Take Courage

by Phyllis Bentley

Mr. Mayor, After a dark cloud, it hath pleased God to show the sunshine of His glory in victory over His enemies, who are driven into the walls of York, many of their chief officers slain, and all their ordnance and ammunition taken, with small loss (I praise God) on our side. This is all I can now write; resting your assured, FERDINANDO FAIRFAX.

  The letter was dated, said our young minister, from Marston Moor on the evening of Tuesday, that is the day of the battle; and he went on to explain how, and from whom, he had received this letter, and how its authority was secure. But even without this explanation I should have credited the letter, for it sounded so exactly like Lord Fairfax—blunt and lumbering and not very clever but honest, even as he.

  For a moment we were all stunned, and could hardly believe our ears, but then the minister gave out the numbers of the psalms, and we sang, and then we believed the news, and tears rolled down our faces as we sang; Not unto us, O Lord, we sang, and If the Lord had not been on our side, now may Israel say. God knows there were thankful hearts that day, in Bradford!

  10

  SIR THOMAS EARNS A JEWEL

  It was wonderful how the fortunes of our cause looked up after that day, and the fortunes of my own family followed them.

  The Parliament empowered Lord Fairfax to fill up the vacant pulpits in Yorkshire, several being thus vacant because their ministers had left them to join the Royalist forces; and he named Will first as his own chaplain, and then as vicar of Kirklington, a small place in the North Riding. Dear Will rode over to tell me the news, his solemn face beaming; he had all manner of notions to account for his sudden promotion, and I had not the heart to tell him that it probably depended on his being the brother of John Thorpe’s wife. Some few months after, I do not quite remember how many now, the Rector of Adel, that tyrannical Dr. Hitch, was excluded from Adel by an Act of Parliament against pluralities—he already held two benefices and a deanery, elsewhere. This living of Adel was in the gift of a connection of Sir Thomas’s, and it was offered to Will; and so within a year Will and Eliza were back again in the place where they had long ministered, but with fuller authority, and very deeply content they were to be there.

  Then, which I am afraid I cared for more closely, David, having returned to Cambridge, took his degree as Bachelor of Divinity, and so one of my most cherished hopes was fulfilled. In the spring, to my great joy, he received further honours; for the university being now reformed, and upwards of two hundred Royalists expelled therefrom, David was made a Fellow of Clare. David, dear lad, told me in a letter that he was distressed that he had taken another man’s fellowship, even if he were a Royalist; but I wrote in reply pointing out to him how Thomas would attend Cambridge, I hoped, in a few years’ time, and how relieved I was to know that the boy would receive sound doctrine from his tutors, and how many mothers and fathers would feel the same. David’s reply to this was, as soon as he drew some of his Fellow’s stipend, to send money to me by the carrier, for Thomas to take lessons from some near-by minister. This was a great joy to all of us; I put Thomas to study with Mr. Blazet, and he progressed very quickly, and soon read his Greek testament with the best, and began on Hebrew. David sent me the money for it every quarter. I must own that I was guilty, not of a lie but of a suppression of the truth, about this money. It was hard for one of my pride that my neighbours should know, or guess, that my husband sent me nothing towards the family’s upkeep, and when Baume by some casual reference showed that he thought Thomas’s study fees came from John, the truth stuck in my throat and I did not undeceive him, either then or later. This was not kind of me towards David, and I was the more remorseful because David was not apt to be kind to himself. He was much clearer sighted than Will, for instance, about his promotion as Fellow, for in his gentle jesting style he wrote that, although he hoped neither his scholarship nor his zeal would prove unequal to his new state, he feared he owed it less to those qualifications than to a letter John had written on his behalf to the Earl who was the head of the reforming commission. And indeed I think he may have been right, for John’s close connection with Sir Thomas was very well known to that Earl (who was one of the commanders who ran away at Marston), and at that time everybody was eager to pleasure Sir Thomas Fairfax, seeing he had just been appointed Lord General of all the Parliament’s forces.

  It happened in this way. Oliver Cromwell was greatly dissatisfied with the conduct of the war; partly he objected to the Earls who were commanding the Parliament’s forces, thinking them slothful and dilatory and too greatly sympathetic to the King, whom they wished to chastise perhaps but not truly to defeat; and partly to the army itself, which was indeed not one army, but a different army in every county, not well trained to act in unison, and apt to fall away if asked to fight in a part of England not its own. Cromwell attacked the Earls in Parliament, and after a great deal of talk and tribulation, in order to get rid of them without offence, a law was passed they called the Self- Denying Ordinance, which forbade any member of either House to hold an army command. Thus all the Earls were knocked out of it, and Lord Fairfax too, seeing they all sat in the House of Lords, and Cromwell himself who was a member of the House of Commons; but not Sir Thomas, who belonged to neither. And so Sir Thomas had the command and was made the Lord General, which was what Cromwell had been aiming at all the time, for he had fought at Black Tom’s side and knew his worth. I daresay Parliament, which being in London is a long way from Yorkshire, might not have rated Sir Thomas so high, but Cromwell I think urged his abilities with great resolution, and carried the day. Sir Thomas was summoned to London and went there very privately, and then four members of the House of Commons came to fetch him thither, which was a great honour, and he stood at the bar of the House, beyond which only members may pass, and was informed of his appointment by the Speaker. John was one of those in attendance on him then, and saw it all; it was a proud day for him as for Sir Thomas.

  After a little delay Sir Thomas’s commission passed the Lords as well, and then the Lord General went to Windsor, which was appointed as a rendez-vous for all the army, and began to arrange it on a New Model. He had a secretary—a very learned lawyer, though a Yorkshireman I am glad to say—appointed for him by the Parliament, and a Council of Officers, and an Army paymaster, and everything very grand; when I read of all this I thought perhaps John might now come home, but he did not. Sir Thomas and his officers put in a petition to Parliament that Colonel Cromwell might be excepted from the Self-Denying Ordinance, and be made their Lieutenant-General, the second in command; the Parliament h’med and ha’ed a good deal about this, but eventually granted the exception for forty days; then they extended it to three months, and so on, until at last it was forgotten that any exception was needed.

  So Sir Thomas and Cromwell, the Lord General and the Lieutenant-General, set to work, and enlisted this New Model Army, picking their officers and men very carefully, so that they should all be honest godly men, experienced in siege and battle, fighting for their beliefs, and thus very steady and not easily daunted. Captain Hodgson was one of those enlisted, and so was Denton, Sarah’s husband.

  For John’s part, he says in those spring months he never had a full night’s sleep, there was so much to be done. He kept all Sir Thomas’s private accounts, and household accounts, and now Sir Thomas was the Lord General, these were much increased. Moreover, it was John’s duty to keep a courteous check on Lady Fairfax’s expenditure, which was not an easy matter. It was Lady Fairfax’s great delight to burst in upon the General at all hours of the day; it was John’s part to give her no excuse for these incursions, to keep her out without letting her see that she was so kept. Then again, Lady Fairfax had no great liking for Cromwell, whom she suspected—rightly enough, as it proved—of being a sectary, an Independent, who believed that each congregation of the faithful was a law unto itself, and that a man need not square with every Presbyterian ruling in matters of religion to be a true Parliament man, so he were guided by reason and light and faithful to the cause.
Such notions were abhorrent to Lady Fairfax, whose father had brought her up in strictly Presbyterian ways. It was best, therefore, to keep Lady Fairfax and the Lieutenant-General apart, when that could be effected. Then there was so much writing and figuring to do, enlisting afresh so many thousand men and providing them with arms and coats and horses and commanders, that everyone about Sir Thomas was pressed into this service, and sat at it day and night. But they all laboured very steadily and eagerly, seeing the great advantage of the New Model to the cause, and Sir Thomas set them a high example of unremitting toil; and so by the midst of the springtime the army was on the move—I remember on one of the monthly fast days recently appointed by the Parliament for remembering our cause before God, we prayed for His merciful assistance to this New Army now on march.

  His assistance was granted indeed, for the New Model swept all before it, and that very rapidly. There was soon a great battle in the middle of England, at a hamlet called Naseby, when the Royalists were so totally routed that they never raised their heads again in this war.

  My John was nearly taken prisoner in this battle—a hazard that makes me cold still to think of. He and the General’s secretary, being commanded to remain behind with the baggage waggons to care for the General’s papers and the soldiers’ pay, were waiting there anxiously, talking to the commander of the guard in charge of the waggons, when a small party of horse came up at the gallop. Their leader was a tall man of dark complexion, and wore a red montero, so the commander of the guard mistook him for the General, and approached him hat in hand, meaning to ask him how the day went. But John suddenly shouted at him, for the horseman was not Sir Thomas at all but Prince Rupert, so the commander drew back and gave the order to his guard to load; the Prince laughed and called out to know whether they would have quarter; they all shouted: “No!” and the guard gave fire, whereupon the Cavaliers galloped off.

  This incident was related in a pamphlet published at that time, of a letter describing the battle writ by the General’s secretary; I did not know then that John was with him by the waggons, but heard it later from John. It gave me a strange feeling, however, to read in print of a red montero like the General’s, for I remembered Sir Thomas’s red montero so well, and the exclamations Lady Fairfax had made upon his lack of it, at our house-door on the day of Adwalton Moor. I felt as if we Thorpes were illuminated by Sir Thomas’s glory, with being so close to him, and I own I held my head a little higher for the pleasure and pride of having the acquaintance of the Lord General of the Parliament’s armies and the victor of Naseby. As for Sam, his roguish little face wore a perpetual grin from joy at his hero’s triumph; the clothiers of the district made quite a pet of him, from eagerness to hear his stories of the General, and many a one tried to buy Sir Thomas’s boots from him at a high price—tried, but tried in vain. There began to be many prints of the portrait of Sir Thomas published, and Sam, who earned a few pence sometimes by running errands and holding horses and the like at Leeds and Bradford markets, where he went with Isaac Baume, put these aside thriftily and bought himself such a print. It showed the wound got at Marston Moor on Sir Thomas’s left cheek, which for some reason gave Sam especial pleasure.

  I was glad of my son’s admiration for Sir Thomas, for such an admiration, provided it be for a man of the right kind, is right and proper in a lad and brings out the best in him. But even had I not been glad, I could not have scolded him for it, when Parliament itself displayed an admiration quite as strong. So pleased were both Houses with their General’s success at Naseby that they made him a very noble gift: a fair jewel set with diamonds of great value, to be hung round his neck on a blue ribbon. I have seen this jewel—yes, I have seen it, though in very different times from those when it was given. It was a kind of locket, made of two plates of gold. On one plate was a picture in coloured work, enamel I think, of Sir Thomas on the chestnut mare from his own stud, which he rode at Naseby, in front of a distant battle; on the other plate a picture of the House of Commons. Inside, there was a presentation of the battle of Naseby, and Non Nobis on a scroll. Indeed it was a very rich fine handsome jewel, and beautiful as well; after I had seen it I determined to copy some part of it with my needle, and so Sir Thomas and his mare and the battle and the scroll live in the set work on our best chair to-day. It was the last piece of fine needlework I undertook.

  This Naseby jewel cost seven hundred pounds to make, they say. Whatever it cost, its price could not reach the value of Sir Thomas’s services to English liberty—I do not need my Sam to tell me that!

  11

  A ROYALIST COMPOUNDS

  That year we had a heavy visitation of the plague in the West Riding.

  Some said that the Scots, who were then quartered on us, had brought it with them, but as to that I do not know. Wherever there is war, there is plague, it seems to me, from what I have read in the history books, though why it should be so I do not altogether understand. I was greatly troubled as the tale of deaths mounted, the more so as I remembered how it had been said before, of the plague in which old Mrs. Thorpe died, that the infection was carried in a pack of wool. Sam was always busy sorting wool, and then too he visited constantly at the markets, where, many people being gathered together, the infection was apt to spread. I wearied myself with thinking what was best to be done, and when one hot August week the deaths in Bradford mounted to the number of twenty-five, I took a resolution, and at breakfast one day told Thomas and Sam that they should go that forenoon to their uncle’s in Adel, and stay there till the plague was passed. They stared at me in silence.

  “Leave The Breck?” growled Sam.

  “If my father came home and found it empty, he would be greatly disappointed,” said Thomas in his clear gentle way. “Besides, there are the oats to harvest.”

  “The Breck would not be empty—I should never dream of leaving The Breck empty,” I explained hurriedly. “I shall stay here, and Chris, alas, is not old enough to leave me, so he must stay too.”

  “You mean, you will stay here alone with Chris?” queried Thomas, his eyes wide.

  “Mother, you must be daft!” said Sam.

  “Now, Sam,” said I: “You know I do not like you to use such homely expressions.”

  For indeed this was one of my troubles at that time, though a small one: Sam, being about so much with Isaac Baume, amid merchants and weavers and clothiers, was growing very homely in his speech and ways. He said d’you see, and daft, and choose how, and so on, and pronounced his words in a very rough homely fashion, such as we Clarksons had never been accustomed to. I tried to correct him, but I did not like to be always on the lad’s back, as we say, for indeed it was not his fault, but that of his company. And then Sam was such a good, stout, warm-hearted lad, so sure and steady in everything he undertook, and we all depended so much on him in all practical matters, that I had not the heart to scold him. Although at this time he was still a mere child, he was already very skilful in all matters concerning cloth, eager to learn more and impatient when Isaac Baume could not answer his questions. “If mi feyther were whoam,” growled Sam on these occasions, saying the words my father and home thus broadly to express his general irritation: “If mi feyther were whoam, he’d show yon Braume summat.” Then I would make a remonstrance to him, saying how kind Mr. Baume had been to us, and how vexed his father would be to hear him speaking thus roughly. “He’d be more vexed if he saw Baume’s cloth,” said Sam with a twinkle in his eye, teasing me. I sometimes troubled myself the more over Sam’s speech because it differed increasingly from Thomas’s, and it would have been intolerable to me that my sons should be unfriendly or contemptuous one of the other. But in that matter my uneasiness was wasted; though Thomas became more the fluent-speaking scholar, and Sam the Yorkshire clothier, every day, they did not trouble that they differed, but respected each other’s qualities and remained staunch friends. With Chris too they were unfailingly kind and loving; I noticed with a quiet pleasure how Sam’s speech grew less rough, and T
homas’s less learned, whenever they addressed their baby brother.

  “Well, Mother,” said Sam now in a reasonable tone, “if you can tell me a better word nor daft for what you said, I’ll use it.”

  “You are in danger, here, Sam,” I said: “The plague grows every day. At Adel you would be out of the infection.”

  “Let Thomas go to Adel and study his book with Uncle Will instead of Mr. Blazet,” said Sam. “I shall not leave you, Mother.”

  “I shall not leave The Breck till Father comes,” said Thomas quietly.

  “To leave you and Chris! The idea! I never heard such nonsense! Daft, I call it,” grumbled Sam. “You don’t want your brothers to leave you, do you, Chris lovey?”

  Chris, understanding, as children do, by the tone though not the words, that some reply was expected of him, beat his spoon on the table very heartily.

  “That’s a good lad,” said Sam, delighted. “No, you don’t want us to leave you. No.” He shook his head gravely, and Chris imitated him, laughing joyously, so that it was pretty to see them together. Indeed Chris was the sweetest, merriest child, and the quickest in understanding, I ever saw.

  So we all stayed on at The Breck together. But the plague in Bradford grew and grew that autumn; the deaths amounted to two hundred in September, and still increased. With what anxiety I watched Sam daily, to see if he looked heavy or haggard or had signs of the fatal bubo on him, I shall never forget; it left a heavy mark on me. Then at last one day Baume, looking very grave, announced that he thought we must cease from our cloth trade for a while, it was too dangerous. This was a relief to me, though it would make us much the poorer; we both determined, the Baumes and ourselves, to stay on our own land and not draw nigh to anyone till the danger should be overpast; and Sam put a chain on our gate and built it up with furze and twigs, in order that Chris, who was growing very swift on his feet though uncertain, and was of a roving mischievous disposition so that with the work of the house to do I could scarcely manage to keep an eye on him, should not stray out into the lane and run the hazard of meeting some person bearing the infection.