London in Chains

by Gillian Bradshaw

  ‘So are we all,’ Wildman replied. ‘In danger of losing all we have fought for these long years; and if we preserve our freedoms, it will be in part through your sister’s steadfast diligence. Sir, I am very sorry to hear what you say, that you mean to take her from London while our need of the press is so great. Will you give me leave to argue our case with you?’

  Paul stared suspiciously.

  ‘Sir. Let me first ask you this: do you believe our cause is just?’

  ‘Sir,’ replied Paul in surprise, ‘I scarcely know what your cause is!’

  ‘And yet would hinder it? That’s as to say, I know not what my sister does, yet I will put a stop to it! Should you not first inform yourself what it is you wish to stop?’

  ‘I know it puts her in danger!’

  ‘If danger were reason enough to stop a thing, nothing would ever be done! Childbearing puts a woman in more danger than ever your sister suffers here in London. Would you therefore forbid her to marry?’

  Paul gaped, then scowled. ‘I see you are skilled at argument.’

  Wildman gave a little bow. ‘I read law, sir, at Cambridge.’

  That had an effect. Cousin Geoffrey’s account of Thomas’s seditious friends had not led Paul to expect a Cambridge-educated lawyer among them.

  ‘Paul,’ said Lucy, striking while he was off-balance, ‘you should speak with Captain Wildman. Why should you believe Geoffrey’s report before you even hear the other side of the story? For my part, though I’m very glad to see you, and though I never want to quarrel with you, I would rather beg in the street than go back to Hinckley! You know very well that I would be wretched there. Our father has no wish to have me under his roof again.’

  Paul winced. He glanced at Wildman and at Ned, then nodded. ‘Very well. I’ll listen.’

  Lucy kissed him and went off to work, feeling much happier.

  Jamie was already at work when she arrived. He stopped, leaning on the press with a smile. ‘You’re late. I was beginning to fear that events yesterday made you ill.’

  ‘Oh, no, indeed, but I have a new trouble! My brother has arrived from Hinckley. He wants to take me home, but—’

  Jamie, however, had stopped smiling. ‘Take you home?’

  ‘Aye. Not because . . . that is, he knows nothing of what happened yesterday. He’s come because a cousin has been telling tales of my uncle’s seditious friends. By God’s grace, though, we met your Captain Wildman at The Whalebone.’ She smiled. ‘He’s the quickest disputer I ever heard! If he can’t win Paul over, no one can.’

  Jamie was frowning. He started to speak, then stopped himself. He tried again. ‘Most wenches would be happy to go home after an attack such as you suffered yesterday.’

  She frowned. ‘I am unlike most wenches, then.’

  ‘Aye,’ he agreed readily.

  She stared in hurt affront, and he quickly raised his bad hand, as though to ward off a blow. ‘You’ve wit enough for two, and spirit enough for three.’

  She was flattered and touched. ‘I told Paul I’d rather beg in the street than go home. It was bad enough just to be known . . . known to be spoiled goods. If I were spoiled goods brought back from London in disgrace, my life would be pitiable indeed.’ She paused, studying his scarred face. ‘You should understand that: you won’t go back to Lincolnshire!’

  He gave a small snort of recognition and looked away. ‘I’d no wish to see my sisters cry when they set eyes on me. Aye, and the pretty girls I used to court would all scream and stare. I’d be spoiled goods come home, and very soon stinking rotten with drink.’

  They were both silent a moment, contemplating the impossibility of ever going home. ‘Do you write to them?’ she asked.

  He made a face and shook his head. ‘John wrote to tell them I was wounded. He’s sent them news once or twice since. I . . . have tried, but it’s as though I had to make myself known in some other language, and I know not how to begin.’

  ‘Aye,’ she agreed, swallowing.

  They looked at one another again. He smiled warmly. ‘I’m glad you won’t be leaving us.’

  ‘Ah, but whether or not I do depends more on your Captain Wildman’s quick tongue than on my will!’

  ‘You do your will an injustice, for it’s a good strong one, and I’d wager on it against your brother. But John Wildman’s wits are always worth enlisting. I’ve told you: I trust him with my life.’

  Jamie’s trust was justified: when they returned to The Whalebone for dinner, they found Paul thoughtfully reading a copy of John Lilburne’s Regal Tyranny Discovered. Wildman, he said, had left for St Albans, but it was clear that he’d made a deep impression. Paul asked about Lilburne and the cause, then joined Lucy, Jamie and Ned for dinner and asked some more.

  However, over the course of the meal a distraction far more potent than Lilburne emerged: Richard Symonds. Lucy told Paul all about the incident at The Whalebone, adding that she’d already written to their father – though, for Ned’s sake, she described Symonds as a ‘cattle-thief’.

  Paul was thrilled: he had come to London to rescue his sister, but a chance to get justice for her was even better. He downed the rest of his ale in a gulp and set off for the Guildhall to demand that the Committee of Safety arrest Symonds and send him for trial at Leicester assizes. Lucy made no effort to dissuade him, though she felt uncomfortable about it. She told herself that to draw Paul aside to explain that Symonds had been murdered would seem suspicious to anyone watching, but she knew that really she was relieved to have found such a good distraction. Not only did chasing Symonds keep Paul’s attention off his sister, it reinforced for the authorities the impression that Symonds and his friend had fled. She and Jamie went back to work.

  When she saw her brother again that evening, he was white with outrage: the Committee had been as short with him as with Lucy.

  ‘The whoreson rogues!’ he complained. ‘They said that they had no legal complaint against these men, that no charge had been made! I’ll charge them, the stinking curs!’

  Lucy thought of telling him the truth, but how could she broach the subject of murder in the house when Agnes had given her instructions to lie about seditious printing?

  She remained uneasily silent as Paul spent the next two days marching between the London courts and the Guildhall with applications and affidavits. In all this time there was no enquiry into the disappearance of the two Reformadoes: the Committee of Safety was evidently relieved to be rid of an embarrassment. Eventually their clerk admitted to Paul that Richard Symonds had disappeared.

  Paul was bound to set off back to Leicestershire with the Hinckley neighbour the following morning: he didn’t have the money to stay longer.

  ‘I’ll get Da to sue for a warrant,’ he told Lucy that evening. ‘He’ll stir himself for this!’

  Her vision of her father descending on London returned, and she winced. A quest for justice now might end in Jamie being hanged for murder: she had to put a stop to it. ‘Paul,’ she said, ‘will you . . . will you come down to church to pray with me about this?’ St Olave’s would almost certainly be empty at this time on a weekday evening.

  It turned out to be locked. Paul tried the door, then turned to go to look for a verger with the key; Lucy caught his arm. The church porch was sheltered, dark and quiet, good enough for her purposes. ‘In truth I need only to talk to you,’ she said nervously. ‘Paul, I’m sorry, I should not have let you waste your effort, but I feared to speak where anyone might overhear! Richard Symonds is dead, he and his friend both. They came to my printworks to murder me, and Jamie Hudson killed them both, the day you arrived in London.’

  Paul reeled. He demanded the details and then wasn’t sure how to respond to them: glee that justice had been done; bewilderment that they dared not say so; anger at the way he’d made a fool of himself with his affidavits.

  ‘But, Paul, that helped to save me!’ Lucy protested. ‘It must have convinced the Committee that they’d run off and I knew nothing of i
t! If they’d investigated, Jamie might have been hanged, and perhaps me as well!’

  It was an exaggeration, but it mollified Paul. ‘Jamie Hudson is the one with half a face?’ he said. ‘I should thank him.’

  ‘Nay, nay, nay! You should forget you ever heard me name him. Paul, the Committee rules here and it would hang him! But tell Da.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Paul wondering. ‘God has revenged the innocent! All praise to Him!’

  Lucy thought that God would have done better to protect the innocent but shunted the blasphemous thought aside.

  Paul duly left next morning. He was still not really happy about what his sister was doing, but he was sympathetic to her reasons for it and he promised to tell their father that Geoffrey had greatly exaggerated. Richard Symonds and his fate were a much greater concern: Paul was still marvelling at the workings of divine justice, and Lucy decided that she must to write to him, to remind him that publicizing the mighty works of God would lead to human injustice. She kissed her brother goodbye and went back to the press with a sigh of relief.

  The next few weeks were among the happiest of her life. There was now a real bond between herself, Jamie and Ned: she found that she trusted the other two more than she’d ever expected to trust men again. She woke every morning looking forward to the day, and every evening parted from her friends with smiles and laughter.

  The city was bubbling with debate, with pamphlet countering pamphlet in a swirling battle. Presbyterian tracts furiously denounced the blasphemers in the Army; Royalist ballads mourned the sufferings of the king and called for his restoration; hopes of a settlement were raised, dashed and raised again. There were speeches and remonstrances, petitions and declarations and engagements. In the pulpits of City churches, preachers denounced toleration; in the conventicles of the sectaries, preachers denounced the intolerant. The City’s apprentices held a violent demonstration, calling for peace, the disbanding of the Army and the restoration of the king. In the middle of it, Lucy’s press laboured, banging out sheet after sheet – and the sheets sold. Distributed across the city through the regular meetings of the well-affected, they were taken up eagerly as soon as they appeared. The fourteen-shillings-a-week subsidy voted by the council was never needed; instead, a surplus was delivered to the fund for prisoners.

  The negotiations between Parliament and Army went nowhere, but still the conflict remained poised short of bloodshed. The Army marched from St Albans to Uxbridge, but stayed out of London. It issued demands. Pay was no longer its first concern: it wanted the Committee of Safety disbanded and the Reformadoes dismissed; it wanted the old Parliament dissolved and a new one elected; it wanted religious toleration, reform to the system of justice, an end to monopolies and corruption. It presented charges of impeachment against eleven members of Parliament and called for their conduct to be investigated. It also demanded the release from prison of John Lilburne, Nicholas Tew, Richard and Mary Overton, and William Browne.

  The House of Commons inclined one day towards resistance, the next towards compromise. It refused to investigate the eleven members, but it disbanded the Committee of Safety and dismissed the Reformadoes. Perhaps this was only because they’d proved so inadequate, but the news filled Lucy with huge relief: that vile oppressive force, gone! Swept away by the Commons as quickly as it had been set up! It was as though the kingdom had been released from shackles and taken two steps back from war.

  Parliament, however, still refused to release Lilburne from the Tower or Richard Overton from Newgate. In another measured step back, though, it freed Mary Overton, Tew and Browne.

  It was a result the well-affected had petitioned for again and again in anger and despair, and the news swept across the city. Ned announced it jubilantly to Lucy and Jamie when they turned up at The Whalebone for dinner late in July. ‘They were set free without warning, early this morning! They’re home!’

  Lucy’s first reaction was happiness: now Liza could go home to her father, and soon there would be a real peace! Her second, however, was anxiety: she’d come to think of the illegal press as hers, but she hadn’t forgotten that it was, in fact, the property of Nicholas Tew. What would happen to her when he reclaimed his own?

  Her third reaction was shame. Nicholas Tew had been unjustly imprisoned: she should be glad that he was free. Instead, here she was, coveting his livelihood! She should repent and ask God to cleanse her sinful heart.

  Ned hosted a celebration dinner for the freed prisoners, arranging it for a couple of days after their release, so that they could first have some time at home with their children. Lucy was invited.

  William Browne was thinner and paler than he had been before his arrest. He was in better health than his fellows, however; he had only been in Newgate for three months. Tew had spent nearly five months in the dark, verminous prison; Mary Overton had been six months in Bridewell. All three were in high good spirits, though, laughing and joking, toasting the health of the Army and the release of Richard Overton and John Lilburne, which everyone was sure must come soon. Liza, smiling shyly, stayed at her father’s side all evening; Mary Overton, little, thin and pock-faced, constantly had her arm about one or another of her three children. The baby that had been taken to prison with her had died there, and the children had been scattered among her friends and neighbours.

  Lucy shyly went over to Mrs Overton and introduced herself: she was a little in awe of this fellow-printer who had suffered so much.

  ‘So you’re the girl who’s been in charge of the press since Will Browne was sent to Newgate!’ said Mary. When she smiled, as she did now, her face became almost pretty. She was still only in her early thirties, though she looked older.

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Lucy. ‘I . . . I’d heard you had a press, too, but it was seized.’ Mary had, in fact, petitioned Parliament to get it back, on the grounds that it represented ‘her present livelihood for her imprisoned husband, herself and three small children’ – a piece of insolence to which Parliament hadn’t deigned to reply.

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Mary with a sigh. ‘And I wish I had it back, for I’ll have a hard time supporting these babes without it!’ She hugged her youngest child, a solemn-faced girl. ‘Still, by God’s mercy, we’re together again!’

  ‘What will you do?’ asked Lucy. A small reprehensible corner of her mind wailed that even the place of Tew’s assistant would be taken.

  ‘I’ll look for work bookbinding,’ Mary said promptly. ‘It pays badly, God knows, but friends and neighbours will help, and the great advantage of it is I can do piecework in my own home. My poor children have suffered enough: I’ll be their mother a while and have no more to do with unlicensed printing!’ She gave Lucy another smile and added, ‘But if ever you need advice on it, that I’ll give you freely!’

  Relieved, Lucy thanked her.

  There was to be music after the meal – two of the guests had brought lutes, and Samuel Chidley had a flute. While the consort was tuning its instruments, Browne came over to Lucy, leading Nicholas Tew. He introduced them, then said, as Lucy had feared, ‘I’ve told Nick that you’ve been minding his press for him.’

  ‘Aye,’ Lucy agreed nervously. ‘It’s safe, sir, and waiting for your return.’ She had not entirely succeeded in suppressing her covetous desire to keep the press, but she was determined not to let it show.

  ‘Good to know,’ said Tew, then paused to cough. He wiped his face and blinked at her. He was a small man and looked unwell: his dark hair was thin and dull, and there were sores around his mouth. ‘I have not the strength to work it, Mistress Wentnor. I mean to leave London for a month or two and stay with my brother in the country to recover my health. I hope you will see fit to continue in place for a little while longer.’

  Lucy could scarcely credit her good fortune. ‘Aye, sir, I would be glad of it!’

  The consort suddenly struck up ‘A Light Heart’s a Jewel’, and they all turned towards the players. Tew smiled, Browne beamed, and at the second verse Lucy joined in, s
inging with great gusto.

  Though Fortune has not lent me wealth,

  As she has done to many,

  Yet while I’ve liberty and health,

  I’ll be as blithe as any!

  I’ll bear an honest upright heart,

  There’s none shall prove contrary,

  Yet now and then abroad I’ll start

  And have mine own vagary.

  ‘He’s afraid,’ Jamie Hudson told her next morning, when she rushed into the barn to tell him the good news. ‘He found Newgate not at all to his liking, and he won’t resume his work until the Army has triumphed and there’s no danger of being sent back there.’

  ‘Jamie, he was ill!’ she protested, taken aback. ‘He really was; he looked ill!’

  Jamie shrugged. ‘Aye, Newgate’s no healthy place. But he might have offered to hire us, rather than leave London without so much as a glance at his press. He wants to keep his distance from illegal printing.’

  About to protest again, Lucy reconsidered. Jamie was right.

  ‘I don’t blame him, mind,’ Jamie went on. ‘Once bitten, twice shy: for my part, I’ve not set hand to a pistol since Naseby. Only I think we should take it to heart, you and I, that he fears to do what we are engaged upon. We’ve grown careless of our danger, and if we don’t mend that, we’ll suffer as he did.’

  She made a face, but nodded soberly.

  In spite of that, she had hopes that the danger would pass. The crisis seemed to be dying down: the eleven members of Parliament impeached by the Army voluntarily withdrew from the House. The Army set up its headquarters in Reading and continued negotiations, not just with Parliament but with the king as well. The Council of the Army – a body that included the ‘Agitators’ elected by the men – arrived at proposals for a settlement of government in line with the Army’s recent demands: religious toleration, biennial elections for Parliament, a monarchy bounded by law. The document they drew up – The Heads of the Proposals – was formally presented to King Charles as the basis on which the Army would restore him to the throne. The Presbyterians in Parliament and the City were terrified that he would accept it.