The Forest (56 page)

Yet even in defeat, King Charles would not deal honestly with his opponents. For Lisle, the last straw had been after the defeat of the king at the final battle of Naseby. Captured documents had proved beyond a doubt that, if he could, Charles would bring an army from Ireland or from Catholic France to subdue his people. ‘How can we believe he wouldn’t allow papism back into England, too?’ Lisle had asked. And when he had been sent with other commissioners to negotiate with Charles on the Isle of Wight, where the king had been held before his transfer to Hurst Castle, he had perceived exactly what kind of man he had to deal with. ‘He will say anything; he will play for time, because he thinks he rules by divine right and therefore he owes us nothing at all. He has the same character as his grandmother Mary Queen of Scots: he will go on plotting until the day his head is off.’

But this, of course, was just the trouble. It was what worried Alice and many others like her. It was why, now, there was a split between the many in Parliament who wanted a compromise and the sterner souls in the army, led by Cromwell, who believed that the king must die. How could you try to execute a king, the Lord’s anointed? Such a thing had never been done. What did it mean? Where would it lead?

Strangely enough, it was precisely because he was a lawyer that John Lisle saw that a legal solution to the problem of the king was impossible.

The constitution of England was actually rather vague. Ancient common law, custom, precedent, and the relative wealth and strength of the people concerned had governed the politics of each generation. When Parliament declared that it had been consulted since the reign of Edward I, nearly four centuries before, Parliament was right. When the king said he could call or dismiss Parliament as he liked he was also right. When Parliament, looking for written authority, appealed to Magna Carta they were not quite right, because that document was an agreement between King John and some rebel barons in 1215, which the Pope had ruled was illegal. On the other hand the implication of Magna Carta, which no one had ever denied before, was that kings must govern according to custom and law. Even bad King John never invoked the idea of divine right and would have thought it very funny. When Parliament rediscovered the medieval form of impeachment, which everyone had forgotten for centuries, to attack Charles’s ministers, they had law on their side. When they claimed, shortly before the Civil War began, that Parliament had the right to veto the king’s choice of ministers and to control the army they hadn’t a legal leg to stand on.

But at the end of the day, it seemed to Lisle, none of it mattered. ‘Don’t you see,’ he had explained to Alice, ‘he has chosen a position from which, legally, he cannot be budged. He says he is the divinely appointed fount of law. Therefore, whatever his Parliament does, if he does not like it, will be illegal. Cromwell wants to try him. Very well, he will say the court is illegal. And many will hesitate and be confused.’ His incisive legal mind saw it all with complete clarity. ‘The thing is a perfect circle. He can continue thus until the Second Coming. It’s endless.’

But to break with law and custom: that was dangerous too. Defeating an impossible king was one thing, but destroy him entirely and what would arise in his place? Many of the Parliament men were gentlemen of property. They wanted order; they favoured Protestantism, preferably without King Charles’s bishops; but order, social and religious. Many of the army, and smaller townsmen however, were starting to talk of something else. These Independents wanted complete freedom for each parish to choose its own form of religion – so long as it was Protestant, of course. Even more alarming, the party of Levellers in the army wanted a general democracy, votes for all men and perhaps even the abolition of private property. No wonder, then, if gentlemen in Parliament had hesitated and hoped to reach a settlement with the king.

Until two weeks ago. For then, finally, the army had struck. Colonel Thomas Pride had marched into Parliament and arrested any members who wouldn’t co-operate with the army. It was a simple coup, done while Cromwell was tactfully absent. Pride’s Purge, it was called.

‘Do you suppose’, Alice had asked with a smile, ‘that Colonel Pride has any relationship with our Prides here in the Forest?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘I can see Stephen Pride arresting the Members of Parliament.’ She had chuckled. ‘He’d do it very well.’

But that had been the last time she had been able to see the funny side of the business. As the December days wore on, and the time for Charles’s removal from the little fort on the Forest shore drew closer she had become more and more gloomy.

‘Anyone would think it was you or I who was going to trial,’ Lisle had remarked testily. But this did no good at all.

What made it worse was that he himself had heard that several of the prominent lawyers on the Parliamentary side were discreetly withdrawing from the process. When she said, ‘Cromwell needs lawyers, that’s why he wants you,’ he knew, in fact, that she was right.

So what if he didn’t go up to London? What if he pleaded sickness and stayed down in the Forest? Was Cromwell going to come and arrest him? No. Nothing would happen. He’d be left alone. But if he ever wanted any appointment or favour from the new regime he could forget it.

Ambition, then. She was right. It was his ambition drawing him to the trial of the king.

And his conscience, too, damn it, he thought angrily. He was going because he knew the thing had to be done and he was man enough to do it. His conscience, too.

And ambition.

The little king was turning off the end of the strand now. A few moments more and the party disappeared from sight. Slowly, reluctantly, John Lisle also turned and rode back towards his house. He and Alice had had several homes in the last ten years. They had been in London and Winchester, on the Isle of Wight, where he was busy repairing his own family estates, at Moyles Court in the Avon valley or at Alice’s favourite Albion House. As it was almost Christmas now they were in Albion House.

What was he going to say to her on his return?

He had thought she might be asleep when he got back, but she was waiting for him, still in her nightclothes, although wrapped up, thank God, in the chilly air by the open door. Had she been waiting there since he left? A pang of pain and a rush of tenderness passed through him. Her eyes were red. He dismounted and went to her. ‘I’ll stay until after Christmas,’ he said. ‘Then, after that, we’ll think again.’ He told himself that this last bit was true, as if he had not already made up his mind.

‘The king has gone?’

‘Yes. On his way.’

She nodded sadly. ‘John,’ she said suddenly, ‘whatever God tells you must be done, we are with you, I and your children. You must do what you must do. I am your wife.’

Dear heaven, he thought, what a fine one. He embraced her and entered the house with a new joy in his heart.

1655

Thomas Penruddock would never forget the first time he saw Alice Lisle. He had been ten. That was two years ago.

They had set off from Compton Chamberlayne early in the morning. The village and manor of Compton Chamberlayne lay in the valley of the River Nadder, about seven miles west of Sarum, and the journey into the old cathedral city was easy and pleasant. After a rest and a brief visit to the ancient cathedral with its soaring spire, they had proceeded south, following the River Avon’s course, past the Gorges family’s great estate of Longford Castle and then, crossing the river a few miles further down, they had made their way up on to the plateau of wooded ground that is the northernmost corner of the huge New Forest.

The village of Hale lay just at this corner. From the manor house, set right on the edge of the ridge, there was a lovely view westward over the Avon valley floor. Two generations ago the Penruddocks had bought the manor for a younger son, and the Penruddocks of Hale and their cousins had always been on friendly terms. On this occasion his parents had taken Thomas to stay at Hale for a few days.

As it happened, Thomas had never been to Hale before. Their cousins welcomed them warmly, the young ones took him to play, and his first evening only seemed likely to be spoiled for a moment when an elderly aunt, looking at him intently, suddenly declared: ‘Dear heaven, John, that child looks exactly like his grandmother, Anne Martell.’

It was from his mother’s side, from her mother’s family the Martells of Dorset, that Thomas had taken his dark, rather brooding good looks. The light-haired Penruddocks were a handsome family too. His father, whom Thomas idolized, was thought especially so and it had always saddened the boy that they did not look exactly alike. So his saturnine face broke into a smile when the elderly aunt continued: ‘I hope you’re proud of him, John’ and his father replied: ‘Yes, I think I am.’

Colonel John Penruddock. To Thomas he was the perfect man. With his brown beard and laughing eyes, hadn’t he been one of the most dashing commanders on the royalist side? He had lost a brother in the war; a cousin had been exiled. His own gallant loyalty to the king had cost him dear – both in money and offices – when Cromwell and his wretched crew had triumphed; but Thomas would rather the Penruddocks lost every acre of their land than have his father any different, any less splendid than he was.

The next morning, to his great pleasure, he was allowed to join the men when they went for a ride.

‘I think’, their host said, ‘we’ll start across Hale Purlieu. Do you know’, he asked kindly, ‘what a purlieu is, Thomas?’ And, when Thomas shook his head: ‘No reason why you should. A purlieu is an area at the edge of a royal forest that used to be under forest law but isn’t any more. There are several places along this edge of the Forest that have been in and out, as the boundaries change down the centuries.’

The Penruddocks had ridden across Hale Purlieu and had started up over a high, wide tract of New Forest heath when they saw the two riders coming from their right on a track that ran directly across their path a little below them. Thomas heard his father mutter a curse and saw his cousins pull up sharply. He was about to ask what it meant, but his father looked so grim that he did not dare. So the Penruddocks watched silently as the figures, a man and a woman, passed two hundred yards in front of them without a sign or a word and continued across the heath.

He had a good look at them as they rode by. The man, quietly dressed, was wearing a high-crowned, broad-rimmed black hat of the kind favoured by Cromwell’s Puritans. The woman was equally quietly dressed, in dark brown with a small lace collar. Her head was bare, her hair reddish. They might be simple Puritans, but the quality of their clothes and their splendid horses indicated clearly that they were people of considerable wealth. Nobody moved until they were almost out of sight.

‘Who were they, Father?’ he at last ventured to ask.

‘Lisle and his wife,’ came the bleak answer.

‘They’ve got Moyles Court,’ his cousin remarked, ‘but they don’t come up here much.’ He sniffed contemptuously. ‘We never speak to them.’ His eyes rested upon the two figures as they finally disappeared. ‘Damned regicides.’

Regicides: the people who had killed the king. Not all the Roundheads had been for it. Fairfax, Cromwell’s fellow commander, had refused to take part in the trial of the king. Several of the leading men were unwilling to sign the death warrant. But John Lisle had shown no qualms. He’d been at the trial, helped draw up the documents, argued for execution, shown no remorse when the king’s head was cut off. He was a king-killer, a regicide.

‘And profited by it handsomely,’ his cousin added angrily. When royalist estates were confiscated by Parliament, Cromwell had given Lisle the chance to buy up land cheap. ‘His wife’s no better,’ Penruddock of Hale went on. ‘She’s in it as deep as he is. Regicides both.’

‘Those people’, his father said quietly, ‘are your family’s mortal enemies, Thomas. Remember that.’

‘They have the power, John,’ his cousin remarked. ‘That’s the trouble. And there’s not much to do about it.’

‘Oh,’ Colonel John Penruddock said thoughtfully, ‘I wouldn’t be sure of that, cousin. You never know.’ And Thomas saw the two men look at each other, but no further word was spoken.

He had wondered what it meant.

And now he knew. It was a Monday morning. They had been out all that damp March night, gathering parties of horsemen around Sarum; but Tom didn’t feel tired for he was too excited. He was riding with his father. It was still dark, an hour to go before dawn, when the cavalcade – almost two hundred strong – rode in beside the old Close wall, under the high shadow of the cathedral spire. At the head rode his father, another local gentleman named Grove and General Wagstaff, a stranger who had come with messages and instructions from the royal court in exile.

Passing the corner where the cathedral’s walled precincts met the town, they rode up the short street that brought them into the broad open ground of Salisbury market place. As puzzled heads popped out from shuttered windows, awakened by this unexpected clatter in the dark, the men-at-arms went quickly about their work.

‘Two men to each door,’ he heard his father order briskly. Moments later they had set guards by the entrance of each of the market place’s several inns. Next, his father sent patrols down the streets and to the gates of the cathedral Close.

It was only a few minutes before a young officer rode up and reported: ‘The town is secured.’

‘Good.’ His father turned to his friend Grove. ‘Would you go door to door? Let’s see how many of the good citizens of Salisbury are ready to serve their king.’ As Grove went off, Penruddock turned back to the young officer. ‘See how many horses you can find. Commandeer them, no matter whom they belong to, in the king’s name.’ He glanced across at his fellow commander. General Wagstaff, a rather hot-headed man, had served valiantly in the Civil War. With a trace of irritation Penruddock asked him now: ‘Where’s Hertford?’

The Marquis of Hertford, a mighty magnate, had pledged to join them with a large troop, perhaps a whole regiment of horse.