On the morning of 25 January 1642, London awoke to find that the cross had been attacked again; crowds gathered, and heard that one unlucky iconoclast had fallen on the surrounding railings and spiked himself, and that the others had run away when they heard the Watch coming. London’s civic leaders placed a guard on the poor old cross. But the maypole season of 1643 finished its chances; emboldened by the successful capture of Reading, the council gave orders for it to go. On Tuesday 2 May, a day ‘calm, clear and fair’, wrote Humphrey Mildmay, ‘the cross in Cheape was taken down by the Jews [Mildmay’s name for the godly party], the town in much disorder’. Attacked by the cross’s passionate defenders, the demolition crew moved in, guarded by none other than the reliable and stalwart men of the London trained bands, who had also been protecting the cross until that moment. The lead images were melted into bullets, to see off more papists. The bells rang out, as if celebrating a famous victory. The waits sang, as if it were Christmas, and the wine flowed. And on the spot where the cross had stood, the very place where Prynne’s Histrio-Mastix had been burned, the Caroline Book of Sports – the one that allowed maypoles – was also reduced to ashes.
Brilliana’s husband Robert Harley was chairman of the committee that supervised the smashing of stained glass and images in London’s churches and the chapels in the royal palaces around the capital during the mid-1640S. Set up in April 1643, originally the committee was to remove images from Westminster Abbey and ‘any church or chapel in or about London’. They duly destroyed stained glass in the Abbey, St Margaret’s Church, and the royal chapels at Whitehall, Greenwich and Hampton Court. In Westminster Abbey, the committee broke up carvings with axes and hammers, pulled down images of saints, and tore out the high altar in the chapel of Henry VII. At Whitehall, they plastered over pictures, smashed the windows, broke up the communion table, and cast out the pieces in the street. The Royalist newspaper Mercurius Aulicus reported that they went on ‘until nothing was left that was rich or glorious’ (16–22 June 1644). Of course, Harley didn’t do most of the work himself; workmen’s receipts survive, showing that, for example, the east window at Whitehall was reglazed with 241 feet of white glass, at a cost of £7. The committee also drew up lists of what should be destroyed elsewhere; the first ordinance, of August 1643, ordered the removal of all altars, rails, candles, crucifixes, and images of the Trinity or saints; the second, dated May 1644, was directed at copes, surplices, roods, fonts and church organs, and demanded the use of plain church plate.
Over several months in 1643, Parliament managed to formalize what had been all along an alliance, between itself and the ardently anti-Laudian, Covenanting, godly Scots. Pym was the chief architect of the Solemn League and Covenant, the treaty in which Parliament all but hired an army of Scots in exchange for paying them £30,000 a month (which it didn’t really have) and for establishing the Presbyterian Church in England and Ireland.
But not everyone in Scotland felt the alliance represented them. Some even began to see the Kirk as an enemy, the enemy of true Scots. When the Kirk and Scotland signed the Solemn League and Covenant, Montrose’s position hardened still further. He had already written his Discourse on Sovereignty, a long letter in which he defended the sovereignty of the king under law and also condemned the once-hallowed Kirk. His reflections on loyalty and honour led him to join the king in 1643, and he offered to raise the king’s friends in Scotland against the Kirk. It took a long time to persuade Charles to back him; the other Scots at the court at Oxford were against it, especially Hamilton. But at last Charles agreed, and Montrose rode out of Oxford as the king’s lieutenant-general. He was ready to hurl himself into the midst of a country that loathed his king to raise an army. He entered Scotland disguised as a groom, collected a party of Irish troops from Antrim who had landed in the Highlands, picked up a few Highlanders as well, and began his campaign. At least he was on his own now; no court, no committee.
My dear and only love, I pray
That little world of thee
Be governed by no other sway
Than purest monarchy;
For if confusion have a part,
Which virtuous souls abhor,
And hold a synod in thy heart
I’ll never love thee more.
Or if Committees thou elect
And goes on such a score,
I’ll sing and laugh at thy neglect
And never love thee more.
His adventure was just beginning.
In 1643, the pressures on Brilliana Harley continued to grow as Hereford became more and more dominated by Royalist armies moving to attack Gloucester and eager to pacify any pockets of resistance in their rear. Country houses like Brampton Bryan were always perceived as a threat, and Brilliana’s case was by no means unique. It seemed inevitable that she would soon find herself besieged.
Hereford, which had been in the hands of Parliament, was occupied by the Royalists in January 1643. In February the commander Lord Herbert began preparing for a siege of Brampton, but his forces were diverted to attack Gloucester, where they were defeated by the Parliamentary army under Sir William Waller in March. In April, some Royalists entered Harley’s estate at Brampton Park, took four oxen, beat up some workmen, and then opened fire, killing one man. Later in April Waller’s forces took Hereford again for Parliament, but then had to march away to reinforce Bristol. It was then – May 1643 – that Ned Harley joined the army of Waller, and so did Robert (Robin), his brother, in June, after Ned had persuaded Brilliana to allow it.
The civilian refugee’s lot is described by Ann Fanshawe: ‘the perpetual discourse of losing and gaining towns and men; at the windows the sad spectacle of war’. And Brilliana’s letters reflect her sadness. They also reflect her fear, the growing shortage of materials for life, and her loneliness:
13 December 1642: My heart has been in no rest since you went. I confess I was never so full of sorrow. I fear the provision of corn and malt will not hold out, if this continue; and they say they will burn my barns; and my fear is that they will place soldiers so near me that there will be no going out. My comfort is that you are not with me, lest they should take you, but I do most dearly miss you. I wish, if it had pleased God, that I were with your father. I would have written to him but I durst not write upon paper. Dear Ned, write to me, though you write upon a piece of cloth, as this is. I pray God bless you, as I desire my own soul should be blessed.
On Christmas Day 1642, Brilliana told Ned that she had been warned by a godly cleric that the people of Ludlow were against her: that ‘they are in a mighty violence against me; they revenge all that was done upon me, so that I shall fear any more Parliament forces coming into the country. Dear Ned, when it is in your power, show kindness to them, for they must be overcome so. I pray you advise with your father whether he thinks it best that I should put away most of the men that are in my house, and whether it be best for me to go from Brampton, or by God’s help to stand it out. I would be willing to do what he would have me do. I never was in such sorrows, as I have been since you left me. I hope the Lord will deliver me, but they are most cruelly bent against me.’
The king ordered Royalist leader Fitzwilliam Coningsby to prepare for an assault on Brampton in January 1643.
Brilliana was miserable, too, about the fate of her servants: on 28 January 1643 she wrote, ‘Poor Griffiths was cruelly used, but he is now set at liberty. But the poor drummer is still in the dungeon [at Hereford], and Griffiths says he fears he will die. I cannot send to release him.’ She was haunted by a sense of failure; naturally maternal, she felt she was supposed to protect her household as if they were her children, and the fact that she was prevented infuriated and shamed her. Her role as co-governor of a large household was collapsing: ‘I know it will grieve you to know how I am used. It is with all the malice that can be. Mr Wigmore will not let the fowler bring me any fowl, nor will suffer any of my servants to pass. They have forbid my rents to be paid. They drove away the young horses at
Wigmore, and none of my servants dare go scarce as far as the town. If God were not merciful to me, I should be in a very miserable condition. I am threatened every day to be beset with soldiers. My hope is, that the Lord will not deliver me or mine into their hands, for surely they would use all cruelty towards me. I am told they desire to leave your father neither root nor branch. You and I must forgive them.’
She was frightened, but by 14 February she was able to report, triumphantly, that ‘we are still threatened and injured … but our God still takes care of us, and has exceedingly showed his power in preserving us’. She had heard of a Royalist plan to blow up Brampton Bryan, but the leader, Lord Herbert, was called away to the Forest of Dean. But the letter ends bleakly: ‘Now they say, they will starve me out of my house; they have taken away all your father’s rents, and they say they will drive away the cattle, and then I shall have nothing to live upon. All their aim is to enforce me to let those men I have go, that then they might seize upon my house and cut our throats by a few rogues, and then say, they know not who did it. For so they say, they knew not who drove away the six colts, but Mr Coningsby keeps them, though I have written to him for them.’ She was genuinely afraid of being killed in her own home, as the Irish Protestants had been.
By 23 February she was having the moat filled with water. But she wanted instructions; though the soldiers had gone to Gloucester, she still received no rents, and knew that if she let her own men go, she would be ‘every day plundered’ (25 February 1643). What she hated most, though, was being cut off from letters: ‘Dear Ned, find some way or other to write to me that I may know how the world goes, and how it is with your father and yourself; for it is death to be amongst my enemies, and not to hear from those I love so dearly.’ Then she received a summons, demanding that she hand over her house, ‘and what they would have’, or be proceeded against as a traitor. ‘It may be everyone’s case to be made traitors, for I believe everyone will be as unwilling to part with their house as I am’, she wrote (8 March 1643). ‘I hear there are six hundred soldiers appointed to come against me’, she added.
Things could only get worse. ‘They sent for the trained bands and have taken away their arms; some say to give the arms to my Lord Herbert’s soldiers that want. They say they gave half-a-crown to every soldier to look for enemies every day. They have taken More’s lad, and he is in prison at Hereford, because he was with me [Samuel More, son of Richard More, MP, was at Brampton Bryan during the siege, and may have been released when Waller retook Hereford at the end of April]. If I had money to buy corn and meal and malt I should hope to hold out, but then I have three shires against me’, she reported bitterly on 11 March 1643.
On 6 May, she lost her most trusted servant. ‘Honest Petter is taken. Six set upon him, three shot at him as he was opening a gate not far from Mortimer’s Cross. He fought with them valiantly and acquitted himself with courage; he hurt two of them, and if there had not been six to one, he would have escaped. He is wounded in the head and shoulder, but not mortally; he is in prison at Ludlow. I have done all that is possible to get him out, but it cannot be; but I hope the Lord will deliver him. I have found him very faithful to me, and he desired to have come to you.’ Petter was still in prison on 9 May. Again, Brilliana was unable to help someone who depended on her. The stress was almost crushing.
But she sent Ned off to the army with a glad heart: ‘You may be confident my very soul goes along with you, and because I cannot be with you myself, I have sent you one, to be of your troop, and have furnished him with a horse which cost me £8. I hope it will come safe to your hand, with his rider.’ Robin was still a problem teen: ‘Your brother Robin goes about as if he were discontented, but I know not for what.’ Brilliana had not lost her wry sense of humour.
By June things had calmed enough for Brilliana to be thinking about work on the court. But she knew this respite could not last. She sent to Lieutenant-Colonel Massey in Gloucester for an able soldier to command and control the men she had, and he sent her ‘one that was a sergeant, an honest man, and I think an able soldier; he was in the German wars’. To her joy, at last Petter was released: ‘He was greviously used at Ludlow’, wrote Brilliana indignantly. ‘Turks could have used him no worse; a Lieutenant-Colonel Marrow would come every day and kick him up and down, and they laid him in a dungeon upon foul straw. In Shrewsbury he was used well for a prisoner, but he is very glad he is come home again, and so am I. I shall be full of doubts till the fair be passed.’
She was also delighted to receive at last a letter from Ned, telling her he had safely joined Waller’s army:
I received your letter dated the 17th of this month, which was dearly welcome to me, because it brought me word that you were safely come to Sir William Waller. My heart is with you, and I know you believe it, for my life is bound up with yours. My dear Ned, since you desire your brother to come to you, I cannot be unwilling that he should go to you, to whom I pray God make him a comfort. If Mr Hill be with you, and you would be free of him, you may if please you, tell him I desire he should come to me (June 1643).
And their closeness was revealed again in another June letter:
That you left me with sorrow, when you went last from Brampton, I believe; for I think, with comfort I think of it, that you are not only a child, but one with childlike affections to me, and I know you have so much understanding that you did well weigh the condition I was in. But I believe it, your leaving of me was more sorrow than my condition could be. I hope the Lord will in mercy give you to me again, for you are both a Joseph and a Benjamin to me, and dear Ned, long to see me.
She told him all her news, too, informing him that all the Herefordshire Cavaliers had returned, that Brereton had been surprised while plundering Hanmer in Shropshire, by Lord Capel’s troops. She also reported triumphantly that ‘all Lancashire is cleared; only Lathom House’ (which was ironically held for the king by another woman, the Countess of Derby). She also sent the gardener and other servants to join Ned, irrespective of her own situation. It kept them safe, and it might help him. Writing to Ned on 11 July, she was more worried about him than about herself: ‘I acknowledge the great mercy of my God that he preserved you in so sharp a fight, when your horse was killed.’ She also worried about how to replace the horse.
Though Brilliana didn’t always appreciate it, the local gentry had been restrained in not attacking Brampton sooner. They respected Brilliana and they were reluctant to sever the traditional class ties between gentry families.
But on 25 July 1643, the siege of Brampton started in earnest when the Royalists’ commander William Vavasour found he had lost esteem in Hereford and the surrounding county because he had failed to reduce it. Then she could send Ned only a few lines: ‘the gentlemen of this country have affected their desires in bringing an army against me’. It was like Brilliana to see this in personal terms. Inside the castle with her were her three smallest children, Thomas, Dorothy and Margaret; all were in their early teens. For six weeks the siege lasted, and during that time all Brilliana’s surrounding buildings, the barns, the byres, were burnt and the livestock driven off and eaten. The Royalists kept up a steady barrage with cannon and a sporadic rain of musket fire. The cook was shot dead, and two other inhabitants wounded. Grain for bread had to be ground with a hand mill when the flour ran out. There were so many holes in the roof that no room was altogether dry or warm.
‘The Lord in his mercy preserve me, that I fall not into their hands’, she wrote, later referring to ‘cruel and blood-thirsty enemies’ (25 August) and adding that ‘I long to hear of you, who are my great comfort in this life’. She began negotiating for an end to hostilities, and was offered a safe-conduct in early September, but she refused to abandon the castle to the Royalists because she was certain they would despoil it. On 9 September, the besiegers were forced to leave to fall on Essex’s Parliamentarian army, which was marching to relieve besieged Gloucester. But again, Brilliana feared that the respite would not last. On 9
October she wrote: ‘I am again threatened; there are some soldiers come to Lemster and 3 troops of horse to Hereford with Sir William Vavasour, and they say they mean to visit Brampton again.’ Almost as an afterthought she added, ‘I have taken a very great cold, which has made me very ill these 2 or 3 days, but I hope the Lord will be merciful to me, in giving me my health, for it is an ill time to be sick in.’
The English Civil War: A People’s History (Text Only) Page 27