TAKE COURAGE
by
PHYLLIS BENTLEY
CONTENTS
Penninah Remembers
I
PEACE
1. The Clarksons Love Learning
2. The Thorpes are Clothiers
3. The Ferrands Own Holroyd Hall
4. Three Men Agree to Differ
5. Three Children are Friends
6. True Love Flowers
II
DISSENSION
1. “You are an Arminian, Sir!”
2. The Rift Widens
3. My Father Falls Ill
4. Francis Apes the Soldier
5. I am Asked in Marriage
6. I Learn My Mind
III
DIVISION
1. I Live a Sober and Godly Life
2. Cloth and Ships are Just the Same
3. We Should Have Been Happy If…
4. “Then were the People Divided”
IV
WAR
1. John Finds a Friend
2. A Soldier Returns
3. Bradford Gives Quarter
4. “Out of the Depths have I Cried”
5. Woolpacks Hang on Bradford Steeple
6. A Ghost Visits a Commander
7. I am Alone
8. A Winter Passes
9. “God Made Them as Stubble”
10. Sir Thomas Earns a Jewel
11. A Royalist Compounds
12. A Medal is Struck
13. “After This a Better Day”
V
IS IT PEACE?
1. Giles Ferrand Grows a Beard
2. Lord Fairfax Resigns his Commission
3. A Commonwealth becomes a Tyranny
4. A Ship Sails
VI
RETROGRESSION
1. A Man is Buried with his Cause
2. The Sun Shines on the Other Side of the Hedge
3. But the Cause is Not Dead
VII
ACHIEVEMENT
1. The Memory of the Just is Blessed
2. Our House has a New Name
Penninah Remembers
PENNINAH REMEMBERS
I Have Been Young, and am now old. I have lived in times very troublous and perplexed; times of rebellion, of civil war, of plague and famine, siege and battle, bewilderment and waste; times when brother raised his hand against brother, and those of my own household were divided against themselves. I have seen men so persecuted and hemmed about that they could abide it no longer, but rose up in arms to defend their just liberties against the oppressor; I have seen those same men deny those same liberties in their turn, till they too were cut down as an offence in the sight of God. I have heard the great cannon thunder over Bradford, and the screams of the women echo in the Bradford streets as the soldiers sacked the town; I have known those same streets quick with peaceful business, the hoofs of the packhorses clattering in the market; I have known them silent, in ruin and decay. I have felt a bitterness as of death when my dear love was struck down in the prime of his youth; I have trembled at the tramp of armed men in my husband’s house by night, while he was fleeing over the moors. I have loved; I have sinned, I have repented; I have borne children and seen the dearest vanish forever beyond a far horizon; I have known both the wrath and the singular mercies of God.
Now I sit here, in the latter part of my age, at the door of my son’s house, and think on all these things. My memory plays me strange tricks since I am grown old; I cannot call to mind what was written in the letters that came yesterday from the New World, or where my son is to preach to-morrow, but I remember very well all the long chequered story of the past; I can see as if it were now before my eyes the day when it all began for me, the day when I first met John and Francis.
I
Peace
1
THE CLARKSONS LOVE LEARNING
It was a Lord’s Day in June, in 1625, the year when Charles I came to the throne; and I remember how in church that morning I was divided in mind between a wish that Mr. Okell should finish his sermon quickly and let us all out into the sweet sunshine, and a reluctance towards the visit at Little Holroyd which would follow the morning’s service. For myself I was well content to listen to Mr. Okell’s exhortation, which was a learned discourse on the sacraments from a text in Corinthians, for we Clarksons have always been fond of our book and eager to learn new things; but David, my little brother, my dear charge since our mother’s death at his birth four years before, was growing drowsy beneath the heat and the length of the vicar’s peroration. His blue eyes blinked and closed, his hot little fingers softened in my grasp, his fair head fell forward on his plump chest, he was asleep. William frowned and shook his arm; David started awake and looked about him, and his smooth cheeks flushed with the shame of finding himself misbehaving in church. But soon his sleepy little head nodded again, so Will, colouring and looking cross, took the child gently in his lap.
To look cross and act gently was like my elder brother Will, with his long glum face and lank loose-jointed body; I never could determine whether it was his big skew nose or his large pursed mouth or his crooked bushy eyebrows or the rough brown hair hanging unevenly on his bony shoulders which gave him that harassed and perplexed but warm and obstinate air. I was uneasy as I looked at him that day; what make of a girl was this Elizabeth Thorpe, I wondered, who had so bewitched our homely Will? Would she prove a good wife for a minister of religion, which dear William had firmly set himself to be? The Thorpes were rich; Thorpes of The Breck at Little Holroyd had been master clothiers for generations past, and owned many closes of land besides. Would they be content to give their daughter to a yeoman’s son? My father, Robert Clarkson, was a good scholar, a churchwarden of Bradford Church, an upright and honest man, and a master clothier too; but though I was then only a child of eleven years old, I knew already, as children do, that others could always over-reach my dear father when it came to trade, and trade has ever been thought much of in Bradford town. I loved my father so well that I often knew what was in his mind though I did not altogether understand it. I knew, when the widow Lister asked him to take her son as apprentice and he denied her and sent her to Mr. Thorpe, that the denial was a grief to him, though I did not know why; I knew, when a month ago I saw him standing with Mr. Thorpe by the loom in the upper chamber in our house in Fairgap, where Joshua Lister used to work, that it was more than a fault in the unfinished cloth that made my father look so sad; I knew, when Will told us, in his rapid jerky speech, of his affection for this Mistress Elizabeth, that my father for some reason was troubled by Will’s choice. So I was loth to dine at Holroyd Hall, for my father’s sake, and uneasy at the outcome of the visit, for Will’s. Some children would have been eager to see a new place and strange folk, but I had lived so close at home, always about my father, that I was shy.
The sermon was over now and the Grammar School boys sang, and my father and Mr. Thorpe walked into the vestry before the Vicar, carrying their churchwarden’s wands. My father at that time was of very tall stature, with his hair a silvery grey and his face somewhat hollowed; indeed he was excessively thin in all parts of his person, persisting, in spite of all our good Sarah urged on him, in a very spare diet. Then, as always, he was very gentle; indeed his grey eyes, though they had a lively sparkle, were the gentlest, kindest eyes, I think, that ever looked out of any man’s head. He was apt to splutter a little in his speech, especially when, as often happened, he had some merry quip or scholarly moral he was eager to tell the company, but his language was always very neat and well-chosen; indeed he used finer and better words than any man in Bradford save Mr. Okell. Walking beside him now, Mr. Thorpe, with his blunt, high-coloured face and his twinkling little eyes, looked very square and
short and dark, and not nearly so fine a gentleman as my father, for all his wealth.
As soon as we were out of church, Will, throwing a jerked excuse over his shoulder, pushed off through the crowd, towards Mistress Elizabeth, as I supposed; David and I stood back by one of the gravestones to wait for father. Many halted to greet us as they passed, the women stooping to pat David’s fair curls and coax his smile with baby talk. David was ever of a sweet and friendly disposition, and though he sometimes held tightly to my hand and his eyes widened in dismay if the lady begging a kiss were old or ill-favoured, he did not sulk or turn aside as some children do, but obediently offered them his soft round cheek. But the congregation had all passed by, and still my father did not come, and it grew lonely standing there on the hillside, watching the farthingales and tall hats grow less as the families descended the slope and crossed the beck by the Broad Stones and went home up Kirkgate to dine. David’s hand trembled in mine, and his lip drooped, and suddenly he wailed out that he wanted his father, he wanted his father; poor little lad, he cried so bitterly the tears stood on his cheeks like marbles, and I was hard put to it to comfort him, for I wanted father too. I felt lonely, deserted, and somehow guilty, as if there was something wrong in our being there by ourselves; but though David begged to go home, I would not stir, I knew we must wait where father had bidden us.
Suddenly all the Grammar School boys came rushing out of the church, leaping and shouting and pushing each other in play; they did not mean to be rough, but David cried out in fear and buried his face in my skirts, and as I bent over him and put my arms around him to comfort him, the tears stood thick in my eyes too.
Then one of the bigger boys turned and came back; the others in play struck at him and jeered, but he took no heed of them, not striving to avoid their blows by running, but coming soberly on. He halted beside the gravestones and stood squarely before us, his feet rather straddled, his face very set.
“If you will walk with me, Mistress Penninah,” he said gruffly, “I will bring you safe to Little Holroyd.” He added, seeing, I expect, that I did not quite know what to make of him: “I am John Thorpe, at your service.”
He was an awkward-looking lad four or five years older than myself, not tall, but very thickset for his age, with broad shoulders and long arms. In feature he was plain, and in complexion dark. At that time I did not fancy dark-complexioned folk, having dark hair myself, so John Thorpe had nothing handsome about him in my eyes, and it struck me as unmannerly that he kept his hat on his head while he addressed me. His voice too was harsh and untuneful, and his words had a homely sound about them, not like my father’s. But he spoke with so much honesty and kindness that I knew at once he was to be trusted, and held him as a friend.
“My father bade me wait,” I began timidly.
“Here he is now, with mine,” said John. He jerked his head towards the east end of the church; and there sure enough came my father, walking slowly, his head bent, in deep talk with Mr. Thorpe. When they saw us, the two men waved us forward and my father called: “Pen, go with John.”
John took David’s other hand, and we walked down Church Bank and along the water-meadows by the willows, then through the Turls, where the rooks calling in the trees seemed to mimic the men who lounged and laughed and shouted below, waiting already for the afternoon’s cock-fighting. I hurried David’s step, for I hated to see the sport, so bloody and fierce and cruel; John without speaking quickened his gait too. Soon we had left the Green behind, and were climbing quietly up the steep lane towards Little Holroyd. David had now ceased crying, and seemed content to walk soberly between us, humming a little as he went. There had been rain the night before, and water still lay underfoot in some of the ruts and hollows beneath the trees. Presently we came to a pool stretching right across our path. David halted, and looked up at me with a pleading mischief in his eye. John, who was walking with head bent, seemingly much preoccupied, did not observe what was going on, and looked up in astonishment when he felt the drag on his arm. He stood still—in the middle of the pool, as it chanced, poor John!—and turned an enquiring gaze on me.
“He wants to be swung over the water,” I said, for father and I, and sometimes even Will when he remembered, would pleasure the child in this way on our walks.
John’s stern face relaxed into a wintry smile.
“Jump then, David,” he said kindly.
He gave David his right hand, put his left beneath the child’s elbow, and swung him through the air with such a will that David shouted with pleasure. He ran on ahead to seek more pools, and would have us jump him over every patch of water he found. John seemed content to humour him; it was a simple pastime but a harmless, and pleasant enough; we reached Little Holroyd hot and a trifle out of breath, but good friends, with our fathers close on our heels.
2
THE THORPES ARE CLOTHIERS
Mrs. Thorpe Came to the door of the Breck to welcome us. At that time she was a large dark powerful woman, with an implacable air; she always dressed in very neat dark gowns, of rich materials but old-fashioned in cut; her features were heavy and plain, like John’s, and she had a mole by one eyebrow which I could see frightened David. She eyed me grimly, greeted me with the false effusion some people keep for children, put her face down to mine but did not kiss me. But neither can I give my kisses easily; so we touched cheeks without embrace. This surprised her a little, I think, though indeed I could not help it; she gave me a shrewd glance and a grim half-smile, and invited me into the house with a plainer but warmer manner. We respected each other for our awkward honesty from that moment, though there was never real affection between us, or full ease. I felt that if her daughter Elizabeth took after her, Will’s way through life would be firm and straight, very reputable and honest though perhaps rather lacking in joy.
But Elizabeth did not resemble her mother, as I found when we were all seated at table in the house; true, she had Mrs. Thorpe’s black hair and heavy frame, but her look was peevish and sickly, and in spirit she was like her father, that is, of easier, less lofty tone. Indeed at times I have found a certain humorous pity for Mr. Thorpe, compressed by the uncompromising honesty of his wife and son into a straiter and narrower way than he would himself have chosen. That day, for instance, he made jokes about Elizabeth and Will, and paid me compliments on what he was pleased to call my broad white forehead and grave grey eyes, saying that my father would not be able to keep Penninah long at home, and so on. Elizabeth tittered, Will threw himself about on the bench, I held my head high and tried to smile though my cheek burned, finding his intention kind though the joke was unpleasing, and my father with an easy transition led the talk away from him to the morning’s sermon; but his wife and son scowled so at poor Mr. Thorpe that he grew abashed, muttered and mumbled and finally dropped quiet. But it was not in his nature to stay down for long, and whenever the talk touched business he spoke up shrewdly.
The house-body of The Breck, where we sat at meat, was very well kept and furnished. The quarries in the mullioned windows, and the flagged floor, had been well washed, and the great oak table and benches, the armchairs and buffets, were polished and gleaming. Not a speck of dust lingered in any cranny of the big panelled court cupboard, or in the carved rims of the table trenchers. All the copper pans and the broiling irons by the hearth, and the brass fittings of the fowling-piece hanging over the chimney-breast, shone bright in the firelight. I could see that Mrs. Thorpe must be a notable housewife, and I thought that her serving-maid and the apprentice, Joseph Lister, who helped to pass the meat before sitting to table, might find her an exacting one. Lister, a scrubby simple-looking boy enough, with a flat face full of freckles, a grinning mouth, and coarse hair the colour of rust falling into his eyes, was placed on David’s other side; at first I did not like him being so close, for though he doubtless meant no harm he fixed such an impish stare on me as disconcerted me, he seemed to be watching every mouthful I ate. But soon I had cause to thank him for his kind
demeanour to David; he helped the child to turn his trencher and cut his meat, and whispering in his ear such simple jokes as children understand, kept him quiet and mannerly. Indeed David quite forgot the rest of us, and sat gazing up silently at Lister with that sweet lovely smile of his, looking so like an angel that even Mrs. Thorpe, as I could see, found her heart melted to the child. In some ways, it seemed, Lister was less simple than he looked; for on his master’s asking him what he remembered of Mr. Okell’s sermon that morning, he gabbled off the heads of the discourse, and some of the particulars, with a wonderful accuracy of remembrance. (It seemed he had two uncles, ministers.) David catching up some of his words, repeated them in the very tone, chanting and somewhat pompous, of the Vicar, at which we all laughed.
“David will be a minister when he grows up, like William, won’t you, David?” said Mrs. Thorpe.
“Yes,” said David, nodding solemnly.
“Nay, there’s one already in the family; one’s enough,” objected Mr. Thorpe. “David must be a master clothier, like his father.”
I saw my father’s face cloud at this, and Mrs. Thorpe saw it too, for she drew the talk back to preaching:
“Sermons,” she said, “are not what they were in my young days.”
At once my father and Mr. Thorpe were agreeing warmly. They were both of a Puritan cast of mind, that is to say, they believed in simple homely ways of religion, thinking that ceremonies were so many arrogant barriers between the soul and God. Bishops they greatly disliked, as Popish and tending to subject religious things to worldly authority, for Bishops were appointed by the King; and they both had great hopes that the Church in England would soon throw off all such encumbrances and stand forth as a reformed and truly Protestant Church, like some of those abroad. Some decrees of the late King James, which seemed to hinder this, had greatly vexed them. How could sermons have spiritual meat in them, complained my father now, when King James had given orders that preachers must adhere strictly to their texts— “strictly” being interpreted to admit only of what was favourable to the Bishops and himself?
Take Courage Page 1