London (108 page)

Yet, as he reached adulthood, it was this very quarter – the royal court – that began to give Julius cause for concern.

There was no use denying it: all was not well between the new House of Stuart and the people of England.

The character of King James did not help. Never very dignified, his old age had become embarrassing. Whether he was actually homosexual, or whether it was just a senile affection for young men, nobody quite knew. “But he actually drools over them,” Henry admitted. Fortunately, his heir Charles had both dignity and irreproachable morals, so the Puritan English closed their eyes to the father and looked forward to the son. True, there were the royal favourites. The greatest, who soon ruled all, was Buckingham, a young man of enormous charm, vapid intelligence and such astonishing good looks that King James had made him a duke. Many felt that Buckingham and his friends had too many monopolies. “Like all favourites, he’s offended some of the old nobility,” Henry explained. “They’re out to get him if they can.”

But these were the usual problems of courts and could be dealt with. The real difficulty, much more profound, came to a head less than a year after Sir Jacob’s stroke.

The Parliament of 1621 had not begun in a very good temper. For a start, James had not called them in some years. True, that meant he had not asked for money; but for centuries now they had been used to regular consultations. They were feeling neglected. If some of the nobles wanted to attack the rapacious court favourites, therefore, the Commons were in the mood to take part; and no sooner were they assembled at Westminster than they found a way to remind the king who they were. Their method took the court by surprise.

“Impeachment.” It was Henry who brought the news. “No Parliament has done that since the Plantagenets.”

In fact, the Commons had been rather clever. They had not impeached Buckingham himself, but two corrupt lesser favourites; and the beauty of impeachment was that it was the one prosecution that the Commons and Lords could push through without the king’s consent. The message was clear: it was time to deal kindly with the Parliament. But here was the trouble: the learned if eccentric King James had somehow persuaded himself that since monarchs were anointed by God, they ruled by Divine Right – which meant that their subjects must obey them because they could do no wrong. This was the law of God, he said, and it had always been so – a claim that would certainly have horrified a medieval churchman and caused any Plantagenet monarch to burst out laughing. Tudor monarchs took care to have their counsellors in Parliament to manage debates, and Elizabeth had been a master of compromise. But King James expected only obedience. The Commons wrote out a protestation.

“And he’s torn it up,” Henry reported, with grim amusement.

“So what will happen?” Julius anxiously demanded.

“Nothing,” Henry judged. “Parliament is angry, but it knows the king is growing old. There is nothing to fear.”

When Dogget and Martha had arrived back in London they waited anxiously to see whether their unknown benefactor, if he was aware of their return, would demand his money back. But, mysterious as ever, he gave no sign. The next question was: what to do? The problem was finally solved by Gideon Carpenter. His father Cuthbert had suddenly died just after they had left; he suggested therefore that he and Dogget should go into business together. They found lodgings close by and a small yard and workshop just by the top of Garlic Hill, and here they set out to repair anything that anyone brought in. Dogget missed his boats, but they were kept busy.

And so it was, on the holy days when they were compelled to attend at St Lawrence Silversleeves, that Sir Jacob would gaze across the little church at the cursed family with impotent loathing – imprisoned both by the stroke that paralysed him and the fact that, even if he could speak and demand his money back, sooner or later people would ask the reason why he had lent it to them. Julius meanwhile, seeing his father trembling with rage at the sight of them, could only conclude that Martha and her family must be very wicked indeed.

Even so, he had meant them no harm that day as he passed out of the city over the Holborn and approached the church of St Etheldreda.

In recent decades a change had taken place there. The old bishop’s mansion had become the residence of the Spanish Ambassador, the church his private chapel; and the gardens next door, having belonged to a favourite of Queen Elizabeth’s called Hatton, had acquired his name. Just as he reached Hatton Garden Julius saw the carriage of the Spanish Ambassador appear, and, since politeness demanded it, took off his hat and made a bow. He did so, however, with great reluctance.

The position of Stuart England in Europe was the same as in Elizabeth’s day. The Continent was still split between the Catholic and Protestant camps. Catholic France was mighty, the Habsburgs of Spain and Austria still determined to reimpose the universal Church of Rome; and Protestant England a small island which could not afford a war. James had to tread carefully. Unlike Elizabeth, though, he had children. And when, recently, his German son-in-law had been turfed out of his lands by Catholic Austria, James reasoned further: “If we make friends with the Habsburgs, perhaps we can persuade them to give the boy his dominions back.” Cautiously therefore, approaches had been made to the ambassador of the most Catholic kingdom of Spain.

The Londoners did not like it. The balance of power meant little to them. They did not believe in Catholic friends. “Remember Bloody Mary,” they protested. “Remember Guy Fawkes.”

The small group of apprentices loitering by Hatton Garden were in a jocular mood. They pointed when they saw the Spanish carriage pass. One of them laughed and made a rude sign, and then the cries came: “Spanish dog!” “Papist!” “We want no papists here.”

Julius shrugged. The carriage passed by. He had thought no more about it until the next day, when Henry returned from Whitehall and announced: “The Spanish Ambassador has been insulted. The king is furious.”

“But I saw it,” Julius told him. “It was nothing.”

“You saw it?” Henry had seized him by the arm. “Did you know them? You must tell. The king’s sent word to the mayor. The culprits are to be found and severely punished.”

Yet Julius hesitated. For one of the young men had been Gideon Carpenter.

It had taken Henry nearly an hour. He told Julius it was his duty, and pointed out that if it was discovered that Julius had failed to report them, the family’s prospects at court would be finished for ever. And finally: “Remember, if God has chosen us to be leaders in this city, how do we repay Him if we shirk our public duty.”

Henry took the news to the mayor and to the king, who thanked him warmly. The apprentices concerned were whipped with the cat o’ nine tails. Such a punishment was not trivial. One of them died. Gideon lived.

From that day on, when the family came to church, Julius could feel Gideon’s eyes fixed implacably upon him. Martha, for her part, confined herself to a single, sorrowful statement when she met him the day after the whipping: “This was not right.” And in his heart Julius could only wish, like his father, that all of these people, Carpenters and Doggets alike, would depart the parish and even the country for ever.

But if Henry could be harsh, he had continued to work wonders for the family; and just two years after the Spanish incident he arranged another huge step in the family’s social rise.

English monarchs had always rewarded their friends with titles. But the Stuarts sold them. It could be lucrative. Buckingham, in James’s name, even sold one man a barony for twenty thousand pounds. But rather than inflict too many newcomers on the Lords, the Stuarts hit upon a brilliant idea.

The baronetcy. A baronet styled himself Sir, like a knight. He did not sit in the House of Lords; but his eldest son and the senior heir thereafter would inherit this title, Sir, in perpetuity. Only well-established gentlemen of large income were acceptable, but there were plenty of applicants. And Henry Ducket got one for his father. It cost twelve hundred pounds. A year later, old King James departed life and Sir Jacob followed him soon after; but, if such proof were needed of the purity of his family’s blood, he died a hereditary noble. Henry was now Sir Henry.

His progress never faltered in the years that followed. The new king, Charles, had married a Catholic princess in the end, but French, which seemed less threatening. Still very young, and hating Buckingham, she was miserably lonely, but Henry had made friends with her. It proved an excellent move. In 1628, an out-of-work soldier killed Buckingham in the street. With the favourite gone, Charles and his queen came together as never before. And how warmly she spoke to him of “that kind Sir Henry Ducket”.

If only the king did not quarrel with his parliaments. But Charles, like his father, believed implicitly in his Divine Right. When he demanded money, they gave him almost nothing. The young king appealed to the country gentry for a loan. “Though some of the sheriffs have got carried away,” Henry admitted. “They’ve actually imprisoned some fellows who refused to lend.” Soon Parliament presented a Petition of Right, reminding the king that, since Magna Carta, he could not imprison illegally, nor had he the right to levy taxes without their consent. Their next meeting, early in 1629, provoked a crisis. In the Commons, furious at Charles’s attitude, some of the younger and more reckless members completely lost their heads, passing motions against the king by acclaim and pinning the Speaker in his chair. What, Julius wondered, would they all do next?

“And that, as it happens, is something I can tell you,” Henry informed him. He smiled wryly. “The Parliament will not be called any more. The king is going to govern without it.”

In the year of Our Lord 1630, Edmund Meredith had more important things on his mind than the Parliament. His pleasant, steep-gabled house in Watling Street contained himself, a housekeeper, a maid and a boy. His income was comfortable; his preaching outside the parish – he was much in demand – brought handsome extra fees. If Sir Jacob had tolerated him, Sir Henry, pleased to have a gentleman as vicar, had him to dinner once a month, which pleased him greatly. In earlier years, he had even thought of marrying, except that the presence of children, he rightly felt, might have spoilt the dignity of the household. Yet he wanted to leave.

The truth was, Meredith was getting a little bored. Success had come, but now he felt ready for more. He could still, he believed, make a larger figure in the world; and there was one, huge prize he had his eye upon. John Donne was dying. It might be a year, it might be two or three; but when he went, there would be a vacancy. As Dean of the Cathedral of St Paul’s.

Eternal St Paul’s. True, the fabric was in a poor state. But it was not the old stone hulk itself that mattered: it was the name. And it was the sermons.

Sermons were given inside St Paul’s but by a curious tradition, reverting to early Saxon days, the greatest were given outside, at the pulpit known as St Paul’s Cross, which stood in the churchyard. Wooden stands were erected for the mayor and aldermen, as if to view a tournament; huge crowds gathered in the yard. It was the most important pulpit in England.

But how could he get it? Sir Henry, who would have been glad to see his own man in such a place, had spoken to the king; but the person Meredith knew he must really impress was the new Bishop of London. And that might not be easy.

William Laud was a small, red-faced man with a moustache, a neat, grey goatee beard, and an iron will. He was also in total agreement with the king about his Church. He made his views known from the start. “Too many Presbyterians and Puritans in London. Even half the clergy are infected.” It was soon clear to Edmund, if he wanted Laud’s approval, what he must do.

The first step was to convince the vestry committee. Here he did not anticipate too many problems. Sir Henry and Julius were both on the committee now and they had run the parish in perfect harmony, but, to his surprise, quiet Julius seemed troubled.

“Isn’t that,” he asked, “like popery?”

“Not at all,” Meredith assured him. “The king desires it; and I promise you the king’s no papist.”

As indeed, he was not. Yet here was the difficulty.

England was Protestant: but what did that mean? On the European scene, that the island kingdom was in the Protestant camp, not to be devoured by the Catholic powers. At home, that many Englishmen, especially Londoners, were Puritans. But the fact remained, her national Church, though slightly modified by good Queen Bess, was still, in its doctrines, the one established by that renegade Catholic, Henry VIII. The creed recited by all loyal Englishmen was perfectly clear:

I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins . . .

Good Church of England men then and ever since might say they were Protestant and truly believe themselves so: but the Church of King Henry and Queen Bess was, indisputably, a reformed Catholic Church. Breakaway, schismatic, even heretic, according to Rome – but Catholic.

King Charles I of England believed in the compromise worked out under Queen Elizabeth – that the Church of Rome had fallen into evil ways, that the English Church was purified Catholicism, and that it was the Anglican bishops, nowadays, who were the true inheritors of the apostles. And the law said that every parishioner must attend Sunday service or pay a shilling fine. Few vestries in pragmatic England actually enforced this. The vestry of St Lawrence Silversleeves turned a blind eye. King Charles, however, did not think this way. He expected obedience. If his Church was perfectly reformed, then there was no reason why his people should turn their back on it. If dignified ceremony was proper – and he felt it was – then it must be observed. It was, for him, as simple as that.

Bishop Laud liked ceremony too.

One Saturday, three weeks later, Martha and her nephew Gideon were surprised to receive a visit from the beadle of the ward. They were to come to church, they were told, without fail, the following day. “Why?” they asked. By order of Sir Henry and the vestry, they were informed. Every household in the parish was being summoned. “We’ll pay the fine,” Martha offered.