Sarum

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “We’re known to the earl,” Eustace told Oliver seriously. His secret hope was always that one day the magnate, who now owned Avonsford, would return his broken estate to him with enough money to put it back in order. He had made several journeys to London during which he had contrived to get himself into the earl’s company and remind him of their common interest in the place. He did not know that the earl’s steward had several times recommended disposing of the unprofitable manor if they could find a buyer, and that this very week it was being offered to the bishop for a sharply reduced price.

  While the town did its best to ignore the feudal goings-on, Godfrey longed to take part. Often he would calculate the relative local merits of the nearby Lancastrian estates of the Bishop of Winchester or the Yorkist ones of the earl; or he would consider the value of the friendship of the Bishop of Salisbury with the huge estates of the diocese, who managed to remain on good terms with both parties in the dispute.

  So he wove his web of hopes and dreams.

  “The family’s well placed,” he claimed cheerfully. All that was needed now to succeed was money.

  He had tried to provide it.

  First he invested in wool, buying quantities through an agent from local farmers for the export market. He invested heavily. But as a Flemish merchant complained to him:

  “The trouble with English wool is that by the time you’ve paid the king’s tax on it, your raw wool costs almost the same as finished cloth.” This was indeed the effect of the fact that the king levied customs on raw wool but not on finished cloth: while the cloth trade boomed, the wool trade was now only profitable for the huge merchants of the Staple and after a few years of steady losses, Godfrey gave it up.

  Then he tried to import wine from Gascony. This was a failure too. For after the successes of Joan of Arc had inspired the French to fight, and since the parochial English Parliament had kept the king short of funds for the war, year by year England’s share of France had been whittled away until finally, to Godfrey’s despair, the possessions in Gascony which had always been England’s stronghold had been lost as well. For a few months in 1453, he was full of hope when the great commander Talbot led an expedition to take Gascony back again. Salisbury even contributed fifty marks towards the cost. But Talbot was killed and the vineyards of Bordeaux were never to be in English hands again.

  His trade with Gascony was at an end.

  “I’ll never be a merchant,” he admitted, half with pride, half ruefully. And though he was only forty-two, it was to his son that he turned and said: “It’s up to you to save the family now.”

  If he laid the task upon his son rather than himself, however, at least he knew what the boy must do.

  “The law and Parliament,” he said. “That’s your way forward.”

  In principle this idea was sound. More than ever before the sons of the gentry and the merchant classes were attending the schools where an excellent education for laymen, as well as priests, was available. Oliver had been sent to the school in Winchester established by the great chancellor Bishop Wykeham the century before; he had also spent two years at the recently founded King’s College in Cambridge. He was an intelligent boy with the capacity to be a good lawyer; his only fault was that he was lazy. But if he worked, Eustace told him, there were certain to be opportunities for him in the service of the king or of one of the magnates who kept their own courts of retainers and placemen.

  As for Parliament, there was the place really to further the family fortunes. The character of that body was changing. There were restrictions on the electors in each shire now – only those freeholders who could show an income of forty shillings a year might vote. It had become an arena for complex power-broking. The representatives of the boroughs and shires might not always be burgesses and local knights: more and more were outsiders, professional men in the pay of a magnate.

  “God knows, John of Gaunt used to pack Parliament,” Eustace remarked. “But young men like you are making a career out of being placemen there now.”

  A good example of the cynical processes at work lay right beside the city. For the half-deserted castle on Old Sarum hill had still retained its former right to send two members to the Parliament.

  “Why, in the Parliament of fifty-three,” Godfrey pointed out to his son, “the two members for Old Sarum were a pair of London merchants – total strangers.” And so the ancient hillfort had begun its long career as a convenient token constituency for the use of ambitious parliamentary men.

  Sometimes, when he thought of his ancestors, these manoeuvrings depressed Godfrey.

  “In the old days,” he said sadly to his wife, “we fought.”

  But those days were long past. Warfare, too had changed. Even before Agincourt, his own grandfather had complained of the new cannon that were changing the old spirit of gentlemanly warfare. And besides, the new plate armour that was worn by any man of rank was far beyond Eustace’s purse even if his son had shown an aptitude for soldiering.

  But Eustace was optimistic. No doubt the boy would do well. As for his lovely daughter, who could resist her?

  All that was needed was money – for his own resources were dwindling. And that meant marriage. Indeed in the last year the need had become urgent, but now Eustace Godfrey thought he had found the right candidates – merchants, to be sure, but rich.

  Confident that he was going about the matter in a sensible way, as he set out on his mission that evening, Eustace was smiling.

  He was also comforted by another thought.

  For once his children were settled, he would be relieved of his chief responsibility. There would be nothing further that he had to do in his life. It was a pleasant prospect. He knew in his heart – perhaps he had always known – that he was doomed to be a failure in the busy world of Salisbury. His real vocation, he felt sure, was as a religious man and a scholar. He was always to be seen in the cathedral when a mass was being celebrated. Sometimes he would even attend all seven of the canonical hours. There was nothing he enjoyed more than to waylay the learned priests in the close and discuss with them the writings of the great mystics of the time like Thomas à Kempis or that remarkable woman hermit from East Anglia, Julian of Norwich; or to dispute with them the merits of the popular theory, which he stoutly maintained, that the people of England descended from none other than the displaced inhabitants of ancient Troy. He had even given a small volume on this preposterous subject to the new library that the dean and chapter had recently built overlooking the cathedral cloisters.

  Yes, when the children were settled, he would be able to devote his time to these more agreeable pursuits; and it was with this happy prospect in mind that he went on his way.

  His first call would be on John Wilson.

  Michael Shockley was confident too, but he had good reason to be.

  The house he left that evening was appropriate to his status in the city: it was a big, double-fronted, ponderous building with heavy oak beams forming the frame, thin wood coated with plaster between, and upper storeys which jutted out, overhanging the street. It lay in the northern Market ward of the city, in the Three Swans chequer, and it fronted on to the northern section of the old High Street which, since it seemed so long, had been given the new and delightful name of Endless Street. The house was solid and sensible, like Shockley himself.

  He wore a short tunic, gathered tightly at the waist to exaggerate his broad chest and a tightly fitting hose that displayed to advantage his muscular calves. His object that evening was simple and straightforward: he was going to make certain that he was elected to the forty-eight.

  There were, to be precise, seventy-two notable citizens who ruled the town of Salisbury: the twenty-four seniors, headed by the mayor and containing the aldermen of the town’s four wards, and below them the body of forty-eight who took some of the more junior posts and who elected the seniors. The previous month, one of the forty-eight had died and his place was to be filled the next day.

 
“It’s time I was chosen,” he told his wife, “and I’ve got the support.”

  He was thirty-nine and he had many friends, partly because he was a good-hearted, easygoing fellow, but also because he had earned them.

  The Shockleys had prospered, never dramatically, but steadily. The fulling mill was kept busy, especially with the heavy undyed broadcloth that sold so well, but Michael had also set up a small business producing the lighter worsted cloth that could still be fulled by manpower rather than by machine. It was a tactful move, for as well as producing a modest extra profit, this activity made him popular with the small craftsmen who were the backbone of the town. The expanding Shockley enterprises employed a number of fullers, dyers, and weavers and Michael never failed to make contributions to their trade guilds and social fraternities. His own son Reginald had also been enrolled in the powerful Tailors’ Guild as well. A rich merchant he might be, but he always reminded his son: “If you want the Shockley business to prosper, you must always show the craftsmen you are one of them.”

  He had had his share of trading misfortunes. The merchants who traded with the Netherlands, known as merchant adventurers and often funded by the great merchants of the wool staple, had been hit by the wars with Burgundy. And the huge eastern trade across the North Sea and into the Baltic, a trade which reached far into eastern Europe and even into Russia, had already been disrupted by disputes with the German traders of the Hanseatic towns. Shockley had imported pitch and fur from Russia and sent cloth to the Netherlands, and both these parts of his business had suffered. But these reverses had been more than balanced by his successes. Only two months before he had imported a load of twenty-five tons of woad for making dye through the port of Southampton on which he had made a handsome profit.

  As he turned out of Endless Street, a group of tailors standing by the corner smiled at him and when one of them shouted: “You’ll soon be one of the forty-eight, Shockley,” he replied with a grin.

  Minutes later he reached his destination: the little church at the west side of the market place. The man he was to meet was already waiting for him.

  As they came together at the church door the great man gave him a friendly nod:

  “So you want to join the forty-eight?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you ready to contribute?”

  “How much?”

  The great man looked at him thoughtfully, assessing his wealth.

  “An extra arch on this church,” he said with a smile.

  There were several great merchants in Sarum, but none were better known than John Halle and William Swayne. Some believed that John Halle was the greater. It was said that he owned half the wool that came off Salisbury Plain; he had already represented the borough in Parliament and petitioned the king to get a new charter for the town. He was rich, arrogant and loud-mouthed. But powerful as Halle was, he was not a richer nor a greater man than his rival William Swayne, who had already served as mayor and whose voice in the council carried authority.

  It was William Swayne now who walked with Michael Shockley into the little church of St Thomas the Martyr.

  No project was dearer to the great man’s heart than the rebuilding of the church. Nearly ten years ago, when parts of the chancel near the altar had fallen down, it had been the merchants Swayne, Halle and Webb, together with members of the gentry like the Hungerford, Ludlow and Godmanstone families, who had decided not only to rebuild it but to extend the whole church as well. Though many helped, the prime mover was Swayne, and he intended the result to redound to his glory. He was even building, at his own expense, an entire aisle as a chapel for the powerful Tailors’ Guild, of which he had become the patron. And here there would be two chantries, where priests would say masses for the souls of the living and the dead – one for the tailors, and one for himself and his family. The chapel was no small size: the renewed church would be splendid indeed.

  “So if you want to join the forty-eight,” he told Shockley frankly, “I shall expect to see you contribute to the building.”

  It suited Shockley very well to do so.

  “I’m already a good friend to the Tailors’ Guild,” he reminded Swayne. “I’ll be glad to contribute to their church.”

  A few minutes later they parted. He had Swayne’s support. He walked across to the corner of the market in a state of happy excitement.

  It was as he went by the poultry cross that the look of contentment on his face suddenly froze to one of rage.

  There were very few things that disturbed the good temper of the merchant, but this was one of them. His blue eyes glittered in an angry stare. For he had just seen Eustace Godfrey.

  It had been such a small, such a foolish event – truly nothing more than a chance and thoughtless remark made in a moment of irritation that had ended, ten years before, the centuries of good feeling between the two families. To this day, Godfrey still regretted it, but since there was nothing that he could do to remedy the fault, he too had allowed the bad feeling to settle and harden until it was like a carapace.

  In those days he had been richer and more arrogant, and when his pretty little daughter Isabella, playing in the cathedral close with young Reginald Shockley one morning, ran up to him with the boy and announced: “Reginald will be my husband, papa, when I’m grown up,” he replied coldly but almost without thinking: “A Godfrey does not marry a mere merchant,” and sent the boy away. He was sorry for his words almost as soon as he said them, but they could not be unsaid. And when his tearful and humiliated little son told Michael Shockley about it, the merchant swore an oath.

  “You’ll not marry the daughter of that damned lord-of-nothing either,” he exploded. And the two men had never spoken since.

  Now, coming face to face at the poultry cross, the two men gazed straight through each other as they passed. But after Godfrey had gone the merchant grunted:

  “You’ll never sit on the forty-eight. I’ll see to that.”

  But at the corner of Cross Keys chequer a few moments later, Benedict Mason was delighted to see Godfrey. He had been looking for him.

  The modest house of the Mason family lay in Culver Street where they occupied half a tenement in Swayne’s chequer. The street had also been the quarters of the town prostitutes until a few years before when Mason and other citizens of St Martin’s ward had persuaded the council to drive them out. Now it was a quiet street like any other. Though he only occupied part of the house, Benedict rented most of the workshop area behind, and here, with the help of two journeymen, he carried on his business as a bellfounder. Bells from Salisbury were installed all over southern England; but the work was sporadic and his own business was small; on a day to day basis, he was a brazier, turning out copper pans in his workshops, which regular trade allowed him to live comfortably and support his family of six children.

  He was a short, stout man, with a round face punctuated by a long, pointed nose, the end of which glowed red in all weathers. When he and his equally short, squat wife waddled down Culver Street followed by their children they resembled nothing so much as a family of ducks.

  Benedict Mason was a member of the Smiths’ Guild, which included goldsmiths and blacksmiths as well as braziers, and he was also one of a small fraternity who paid contributions to ensure that a mass was said for its members at St Edmund’s church at least once a year and that the great bell was rung – at the considerable cost of twelve pence – when any of its members departed the world.

  But his pride and joy was in making bells. Near his furnace was the pit with its centre post in which the clay mould for a new bell would be made; every day when he went to work, he would look lovingly at the carefully shaped wooden boards which would be rotated round the centre post to shape and smooth the clay. When each bell was finished, it bore his name, carved in the metal: BEN. MASON ME MADE.

  And of all the bells he had ever made, the one he wanted to make now would be the greatest.

  For after two centuries of disa
ppointment, it really seemed at last that Salisbury was to get its own saint. The envoys from the chapter had been in Rome for many long months now; hundreds of pounds had been spent and although nothing definite was known, he knew it was widely rumoured that this time the long quest might be successful and old Bishop Osmund finally receive the recognition due to him.

  “And then they’ll be needing a bell,” he announced. He could see it clearly: a magnificent bell, four, perhaps five feet across, with a deep mellow tone. It would be placed in the belfry in the close, above the clock, and its splendid chime would summon the priests to mass.

  The problem was – how to convince the cathedral canons? And how to secure the commission for himself?

  Benedict Mason might be modest, but he was also persistent. For weeks he had tried to get the attention of the priests for his idea. He had even approached William Swayne himself. But Swayne was only interested in St Thomas’s and none of the priests had taken much notice of the humble bellmaker: he needed a more important figure to plead his cause.

  Then he had thought of Godfrey. Godfrey, after all, was a gentleman: it was said he was even close to the bishop. He had prepared his case carefully and was on his way to his house at the very moment when he saw him walking away from the poultry cross.

  His approach was masterful – which is to say that he bowed as low as if Godfrey were the bishop himself and humbly asked if he might speak a word.

  “It’s the townspeople, sir,” he began. “Even Swayne. They won’t do anything for Saint Osmund.” And then he unfolded his tale. The great bishop might be canonised at any time, he explained, and surely it was fitting that the people of the city should contribute something to honour him. “But they won’t, sir. They only think about St Thomas’s,” he complained.