Rebels and Traitors (65 page)

Sir Lysander pulled a face. ‘One has to have standards.’

‘It should never have come to that. It is
too serious!’
Lovell burst out, full of rage again. ‘There should have been no risks, no mistakes, no compromises. Nothing left to chance. No thinking on the wing. No damned incompetence by pretty dancing-master courtiers of the Queen’s! Will Legge should have been in charge of the escape, with a band of decent soldiers and a plan that allowed no slips.’

The King was highly nervous,’ Sir Lysander soothed him. ‘He needed faces he knew. Even the jailors were more likely to relax their guard if they only saw familiar attendants.’

Lovell muttered something inaudible, clearly an obscenity.

After Lovell glanced through the letter one final time, he destroyed it. He flung it into the fire, but controlled his annoyance and carefully ensured with a poker that all the pages were consumed. In the light of the rising flames, Sir Lysander looked less tipsy and more adroit than Juliana had ever seen him; he announced that they must digest this news carefully. Tomorrow he and Lovell would speak further. Juliana now understood there was some much bigger conspiracy afoot.

Lovell returned with her to the farmhouse, saying no more. Juliana also remained silent, not trusting herself to talk.

Now the contrite father, Lovell threw himself into entertaining Tom. He tossed pancakes amidst much genuine merriment, slathering them with orange juice, feinting a near-miss with a flying crêpe. He played a full part in the birthday celebration. There was no sign that this was a disappointed plotter who had much to think about. Juliana realised that had she not gone to the Hall, she would never have learned Orlando was so close to the political crisis.

That night she tried to tackle him: ‘You and I always believed in companionship, Orlando. A wife should share all her husband’s secrets.’

‘Were I able to speak freely, I should tell you all.’ Begging had been fruitless. The need-to-know principle has caused many a domestic conflict. Safe people are excluded unnecessarily. Idiots and incompetents then break the confidence. ‘They are not
my
secrets, sweetheart,’ explained Orlando, disingenuously.

Juliana could not have watched him closer then, if she had suspected he had a mistress. When Lovell travelled to the Isle of Wight shortly afterwards, she was at least prepared. He, for once, did tell her he was going. She thought no better of him for that.

Juliana felt betrayed. It seemed their whole time at Pelham Hall had been arranged only to enable Lovell to work as a Royalist agent, close to his patron. He had had no real thought of giving her and the boys some family life, family life in which she had taken such delight but upon a false premise. Still, doggedly, she continued to pretend she and Lovell were as one. She offered to go to the Isle of Wight with him, taking the children, which might provide camouflage. Lovell made spurious excuses that his work for the King was too dangerous; he could not expose his dear family to risk. Juliana decided bleakly that he simply did not want them. She believed Orlando enjoyed the excitement and isolation.
He wants freedom to play on his own!

Their year-long idyll abruptly ended. So too did Juliana Lovell’s complaisance with her marriage, another casualty of the civil war.

Some stories of the King’s captivity at Carisbrooke Castle were confided to Juliana by Sir Lysander Pelham. She knew that her husband was on the Isle of Wight at the end of 1647 and that he left in the early months of 1648. She was never told what part, if any he played in the escape attempts. Not much, she thought. To give him credit, Lovell was competent. He would have managed better results.

The castle was a stalwart Norman motte-and-bailey affair, with stone walls, towers and a keep added to fortify it against possible invasion by the Spanish or the French. It made a strong prison but had never been used defensively. Nevertheless, it would be from here that King Charles launched the second civil war whilst, ironically, sanctioning a foreign invasion for his personal assistance.

At first the prison regime was lax, although his room did have barred windows, just as Royalist broadsheets depicted. They showed him looking out through the bars forlornly while wearing a full crown and a glimpse of ermine, which Juliana thought unlikely. The King’s pursuits were those of a gentleman with endless leisure; she reckoned he would require smart, warm daywear which had plenty of room for movement, plus hat and gloves.

His carriage was brought over the Solent for taking the air; he went out sightseeing and even attended a funeral of a man he had never met. Colonel Hammond had a bowling green created in the castle for him. Reading material was available. As well as sermons, Latin for translation and Bacon’s
Advancement of Learning,
Charles read Tasso and
The Faerie Queene.
Fiction should provide solace, but it was characteristic of the man to bury himself in romantic escapism just when he should have been most grounded in reality. Socially, his usher was busy. Political negotiators approached him gingerly. Isle of Wight gentry from time to time were permitted to kiss their sovereign’s hand and, as Sir Lysander growled, piss themselves with the thrill of being in the same room as the blood royal’.

The courtiers who had assisted with the flight from Hampton Court stayed only briefly. Parliament ordered Will Legge’s arrest. By January he had made his way to the Channel Islands though Juliana would learn later that he returned to the mainland to join Royalist activitists in Kent. Berkeley was again employed as a messenger from the Parliamentary generals to the King in April 1648, but he feared prosecution and thought it wise to retire abroad.

Royal servants of lower rank who had been left behind at Hampton Court faithfully followed what was now routine; they packed up trunks and traipsed after their master. He soon had his page, barber, tailor, coal-carrier and laundress; the laundress’s assistant was one of several women who brought in letters from the Queen and supporters outside. Correspondence was passed to the King at dinner or hidden under carpets in his room. Royalist agents were everywhere — actually inside the castle or waiting ready to help in nearby towns, both on the Isle of Wight and the mainland. A flame-haired female devotee called Jane Whorwood, who had previously hung about Holdenby House, turned up in the Isle of Wight and affixed herself to the castle. The governor was too polite to send a woman packing — or preferred perhaps to keep her under observation.

Using guidance from the astrologer William Lilly, Jane Whorwood made numerous attempts to help the King escape. The stars proved unreliable on logistics: one plan was for the King to escape through the window bars, which Charles had tested for feasibility by poking his head out. The plan failed when his body would not follow (something he had not rehearsed) so, as the wind changed and his ship sailed away empty, he became ignominiously stuck. Jane Whorwood then fetched from London a consignment of aqua fortis, which was nitric acid; she spilled much of it on the long bumpy journey down to Hampshire though she managed to carry some, together with a file, as far as the King’s stool-room. Her scheme was to weaken the window bars so they could be removed from their sockets. Unfortunately, the castle governor became aware what was going on and intervened. Other, wilder ideas were abandoned: to cut a hole in the ceiling of the King’s bedroom; to fit him out in a crazy theatrical disguise; to set fire to a heap of charcoal stored near the royal chambers, as a diversion … As Colonel Hammond routinely uncovered these stratagems and routinely blocked them, he reduced the number of the King’s attendants; after his barber was dismissed, Charles balked at having a Parliamentarian come anywhere near him with sharp implements, so he had to grow his hair.

Meanwhile in London a daring plan to free the King’s second son, James, Duke of York, did come off. A woman called Anne Murray was enlisted by her lover, Colonel Bampfylde, to provide female clothing; after a convenient game of hide-and-seek, the young duke successfully bolted for freedom. Disguised in a dress with a crimson petticoat and fortified by Wood Street cake, he was whisked away to his mother in France, safe from being made a puppet-ruler in his father’s stead.

As these ludicrous stories surfaced through Sir Lysander, Juliana became ever more annoyed with Lovell.
She
could have been just as willing, inventive and brave as those women. Her grandmother had worked for the court and although Juliana had never been compelled to declare formally whether or not she was a Royalist, she would certainly have made an indomitable partner. She shared Lovell’s clear-eyed understanding of the King’s faults and the limitations of the King’s chosen advisers; her husband should have seen she could have done better. Juliana knew her own value; she thought Lovell knew it too. Being excluded left a chill in her heart.

Work was found for her, none the less. Early in 1648 Lovell wrote instructing her to go up to London, to face the notorious Committee for Compounding. Her task was to beg, plead, apologise, promise, rend hearts, screw favours and if needs be perjure herself in order to obtain the release of Lovell’s property in Hampshire.

Sir Lysander sent her with a groom, and allowed her to live in his elegant London town house in Covent Garden. He had been a member of Parliament, though had ceased to take his seat at the Commons when the war began; as a result his London home was rather sparsely furnished and staffed — it had been ransacked in 1642 by Parliamentary officers. Juliana offered to organise an inventory of what survived and a list of work needed, in return for her keep.

Her departure for London was much approved by Bessy Sprott, née Pelham, who had recently come home to live at Pelham Hall because her husband died. The death of so young a man would once have been occasioned by pox or plague; nowadays, wounds were a more common cause. In fact Jack Sprott, the livelier of Sir Lysander’s sons-in-law, died of an ague, caught on the malarial Essex marshes. It was a while before Juliana worked out what he had been doing there — Royalist plotting — and she reckoned his wife never did understand. The baffled Bessy returned to her childhood home, eager to annoy her sister by strengthening her hold over their father as gout and general bleariness took him towards the grave. Both sisters viewed Juliana’s presence with jaundiced eyes. The more Sir Lysander admired Juliana, the more leery they became. Although entirely innocent, she was glad to leave.

She stayed in London for a month and a half, a time made the more tedious because she had left her children behind in Sussex. She had not realised how long this might take.

Delinquents had to present themselves at the Committee for Compounding of Malignants, which sat at Goldsmiths Hall. How appropriate! thought Juliana, as she became aware of how much money this committee was extorting. Successful appellants swore an oath not to bear arms against Parliament again, and they took the Covenant. They had to declare the full value of their estates; any misstatement or fudging rendered them liable to heavy fines. Juliana knew that the rates of assessment varied, depending on how strong a supporter of the King the victims were deemed to be. Sir Lysander, as an MP and a full colonel, had been fined half his estate. Lovell reckoned he might get away with the general rate, which was only a sixth.

Among Royalists there was much conferring about how to manage the committee. It was believed that sending a wife to plead was more likely to work than appearing in person. The more pregnant and sickly the wife looked, and the greater the number of her dependent children, the better. Lovell had written that he hoped he had left Juliana pregnant for this purpose; he had, but she suffered a miscarriage. ‘Use your grief!’ Bessy Sprott had advised her, which was cynical but sound.

Goldsmiths Hall was less than twenty years old, a large foursquare building with a lofty entrance, pillared and fanlighted in grandiose style. The monumental livery hall stood in the traditional heart of the City of London, occupying an enormous block between Foster Lane and Gresham Street. In close proximity to Guildhall and St Paul’s, this was an area of great bustle and commerce, peopled by aldermen, clergymen, booksellers, jewellers and cut-purses. Juliana had lived in London for a while with her grandmother, though not since she was a child. The frenzy and noise now came as a shock.

Appellants had to mingle with goldsmiths and silversmiths bringing work to the Assay office, and the tough servants who acted as their bodyguards. When Juliana presented herself there was a queue, mainly of other women, most of them looking strained, some definitely viewing this occasion as beneath them. One extremely haughty lady in yards of black figured silk came stalking in, took a fraught look at the situation, then left again as if she could not demean herself. Juliana had been brought up to do whatever was necessary to survive. She quietly ascertained the system from a man she assumed to be a clerk, who nodded to the line of other supplicants. ‘You will catch a strong whiff of lavender, for they have all dug into chests for finery, in order to seem more important… the sensible ones come looking as poor as possible.’ His eyes lingered on Juliana; she had no finery to draw upon. ‘You may present yourself first, madam.’