Rebels and traitors

by Lindsey Davis

  Lacy glared at him. Her long chestnut hair went right down to her

  … She could sit on it. Gideon closed his eyes.

  A man may look at his wife.

  He opened his eyes again, now fully to attention for what he had to do.

  Chapter Nineteen — London: May 1643

  The next day, Gideon walked into the print shop with what he hoped was a debonair step. It was late to start work. He had already endured teasing quips about newly-weds lying abed, for he had come from home. It had been decreed, in the way families decide things, that Lacy and he would lodge with his parents temporarily, or 'until your first child comes'.

  The notion of a child worried him. Gideon knew what really happened with babies but let himself envisage a small boy in a creased brown suit arriving on the doorstep, aged about five, with his belongings in a tidy snapsack. This imaginary child would 'come' as if ordered from abroad through a long-distance merchant, in the same way that Lambert and his father arranged imports of sultanas and allspice, not expecting word of the produce — or demands for full payment — for many months, if not a year…

  The couple had money, though it needed careful management. Parthenope and John had given Gideon a generous wedding gift. For a second son he felt secure. Lacy brought a small marriage portion, which seemed to be largess from Bevan and Elizabeth rather than her own parents. With Gideon's printing income, even though it fluctuated crazily, the pair could have rented accommodation straightaway, but it was deemed better to save their shillings and let Lacy be taught housewifery by Parthenope and Anne. 'Not just better, but necessary!' was Parthenope's tart verdict. According to Lacy, in Eltham nobody baked, while Elizabeth Bevan had mislaid her pudding bowl for the past two years.

  Dumping Lacy at Bread Street, Gideon fled to work. Finding himself ravenous, he bought a muffin. In their tiny premises in Basinghall Street, he discovered Robert Allibone sunk in gloom. 'All well?'

  'Aye. And with you?'

  'Of course,' muttered Gideon through muffin crumbs.

  Allibone gave him a benign nod. 'It gets easier.'

  Gideon held back from grumpily demanding, 'What does?' He flushed scarlet, remembering, then he cursed his fair complexion that so easily gave away his thoughts. Private unease struck him. As he walked through Cheapside and Ironmongers Lane that morning, accompanied by Lambert's terrible sackbuts whose belching valve music had stayed in his head, he had been troubled by memories: Lacy's anxiety, his uncertainty, their fumbled failures at union, his irritation and shame, then her patient suggestions: 'Will it perhaps go here more fittingly…?'

  He wanted to be a good husband; Lacy seemed more distant than he had hoped. Gideon feared it was due to his deficiencies as a lover. All the same, he was a man, and as he had transferred Lacy from the inn to his parents' house he had put on a show of equilibrium.

  'Tell me about the horse-trough!' he instructed Robert briskly.

  Allibone always opened up at his own pace. He busied himself with routine tasks, preparing the press for operation. He drew out from his doublet the pages Gideon had glimpsed yesterday. As the pamphlet lay on the flat bed of the press, Gideon saw the frontispiece bore a woodcut of a long-haired horseman, in full cavalry armour, a dog with a leonine mane cavorting at a rampant steed's heels.

  'Your uncle picks his moments.' Robert's pamphlet looked lengthy for a news publication; Gideon rapidly assessed it was over thirty pages. 'Out he sailed, so full of incendiary disputatiousness he was fit to pop. He bearded me on the wrong day, Gideon. It was my journeyman's wedding. I desired to be in cheerful mood, but was already downcast. Bevan began boasting how he is contributing funds to a Royalist regiment and that with such help the King must return to his palace in the next twelvemonth… I was dodging these black bombardilloes, when your brother Lambert came out, with that stranger of his — Saxby? Sextant?'

  'Sexby' Lambert had talked of it with Gideon that morning — anything to avoid discussing his bridal night. 'Lambert knew him as an apprentice. He is going to East Anglia, where a kinsman has raised a troop of horse. Sexby was tempting Lambert to join him, but Anne fixed her cool eye upon my brother and that was the end of any elopement.'

  'Well, Bevan set upon Lambert,' Robert growled. 'His new beef was the Lines of Communication: "Oh, nephew, I hear that you and your mad hothead wife are excavating frozen earth, alongside a thousand oyster-women! You go digging fortifications with mattocks and picks, among confectioners and tailors, with those calumnious rogues from the Common Council, drums thundering and colours flying"

  After Turnham Green, Parliament had decided that the King's army would inevitably be back to attack London again. They had to increase their earlier hurried fortifications. Citizens rallied and turned out enthusiastically again. New barriers arose that were said to be eighteen Kentish miles long; Kentish miles were famously longer than the legal statute mile. The Lines of Communication surrounded much more of London than the ancient city walls ever had: from Constitution Hill to Whitechapel, going as far north as Islington, and taking in Southwark on the South Bank. The Houses of Parliament, the Tower, part of the River Thames and the docks at Wapping were all now safely enclosed in the citadel. Dutch engineers who were acknowledged experts in military earthworks had been summoned to advise. A complicated system of trenches, dykes and ramparts linked twenty-four substantial forts and redoubts. There were single and double ditches, then single or double palisades, the latter set with sharp pointed stakes facing outwards, a foot apart. The forts, shaped like four- and five-pointed stars for all-round vision, had heavy wooden platforms which bristled with cannon, protected under stone-tiled roofs. There were more than two hundred pieces of ordnance — from demi-culverins that hurled nine-pound balls and demi-cannons that threw twelve-pounders, right up to cannon royal that weighed over three tons and fired enormous missiles weighing sixty-four pounds.

  Nobody could enter or leave the city without scrutiny from the sentinels. Companies from Trained Bands regiments were manning the fortifications day and night. It was far from an alarmist measure. Royalist strategy in that year of 1643 centred on a London attack. It was planned that Lord Newcastle in the north, Sir Ralph Hopton in the West Country and the King himself in the Midlands would defeat local opposition, then after meeting the King at Oxford all would surge towards the capital, set up a blockade by sea, and starve London into submission. If such a plan succeeded, which seemed quite likely as Royalist successes grew, Londoners could only hope the Lines of Communication would save them from the plight of so many desperate cities on the Continent.

  'On the Continent, and here — as this grim pamphlet illustrates!'

  Gideon reached for the pamphlet at last: Prince Rupert's Burning Love to England, Discovered in Birmingham's Flames. It was an eye-witness description of what had happened at Easter. 'Wherein is-related how that famous and well affected Town of Birmingham was unworthily opposed, insolently invaded, notoriously robbed and plundered, and most cruelly fired in cold blood the next day…' Gideon read it fast. Now he understood Robert's anger, shared it, saw why his colleague's outrage had simmered to a rolling boil with Bevan Bevan. When Bevan endlessly praised the King, whose unrestrained mercenaries had carried out the atrocities in Birmingham, Robert's frustration broke.

  'I will not hold your wife's relatives against her, Gideon, but you must separate Lacy from any connection with the King's party. This is civil war. The conflict stalks in the parlour.'

  Gideon was shaking his head in disbelief as he read: 'These were ordinary people, penalised — punished — robbed, raped, fired at in their houses, left naked in the street, terrorised with threats of more — a surgeon shot, a madman barbarised — their goods stolen and their homes burned.'

  'If I had had my musket yesterday, I would have killed your uncle.'

  Gideon looked up with a brief smile, 'That would have made a wedding to remember… Yet your nature is too sweet for it; you would have rued the business all your life. Robert, I can now s
ee how you found the strength to tip so large a man into a horse-trough.'

  Like Gideon, the printing press had made Robert tough, but he was of neat stature and not tall. 'I am proud of it. I pushed him hard against the trough; when the rim caught his gross thighs, he toppled backwards. A great wave washed over the brim. Then your brother Lambert helped, with that friend of his, who seized Bevan by the feet while Lambert fulcrumed him by his fat head. They spun him around, until he made a full-length fit. Lambert, being no featherweight, then leaned on his belly — I was hammering him flat — Bevan was soon so well wedged, he could not move. Then the sackbuts came and droned him a slow measure, so none could hear his pleas for help.'

  'Lambert claims it took five men with a rope on a dray-horse to drag Bevan from his waterbed.'

  'Traitors and reprobates,' Allibone declared. 'They should have drowned him.'

  'It was impossible,' said Gideon. 'His bulk had swamped out all the water. The landlord begged to have my uncle's great carcass lifted, so he could refill the trough for waiting beasts — ' Thomas, the ostler at the Swan, pistolled, coming officiously to take their horses… 'This news is terrible. What can we do?'

  Robert gestured to the printing press. 'Print it. You are reading one of three pamphlets I have seen on the streets about Birmingham. Some scabrous apologist wrote a Royalist version, but there are two lucid rebuttals. This in your hand was published for the Parliamentary committee in Coventry: "that the Kingdom may timely take notice of what is generally to be expected if the cavaliers' insolences be not speedily crushed". Gideon, our task must be to gather the facts of this conflict and relate them truly. I have on the press the thoughts of Mr A.R., whom I find always a very considerate, trustworthy commentator.'

  'Perhaps I shall meet the gentleman one day!' Gideon knew of several rousing pamphlets by this 'Mr A.R.'. He was sure Robert wrote them, hiding from censorship.

  Robert smiled. 'Oh he comes to me bringing his work privately, late at night, and keeps his face hidden.'

  'You are still responsible for what you print,' Gideon warned.

  'I will answer for it, if challenged. He relates truth and his language is temperate. There are no "Turds shat from the devil's flaming arse" with Mr A.R.'

  'And what is his next topic, Robert?'

  Robert applied the oily ink to the composited letters with his lambs-wool swab. His freckled face was calm yet alight, as if he were engaged in holy work. 'That Birmingham will prove a disaster for the King. All the country is shocked by these monstrosities. The King hires the filthy foreign troops. His brigand nephew — another glorified mercenary — leads them. Incidentally, Charles has been forced to berate Rupert, and to beg him in future to take his subjects' affections rather than their towns. It is scant consolation for the widows and orphans, and those left naked in the street when their homes burned. What may cheer them a little is that Lord Denbigh, a close confidant of the prince and much mourned by him, died from his wounds four days later at Cannock; the best of that is that Denbigh's son is staunch for Parliament. But a steel mill in Birmingham which had produced swords for Parliament has been pulled down by malignants — royal supporters lost more goods than anyone else, and they have claimed that the mill caused his anger against the town.'

  Gideon was in a dark mood. 'The cavaliers' weapons are fire and fear — but we have our own. Words.'

  'Never truer. Telling the news must become regular and accurate. It pains me to say, but the King has equipped himself for propaganda before our party even stirs.' King Charles had always taken a keen interest in what was printed; he had even written self-defensive pamphlets. Robert fumed, 'There is a printing press close to the King in Oxford — though I know of nobody there who belongs to our fraternity'

  'Is the printer a true Royalist', asked Gideon, 'or has he simply seen a way to profit?'

  'Why that would make him an opportunist!' laughed Robert. Neither thought it impossible. 'What's certain is that since January this astute toady has been printing a weekly news-sheet that speaks for the court. Mercurius Aulicus — dross, but we have nothing to compete. The King's version is the only version. It is not only produced at Oxford to edify the cavaliers, but it is carried to London in secret pouches and reprinted here in a larger format.'

  Gideon straightened up. 'We need a Parliamentary answer — fast.'

  'Why that must be done by a committee! Robert scoffed. Then he grew more serious. 'We must give weekly accounts of debates and events. The sheets must be cheap, no more than a penny or tuppence. They must be sold on every street corner in London, then carried to the provinces and made available at great highroad inns. We cannot have this present situation, where one or two interested parties procure the news from London haphazardly, but only if Honest Ned or the parson happens to be visiting town to sell eggs or see a cousin. Nor can we tolerate Royalist bleats or lies concocted by sloppy scriveners who print the most ridiculous rumours.'

  'You must have honest intelligencers.' Gideon was ahead. 'Like those ambassadors to foreign courts, who write accounts of rulers, society and commerce overseas. Kings dispatch and merchants employ such people. Now, here at home, there must be trusted correspondents placed everywhere — in Parliament, close to the King, even on the battlefield.'

  Robert nodded. 'And there must be a reliable network of carriers to take the truth every week from the press to the public'

  'Every week?'

  'Every week,' stated Robert calmly. 'I am ready to work. I shall find scouts. There must be some cobbler in Westminster who can winkle me out information while he taps the members' boot-soles. I know of a victualler who has approval to run delivery carts through Clerkenwell; when he brings in cabbages he can carry out the news. He may need a false base building into his cart — ' He realised the scope of this venture was worrying his younger colleague. 'The plan has some danger. You can be in, or out, Gideon.'

  'Oh, I am in! What if we cannot discover enough news for the week?'

  'We shall fill in with advertisements for ointments. Apothecaries' shillings will fund us.'

  'Will it work?'

  'Telling the news will be standard practice,' Robert assured Gideon airily. 'Parliament can grumble all it likes: this is the future, my friend.'

  Chapter Twenty — London-Gloucester: autumn, 1643

  Critics of the Privileged Corranto (a few scurrilous rival publications, all of little merit, according to the Corranto's proprietors) would point out that although this journal sounded like a fast Italian courier, it had been named by mistake after a slightly seedy Spanish court dance. Robert and Gideon were unmoved. Printers of the civil war news were capricious, defiant, self-assured, non-compliant individualists. They were their own proprietors. Most wrote their own material. Some were vulgar, slanderous and obscene, though many were earnest moralists. A few wrote for money. That did not necessarily make their articles untrue. ' "Privileged" is weak though,' grumbled Gideon, who admired Robert, yet zealously picked on errors. 'It will frighten off the nervous.' 'People will judge from the content,' scoffed Robert. 'No, they won't judge unless they buy — and they will buy from the title. If it be lathered in Latin and pomposity, they will turn to some True Diurnall — especially if that shows a woodcut of pillaging soldiers roasting naked infants on a stolen spit.'

  'Trust a grocer to know what makes people part with their money' 'Dried prunes do well… Call ours the Plain Speaking Corranto.' 'The Honest Corranto, Truthfully Intelligenced and without Lather?' 'We alienate the soap-boilers then…' There was an enclave of soapboilers only next door in Coleman Street. 'The London Corranto?'

  'No; we want it to travel further. Why, it shall be the Public Corranto and all shall understand it is for them.'

  So it was. Gideon never revealed to his partner that the Jukes family jocularly referred to the treasured news-sheet as Robert's Raisin. Even Lacy had picked up the habit of mockery, to Gideon's irritation. He bit it back. He did not like to quarrel with her, because she was expecting a chil
d.

  It was soon whispered that the producer of the king-congratulating Mercurius Aulicus was neither trained nor a licensed printer. 'Oxford University has a licence to print books, but no individual is so privileged.' Robert Allibone had heard gossip about the Royalist printer at his 'ordinary', the tavern which he used for economical daily dining now that Gideon was fed at home. 'This is some spangled parakeet who has been an actor.'

  Gideon would never shake off his dotterelling. Used to it, he stayed calm. 'They say he is the son of a mayor of Oxford, one John Harris. Apparently the family are vintners and tavern-keepers.'

  Robert shook his head. 'How can a wriggling alehouse maggot have got himself a press?'

  "Who knows — but a brewer's dray would be heavy enough to carry it into town for him,' said Gideon, whose grocery background always made him consider logistics.

  As that year of 1643 went forward, the Public Corranto took on Harris and Mercurius Aulicus, striving to give the Parliamentary view even though what happened in the war was often confusing. Every district had its sieges and skirmishes. Some actions were part of the overall battle-plan; many fights occurred willy-nilly, when troops unexpectedly happened upon their enemy or the enemy's provision trains. On the whole it was the King's year.

  The Corranto tried to remain optimistic. But three important Parliamentary leaders were lost that year: first Lord Brooke of Warwick was shot through the eye at Lichfield, picked off by a sniper who had been positioned on the central spire of St Chad's Cathedral, the deaf-and-dumb younger son of local gentry. In June, John Hampden, the famous rebel against Ship Money, one of the Five Members and Pym's most able supporter for reform, received fatal wounds in an engagement at Chalgrove. Overloaded with powder, his pistol blew up; he died four days later, murmuring, 'O Lord! Save my country!' Meanwhile John Pym himself was falling victim to bowel cancer and would breathe his last in December.