Rebels and traitors

Chapter Forty-Four — Pelham Hall: 1646-47

Against her expectations, the ending of the siege of Oxford brought Juliana Lovell a period of happiness as a mother and wife. For a short time she feared that Orlando had left England. Prince Rupert sailed to France; his brother Maurice to the Netherlands. At this point, the contempt Lovell had always felt for Rupert's generalship, so often openly expressed, acted against him. He knew he had no chance of his name being put on the list of friends who received passports; he would be thanked for his service and told to save himself. Although Juliana did not immediately know it, Lovell decided to remain in England.

Being Lovell, he wasted no time on complaints. Without telling Juliana (though he did leave her a tender letter — albeit only a paragraph) he found an opportunity to escape from Oxford. After the New Model Army arrived, she had to submit to interrogation. She threw herself into the role of long-suffering wife, abandoned to her fate by a delinquent husband; she managed to bite her lip, while looking frightened but courageous. She did not need to weep; sensitive to upset, both her children were screaming so loudly in the kitchen that they were visibly disturbing the officer who questioned Juliana in the small parlour. And when did you last see your husband?'

She played simple. 'When he went out for a scuttle of logs and never came in again.'

When?'

'Certainly last Thursday week. I had my blue gown on, with the rent in the hem, and I do remember the meat was overdone at dinner.. '

Clearly this prattling woman posed no danger. Equally clearly, she could not be allowed to continue to occupy such a grand house.

'Oh! Will you turn me out on the streets with my little ones?'

'Have you no friends to go to?'

'I am an orphan. My foolish husband has been denounced by his good Parliamentarian family. I was married just as the war began and I have never known a settled life or the normal joys of peace.'

'Well, there will be peace now!' the captain assured her sanctimoniously, as he quartered a large number of his soldiers in her house.

Enduring the enemy in her home was a bad experience. Fortunately it did not last. To Juliana's amazement, Lovell reappeared in St Aldate's, without any explanation. She had to stop him losing his temper at the New Model Army soldiers, but by warning him he was on a wanted list, she managed to keep him hidden. She wondered how the subterfuge could continue; however that was not Lovell's plan. Wanting to use his family as a cover, he had come to fetch them. While the soldiers were out on duty, he produced a cart onto which with all-too-easy furtiveness he began to load their possessions. They owned more than when they arrived in Oxford as newlyweds. As well as purchases and the results of Lovell's plundering, they had the Mcllwaines' Continental furniture.

And damme, whose terrible tuck is this?' Lovell had discovered a sword under their bed. It was the blade he had picked up at Birmingham. 'Have you taken a half-baked forgetful lover I don't know about?'

'You yourself gave it me for my protection, dearest.' Juliana had been hoping to leave it behind. Whether or not he remembered the weapon, Orlando grunted and insisted that they bring it with them. He made a few feints with the blade, and shuddered fastidiously before packing it away.

'You must be curious about our sudden move,' Orlando then acknowledged to Juliana, as she and her maid Mercy Tulk manhandled a court cupboard out of the back door.

'Oh, I fully understand,' his wife murmured, controlling her breath and her sense of injustice as her husband merely busied himself counting dining chairs. The cupboard had bruised Mercy's hip and fallen on Juliana's foot. "Were it night, this would be a moonlit flit.'

Lovell looked put out.

He had found them somewhere to live, a small farmhouse on the estate of a Royalist, Sir Lysander Pelham of Pelham Hall in Sussex. Mercy Tulk refused to go with them, preferring to stay in the town she knew; she would return to her old mistress, the midwife. Whatever happened to faithful servants who would travel with you anywhere? wondered Juliana, though she knew the answer.

They then lived in Sussex for over a year. Disillusioned by Royalist failure, or so he said, Lovell played no part in the last flares of resistance that Fairfax and the New Model mopped up in the West and Wales. The King was at Newcastle, then Holdenby House. So long as Charles toyed with agreeing to impose Presbyterianism, he only antagonised Lovell. Lovell hated any authoritarian government.

'Should you then join this new radical movement, dearest? Become a Leveller?'

He roared with indignation at that too.

Once the Levellers seemed to be holding sway in the Parliamentarian army, Juliana hardly dared bring a news-sheet into the house. Lovell procured them anyway at the nearest market town, winding himself into a fury over the numerous reports of Remonstrances and Declarations, like a man picking at a half-healed scab, unable to leave it alone. 'Damme, I know my father and my brother Ralph will go into ecstasies at this fantasy of birthrights.'

'I believe the Levellers claim we are all born equal under God. Would you not like to have natural parity with Ralph?' asked Juliana wickedly.

'Sweetheart, I am equal to Ralph any day!'

'You have not suffered like him.'

'Ah, Juliana, do not hold my luck in the field against me. Estates cannot be divided up; it would diminish them.' This was an intriguing glimpse of Lovell as the scion of landed gentry. He had no bitterness; he shrugged and made his own way. That he went off abroad at only sixteen to do it was simply precocious. The pity was that he broke with his family. Their differences were almost nothing to do with politics, though Lovell was becoming more and more the dedicated Royalist and the next phase of his career would confirm that.

Sir Lysander Pelham, their landlord and patron, looked like a barrel on legs, though some of it was due to enormous folds of clothing on a man with short thighs. He wore a huge hat with a sweeping brim, burgeoning with white ostrich feathers, and rough-hewn cavalry boots of enormous width, over which he was prone to tripping, especially when in sack. This was most of the time. Calling for a cup of sack was the noble Lysander's idea of conversation. When he wanted to sound cosmopolitan he roared for a gobletto di sachietti — a phrase he claimed as his own invention, proudly holding the opinion that the English knew more about foreign languages than the foolish foreigners who spoke them.

Among country squires, Sir Lysander did verge on sophistication; he possessed rags of Latin, Greek and several European tongues, knew a quarter of a treatise on mathematics and a glimmer of astronomy, was haunted by memories of books he had half-read twenty years ago, and had once met Sir Francis Bacon (who was by then extremely elderly and mistook him for a cook). Sir Lysander had a heart of gold — though, he claimed, very little money. Seven generations of Pelhams had spent their lives in royal service, adroitly dodging all changes of religion and monarch so that not one ever fell out of favour or was beheaded. By never entertaining any monarch at the Hall, they also managed not to go bankrupt, though since it never received extravagant modernisation to please royalty, their home did now look old-fashioned and rundown.

When the civil war began, Sir Lysander chose his side in the same spirit as Sir Ralph Verney, who had famously explained:

'… for my part I do not like the quarrel, and do heartily wish that the King would yield and consent to what they desire; so that my conscience is only concerned in honour and in gratitude to follow my master. I have eaten his bread and served him near thirty years, and will not do so base a thing as to forsake him.'

Lysander had devoted himself to the Royalist cause from the day King Charles set up his standard at Nottingham. When the royal standard fell down that stormy night and everyone else hid away in their lodgings, the Sussex knight had stood grappling with the pole and striving to hold the soaking wet flag upright for two hours, notwithstanding the rain and darkness and the fact that his cries for sack to sustain him went unheeded. Once he recovered from the ague he caught that dark night, he fought valiantly at every skirmish and battle that presented itself before his regiment — which Lovell described to Juliana as 'flybitten as any other farming tenants mounted on carthorses' — until his great faithful charger lay down exhausted at Naseby. Weeping, Sir Lysander then announced, 'If my dear Smudge can no longer bear me, it is a sign of God's will that I must retire from the fray. Henceforth I shall support my beloved sovereign only with my prayers.'

He was a widower. The Pelham line would die out. All four of Sir Lysander's sons — Phillip, Jeremy, Hengist and Little Barty, who was only fifteen — had perished fighting for the King. Juliana suspected that Lovell was hoping to ingratiate himself so he might be made the knight's heir. If so, he had reckoned without Sir Lysander's forthright daughters, Bessy and Susannah, not to mention their husbands. The girls arrived in carriages from different directions, each nursing an infant at the breast and towing a cowed spouse. 'Pulled by the nose!' muttered Sir Lysander to Lovell. 'I would get more spunk from Hercules and Ioleus.'

Hercules and Ioleus were his two white-faced bullocks, all he had left of a once-great herd after comprehensive plundering by one army and another. His trees were felled, his horses and cattle stolen, his palings broken down, his barns raided and his house robbed out, with even the pillows slit open and their feathers scattered over half the county. The two bullocks had been somehow left behind and became rather close friends. Sir Lysander explained to Juliana that they had lofty ancient Greek ideals and earthy ancient Greek habits. 'The love between males, which is unselfish, philosophical — and requires from the parties some adaptability in performance.'

Juliana cast her eyes down. 'I never heard of this before!' 'Then you never were in military quarters, madam.' Untrue. Juliana thought back pensively to when Fairfax's New Model Army shared her house in Oxford. All she remembered were constant filth from muddy boots, queues day and night for the overflowing privy, endless demands for bread and butter and the men's tireless stares of disapproval for her and her little household. They kept Mercy and her out of the kitchen while they let the fire go out. When they wanted to make Juliana feel a sinful malignant, they piously sang psalms for hours, once trapping her son Tom in the room with them, until he bit a sergeant. The worst of it all had been the necessity to endure what was done. To complain risked more bad behaviour and uncertain official reprisals.

Now life was better. Although Orlando, who was ostensibly the knight's estate manager, often came in with his boots on after tramping through farmyards, Juliana only had to mop up after his one pair. She had trained the boys to sit on a bench and pull off their dirty shoes when they were called in for dinner. Tom and Val ran free in chicken-run and orchard, while as a family who lived in their own accommodation, generally they were left to their own devices.

Attempts at household regulation still foundered on Orlando's free-booting habits. Juliana did sometimes wonder how such a man could have been a competent soldier and whether he saw their life here only as some kind of game. He came and went in disorderly bursts. He continued to excite their sons at inappropriate moments, taking them from Juliana's lap when she was quietly reading to them, then when he remembered business of his own needing attention, he abruptly passed them back to her, stirred up and fractious.

Thomas was approaching four, Valentine had had his first birthday just after Oxford fell and was now unsteadily toddling. When Sir Lysander took Orlando on a trip to London (for reasons that were not quite clear), toys for which both boys were far too young were brought back. Given the warlike period, it was no surprise when Tom received a gun and even Val was given a flat-cast pewter cavalier, pressed out of metal. 'I won't have my boys play with dolls, Juliana!'

'Valentine is still in baby skirts, Orlando; he loves his doll.'

'Nonsense. Look at the exquisite detailing. I had a ship of the same type, with rigging and cannon and a wavy waterline — '

Val's soldier, on which he soon cut his lip, was one-dimensional, whereas Tom's copper toy musket was fully modelled, with imitation scroll motifs and a tiny trigger. It really fired. For a mother it was a nightmare. The harder Juliana tried to hide the hideous little weapon, the more Orlando conspired with Thomas and made her out to be a spoilsport. Fortunately when the toy misfired, it was Orlando who had it and was burned in the hand — after which he banned the gun and gave it away to an ostler's child. (Juliana found the ostler and warned him of the danger, but he had been in the Earl of Essex's infantry and told her he had spiked it and made all safe; his sneer was telling.) Tom cried for four days. Juliana was left to deal with that.

Life, however, was better than she had ever known before. Perhaps qualms made her suspect she was only playing at house, yet Juliana knew how to savour even a situation she distrusted. Since she married five years before, she had been accustomed to insecurity. Now here they were, all alive and together. She took what she could. Even to be wrangling with her husband over whether carrots should be glazed with parsley butter was a joy, infinitely preferable to wondering which battle he was in and whether he was dead or wounded. All the same, she wondered if she must spend the rest of her days feeling that every place they lived in was just a temporary stop on the way to a remote destination they would never reach.

Juliana was curious about how her husband had discovered Sir Lysander Pelham, and why Pelham had taken him up. She could not quite square the tale that Orlando was acting as an estate manager — when there must be plenty of men in the countryside who were better qualified. Sir Lysander certainly liked to share a drink with Orlando in the evening and would sometimes summon him to the hall for that purpose — a source of contention when Orlando came home the worse for wear. Juliana said little, because they needed the patronage.

Other men visited the hall, presumably friends of Sir Lysander. Juliana never met them.

Finding an occupation posed a problem for her husband. He was not suited to endure penurious exile at the royal court in Paris. There would be no pay, he spoke no French, and hanging about a cold chateau on the fringes of Queen Henrietta's retinue would be as boring for him as for his wife, assuming she went with him — which was never discussed. A professional soldier all his life, either Orlando now must find himself a new war, or he must buckle down to a civilian occupation, untrained and inexperienced. That he had fallen into this niche at Pelham Hall was as lucky as it was surprising — all the more so since England was awash with disbanded and retired soldiers, all desperate for employment. All claimed to be obedient to discipline, good at man-management, trained in horse-husbandry, loyal, hardened, healthy and, naturally, expert shots. Once the New Model Army was disbanded, this could only grow worse. Sussex was a Parliamentarian county and would have many returning soldiers.

In truth Sir Lysander seemed almost fonder of Juliana than Orlando. He was a kindly man and an appreciator of women. Telling her about Hercules and Ioleus, the bullock lovers, occurred because he could see Juliana had more sense of humour than her husband and indeed enjoyed curiosities, unlike the rather straight Orlando. Orlando thought himself a lively fellow with a racy past, but Juliana was more observant and had a better ear for an anecdote. If she baked an almond tart, Sir Lysander would willingly discuss its finer points with her. If one of her boys had a chill, he suggested remedies. He took her on walks, showing her how to identify edible plants and mushrooms. She rapidly learned on those walks not to dally to be helped through gates or over stiles, lest she be pinned to them and forced to notice a virile erection that advertised why English knights of the shire generally had long pedigrees. Juliana was taller than the knight and had faster legs, should running for home become necessary. But it never really came to that. She was never afraid of him.

He knew that she read. Orlando had always boasted that his Juliana was a great reader. She thought of herself more as a needlewoman, but her father had taught her a love of books. Sir Lysander presented her with his late wife's book of recipes and household management. 'Well, it will save Bessy and Susannah tearing it in half.' He then brought her a First Folio Shakespeare one day, simply because he thought she would enjoy it. 'A gift.' He shrugged. 'I never look at it, but you will gain pleasure from it.'

She did. In particular, she discovered Shakespearean heroines: their wisdom, wit, grounded good sense and intrepid bravery, their love for men in all their mastery, mystery and folly. Had he noticed, Orlando Lovell might have thought it ominous that Juliana admired Viola, Rosalind and Harry Hotspur's rumbustious wife, Kate Percy. The ladies in cavalier love lyrics were lofty objects of devotion, yet they were praised more for their clothes, especially fine silks and lawns that lay awry as if tumbled by lovers, than for their readiness to climb into britches, taunt men and take on fate. In the civil war, even the doughty matrons who defended castles were seen as handy to have, in order to preserve an absent husband's home, yet unnatural.

Like many extremely conservative men, once Sir Lysander Pelham found a girl he suspected was equal to anything, he soon developed an affectionate twinkle. He was even struck by Juliana's ability to tolerate and handle the sometimes tricky Orlando Lovell. Sir Lysander never commented on that; he was a gentleman, except in the vicinity of gates or stiles, where he believed a countryman had a blanket exemption from the rules of etiquette.

Eventually Juliana found out why her husband had been brought here. Orlando Lovell and Sir Lysander Pelham were in deep conspiracy.