Equally seen as outsiders were Fox's men at Edgbaston. Lord Denbigh regarded this garrison as tricky and high-handed. Fox resented his commander's lack of warmth and his reluctance to send funds. If Denbigh's men trespassed into districts he regarded as his own, Fox complained. He wanted personal credit for his garrison's exploits. When he was summoned to Coventry on charges of plundering, and was compelled to cough up 'a goodly sum' to regain his position and his reputation, he made up the fine in further demands on local villages and individuals in the area he roamed.
Where exactly he came from and his true background were obscure. Enemies called him a tinker, yet he was literate, intelligent and effective. When civil war broke out, John Fox had found his role. He drew on his own resources. With him to Edgbaston he brought a brother and a brother-in-law, Major Reighnold Fox and Captain Humphrey Tudman. His core of sixteen men swelled to more than two hundred. Some he recruited for Edgbaston were locals. His clerk was called John Carter; a John Carter junior had been killed by Prince Rupert's men in Birmingham.
Denbigh formally granted Fox a colonel's commission in March 1644, to lead a regiment of six troops of horse and two of dragoons. Even so, it was three more months before Parliament allowed him financial support. Until the money came, he and his men fended for themselves. Robert Porter, the steel-mill magnate, assisted, though he and Fox were later to quarrel tiresomely over manor rents.
When the gentry established garrisons — stalwart knights of the shire with university educations and large landholdings — they were always admired for their energy, loyalty and honour. The real charge such people had against John Fox was that without social advantages and without being asked, he seized the initiative and set himself up at Edgbaston. Both Royalist and Parliamentarian leaders shunned him. Not only was he no gentleman, the job he decided to do for Parliament gave him a touch of the outlaw. His nickname, the 'Jovial Tinker', was because he rarely smiled, though if calling Fox a tinker was an insult, it never seemed to bother him.
Dressed in their latest uniforms, the Tew brothers were sent to serve 'Colonel Tinker' at Edgbaston Hall. This was nothing like the house where they had just been captured. Aston Hall, which lay immediately to the north-east of Birmingham, was brash and boastful, one man's symbol of his own new wealth and power. They found that Edgbaston, on the south-west side of Birmingham, was a moated medieval manor-house with a dovecote, typical of timeless English village life, surrounded by rickety watermills and weedy fishpools. Even when the Tews arrived they could see the idyll was deteriorating. The greens around the house were churned to mud and slime by soldiers' horses. No ducks swam in the moat; there were probably no fish left in the pools. The roof of the adjacent ancient church had been stripped and its bells removed; the lead was being melted down for bullets. The centuries-old Hall was treated with disrespect by Fox's soldiers; it already showed sad signs of wear and would in time be badly damaged, destroyed by fire and lost to posterity.
Brought before Fox for inspection, Rowan and Joseph cast their eyes down, though not too much. They knew the fine line between looking unobtrusive and looking suspiciously meek. Fox, a dour man in his mid-thirties, surveyed them with Midlands scepticism. He accepted them as turncoats; there were plenty of those on both sides. Still, he made it plain he expected nothing good from them and if they tried anything on, he would know about it. He gave them a sombre speech about the garrison, then handed them copies of 'The Soldier's Prayerbook', a religious publication for devout troops which was famous for the number of times its pages had stopped enemy bullets. 'Let the Word of the Lord be your breastplate!' Colonel Fox instructed — which covered up the fact that he could not afford to buy helmets or body armour.
He spoke with the deadbeat cadence of the area. Outsiders would assume he was slow-witted, but the Tews understood that language. Their colonel's dry tone hid intelligent qualities. John Fox lived by his wits. So did the Tews. They all thought themselves as good as anybody anywhere.
Rowan rode with the troopers. Joseph was left behind to scrub pots. The garrison had a brewer and a meat-salter who both allowed the skinny lad to help them with their work. Dripping snot, the so-called Joseph watched and learned. Service in an army teaches a bright spark skills for life.
The garrison's main task was the endless extraction of taxes. Fixed amounts were set, which towns and villages had to give in support of the war effort, whether or not those towns and villages supported Parliament. The King's side worked the same system. Some towns and villages therefore ended up paying twice; it was safer not to refuse. In addition, Parliament required that individuals whose land produced more than ten pounds a year or who had a hundred pounds in personal estate should make 'loans' of up to one-fifth of their revenue from land or a twentieth of their goods. Few expected repayment. Very few ever obtained it. Grumbling victims complained that Committees of Public Safety were making themselves rich; members of the committees protested that their own estates were plundered by soldiers, who often took them prisoner as well, in order to extract ransoms. Such was the chaos of war. Or so said Colonel Fox.
Outright plundering by local garrisons was rare because it made no sense. To ruin the countryside would leave troops and their horses starving, nor was it good practice to arouse too much hostility. Locals who felt they had nothing to lose might organise armed reprisals. But when they were out on the loose, Fox's men did seize horses 'for the service of Parliament'. If Fox knew, he turned a blind eye. They took free quarter where they could too — lodging for which they did not pay — and sometimes they made illegal promises to householders in order to obtain bribes. All over the country and regardless of affiliation, houses were being raided for food — oats, meat and cheese — for horse gear — bridles, saddles, spurs — and for weapons. Anything rideable or portable was at risk. Though the Tews took little interest in politics, as soon as they arrived they quickly grasped the attractive milieu into which they had been sent. For them, Edgbaston was a happy time.
Fox was a diligent scout. He made regular reports to Lord Denbigh, concentrating on the presence of Prince Rupert in the Midlands, sometimes noting manoeuvres of the King. It involved his men spying on troop movements; listening in on Royalist soldiers' conversations; writing detailed reports of intelligence gathered; and astutely interpreting the information. Messages were then sent considerable distances with speed. To achieve this required an established body of reliable scouts who had to be brave, sharp-eyed, able to call upon safe houses and a supply of fresh mounts both night and day. All the men had to be very familiar with a wide district. Scouts could not get lost. Messages must not be captured. Sometimes Fox sent his reports much further afield: to Sir Samuel Luke, who was the Earl of Essex's scoutmaster.
For a couple of months after the Tews arrived, winter continued and there was little happening. In March 1644, Fox began a series of lightning activities. He captured Stourton Castle but was driven away by a massive Royalist response. He and his men fled headlong across Stourbridge Heath, pursued by the enemy who soon proclaimed that first to flee before them had been Fox himself. Undeterred, his men then besieged Hawkesley Farm on Clent Ridge, a strong Royalist outpost where the King had stayed on occasion; they drove out the owner, Mr Littlemore, and his family. But while they were away at Hawkesley, Prince Rupert and his brother Maurice rode into Birmingham and stole sheep and cattle from the markets.
In April, too, Fox organised a breath-taking night raid. Setting off one afternoon, he rode with sixty picked men to Bewdley, a pretty town on the River Severn which was famous for making Monmouth caps, the warm, easy-to-wear felt headgear worn by many soldiers instead of helmets. Bewdley was a Royalist stronghold and an inland port. Pottery and iron were taken there by packhorse, for onward shipping down to Bristol and beyond. King Charles several times stayed there at the grand comfortable house called Tickenhill which overlooked the town from high ground, surrounded by elegant woods and parks. It would be from Tickenhill that the King would write a very f
amous letter to Prince Rupert in June, saying that if York was lost he would reckon his kingdom lost too. However, in April the house was merely occupied by the Governor of Bewdley, Sir Thomas Lyttelton.
Fox and his men arrived in the dark, cheekily pretending to be some of Prince Rupert's men, who were lost. They quietly put the town guards out of action. They crept up to the house, where everyone was gently sleeping. The first the governor knew of this daring raid was when he woke up to find himself a prisoner. He and his retinue, with forty extremely good horses, were then sneaked out of Bewdley.
Eventually Royalists pursued Fox back to Edgbaston. They were too late. Fox had gone in triumph to Coventry. From the stronghold at Coventry, Lyttelton would be passed on under guard to London, where he would be held in the Tower for the rest of the war. 'Thanks be to God,' murmured the Jovial Tinker piously of the Royalists to whom he had given the slip, 'they came a day after the fair!'
'Joseph' Tew had been terrified when angry cavaliers arrived at the Hall. Disappointed, they rode off soon enough, but fear jolted the brewster into action. Taking advantage of the colonel's absence at Coventry, the youngster slipped away.
There was a reason. Disguise would soon be impossible. Some comrade at Dudley Castle or Edgbaston Hall — or maybe more than one — had uncovered Joseph's secret. Discovery inevitably happened with women soldiers, because either they were following a sweetheart to the wars, or in their loneliness they found a confidant and broke their silence. The traditional fate had befallen young Tew. Secret couplings had led to the usual result. Soon everyone would know: the potboy 'Joseph' was to be the mother of a child.
Whether the father had refused to acknowledge his role, whether he already had a wife and children, or whether the right man could not even be identified, marriage was not an option. The young mother was, therefore, dealing with the problem in her own way. If she knew whom to blame, she had no wish to say so. Rather than be exposed, she deserted the garrison and fled. She dressed again in stolen female clothes. She dared not return to Birmingham, so she chose the route so many forlorn hopefuls took: she would go to London where, even if the streets turned out not to be paved with gold, those who wished to be anonymous had a chance to disappear.
So, once more, the sorry waif took to the road alone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven — London: autumn, 1643
When the two Jukes brothers had returned home from Gloucester and Newbury, they stood in the upstairs parlour of their parents' home, almost forlorn for a moment. Lambert was led away to be tended in private by his wife. Gideon passed a hand over his forehead as if the light hurt his eyes. Lacy took no interest. At first his parents were too polite to intervene but then as he shivered and swayed on his feet, Parthenope Jukes seized back her maternal rights. Soon she was gently washing her younger son as if he were still a small boy. Trying to shield him from her horror at his sores, she dispatched Lacy to the apothecary for stronger salves than were kept at home. Gideon, who was now clearly feverish, fretted as she touched him. He was crotchety in a way Parthenope found familiar. Just as when he caught chickenpox at the age of seven, Parthenope saw the moment when reddish-purple spots began to appear on his arms and chest.
His father came to inspect the rash. John pronounced the worst: Gideon had camp fever, probably caught at Reading. Conditions there had been crowded and lice-ridden; the lice were implicated. Essex's men had been put half out of action by this rampant sickness. 'Call it camp fever, ship fever, jail fever — it is all one. Our boy is in great danger!'
Gideon was gravely ill for weeks, sometimes with such wild delirium he could hardly be held down. Parthenope nursed him, since Lacy pleaded anxiety for her unborn child. Already weakened by hardship, Gideon was in no condition to resist the fever; headache, spasms of nausea and diarrhoea racked him. Although his mother produced broths and caudles, he could keep nothing down. He was so weak he could hardly climb out of bed to the chamberpot. He raged at his helplessness. His frustration and fear made him bad-tempered even with his mother as she cared for him.
Worse, Gideon began to relive the horrors he had experienced in the battle at Newbury. Hallucinations caused by fever danced wildly among traumatic flashbacks. He needed to rest; yet repetitions of the gunfire and visions of men being torn apart tormented him. Never a good patient, discomfort and mental anguish combined to make him a monster. Many a time his harassed mother left his room, leaned against the door-jamb and wept silently into her apron. She understood his behaviour and rarely snapped back. She was just terrified Gideon would die.
Parthenope Jukes was made of stern stuff, however. She had always been a scrupulous housewife. In her home, flies were swatted. Hands were washed before preparing food. Floors were mopped; tables scrubbed; dishcloths boiled. Cooking pots were cleaned to a sparkle with vinegar or lye. The well in the yard was kept sanitary.
A similarly strict regime was applied to her sick son. He was quarantined to a small, simply furnished room, where his bedding was changed daily. The lice were dealt with; Parthenope tenderly cut his hair short, combing out nits onto a piece of housewife-cloth which she burned. Once she realised the extent of the problem, his parents struggled to hold Gideon while a barber shaved him naked, including places where a seventeenth century man never dreamed of being shaved. His delirium was coloured by the constant smell of sulphur and lard from ointments to soothe his itching, an aroma that soon seemed to infest even his dreams.
Eventually came a worse odour: rotting flesh. When gangrenous sores appeared, a surgeon was called. Gideon lost three fingertips on his left hand and his right fourth fingertip.
Though frail, John Jukes played his part in tending his son. After close study of medical tracts, he had advanced views about airing sickrooms and even though it was winter, he insisted that a window was opened daily to allow the escape of dangerous 'miasmas'. John's more curious theories were rebuffed while Parthenope tackled the unpleasant day-today aspects of nursing. By some act of providence his parents managed not to catch the fever and slowly they restored Gideon's health. He moved from stupor into a clear mind. It took months, and even afterwards he clung to his room in a long depression.
At least he was rarely left alone with his terrors. Mostly his mother sat with him, studying her books of household management. It was years since she had had so many quiet moments and Parthenope came to enjoy the respite. Often Gideon emerged from restless sleep to find her, spectacles on nose, intent on putting her recipes in order — spreading the papers across his bed as she worked. Sometimes instead, a waft of tobacco smoke announced his father in attendance. Gideon felt bound to protect both from knowing what he had endured, but John was determined to find out. The days were long gone when John Jukes could parade with the Artillery Company, but he was full of curiosity about all that had happened to his sons. He plied Lambert with questions, unconsciously helping Lambert to unburden himself, then when Lambert lost patience John would turn to Gideon. In the early days, when Gideon was most dangerously ill, John took to dozing in a chair at the bedside overnight.
Gideon lost some of the distance from his parents that had built up while he was apprenticed. He was already much better friends with Lambert. So they all moved into a new family cycle. Whereas for some people the civil war damaged or destroyed stability, the Jukes were more fortunate. The parents were proud of the sons; the sons were encouraged by their parents' support. One son's wife was a fervent ally. Only Lacy held herself aloof, but that was never political.
Robert Allibone was of course another supporter. As soon as the invalid was adjudged out of danger and unlikely to be contagious, Robert hurried to help keep him cheery. For him, this meant bringing paper and ink to woo reminiscences that could be reconstructed into a diary. Like other memoirs by the Trained Bands, it was polished, edited and published. So the vivid, intrigued recollections of the ordinary soldier were brought to both contemporary and future readers in an unprecedented way. Gideon complained that the fever had made his mind ha
zy, but Robert persisted.
Robert brought news of how the London Trained Band regiments were continuing to serve in the field. Gideon listened, at first feeling out of it, but then relieved to be so.
Sir William Waller had now been made commander of various troops but was beset with problems. Particularly fraught was persuading his allocation from the London Trained Bands to do service outside the city. Some grumpy members of the Yellow Regiment were taken to Farnham Castle, Waller's headquarters. They met their new commander: an intense West Countryman, with brows drawn anxiously down over wide-set eyes and a pursed mouth beneath a moustache that was swept up at the ends onto gaunt cheeks. He signalled his authority by hanging a clerk of his own regiment for mutiny. This failed to impress the disgruntled Londoners. Their relationship with Waller never gelled and he was frequently furious at their open cries of 'Home! Home!', which forced him to make unmilitary pleas for them to stay.
It was a bad time of year for manoeuvres. The troops marched towards Winchester but were turned back by extreme wet and snow. Waller swung them over to Basing House. This enormous Royalist stronghold dominated the area between Oxford and London, threatening both Essex's headquarters and Waller's base at Farnham. Once a staunch motte-and-bailey castle, it had been transformed by grandiose Tudor courtiers and now rivalled the Tower of London in size and strength. Over fourteen acres included the Old House, surrounded by still-viable Norman earthworks, and the palatial New House, which contained 380 rooms. Basing was garrisoned with two regiments of foot and extra cavalry, who were protected by star-shaped towers set into massive surrounding walls that were said to be eight feet thick, brick walls on an earth core that would withstand the heaviest cannon fire. The gatehouse was a stupendous four storeys high.
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