Through the puddled thoroughfares tramped the teeming life of university and town, embellished now by a local garrison of over two thousand foot soldiers and three regiments of horse, plus the incomers of the royal court, from anxious lords and bored ladies to poulterers and pastry-makers, tennis teachers and dancing masters. All cursed their mud-splashed hems as they milled in a stew of brewers, builders and butter women, dons and college servants, priests and lawyers, along with the horses of cavalrymen and distributors who all thought they had right of way, fighting for space with protesting herds of raided cattle. Everyone was raucously abused by the traditional uncooperative low-life of lewd women and disorderly persons. Sometimes there were arrests. At Carfax, villains who committed lesser crimes were made to 'ride the wooden horse' as punishment, sitting painfully astride two planks to atone for theft or obscenity. Occasional hangings took place there. Some saw these as entertainment; Juliana had a gentler attitude to human life.
If there was no market, Juliana would sit to rest on Penniless Bench. This wooden seat, about a hundred years old, attached to the City Church of St Martin's, was where the butter girls sold their produce, citizens met, and the King had been welcomed on his first arrival with a gift of two hundred pounds — accompanied by the hopeful but futile hint that Oxford could afford no more. Once Juliana was moved on by a beadle who pronounced her a vagrant. Ruefully, she reflected that she was little better, though her habit of reading the news sheet Mercurius Aulicus, which was now produced for the King by a lively, satirical editor called John Berkenhead, should have identified her as literate gentry, merely troubled by lack of funds. Once she herself had to summon the beadle, when she found a dead soldier lying under the bench; the parish took away the corpse for burial.
When desperate for refuge from the crowds, she elected to become devout. While many Oxford worshippers liked short services, Juliana sought churches with verbose preachers where she could shelter for longer; a two-hour sermon suited her well and she learned to doze gently while sustaining an attentive expression. She would have been better provided for in the East End of London, where in the most Independent parishes lecturers were hired to give four-hour morning sermons, after which a new set of afternoon lecturers gave four hours more, speaking ex tempore with magnificent passion. In Oxford, worship was high; altars were ornately railed to protect the perfumed sanctity of God from persons with grubby consciences and muddy shoes. Sermons were intellectual, pre-written and dry; they were read by fleshy ministers with plummy voices who could spot a button slipped into the collection plate at twenty paces, or scrawnier men who used Latin like a flail to exclude their inferiors. Some churches were available to a pregnant woman seeking grace and respite for her weary feet, though not all: from time to time Royalist soldiers were billeted in St Michael's and St Peter-le-Bailey, until the despairing churchwardens paid them to find lodging out of town. Parliamentary prisoners were kept in St Giles, St Mary Magdalen and St Thomas, causing damage for which the King had had to pay compensation. Their lot was better than those who were locked up in the castle, who were said to have deplorable conditions.
In the hope of deterring the glover, Juliana made sure he knew of her churchgoing. It merely encouraged him. A girl with high morals was far more of a challenge — and clean goods, moreover.
Juliana would have liked to remain quietly in her room. She had been brought up to do embroidery, tatting, lace-making and sewing; among the gentry these were just about regarded as ladylike activities — though not so admirable as ornamental flower-painting, which shamed no one since it had no practical use. She had great talent in design herself, but also possessed many patterns created and drawn by her grandmother. These called to her as she filled in time with piety, and one cold day she became incensed that fear of her landlord was keeping her from home. From then on she spent more time in her lodgings, though she made sure when she sat working at her table she had a sharp array of needles and scissors displayed as a deterrent. She would slip into the house discreetly when she thought the glover was busy with customers. If he did accost her, she insisted on discussing sermons and scripture until his eyes glazed. Once she was in her room, she would remain still and quiet, hoping he might forget her presence.
It could not last. One night she awoke in her bed, horrified to feel a man lying on top of her. His great weight and beery gusts of breath confirmed it was not Lovell. While the fellow fumbled in the dark, Juliana screamed. Though he tried to silence her, she managed to avoid the fat hand scrabbling for her mouth. She kept screaming, even though she thought nobody would come to her aid — and was amazed when Smithers the glover rushed up the stairs and burst in with a candle, shouting.
In the dim light she saw that her assailant was the cooper who lodged upstairs. He rolled one way, spitting curses at her; she tumbled off the bed the other.
In the tiny house this coarse man had to pass right through her room on the staircase by the fireplace every time he came and went. Juliana hated it, though she had lived in similar situations with her grandmother. She had barely exchanged nods, preferring to keep a kind of privacy by pretending the barrel-cooper did not exist. He certainly knew that Lovell was away with Prince Rupert. This night, returning drunk from the Mitre or the Angel, he had seized his moment.
The cooper shambled off upstairs. The glover became nobly indignant, though it was hypocritical. Both men matter-of-factly assumed that any lone female was available to those who wanted her, whatever her own morals or her husband's potential jealousy. There was never a suggestion that the landlord might evict the culprit. Only his embarrassment at being seen stumbling over the hem of his ridiculously voluminous nightshirt made Smithers withdraw from Juliana's room.
She had been saved from rape, or whatever abuse the cooper could have managed in his drunken state. Juliana now found herself having to be grateful to Wakelyn Smithers. This was a nuisance to both of them, because for at least a week the glover felt obliged to maintain his role as honest pillar of respectability.
That did not last. Now the glover was aware of the cooper's interest and brooding over his permitted thoroughfare through the Lovells' room. Smithers became determined not to see another man get to Juliana before him.
The weeks were passing more slowly than the nervous girl could bear. Occasionally news filtered in of Prince Rupert's campaigns. Satisfaction greeted the sack of Birmingham, less joy when it was reported that Colonel Russell, the Parliamentary governor at Lichfield, had refused to surrender to Prince Rupert, on the grounds that his atrocities were 'not becoming a gentlemen, a Christian, or an Englishman, much less a prince'. About three weeks after the cavaliers first left Oxford, Juliana heard someone at market maintaining the King was at Wallingford (she noted it particularly, thinking fondly of her time there with her guardian, Mr Gadd) where it was said Prince Rupert was 'imminently expected'. She had already learned to distrust hearsay. It was not until the 21 of April that the prince took Lichfield, which he accomplished through undermining the Close, a novelty in warfare in England, the tunnels being dug by miners Rupert had summoned specially from Nottingham. A few days later he was indeed back in the neighbourhood of Oxford, but he and the King moved east in an attempt to relieve Reading. Reading was a key garrison between the King's headquarters and London. It had provided equipment to the Royalists, but its townsmen were of shifting allegiance and it was impossible to defend. Eventually the King retreated to Wallingford, where the castle could be well fortified, and Reading surrendered to the Earl of Essex and the Parliamentary army.
On the last day of April, the glover made his move. Everyone else was out of the house, but Juliana was seated at her table, frowning over some embroidery in the low afternoon light. On the pretence of pleading for rent money — which he knew he had no hope of getting — Wakelyn Smithers climbed the stairs to her room. Pretence then faded. Smithers meant business. He came straight across towards her, and when she jumped to her feet he took the opportunity to embrace her.
Then he abruptly released her. She kept her feet with an effort.
"Why here is my husband, returned from the wars!' Juliana gasped.
Orlando Lovell had walked into the room. He had his usual casual air, as if he had left his wife only that morning on an errand to a tobacconist. In benign mood after a successful month of skirmishing and plundering, Lovell was taking the scene calmly. For a moment Juliana thought he would ignore her beseeching look; he seemed about to greet the glover as a friend. She was in a second danger: the two men could easily become drinking, dining, boasting, grumbling and gaming partners, which would leave her more than ever prey to the glover's advances whenever Lovell was absent. Smithers knew it too. He reckoned that the cavalier would overlook or even condone his overtures. She saw complacence settle on him — but then she saw it slide away. Orlando Lovell had decided to defend his own.
He swept off his hat. The peacock feather was bedraggled, but the silk band Juliana had made for him remained in place; Orlando's long fingers stroked the bright hatband as his eyes settled on the glover. He spoke quietly, but his voice was rich with menace: 'Master Smithers! What do I find? Are you perturbing my wife, sir?'
The glover scuttled from the room like a cellar rat.
Juliana closed her eyes, feeling faint. She turned away as she tried to recover, leaning on her table for support. Lovell came up behind her, put both arms around her, then as his hands played over her midriff he noticed her swollen body. 'You are with child!' She heard shock — and a fear of responsibility. 'Is it mine?' Spinning back towards him as he released her, Juliana bit back a furious retort. Orlando Lovell, ever the strategist, capitulated fast. 'Oh I am a dog! Of course it is — Come, come to me, sweetheart — '
Juliana fell into his arms, and allowed herself a rare moment of relief. As she shook with tears and he soothed her, Lovell seemed lost in thought. Perhaps he felt chastened by the trials his young wife had endured alone. Soon recovering her composure, Juliana observed that the lace-edged shirt collar she had wet with her tears was not one she recognised from her husband's previously meagre wardrobe — nor, she fancied, was this otherwise handsome garment very clean. His coat was new. He had a more expensive rapier, suspended in elaborate malmsey-red velvet carriers, and an enormous ruby finger-ring.
'This will not do,' said Lovell. 'I have a sword I shall give you.' Juliana was shaking her head but he overruled her. 'Nay, do not trouble yourself. I have no use for it; the thing sits in the hand poorly, but it will serve to protect yourself, should you be accosted.'
It was the weapon that Lovell had acquired in Birmingham from Kinchin Tew. He hung it on the wall by the window near Juliana's work table. She was to keep the sword dutifully for years, never used and always disliked. He offered to show her how to defend herself with it, but Juliana shrank from that idea.
Then, though he did nothing about it, Orlando promised to find them a better place to stay.
Chapter Twenty-Three — Oxford: 1643
The rest of the first year of her marriage, and her first pregnancy, passed in similar style for Juliana. Orlando came and went, as the princes came and went. Usually he was with Prince Rupert, though once, when Rupert went to the Midlands to escort the Queen to Oxford, Lovell despised that task and stayed behind on some excuse. When Prince Maurice then dashed into Oxford desperately calling for reinforcements for General Hopton, Lovell volunteered; as a result, he fought at the battle of Roundway Down when the Royalists trounced Waller, which gave him a violently low opinion of Waller and, being Lovell, a not particularly high one of Prince Maurice. He returned to Oxford, rode to the West Country and was with Rupert at the storming of Bristol, where he received a slight shoulder wound.
Lovell gave Juliana nothing to live on. The three shillings he left when he rode with Prince Rupert in April was apparently supposed to last her through her lying-in and into the next decade. He, by contrast, seemed to have some store of chattels. On his first return he had presented his bemused wife with a curious mixture of household goods, strings of sausage, a half-wheel of cheese, together with a fashionable necklet of large pearls which he said was a gift for her birthday. 'Don't look so surprised. Mr Gadd wrote and ordered me to remember your anniversary'
'You knew when it was?' Juliana let him see her surprise.
'No. Gadd told me.' Orlando gave her a straight look. 'I shall know next year.'
'Will you remember?' Juliana asked, smiling.
'I have', Orlando Lovell said with stately self-composure, 'a very good memory' He made it sound threatening. Juliana dismissed that as his inability to be teased.
The necklace was the most valuable thing they ever had. Juliana wore it on festive occasions, though she tried not to become fond of it in case one day their fortunes deteriorated and her pearls had to be sold. Besides, she was afraid of its history. Like everything Orlando brought her it was probably stolen. You could not tell with jewellery. Lovell was unlikely to have purchased this over the counter of a goldsmith's shop at a fair price. If he did, the fact was remarkable and he could only have been spending the profits of plunder. Juliana had real fears that her gift had been violently pulled from the pale neck of a previous owner. What might have happened to that owner next was too horrible to contemplate.
Lovell would never tell her.
No, that was wrong. He would tell her truthfully and brutally, if she was ever so foolish as to ask him. Juliana could prophesy his amusement if the circumstances — and his part in them — then offended her.
During her times alone, which were many, she had plenty to read. Sometimes, on returning from military engagements, Lovell brought her books. She had to avoid thinking of him and his men bursting into some respectable puritan's home, then after the soldiers had stolen the cheese, the roasted chicken on its spit, the pewter and the bed-linen, the captain jauntily exclaiming 'Books! Damme, my wife will enjoy those…'
Life in Oxford had its stresses even when Lovell was with her. There was a bad atmosphere. People were oppressed by the constant talk of war, the never-ending fear of defeat, the loss of estates, the counting of the dead. The natural edginess between town and university had acquired an extra dimension, exacerbated by the King. After causing much dismay by his attitude to academic honours — on one occasion granting 140 of his supporters the title of Master of Arts — Charles had been forced to assure the university he would stop ordering up honorary degrees for courtiers. Oxford had to raise a garrison for its defence, due to the King's presence, and since the town was protesting at the costs of the court, at the end of July the Royalists announced that their troops were to be paid by taxing the scholars. That caused another outcry, especially as there were now so few scholars. The colleges were constantly being asked for money. All the university and college buildings were being used for official purposes, and even private houses that had once been lodgings for students or their families now had soldiers billeted on them in large numbers. People of substance were prevailed upon to give way to high officials such as Privy Counsellors. The town clerk's house in the High was occupied by Princes Rupert and Maurice. The inns were chock-a-block with military personnel, curious foreign ambassadors, even on occasion peace-keeping legations from Parliament.
Numbers swelled to capacity in June, when Queen Henrietta Maria arrived. With peculiar symbolism, she and the King were reunited on the battlefield at Edgehill. Then Her Majesty was welcomed into Oxford with flowers strewn before her and given a purse of gold at Penniless Bench, Juliana's news-reading spot. The Queen brought four and a half thousand new troops from the north, which the Earl of Newcastle had raised and she had armed. Vibrant with her own success as a fun
draiser and her courageous adventures, Henrietta was ensconced in Merton College, with a covered way built to allow her to visit the King in Christ Church — a privilege the couple presumably enjoyed since a few weeks later the Queen was known to be pregnant. A Master of the Revels provided elegant entertainments, though even festive occasions were strained. There were complaints that the cramped colleges did not provide scope for the elaborate machinery of the theatrical masques Inigo Jones had once devised. The Queen found endless conversations about the war depressing.
August, when the King and all the army were away at the siege of Gloucester, was a difficult time. There had been suggestions that the Earl of Essex might attack Oxford in the King's absence, hoping to capture the Queen. News that Essex had in fact gone to relieve Gloucester only caused more anxiety, for that had previously been thought impossible. Meanwhile there was unrest because of the new, highly unpopular town governor, Sir Arthur Aston. A short-tempered Catholic disciplinarian who had been governor of Reading until Essex took that town, he was so loathed in Oxford that on his evening inspection rounds he had to be escorted by a special bodyguard of four red-coated halberdiers — despite which he was physically assaulted and wounded in the side during a scuffle in the street.
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