Then angry words were spoken on either side, and my Uncle Jones came never again to our house.
About New Year, 1643, the Mint was brought to Oxford from Shrewsbury, and set up at New Inn Hall which, having been a famous resort of Puritan scholars, was now by them deserted. The coming of the Mint was no cheerful sight for the Heads of colleges and halls, for the plate which had been spared to them by the Lord Saye, on condition that they refrained from using it against Parliament, was now forcibly taken from them by the King, who minted it into money. These Oxford coins were very pretty ones, on which was written in Latin, “Let God Rise up and Let His Enemies be Scattered!” But it was a sad loss to the colleges to be thus deprived of their ancient dishes, cans, cups and flagons. The President and Fellows of St. John’s College, being loath to lose the memory of their benefactors, gave the King the sum of £800, the value of their plate by weight, hoping to save it; but His Majesty, while graciously accepting the money, sent again for the plate and turned it into crown-pieces and shillings. All the nobility and gentry of the County were now required to send in their plate, with a promise of repayment when victory should be won, and my father was constrained to send in 3 lb. weight, which included the cup and dish given me at my christening by my Godmother Moulton; but he kept back 9 lb. or 10 lb. of the better pieces, which he hid in the garden under a bed of clove-pinks. From these requisitions the King took in about 3,000 lb. of silver, silver-gilt and gold; but the two mint-masters, of which Esquire Bushell was one, complained how many gilt cups and cans and dishes, inscribed with honoured names, were underneath but base metal, serviceable to be coined into farthings but not into crown-pieces.
A great many soldiers were billeted upon us that winter, fit only for a gallows on this earth and a hell hereafter. They were very drunken, rude, tetchy, quarrelsome, discontented wretches, who did the estate infinite injury by their thieving and by grazing their horses without leave upon our meadows, and by the idle and wanton spirit that they infused into the tenantry. They made our fine house into a nasty common ale-house with their tobacco-smoke and spitting; and a barrel of our good beer would tremble at sight of them. A King’s officer requisitioned our three best geldings for mounting dragoons upon, paying my father but £4 apiece, though worth double that sum; and our best team of heavy horses, at a mere £6 apiece, together with the new blue wain, he took for drawing a great brass gun; and three men of our household to be impressed into the Army, besides six or seven of our tenants’ sons. By the King’s order, none but able-bodied men were to be impressed, and single men rather than married, and serving men rather than house-holders, and mechanics or tradesmen rather than husbandmen. Nevertheless, my father did not strictly observe these preferences, but discarded the toss-pot knaves and other cards that he would soonest spare, without regard to their quality or condition. Horse-thieving was so common a crime in those days that we were forced to put locks upon the fore-feet of our remaining beasts; yet even this was no positive security against their loss. Nor was a man’s life valued as formerly, death in battle being every soldier’s expectation; and one day in our wood-yard two troopers fell out about a horse-shoe and went into the orchard apart together, and there fought with carbines. One shot the other in the breast and killed him, and was himself wounded in the leg, which ulcerated and within the week he was dead likewise.
In February our hopes were raised again by the arrival of Commissioners from Parliament, headed by the Earl of Pembroke, Chancellor of the University, who hoped to agree with the King upon an accommodation of differences and proposed a cessation of arms. The King received them well, and sent them away merry with a written answer; but since the Prince Rupert had a few days before this taken Cirencester, which was strongly defended, the King was urged by a majority of his Counsellors to yield nothing; and so the war continued. Yet while the Treaty was in progress, namely from February until the middle of April, there was a lull made in the fighting; of which my husband took advantage to send a messenger to our house. Since he could find no man bold enough to undertake the double journey, the messenger he sent was his servant Jane Yates.
She came to the pantry door one morning in March and asked leave to converse with my father; but, as it chanced, the person who opened to her was Trunco, who bade her wait outside and shut the door in her face, and then came running to me in the pantry-room. “Oh, Mistress,” she cried, “here comes that sour-breathed, lying rebel, Jane Yates, who would speak to his Worship your father. Have I your leave to fling her into the swine’s trough, for I swear she was hatched in hell?”
“Nay, Trunco,” I said, “that were uncharitable. But do not trouble his Worship, who is busy upstairs with his accounts; my mother may perhaps wish to speak to the woman on his behalf.”
When my mother heard that Jane was come, she sent for her into the little parlour and there asked her business. Jane answered that she had a spoken message from Mr. John Milton to deliver to Mr. Justice Powell in person, and to none other. My mother told her that she was Mr. Justice Powell’s wife, and that his Worship had given orders that the business he was at was not to be disturbed.
“Why, then, Mistress,” said she, “I will wait in the kitchen, by your leave, until his Worship shall be at leisure.”
“Nay, that you will not,” cried my mother. “I will have no canting Presbyterial trash in my kitchen, stirring up trouble and dissettling the servants. If you must wait, you shall do so in the long barn where the soldiers are quartered; I warrant they’ll cosset you kindly when Trunco here gives their corporal a report of the manner in which you entertained her in Aldersgate Street—now, won’t they, Trunco? Trunco is a slut with a sweet nature, ready always to return good for good or evil for evil, in equal measure; and the corporal utterly abominates all Roundheads, whether male or female.”
Jane then consented that, if she were positively forbidden to address Esquire Powell in person, she would give her message to my mother as his accredited agent; confessing that she feared for her chastity among the ungodly soldiers—though, for my part, I thought that no man living (unless he were blind, drunk and mad all in one) would have ventured to be amorous with such a frumpish, daggy creature as she.
“Say on, then, woman!” cried my mother.
“This is Mr. John Milton’s message,” said Jane. “He has written four times to your worshipful husband, since this past Michaelmas, but has received no answer; and fears lest his letters have been seized; and therefore sends me, as a person to be trusted, to deliver a message by word of mouth and bring an answer to him again; and he requires to know wherefore his wife is not returned to him, as was agreed, and commands her now to come back in my company. As for the money owing to him, he will be content at present with the £1,000 portion (for the other debt may wait a month or two) and requires it to be paid to Mr. Rous, the librarian at Oxford, who has undertaken to convey it to him by the hand of one of the Commissioners for Peace, Mr. Pierrepoint; and he demands that his wife be sent back to him with an assurance from Mr. Rous that the money is already delivered to him.”
“And is that all?” cried my mother in a mocking tone. “In God’s name, is that all? In his pretty garden-house at Aldersgate Street has your master received no news yet from some servant or neighbour that this country is embroiled in war? How thinks he that his Worship, my husband, can suddenly in these times lay his hand upon so great a sum as £1,000 or that, if he could, he would yield it to a saucy Presbyterial rebel rather than to his Sovereign Majesty, King Charles—who stands in need of every parcel of clipped groats that his loving subjects can scrabble together? Begone, now, lest I be wroth with you, you bleary-eyed, psalm-chanting hussy, and take a stick to your shoulders.”
Nevertheless Jane Yates persisted and cried: “Madam, be not unkind to me, for I am come with great difficulty from London, and am but an envoy, as my Master says, not a principal in this matter. If I come not again with a written message, my master will accuse me that I have failed in my trust.”
> “Trunco,” said my mother, “see that this woman is hospitably entertained for the honour of this house, and take no vengeance upon her.” Then turning to Jane she said: “My worshipful husband sends his compliments to your Master and his answer to the impertinent message you bring is this: ‘Let him scratch himself wherever he may itch.’”
“Oh, Madam!” cried the wretched woman, “I dare not take back such an answer to my Master!”
“And is he so terrible?” asked my mother. “Upon my soul, I pity you! Why do you not find another master? Yet you, who were bold to bring a rude request to one who is not your master, can surely be bold to carry back a suitable reply?”
So my mother dismissed her. Yet my father, when he heard from his bailiff that Mr. Milton’s messenger was in the kitchen, and that she complained to have been denied access to him, went down to her. He addressed her civilly in the presence of the bailiff and myself, and gave her another message altogether. This was that, though I had been suddenly sent from London to Forest Hill by my husband without any invitation from himself, yet he was content to have me with him for awhile, and would guard me well until my husband came to fetch me; but that he loved me too well to hazard me, in the company of a serving woman only, between the embattled armies. As for the money, he said, it was to his regret that he could not deliver the same to Mr. Rous, unless with an assurance signed by my husband that not a penny of it would be used to comfort the King’s enemies. And he sent his hearty respects and service to Mr. Milton, Senior. He made Jane repeat his words after him, and learn them by rote. When she had departed he called me to his study and said to me: “My son Milton thinks, perhaps, that he can divorce you, and presently marry another; but my message, given before witnesses, will prevent him, I dare swear; for it is a shrewd put-off and a pleasant one.”
I asked him: “Pray, tell me, sir (for this is by no means clear to me), what are the grounds upon which a man or woman may plead for a divorce under the Law?”
He laughed a little and then answered: “Why, Mischief, that is a question as wide as the doors of a college library. Nevertheless, I will answer it in a short Latin verse if that will make you any the wiser:
Error, conditio, votum, cognitio, crimen,
Cultūs disparitas, vis, ordo, ligamen, honestas,
Si sis affinis, si forte coire nequibis—
Haec socianda vetant connubia, facta retractant.”
However, when I looked rueful, he was good enough to explain the meaning of the verse, which was that, in Canon Law, the following were impediments that either forbade the solemnization of matrimony, or annulled it when it already was solemnized:
If one of the two parties be by error or trickery mistaken in the other’s person, name or condition.
If one of them be already married to another.
If one of them should have taken a solemn vow of chastity before a priest.
If they be of consanguinity or affinity within the forbidden degrees of matrimony; or if unlawful carnal knowledge should have brought the parties within such degrees before matrimony was solemnized.
If either party in a previous marriage should have been guilty of adultery or incest; or if the man should have christened his own child.
If either party should have murdered a priest, or committed a murder in order to clear the way for a marriage.
If either party prove to be Jew, Turk, Saracen or such other.
If either of the parties should have used intolerable cruel violence to the other; or plotted against the life of the other.
If the man be a priest.
If the man be impotent8 or the wife’s nature be deformed, so that they may not know each other carnally.
“Now, there,” he said, “is treasure spread for the Canon-lawyer; who can hit upon a flaw almost in any marriage. For if John of Stiles confess that before his marriage to Joan of Noke he slept between the same sheets with her aunt or cousin, or grandmother, why then, John and Joan were of the same affinity, and their marriage is no marriage, and they are as free as the air.”
I asked: “But, sir, cannot a woman be divorced for an act of adultery, or for desertion of her husband?”
“Nay,” said he. “A separation may be granted, but there lies no action for divorce: that is, neither party is free to marry again, as in the other cases. Nevertheless, the Puritans are pushing for a reform in this matter, and what is not permitted in Oxford to-day, may, for aught I know, be permitted in London to-morrow. Wherefore, since I will not have you whored by your husband’s alleging that you have deserted his bed and board, I have injured his plea by the politic answer I returned his messenger. For he cannot deny that it was he that sent you away, rather than you that deserted him.”
Suddenly he asked: “Tell me, do you perhaps desire to return to him, my dear, come what may?”
“Nay, an honest woman has no legitimate desires,” I replied. “She obeys the orders of her governors. And if governors disagree, and if she knows not to which of her governors she owes obedience, whether her father or her husband, what can she do but obey always the latest order? Bid me stay, and I will stay.”
“Stay!” said he.
I stayed. I was like a dog that has broken free, yet still trails the chain; and that same summer a Royal Proclamation was read at Oxford forbidding, upon pain of death, all commerce with London whatsoever.
1643 was the year in which the King hoped to achieve the subjugation of the Westminster Parliament—for he called an anti-Parliament at Oxford, which met in the Schools—and planned an advance upon London from three several directions. The plan was that the Earl of Newcastle should march from the far North, by way of Lincolnshire; Sir Ralph Hopton, M.P., who had won fame in the German wars, should march from Cornwall in the West, following along the southern coast; His Majesty himself should move out from Oxford as soon as the others had reached an equal nearness to London with himself. The Earl of Newcastle and Sir Ralph Hopton both won grand victories and by the summer, save for two or three seaports, the whole of the West and North were won for the King, and most of the Midlands. The Earl of Essex sought to make amends by a push at Oxford, and there was great alarm in Forest Hill when news came that he had taken Reading; but his army was discouraged by the death of Esquire John Hampden, M.P., accounted the grand champion of popular liberties, who was wounded in a skirmish a few miles from us, and died at Thame; the Earl fell back and presently Reading was regained by the King.
Nevertheless, the Parliamentarians were stronger than we had supposed. For the Fleet was faithful to them; and they wanted not for money to pay their soldiers; and they held Sussex, where are the principal ironworks in this country and where great guns are cast; and they might fetch from overseas what munitions of war soever they could afford to buy. The King suffered from three great inconveniences, beside the want of vessels: first, the want of money; second, that the levies raised by him in one county would not willingly march into another; and third, that there was continued strife and jealousy between his commanders, especially between his princely nephews and his proud English nobles—anyone of whom would rather that the common ship sank under them all than that he should abate a tittle of his dignity in obeying any commands but the King’s only. Had it not been for these inconveniences, the King was already the victor. For London, the head of rebellion, was in such a dismal state of dissension and foreboding with crowds running through the streets, and crying for the blood of “that dog Pym” and of the traitors who were against the making of peace, that the King might have taken the City with ease, had he struck at it with a small, willing, well-paid army. But the gentlemen and peasants of the West would not adventure east until Gloucester had fallen, which was obstinately held by one Colonel Massey; nor would the gentlemen and peasants of the North adventure south until Hull had fallen, which had been succoured and revictualled from the sea.
The King therefore gave his army the about turn and besieged Gloucester, which, as he knew from letters that he had inter
cepted, could not hold out above another fortnight at the longest. He summoned the garrison, but Colonel Massey gave him a humble denial. Then said His Majesty: “If you expect help, you are deceived. Waller is extinct and Essex cannot come.” Nevertheless, the inhabitants set fire to the city’s suburbs and continued resolute, for they knew that His Majesty had no siege-train with him worth a rush. Then the Earl of Essex marched out of London with General Skippon and his hardy trained bands, who cared not how far they marched, nor how speedily; they avoided Oxford and passed round upon our left hand and reached Gloucester within ten days, and so raised the siege. Yet His Majesty did not much lament, for he had lured his arch-enemy from his strongest post, and was confident to cut his retreat. He moved swiftly, and straddled across the London road at Newbury in Berkshire and so forced the Earl of Essex to battle. This fight proved every whit as hot as that fought at Edgehill; and again neither side could claim a victory, for though the King’s horse were twenty times as good as Parliament’s, yet General Skippon’s London foot stood as fast as stakes and would not be broken, despite that the cannon shot ploughed through their squares and flung the bowels and brains of their comrades in their faces. On the next day, in the morning, when the Earl marshalled his forces for another fight, he found the London road open to him, and home he took his army rejoicing. It was explained at Oxford that the King had wanted powder and bullets, and therefore could not hold his ground.
In this battle fell the Lord Falkland, who was the King’s Secretary for State and his most constant persuader to peace: a good man, weary of the times, who foresaw much misery to England, however the battle might go. In the morning of the fight he had called for a clean shirt, saying that if he were slain that day his body should not be found in foul linen. About the same time died his friend, Mr. Chillingworth, god-father to my brother James, who was then Chancellor of Salisbury; he died in the hands of Parliament men and was ministered to at the last by his Schools rival from Merton College, Dr. Cheynell, who had the satisfaction of preaching Mr. Chillingworth’s funeral sermon. He threw into his grave that book of Mr. Chillingworth’s, The Religion of Protestants, against which my husband had spoken, and cried as he did so: “Get thee gone, then, thou cursed book, thou corrupt rotten book, earth to earth and dust to dust! Get thee gone into thy place of rottenness, that thou mayest rot with thy author and see corruption.”
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