Philippa Carr - [Daughters of England 06]

by The Love Child

“He did not mention his name.”

  “So now James the Second is King of England.”

  “God help us, yes.”

  “Carleton, you will not become involved. You will stay here in the country.”

  “My dear Arabella, you know me better than that.”

  “Does all this mean nothing to you? Your home, your family … ?”

  “So much,” he answered, “that I shall protect it with my life if need be.”

  They seemed unaware of me. I turned away and left them. He was comforting her, easing her fears. But I knew him well. He was a man who, when he had made up his mind that a cause was right, would stop at nothing to work for it. He had been the one who had stayed in England during the Commonwealth to work for the return of the King. He had lived in the midst of his enemies, posing as a Roundhead, he, the greatest Royalist of them all.

  He had risked his life every minute of the day. He would do it again.

  I was very uneasy.

  We knew little peace from that moment. My mother went about the house like a pale ghost. My father was often at Court. I noticed how nervous my mother was becoming. She was startled every time we heard the sound of horses’ hoofs in the courtyard.

  We learned that the new King had heard Mass openly in the Queen’s chapel. The Quakers sent a deputation to him in which they testified their sorrow in the death of Charles and their loyalty to the new King. The wording of the petition was significant.

  We are told that thou art not of the persuasion of the Church of England any more than we, and therefore we hope that thou will grant unto us the same liberty thou allowest thyself.

  In April the new King and Queen were crowned. James showed his leanings clearly by arresting Titus Oates, and although none felt any great sorrow about that, it did indicate that the King wished for no voice to be raised against the Catholics. Titus Oates was made to pay a fine of one thousand marks, was defrocked and condemned to be whipped publicly twice, and every year of his life to stand five times in the pillory. This would perhaps be the worst ordeal of all, as he had gathered many enemies during his reign of terror.

  It was May—a beautiful month. Twenty-five years ago Charles had come back to regain his kingdom, and for those years the country had been lulled into a sense of security and rich living. The Puritan rule was over; the meaning of life was pleasure. The King had set the example and the country was only too happy to follow. The reign had been marred only by the Popish Plot and the Rye House Plot; and both of these had been formed at the instigation of foolish, evil men.

  Now the days of soft living were over. There was a new King on the throne, and he was a Catholic King in a country which was dedicated in the main to Protestantism. It was said that Charles himself had been a Catholic; if he had been, he had also been too wise to show it openly. James had no such cynical wisdom, and in that beautiful month of May the menacing clouds hung over our house.

  My father said quite casually, but I could tell he was hiding his excitement, “The Duke of Monmouth has sailed from Texel with a frigate and two small vessels.”

  “So,” replied my mother blankly, “he is coming to England.”

  My father nodded.

  “He will not be such a fool …” she began.

  My father said: “He is the King’s son. Many say Charles was married to Lucy Walter. Most important of all, he will stand for the Protestant cause.”

  “Carleton!” she cried, “you will not …”

  “My dear,” he answered very soberly, “you may be sure that I shall do what I consider best for us all.”

  He would say no more than that. But he was waiting. And we knew that one day the summons would come.

  It was nearly three weeks later when it did.

  Monmouth had landed at Lyme in Dorset and was appealing to his friends to join him. He was going to make an attempt to take the throne from James.

  On the day my father left for the West Country a Bill of Attainder was issued against the Duke and a reward of five hundred pounds offered to anyone who could bring him to justice, dead or alive.

  My mother was inconsolable.

  “Why did he have to do this!” she cried. “This will be civil war. Why do we have to take sides? What does it matter to me what King is on the throne?”

  I said: “It matters to my father.”

  “Does it matter more than his home … his family?”

  “He was always a man for causes,” I reminded her.

  She nodded, and a bitter smile touched her mouth. I knew she was thinking of her arrival here when she had come with her first husband—Edwin’s father—and how she met my father, who was then living at the utmost risk … for a cause.

  “Monmouth will never succeed,” she said vehemently, “I know it.”

  “And I know,” I assured her, “that my father is a man who will win through.”

  It was a grain of comfort … nothing more. There was little we could do but wait. It was then that she gave me the family journals to read and I learned so much about her and him that I was filled with a new tenderness towards them both.

  News came from the West Country. Monmouth had taken Taunton and it seemed that the West was ready to declare for him. Flushed with victory, he had issued a counter proclamation to that of the King, offering five thousand pounds for the head of King James and declaring Parliament a seditious assembly.

  “It was the braggart in him,” said my mother. He was young and reckless. He might be Charles’s son but he would never be the man his father had been.

  “How can your father! How can he? Monmouth is doomed to failure. He has failure written all over him. I pray to God to guard your father.”

  There was a jubilant message from my father. Monmouth had been proclaimed King in Taunton and was marching on Bristol.

  We heard later that he did not reach Bristol, as the King’s army was approaching. So he went back to Bridgwater and there prepared for the great battle.

  My father wrote to us on the eve of the battle and sent a messenger to us.

  Be of good heart. Ere long there will be a new King on the throne and though his name will be James he will not be James Stuart. This will be James Scott, King of England.

  Reading the letter my mother grew angry.

  “How foolish of him … to write thus. The risk he runs! Oh, Priscilla, I fear for him. I fear so much.”

  I repeated my belief that he would always win through. “Whatever happens, he will be all right. I know it.”

  She smiled wanly. “He always got what he wanted,” she agreed.

  The outcome of that fateful battle of Sedgemoor is well known. What chance had Monmouth against the King’s forces led by the Earl of Faversham and his second in command, John Churchill? Monmouth’s army consisted of rustics and men such as my father who, for all their bravery and dedication, were not professional soldiers.

  Monmouth’s army was easily defeated and Monmouth himself, seeing the day was lost, was more intent on preserving his own life than standing to fight with those who had so loyally supported him.

  Many people had been taken prisoner—among them my father.

  We were stunned, although my mother had been expecting disaster ever since the death of the King, but that our pleasant lives should be suddenly so devastated was something we found it hard to accept.

  The news grew worse. My father was imprisoned in Dorchester, and when my mother heard that the Lord Chief Justice, Baron George Jeffreys, would preside at the trial, she was overcome by a frenzy of grief.

  “He is a wicked man,” she cried. “He is cruel beyond belief. I have heard such tales of him. And your father will be at his mercy. He said at the time of his appointment that he could not understand why Jeffreys had been given the post. Charles disliked him. He once said he had no learning, no sense, no manners and more impudence than ten carted streetwalkers. I know he opposed the appointment for a long time. It was a sign of his weakening strength that he at length gave way. Oh, I
am so afraid. He hates men like your father. He envies them their good looks, their breeding and their boldness. He will have no mercy. There is nothing he enjoys more than condemning a man to death.”

  My mother’s grief was more than I could bear. I kept thinking of wild plans to rescue my father. The thought of his being herded into prison with countless others was horrifying.

  Thomas and Christabel came to see us as soon as they heard the news; they were genuinely grieved. Thomas had a grain of comfort to offer. “Jeffreys is a greedy man,” he said. “It is hinted that he will be lenient in return for some profit. They say he is hoping to make a small fortune out of these assizes, for there are some rich people involved.”

  “Then there is a chance!” cried my mother.

  “It would have to be done very tactfully and he would want a good deal, I daresay.”

  “I would give everything I have,” she replied fervently.

  Clearly the Willerbys had raised her spirits, for she came to my room that night. She looked very frail and there were dark shadows under her eyes. She stood against the door and I longed to comfort her, for I knew that without him her life would not be worth living.

  She said: “I have made up my mind. I shall leave for the West Country tomorrow.”

  “Do you think it possible to bribe this judge?”

  “It is obviously possible and I am going to do it.”

  “I shall come with you,” I answered.

  “Oh, my dearest child,” she cried, “I knew you would.”

  “We will make our preparations early in the morning,” I said, “and leave just as soon as we are ready.”

  What followed is like a nightmare to me—and still is.

  We went by stagecoach, which seemed the easiest way. It was a sombre journey and at the inn where we rested there was constant talk of what was being called the Monmouth Rebellion. The name of Judge Jeffreys was spoken in low whispers. It was clear that everyone pitied his victims.

  It was said that he not only passed the harshest sentences which he could, but he did so with relish and could, with his wicked tongue, turn innocence into guilt.

  As we approached the west, the mist grew more intense. Monmouth’s army had been active only in Dorset and Somerset, and the prisoners were all judged in those counties.

  Jeffreys, with his lieutenants, was in his element. He delighted in his grisly work. There should be no delay once a man was sentenced. In twenty-four hours from his condemnation he was swinging on a gallows or suffering whatever the bloodthirsty judge had decreed for him.

  “Oh, God,” prayed my mother, “let us get there in time.”

  I think perhaps I pitied her more than I did my father. If he were sentenced, his death would come quickly. She would be haunted by the tragedy for the rest of her days. She was almost demented with grief. We would save him, I promised her. We must. It was not impossible and she must not allow herself to think so. We were going to get there in time. We were going to give everything we had if necessary to save my father’s life.

  It was so irksome for her when we stayed in the inns on the way. She would have liked to drive through the night.

  As we came nearer to our destination, so did the horror increase. The judge, whose name was on every lip, and was spoken of with disgust and repugnance, had ordered that it should be brought home to the people what happened to traitors. Often we passed limbs hanging on trees and corpses of hanged men. The smell of death permeated the air.

  “What shall we do?” demanded my mother. “What can we do when we get there?”

  At an inn one night they were talking about the case of Lady Lisle whose crime had been to give food to two of Monmouth’s followers who had escaped from the battlefield.

  Jeffreys’ manner towards the poor woman had been so cruel even for him that the case was being discussed everywhere.

  He had a way, this judge, of bullying his juries into giving the verdict he wanted. If they seemed inclined to be lenient he would fix them with a glare from the most wicked eyes in the world so that they shivered in their seats and wondered what case would be brought against them if they did not do the judge’s bidding.

  This poor lady was called a traitor; she should suffer the death of traitors. He sentenced her to be burned to death.

  This was too much to be accepted. Moreover, it was being said that the harshness shown to Lady Lisle came at the instigation of a higher source, for she was the widow of John Lisle, who had been one of the judges at the trial of Charles the First.

  This seemed like the King’s revenge on the murderers of his father, and friends of Lady Lisle were pointing out that the lady herself was guilty only of two things—giving food to men who happened to be flying from Sedgemoor and being the wife of a man who, with others, had condemned Charles the First.

  James should consider. What would his brother Charles have done? He would never have allowed a woman to be treated so.

  James was not inclined to enjoy being compared with his brother, but he did have enough sense to see that to submit a frail woman to one of the most barbaric deaths conceivable for no real crime would not redound to his credit. At the same time he wanted everyone to know that they would be ill advised to take up arms against him.

  Lady Lisle was saved from the stake to lose her head on the block.

  My mother had scarcely eaten since we left home. She was very pale and had lost weight. I was fearful for her health.

  There was more news. Monmouth had escaped to the New Forest even before the battle was over. He had hidden there for a few days but had been captured and taken to London. There he had implored the King to save his life. “For my father’s sake,” he begged. “You are my uncle. Remember that.”

  But James only remembered that Monmouth had tried to take the crown from him. There was no point in delay, he said.

  We had reached the town of Dorchester when news was brought to us of Monmouth’s death. He had deserted his army; he had cringed before the King; but once he knew that death was inevitable, he had met it bravely, affirming on the scaffold his adherence to the Church of England. It must have been a gruesome scene because the executioner struck five times before he completely severed the head and brought about the end of the Duke of Monmouth, reckless, ambitious and lacking in principle.

  At least he died a brave man.

  This was small comfort to my mother.

  We came to lodge in an inn in the ancient market town—a busy one, for through it passed the road to Devon and Cornwall. The earthworks, known as Maiden Castle, relic of four thousand years before when the land must have been little more than a forest, brought many people to look at it. But we had no thought of such matters.

  My mother, frantic with anxiety, frustrated because she had no idea how to set about the task of freeing my father, was in a desperate state, and the very night we arrived at the inn was smitten with a fever and was delirious. I was really frightened and the next morning sent for a doctor. He came and said she must rest and nothing must be done to disturb her. He gave her a potion to make her sleep.

  “You are here because you have a relative prisoner?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  The doctor shook his head sadly. “Let her sleep as long as you can. It is acute anxiety which has brought this on. I have seen much of this since our town was turned into a court and a shambles.”

  I was grateful for his sympathy. I asked myself what I should do. How could I set about this delicate task? To whom did I offer my bribe? I must not run into trouble, for there was my mother to care for.

  I was in a state of great anxiety.

  When the doctor had left I went down to the inn parlour. I wondered if I could speak to the innkeeper. There might be someone here … someone from the army, perhaps, who could help me. Edwin and Leigh were in the army. It was ironical to think that they might have been fighting against my father had they been in England.

  We had at least been saved that.

  My gr
andfather, my mother’s father, now dead, had been General Tolworthy; the Eversleighs were connected with the army, too. Yes, I decided there must be some high-ranking soldier in this town who would be ready to help me.

  I came into the inn parlour. A man was sitting there. He was in uniform, so he was a soldier and a high-ranking one. My heart beat fast. My prayers might be about to be answered.

  I said, “Good day.”

  He turned. I was looking into the face of Beaumont Granville.

  A shiver of terror ran down my spine.

  I muttered: “I’m sorry. I thought I knew you.”

  Then I turned and ran quickly up the stairs.

  I was trembling. I felt sick with fear. The nightmare was indeed growing worse.

  I looked at my mother lying there sleeping. She was pale and very still. I knelt by the bed and hid my face in the bedclothes.

  I felt very apprehensive.

  After a few moments I arose. He wouldn’t have recognized me, I assured myself. He had said nothing. I should have to be watchful now. I must keep out of his way.

  What evil fate had brought him here to Dorchester? I had not thought of his being a soldier—one of the King’s men. This town was full of soldiers.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. I must have changed since those days in Venice. No, he would not have recognized me, for I had hurried from the room almost as soon as he had looked at me.

  I sat down and thought of it all—those days in Venice, that night of the ball when he had come very near to kidnapping me, the birth of Carlotta; I thought of Harriet, lively, energetic, relishing a situation which was full of pitfalls.

  What can I do? I asked myself.

  I felt the situation was growing more and more desperate every minute.

  There was a knock at my door. I started up, crying: “Who is there?”

  It was the innkeeper.

  I opened the door and he stood there with a letter in his hand. “A gentleman asked me to give you this,” he said. I took it and said: “What gentleman?” “He is below, my lady. He awaits an answer.” “Thank you.” I shut the door and listened to his footsteps as he went down the stairs.

  For some moments I was afraid to open the letter. Then I took it to the window and read: