The Forest (65 page)

There was something else that bothered her too. ‘All that we have done, John,’ she would say to Lisle, ‘if it were not done to establish a just and godly rule, then better it had not been done at all.’

‘That is what we are about, Alice,’ he would respond irritably. ‘We are establishing a godly rule.’

But were they? Oh, the Parliament had made some fearsome laws. They had even made adultery punishable by death – except that juries quite rightly refused to convict in the face of such monstrous punishment. Swearing, dancing, all kinds of amusements that offended the Puritans were outlawed. The major-generals had even managed to close half the inns where people went to drink. But what did this mean if, at the centre, she saw Oliver Cromwell, when his supporters put it to him, quite clearly tempted by the idea of taking the title of king, and who clearly meant his son, a nice but weak young man, to succeed him as Protector? Visiting Whitehall, she had been shocked to find the other
leading families of the new regime dressed up in silks and satins and brocades exactly like the old royalist aristocracy they had replaced. It seemed to her, though she was too wise to say it, that little had changed at all.

And so it was, as the years had passed, that while to all outward appearances Alice loyally supported her husband, whom she loved, in his busy public life, she withdrew, within herself, into a more private world. She found that she cared less and less what party people belonged to, and more and more about what kind of individuals they were. When poor Mrs Penruddock, a few months after her husband’s execution, had finally been stripped of all his family’s property and had petitioned Cromwell for mercy, Alice had vigorously argued on the family’s behalf and been glad when a part of their estates had been granted back so that Mrs Penruddock could support her children.

‘I don’t know why you care about these people, who certainly care nothing for you,’ Lisle had remarked.

Because Colonel Penruddock, deluded or not, was probably worth ten of our friends, she might have told him. But instead she kissed him and said nothing.

One thing she did like about the Commonwealth regime, however, was its tolerance in matters of religion. That tolerance, of course, did not extend to the Roman Church. As a good Protestant she could not have sanctioned that. Popery meant the enslavement of honest people by cunning priests and brutal inquisition; it meant superstition, backwardness, idolatry and, like as not, domination by foreign powers. But within the broad range of Protestant congregations, stern Cromwell was surprisingly liberal. He had refused to allow the Presbyterians to impose their forms upon everyone; independent churches, choosing their own ministers and their own forms of worship, were allowed. Fine independent preachers, drawing their inspiration directly from their own religious experience, were encouraged. Alice liked the preachers. They were mostly honest men. When she thought
of how they would have been treated by King Charles and his bishops – silenced, hounded out of house and home, even perhaps put in the stocks or sentenced to have their ears cut off – at least she could believe that the Commonwealth had brought some real improvement to the world.

Then Cromwell had suddenly died.

No one had been prepared. They’d thought he’d live for years. His son Richard had tried to step into his place, but he wasn’t cut out for the job. It would be all right, Lisle told Alice. There were wise men like himself to guide the regime. But she had shaken her head. It wouldn’t work. She knew it wouldn’t.

It didn’t. Even Alice was amazed, though, at how quickly everything had fallen apart. The very circumstances that the gentlemen of the Sealed Knot had hoped for at the time of Penruddock’s Rising had now, only a few years later, come to pass. The people, after the brief rule of the major-generals, had come to hate the army. The army was divided within itself. The Parliament men wanted to have their own say again. The royalist gentry saw their chance. If the terms were right, people started to say, perhaps they’d be better off with a king again. Finally General Monk, who believed in order, and the city of London, which had had enough of the army, agreed together to restore the previous regime.

Young Charles II was ready and waiting. He had gone through the necessary period of adversity. If he had ever believed in his father’s foolish doctrines they had long ago been knocked out of him. Tall, swarthy, affable, deeply cynical, longing to escape from exile, determined not to be thrown out again, ready to compromise, completely penniless – here at last was a Stuart who had been properly trained to be King of England. Terms were negotiated. The king would return. The English prepared to rejoice just as though they had never cut off his father’s head.

It was a bright day in early May when John Lisle arrived back from London. Alice had been sitting with one of her daughters by the window and they ran out to greet him. He was looking cheerful, yet Alice had thought she detected a trace of awkwardness in his manner. When she asked for news he had smiled and said: ‘I’ll tell you as we dine.’

As the family ate together he painted a pleasant picture. The Parliament men, the army, the Londoners, everyone was to be reconciled with each other and the king. It was all to be the friendliest business imaginable. There was to be no vengeance. Only after the children had left them alone did Alice ask: ‘You say there is to be no vengeance? None?’

John Lisle poured himself another glass of wine before replying. ‘Almost.’ He came to it slowly. ‘There is, of course, the matter of the regicides. As it happens’ – he tried to speak easily, as if he were discussing some interesting case in the courts – ‘it is not the king who is pressing this, but the royalists. Those gentlemen want to see some blood shed for all the losses they have suffered.’

‘And?’

‘Well …’ He looked awkward now. ‘The regicides are to be tried. Executed probably. The king will decide, but I think it likely.’

She stared at him blankly for a moment, before saying quietly: ‘You are a regicide, John.’

‘Ah.’ He put on his professional smile. ‘That can be disputed. You must remember, Alice, I did not in fact sign the king’s death warrant. I think it could be said that I am not a regicide.’

‘Said by whom, John? They have always called you one. You were with Cromwell, you argued for the king’s death. You helped draw up the accusations, the papers …’

‘True. Yet even so …’

Was he trying to give her hope, break the news to her gently, or was it possible that her clever husband, faced by this crisis, was suddenly unable to face the obvious truth?

‘They will hang you, John,’ she said. He did not reply. ‘What will you do?’

‘I think I should go abroad. It would not be for long. A few months at most, I suppose.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘I have friends. They will speak to the king. As soon as this matter of the regicides is over I can return. It seems wisest. What do you think?’

What could she say? No, stay here with your wife and children until they come to hang you? Obviously not. She nodded slowly. ‘I am sorry for it, John,’ she said miserably, then forced herself to smile. ‘We should rather have you alive, though. When shall you leave?’

‘At dawn tomorrow.’ He looked at her earnestly. ‘It will not be for long.’

She never saw him again.

He had been right about the king. Young King Charles II, whatever his faults, had no appetite for vengeance. After twenty-six surviving regicides had been hanged in October that year he quietly told his council not to look for any more. If they appeared they would have to hang, but if they stayed out of sight he was content to leave them alone. This vengeance being not quite enough for the king’s royalist supporters, however, they hit upon what seemed to them a happy idea. The following January the corpses of Cromwell and his son-in-law Ireton were dug up from their graves, brought to the Tyburn gallows in London and hanged there for all to see. Much wisdom was shown, no doubt, in choosing January, rather than a warmer season of the year.

But Lisle had been wrong if he believed that he mightn’t be viewed as a regicide. As he waited in Switzerland for news, it soon became clear: he had too many enemies.

‘My dearest husband,’ Alice wrote sadly, ‘you cannot return.’

There was talk, each year, of her going to join him in Lausanne, where he was now living. But it was not so easy.
For a start, money was short. Most of John Lisle’s property had been confiscated or removed. One estate had been given to some of his own relations on the Isle of Wight who had remained faithful to the royalist cause. Another went to the new king’s younger brother James, Duke of York. The London house was gone. Alice alone had to support the family now on her New Forest inheritance and try to send money to her poor husband too.

‘We must live quietly,’ she told her children. With the estate to look after, and the children, it was hard to see how she could go to live in Switzerland.

The family was quite extensive. There were John’s two sons from his previous marriage. They were young men now, but she had always brought them up like her own and with their father’s fortune gone and his name in disgrace, how were they to make good marriages? As for her own children, her son, to her great grief, had died at sixteen, but there were three surviving daughters, Margaret, Bridget and Tryphena who would all be needing to find husbands.

And then there was little Betty – bright-eyed Betty, so small and full of life. She had been conceived that last night before her husband departed: that night when she had clung to him, praying that he would return, so afraid that he would not. Little Betty: the child John Lisle had never seen; the child she would remember him by.

Two years passed. Then another. And another. The baby had become a toddler; she ran about now, she talked. She asked about her father. Alice would tell her stories about him, what a fine man he was.

‘I shall go and see the king one day and tell him I want my daddy back,’ she said. And who knew, thought Alice, given the genial character of Charles II, it might work. But not yet. It was too soon. So she wrote to her husband and told him every detail of what they all did and how Betty grew; and he wrote long and loving letters in return; and they both
prayed that with the passing of time, he might come back – one day.

In the meantime, what was there to do? She was glad at least to be in the Forest. It was the country of her childhood and her family. In Betty she could relive her own happy early days. There was comfort in that. There was always plenty to keep her occupied, from day to day. Yet how could she fill the other void in her life?

To her surprise it was religion that did so.

She had never been especially religious before her marriage. Of course, she and John had been vigorous supporters of their congregation in London; but how much of that, she wondered, had been her husband’s desire to keep close with Cromwell and his family? Her new interest had come from another source entirely and was quite unexpected.

Stephen Pride’s wife. It was unusual for a Pride to marry someone from outside the Forest, but one fine Saturday morning, when the Pride family had gone down into Lymington to the little market there, Stephen Pride had met his future wife and that was it. Her family had come from Portsmouth, some years before. She was quiet, kindly, about Alice’s age with light-brown hair and grey eyes very like Alice’s own. ‘He says he married me because I reminded him of you,’ Joan Pride once confessed to her. Alice couldn’t help being rather pleased about that.

Joan Pride was devout. All her family were. Like so many others in the small towns round England’s coasts, these honest folk had read their Bible in the days of Queen Elizabeth and found nothing there about bishops and priests and ceremonies; so they had preferred to gather in small meeting houses, choose their own leaders and preachers, and lead a simple, godly life in peace, if only they were allowed. When Charles I had found such freedom intolerable, many of these folk had emigrated to the new settlements in America; some had fought the king in Cromwell’s army.
During the Civil War and under the Protector’s rule they had been able to worship as they pleased.

Every Sunday, therefore, while her husband watched with a tolerant smile, Joan Pride had set out from Oakley, sometimes taking one or two of her children, and walked the two miles into Lymington where she joined her family at the meeting house. And now and then, when she was not in London with her husband, Alice had joined the congregation at their prayers. There was no reason why not. In matters of religion these had been democratic days. Although somewhat surprised to find such an important lady in their midst, they quietly welcomed her; and for her part, she liked them. ‘I’ve heard sermons there from travelling preachers quite as good’, she had told John Lisle, ‘as ever I heard in London.’

Often on these occasions she would lead her horse beside Joan Pride and her children as far as Oakley, in pleasant conversation, before returning to Albion House. Their relationship was entirely comfortable. As was the custom, she called her tenant’s wife Goody Pride and Joan called her Dame Alice. When John Lisle had been made one of Cromwell’s Lords, properly she should have been called Lady Lisle, or My Lady, but Alice noticed with amusement that Joan Pride continued quietly to call her Dame Alice – which let Alice know what her Puritan friend thought of lordship. In this way, over the years, while they preserved the usual formality between landlord and tenant, Alice Lisle and Joan Pride became friends.

It was the week after John Lisle had fled from England that Joan Pride came to Albion House. She just happened to be passing that way, she said. She had brought some cakes she had baked. It would have been the height of bad manners not to accept such a gift, even though she didn’t particularly want them, so Alice thanked her kindly, while Joan Pride’s grey eyes took in everything she saw in the big house she had never entered before.