by Ann Swinfen
The Sergeant-at-Arms, looking both bewildered and afraid, departed to carry the message to the small remnant of the House.
As time passed, the prisoners roamed the confined area of the court, trying to warm their stiffening limbs, while their numbers were increased by new arrivals. Crewe greeted John ruefully.
‘I suppose we should have seen this coming,’ he said, ‘but I hadn’t thought they would act so soon.’
‘What is their intention?’ John asked. ‘They’re allowing some to enter the House. It cannot be dissolution.’
‘Perhaps when they have enough of their own friends there, they will force a vote for dissolution, under the pretence of valid procedure.’
John glanced about the courtyard, puzzled.
‘But there can’t be above forty of us here. There would still be enough of our party left to out-vote the war party in the House.’
‘Oh, we are but the distinguished few,’ said Crewe wryly. ‘Those that they’ve arrested. Our other friends are barred from the House and sent home, but they haven’t been seized by force. Yet. We are the dangerous few. They dare not let us remain free. Look, they’ve even arrested old Rudyard.’
Sir Benjamin Rudyard was leaning against the wall of one of the buildings surrounding the court as John walked across to him. He looked frail and drawn, his skin bluish about the mouth, from the cold or perhaps from some more serious cause. He wiped his reddened eyes with a silk handkerchief.
‘I do not weep,’ he said stoutly to John. ‘‘Tis but a rheum in the eyes, with this pestilential wind.’
‘We might well all weep,’ said John gravely, ‘at what we see this day. The House of Commons attacked by armed men. Our elected government overthrown not by a tyrant prince but by an army recruited by Parliament itself to protect the people from the abuses of tyranny.’
‘Aye, you speak truth, lad.’
‘Come, sir,’ said John. ‘It’s little enough, but there’s an old mounting block over there where you may sit and rest a while.’
He led the old man to the mounting block, and then wrapped his own warm cloak around him.
‘You can ill spare this,’ said Rudyard.
‘I shall walk up and down when I feel cold.’
John looked around at the shivering company. They were the men he expected to see here. Fiennes, who had spoken first in defence of the peace treaty. Bulkeley and Grimston from the commissioners who had negotiated with the king to secure the treaty, Clotworthy, D’Ewes, the Harleys. Those army officers who would have nothing to do with Cromwell and Ireton’s seizure of power: William Waller, Edward Massey, Lionel Copley. His own fellow Stafford MP, Edward Leigh.
‘I don’t see Denzil Holles,’ he said. ‘Surely Holles is one of us they would be certain to arrest.’
Rudyard laughed aloud.
‘Holles is sure to have fled before he could be arrested. The “bird” is flown once again. Some whisper of danger must have reached him. Nay, lad, you’re too young to remember ’29, when Holles and the other five “birds” were to be arrested by the king in the very House itself. In marches the king with his armed troopers, while out fly Holles and the others by the back door and we smuggle them aboard a waiting barge to flee down river to safety in the City.’
The old man smiled at the memory, and rubbed his bony hands together against the cold.
‘Though indeed, on that occasion, Holles was all for staying, so that the king would be forced to arrest him in a struggle on the floor of the Commons, and so be shown up for a lawless tyrant who disrespected the privilege of the House. A week later, back the birds came to the House aboard a barge decorated like one of old King Harry’s royal craft, and all the City and Westminster celebrating.’
‘Then there was the matter of Speaker Finch, was there not?’ said John. ‘Was that later?’
‘Aye, two months later, or thereabouts. The king ordered Speaker Finch to suspend Parliament. Now there was a cheeping little bird eager to do the king’s bidding! When that rascal Finch tried to carry out the order, Holles pushed him back into the Speaker’s chair and stood over him so that he dared not act. Holles is a big man still, but twenty years ago it would have taken a brave or a foolhardy man to resist him, and Finch was neither. Two days later, the king’s men arrested nine members, including Holles, and sent them to the Tower. Sir John Eliot died there.’
‘It was spoken of even in Staffordshire when I was a boy,’ said John. ‘We were all afire with the injustice of it. I swore then that when I grew to a man, I would defend the rights of Parliament against the king.’
‘Well,’ said Rudyard ironically, ‘this moment in time may be your own chance of martyrdom in the Tower. I fear my old bones will not long survive imprisonment there.’
‘You should not have been arrested,’ said John. ‘An old gentleman such as yourself. Forgive me if I speak out of turn, but you’re nearly as old as my grandfather would be, had he lived till now.’
‘An honest remark, if tactless,’ said Rudyard. ‘But I am indeed past the age for heroics. I leave that to you young men.’
John walked about the courtyard, rubbing his arms and stamping his feet against the icy chill which seeped into his boots from the churned snow. The downward drifting flakes had gathered in intensity, so that even the up-turned collar of his doublet was no defence. His shirt was soaking around his neck and shoulders, and his empty stomach ached. It was already long past mid-day, and none of the prisoners had taken food or drink since early morning, but their guards were impervious to pleas for victuals or shelter. Instead they shouted threats at the prisoners. Stephens asked quietly whether the older men, at least, might be granted some relief.
‘Liars, cheats! Damned thieving bastards!’ yelled one of the guards in reply, prodding Stephens none too gently with the tip of his sword. ‘You’ve stolen our pay and pocketed it yourselves!’
‘If that’s the lie they’ve been fed,’ said Nat Fiennes, ‘we can expect no mercy from these men. What pay? Where do they think any money has been found? Best keep our distance from them.’
About halfway through the afternoon, Hugh Peter, the fanatical army preacher, hurried in to the Queen’s Court. John turned away from the fellow in disgust. His round cheeks plump and greasy as a roasted pig, Peter bustled about with more than his usual self-important air. He was a known troublemaker, come back from the Americas, with a talent for stirring up mischief amongst the soldiers with his fiery sermons about their God-given rights and the golden future that lay ahead, did they but seize what was theirs for the taking.
‘Look at him,’ John said contemptuously to Crewe. ‘A fine Saint he makes, with a sword by his side, like a boisterous soldier. He has decided he will have richer pickings here in England than in the savage land of the Virginias.’
But they must all swallow their pride and submit to having their names writ down on a list, Hugh Peter said, for the use of the Lord General Fairfax. When it came John’s turn he repeated his name and constituency like any obedient schoolboy, although he knew that Peter recognised him and was making a great show of mishearing, and demanding the spelling of the difficult name, all to enhance his own imagined importance. He wrote down the name on his list as ‘Swinton’, then elaborately corrected it. As he must endure this indignity anyway, John decided to try to gain some good from it.
‘Well enough, Master Peter, that you show this discourtesy to those of us who are young and able. But I am convinced that the Lord General cannot be aware that a decrepit old man like Sir Benjamin Rudyard is being kept here all day, outdoors in the storm and snow, without meat or drink, no fire to warm him, and not even a joint-stool to sit upon. ‘Tis a dishonour to a man like Tom Fairfax to treat an old gentleman so, and a stain on his reputation.’
‘It’s not for such as you to speak of reputations,’ Peter blustered, but John saw that he glanced across to where Rudyard still sat huddled on the mounting block, shaking with the cold in spite of John’s cloak thrown over his own.
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The rapacious agitator bustled off, but returned less than an hour later with Fairfax’s order for the release of two of the prisoners. He made a great business of opening the paper and studying the names.
‘Sir Benjamin Rudyard,’ he read out. ‘And . . . I cannot quite make out . . . ah yes, Nathaniel Fiennes.’
The prisoners murmured to each other. Rudyard they could understand, but Nat? Perhaps the whole matter was a show of strength only, and they would be released one by one, to subdue them and bring them to heel.
Nat helped the old man to his feet. He was so stiff and cold that he could barely walk.
‘Give young Swynfen his cloak,’ Rudyard said in a shaking voice. ‘He must be as frozen as the Norway seas. I’m grateful to you, my boy. I had been dead by this, without it.’
‘I don’t know why I am privileged to walk away,’ Nat muttered to John. ‘I’ll try to discover what I can, and send word to you.’
‘I suspect Tom Fairfax had no hand in this seizure of our persons,’ said John. ‘Others are acting in his name, and he hesitates to gainsay them, for fear of mutiny in the army. But since your father is one of his oldest friends, he probably persuaded him to set you free.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Nat. ‘I don’t like to think that I am freed while the rest of you are left behind.’
‘Away with you. Take that poor old man home to fire and food, and a warm bed,’ said John.
He wrapped his cloak about him thankfully, for, despite moving constantly to try to keep his blood from freezing, he had rarely felt so cold in all his life, even when riding across Packington Moor through a winter’s storm at home. His teeth clattered together with a noise like an ill-made loom. After the departure of Rudyard and Fiennes, the other members grew gradually more subdued as no word came of further releases. They had now been confined here for ten hours. Men had been forced to relieve themselves in corners, and the place had begun to stink. Some sat upon the ground in the snow, too exhausted to stand any longer. Some scooped handfuls of snow into their mouths, for they were parched with lack of drink. The guard of soldiers had been changed twice during the day, each new troop coming steaming out from one of the alehouses nearby, fortified with beef and beer.
Sir Robert Harley, the oldest of them now that Rudyard was gone, sat on the ground in a corner of the wall, trying to gain some shelter from the wind, for he was coughing and sneezing with a heavy cold.
‘This is how our Parliamentary heroes are rewarded,’ said John bitterly to Edmund Stephens, who was petulantly kicking at the snow. ‘I see here William Waller, “William the Conqueror” as we used to call him, one of our most successful commanders in the early days of the war. This is the man who first suggested we should form a national army. This very army! And look at Rob Harley yonder. He’ll take a fever and a flux of the lungs if he’s not soon allowed indoors. The whole world knows how his lady Brilliana defended Brampton Bryan with a handful of musketeers against a besieging Royalist army. The name of Harley was admired throughout the land, and now it’s come to this.’
Stephens shrugged. ‘What’s to be done, when we have to deal with men who think themselves Saints on earth? Even though their sainthood lie in waging war upon their friends and stealing the property of those whom, not long since, they were pleased to call their brothers. Do you suppose we are to be kept here all night? ’Tis near dark.’
As if in answer, the bustling Hugh Peter returned at that very moment, accompanied by a new group of officers.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, twinkling with bonhomie, ‘there are carriages awaiting you now at the Lord’s stairs, to convey you to Wallingford House for the night.’
Murmurs of relief could be heard amongst the grumbling as the prisoners were herded by the armed guards, pushed and harried like a drove of beasts, along to the Lord’s stairs and into a group of coaches lined up there. But it was nothing more than a stupid and cruel trick. The men settled themselves in the coaches, glad at last to be out of the snow and the wind, and off the coaches trundled, to stop a short distance further on. The doors were jerked open and they were prodded out with the points of the troopers’ swords.
‘Where are we?’ asked Crewe. ‘This is not Wallingford House.’
John peered around in the dark. The snow was falling more heavily again, but at last he made out where they were.
‘I know this place,’ he said. ‘A fit place indeed. Gentlemen, we are come to the back door of Hell.’
Chapter Eight
The tavern familiarly known as Hell was dark, dirty, and noisy, but it did a good business amongst the clients and lawyers attending the Court of Exchequer. Like the taverns Heaven and Purgatory, it had once had another name, long forgotten by those who lived and worked about the Palace of Westminster. It was an ancient building, where men of no more than normal height must duck through doorways and under the heavy, rough-hewn oak beams that supported the low ceilings. On the ground floor there was one large room at the front where customers ate and drank. Beyond a screened passage at the back, a warren of cubby-holes provided privacy for those with secrets to discuss. The floors were strewn with filthy straw, unchanged for years, mingled with discarded chop bones, fleas, spittle, and cockroaches. Upstairs, two further storeys provided mean bedrooms, each storey jetting out further than the one below, canted over at an alarming angle and nearly pressed against the building on the opposite side of the street. In the floor of the passage behind the main room of the inn, a trapdoor opened to reveal a flight of time-worn steps, even older than the building itself, which led down to a cellar so lost in the past that men said it had been built by the Romans in the days of Londinium.
Master Duke, the inappropriately named innkeeper, stood beside the open trapdoor, wringing his hands in his greasy apron. He dared not protest against the seizure of his premises by the army, but could see only trouble for himself and his business looming ahead. He knew most of the prisoners. Since many were lawyers by training, they had often been his customers in their younger and penniless days. The poor fellow nodded and bobbed a half bow at these unwanted guests, unsure of the correct way to receive imprisoned Members of Parliament.
‘Gentlemen, good evening. Welcome, ah . . . good evening to you, sir.’
With angry cries of protest, the prisoners were pushed down the steps into the windowless cellar. Lit on their way only by two candle-lanterns hung from the walls, several of them slipped on the damp stone and might have fallen to their great injury, had it not been for the press of bodies around them. When all had descended, the trapdoor dropped with a heavy thud over their heads, shutting out the noise from the tavern and the street, and with it the smell of soup, roasted meat and warm beer which the hungry men had sniffed with appreciation as they came in, despite the humble reputation of the inn.
As his eyes accustomed themselves to the poor light, John looked about to see what kind of quarters they had been given. On the soldiers’ orders, clearly, Duke and his servants had removed anything which might have given comfort to the prisoners. Two wooden platforms against the walls, on which barrels normally stood, were fixed permanently in place, but the barrels, containing the solace of beer, had all been moved upstairs. The floor was bare flagstones, stained with beer but otherwise somewhat cleaner than the floor in the public room above. There was neither stool nor chair to sit upon, nor bed to lie upon. The walls glistened with running damp, and there was no fire, nor any fireplace where one might be laid.
‘A Hell without hellfire, it seems,’ said John to Clotworthy, who had sunk down on one of the barrel racks and was sitting with his arms crossed and his chin glumly sunk on his broad chest.
‘I’m frozen to my very marrow,’ said Clotworthy angrily, ‘and if you don’t hear my stomach growling like a lion for food, it can only be because your ears are grown deaf.’
‘Or filled with the sounds of my own stomach,’ said John. ‘Do you suppose they intend to keep us here all night, without beds, or food, or drink? There’s not
so much as a piss-pot in this infernal place.’
‘Aye, I’ve no doubt that was intentional,’ said Crewe, squatting down on the floor beside Clotworthy. ‘Nay, don’t get up. We must take turn about to sit, for those racks will seat no more than ten of us out of the forty-two.’
‘Intentional?’ John echoed.
‘Their desire is to humiliate us, as well as frighten us. What better way than to force us to sleep, hungry, on wet stone, and grow filthy in our own dirt?’
After perhaps an hour, the trapdoor was lifted, and the prisoners looked up hopefully as light and the smell of food drifted in. Perhaps their captors had relented. A young cornet of horse, no more than twenty, came mincing carefully down the steps, studying a piece of paper by the light of a candle in his hand. The curling feathers in his hat gave him more the look of a Royalist than one of Cromwell’s men.
‘I understand,’ he said in a courteous tone, ‘that six of you gentlemen have houses nearby: Sir Robert Harley, Master John Crewe, Master John Swynfen . . .’
‘What trick is this?’ John muttered.
‘Perhaps they plan to move us to your six houses for the night,’ said Clotworthy.
‘Hush,’ said Crewe.
‘My orders are,’ said the officer, ‘to allow the six of you to go home, provided you will swear an oath to present yourselves tomorrow to the General and Council.’
John walked over and confronted him. He was taller than the officer, and took care to stand near enough to seem threatening without raising either his hand or his voice.
‘I am John Swynfen, and indeed I have a house in St Ann’s Lane. Will you send a message to my wife, to tell her what is afoot here?’
‘You may tell her yourself, if you will swear the oath.’
‘I will swear an oath indeed,’ said John. ‘I will swear to go home this night and I will attend the House of Commons tomorrow, as has been my duty and privilege these three years past. I will attend neither General nor Council, who have authority neither over my person nor over my responsibility to speak for the electors of Stafford in the governing of this country.’