Rebels and traitors

Chapter Twenty-Six — The Midlands: 1643-44

When Rowan Tew met his sister at Henley-in-Arden he decided the best way to avoid trouble was to rename her. So she became Joseph.

It was a few days after she fled alone from Birmingham, back after that terrible Easter. Her brother had recognised her instantly from the truculent set of her body and her pale, strained face as she approached, even though after nearly fifteen miles she was limping badly. Her bare feet were cut and bleeding. At the last hamlet where she begged for food, someone had given her rags for bandages but to little effect. She had found that in these tiny groups of cottages, shaken by Prince Rupert's passage a few days before, if she gave news of the greater assaults wreaked on Birmingham, people would provide her with food. She told her stories weeping; real tears came easily.

When the group of ragged cavalier soldiers rose from hedgerows either side of her, she thought her time was up.

'Who are you for?'

'Parliament and the King.'

'Wrong answer!' Although there was no glimmer of lit matchcord, she heard the click of a musket being cocked.

With the band of whiskery layabouts levelling swords and guns, her spirit faded too much for resistance. Once she would have yelled, thrown stones, punched and spat and bit, then run away faster than anyone would bother to pursue her. Fortunately, one of the louts turned out to be her brother.

Rowan was the young Tew who had volunteered for the royal army the year before, just after the war started, when King Charles passed through Birmingham. As their father had said at the time, Rowan wanted the rations and the plunder. He looked unchanged in the six months since his sister had last seen him: still wide-eyed with fake innocence, ready to whine about bad luck, always out for easy pickings. Thin as a pea-stick under a filthy baggy shirt, he had a long fall of black hair and a new scrubby beard with a barely adequate moustache. His boots, which were too big and no doubt stolen, made him stagger with his legs apart, while sashes, sword-hangers and rattling bandoliers were slung in a carefree fashion over his bony shoulders.

The other soldiers cursed and dropped back into the damp hedges to resume their tobacco pipes. Rowan was eager to brag about his life: the free uniform, the daily food allowance, the drink, the access to weapons, the excitement, the untroubled life. He had instinctively fallen in with a bad crowd. In a disreputable army, the former vagabond had quickly found the most dissolute comrades among whom to burrow like a white maggot. A rascal from birth, he was now in his element, plundering and bullying. He and his fellows claimed to be an antiguard, men authorised by Prince Rupert to remain behind to control Henley-in-Arden; they were in effect deserters. No one had missed them — or if their absence was noticed, nothing had been done about it. To spend all day threatening farmers and robbing passers-by, then to drink the profits while singing cavalier ditties around a campfire every night, seemed a glorious life.

'Come and join us!'

'Do women become soldiers?'

'It happens.'

'In ballads.'

'More often than you think. You have to pass as a man.'

Rowan Tew realised that his sister would not make a camp-follower. She could neither cook nor launder nor nurse the wounded. She was no whore either, or not yet. He supposed she would come to it. To him, who had known her from childhood, she offered no prospects — otherwise he would have cleaned her up and organised a rapid sale on the spot to any man who was willing to give him sixpence for her. He gazed at the thin, undersized, immature figure, grey-faced from lack of nourishment, bunched in dirty old clothes. Though he was a lad with more imagination than sense, his sister was so unprepossessing he knew he could not pimp her. Family feeling was not dead, however. 'Damme! I shall hack off your hair this minute; you must play the boy and come along with me. I'll take care of you. You shall have britches and a buff coat and march bravely and swagger. What do you want to be called?'

'What girl's name was given to me when I was born?' demanded the former Kinchin with urgency. 'Do you remember?'

Rowan, the elder by about four years, thought of any girls' names he ever heard and then claimed expansively, 'Araminta!'

'It would be Mary or Joan, I think,' she corrected him severely.

'Maudie, maybe… well now you cannot have that. You shall be Joseph.'

So for a year and over, Joseph Tew served in the King's army.

The laggards skulked around Henley for a week, poaching deer and scaring milkmaids, then just when the milkmaids were starting to warm to them and flirt, along came a small party of Royalist cavalry from Dudley who rounded them up before the women of Warwickshire had managed to catch even half of their fleas and foul diseases. Most were ordered to march north to the siege of Lichfield; whether they would ever arrive was doubtful. Pasty-looking Rowan and his badly limping 'brother' were deemed unfit, so they were carried off westwards in a provender wagon to the garrison at Dudley Castle. There the governor was Colonel Thomas Leveson, a more active officer than they liked. Somehow they passed muster. They kept to themselves, and nobody enquired about them too closely. Many of the other soldiers were French or Irish, foreign-speakers, stuck in their own tight cliques. Officers noticed that the unit had acquired two rat-eyed, bone-idle, light-fingered tykes, but most common ranks in the Royalist army were scavengers and although the Tews hung back when action started, they never refused direct orders. So long as bodies marched where he needed them to be, the colonel was satisfied.

Castle life suited them. They had shelter, rations, company and instruction in the use of arms. The Royalist daily subsistence allowance was a luxury: two pounds of bread, one pound of meat and two bottles of beer. All their thinking was done for them. They even had leisure — so much leisure that among the rubbish which the soldiers in the Dudley Castle garrison threw down their latrines were gaming counters and animal-gut condoms. To have latrines at all was a novelty to the Tews; they had to learn how to use them. In their own minds, all they needed to do now was sit tight to the end of the war, when — if they could carry off their guns on disbandment — they would be equipped for life as highway robbers.

For Joseph, there was thinking to do. Women who passed themselves off as soldiers must stay endlessly alert. Their daily lives were geared to hiding their identities. Joseph had begun the fraud while grubby and gaunt enough not to seem too delicate; the other men at Dudley soon became used to their high-voiced, soft-cheeked, slightly built colleague. With regular food he grew taller and filled out; although breasts were a problem, they blossomed slowly. Breasts, especially adolescent ones, could be squashed flat beneath the firm heavy leather of a military buff coat. With care, monthly courses could be hidden and the necessary rags washed in private. A loner, who had always roamed independently, was able to cope with the intense secrecy of living in disguise. After a whole young life of solitude, keeping one's counsel came easily. Nature had issued one challenge, which from time to time became pressing: no woman could urinate in public and stay hidden. But like disguised drummer-boys and powder-monkeys throughout history, Joseph Tew found ways to manage.

Any street urchin knew how to bluff.

In December 1643, when the Tews had been living at Dudley Castle for six months, Colonel Leveson received a request for aid from a prominent Midlands landowner who believed Parliamentary sympathisers were planning an attack on his house. The colonel felt obliged to respond to an irascible local Justice of the Peace, a man with connections at court and who had entertained King Charles in that very house. Colonel Leveson reluctantly spared forty musketeers. They marched, grumbling, to the great hall in question; they were told it was five miles away though found it nearer ten. They were not surprised to be lied to, for that is how soldiers are generally cajoled.

On arrival, their discontent mellowed. It was a grand billet. While looking forward to an extremely comfortable Christmas in warm and grandiose surroundings, they began to fortify the place. Despite his danger, the haughty owner only reluctantly agreed to let them cut down trees to clear a line of fire from the house and dig protective earthworks in the deer park of which he was so proud. Like many landowners he was torn between trying to preserve ordinary life and standing up for his political beliefs.

The troops were quartered like bats in the attics, which were airy and luxurious, being barely ten years old; few ghosts and hardly any spiders had had time to take up residence. Though the ceilings sloped, there were fine views across the three hundred acres of parkland that surrounded the house. They would see the enemy coming.

The great house was built to the highest standards. It aimed to impress inferiors — and its scowling owner reckoned pretty well everyone around him was an inferior. For the Tews this was an ironic destination: they had come to Aston Hall near Birmingham. It was the home of black-browed Sir Thomas Holte, whose enclosure of local commons when he was creating this majestic house and its huge new park had dispossessed their family.

Once indoors, Rowan and Joseph were staggered by the size of the house, with its great hall, several parlours, dining room and withdrawing room, enormous long gallery, endless corridors and series of bedchambers, cavernous kitchen with wet- and dry-larders, wine and beer cellars and endless stables and outbuildings. Aston Hall sat in lush parkland, created for hunting and for keeping the people at a distance; the house had high Jacobean gables and chimneys, elegant plaster strapwork ceilings, expensive fireplaces, fabulous carved woodwork and a profusion of expensive windows. The quantities of furniture and personal possessions were beyond anything the Tews had ever imagined. Even after large civil war losses, when Sir Thomas Holte died, his belongings would be inventoried on a scroll eleven feet long. The Tews wandered in amazement, sniggering at the Holte family behind their richly clad backs and pilfering small items whenever they could get away with it.

The Parliamentary forces arrived on Boxing Day. This was their reprisal for Prince Rupert's attack on Birmingham and they were hoping for revenge in the form of money and plate. They took up positions in the grounds, planted their standards, then in the language of war sent 'to demand the house for the use of the King and Parliament'.

Sieges had their own chivalry. Once the enemy turned up and formally 'summoned' a town or house — announced that they had come to take you over — it was vital to refuse surrender at least once, and in a robust fashion. To give up too easily meant disgrace and court martial. There was a fine knack to choosing the correct moment to submit with honour, in order to obtain 'terms'. Terms meant the defeated side would be allowed to lay down their weapons, march out and avoid cold-blooded slaughter. If they had fought tenaciously, they might be allowed to keep their arms and leave with their colours flying, though that was recognition of extreme courage. It was rare, and it took a merciful winning commander. More often, if the besieging commander had been seriously annoyed at any point, he would hang a few of his enemies just to relieve his feelings.

At Aston Hall, the Royalists answered the summons by defiantly retorting that they would not yield while they had a man alive. Sir Thomas Holte could be confident a man of his rank would be spared whatever happened.

It took three days for resistance to disintegrate. There were twelve hundred rebels, who had brought artillery. On the first day, Tuesday, the attackers made play with their cannon, doing serious damage to the house's interior, especially the fine dog-leg staircase with its bulbous carved balusters. The cannon-fire terrified the defenders. Amidst the smoke and noise and crashing shot, the Holtes, their servants and soldiers took refuge in the lower rooms. Next day, the attackers assailed the parish church, close to the house, where some of Colonel Leveson's Dudley troops had been out-stationed. Churches made very defensible strongholds, but it was quickly stormed. The Parliamentarians took French and Irish prisoners, including one female camp-follower who, in the enemy's tradition, was viciously abused as a whore.

The Tews heard the shouts and rattle of fire when the church fell. They were already quaking at cannon balls crashing through the house, and the smell of smoke and panic became too much for them. When enemy soldiers broke through the earthworks on the lawns, the young Tews passed their guns to servants and hid together under a great table in the entrance hall. Parliamentary troops soon burst into the house through its tall, elegant windows. As showers of broken glass fell inwards, large booted men swung through window cavities, shouting and brandishing swords. The defenders cried for quarter. It was granted.

Peering out from their hiding place, Rowan and Joseph then saw some trigger-happy Royalist soldiers kept firing anyway. Two rebels were shot in the face. At the sight of stricken comrades with blood pouring from their mouths, the Parliamentarians went mad. They killed and wounded twenty defenders before being brought under control by officers. Joseph and Rowan Tew cringed against the great carved table leg.

'Play dead Rowan!'

'Who needs to act it? We're done for!'

Eventually the shooting stopped. The attackers had better ways to enjoy themselves than wasting ammunition on a cowed foe. They were here to pillage goods and to capture anyone of quality who could be heavily fined and ransomed. Forty useful prisoners were rounded up. As soldiers rushed past their bolthole to stampede upstairs and search the house, the Tew brothers ventured out into the open, two disingenuous mites holding pieces of white cloth (they had sensibly equipped themselves with these tokens). 'Joseph' considered disclosure, but was deterred by how cruelly the woman previously taken was reviled as a whore. Royalist camp-followers risked mutilation and cold-blooded murder, especially if they were believed to be Irish. Women were hanged as rebels and spies almost as often as men. To be in disguise would not win favour.

The Tews instinctively knew how to pose with the typical hangdog relief of surrendering soldiers. They were stripped of weapons, hats, belts, boots, britches and coats — though not deprived of their verminous shirts, or Joseph would certainly have been discovered. While this was happening, they saw Sir Thomas Holte, a furious old man in his seventies, dragged from the house, bare-chested in the December cold as he had been stripped of even his fine cambric shirt. He and his family were taken away for special ransom. Lesser prisoners were strung together in a line, their hands bound behind them with matchcord, and marched to the church. There they were insulted, threatened and starved. Then the abject prisoners were offered the usual inducement: a dungeon in Warwick Castle, for ever — or repent of their Royalist delinquency, turn and fight for Parliament.

Some hung back, genuinely hating puritans. Joseph and Rowan Tew immediately swapped sides.

The new Roundheads were equipped with coats, shirts, stockings, shoes, britches and Monmouth caps, and allocated another daily allowance (threepence a day). Once they had been judged docile and trustworthy, they were armed with swords and guns made in Birmingham. They regarded these weapons as inferior, but for thruppence a day, plus a roof over their heads, they would put up with anything. Rowan could ride. Most horse thieves could stay safely on anything with four legs. He was given a mount, then appointed to be a light dragoon. His diminutive younger 'brother', who lacked the strength even to support a long musket properly, would be allotted camp duties. They were assigned to a new garrison which had recently been created for Parliament under Colonel John Fox.

Fox ran an irregular, roistering, free-ranging, unsupervised organisation that would eventually be disbanded under a cloud. Two guttersnipes could not have found themselves a more congenial position.

Warwickshire in the civil war was mostly held by Parliament, but a Royalist bloc lay to the west, including all of Wales; its rough boundary ran from Chester down through Shrewsbury and Worcester to Tewkesbury and on to the West Country. The district around Stratford-upon-Avon was Royalist, which provided a safe corridor when the King obtained Welsh recruits. The Midlands were constantly crisscrossed by Prince Rupert. His efforts early in 1643 had achieved their objective: the Queen's convoy of soldiers and ammunition wagons left York and passed safely south, bypassing Birmingham, though resting overnight nearby at the Saracen's Head in the Queen's personal manor of King's Norton. The next day Her Majesty arrived at Stratford-upon-Avon, where she was an overnight guest of Shakespeare's daughter, Susannah Hall, at New Place. There Henrietta Maria was joined by Rupert, and four days later met King Charles and progressed into Oxford.

The Royalist Lord Denbigh's death at Birmingham changed the balance of power in Warwickshire. Although Parliament then lost Lord Brooke at Lichfield, the new Lord Denbigh fought for Parliament. This Denbigh replaced Brooke in charge of the Midlands Association: Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Shropshire. His Committee of Public Safety headquarters were at Coventry. He also had a large base at Warwick Castle, so strong that it was never besieged. Wherever there were suitable large houses he set out to take them from Royalists, fortify the buildings and establish garrisons which would control the countryside, raise money and recruit men to attack other Royalist strongholds.

Some of the rebels in these areas had curious origins. Most colourful were the 'Morelanders' in remote upland country in north-east Staffordshire. Armed only with birding-guns, cudgels and scythes, these shaggy turf-cutters had banded together, giving their leader the sinister title of 'the Grand Juryman'. Their boldest exploit was a doomed attempt to drive the Royalists from Stafford.

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 famous 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.