London in Chains

by Gillian Bradshaw

  Thomas stared at the creature then shook his head. ‘Nay. He’s the tiger. He would not be in prison else.’ He smiled. ‘Why his father ever apprenticed him to be a mercer I know not, for he never had the temper for it. He was ever a bold man, headstrong and ready to quarrel – though withal as generous and warm-hearted as any man that breathes.’

  Lucy knew Lilburne’s story now: how the young man, charged with illegal printing under the king, had refused to testify under oath before the High Commission; how he’d been whipped at the cart-tail and pilloried and imprisoned for his defiance; how he’d been released from imprisonment when Parliament began its struggle with the king; how he’d fought bravely for Parliament’s cause, only to be dismissed from the Army for refusing to take the Covenant. She hadn’t, until now, heard Uncle Thomas speak of the John Lilburne he’d known before the story began.

  ‘I’d thought you were apprentices together,’ she said hesitantly. ‘But you’re his elder.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Thomas. ‘He was apprenticed to Thomas Hewson, with whom I did a deal of business before the war. In those days, all Puritans were friends and dealt candidly with one another. Everything was so much simpler then! We could call for liberty of conscience and the true reformed Protestant religion all in one breath, and no one imagined any contradiction between the two. And now many who used to call for liberty call for persecution, and conscience and religion are seen to be quite at odds. It grieves me to the heart when I remember what high hopes we had! Howsomever, John was Tom Hewson’s apprentice, and I saw him whenever I came to do business with his master. I thought him a godly young man and a kind one, but something lacking in respect for his elders, and over-ready to take offence.’ He shook his head. ‘I mistook his honest fervour for bluster. Had I ever been dragged before the High Commission, I would have cowered in terror and done all I could to appease them. John’s courage and fidelity shamed me.’ He gave her an earnest look. ‘As do yours.’

  Lucy stared at him a moment in surprise, then caught his arm. ‘Never say so! Am I to shame you? I am proud of my uncle!’

  ‘Oh, dear child!’ He patted her hand. ‘When Hannah married and left, my house was so empty of joy I could scarce endure it; I am so glad you came to stay with us in London! God keep you, sweet!’

  It was later in that same week that Gilbert Mabbot took the plunge and launched his newsbook, in the profitable disguise of John Dillingham’s Moderate Intelligencer. Lucy was at last required to leave the Bournes and assist in the smoke-filled workshop of Robert White.

  It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared: White wasn’t around much, and when he was around, she was able to fend him off simply by taking a hairpin from her coif and pointing it towards him every time he approached. It turned out that he had recently bought a second printworks, and his quarrel with Dillingham had been because Dillingham expected him to oversee printing the Intelligencer personally. White would have split with Dillingham over the matter before, except that none of his downtrodden assistants was willing to manage the printshop in his absence. Mabbot had promised to pay for an experienced manager: Lucy was his economical fulfillment of that promise. When Lucy first understood this, she worried about how the assistants would view her; she discovered that the mere fact that she wasn’t Robert White told strongly in her favour. The two men considered it beneath their dignity to be subject to a woman, of course, but they were happy to consider themselves subject to White while actually dealing with Lucy. The woman worker was simply pleased to answer to someone who would not molest her. No one, to Lucy’s relief, seemed to believe she’d acquired her place by sleeping with Gilbert Mabbot. The Bournes must have scotched that rumour.

  Samuel Pecke turned up during Lucy’s first day at the printshop, almost spitting with indignation. His complaint wasn’t, as Lucy had expected, that his junior partner had set up in competition: it was that his junior partner had cut him out of a profitable new enterprise. Lucy listened to Pecke respectfully, agreed that he’d been ill-used, and told him, quite truthfully, that she didn’t know where Mabbot was. Mabbot had, in fact, made very sure that that would be the case: he’d appeared early that morning to give her the sheet of news to print, but told her that he would be ‘out’ for the rest of the day.

  Pecke’s visit was on a Friday, the start of a new period of newsgathering. The following Thursday, after their first issue came out, a scrawny man in a good coat turned up, his meagre face blotchy with rage. ‘Where’s White?’ he demanded, glaring around the printworks.

  Lucy hurried forward, wiping her hands. ‘I manage the works for Mr White,’ she admitted nervously.

  The stranger looked her up and down with contempt. ‘Who are you? Where’s White?’

  ‘I’m Lucy Wentnor, sir. I have charge here while Mr White is at his other shop. It’s on Thames’ Street if—’

  ‘Oh, of course! At the other shop! Did White hire you?’

  Lucy winced. ‘Mr Mabbot did, sir.’

  The other let out a shriek. ‘Gilbert Mabbot! God give me patience! Gilbert Mabbot the Licensor! I have been abused!’

  ‘Sir, if you wish to speak to Mr Mabbot, he isn’t here, and I know not where he is.’

  The stranger whipped a copy of the new Intelligencer out of his coat. ‘Did you print this for Mr Mabbot?’

  Lucy swallowed. ‘Aye, sir, we did.’

  ‘The whoreson rogue! The lousy cozening rascal! God damn him! I’ll have the law on him! Where is he?’

  ‘Sir, I know not, but if you would leave a note—’

  ‘He’ll take note of me, I swear it! You lying whore, where is he?’

  ‘Sir, I know not! He came this morning with the paper of news, and then went!’

  ‘You inky strumpet! This is my title! I built it up from nothing to what it is today! You surely knew it was my title!’

  ‘Sir, I’m but a hireling! Leave a note or a message for Mr Mabbot, and I’ll see that he gets it!’

  The stranger glared. ‘You tell him this: he’s a false knave, and I’ll have the law on him!’ He stormed out.

  ‘That was Mr Dillingham,’ one of the assistants said, awed.

  ‘I guessed as much,’ said Lucy sourly.

  Dillingham found himself new printers, registered again with the Stationers and resolutely published his newsbook the following Thursday, just as he had before. For the next three weeks two completely different versions of The Moderate Intelligencer did battle on the streets of London. Mabbot toyed with the notion of cancelling Dillingham’s new licence, but he had no excuse to do so, and he was afraid of what the action might cost him if the matter came to court. Both Intelligencers carried the imprimatur of Gilbert Mabbot.

  Dillingham, however, didn’t take the matter to an ordinary court of law: instead, he appealed to the House of Lords, who were officially responsible for overseeing the Licensor. The Lords had resented the Army’s interference in appointing Mabbot and were quick to take advantage of the complaint against him. They ordered him at once to yield the title The Moderate Intelligencer back to the man who’d founded it.

  Lucy was alarmed. Obviously, Dillingham deserved to keep the title he’d built up from nothing, but by this time she was thoroughly enjoying the work she was doing for Mabbot. It was both easier and more difficult than managing Tew’s clandestine press: easier because everything could be done openly; more difficult because there was more to do. Not only were there three staff instead of one assistant, there were also the ‘mercury-women’, the hawkers who sold the newsbook on the street. This was a group of poor women who collected copies of the Intelligencer when it came out on Thursday morning, and kept everything they earned above the printer’s price: keeping track of who had taken how many copies, and how much money was due back, was difficult. On top of this, there was advertising. She was already accustomed to setting the little notices in the Diurnall: so-and-so would provide lessons in dancing or music; Dr such-and-such announced the availability of his infallible cure for the pox; Mr Blank of
fered a reward for the return of his stolen horse. Now she also had to check over the text and collect the newsbook’s sixpence for the service. All of this involved a lot of accounting and figuring, and she often found herself taking the account books home to pore over them by candlelight. She liked the challenge, though, and loved the sensation of being in the centre of things, with the news flowing out from under her ink-stained fingertips. She did not want to go back to simple typesetting at John Bourne’s.

  Mabbot arranged another dinner at The Cock to discuss what to do. When Lucy arrived, she found that Wildman had also been invited again. She had just sat down beside him when Robert White came in.

  ‘Ah, Robert!’ said Mabbot easily. ‘Good day! This is John Wildman, a lawyer friend of mine; John, this is Robert White, my printer.’

  White gave Wildman a hard look. ‘You’re the Leveller law-man?’

  Wildman sighed resignedly. ‘Aye.’

  He was beginning to attain a minor notoriety, if only among those who followed the news closely. He had drafted The Case of the Army Truly Stated for a group of radical Agitators: this document strongly protested the failure to act upon all the Declarations and Engagements made the previous summer, and called for the dissolution of Parliament and fresh elections. ‘All power is originally and essentially in the whole body of the people of this nation,’ it declared, ‘and their free choice or consent by their representers is the only original and foundation of just government.’ The notion was considered by many to be dangerous and extreme: it not only did away with the need for King and Lords but also ignored all distinction between rich and poor. The whole body of the people, it said – not just the few who currently had the vote.

  White regarded Wildman uneasily.

  ‘John’s a wise man,’ Mabbot reassured him. ‘And no enemy to property – indeed, he’s as quick to acquire it as any man I know!’

  Reassured, White sat down beside Mabbot. ‘A man’s doing well if he can acquire property in these times! What do you deal in, sir?’

  Wildman gave a sour smile. ‘I’ve purchased some land that was confiscated from malignants.’

  ‘Ah!’ White was now impressed. ‘I know half-a-dozen that have tried to buy such and failed.’

  ‘It helps to know law,’ said Mabbot, ‘and to have kinsmen in Parliament. But we’re here to speak of my newsbook, not John’s business!’

  ‘You mean Dillingham’s newsbook,’ replied Wildman.

  Mabbot made a face. ‘I thought the law would grind slow!’

  ‘Justice has been done speedily for once,’ said Wildman, amused. ‘Gilbert, give it up! You can’t have been earning much the last weeks anyway, not splitting the readership with Dillingham.’

  Mabbot, dissatisfied, appealed to White. ‘Robert, what were our sales this past week?’

  White jutted his lip, as though he were thinking hard; Lucy was quite certain that he hadn’t been following the newsbook closely enough to know. She took out her notebook. ‘Three hundred and eighty copies,’ she said. ‘After costs we had a loss of three shillings and eightpence.’

  Mabbot raised his eyebrows appreciatively. ‘That’s less than I feared.’

  ‘The mercury-women that hawk it say people now ask which Intelligencer it is, sir.’ She met Mabbot’s eyes hopefully. ‘I think some prefer the new Intelligencer to the old.’

  ‘Still, it is a loss,’ said Mabbot unhappily. ‘I’d hoped to earn money by this venture.’ He looked at Wildman. ‘Is there no hope of keeping the title?’

  Wildman shook his head. ‘You must make your choice, my friend. Publish a newsbook that’s truly your own or go back to the Diurnall.’

  Mabbot frowned.

  ‘Sir,’ said Lucy hesitantly, ‘you wanted your own newsbook in part because you tired of Mr Pecke’s caution, did you not? Perhaps you should be bolder in what you write.’ She glanced at Wildman and said, ‘The Royalist mercuries sell well because many long for the king’s return. Perhaps something might be done on our side, too. Everywhere we hear Levellers reviled, or else passed over in silence, and yet there are many of us and we are all great readers of the news.’

  Wildman gave her a startled look. ‘That is a very fair point, Mistress! I, certainly, would be glad to read a newsbook that spoke well of us!’

  Mabbot frowned some more. ‘Perhaps . . . and yet there are a great many people who think ill of you now – aye, I know how falsely you’re slandered! But John, if my newsbook closed because readers shun it, how would that help anyone?’

  ‘Mistress Wentnor’s point was that it wouldn’t close,’ said Wildman. ‘That there are enough of us to make it profitable.’

  Mabbot tapped the table. ‘I should think on this. Robert – you’re happy with Mistress Wentnor’s management?’

  White had been staring at Lucy with some astonishment; he started. ‘What – oh, aye. The wench is hard-working and knows her trade.’

  ‘Then we’ll carry on for at least a few more weeks. I can afford patience if the loss is no worse than four shillings a week. Though it seems, alas, that I must find a new title. The Moderate Intelligencer!’ He sighed. ‘I liked that. Here, can anyone think of a title that sounds as if it’s but a continuation? That way we might keep some of our readers.’

  ‘The Army’s Intelligencer?’ suggested Wildman.

  Mabbot made a face and shook his head. ‘That would hardly please the Lords! They are angry enough with the Army as it is.’

  ‘The City Intelligencer?’ offered White.

  ‘Nay! That sounds as though it means to speak of Common Council and its affairs, which is foul ground!’

  ‘The Moderate?’ said Lucy.

  ‘The Moderate,’ repeated Mabbot, tasting the name. ‘Aye. That will do.’

  Eleven

  The Moderate first came out the following week. It was four pages shorter than The Moderate Intelligencer and was published on Tuesday, rather than Thursday; this was to take advantage of the people who liked to send a newsbook to their country cousins on the post-coaches which left London on Tuesday morning. For its first few weeks it continued much like its parent, cautiously neutral. Events, though, made neutrality increasingly difficult to sustain. Mabbot’s Leveller sympathies were expressed cautiously, at first; when sales actually improved as a result, The Moderate became enthusiastically radical.

  The king declared his preference for the Army’s Heads of the Proposals over the strict Presbyterian terms being offered him by Parliament, then refused to negotiate with the Army. He saw the Scots commissioners regularly, however, for long private discussions. The threatening rumbles north of the border which had been sounding all summer were growing much louder. The Scots had made a Covenant with the Parliament of England: would England’s Army break it? Charles was Scotland’s king as well as England’s: how could the southern kingdom presume to settle with him as though the northern one had no rights in the matter? The summer of struggle had settled nothing, the threat of another war was growing again, and still the country was paralysed.

  John Wildman’s The Case of the Army, with its insistence on the sovereignty of the people, was formally presented to Lord General Fairfax and the Council of the Army. Cromwell, however, was still desperate to come to an agreement with the king. He used all his influence to ensure that The Case of the Army was rejected, and made a speech in Parliament dissociating himself from it and praising monarchy.

  And thus Cromwell’s dear Democraticks being left all in the suds, [Mercurius Pragmaticus reported cheerfully] his face is now more toward an Aristocracie than Zion, which has raised a deadly feud betwixt him and the Agitators, who looke upon him as fallen from grace; especially since he has used all his wit and power in the Army to suppresse them, now that he has served his ends upon them.

  ‘What’s a Democratick?’ Lucy asked Wildman. They were at The Whalebone, where Lucy had gone after work in the hope of meeting friends.

  ‘One that believes in the sovereignty of the people,’ Wildman told
her. He looked very weary – unshaven, hollow-eyed and dishevelled, not at all his usual immaculate self. ‘From the Greek demos, the people, and kratia, power.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Lucy. ‘I thought it meant something bad.’

  That drew a tired smile. ‘Many think it does. They say that if the common people get power into their hands, they will turn first upon the rich and then upon one another, and all will descend into anarchy and bloody ruin. And yet the Grecians, when they were at their most flourishing, settled upon democracy as the best and noblest form of government.’

  Lucy considered that. ‘So common people have ruled, in the past?’

  ‘Aye, they have!’ Wildman roused himself and added fiercely, ‘And will again, by God’s grace!’

  Ned came over with three mugs of beer and, after a glance over his shoulder to check that his staff were coping without him, sat down at the table with them. ‘You’re speaking of The Case of the Army?’ he asked them. ‘I heard Noll Cromwell’s been promised the earldom of Essex for his part in suppressing it!’

  Wildman nodded impatiently. ‘I heard the rumour. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true. Whenever people are required to make sacrifices for the common good, somehow it always happens that other people make the sacrifices and Noll Cromwell gets the good.’ He picked up his beer, had a long drink, then gave Ned a direct look. ‘We’ll press on, never fear! If they won’t accept The Case of the Army, we’ll try them with The Agreement of the People.’

  The Agreement of the People was the newly proposed Leveller settlement, the result of the committee the Levellers had set up to work with the Agitators back in July. Drafts of it had been circulated around all the Leveller chapters in London, and the initial glut of proposals had been sifted and winnowed out to basics: Parliaments freely elected every two years on a reformed franchise; a set of reserves guaranteeing religious tolerance and equality before the law. The hope was that it could be submitted to the people for ratification, and that the people could be convinced that it really could supply what it offered – ‘a firm and present peace upon grounds of common right and freedom’ – and abandon their insistence on a king. The latter objective looked more difficult even than the first. There were now more unlicensed Royalist newsbooks in London than legal ones.