A Close Run Thing

by Allan Mallinson

  ‘And it will be no housling ministry, I warrant. Do they celebrate the Holy Communion with any regularity and frequency?’

  Elizabeth looked anxiously at her brother, who understood her meaning at once.

  ‘As a rule, no,’ he replied patiently, though he might easily have omitted the qualification and simply answered with the negative.

  John Keble shook his head.

  ‘They do preach and pray with the wounded,’ he added in a half-hearted plea in mitigation.

  ‘And Methodists?’ Keble continued. ‘I have heard that they make converts.’

  Hervey’s father huffed loudly. ‘Mr Keble, to my shame, we have here in Horningsham the oldest dissenting chapel in England!’

  ‘It is nonsense to speak so, Father,’ smiled Elizabeth. ‘You and the minister get on like houses on fire!’

  ‘Indeed, we do,’ replied the old man chuckling, ‘though only when we avoid any mention of religion. On the whole it is better that way with men of God! But I would sooner spend an evening in the company of the old Jesuit from Wardour. He does not quote scripture at me the while, and we may have gentlemanly conversation about such matters of doctrine that are unknowable, and which therefore we may discourse upon without acrimony.’

  ‘And with good claret,’ chuckled Mrs Hervey.

  ‘This latter is very sage, sir,’ John Keble acknowledged; and then, with a smile so full that his face was wholly transformed, added, ‘as is yours, ma’am.’

  ‘They are not my words, however, Mr Keble,’ sighed the Reverend Thomas Hervey, ‘but dear Archbishop Laud’s.’

  ‘God rest his soul,’ said Keble before turning back to Hervey to press his point. ‘But, as to these Methodists, I would think that the meeting of soldiers in their cantonments to sing psalms, or to hear a sermon read by one of their comrades, is in the abstract perfectly innocent; indeed, it is laudable, but I think it might become otherwise.’

  ‘And I think that is precisely what the duke believes, too,’ agreed Hervey, surprised by Keble’s evident grasp of the requirements of good order and military discipline, ‘but I wonder why the established church makes no greater impression.’

  Keble was quick to answer, though with more sadness in his tone than enthusiasm. ‘The Church has, I believe, in many quarters turned its back on its true origins. The best men do their duty faithfully but without fervour; the worst … well, let us say they are free from the tumults of conscience.’

  ‘But what of the Claphamites, Mr Keble?’ Elizabeth interjected. ‘They do their duty with fervour and confront their consciences squarely, do they not? And see what good deeds they do!’

  ‘Oh, a worthy movement, Miss Hervey, but fired by Protestant fervour.’

  ‘And is that to be denounced, then?’ she challenged, with some perturbation.

  ‘By no means, Miss Hervey,’ he replied, seemingly stung by her rebuke, ‘but the Church of England was not conceived in Protestantism: it is Catholic and reformed. Is that not what we affirm in the creed?’

  Elizabeth looked to the head of the table. ‘Father, what is your opinion in this?’

  The vicar of Horningsham spoke with unusual animation. ‘Mr Keble is wholly accurate upon this point, my dear. You must read the Thirty-Nine Articles as an affirmation of the doctrine of the Fathers of the Church, not as a Protestant tract – which latter is all that people seem to do today. As you read they will be a revelation to you! Lancelot Andrewes and the other Caroline divines were wholly lucid on this matter – poor Laud went to the scaffold because of it. We have drifted into Protestantism. It needs younger men of integrity and energy, however, to recall the Church to its proper destiny!’

  ‘And I believe your elder son to have been one of these, Mr Hervey,’ John Keble replied in a tone approaching ardour. ‘You should have heard his sermons at Oriel and seen his ministry in the hovels of Cowley. He was worthy indeed of taking up Andrewes’s torch.’

  But Hervey’s mother had become likewise agitated: ‘Then are we to throw vipers at the Methodists again, Mr Keble?’

  John Keble looked at her with polite but evident incomprehension.

  ‘Mr Keble,’ Elizabeth interjected sheepishly, ‘some years ago a Methodist was preaching outdoors in Warminster and a townsman threw an adder at him.’

  ‘“O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”’ Keble replied, hoping that the gospel after whom her younger son had been named might deflect them.

  ‘Just so, Mr Keble,’ said Mrs Hervey, equally opaquely. ‘And now, Matthew, turning to lighter matters, will you be going to see the marquess tomorrow?’

  ‘Well, Mother,’ he began hesitantly, ‘perhaps not tomorrow; but, yes, I shall pay my respects.’

  ‘I think if you knew whom you might also see at Longleat you would not long delay,’ she added with a smile.

  ‘Oh, Mother!’ sighed Elizabeth. ‘Do you have no artfulness?’

  Hervey looked bemused, and all the more so for Elizabeth’s prim reprimand.

  ‘Henrietta Lindsay is come back to Longleat, Matthew; that is all,’ his sister explained.

  Hervey felt his gut twist, and he fought hard not to show it. ‘Well, that is agreeable, Mother. No, you are quite right, it is very agreeable to hear. I have not seen Henrietta Lindsay in years. I expect she is quite grown now.’ He looked at Elizabeth, who looked down at her plate, and he searched for some way by which to change the subject. ‘But I thought that first I should go to see Daniel Coates!’

  ‘Coates!’ exclaimed the vicar of Horningsham, suddenly come back to consciousness. ‘The only man with any idea at all how to deal with those rick-burners!’

  ‘And how is that, Father?’ asked Elizabeth kindly, laying her hand on his forearm. But her father had slipped peacefully back into upright yet profound sleep.

  Daniel Coates – rick-burners? What was the connection? wondered Hervey. Coates was not a violent man – at least, he had not been when last Hervey had seen him before leaving for Spain. Had the unrest at home taken its toll of yeoman fortitude? But Coates was a tenant sheepfarmer: why might he be troubled by rick-burners?

  ‘Daniel is a churchwarden now, and a magistrate,’ revealed his mother. ‘At Upton Scudamore. Your father holds the benefice in commendam.’

  Daniel Coates a churchwarden and a magistrate! Hervey could only wonder at the change in the country these past few years. Daniel Coates – old soldier, his childhood hero, a poor tenant farmer who had once been shepherd on the Longleat estate: it had been he who had taught him to ride cavalry-fashion, to shoot straight and use a sword so well that on joining the Sixth he had been dismissed riding school and skill-at-arms quicker than anyone could remember. Hervey could not present himself unannounced to Henrietta Lindsay, but he most certainly could to Daniel Coates! And in Coates was, perhaps, his best chance of gaining a reliable secular opinion of what the country had become while he had been away; in John Keble he knew he had such a mentor in the clerical view. ‘Mr Keble,’ he said, with sudden resolution, ‘may we take a turn about the garden? I should be obliged for your opinion on this country to which I return, it would seem, as something of a stranger.’

  VI

  THE YEOMEN OF WILTSHIRE

  Salisbury Plain, Midsummer Day

  HIS FATHER’S COB knew the way to Upton Scudamore well enough, and the pace at which the vicar of Horningsham liked to cover the five or so miles of rutted lanes which crossed the vale, skirted the prehistoric mystery that was Cley Hill, and connected the handsome estate village with the rougher settlement by the great west scarp of Salisbury Plain. Daniel Coates’s farm lay on the edge of the downs, virtually under the scarp. When he had taken the tenancy fifteen years earlier it had been nothing but a few dilapidated buildings and three acres of poor pasture, with a hundred or so more of common land on the Westbury side. He had rebuilt it stone by stone, brick by brick – Hervey had carried many of them himself. There was nothing poor-looking about the place now, however.


  Coates received him with an easy combination of deference and familiarity, but ‘Master Hervey’, and soon thereafter simply ‘Matthew’, was subjected to a veritable cannonade of questions, a bombardment lasting a full half-hour without respite. Finally, Coates seemed to become aware of his insensibility and was then much abashed: ‘My dear Matthew, how could I ’ave been so inhospitable – your glass is empty, and you have not spoken except for to speak back,’ he said, reaching for a jug of purl.

  ‘Dan, I have so keenly imagined this time for many months, but I want more than anything to ride on the downs again, as we have done together since I was on the leading-rein. There I promise I shall answer every enquiry you have a care to make!’

  ‘And so shall it be, Matthew; so shall it be!’ Coates replied with the broadest of smiles, and he summoned his housemaid to take word to the stables.

  Hervey had never known a groom before at Drove Farm: when first he had gone to Spain there had not been so much as a labourer, and certainly no housemaid. Now as they went into the stableyard there was a smart-looking fellow holding a fine pair of bay hunters. Prosperity indeed, thought Hervey. But their discourse did not immediately resume on leaving the yard, for Daniel Coates took Hervey at his word and waited until they had reached the downs before pressing him once more to the details of his campaigning. So with scarcely an exchange they rode out along the empty expanse of Warminster Bottom, past Dirtley Wood and up the steep scarp of the great plain on to Knapp Down, both men happy to let the memories stir in silence.

  To Hervey’s mind the plain had no rival for both bleakness and beauty. In winter, with a strong, cutting north-east wind, and sleet, hail or heavy rain driven in sheets over the lonely plateau, the scene, broken here and there by a few clumps of dripping trees or a misty barrow, was dismal – desolate even. He had been as cold here – more so even – as on the retreat to Corunna. But in fine weather (and that midsummer morning was as fine as they came) the air was as pure as in the Pyrenees and the sun, high and directly ahead, as warm as in Gascony. The turf was soft and yielding (it had cushioned many a fall in his youth), and the whole face of the down was carpeted with flowers whose names he was surprised to be able to recall: harebells, centaury, dark blue campanula, scabias, milkworts, orchids and meadowsweet. And where there were no flowers there was broom and furze.

  Still they rode on without speaking until, cresting the rise of Summer Down, Hervey saw, and heard, the source of Daniel Coates’s wealth: sheep – many, many more than he could ever remember, so many that for the best part of a mile it was scarcely possible to see the carpet of turf and flowers. ‘Yes, they’re all mine,’ said Coates, guessing his thoughts. ‘Every bale of wool these past five years has gone to clothe His Majesty’s troops. The war has upped demand beyond anything I could’ve imagined. The flock’s grown a hundredfold, and I’ve five shepherds tending ’em. I’ve been sole agister on these downs for three summers now. I’m a rich man, Matthew!’

  Hervey nodded: he could find no words adequate for his admiration.

  ‘But I doubt demand’ll remain high now that regiments and ships are being paid off. I shall sell ’em all before winter.’

  This last was perhaps the true measure of Coates’s acumen: energy and good fortune alone might promote wealth but, it seemed to Hervey, real judgement was needed to know when to sell out. But Coates did not want to speak of business. ‘I see the Army hasn’t given you a taste for the straight leg, then, Matthew?’ he smiled approvingly, nodding to the hunting length of Hervey’s stirrups.

  ‘No, Dan, it has not. I cannot abide it. All through Spain we bumped along. The King’s Germans didn’t: they ride at half our length and always rise to the trot, and their horses are the better for it. Ours seemed to have no end of sore backs.’

  It gave Coates no pleasure to hear it, but he could take satisfaction in Hervey’s opinion: it had been one of the hard lessons of America, lessons of which he had spoken endlessly when they had ridden out together. ‘Yes, I always said I learned more about campaigning from the colonists than from our own officers: they had little idea other than how to drill. How in heaven’s name can you lean out with a straight leg?’

  ‘I reckon I had the advantage of an extra half-sword riding at hunting length – all the difference when cutting at an infantryman trying to use his bayonet. There’s an ensign in the Coldstream who would be dead but for that reach.’

  ‘Ay, I saw that time and again. But the reach has no purpose unless the sword is sharp.’

  Hervey sighed. ‘We put straw in our scabbards as best we could, and it stopped the rattling, too, but that steel sorely blunted the blades. The Germans had wooden scabbards and had not half the trouble.’

  Daniel Coates’s interest in each and every detail seemed limitless. They crossed Summer Down with the old soldier apparently oblivious to the vastness of his flock, which calmly parted for them as they trotted through, and they descended the east slopes, into the dry valley where, legend had it, King Alfred hid his army before Edington. Yet scarcely did Coates seem to notice their progress. Only when they climbed on to Chapperton Down, where the Imber shepherds grazed their flocks (though on this morning the Imber sheep were the other side of the valley), did he return to the present. ‘Come on!’ he called suddenly, urging his bay into a canter, ‘keep with me till Wadman’s Coppice an’ then it’s flat out to Brounker’s Well. D’ye remember the gallop, Matthew?’

  That he did! Though he would have preferred to be on Jessye now, for that fast and sure-footed little mare was made for just such a run on the plain. But this gelding felt handy, too, and soon revealed a turn of speed, pulling the whole mile and more to the ancient coppice and making Hervey work hard to check him. Letting him have his head for the last half-mile into the dry valley beyond, they reached Brounker’s Well a dozen lengths clear. As he pulled up and turned south for the Imber road, Hervey laughed and called to Coates: ‘By heavens, you’re spending some of your wealth on horseflesh, Dan!’

  ‘What else is worth it, Matthew? Not a woman in a thousand, that’s for sure!’ he called back.

  They both laughed even louder.

  ‘The gelding is yours, Matthew!’

  ‘What? Dan … I can’t possibly …’ Hervey spluttered, but his protests were unlikely to make any impression.

  ‘I’ve more to be grateful to your family for than ever I could repay – not even with a troop’s worth of horses. Without your father I would have trudged on down that lane where he found me coughing up my lungs thirty years ago and more. It was ’im that found me employ on the estate, and it was ’im that lent me the money for the first year’s rent on Drove Farm fifteen years back. The horse is yours for as long as you wants ’im. Take ’im – at least until you go to Ireland. And by then you won’t want to leave him anyway. He’s a homecoming present, Matthew – why should I not give you a homecoming present?’

  Interest to pay or not, he was sure that such a gift was more than he could accept, and he might have continued protesting but for the sudden appearance of a score or more horsemen on the Imber road.

  ‘Warminster Troop. Come on and see ’em,’ said Coates, spurring into a canter again.

  Though the troop had been raised before he had left for Spain, this was Hervey’s first encounter with them. Their appearance was, in one respect at least, impressive, for the blue dolmans and Tarleton helmets looked almost new. But the troopers themselves did not have the stamp of men under habitual discipline, hardened by service in which a bed was the infrequent alternative to a straw billet or a muddy bivouac. Indeed, in some respects they had a faintly theatrical appearance, for the Tarleton had been out of regular service for two years at least. But, although the Tarleton had been disliked for field service (it was almost as cumbersome as the hussars’ mirleton), he considered it still a very handsome head-dress.

  ‘Good morning, Coates,’ called their lieutenant.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Styles,’ replied Daniel Coates, raising
his hat to the guidon. Hervey blanched at the man’s lofty manner, and looked with disdain at the pallid face and fleshy thighs of this leader of yeomen, but he raised his hat to the guidon nevertheless. Styles, however, assumed that both salutes were his and waved his hand airily in acknowledgement.

  ‘And who, indeed, was that?’ asked Hervey when the troop had passed.

  ‘Mr Hugo Styles, son and heir of Sir George Styles of Leighton Park at Westbury,’ replied Coates, ‘and a right Johnny Raw!’

  ‘I do not know of a Sir George Styles,’ said Hervey, puzzled.

  ‘No, you would not. He bought Leighton Park three years ago, and a baronetcy a year or so before that. He owns most of the mills in Devizes.’

  ‘Not a man at home much in the saddle, I should say.’

  ‘I dare say not,’ sighed Coates. ‘He fancies himself very much the gentleman, though, and disports himself as a blade hereabouts.’

  ‘Then I am doubly certain that I shall not call on him.’ A supercilious yeomanry officer was, by all accounts, nothing unusual, and hardly something to be troubled by: it did not appear to trouble Coates. But, simmered Hervey to himself, that Daniel Coates, JP and sometime trumpeter to General Tarleton, should not receive the commonest of courtesies from someone wearing the king’s uniform was detestable. ‘Dan, that milksop hailed you as if you were Dick-in-the-green!’

  ‘Not to worrit, Matthew. You’ll be looking to a troop yourself next,’ said Coates, seeing his anger and wishing to divert him.

  ‘Hah! And where would I find two thousand pounds, Dan?’

  Coates whistled. ‘Is that what it takes nowadays, Matthew?’

  ‘In addition Dan, in addition. Three thousand is the price.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be … You should go to India!’

  ‘You are the second to tell me that,’ replied Hervey, with a smile at last, ‘but I have no desire to leave the Sixth. They are the very finest of fellows.’

  Hervey had expected a dinner of mutton at Drove Farm – a joint perhaps, or a pudding even – but not venison.