wrote, ‘but we are in the hand of our God, who I hope will keep us safe’. She packed up the plate to send it to Robert, characteristically putting in a cake for him, too, but on 9 July 1643 she added, ‘I do long almost to be from Brampton.’ Ned and Robert sent more arms; she sent more plate, carefully telling the carrier it was a cake so it would not be stolen. To get an idea of affairs, she sent Samuel to Hereford. He did not bring back good news: ‘they all at Hereford cried out against your father, and not one said anything for him, but one man, Mr Phillips of Ledbury, said when he heard them speak so against your father, “Well”, said he, “though Sir Robert Harley be so low here, yet he is above, where he is”.’ She was worrying again. ‘My dear Ned, I cannot think I am safe at Brampton, and by no means I would have you come down.’ Even the servant she sent with a letter to Ned on 19 July was a further headache: ‘he is such a roguish boy that I dare not keep him in my house, and as little do I dare let him go into the country, lest he join with the company of volunteers, or some other such crew. I have given him no more money than will serve to bear his charges up, and because I would have him make haste and be sure to go to London.’ She ordered shot from Worcester, in secret. Her skills as a housewife, dispatching food parcels and ordering supplies, were now turned to martial purposes.
The English Civil War: A People’s History (Text Only) Page 19
