Treason's Daughter (43 page)

HISTORICAL NOTE

A few years ago, I was living on Fetter Lane. It is a typical central London street – a jumble of hideous concrete buildings, glass-fronted offices, a newsagent, a mellow wood-panelled pub and a dodgy boozer for the Friday night bingers.

It was a magical place to live. At weekends, the old square mile of London and a few streets beyond empty out. The offices are shuttered; the pubs are hushed. The streets are left to a handful of bemused tourists, a few lucky residents and sightless, grey statues. The City is quiet, and you can hear the echoes of London's deep layers of history.

Idly researching my street one day, I came across the story of Waller's Plot. The two merchants involved, Richard Challoner and Nathaniel Tompkins, were hanged outside their front doors – one on Fetter Lane. The aims of the plot are murky, but I have tried to be true to what facts there are. I have borrowed the names of the merchants and invented their characters and families. Edmund Waller's character I have inferred, rightly or wrongly, from his poetry.

I have long been fascinated by the English Civil War, and perplexed by its absence from our national story. French and
American souls are informed by their revolutions; we are more diffident about ours. Perhaps the Restoration made all the ructions and schisms seem like a macabre dream. Perhaps the religious zeal that drove the political radicals is hard to tolerate in a more secular age.

But the fact remains that the ferment of ideas generated in those twenty years informed all the West's later movements for liberty and the rights of man. The very early seeds of feminism are evident in women's writing during the period, albeit tinged with godliness. The British instigated an extraordinary attempt to define and claim freedom in an era of hitherto unchallenged monarchy.

It was costly. In
Going to the Wars,
Charles Carlton estimates that 190,000 people died in England and Wales alone – both directly on the battlefields and as a result of the disease and hunger which follow armies. This from a population of five million. It was unprecedentedly bloody and brutal, with atrocities on both sides. Our neat caricatures of Roundheads and Cavaliers distort a much more interesting, complex reality.

For those who would like to read further, the best recent introductions to the era I have read include:
The English Civil War
by Diane Purkiss;
God's Fury, England's Fire
by Michael Braddick;
The English Civil Wars
by Blair Worden;
Civil War
by Trevor Royle. John Adamson's
The Noble Revolt
is a radical reinterpretation of the causes of the war.

Other books I found invaluable include:
Birth, Marriage & Death
and
Dangerous Talk
, both by David Cressy
; The Tyrannicide Brief
by Geoffrey Robertson;
The Verneys
by Adrian Tinniswood
; A Royal Passion
by Katie Whittaker;
The Ends of Life
by Keith Thomas;
Samuel Pepys
by Clare Tomalin;
Charles 1
by Richard Cust;
Black Tom
by Andrew Hopper;
The Impact of the Civil War on the Economy of London
by Ben Coates;
Puritan London
by Tai Liu;
Merchants and Revolution
by Robert Bremner;
Women all on Fire
by Allison Plowden;
London and the Civil War
by Stephen Porter.
The King's Smuggler
by John Fox is a fascinating book on Jane Whorwood, a secret agent for Charles 1.

On the military side, these books were very useful:
A Military History of the English Civil War
by Malcolm Wanklyn and Frank Jones;
Naseby
by Glenn Foard;
The Battle for London
by Stephen Porter and Simon Marsh;
Cromwell's War Machine
by Keith Roberts;
Prince Rupert
by Frank Kitson;
Going to the Wars
by Charles Carlton;
War in England
by Barbara Donagan. All mistakes and misinterpretations are mine alone.

This is a very limited bibliography. As well as numerous secondary sources, it excludes countless letters, eyewitness accounts and diaries. I have been reading about the English Civil War ever since I studied it for A level, when I was inspired by a wonderful teacher – Annabel Smith. A second brilliant history teacher and Civil War expert, Serrie Meakins, kindly read the work early to check for errors, and found a couple! Thank you to both of you – history needs its inspirational teachers.

Other huge debts of gratitude are owed to Andrew Gordon, my agent. Without his advice and support, this book would still be mouldering, half-written, in the ‘if only' pile. Thanks too to my editors at Corvus, Maddie West and Anna Hogarty, for all their enthusiasm and hand-holding.

I have been cajoled and encouraged to publication by various friends and colleagues – in rough chronological order:
Surmaya Talyarkhan, Clare Moore, Jeanette Burn, Megan Skipper, Annabelle Honess Roe, Anne Ashworth, Gráinne Gilmore, Robert Cole, Anne Spackman, James Harding, Bill and Sandra West. Thank you to all of you for the wine, ego-stroking, babysitting and professional breaks that contributed, sometimes indirectly, to the writing of this book.

Thanks to the old block I'm a chip off – my dad, Bob Senior. My beloved sisters, Glencora and Elishna, deserve a special mention in a book about sibling bonds and tensions – I am almost sure we would have been on the same side! Hector, my nephew, thank you for being a fellow history buff. Lara and Romilly, my daughters, I love you to the stars and back.

Thank you to Lisa, my mother, for everything; and for teaching me how to read.

Thank you to Colin for everything else; and for teaching me how to write about love.