Rebels and Traitors (37 page)

The new Roundheads were equipped with coats, shirts, stockings, shoes, britches and Monmouth caps, and allocated another daily allowance (threepence a day). Once they had been judged docile and trustworthy, they were armed with swords and guns made in Birmingham. They regarded these weapons as inferior, but for thruppence a day, plus a roof over their heads, they would put up with anything. Rowan could ride. Most horse thieves could stay safely on anything with four legs. He was given a mount, then appointed to be a light dragoon. His diminutive younger ‘brother’, who lacked the strength even to support a long musket properly, would be allotted camp duties. They were assigned to a new garrison which had recently been created for Parliament under Colonel John Fox.

Fox ran an irregular, roistering, free-ranging, unsupervised organisation that would eventually be disbanded under a cloud. Two guttersnipes could not have found themselves a more congenial position.

Warwickshire in the civil war was mostly held by Parliament, but a Royalist bloc lay to the west, including all of Wales; its rough boundary ran from Chester down through Shrewsbury and Worcester to Tewkesbury and on to the West Country. The district around Stratford-upon-Avon was Royalist, which provided a safe corridor when the King obtained Welsh recruits. The Midlands were constantly crisscrossed by Prince Rupert. His efforts early in 1643 had achieved their objective: the Queen’s convoy of soldiers and ammunition wagons left York and passed safely south, bypassing Birmingham, though resting overnight nearby at the Saracen’s Head in the Queen’s personal manor of King’s Norton. The next day Her Majesty arrived at Stratford-upon-Avon, where she was an overnight guest of Shakespeare’s daughter, Susannah Hall, at New Place. There Henrietta Maria was joined by Rupert, and four days later met King Charles and progressed into Oxford.

The Royalist Lord Denbigh’s death at Birmingham changed the balance of power in Warwickshire. Although Parliament then lost Lord Brooke at Lichfield, the new Lord Denbigh fought for Parliament. This Denbigh replaced Brooke in charge of the Midlands Association: Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Shropshire. His Committee of Public Safety headquarters were at Coventry. He also had a large base at Warwick Castle, so strong that it was never besieged. Wherever there were suitable large houses he set out to take them from Royalists, fortify the buildings and establish garrisons which would control the countryside, raise money and recruit men to attack other Royalist strongholds.

Some of the rebels in these areas had curious origins. Most colourful were the ‘Morelanders’ in remote upland country in north-east Staffordshire. Armed only with birding-guns, cudgels and scythes, these shaggy turf-cutters had banded together, giving their leader the sinister title of ‘the Grand Juryman’. Their boldest exploit was a doomed attempt to drive the Royalists from Stafford.

Equally seen as outsiders were Fox’s men at Edgbaston. Lord Denbigh regarded this garrison as tricky and high-handed. Fox resented his commander’s lack of warmth and his reluctance to send funds. If Denbigh’s men trespassed into districts he regarded as his own, Fox complained. He wanted personal credit for his garrison’s exploits. When
he
was summoned to Coventry on charges of plundering, and was compelled to cough up ‘a goodly sum’ to regain his position and his reputation, he made up the fine in further demands on local villages and individuals in the area he roamed.

Where exactly he came from and his true background were obscure. Enemies called him a tinker, yet he was literate, intelligent and effective. When civil war broke out, John Fox had found his role. He drew on his own resources. With him to Edgbaston he brought a brother and a brother-in-law, Major Reighnold Fox and Captain Humphrey Tudman. His core of sixteen men swelled to more than two hundred. Some he recruited for Edgbaston were locals. His clerk was called John Carter; a John Carter junior had been killed by Prince Rupert’s men in Birmingham.

Denbigh formally granted Fox a colonel’s commission in March 1644, to lead a regiment of six troops of horse and two of dragoons. Even so, it was three more months before Parliament allowed him financial support. Until the money came, he and his men fended for themselves. Robert Porter, the steel-mill magnate, assisted, though he and Fox were later to quarrel tiresomely over manor rents.

When the gentry established garrisons — stalwart knights of the shire with university educations and large landholdings — they were always admired for their energy, loyalty and honour. The real charge such people had against John Fox was that without social advantages and without being asked, he seized the initiative and set himself up at Edgbaston. Both Royalist and Parliamentarian leaders shunned him. Not only was he no gentleman, the job he decided to do for Parliament gave him a touch of the outlaw. His nickname, the ‘Jovial Tinker’, was because he rarely smiled, though if calling Fox a tinker was an insult, it never seemed to bother him.

Dressed in their latest uniforms, the Tew brothers were sent to serve ‘Colonel Tinker’ at Edgbaston Hall. This was nothing like the house where they had just been captured. Aston Hall, which lay immediately to the north-east of Birmingham, was brash and boastful, one man’s symbol of his own new wealth and power. They found that Edgbaston, on the south-west side of Birmingham, was a moated medieval manor-house with a dovecote, typical of timeless English village life, surrounded by rickety watermills and weedy fishpools. Even when the Tews arrived they could see the idyll was deteriorating. The greens around the house were churned to mud and slime by soldiers’ horses. No ducks swam in the moat; there were probably no fish left in the pools. The roof of the adjacent ancient church had been stripped and its bells removed; the lead was being melted down for bullets. The centuries-old Hall was treated with disrespect by Fox’s soldiers; it already showed sad signs of wear and would in time be badly damaged, destroyed by fire and lost to posterity.

Brought before Fox for inspection, Rowan and Joseph cast their eyes down, though not too much. They knew the fine line between looking unobtrusive and looking suspiciously meek. Fox, a dour man in his mid-thirties, surveyed them with Midlands scepticism. He accepted them as turncoats; there were plenty of those on both sides. Still, he made it plain he expected nothing good from them and if they tried anything on, he would know about it. He gave them a sombre speech about the garrison, then handed them copies of ‘The Soldier’s Prayerbook’, a religious publication for devout troops which was famous for the number of times its pages had stopped enemy bullets. ‘Let the Word of the Lord be your breastplate!’ Colonel Fox instructed — which covered up the fact that he could not afford to buy helmets or body armour.

He spoke with the deadbeat cadence of the area. Outsiders would assume he was slow-witted, but the Tews understood that language. Their colonel’s dry tone hid intelligent qualities. John Fox lived by his wits. So did the Tews. They all thought themselves as good as anybody anywhere.

Rowan rode with the troopers. Joseph was left behind to scrub pots. The garrison had a brewer and a meat-salter who both allowed the skinny lad to help them with their work. Dripping snot, the so-called Joseph watched and learned. Service in an army teaches a bright spark skills for life.

The garrison’s main task was the endless extraction of taxes. Fixed amounts were set, which towns and villages had to give in support of the war effort, whether or not those towns and villages supported Parliament. The King’s side worked the same system. Some towns and villages therefore ended up paying twice; it was safer not to refuse. In addition, Parliament required that individuals whose land produced more than ten pounds a year or who had a hundred pounds in personal estate should make loans’ of up to one-fifth of their revenue from land or a twentieth of their goods. Few expected repayment. Very few ever obtained it. Grumbling victims complained that Committees of Public Safety were making themselves rich; members of the committees protested that their own estates were plundered by soldiers, who often took them prisoner as well, in order to extract ransoms. Such was the chaos of war. Or so said Colonel Fox.

Outright plundering by local garrisons was rare because it made no sense. To ruin the countryside would leave troops and their horses starving, nor was it good practice to arouse too much hostility. Locals who felt they had nothing to lose might organise armed reprisals. But when they were out on the loose, Fox’s men did seize horses ‘for the service of Parliament’. If Fox knew, he turned a blind eye. They took free quarter where they could too — lodging for which they did not pay — and sometimes they made illegal promises to householders in order to obtain bribes. All over the country and regardless of affiliation, houses were being raided for food — oats, meat and cheese — for horse gear — bridles, saddles, spurs — and for weapons. Anything rideable or portable was at risk. Though the Tews took little interest in politics, as soon as they arrived they quickly grasped the attractive milieu into which they had been sent. For them, Edgbaston was a happy time.

Fox was a diligent scout. He made regular reports to Lord Denbigh, concentrating on the presence of Prince Rupert in the Midlands, sometimes noting manoeuvres of the King. It involved his men spying on troop movements; listening in on Royalist soldiers’ conversations; writing detailed reports of intelligence gathered; and astutely interpreting the information. Messages were then sent considerable distances with speed. To achieve this required an established body of reliable scouts who had to be brave, sharp-eyed, able to call upon safe houses and a supply of fresh mounts both night and day. All the men had to be very familiar with a wide district. Scouts could not get lost. Messages must not be captured.

Sometimes Fox sent his reports much further afield: to Sir Samuel Luke, who was the Earl of Essex’s scoutmaster.

For a couple of months after the Tews arrived, winter continued and there was little happening. In March 1644, Fox began a series of lightning activities. He captured Stourton Castle but was driven away by a massive Royalist response. He and his men fled headlong across Stourbridge Heath, pursued by the enemy who soon proclaimed that first to flee before them had been Fox himself. Undeterred, his men then besieged Hawkesley Farm on Clent Ridge, a strong Royalist outpost where the King had stayed on occasion; they drove out the owner, Mr Littlemore, and his family. But while they were away at Hawkesley, Prince Rupert and his brother Maurice rode into Birmingham and stole sheep and cattle from the markets.

In April, too, Fox organised a breath-taking night raid. Setting off one afternoon, he rode with sixty picked men to Bewdley, a pretty town on the River Severn which was famous for making Monmouth caps, the warm, easy-to-wear felt headgear worn by many soldiers instead of helmets. Bewdley was a Royalist stronghold and an inland port. Pottery and iron were taken there by packhorse, for onward shipping down to Bristol and beyond. King Charles several times stayed there at the grand comfortable house called Tickenhill which overlooked the town from high ground, surrounded by elegant woods and parks. It would be from Tickenhill that the King would write a very famous letter to Prince Rupert in June, saying that if York was lost he would reckon his kingdom lost too. However, in April the house was merely occupied by the Governor of Bewdley, Sir Thomas Lyttelton.

Fox and his men arrived in the dark, cheekily pretending to be some of Prince Rupert’s men, who were lost. They quietly put the town guards out of action. They crept up to the house, where everyone was gently sleeping. The first the governor knew of this daring raid was when he woke up to find himself a prisoner. He and his retinue, with forty extremely good horses, were then sneaked out of Bewdley.

Eventually Royalists pursued Fox back to Edgbaston. They were too late. Fox had gone in triumph to Coventry. From the stronghold at Coventry, Lyttelton would be passed on under guard to London, where he would be held in the Tower for the rest of the war. ‘Thanks be to God,’ murmured the Jovial Tinker piously of the Royalists to whom he had given the slip, ‘they came a day after the fair!’

‘Joseph’ Tew had been terrified when angry cavaliers arrived at the Hall. Disappointed, they rode off soon enough, but fear jolted the brewster into action. Taking advantage of the colonel’s absence at Coventry, the youngster slipped away.

There was a reason. Disguise would soon be impossible. Some comrade at Dudley Castle or Edgbaston Hall — or maybe more than one — had uncovered Joseph’s secret. Discovery inevitably happened with women soldiers, because either they were following a sweetheart to the wars, or in their loneliness they found a confidant and broke their silence. The traditional fate had befallen young Tew. Secret couplings had led to the usual result. Soon everyone would know: the potboy ‘Joseph’ was to be the mother of a child.

Whether the father had refused to acknowledge his role, whether he already had a wife and children, or whether the right man could not even be identified, marriage was not an option. The young mother was, therefore, dealing with the problem in her own way. If she knew whom to blame, she had no wish to say so. Rather than be exposed, she deserted the garrison and fled. She dressed again in stolen female clothes. She dared not return to Birmingham, so she chose the route so many forlorn hopefuls took: she would go to London where, even if the streets turned out not to be paved with gold, those who wished to be anonymous had a chance to disappear.

So, once more, the sorry waif took to the road alone.