Sarum

by Edward Rutherfurd

  And what of his own views? He supposed that as long as he went to whatever Church the king ordered, no one should find fault with him. It was true that in private, he personally found much to support the Protestants in his Bible readings; if he liked to hear the service in English and thought that men like Cranmer and Shaxton had been right to attack the old popish superstitions – was there any need to bring the subject up and risk a refusal from his prospective father-in-law who lived so far away? He did not think so.

  He remembered the interview with old William Moody all too well.

  “We are a Catholic family,” Moody reminded him, “and my daughter will only marry into a family of the same mind.”

  “My parents are Catholic and regret the break with Rome,” Edward replied truthfully, hoping this would be sufficient. He looked down modestly.

  But an instinct cautioned the older man. As Edward looked up again, Moody’s piercing grey eyes seemed to probe into his soul.

  “There were reforms at Sarum,” he observed quietly.

  “Under Shaxton,” Edward agreed, “but the king replaced him with Bishop Capon, who enforces the Six Articles.”

  Indeed, everyone knew that Bishop Capon, a former monk, had got his preferment because he was most anxious to do the king’s will, whatever it might be.

  But Moody was not satisfied.

  “And you, young Edward Shockley, are you sure you care nothing for the doctrines of the Protestants?” His balding head had jutted forward, almost accusing. “Let there be no mistake,” he went on, “if you cannot in conscience swear to that, my daughter will never find happiness.”

  He had thought of the submissive girl’s sweet smile, of her fresh young body and of his own desire.

  He had not faltered. He had looked William Moody in the eye and sworn:

  “I am a Catholic, in a Catholic family.”

  Katherine loved him, he was certain of it; that was all that mattered. If in the future there were any disagreements, he felt sure that with her submissive nature, she would not give him any trouble.

  Three months later, having promised also to be a good friend to her ten-year-old brother, he was married.

  He had lied.

  His married life proved to be delightful. He and Katherine had taken lodgings near the Shockley house and there they enjoyed a first year of happiness.

  Each evening, they would sit together at supper and often, before they had finished the light meal, they were both trembling with anticipation. His days were filled with work for his father, his nights with wild passion. And though she sometimes looked at him timidly for a sign of approval for the changes she had made about the house or the food she served, it was not long before she had gained a happy confidence and even a passionate aggressiveness in their lovemaking.

  During that year, the subject of religion scarcely arose.

  They went to mass together in the town or the cathedral but otherwise they seldom discussed religious matters. Since they both agreed, as she thought, there was no need.

  Occasionally he had read the English Bible and she had looked concerned. But he had reminded her that the king permitted it and she had not thought proper to argue with her husband.

  He was kind to her, and firm. And she loved him.

  In 1547, several events took place to change their lives. The first was the death of his father, leaving him in sole charge of the business. Since his mother was ailing, they had moved into the Shockley house and he had installed his mother in the smaller house next door with a nurse to look after her.

  Now he was a man of responsibility. He was ready for it, but it kept him busy and he saw slightly less of his wife. But Katherine was content. Her pale eyes were shining, her timidity was in abeyance. She was pregnant.

  But it was a third event which made a much greater difference to their home, and which cast a cloud over their lives.

  For in 1547, King Henry VIII of England died, to be succeeded by his only son, the pious boy king Edward VI.

  He had not realised what it would mean.

  Edward VI was only a boy. He ruled under the guidance of protectors, first his Seymour uncle, then the powerful and scheming Duke of Northumberland. He had favourites whom he trusted – like Sir William Herbert of Wilton, whom he made Earl of Pembroke. Some said he was under Cranmer’s influence too. But whatever his advisers may have urged, there was no doubt that the precocious young king had a mind of his own – and that he was Protestant.

  And now the Reformation had really come to Sarum.

  To his astonishment, Bishop Capon, that strict upholder of King Henry’s orthodoxy, turned just as sternly Protestant, it seemed within the day. His regime was soon all the boy king could desire.

  Everything had changed: the chantries with their priests and their masses for the souls of the dead; the altars, statues, gold plate; the seven services and high masses: all were gone in five years. Now there were two plain services a day and a communion once a month; the ancient Use of Sarum, which in Henry’s day had been the form of service in most of the Canterbury archdiocese, was now replaced by Cranmer’s English Prayer Book – fine in its way, but to some ears at least, empty of the mystery of the old Latin liturgy. Bishop Gardiner at nearby Winchester had been deposed. The clergy were told that priests might marry and their children be considered legitimate.

  Edward Shockley was too busy with his work to worry about these changes much, but when he thought about it, he viewed them with mixed feelings. He was sorry to see some of the old chantries go, but when he heard the fine sermons of some of the reformers and as he grew better acquainted with the beautiful, melodic periods of Cranmer’s Prayer Book, he came to the conclusion that the honest Protestantism of the new regime was in many ways an improvement on the harsh authoritarian orthodoxy of the previous reign. The fact was, he had been half in sympathy with Cranmer before and as new Protestant tracts came into the country from Europe, he read them to himself privately and became increasingly converted to their views.

  But on Katherine the effect of the change was devastating, He had understood, of course, that she was a devoted Catholic; but he had not expected her, as the first reforms of the new king began, to go into a state of shock. Yet this was what happened.

  She refused to go near the Protestant Communion table. She wept to see the images of the saints smashed and the chantries in nearby St Thomas’s desecrated. Often, when he had come into the house now, he would find her tearfully at her rosary; and often at their meals together she would ask him anxiously: “What shall we do?”

  She wrote long letters to her father and received the stern reply that she should maintain the true faith with strictness in private and wait upon events. Above all, he had reminded her, she should obey her husband who as a good Catholic would guide her best.

  He remembered her father’s warning. He understood it better now. But what could he do? At first he did nothing. He told her to be discreet. He told her to be patient. Seeing her fret, he even tried, once or twice, to make light of the matter. But this upset her so much that he even feared she might miscarry with the child.

  He soon found himself protesting his own Catholicism in an effort to comfort her while urging her, for the sake of the child, to show discretion.

  How submissive she was. Sometimes it moved him to see her pathetically and hopefully looking to him for the reassurance and comfort he knew in his heart of hearts he could not give. At other times it would irritate him when she turned to him and cried:

  “If only we had a priest!”

  There was only one answer: he was firm with her. Her father had told her, and she knew it was her duty to obey him. For the sake of the business and the child, he knew he could demand her cooperation.

  It was a strange situation. Outwardly, Edward Shockley conformed to the new Protestant regime, which in his heart he believed in. At home, he maintained that he was a good Catholic in secret, to pacify his wife.

  Celia was born and he supposed th
at for the time being, his wife might be contented.

  Was it her submissiveness that made him sometimes bully her? Did he still enjoy her company? Certainly, her young body, now in its first, perfect fullness, still drove him to heights of excitement which he assumed were passion. And at such times, secure in her belief in him, the passion was returned.

  The rift that gradually opened between them did not appear until Celia was about a year old. It was his fault. Perhaps, if she had not been so anxious to please, he could have held out for longer; but occasionally he began to tease her. Sometimes it would be no more than a light-hearted remark; at other times there would be an unstated criticism of her in his words. These comments were usually about the dogma of the Catholic priests, or perhaps the absurdity of some sacred relic that had been done away with. Poor Katherine could sense that such remarks were intended as a challenge, but she was not sure whether they were a criticism of herself or of her church. Was he no longer a good Catholic? Or did he mean that he no longer loved her?

  He was young. Sometimes he enjoyed making her unhappy. Sometimes it even excited him. But as the months passed, a certain coldness began to develop between them. Several times he had found her looking at him suspiciously, and once she had turned to him and frankly demanded:

  “Are you not a Catholic?”

  He had told her that he was, but this time he realised that she feared he might be lying.

  When he lay beside her at night, though she did not turn away from him, he could feel her resentment coming from her like a wave; and as the months went by he found that he returned it, if only in some sort of self-defence.

  She was still submissive, still dutiful; but because he sensed she might not love him, it no longer gave him pleasure to get his way. Sometimes he would lie again to please her, swear to his Catholic faith, and for a time it would seem that their relationship had returned to where it had been before. But always he suspected she secretly doubted him.

  He guessed correctly, however, that she had made no mention of her doubts to her family, for to do so would have been to admit that her husband was a traitor.

  During the last few years though, their marriage had been peaceful enough. The old attraction had for periods returned. She had become pregnant again, but miscarried.

  Celia was being brought up as a Catholic, in the secrecy of the home. But once or twice already the child had been heard to utter remarks which might have given him trouble in the city.

  “Let the child be taught the Catholic faith when she is older,” he ordered Katherine. “But not until she has reached an age when she can understand how to keep silent. After all,” he added to comfort her, “Cranmer’s Prayer Book is but a translation taken mostly from our old Use of Sarum.” This was true, but it failed to console her.

  And then there had been the scene that morning. He went out early but had returned to the house briefly before going on to St Thomas’s church.

  She had not heard him coming in. It was as he came up the stairs to the big room that overlooked the street that he heard her gentle voice saying to the child:

  “And then the priest performs a miracle and the bread and wine become in very truth the body and blood of Our Lord.”

  He felt himself grow cold. What if the child should say such things in public? For this was the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Every Catholic must believe in the power of the priest, when he raises the Host to perform the great miracle that transforms bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Every Lollard in the past and every Portestant now denied it. The orthodox Henry VIII in his Six Articles had insisted upon it. But to his son Edward VI, to Cranmer, and to Bishop Capon it was anathema.

  He stormed into the room.

  “No! I will have her taught no popish doctrines.” He pointed his finger furiously at his wife. “I forbid it, Katherine, and you will obey me.”

  He saw her look of anguish but he did not care.

  “You call it popish?”

  “I do.”

  “Then,” he would never forget the pain he saw in her eyes, “do you not believe?”

  And at last in his anger he cried:

  “No, foolish woman. I do not.”

  So now she knew, beyond all shadow of doubt, that all these years he had despised her and that he had lied.

  It was a relief to turn his thoughts back to business.

  For today could be a turning point in his life. If the meeting he and Thomas Forest were about to have with the Dutchman were successful, the Shockley family might succeed in its long ambition of scaling the heights of Sarum’s merchant society.

  “I could even be mayor one day,” he thought with a thrill of excitement.

  Once again it was the old fulling mill which was central to the family’s success.

  In recent decades the cloth business of England had been changing. The lighter cloths, the rays or kerseys that Salisbury had made so successfully, were no longer in such demand; the city with its medieval craft guilds, proud of their skills and set in their ways, tried to continue as before. But the old Italian trade through Southampton had almost gone; even in England rays were less in fashion.

  But for the Shockleys with their fulling mill, there was a new opportunity. “Forget the Italian trade,” John Shockley urged his son. “Get to Antwerp if you can.”

  It was the heavy cloth that was in demand – the simple undyed broadcloth, twenty-five ounces to the yard, as heavy as a modern overcoat – thick, felt-like material that the mighty hammers of the fulling mill could pound day and night. This was the cloth that the merchants from the Netherlands and Germany were clamouring for, and their great market at Blackwell Hall in London was the focus of the trade that then flowed to Antwerp, the Baltic and beyond.

  But it was the men of west Wiltshire, not the craftsmen of Salisbury who flourished: for the conditions of the new trade were different. The western cloth-makers had suffered before from a disadvantage: for although they had swift-flowing streams to drive their fulling mills, the water in those streams from the chalk and lime ridges of the west was so hard that it would not take the dyes properly and it was hard to obtain an even colour. But for the growing trade in undyed broadcloth these conditions were perfect.

  There were other changes too. Though the cloth was still woven in the same way on a two-man loom, enterprising merchants in the west had brought them together near to their fulling mills in what were sometimes almost factory conditions. Indeed, when the monasteries were dissolved, one western clothier had bought up the ancient Abbey of Malmesbury and turned the place into a huge cloth-works.

  This was the way in which fortunes were being made, but few at Sarum, with its rich old market, its medieval guilds and their long established practices, were doing so. Some were, however.

  “Look at the Webbe brothers,” he would cry admiringly. “They’ve not only gone into broadcloth but they actually export it to Antwerp themselves.”

  This powerful pair of merchants had done exactly that, cutting out the middlemen on the way and making themselves a fine name in the town.

  The trouble was, as he ruefully acknowledged, that he had not the resources to invest in such a large scale enterprise.

  But now Thomas Forest had offered to supply his young friend Edward Shockley with exactly that. His plan was well-calculated to suit both men.

  Thomas Forest was a gentleman. Of that there was no doubt. At the manor of Avonsford, which he had largely rebuilt, his father had added to the family’s social status in several ways. He had acquired an imposing coat of arms – a splendid if garish creation featuring a lion rampant on a field of gold, which was proudly displayed over the fireplace in the hall and also on his tomb in the little village church. As well as this proof of gentility, he had commissioned, shortly before he died, another addition for the manor: a fine portrait of himself. It was not, admittedly, by the great Holbein who had painted the king and the leading figures in the land; but it was by a competent follower, a young
man from Germany who had given his narrow, cunning face an austere dignity which it certainly never possessed. This painting of portraits was a new fashion in England, at least amongst the gentry: but Forest had shrewdly realised its value in stamping the family’s importance on the minds of anyone who visited the house, and though he groaned at the price, he paid it.

  “Get yourself painted, Thomas,” he instructed his son. “We’re a new family now, but one day . . .” He could see the long line of family likenesses that would one day hang on the walls of the gallery.

  Thomas Forest continued his good work of raising the family’s status with, if possible, even more urgency than his father. He married the daughter of a rich clothier from Somerset, who had, through her mother, some claims to noble ancestry that had yet to be defined. She brought an impressive dowry. The estates were mostly let to tenants: the last remnants of the old village he therefore knocked down and built some fresh cottages a mile away. This allowed him to make a handsome new three hundred acre enclosure around the house in which he kept deer. Cottages, fields and hedges were all swept away and replaced by an open space planted with clumps of trees: the resulting deer park stretching towards the river was a much more agreeable prospect than the straggling houses of the peasants. At the dissolution the Forests had not obtained any of the great estates, but they had bought at cheap prices a number of farms that had belonged to the lesser friaries and it was on one of these, where there were some underemployed tenants, that Forest now proposed to set up a weaving business. He also supplemented his income by acting as steward for several small estates which the crown or the church were too lazy to manage properly themselves. By paying a low rent for them and then managing them through his own steward with ruthless efficiency he was adding handsomely to his revenues every year. Soon he hoped to join the ranks of the Justices of the Peace: for that was the first step on the ladder of full acceptance into the gentry and could lead to parliament, the king’s court, and who knew what titles and riches.