Take Courage

by Phyllis Bentley

  It was about this time, too, that I first heard that other name, of Cavalier. Those courtiers of the King’s guard, because they always wore long curls and swords, began now to be called by those who disliked them Cavaliers—a word meaning really, as I understood from David, a horseman, but few of the people knowing its true sense.

  After these names arose, the division in the country was clearly defined and not by any means to be slurred over. A name is a rallying-point, a banner, which ranges men on different grounds; as soon as names are given the differences in men’s opinions, being thus marked, show very clear and cannot escape constant notice, while the agreements between them are obliterated. It was very shortly after this that the black day came when the King actually entered the House of Commons with an armed guard to arrest five members of Parliament—John’s hero, Hampden, was one—whose speeches had displeased him. His Cavaliers behaved very tumultuously on that occasion; they stood by the doors of the House with their swords drawn and pistols cocked, and would not let members come in. Then when they were commanded to admit them, it was reported that one Cavalier cried out disrespectfully:

  “Let ’em come, and be hanged to ’em!”

  (These words had a familiar ring in my ears, though I could not quite call to mind whom I had heard use them.) I shall never forget John’s look when he heard of this mad action of the King’s; his cheek grew sallow, he set his jaw; standing very still, his head lowered, he said in a tone which scarcely rose above a whisper:

  “It is not to be borne.”

  And indeed after an infraction of his subjects’ liberties so shocking, I do not think there was much hope of a peaceful settlement between King and Parliament. The matter made such an uproar that the King could not bear to stay within sound of it, but very soon went away from the Parliament, and would not return in spite of many petitions and addresses sent to him.

  In the spring, to my great concern, he came to York, surrounded by a swarm of gentry and clergy ill-affected to the Parliament. This brought the whole business very close to us, and what with the badness of trade, owing to the unsettled times, and my fears for John, who I dreaded would make some notable defiance of the King’s party, I was most uneasy and wretched the whole time of his stay in our county. It seemed there was a great deal of ammunition at Hull, which the King wanted to get hold of, but the Parliament had commanded it to be fetched to London; when the King went to Hull, the Governor of the place would not let him in. He used this as a pretext to say there were designs against him, and he must have a guard for his person, this being an excuse to call out the Train-Bands. When the gentry of Yorkshire hesitated about this, the King summoned the lesser men to meet him on a moor near York; ministers and farmers and freeholders, all had to go. John and Will were amongst those summoned, and I was very anxious for their safety. Just as John was about to set out, we saw Mr. Ferrand riding down the lane on the same errand; John’s face clouded, and he drew back, and waited till his uncle should be well out of sight before he started.

  I was greatly relieved when John came back, a couple of days later, unharmed, and with a much more cheerful look on his face than I had expected. It was a tremendous sight on the moor, he said, nigh on a hundred thousand men being drawn up there; and he himself had had a very good view of the King. A dark melancholy face he had, said John, across which cloud and sun seemed to chase each other impatiently; he had a very handsome dress and a stiff seat on his horse and a lofty kingly look, but a jerky and irritable manner, as if he were fretted beyond endurance. A long declaration on his behalf had been read out to those assembled, of which John did not hear a word, save that it concerned the Train-Bands; and as far as he could see, said John, they might all just as well have stayed at home, for nothing was settled. The men he seemed most struck with were the Fairfaxes. Ferdinando, he said, the old Lord’s son and Sir Thomas’s father, was just like his own father, Mr. Thorpe, small and round and shrewd and fond of vulgar jokes. Sir Thomas was a very different man. He had been chosen to present a petition to His Majesty, imploring him to refrain from warlike measures and return to his Parliament. Will and John had seen a copy of this petition, by courtesy of Lord Fairfax’s chaplain, and John was pleased because it told the King plainly that Yorkshire was being ruined by all these troubles, the clothing trade being in great adversity and the whole county in a sense depending on it. The King did not wish to receive the petition, for he doubtless guessed its contents, so he avoided Sir Thomas, who was obliged to follow him up and down the field all day.

  “But he couldn’t shake off Black Tom,” said John with a chuckle.

  Sir Thomas at last managed to lay the petition on the pommel of the King’s saddle, though the King, frowning angrily, jerked at the bridle, so that Sir Thomas was almost ridden down for his pains.

  “Much he cared,” concluded John with approval.

  He told this same story several times over, which was not a habit with him, for he was not easily impressed. When I asked him what Sir Thomas was like in looks, he shook his head thoughtfully and seemed unable, or unwilling, to describe him.

  Between the hesitations of the gentry, and the humiliation of being refused admission to Hull, and continual difficulties with the Parliament about the Train-Bands, I think the King began to find Yorkshire too hot to hold him, or at any rate too divided to be comfortable; so in the summer he went away to Nottingham. We had hardly time to sigh with relief at his departure before we heard he had set up his standard there, and begun to issue commissions to gentlemen to raise regiments of foot and horse. At this the Parliament sent no more polite messages, but called out all the Train-Bands, and prepared for war.

  “It is the final stroke with the cleaving knife,” said John, discussing this with Will before one of our meetings. “England is no longer one, but two; Parliament and King, Roundhead and Cavalier.”

  “The anger of the Lord hath divided them,” quoted Will soberly. “Then were the people divided into two parts.”

  “What will the Parliament do to the King, Father?” asked Thomas.

  “They will fight him,” said John grimly.

  “Blessed be the Lord my strength, who teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight,” chanted Lister.

  “Bang! Bang!” cried Sam, bringing an imaginary musket to his shoulder and taking aim.

  So far had I been pushed from my true nature by continual tyranny, which had pressed me ever since my childhood without relaxation, that I saw nothing dreadful in my little son’s play of war.

  IV

  War

  1

  JOHN FINDS A FRIEND

  Yes, so exasperated was I by the fret of continued persecution that I actually felt glad—I am ashamed now to recall it—that the dispute had come at last to the arbitrament of the sword. None of my loved ones were soldiers, I thought, so they were safe; I imagined there would be one great exciting battle, such as I had read of in David’s books, at which God would surely grant His servants victory, and then everything would be settled and we should have peace and freedom, and life would be good once more.

  How different the event proved from my expectation, I exclaim at, in pity for my young self, even now.

  The very first result of the outbreak of war was a great distress of the cloth trade. In midsummer a ship from Hull always took the Yorkshire cloth across the sea in time for the market at Hamburg. But this year the Governor of Hull would not allow the ship to sail; he could not spare the men to work her, he said, being then at the height of his argument with the King. So first the ship lay at the quay, with cloth aboard her, and then there came rumours that the cloth was to be unloaded and the ship used for some purpose of defence. This spelled ruination for the West Riding; for if the merchants could not get their money for the cloth aboard, they could not pay the clothiers, and if the clothiers could not get their money, they could not pay their weavers or buy more wool, and so the cloth-workers could not buy food, and the markets suffered, and thus every person living
in Yorkshire was the poorer for the delay of the ship. John had five dozen good pieces aboard in his own name, besides some that had been taken up by merchants. This troubled him sorely enough, but it was the general distress which angered him; it was like taking a shipful of life-blood out of Yorkshire, he said, and holding it at a distance, while Yorkshire slowly died of the lack. At the very same time that this ship was stayed in Hull, requests came round that we should contribute towards the Coat and Conduct money of the Parliament’s Train-Bands. This maddened John.

  “They’ve taken all we could have given,” said he, “and keep it rotting at a quay in Hull, doing no good to anyone. Can’t they see that? Can’t they see?”

  He paced the house with his head on his breast; so strong was his feeling that I could almost see a picture of the ship tied up in Hull, floating on the air before his eyes.

  John wrote many letters to the governor of Hull, but received nothing much in the way of replies; and at last he began to consider going there himself to see what he could do, if the other clothiers in the district would give him power to act for them.

  When he told me this I was first astonished and then angry. I felt that it was madness in him to cross the whole breadth of the county, when, as we now increasingly heard, Royalist gentry were everywhere raising bands of foot and horse to send to the King, and dragoons—a word of terror to me even then, though I had never seen one—were galloping about, on their way to the war, all over Yorkshire. I thought it wrong for a man to leave his wife and children and put himself in danger, just for the sake of a few pieces of cloth, and I could not refrain from making some reproaches on the subject to my husband.

  “What will become of us while you go?” I said.

  “What will become of us if I don’t go?” said John.

  “We shall lack a little wealth,” said I. “That is better than lacking a father to my children.”

  A frown of irritation crossed John’s face.

  “Penninah,” he said stubbornly: “That shipful of cloth is the life-blood of the West Riding.”

  “I know, I know!” I cried, vexed by this repetition. “But I am talking of the life-blood of my children’s father.”

  “I notice you do not say, of your husband,” said John in a gruff tone.

  “It is the same, John,” I said quickly, sorry to see him hurt, and I made to go to him, but he had flung away towards the stairs.

  After that I knew it was no use trying to turn him, he was set to go; so without any further word to him I prepared a small stock of linen and other necessaries he would need on the journey. He saw what I was busy with, but made no open reference to the matter, and we passed some uncomfortable days, outwardly polite but inwardly much angered. At last one Tuesday night when he came in from Leeds, I could see by his face that the hour of his going was fixed, and sure enough over supper he began to speak of it. He was embarrassed, and looked down, as he spoke, and I did not help him out as was my custom.

  “It will be safe for me to go to Hull now, Penninah,” he said gruffly. “All the Yorkshire gentry have met near Leeds, and decided on a treaty of neutrality for this county.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means that there will be no fighting in Yorkshire,” said John. “That is, if Parliament approve the treaty.”

  I was amazed, though not in the sense he expected; in my ignorance it had never occurred to me that fighting would take place on Yorkshire soil. Fighting, in our own county! John’s journey seemed more dangerous, more unnecessary, and more wrong, even than before. Fighting in Yorkshire!

  “The treaty is subject to the approval of Parliament,” repeated John, misinterpreting my astounded look.

  “Will Parliament approve?” I asked, catching at this straw.

  “I doubt it,” said John. “But there will be no fighting till we hear. So if I leave soon, there will be time for me to go and come in peace.”

  I saw he wished me to ask him when he meant to leave, and out of wifely duty I tried to do so, but the words stuck in my throat. Fighting in Yorkshire! And John crossing its whole breadth twice, for a few dozen pieces of cloth! I could not speak, from sheer anger and dismay.

  “I leave to-morrow at dawn,” said John at length.

  Still I did not speak; and although I rose early next morning and saw that John had a good breakfast and wore his warm new cloak, as a wife should, we were not friendly to one another. I had got the children out of bed to say farewell, as was proper, but they were sleepy and seemed not much affected—they were fond of their father but not overmuch, for indeed hitherto poor John had not the faculty of getting himself much loved. John held the children close and kissed them very tenderly, as though his heart was sore and he sought comfort in their sweet flesh; and then I was sorry for him and would have embraced him warmly, but he was too much hurt, and too stiff in nature, to respond swiftly and make an easy reconciliation, and so we parted ill at ease and vexed.

  There was little business to do in his absence, trade being so very slack, as we thought at that time. In a way this was a relief, for when Lister had overmuch to do, or some important decision to make, while John was away, he was apt to come and gabble it all out to me in his shrill raw tones. I suffered him patiently, for I knew his faithfulness and skill, but it was a trial for me; for on the one hand Lister would press and press me for an opinion, and go away hurt and grumbling if I gave him none, and on the other if I gave him one he was apt to jeer at it and hold it up to scorn to John when he returned—as indeed he had often every right to do, for though I had always lived where cloth was made, I knew little of its marketing. In the early days when Thomas and Sam were babes, John and I had often laughed together over Lister’s expectation that I should understand threads and dyes as well as he did, but now these tales were apt to irritate John’s temper and I did my best not to provoke them. Now that things were so quiet about the place, I thought, at least I shall not have to listen to Lister. But I was mistaken; in his enforced leisure he spent long hours leaning against the house door, his freckled face long and mournful, talking about the difficulties of weaving, the iniquities of King Charles and the marvellous goodness of John. I had not quite understood before the strength of his devotion to my husband, and I schooled myself to listen to him willingly, feeling it a kind of penance for my vexation with John, of which I wished to be ashamed. When letters came from Hull, telling that the business of the cloth ship was proceeding well, for the Governor saw the force of John’s argument about the ruin of the Parliament’s cause in Yorkshire if the clothing towns were impoverished, I read them aloud to Lister as well as to my sons. Lister was greatly excited, he cracked his great knuckles with glee and quoted half a dozen psalms at once.

  I too was glad of the news, for, knowing John’s obstinacy well, I knew he would not leave Hull till he had settled the matter one way or the other, and I longed with increasing urgency to have him safe back home. In a very few days after his departure the treaty of neutrality received the fate he had expected; Parliament condemned it, promptly and utterly. Next we heard that Lord Ferdinando Fairfax was appointed General of all the Parliament’s forces in our county. This was another shock to me; I had been slowly coming to the notion that there might be fighting in Yorkshire, but now this appointment seemed to make it sure. Armies in Yorkshire! And John with fifty miles of it to cross! And all for a few score yards of cloth!

  So, although my anxiety grew, my anger did not diminish, and when at last one afternoon Lister from the loom-chamber suddenly shouted to me that the master was coming up the lane with three other horsemen, though I ran to the door to welcome John as a wife should, in my heart I had not wholly forgiven him. I will welcome him, I will be glad of his return, I told myself mutinously, but I will not be grateful for the safety of a shipload of kerseys. I waited for his greeting; will his sons come first, or his cloth, I wondered, half smiling, as two horses drew up at The Breck door—John’s strong bay nag looking squat and full of
corners compared with the shapely white horse at its side. (For a moment I thought of Snowball—I had not remembered Snowball for nearly ten years.)

  “Wife! Wife!” called John in a loud lively tone, dismounting rapidly. “Here is Sir Thomas Fairfax, come to dine with us. Welcome to The Breck, Sir Thomas,” he added, turning to the rider on the white horse with an eager smile.

  One of the mounted men behind rode up to take his master’s bridle, and I found myself receiving a bow from Sir Thomas Fairfax, against a background of buff leather coats, bristling, as it seemed to me, with swords and muskets.

  I was startled by this sudden intrusion of the gentry and the military into our quiet home life, and felt shy and even a little frightened at the prospect of receiving a knight at my table; but as soon as I looked into Sir Thomas’s eyes, I knew my fears were petty and ill-founded.

  “He is a very noble gentleman,” I thought at once; and I have never had any cause to change that view.

  The great Fairfax, as he so soon became, was at that time tall and slight, with long thin dangling hands and a long thin quiet sallow face; his high aquiline features were shaded with a kind of melancholy, a grave reserve that was both stern and dreamy. His dark hair, very fine in texture like that of my little Thomas, fell on his shoulders somewhat carelessly arranged, but his moustache and small tufted beard were trim and comely. In gait he was not graceful in the ordinary sense of the word, but he had an unforced dignity, even in the smallest actions, which came from the noble spirit within him. Yes, he was altogether a most noble and most notable gentleman; not exactly handsome, but yet one to call the eye in any company by some stamp of greatness about his countenance. The prints in the pamphlets, of which there were so many later, never did his looks justice; there was an air of such lofty magnanimity, such honourable integrity, such delicate generosity, in the very turn of his mouth and the look of his fine hazel eyes, as was not to be caught by ink and paper.