“What will your duties be, Husband?” I asked.
“The writing of Latin letters to Foreign States and Princes in the name of the English Republic,” he replied, “and now and then I will be desired to undertake the writing of a book in defence of our new liberties. This is a great new thing that a Secretary of State should be chosen for his learning and his handiness with the pen, rather than for his subserviency to Court doctrine. King Charles had a Chief Secretary, the Lord Conway, whom he accepted as a legacy from King James, that was a notable falconer and a devoted creature of the Duke of Buckingham’s, yet could neither read nor write.”
“But what of your History of England?” I asked, “and your Latin Dictionary? And your Methodical Digest of Christian Doctrine? However will these works be finished?”
“Why,” said he, “they can wait awhile, and indeed now that Ned, at his step-father’s insistence, goes up to the University, I cannot easily continue with the Digest or Dictionary, for John has neither Ned’s parts nor his industry.”
“I hope,” said I, “that our new house will have a garden where I can take the air, and where our children can tumble together on the grass.”
“Mr. Thomson’s house opens into Spring Gardens,” he replied, “but that is no place where I should allow my wife to resort, being now become a haunt of cut-purses, harlots, and idle soldiers. However, on pleasant days you may go with the children into the Whitehall Palace Gardens to which doubtless I shall obtain a ticket; there the company is more select.”
“That will be delightful,” said I, “if you will hire me a strong young wench to carry our Nan. She cannot go so far as the Palace on her lame foot, as you know well.”
“You should have considered these inconveniences when you bore a crooked child,” said he. “I am no fool: I know how it comes about that children are born crooked. Say no more lest I accuse you directly of having tried to make away with my child while it was yet in your womb. Had Nan been the son that I expected, and had you so maimed him, I would cheerfully have procured your hanging.”
“May God pardon you for that accusation, Husband,” said I. “For upon my word, I cannot find it in my heart to do so.”
He smiled frostily at me and “You are too free with the name of God, Mary,” said he, “and you may leave Him out of this matter. But when my daughter Ann grows to riper years and inquires of her neighbours: ‘How came I to issue warped from my Maker’s hand? Was He then wroth with me?’—do you not suppose that they will answer and say to her: ‘Nay, child, that was your mother’s wicked doing: it comes not of God’?”
How could any person dispute with such a man? I told him: “Then the long and short of the matter is that, because you are to be paid near sixteen shillings a day by the Council, our poor babies will be shut up in a noisy lodging-house in a stinking street and never refresh themselves with grass and flowers.”
“What is good enough for me,” he answered, “will surely be good enough for my wife and daughters? What I earn for myself is no business of yours; and if your father had paid me punctually the £1,000 he promised me, you could have had any wench it pleased you to hire.”
Oh, that £1,000 portion! How closely it was clamped upon his mind! He flattered himself that he had a perfect command of his passions, like the Caspian Sea that neither ebbs nor flows; yet one night about this time he and I had high words together in bed, it is no matter upon what. I could not sleep and, about an hour before dawn, I slipped out of bed and went to the hearth. There I blew softly with the bellows, and lighted a piece of paper at the embers and so lighted a candle-end; and took from my needle-box which lay on a bye-shelf a pocket scissors to trim my nails withal; and then came softly gliding back into the bed, shielding the candle-light with my hands, for fear of waking him. But he being very suspicious, and a light sleeper, saw me creeping towards him with the scissors and candle. He startled up and wrestled with me and snatched away the scissors, which were a very good pair made in Woodstock, and flung them out of the open window. Then he exulted, crying, “Ah, Delilah, Delilah, daughter of the Philistines, here is a Samson who sleeps with one eye open.”
I began to laugh and weep in the darkness, for the candle was out, and said to him: “Why, Esquire Samson, may I not trim my nails in bed without suffering so fierce an assault from you? You have bruised my wrists and wrenched my thumb and spilt hot grease upon my foot and thrown away the scissors that I prize. Whatever will you do next, pray? Did you fear that I was come to cut off your heartbreakers and so annul your holy masculine virtue? God forbid that I should ever lie in one bed with a lisping she-man!”
All that he would answer was: “You shall be punished for this, you naughty Lamia, you Creeping Cockatrice of Forest Hill!” Yet on the next day I heard no more of the matter; and I think he had repented his suspicions, for towards evening I found another scissors laid in my needle-box, as good as the pair he had thrown away. This was to my profit, for unknown to him I had already recovered the other scissors too, which was caught on the twig of a tree and hung there prettily.
We moved to Mr. Thomson’s, who provided us with three upper rooms: one large room in the backside for my husband’s books, where he also slept on most nights, one small room for John Phillips, and my room, of middle size, with a closet for the children to sleep, which looked out upon the Strand. In my room we took breakfast and supper together and entertained company. My husband told me that we had now no need of servants, forasmuch as Mr. Thomson would supply our needs, and that all my work would be to care for the children and keep his clothes in repair.
It is exceedingly awkward for a country-bred gentlewoman with two helpless babes to be the guest in a London lodging-house, where the servants are surly, the kitchen removed from her room by six flights of steep stairs and two long dark corridors, the yard where she must wash her linen forever full of coaches and waggons and drunken ostlers—an overflow from the Bull Tavern next door—and nowhere to hang the linen but on a line below the window. My husband rose early and worked at his private business until he breakfasted at seven, after which he went to his work (to Derby House at first, but thereafter to Whitehall Palace). I saw him not again until supper, for he took his bread and cheese with him in a satchel.
John Phillips remained in our rooms all day, busied with the task set him by my husband; and wrote a little book of his own upon the quick and easy teaching of Latin, which was afterwards published by Mr. Royston. John began to show me attention beyond the ordinary and was eager to run errands and do little services for me, and would even mind the children while I was away in the kitchen, though he was no lover of children. But presently a coolness arose between us, for I found that he had conceived an adulterous passion for me, and would fain have lain with me, had I let him. When one day he showed me some amatorious verses he had written, and confessed that I was the Berenice whose hair was celebrated in them, I clouted his nose for him, so that it bled (so vexed I was) and tore his poem to shreds. Yet I could not find it in my heart to blame him, for he was now almost a grown man and, by the vigilant strictness of my husband’s care, prevented from ever cooling his intemperate heats in a riotous gaudy-night. Also, he was too much thrown in my company, and knew that I fadged not well with my husband and was restless in my mind. I feared that he would play virtuous Joseph and represent me to my husband as Potiphar’s wife; but he was not ill-natured or revengeful and, since I did not complain against him to my husband, he held his tongue likewise. He offered me his services no more, however, and preserved a haughty silence towards me, and shut himself away from me in his room; so that I lived a very lonely life at Thomson’s, except for Trunco’s visits. Trunco on two days of the week would fetch me and the babes to her husband’s house, where there was a little private garden, and where I could converse with my dear mother and with Zara, and sometimes with my young brothers, if they were excused from military duty. My mother would never come to Mr. Thomson’s, because of her detestation of my husband.
> The Latin letters that my husband wrote for the Council of State were only a small part of his work. He was also set to write a tract against the unnatural league in Ireland made by the Marquis of Ormonde; which he did. And, a more important task, to write a book in answer to the Eikon Basilike; at which he worked for the better part of the spring and the whole of the summer ensuing. But the heaviest labour assigned to him was to assist the Council in the suppression of books and pamphlets hostile to the new Government: of which there were a very great number published, of three several sorts, namely the Cavalier sort, the Presbyterial sort, and the Levelling sort.17
Now this was a transformation: my husband who had written his Areopagitica as a trumpet-blast against the licensing or muzzling of the Press was now himself become (with Mr. Frost, the Principal Secretary of State) a Censor of the Press; and was required to chastise with scorpions the printers and authors of unlicensed books whom King Charles and the Presbyterians had chastised with whips only! How he compounded with his conscience in this business, I know not, for I had not the hardihood to inquire; but I think he was of one mind with those Jesuits who held that evil deeds are well done if good from them proceeds. Moreover, he had written the Areopagitica chiefly in protest against the licensing of his own wise books by fools; and here was a horse of another colour—he, a wise man, was required to license the books of fools.
As for his answer to the King’s book, which he called Eikonoklastes (or the Portrait-breaker) he answered it fairly enough for the most part; but he told Johnny Phillips that any stick was good enough to beat a mad dog withal, and since he knew the book to be a forgery, and a dangerous one, he scrupled not to take advantage of the merry trick that he had played upon Mr. Royston in the matter of Pamela’s prayer before he had any thought of writing an answer to the book.
Now he wrote:
“From stories of this nature, both ancient and modern, which abound, the Poets also, and some English, have been in this point so mindful of decorum as to put never more pious words in the mouth of any person than of a Tyrant. I shall not instance an abstruse author, wherein the King might be less conversant, but one of whom we well know was the closest companion of these his solitudes, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE; who introduces the person of Richard the Third speaking in as high a strain of piety and mortification as is uttered in any passage of this book, and sometimes to the same sense and purpose with some words in this place. ‘I intended’ said he (King Charles in the preceding part of the Eikon), ‘not only to oblige my friends, but mine enemies.’ The like saith Richard, Act 2, Scene i:
“I do not know that Englishman alive
With whom my soul is any jot at odds
More than the infant that is born to-night.
I thank my God for my humility.
Other stuff of this sort may be read throughout the whole tragedy, wherein the Poet used not much license in departing from the truth of History; which delivers him [Richard] a deep dissembler, not of his affections only, but of Religion.
“In praying, therefore, and in the outward work of devotion, this King, we see, hath not at all exceeded the worst of Kings before him. But herein the worst of Kings, professing Christianism, have by far exceeded him. They, for aught we know, have still prayed their own, or at least borrowed from fit authors. But this King, not content with that which, although in a thing holy, is no holy theft—to attribute to his own making other men’s whole prayers, hath, as it were, unhallowed and unchristened the very duty of Prayer itself by borrowing to a Christian use prayers offered to a heathen God. Who would have imagined so little fear in him of the true all-seeing Deity, so little reverence of the Holy Ghost, whose office is to dictate and present our Christian prayers, so little care of truth in his last words, or honour to himself or to his friends, or sense of his afflictions, or of that sad hour which was upon him, as immediately before his death to pop into the hand of that grave bishop who attended him, as a special relic of his saintly exercises, a prayer stolen word for word from the mouth of a Heathen woman praying to a Heathen God, and that in no serious book, but in the vain amatorious poem of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia: a book in that kind full of worth and wit, but among religious thoughts and duties not worthy to be named nor to be read at any time without good caution, much less in time of trouble and affliction to be a Christian’s prayer-book? It hardly can be thought upon without some laughter that he who had acted over us so stately and so tragically should leave the world at last with such a ridiculous exit as to bequeath among his deifying friends that stood about him such a piece of mockery, to be published by them as must needs cover both his and their heads with shame and confusion. And sure it was the hand of God that let them fall and be taken in such a foolish trap as hath exposed them to all derision, if for nothing else, to throw contempt and disgrace in the sight of all men upon this his idolized Book, and the whole rosary of his Prayers: thereby testifying how little He accepted them from those who thought no better of the Living God than of a buzzard Idol, that would be served and worshipped with the polluted trash of Romances and Arcadias, without discerning the affront so irreligiously and so boldly offered him to his face.
“Thus much be said in general to his Prayers, and in especial to the Arcadian Prayer used in his captivity: enough to undeceive us what esteem we are to set upon the rest!”
He also accused the King, upon hearsay evidence, of the horrid crime of conspiring with the Duke of Buckingham to poison his father, King James (whose catamite the said Duke had been) that he might sit on his Throne, and of rewarding the deed with half his kingdom.
Meanwhile, in April of this year 1649, General Cromwell was chosen to go to Ireland, against the Marquis of Ormonde’s power. He was appointed Lord Lieutenant-General and General Governor, at £13,000 a year for three years. In May he went to Oxford, to a University already purged of all Heads of Houses, Fellows and scholars who having favoured the King would not change their colours—three hundred in all; and there with the Lord General Fairfax he was created a Doctor of Law. A number of his officers, some of whom, it was said, could hardly sign their names, much less construe a simple Latin sentence, were created Masters of Arts. In July, dressed in a suit worth £500, he drove off from Whitehall to Bristol, where his army of 12,000 men was assembled. He was in a coach drawn by six Flanders mares, with eighty officers as his life-guards, among whom was my brother John. General Ireton commanded under him.
“Ah,” cried my mother, who was with me when I watched his departure. “He is become like the Devil who cries ‘All is mine.’ God give that he may never return to England, neither he nor any of his self-seeking murderous crew, but leave his bones in a bog.” This was the prayer of a great part of the citizenry of London, and there was hawked about a “Last Will and Testament of General Cromwell” which read:
In the name of Pluto, Amen: I, Noll Cromwell, alias the Town-Bull of Ely, Lord Chief Governor of Ireland, Grand Plotter and Contriver of all Mischiefs in England, Lord of Misrule, Knight of the Order of Regicides, Thief-tenant-General of the Rebels of Westminster, Duke of Devilishness, Ensign of Evil, Scout-master-General to his Infernal Majesty, being wickedly disposed of mind, of abhorred memory, do make my last Will and Testament in manner and form following… etc., etc.
My mother had been incensed at the creation of Masters and Doctors at Oxford. “This Crum-Hell of yours,” she cried, “this copper-faced Nod-Noll who was cast out from an inferior University, as unfit to proceed even to a bachelor’s degree, and who proceeding to an Inn of Court frittered his time away at the tavern and bawdy-house, and came away with nothing decent accomplished—that such a wretch as he should by reason of his military crimes be honourably entertained at Oxford University, and presented with a Doctorate at Law—oh, it makes the blood run up and down my veins! What knowledge of Law has His Noseship, except it be how to override, pervert and destroy all laws? He has crucified this Kingdom upside-down!”
When it was noised about that my husband was become a li
ttle Grandee and that he conferred every day with three or four great Grandees, he was continually waylaid by persons of his acquaintance—for the most part by Royalists whose estates had been sequestrated—and begged to speak a seasonable word for them in this matter or that. But he always denied them, saying that he knew nothing of the business and was sure that the Commissioners would do their duty, without any prodding or prompting from himself. When these importunate people, women for the most part, found that they could not get his ear by direct means, they came to Thomson’s and tried with tears and little presents to use me as an instrument of persuasion. I dared not accept anything, and plainly told them that if I were to plead any cause with my husband, this were the surest way to lose it. There was one lady who thought that I had rejected the present that she offered as not being handsome enough, and came again with marvellous jewels. I should dearly have loved to accept them of her, for my husband gave me no ornaments of any worth: but I told her that she was wasting her labour, for how could I make use of such gifts? If my husband reckoned them to be a bribe, he would rail at me and command me to restore them; and if I did not acknowledge them to be a bribe he would conclude them to be the fee of adultery.
One day came a tasty present, a basket of little white peaches, which came addressed plainly to me, and of which I ate. Unlike Eve, I offered no fruit to my husband, but ate all myself, except for what I gave my little Nan, and cast the stones out at the window. Yet I regretted my greed, for on the third day comes Sir Timothy Tyrrell’s lady, who was Archbishop Usher’s daughter, with a tale of injustices committed by the sequestrators at Shotover, and other complaints, I know not what; and she reminded me of the bridal gifts of buck and game that my husband and I had from Sir Timothy at our wedding; and at last she asked would not my husband speak a word to the Lord President Bradshaw, etc.? I grew angry and said that the buck had been eaten and given thanks for, long ago.
Wife to Mr. Milton Page 41