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But it was only when Meredith, in his sermon next Sunday, made reference to the wickedness of those like Prynne who denied God’s bishops, that something within Martha suddenly gave way. Standing up, she spoke quietly but clearly: “This is not the house of God.”

There was an astonished silence. She said it again.

“This is not the house of God.” And then, feeling Dogget tugging at her arm, she calmly proceeded: “I must speak out.” And did so.

It was remembered for many years, that little speech in St Lawrence Silversleeves; even though, until the beadle dragged her from the place, it could not have lasted more than a minute. It touched on popery, on sacrilege, on God’s true kingdom – in simple words with which every Protestant in the congregation could identify. But most of all, it was remembered for one terrible sentence: “There are two great evils walking this land,” she said: “and one is called a bishop, and one is called a king.”

“She will surely,” they said, “have her ears cut off too.”

It took all Julius’s powers of persuasion to save her. The Bishop of London would have hauled her to gaol, but Julius could never forget the awkward guilt he felt about Gideon; and so, on the Tuesday following her outburst he carefully explained to her: “I think you must leave the country. Have you any thought of where you could go?”

“I will go,” she said placidly, “to Massachusetts.”

And so it was, in the summer of 1637, that Martha, her young daughter and both Dogget’s sons, prepared to set sail from London. Gideon and his family could not travel yet; and since Gideon needed his help in their little business, it was agreed that Dogget himself would remain in London for a year or so while they decided what to do.

The company that gathered to take ship at Wapping was a varied one. There were a number of craftsmen, a lawyer, a preacher, two fishermen. There was also a young graduate of Cambridge, who had recently inherited money, partly from the sale of a tavern in Southwark. His name was John Harvard.

The last words Martha spoke, as the boat was about to leave, were to Mrs Wheeler. “Promise me that you will keep an eye on my husband.”

So Mrs Wheeler promised that she would.

There were many ships that arrived on the shores of Massachusetts in the autumn of 1637. One was the vessel that carried Martha and John Harvard. Many others also came from England, and some from different places.

Hardly anyone noticed the slow old ship which had ploughed its way up from the Caribbean with a cargo of molasses. Indeed, within a season or two, even the harbour-master and the clerk who noted its arrival at Plymouth would probably have forgotten its existence if the captain of the vessel had not chosen the brief lay-over in port as his time to die. It was memorable because although the hair of the old mariner was white, his skin was black. “Black as your hat,” the clerk told his wife.

Orlando Barnikel died quietly because he knew in his heart that he had no true reason to live any longer.

The years after his buccaneering had not brought Black Barnikel great satisfaction. He had gradually settled into a quieter role as a sea-captain for hire. Men now knew him as a shrewd, skilful old operator, whose ships came through all weathers and who had a knack of avoiding trouble.

Where were his sons? Two, he knew, were dead. One was a Barbary Corsair, a Mediterranean pirate, a lower kind of fellow than he had ever been. A fourth – who even knew? They had gone from him, and come to nothing; it was, he now knew, inevitable for a man who was black in a white man’s world.

Before he died, however, he had decided that there was one last debt he wished to repay. And asking for a lawyer, he privately dictated a brief document, which he gave to the mate, whom he trusted, with a simple instruction that it was to be given to Jane, whom he carefully described. “God knows if she’s alive or what she’s called now,” he said, “but I left her in Virginia.”

Then, for the hour still left him, he had stared silently out of the window, at the harsh, rocky shore and the cold, unforgiving sea.

1642

Who could ever have believed that things had got so far? In 1637, believing that they had cowed the Puritans in England, King Charles I and Archbishop Laud turned their attention northwards and gave orders that the Church of England Prayer Book and services were straight away to be forced upon the dour Presbyterians of Scotland. Within weeks, all Scotland was aflame. And by the following year, a huge organization had arisen of Scots prepared to die to defend their Protestant cause. They had taken an oath; they were armed; they were ready to march upon England. The name of their endeavour was to ring through Scottish history: the Covenant.

To Charles it was time for stern measures. He called to his side his toughest servant, the trusted lieutenant who for some years had been ruling the unlucky Irish with an iron fist. The Earl of Strafford returned and a force of sorts was put together, but half the troops seemed to agree with the Covenanters. After more than a year of useless negotiation, Charles reluctantly summoned a Parliament. “For I dare say,” he reasoned, “with the marauding Scots at the door, the gentlemen of England will raise a decent army.” They demanded to discuss Charles’s government, so he impatiently dismissed the so-called Short Parliament within days. “We must hire an army, then,” Charles decided. And here began his greatest problem.

Money. He asked the city of London for a loan. No one would lend. Strafford told the merchants: “If we need to we’ll get cash by cutting the coinage.” As for the city’s refusal: “Double the demand, sire,” he suggested to the king in the Londoners’ hearing, “and hang a few aldermen. That’ll do it.”

“If only the king had listened to me,” Julius lamented to his brother, “about how to raise debt, he would not have been in this position now.” But he was. Seeing his weakness, the canny Scots occupied the north of England and would not go away until paid a huge indemnity. Charles therefore had to call Parliament again; and in the autumn of 1640, they were ready for him.

“These parliament men,” Henry angrily declared, “are dangerous radicals – no better than traitors. They’re in league with the Scots.” Of course they were. But traitors they were not, and hardly even radicals. They were mostly country gentlemen of substance who were appalled at Charles’s government. One, a senior fellow named Hampden, intended to lead a crusade against Ship Money. Another, a squire from East Anglia named Oliver Cromwell – a distant kinsman, as it happened, of Secretary Thomas Cromwell who had dissolved the monasteries a century before – up to Parliament for the first time, was shocked by what he saw as a godless court. But most important of all, the leader of the pack, was a master tactician called Pym.

“Pym’s reasoning is very simple,” a stout gentleman informed Julius one day in the Royal Exchange. “As long as the Scots sit tight up north – and they’ve promised us they will – and we refuse him any money down here, King Charles is trapped in a vice. Can’t do anything.” He chuckled. “So you see, it’s time to squeeze him now.”

And squeeze they did. The king’s right to customs, stripped away; Parliament must be called every three years; the present Parliament to sit as long as its members saw fit; the Ulster settlement to be returned to the Londoners. One by one these Acts were passed, humiliating Charles. By November, Strafford had been sent to the Tower; within a month, Archbishop Laud as well.

Yet, as the Parliament went about this grim business in the spring of 1641, Julius was not alarmed. Parliaments had crossed kings for centuries, whenever they dared; caused favourites to fall, even deprived monarchs of their mistresses! The situation was bad, but hardly desperate. Indeed, strangely enough, the sense of disquiet that he did feel came not from the doings of the great men in Parliament, but from a far more humble source, in his own little parish of St Lawrence Silversleeves.

It was not long after the Parliament had begun. Julius remembered the day vividly because William Prynne had just been released from jail and a huge crowd had been leading the earless Puritan hero in triumph through the streets. The shouts of the crowd were still ringing in his ears when, to his surprise, he learned that Gideon Carpenter was at the door; and he was even more puzzled when Gideon, looking at him steadily, showed him a large scroll of paper and asked him: “Do you want to sign?”

“Sign what?” Julius had demanded.

“It’s a petition. We have nearly fifteen thousand signatures. For the abolition of bishops and all their works, root and branch.” And Gideon pointed to the mass of signatures he had collected.

Julius had heard of this petition. Started by Pennington, a vigorous Puritan on the common council, and encouraged by the Presbyterian Scots envoys who had recently arrived in London, it had been signed by many who had hated Laud and his Church. But whatever the king’s troubles with Parliament, Julius could not imagine King Charles even deigning to look at such a document. “Why bring it to me?” he had asked, only to receive a reply that surprised him further. “When you had me whipped,” Gideon said quietly, “you didn’t give me a chance.” He stared at him. “But I’m giving you one.”

A chance? What was the solemn young man talking about? “Take it elsewhere,” he said curtly. But he still wondered afterwards. Giving him a chance: it was a strange expression. Soon he learned another.

Parliament now turned to impeach Strafford, but its legal grounds were unclear. “We’ll accuse him of unspecified crimes and the king must sign his death warrant.” To which the city of London added a gentle gloss: “We lend no money till his head is off.”

King Charles resisted. In the midst of all this, one April day, when a large crowd had gathered to make their feelings known at Westminster, Julius happened to encounter Gideon. Not wanting to seem discourteous, he remarked to him that, whatever one thought of Strafford, it was hard to see the business going as far as execution. The king just wouldn’t have it. So he was astonished when Gideon, instead of arguing, merely smiled and asked:

“Which king?”

“Which king? There is only one king, Gideon.”

But Gideon shook his head. “There are two kings now,” he said. “King Charles in his palace, and King Pym in the Commons.” He grinned. “And I think, Master Ducket, that King Pym will have it so.”

King Pym? The parliamentary leader. Julius had never heard the expression before and found it distasteful. “You should be careful what you say,” he cautioned. Yet the very next day, he came across a printed broadsheet plastered on the cross in Cheapside, whose heading declared in bold letters: “King Pym Says . . .” And within a week he had heard it a dozen times. Gideon was proved right as well. Within a month, bludgeoned by Parliament and without any funds, King Charles was forced to give way. Strafford was executed on Tower Hill.

But there was still one last, and terrible word that Julius had to learn.

During the summer, little changed. King Pym sat tight in his Parliament. King Charles made one, futile journey north to try to strike a bargain with the Scots, but the Presbyterians did not budge: King Charles remained caught in the vice. The Ducket brothers meanwhile had their own affairs to attend to. Julius and his little family joined Henry at Bocton for the summer, bringing with them several families of children from the parish – including, to his surprise, Gideon’s wife and children – to help with hop-picking. In the great peace of the Kent country, even Sir Henry and tiny O Be Joyful seemed to strike up a friendship as the little boy toddled about in the sun.

As soon as they returned to London, however, it was clear that more trouble was brewing. News had just arrived of a disturbance in Ireland. People had been killed, property burned. King Pym and King Charles alike agreed that troops must be sent to quell the unruly province. But there agreement ended. “I shall control the troops,” King Charles declared. It was what kings had always done. “In no circumstances,” the parliament men replied, “are we going to pay for troops that the king will surely turn against us.”

“To limit the king is not enough,” Parliament then argued, “for he could always strike back. We must control him.” King Pym, in effect, must be greater than King Charles. Every week some new and more radical proposal was raised. “The army must answer to Parliament alone,” they declared. “We should be able to veto the king’s ministers too.” And, hardly surprisingly, the Puritans among them urged: “No more bishops, either.”

By November Gideon was collecting signatures for another petition. “We’ll get twenty thousand this time.” At Westminster a huge mob was in regular attendance, which Pym and his friends did nothing to discourage.

“I was with some of the sounder parliament men today,” Henry told Julius one evening. “And they’re getting uneasy too. They want to control the king, but they think Pym is leading them towards mob rule. They’d rather reach some accommodation with the king than go down that slippery slope.” At the end of the month, when Pym and his followers forced their Grand Remonstrance through Parliament, incorporating all their radical demands, they only just got it passed, a large minority voting against. “Pym’s gone too far,” Henry judged. “He won’t get another majority unless he learns moderation.”

Many of the city aldermen and the richer London families were starting to have similar doubts: “The wards have elected a new common council of troublemakers and radicals.” As if to confirm all their fears, just days after Christmas a great mob of apprentices rioted at Westminster and had to be dispersed by troops. And then, for the first time Julius heard the word he was soon to learn to dread. “You know what the troops called the apprentices as they chased them past Whitehall?” Henry asked him. “They saw most of the young devils had close-cropped hair, so they called them Roundheads.” He laughed. “Roundheads. That’s what they are.”

Within days, five hundred young gentlemen from the Inns of Court had offered their services to King Charles, to maintain order. Even the new common council agreed to call out the city’s armed men to keep the peace.

Yet just when all sorts of influential people were beginning to have doubts about the opposition to the monarch, Julius, sitting over his accounts in the big house behind Mary-le-Bow, was astonished to see the heavy oak door of the parlour burst open and his brother, of all people, announce: “The king has gone mad.”