Take Courage

by Phyllis Bentley

  9

  “GOD MADE THEM AS STUBBLE”

  And as it was with us, so it was with the cause and the men who served it. They had a long hard winter, full of hunger, cold, misery, defeat; but, simply by their going on and not giving up, by their not being disheartened, the winter passed, and the cause lived.

  Well do I remember the snowy day in January when Isaac Baume, standing talking to me outside our door with our cloth over his shoulder, waiting to set off to market, told me the first piece of stirring news. Sir Thomas, he said, had been appointed by the Parliament to cross over into Lancashire and Cheshire with what force he had, to meet a great Royalist army, mostly from Ireland, which had gathered there. Not being able to get over the Pennine hills by the usual West Riding road, which was barred to him by the Royalist garrisons, he had gone round through Derbyshire—though God knew how he had managed it in this weather, said Baume, for the mountains were much higher in those parts—and had got into Manchester, and all the Parliament men who could, were gathering to him.

  “They say Hodgson, who has been in hiding up Skipton way since he got exchanged, has collected a troop and slipped across to him,” said Baume.

  “John will be with them!” I exclaimed.

  “Very like,” agreed Baume, nodding.

  It was a very crisp cold day and he was much wrapped up, there was a drop of rheum at the end of his nose and his hand on his stick was red and swollen with frost, so that he did not appear a very heroic figure, but I thought I heard a wistfulness, a note of longing, in his tone.

  “You wish you were there too?” I said.

  Baume struck the ground with his stick and turned aside, not wishing to reveal his feelings by answering. But he did not go away, though Sam was skipping about in the snow, ready to start, so I waited, and after a moment Baume turned back to me.

  “’Tis said that Black Tom wept when he looked on ’em,” he muttered.

  “Looked on whom?” I asked him, puzzled.

  “Our Yorkshire lads. They were so sick and naked and haggard,” said Baume gruffly.

  I exclaimed in grief and pity. After a moment: “Mr. Baume, let us send them our next piece of cloth,” I said.

  “Why, that would be very difficult, d’you see, Mrs. Thorpe,” grumbled Baume, though from the tone of his voice I knew this was what he had been aiming at all along. “Nay, I reckon it couldn’t be done. How should we get t’cloth to Black Tom? Over t’mountains, and right to Manchester! I don’t see as it could be done.”

  “By carrier from Halifax,” I suggested.

  “Aye? And how if the Royalists there find out it’s for Black Tom?” objected Baume. “Where would piece go then, eh?”

  “You can send the cloth in care of John Thorpe,” I said. “Royalists away from Bradford won’t know his name.”

  “It might never get to him,” said Baume.

  “But it might,” said I.

  “What would be t’use of twenty or thirty yards of cloth among all them men?” objected Baume again.

  “Thirty yards more use than none,” said I. As he stumped off, grumbling, I called after him: “I will send a letter to my husband with the cloth.”

  “Look sharp and get it written, then,” Baume threw over his shoulder crossly. “Women! Letters! I reckon we’ll send one piece for nowt, and one to sell.”

  So I wrote to John. I scarcely knew how to address him, for I felt he would not wish endearments from me; so I began simply: Husband, and wrote a plain bare account of what had happened at The Breck. Christopher Was born on September 18, I told him baldly; The Breck was sacked but none of us hurt; David is a prisoner; Lister got in the hay and oats and then left us and I know not where he is; Will and Eliza have lent Isaac Baume and myself money and we are making one piece of cloth a week; at first it was hard but now we shall do well enough; Sam, if it please God, will be a clothier, and Thomas a scholar, and they send you their dear love; one piece that comes herewith is a gift to the Parliament, the other, if it may be, is for sale. That God be merciful to you and bless you, and direct you in all your ways, and give you the victory over all your enemies, is the prayer of your wife Penninah Thorpe, I wrote, and so concluded, save that I put below: Remember our humble service to Sir Thomas Fairfax. The letter was tied and sealed, and put in the pack with one of the pieces, and as soon as they were ready they were sent off by carrier from Halifax.

  For a fortnight I was strangely happy; I sang about the house, and when I chanced to see my face in the little mirror which Sam had brought me, I saw my lips had colour again and my eyes were bright. I dressed my hair more carefully, and once again rejoiced in its thickness and length instead of feeling them a trouble; I pricked my ears whenever a footstep of man or beast could be heard in the lane. All this, though I did not own it to myself, was because I hoped for a letter from John. But none came. My hope died gradually; after a month I heard myself one day scolding crossly at the children, and caught myself up, ashamed, and then I knew why I was so cross, and put aside my hope and my scolding together, and told myself my hope was vain. It was a sad and stern admission, a bitter thing to face, that my husband was either dead or would not write to me, for that the packs had gone astray I somehow could not believe. To my own disappointment was added the vexation of Isaac Baume, who grumbled and scolded so bitterly and continually about the cloth, which indeed we could ill spare, that one day I broke out at him, and in a strange harsh voice cried loudly:

  “You have lost your cloth, but I have lost my husband!”

  At this he took my hand quickly and pressed it, turning away so as not to meet my eyes, and he sniffed and pressed my hand again and dropped it and walked away; and after that I heard no more of the lost cloth.

  And then all of a sudden good news began to come so thick and fast we could scarce keep pace with it—or at least it seems so to me now; perhaps the reality was more dreary. First I heard from Will that the Parliament had ordered some commission or other to reform the University of Cambridge; so that if only David could get free, he would be able to resume his studies there. No one in Leeds knew where David was, Will added, though he had enquired diligently—which damped my spirits; but there were rumours that David with another gentleman of a scholarly turn had been taken to Selby—which slightly raised them. Then we heard, both by gossip and in print, that Sir Thomas and the other Parliamentary commanders from Lancashire had beaten the Royalist army in Cheshire totally; by the mercy of God a thaw had come in the night, with heavy pouring rain, and the river there had swollen with the melted snow and cut off parts of the Royalist army from mutual assistance, and Sir Thomas, caring nothing for the weather or anything else but the business in hand, though the battle started badly for our men, finished it well. It was after this battle, so I have heard, that the wicked man who later became General Monck, that abomination of desolation, changed sides; from being a Royalist he turned Parliamentarian—what disservice he did our cause later, alas that I should have to remember. But in those days all this was in the womb of time, and we rejoiced greatly at this victory, which cleared all Lancashire of Royalists. And then one day Isaac Baume came whooping up the lane, waving a diurnal over his head; the Scots, he said, had crossed the Tweed to our assistance, and the Earl of Newcastle had perforce marched north with the main part of his army, to meet them. Sure enough, the very next day there was drumming and mustering in Bradford, and some of the soldiers marched off to go north to accompany the Earl, thus lessening the garrison considerably. From that it seemed but a moment to the next good news—though when I consider the matter, I think it must have been about a month, for when Baume brought the diurnal about the Scots it was a raw February day, with half-melted snow on the ground and a dank mist in the air; and when Sam came rushing with the name of Mr. Hodgson it was a wild spring day, March I expect, with a wind very strong and gusty, and showers of hail sometimes, but a blue and white sky behind when they had passed, very bright and cheerful.

  “Oh, Mother, oh, Mo
ther!” cried my Sam, rushing straight up to me and burying his face against my waist. “Mr. Hodgson! Oh, Mother!”

  “What is it, love, what is it?” I said—I tried to keep my voice quiet for the child’s sake, but my heart beat fast at once, dreading bad news.

  “I’ve seen Mr. Hodgson in Halifax!” cried Sam, drawing back his head and shouting loudly up at me. “He’s an Ensign now. Some Parliament men are there—they’ve come over the hills—the garrison has run away—the Bradford garrison will run too, he hopes—my father is safe, he says, and with Sir Thomas Fairfax.”

  “Well, God be praised!” I said, and my knees trembled so that I sank to a chair. “But can it be true?” I doubted.

  “It’s true, never fear,” cried Sam. “I always knew, I always knew, Mother!” he stammered, his voice loud with excitement and his face very pale: “I always knew Sir Thomas would gain the victory in the end. How could you doubt it? Why, even Chris knows better than that! Don’t you, Chris love?” he said fondly, bending over the child and shaking his rattle which Mrs. Baume had brought him, so that Chris smiled and kicked and gurgled and Sam was pleased.

  “We are not at the end yet, Sam,” I warned him.

  “You’ll see the Royalists out of Bradford to-morrow, choose how,” contended Sam stubbornly.

  To my amazement he proved right. Next day early in the morning we heard the drums down in Bradford beating to summon the men, and a great sound of orderly shouting and marching; and then, not an hour later, from the hills behind us Halifax way, there came very faintly the same kind of orderly tramping noise, so that we paused and looked at each other. I had just taken a bite and sup to Isaac Baume in the loom-chamber, and suddenly as I stood there with the basin in my hands we heard distant singing,. and the tune was that of a psalm. Then I cried out and sprang for the door, dropping the basin, and Baume and Sam sprang after me, and Thomas downstairs already had the porch door open, and we all ran out, just as we were, right across the field and the beck and the Holroyd Hall land until we came to Great Holroyd. All the villagers were out and watching, and I noticed how they too, like us, looked pale. And then—God be praised that I saw that day!—over the brow of the hill, down Great Holroyd Lane, came the men in buff-coats, marching, ranks and ranks of them, both on foot and mounted, and as they marched they sang the sixty-eighth psalm in verse. We sang too, and waved and shouted, and some of us wept, and some fell on their knees and prayed. At the head of our soldiers rode a man I had never seen before, a handsome ginger-haired fellow with a fiery pointed face, Colonel Lambert from Malham way the people said he was, a great leader of horse, whom Sir Thomas thought very well of. Mr. Hodgson came not far behind, smiling hugely. When I saw him I could restrain myself no longer; I ran out of the crowd, so that all the people looked at me, and planted myself before him and cried out: “Is my husband safe?”

  “Aye, safe, safe!” cried Hodgson, beaming. “Safe as yet.”

  This last was a little ominous when I came to consider it, but at the time I felt only a rush of thankfulness.

  Before we reached home we heard the sounds of musketry and drums from Bradford, and knew the battle had been joined. At least, we in Little Holroyd thought of it as a battle, but I noticed that Captain Hodgson, as he soon became, though he did not correct me openly, spoke of it later as a skirmish, which I suppose is a much lesser matter. The Royalist horse engaged our men pretty closely, Captain Hodgson said, but our foot gave them such a salute with shot, as made them run. So there we were, free of the Royalist garrison, with our friends about us once again; with what feelings of relief and thankfulness we went to bed that night, I can remember now.

  Captain Hodgson most kindly came in to see us next day, on his way home to Coley for a few days’ rest, and he was able to set my mind at ease about my husband. John, he said, was close about Sir Thomas’s person, and very well esteemed; men called him Sir Thomas’s steward, and indeed he kept all the general’s accounts, public and private, gave receipts to Parliament for great sums, and disbursed the soldiers’ pay—when there was any to diburse, added Captain Hodgson, laughing. If Thomas and I were pleased about this promotion for John, Sam was in an ecstasy; he went outside and turned somersaults over and over upon the grass, alone.

  Again it seems as if but a moment passed between the freeing of Bradford and the thanksgiving ordered by the Parliament for Sir Thomas’s victory at Selby, but again it must have been a month at least, for Chris, I remember, was then cutting his teeth. Sir Thomas had orders from the Parliament to get over into Yorkshire and join his father’s forces and march north to help the Scots, and unluckily the Royalists in York got wind of this, and marched to intercept him. He routed them so totally that the Earl of Newcastle was alarmed and turned away from the Scots and marched back into Yorkshire, and the Scots followed close on his heels, and they and Sir Thomas shut him up in York. Yes, it was really spring by then, and warm, with the buds on the trees and the lambs in the fields, for I remember that, with having had a poor night of it over Chris’s teeth and the church being warm and sunny in the afternoon, I almost fell asleep during the thanksgiving sermon. But that did not mean a lack of thankfulness on my part; indeed in no place anywhere in England was the service celebrated with more true feeling for the glory of God and the excellent worth of Sir Thomas, than in Bradford. It pleased us to regard the Parliament’s order as a compliment to our county.

  “They’re beginning to take notice of our Tom up i’ London,” chuckled Isaac Baume, hobbling about from friend to friend. “Aye! They’re beginning to see we’ve got a general i’ Yorkshire.”

  And now upon an instant, as it seemed, three great Parliamentary armies were joined together, and drew a leaguer round York; there were the Scots under an Earl of theirs, there were the Fairfaxes with their Yorkshiremen, and there were the men from the Eastern counties—some Earl or other was supposed to command them too, but their true commander was Colonel Cromwell—for whose assistance Sir Thomas had been into Lincolnshire to ask. I own that, although I was only a woman and knew nothing of fighting, I felt uneasy when I heard of all these Earls, and Lord Fairfax, commanding our armies in such a great opportunity, for having seen Lord Fairfax and the Earl of Newcastle both, I had no great opinion of Earls and Lords as commanders. Such highborn folk are too much occupied with themselves and their own pretensions, I thought, to do well in an irksome and long-continued task; if only Black Tom and Colonel Cromwell—of whose exploits in the Eastern Counties the diurnals were always telling—had it in hand, or even Colonel Lambert, who had lately joined Sir Thomas’s forces, we should go better to work. However, I comforted myself with the thought that the commanders on the other side were mostly Earls as well. Indeed the Royalists had a king and a prince to command them; I never heard that the King did much in the way of fighting, but his brother Prince Rupert was much talked of as very daring and fiery in cavalry charge. But for my part I always held my tongue when he was mentioned, and withheld my assent to the general awe; for I thought that a Stuart prince might be daring in a charge indeed, but would never be shrewd in managing a whole battle. How right I was in my guess, Marston Moor and Naseby proved very well.

  It was while our three armies were thus besieging York that a piece of news reached me which brought me to my knees in thankfulness, though there was a little bitterness mingled with it too. Our former maid came up to The Breck from the Pack Horse with a letter for me, which she said the carrier had left at their inn; for my sister Penninah Thorpe at her house in Little Holroyd, I read as she held it, and I cried out with joy and snatched it from her, for the superscription was writ in David’s fine scholarly hand. A paper fell out as I unfolded the letter, which was dated from the leaguer before York. I scanned it with such joy, such eagerness! Dear Sister, I read:

  Dear Sister, It will give you joy, I believe, to hear that the recent great action of Sir Thomas Fairfax at Selby hath set me free of my imprisonment, and since those ceremonies in Cambridge, the strict urging of which
drove me thence, have now been reformed, both Sir Thomas and your husband are urgent with me to return to my books. They say there is much to be done in that University, in sustaining the faithful and preventing the ungodly, and that I shall serve God to more purpose with the pen than the sword. Indeed my service on the field was as little glorious as that of Horace, nor did Mercury deign to snatch me away from the enemy in a dense cloud as he did the poet, though indeed he provided Joseph Lister with a holly bush. I hope Lister came safe off. He is a worthy man, if on some points mistaken: I commend him to you.

  I have delayed a few days here with the leaguer, for I was employed about a task better suited to my abilities than carrying a musket. A mine having been sprung untimely by the besiegers, a certain tower in York, which housed many old manuscripts, fell down, burying the manuscripts beneath its ruins. This much distressed Sir Thomas, whose zeal for all old writings you know, and he forthwith promised a reward to any soldier retrieving a paper from the stones. I and another gentleman, an antiquarian in Sir Thomas’s employ, busied ourselves in gathering and ranging these documents, and encouraging the soldiers in their search. But now most are found, and I ride to-morrow to Cambridge, Sir Thomas with his customary generosity having promised to furnish me with a horse. He hath forbidden the ordnance to aim at the Minster, of which I am truly glad, for it is a most fine and gracious building.

  My brother John is well, though somewhat overwearied from much employment; he bids me remember his dear love to you and his sons. He thanks you and Isaac Baume for your timely gift of cloth, which, he says, kept several good men warm from the wind last winter; the inclosed paper pledges the public faith for the price of the other piece. God bless you, my dear sister. Pray for your affectionate brother,