The Duke was particularly drawn to one large scarlet example on which the initials ‘J R’ were surmounted by a crown of gold. Like a message from above, the wishes of the ordinary people were thus made clear to him. Never mind the bitter old Cromwellians and republicans in his command. The weft-and-weave members of society required a King, and that ‘J R’ didn’t refer to James Stuart Rex. Therein lay the key to pulling in the nobles so far missing from his camp, together with their deep pockets and trains of obedient servants. Those great and cautious ones would follow a King but not a rebel.
Monmouth decided then and there, as he looked deep into the pre-orgasmic eyes of Miss Blake, that he’d be King before he left town. It was … unfortunate that Preacher Ferguson had put in the proclamation that he’d submit his claim to Parliament, but there again, the Duke didn’t feel too bound by the frothings of madmen.
Mounting up each maid in front of one of his Lifeguard of young gentlemen, Monmouth led them back in picturesque horseback procession through the streets. Church bells rang in exultation and the hoi-polloi went wild. As they went he composed his coronation ceremony.
‘This is just bursting bladders of bad air!’ said Nathaniel Wade. ‘A mere going round in circles. Enough!’ The Rebel Council of War was surprisingly, obediently, hushed.
Monmouth liked this Bristolian lawyer – he could always be relied upon to get stuck in, either in debate or leading the Red Regiment. The Duke smirked and awaited more.
‘It’s like this,’ Wade went on. ‘We may not relish this monarchic business but the matter’s agreed and there’s an end. Our protests are recorded for the judgement of history and Almighty God. So, as I say, enough. The only worthy question at our feet now is what next?’
The Duke took another pull on his churchwarden and nodded agreement. This was the main trouble in conspiring with Protestants: they were infinitely factious and confident of their own text. One day there’d be a sect for each member – maybe more.
The gathered Colonels and senior figures duly considered. Their forte was conspiracy, assassination, fund-raising and low-level soldiering; not grand strategy and swinging an army across the map of England. Trusting in the power of prayer, they’d all rather expected to just land and be swept to London – and the New Jerusalem – on an unstoppable tide of Godly rage. It was not part of the bargain that the aristocracy stand aloof or the Army profess loyalty to Satan.
Worst of all, Preacher Ferguson looked to be winding up to a prayerful, ‘seeking-the-mind-of-God’ tirade. These tended to be rich in length and low in enlightenment and were much to be avoided. All present were therefore grateful when Wade once again leapt in with both boots.
‘The way I see it there’s three choices: back, Bristol or BabyLondon.’ He counted them off on one penpusher-soft hand. ‘We can turn round and destroy Churchill and his little band of men. With that achieved the West is all ours and we’ll be forty thousand strong within the month. Contrary-wise, we can head to Bristol or London, and I plump for Bristol. Babylon’s too big a chew for us as we are, unless we’re lucky and I don’t care to trust to that. With Bristol though, that’s the second City of the Realm and I know it as I do the Gospel. We’d have a welcome there and recruits like sand grains on the shore. Somerset-side, I grant, it’s well protected, but I know a kinder approach. If we can attain the bridge at Keynsham and gain the Gloucestershire-side, there’s only militia ‘tween us and the prize.’
‘And one’s seen how firm they stand!’ laughed Lord Grey. His amusement met frigid silence and froze to death. Only Grey thought he had any room to comment on others’ steadfastness. Already his nickname in the army was ‘Earl I’m-off’.
‘The Godly folk therein await us,’ Wade continued in calm exposition, ‘and the shipyards and all south Wales shall be ours. The Duke’s men in Cheshire can then move to link up. And that’s when the magnates might move, I reckon; seeing a signal victory. There might well be no more fighting, for the enemy will like as not fade away.’
The Council of War stirred and looked at one another with invigorated zeal.
‘What say you, my Lord?’ asked Wade. ‘Or should I say, Sire … This seems to me our bill-of-fare; would you care to make a selection?’
Monmouth ceased to twiddle with his tobacco pouch. In stroking its soft leather side he’d been reminded of mistresses past.
‘I,’ he said, uninvolved, unconcerned, ‘will eat what’s put before me. You suggest a place and I’ll lead you there – to triumph, of course,’ he added, noting his indifference cause faces to fall.
Witnesses around that time report seeing a decline in the Duke they once knew. A Quaker (and thus well qualified to comment on misery) compared him sadly with the golden youth he’d observed in Monmouth’s great 1680 ‘Tour of the West’; writing that he looked ‘more thoughtful, more dejected and so much the thinner that he felt sorry for him’. It seemed odd to observers that the Duke was cast down when riding a successful wave of rebellion.
The truth was that Monmouth was merely relaxed. Whether they made for Bristol or London or stormed Lands End made no odds to him. A battle there must be, but its siting was of no great import. Likewise, the issues it would settle were not those held dear by these dupes in the Council. Aspiring to be more than plain and simple King of plain and simple England; to be the ruler of an altered, wilder realm, Monmouth knew that for the moment – until he could in due course betray him – he must wait patiently upon Arthur rising from the grave.
‘Right,’ concluded Wade, hiding his concern and pounding the table, ‘Bristol it is then.’
Taunton Market Cross might not be Westminster Abbey and Joseph Tily, a captain of the Red Regiment, a poor substitute for the Archbishop of Canterbury, for all his good bass voice – but they’d suffice.
‘Hear ye,’ he read, ‘that upon the decease of our Sovereign Lord Charles the Second, the right of succession to the Crown of England, Scotland, France and Ireland with the Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging, did legally descend and devolve upon the most illustrious and high born Prince James, Duke of Monmouth, son and heir-apparent to the said King Charles the Second. We do therefore recognise, publish and proclaim the said high and mighty Prince, James, Duke of Monmouth, our lawful and rightful Sovereign and King, by the name of James the Second!’
Actually there’d been a problem as to what to call him, both claimants to the Crown unhappily boasting the same Christian name. Though ‘King James’ he had to be for official purposes, his followers tended to term him King Monmouth, to avoid confusion. The stop-gap measure would do until the rival James could be divided head from body and thus from life. The new Monarch’s first decree-in-state offered a reward of £500 to anyone achieving this end.
Hearing the news a day or so later, the other James was less kind in his terminology. He dubbed Monmouth the ‘King of Lyme Regis’ ( in unconscious imitation of the Duke’s own bitter self-description) and the name stuck amongst courtiers keen to curry favour.
Back in Taunton – Taunton-Regis as might be – the response was more favourable and Miss Blake the schoolmarm led the wild cheering, leaping in the air and waving her arms, inadvertently (perhaps) revealing a quite acceptable ankle and an inch or two of pink calf besides. King Monmouth looked down from the stone cross and decided to tip her on her back (and front and side and knees) after all, and to hell with what his more grim-faced subjects thought. Once anointed by God to be beyond the reproach of man, a certain amount of freelance ‘bed-piracy’ was, he knew, almost expected from a vigorous monarch.
Before advising Miss Blake of her treat in store, the new King of four great Nations issued a second decree. Mindful of his army’s deficiency in arms, ‘James R.’ ordered all the constables and tithing-men of the West to ‘search for, seize and take’ all scythe blades and other deadly agricultural implements in their vicinity, and deliver them to him.
Then, whilst the republican higher command of his forces averted their gaze in disgust, Ki
ng Monmouth stepped down to pass among his subjects, touching the sick for the ‘King’s Evil’.
They set out for Bridgwater on the twenty-first. It being a Sunday, certain proprieties had to be observed. Divine service was thus laid on and scripture ransacked for suitable supportive texts.
Similarly, back in Chard, John Churchill and Theophilus Oglethorpe were regaled from Romans 13: ‘And they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation’. Churchill was not consoled, for that could be taken either way. Only the eventual victor would decide who were the rebels and who the staunch upholders of right. Presumably therefore, eternal damnation was rolling about like a loose cannon until the issue was resolved – an uncomfortable thought to take away with you. Also, such intimidation seemed an impertinence, religion’s rude intrusion upon a gentleman’s peace of mind. Back home, as in many other great houses, Churchill’s chaplain doubled up as an under-gardener – and knew his place.
Meanwhile, Preacher Ferguson, eaten up with fury at missing the chance to preach in Taunton’s fine Churches, more than made up for it on the march. Sinking his teeth into Deuteronomy 20 he told the passing army: ‘fear not, and do not tremble, for the Lord your God is he that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies …’
Though he paid little attention to it, ‘King Monmouth’ was most pleased with this sermon. Their rate of march was noticeably speeded as people sought to hurry past the ranting cleric.
On arrival, Monmouth was proclaimed King all over again. Mayor Popham and the Bridgwater Corporation put on a proper show and people went even wilder than at Taunton. He wouldn’t stay, though they pleaded, but recruited richly even so. Men hastened from their loved ones on impulse, to take up pike or scythe or gun. Nor were these just the likely types to go; men who’d sooner have a fight than breakfast and find fault in paradise. Along with the would-be rolling-stones delicately poised in every place, there also went the more solid, cautious, kind: men with a stake in the realm and responsibilities to think of. Daniel Defoe, ‘Robinson Crusoe’ still potential within his head, joined up.
The uncommitted were impressed, edging their opinions another notch Duke-wards. Much more of this and he’d have the mighty force of social conformity on his side and almost nothing, neither virtue, right or justice, can stand against that.
When they issued from the Town, enumerators counted seven thousand in arms.
Best of all, the enemy still did not understand. They were getting ever closer to their target and the foe could not see it. The tiny Royal army stayed out of their way, fearful of swamping or desertions. Up to now they had made only the merest, pinprick, token attacks, and even then, got as good as they gave. Doubtless reinforcements were en route but they were only positioned against a dash on London. The Duke of Beaufort, the greatest landowner in the West, meanwhile sat in Bristol, commanding the useless militias of Wales and Gloucestershire, and deluding himself he was safely bypassed. When ordered, by King James himself, to destroy the bridge at Keynsham, the magnate thought it a shame and waste. In all likelihood, when things were settled, the cost of repairs would have to come from his own deep but not bottomless pocket. He therefore settled for the option of technical compliance and had his men knock a hole in the middle of the span. It could be truthfully said the Avon was no longer bridged at Keynsham – but a long-legged man could have stepped over the gap.
Monmouth had numerous spies in Bristol, even at Beaufort’s right hand, and they told him all this. Such luck seemed implausible, almost suggesting a better protector watching over him than mere fortune.
On the other hand, as they headed for Glastonbury and his patron’s place of rest, the weather changed. Up to now they’d been blessed with heart-warming sunshine and the sort of days that positively incited adventure and recruitment. Now it started to rain – and rain in endless, drenching, discouraging, buckets. ‘King Monmouth’ wondered about that.
He had hoped something might happen at Glastonbury to save them the trouble of bothering Bristol. However, Arthur was as good as his word and continued to slumber. The rain, natural or otherwise, continued. His crusaders might have drawn some cheer from capturing the fountainhead of their religion in Britain but it was too tainted by Popery to really appeal. The Abbey ruins reminded them of the long centuries of monkish-trickery, and legends of St. Joseph’s supposed visit grated upon staunch Protestant sensitivities. Ideologists amongst them could only applaud their puritan forbears for chopping down the Glastonbury Thorn. No one climbed the Tor to pay their respects and great fires were lit around the old site of the High Altar, both to spite the site and in vain attempt to dry their clothes.
For himself, Monmouth was more than minded to visit the Tor, to shoot cannon at its hollow sides or set teams to mine within. He was in a mood to sing ‘wakey-wakey’ to this Judas-ally who allowed him to march through mud, leading an army armed with … agricultural implements; even if it was to a glorious, eventual, end.
Sadly, though several such nice ideas occurred to him as they squelched to their quarters, each had to be rejected as giving the game away. The Army considered itself to be serving God – and one particular concept of him to boot. Even more than the Noah-style rain, revealing the contents of the Tor might give them pause for fresh thought. He needed them and their idealism-bred-violence. If he must go to Bristol, he could hardly go alone.
The Duke was – just – human enough to be able to restrain himself and quell his Elfish side wherein desire equalled action. Even so, Mistress Walter’s boy got to feel quite petulant about the way the world was serving him. Just how long did it take a supernatural power to wrest a sword off a half-witted Surrey thug? The Duke had told Arthur of Oglethorpe’s Achilles’ heel: why was he so slow to strike at it?
They made recruits at Glastonbury village despite the weather, and a Quaker came in to say the ‘Clubmen’ were rising; the old Civil War, against-both-sides, mutual protection groups voting to come out in his favour. This was greatly to be wished, for even old Oliver’s New Model Army had striven to avoid giving offence to them. ‘Take our cattle and we give you battle’ had been their motto and they’d resisted enlistment for either side. If they should now rise from long sleep, ten or twenty thousand strong as in days of yore, there was hope of other imminent awakenings.
For all the local enthusiasm, the rain, worsening if anything, prevented a fond farewell to the Army. Most people stayed indoors and offered remote-blessings from under tile and thatch. Likewise, the torrent deterred the rebels from noting those few who did turn out to see them go. Slipping forth from secret exits, Arthur’s acolytes left the Tor and lined the route, viewing the first army raised in his service since Camlann eleven centuries before.
Men of Snowdonia, furthest Cornwall and the Highland Isles, women of Alba, Elmet and Dalriada, stood in thin, sodden, line, not waving or cheering, but in sullen observation. In fairness, many were not best qualified for joy or speech or seeing. Taking blame for the Elven-Stuart-Oglethorpian incursion of the Tor and marked by the wrath of Arthur, they lacked one eye, an ear or hand or tongue.
There were other wonders abroad that summer. A wise-woman in Kent almost got it right and published her troubled dreams that Gwyn Ap Nudd, fairie ‘King under the Hill’ was rising from his golden chair at Glastonbury, together with his fairie queen, Annwfn, and all the ‘fairie host’, to issue from the Tor and wreak mischief in the world. She died soon after in a freak accident, under the wheels of a coach driven by a Welsh Professor of Literature at Oxford.
St. Keyne was a sixth century princess and renowned turner of snakes into stone whilst in life, and a patron of healing thereafter. She now reappeared to various rustics near her namesake town and beseeched them to tumble Keynsham Bridge down. They listened politely and ever-after reformed their lives – but did not comply. Whilst grateful for the instant curing of their various squints, piles and syphilis, they knew the quarter session judges would not forgive even divinely-inspired vandalism.
The spirits of the Saxon war-dead slain at Badon, rose lamenting from the ground before a clergyman of Bath. He mistakenly took it for a confirmation of his Christian faith and remained resolutely unalarmed. It did not occur to him to contact his brother, a Privy Councillor and a man with much influence in military matters, but also, alas, a scoffer and atheist, with the news.
On Paery Hill, near Keynsham, strange patterns appeared in the growing crops: circles and ellipses joined by great avenues through the corn. Though people came to see and farmers recouped their losses by charging admission, cognisance of Mother Earth’s handwriting was long gone. They were not warned.
A comet crossed the sky in that season. The diarist, John Evelyn, traced its fiery path, high in the heavens, day by day. It was, he wrote, ‘moon-white and very much in the shape of a sword, bending towards London …’ As the month wore on it became blood-red.
A triple-headed lamb was born, live, in Ludgvan in Cornwall. Its owner debated whether to kill the abomination or put it on display and earn a crust. Settling for the latter, thousands made their way to his village to ponder on the wild whims of Nature.
Only this last event, the product of the granite-based farm’s high background radiation, had nothing to do with the great struggle underway.
Three Kings: Arthur, and two James’s, and sundry half-seen universal forces, converged on each other in Somerset that summer. The world which awaited a decision and then transformation, could not help but betray symptoms, breaking out in anxious portents.
The sortie was a disaster and Ellen Oglethorpe bitterly repented of her over-confidence. Hitherto she’d found that sufficient determination had been all that was needed for success. The mustering of enough drive and elan always somehow cleared the way to one’s wishes. Now she found herself mistaken and others had paid a heavy price for her education. It transpired that Life wasn’t light-hearted and punished carelessness.
The Royal Changeling Page 24
