London in Chains

by Gillian Bradshaw

  This newsbook called itself Mercurius Pragmaticus, and it was widely known that it was written by none other than Marchamont Nedham, the newly converted Royalist.

  ‘Where did he get the money?’ fumed Mabbot. ‘Starting up a newsbook is a costly business, as I know only too well!’

  Where Nedham got the money was quickly established. He had visited Hampton Court, where King Charles now resided; he had begged the king’s pardon and been allowed to kiss the royal hand. The guards who’d admitted him hadn’t noticed whether the royal hand had held a royal purse, but it was certain that the king and his supporters still had a lot of money. From their point of view, Pragmaticus was money well spent: it was popular from the moment it came out, and the king’s enemies were outraged by it. It was unlicensed, of course, and Parliament instructed Mabbot to shut it down. His futile attempts to do so were the main reason for the delay in launching his own newsbook.

  His job was made more difficult by the fact that the king’s popularity was increasing and Parliament was widely detested. All the frustrations and disappointments of the past two years had been crowned by the misery of a poor harvest.

  The growing season had been cold and wet; August was just as bad. The harvest was the worst for a generation. Prices had been high ever since the war, but they usually dropped at harvest-time: this year they kept climbing. The beggars on the streets of London, always numerous and wretched, grew in number and in misery. It was obvious to anyone who paused to think about it that many would die during the winter, from cold and illness and starvation. If God really favoured Parliament, people began to whisper, why hadn’t He shown that favour to the land? Bring back the king, they murmured; put Charles Stuart on his throne, and then see if the earth yields its bounty!

  There was no progress, however, on a settlement of government. Wildman, who was in the thick of things, said that the Grandees were losing patience with Parliament, and the common soldiers were losing patience with the king. Charles Stuart, they said, was the author of the war, and even in defeat he was obstructing peace, refusing to agree to a settlement that set any limits on his power. A belief that the country would be better off as a Republic, though still extreme, was growing as quickly as resurgent Royalism. The middle ground, with its hope for a bounded monarchy, was eroding away under the negotiators’ feet.

  In this impasse, the Levellers (the name caught on, despite all attempts to reject it) began to have real influence, particularly since their proposals were the only ones that did not rely upon negotiation with Charles Stuart. Richard Overton was finally released from Newgate Prison and allowed to join his long-suffering wife and children in his own house. John Lilburne, however, remained confined in the Tower.

  Lucy was surprised to find that she missed her regular attendance at the Leveller council meetings, that when Thomas set off for The Whalebone in his role as representative of Southwark, she was restless, and when he came back, she was full of questions. She started accompanying him to the Southwark chapter meetings instead. These were held the evening after the general meetings, usually at The Bear Tavern at Bridgefoot. Mabbot and Pecke, who were already in the habit of asking her if she’d heard from Wildman, began asking her about what she heard at the meetings, though the Diurnall, ever-cautious of offending authority, rarely repeated it in print.

  Sometimes it seemed to her that news was what she breathed, as omnipresent as air, and just as necessary. The question of how England was to be governed, which had seemed almost irrelevant only a year before, was now of so much importance that each twist and turn of events made her heart race: good news elated her and bad news kept her awake at night. When she looked back, she was amazed by the huge gulf between herself and the girl who’d arrived in London less than a year before. She’d begun to write to her brother regularly, but every time she got a letter back it was a shock. Paul wrote to her about the doings of neighbours and relatives – so-and-so married; so-and-so fallen ill – and about the farm, the wretched weather and the price of milk: things which now seemed like the concerns of a foreign country. When he wrote apologetically that he had hard news for her, she was relieved when she discovered that it was only that her one-time betrothed, Ned Bartram, was married. She replied that the news was not hard at all and asked him to give her sincere commiserations to the bride.

  Late in August, Cromwell brought a regiment of cavalry to London and stationed it in Hyde Park while he proceeded to the House of Commons with a large force of armed bodyguards; he then entered as Member for Cambridge and called for a vote on an ordinance that the Presbyterians had been blocking. Unsurprisingly, it passed. The more extreme Presbyterians were intimidated into withdrawing from the House altogether: the Independents finally had a majority.

  It broke the impasse in the House, but not that with the king. Despite the increasing rumbles of discontent from the Army, Cromwell remained committed to a settlement with King Charles. That, probably, was why, early in September, he went to visit John Lilburne in the Tower: Lilburne could either quiet the Army’s discontent or whip it into fury. An indirect result of the meeting was that Lucy met the Leveller leader for the first time.

  Lilburne had been imprisoned since June the previous year, ostensibly because he’d slandered a member of the House of Lords. His sentence had no fixed limit: he was held ‘at the Lords’ pleasure’. He was officially banned from ‘contriving or publishing any seditious and scandalous pamphlets’; he was denied access to pen and ink, and his warder was required to watch him whenever he left his cell or had visitors. He’d protested, of course – there wasn’t a man in England more willing to protest injustice – and his case had been referred to a Commons committee; this, however, had been blocked and baffled every time it tried to report. His followers in London had petitioned and demonstrated on his behalf again and again, the Army had called for his release, marched and triumphed – and still he remained in prison.

  The ban on publishing had – obviously – never been successfully enforced. Lilburne’s numerous visitors smuggled in paper and ink, and smuggled out pamphlet after pamphlet. After Cromwell’s visit, however, the guards were ordered to be stricter and more vigilant, and for a while they obeyed. Some visitors were refused admittance; others were searched and had paper confiscated from them. It was therefore decided that someone who was not one of Lilburne’s regular contacts should visit, in the hope that the guards would be less suspicious of someone not actually known to them as a Leveller. Uncle Thomas offered to go, in the role of an old friend of Lilburne’s from the days before the war; Lucy came with him because he could properly object if the guards tried to search her. She spent the night before stitching octavo-sized pockets into the inside of a petticoat and hiding paper in them.

  Walking to the Tower the following morning, she was jittery. What if the guards searched her? She couldn’t be punished for carrying paper, but the thought of a pack of rough louts tearing off her petticoat gave her sick chills. Uncle Thomas patted her arm ineffectually and tried to smile.

  When they were admitted to the Tower’s outer ward, however, she began to feel steadier. The fortress was huge, and it bustled with activity that had nothing to do with them or their mission. Workers at the Mint jostled soldiers from the Royal Ordnance in the Tower’s walks, and there was a noisy queue waiting to enter the menagerie. Even the guards at the entrance to the Inner Ward, where the prisoners were lodged, had very little interest in the comings and goings of the public. Thomas and Lucy were admitted after handing over a mere tuppence tip.

  At Coldharbour Gate, where Lilburne was lodged, the warder was more careful. Thomas’s name was checked against a register, and he was questioned about why he had come.

  ‘I was a friend of John Lilburne long ago, when he was an apprentice,’ said Thomas earnestly, ‘and I wish to appeal to him to use his influence to make peace.’

  The warder snorted. ‘You’ve come for nothing, then! I once tried to do the same, and he told me that if I were not such
an old man, he would fight me!’

  ‘Even so,’ said Thomas. He opened his hand, showing a silver shilling. ‘I feel called upon to make what appeal to him I can. When he was a wild young man he did listen to me once or twice. Surely no effort towards peace is worthless?’

  The warder snorted again, took the money and wrote down Thomas’s name as a permitted visitor.

  After that they were searched, but not very rigorously. The warder asked Thomas to take off his coat and inspected the basket of food which Lucy had brought as a gift for the prisoner; he asked Lucy to hitch up her skirts and turn about, but he didn’t notice the pockets inside the petticoat and demand that she strip it off.

  Lilburne had a chamber on the first floor of Coldharbour, above the gate itself; the warder escorted them up to it. On the stairs they heard voices raised in excited discussion, and when they came into the room they found two men sitting at a table looking at a book.

  ‘. . . wrote it yourself!’ the tall fair man was saying.

  ‘Nay!’ cried the other, a rangy, dark-haired fellow with spectacles. ‘It is by Andrew Horn, a citizen of London in King Edward’s day! See here, it says as much by the title!’ He had a northern accent.

  ‘Then why do his words sound as though they came from your pen?’

  ‘Because we have both studied under the same masters!’ replied the northerner. ‘History has taught us to cherish the same freedoms!’

  The fair man inspected the title of the book, then grinned. ‘I yield: I see that this was translated only last year. No one now can set out to speak of liberty without sounding like John Lilburne.’

  ‘Visitors for you, John!’ said the warder.

  The bespectacled man turned towards them, an eager smile on his lips. He had only one eye: the socket of the missing one was misshapen, and a scar showed white above and below the black line of his spectacles. ‘Why, it’s Thomas Stevens!’ he cried, and set down the spectacles to come over and clasp Uncle Thomas’s hand. ‘You that were a master-mercer when I was but an apprentice! And who’s this? Your daughter?’

  ‘My niece, Lucy Wentnor,’ said Thomas, beaming, snatching his hat off in token of respect.

  ‘I’ve heard your name before, Mistress Wentnor,’ John Lilburne said, taking her hand with a smile. ‘Friends have told me of Thomas Stevens’ niece, a girl as brave as she is pretty. You’re well met!’

  Lucy ducked a curtsey, tongue-tied. This man had changed her life – yet she hadn’t even known he had lost an eye or that he was so young, surely not much above thirty! She’d assumed that he and Thomas had been apprentices together. Unsure what to do, she presented him with the basket of food.

  The other man at once came over to inspect it like a greedy child, and Lucy noticed that he – like Lilburne – was thin and ill-nourished.

  ‘Apples!’ he cried eagerly. ‘Give us an apple, John!’

  Lilburne plucked an apple from the basket and tossed it to him. ‘Now get you gone, Lewis!’ he ordered. ‘We’ll feast later; now I’ll speak with my old friend.’

  Lewis grinned and made for the door; the warder, after a distrustful look at Lilburne, hurried after him.

  ‘Quickly!’ Lilburne said, as soon as they were gone. ‘Lewis is a Royalist prisoner and must be escorted back to his cell. You brought paper?’

  Lucy was already hauling up the side of her gown and turning her petticoat inside-out. Thomas, with a nervous glance at Lilburne, came and held the skirts out of her way. She drew the paper quickly out of the octavo pockets; by the time she’d pulled out the third small sheaf, Lilburne was offering her some folded papers to put in its place. ‘Two letters to Henry Marten,’ he whispered. ‘Copy them over before you deliver them, and print the copies: they tell the truth about the double-dealing of that false hypocrite Oliver Cromwell!’

  Lucy shoved the letters into her pocket and pulled out the rest of the writing paper. Lilburne took it and glanced around his room.

  ‘They searched the basket already,’ suggested Lucy.

  Lilburne shook his head. ‘The keeper will help himself from it, the rogue.’ He thrust the paper under the open book on his table, just as the keeper returned.

  The warder, as predicted, went over to the basket. He removed an apple and a round cheese and sat down at Lilburne’s table. He took a bite of apple.

  ‘Thieving scoundrel!’ Lilburne said irritably. ‘There are no thieves like jailers, Mr Stevens: they pilfer all that comes in, they steal anything lying about, they tax all that goes out, and if a prisoner complains, they clap him in irons. Sir, if you had asked me if you might have that apple, I would have given it you!’

  The warder glared, swallowed his bite of apple and cut himself a slice of cheese.

  ‘So tell me the news!’ Lilburne said, flinging himself into a chair. ‘What goes on under the wide sky, while I am buried here?’

  ‘Mr Stevens is come to appeal to you to use your influence for peace,’ said the warder maliciously, around the mouthful of cheese.

  ‘Why, so I do already!’ replied Lilburne. ‘I am as eager for peace as any man in England.’ He leaned forward and slapped the table. ‘We might have peace, swiftly and easily, if our rulers did not set their own greedy interests above the common good!’

  The warder rolled his eyes in contempt.

  ‘Cromwell spoke of peace!’ continued Lilburne, warming to his subject. ‘By which he meant, having his own way. He said that I could not be released, for fear of my making new hurly-burlys in the Army, but that if I would be quiet, I might have an honourable employment in that same Army. I told him I will never be quiet until I have justice, and that I would not engage myself for either Parliament or his Army for all the gold in the world! And yet, to my shame, I did promise that if I were released, I would go abroad. He professed himself satisfied with this and said he would see to it that I was set free. We drew up a paper together – the warders of the Tower all witnessed it! And now my case has been referred back to committee, and God He knows if ever it will be heard at all!’

  ‘If you bore yourself humbly . . .’ began the warder, then stopped as the prisoner straightened and glared at him.

  ‘If Lieutenant Colonel Lilburne had borne himself humbly,’ said Thomas with quiet sincerity, ‘he would now be a poor mercer, like myself, and we would all be living – most humbly! – under tyranny, for no one would believe it right to resist injustice, however great.’

  ‘I see I have been misled!’ declared the warder resentfully. ‘You are of his faction. Well, then, your visit is at an end!’ He got to his feet. ‘Get you gone!’

  He chivvied Thomas and Lucy out. Lucy paused on the threshold to glance back at John Lilburne, sitting alone in his cell. He saw her looking and gave her a tired smile, and she touched her hand to her heart.

  When they left the inner ward again, she began to cry. It was a monstrous world: that brave, generous man was locked up in prison, subject to the petty malice and greed of his keepers, while scavengers grew fat and Parliament and the Army Grandees tussled with the king for power. She told herself, sniffing, that it was hardly news that the world was evil – yet why should those who were trying to make it better be punished?

  ‘Hush, sweet!’ exclaimed Thomas. They stopped in the shadow of the Traitors’ Gate, and he put his arms round her. ‘Don’t weep! We succeeded.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Lucy, still sniffing. ‘When the Army came to London, I thought it was all over and all would be well, but things are no better than they were!’

  Thomas shook his head uncertainly. ‘Child, if human efforts come to naught, it is but to be expected: we are sinful and weak. God’s ways are as high above ours as the heavens about the earth, and we can but hope that in His great mercy He will strengthen our feeble hands.’

  Dissatisfied, she said nothing. If men could only do good through divine help, then why didn’t God help them? Did He want them to do evil? It was a blasphemous thought, and she tried to put it out of her mind.

 
; ‘Come!’ said Thomas with a desperate effort to be cheerful. ‘We’ll visit the menagerie! That will lift our spirits.’

  Lucy eyed him doubtfully: she’d seen enough prisoners for one day, she was expected back at work – and Agnes would certainly view the cost of the menagerie, added to what Thomas had already spent on bribes, as insult on top of injury.

  Thomas, however, was smiling. ‘I took Mark and Hannah when they were babes,’ he told her, ‘and Bella, and my little Tommikin. Bella cried that she wanted a lion to be her pet, and she and Tommikin fitted out a place for it beside their bed!’

  For a moment she was puzzled; then she understood. She’d never before heard Thomas name any of the children he’d lost in their infancy; that ‘my little Tommikin’ suddenly showed her a grief she’d never guessed at. ‘I should like to see the menagerie,’ she said, suddenly wanting only to make her uncle happy. He smiled at her, as pleased as though he were a child himself.

  The menagerie was in the western part of the Tower’s outer ward; the cost of entry was three farthings – or a cat or dog to feed to the lions; Lucy was glad to see no miserable strays in the queue. Thomas paid for them both, and they walked about the tiny enclosures with the rest of the gaping crowd. There were lions, sprawled as though heartbroken on bare earth; there was a tiger, pacing back and forth before the bars of its tiny cage, gazing at the citizens outside with a blind, manic stare. Lucy found the sight painful and disturbing, but Thomas was delighted with the beast and marvelled at its bold stripes and terrible teeth.

  They came to some apes. One of the crowd tossed an apple into the cage: an ape caught and ate it avidly, baring its teeth at its companions when they tried to take a share. ‘These are more warders of the Tower!’ Thomas told Lucy, and she laughed.

  Next was a great pale deer-like creature with dark, suffering eyes; Lucy thought at first that it must be a unicorn, but it had two horns, not one. She gazed at the beautiful, exotic animal in wonder and pity. ‘That’s Lieutenant Colonel Lilburne,’ she whispered.