Rebels and traitors

Chapter Twenty-Eight — Newport Pagnell: 1644

When civil dudgeon first grew high,

And men fell out they knew not why?

When hard words, jealousies, and fears,

Set folks together by the ears,

And made them fight, like mad or drunk,

For Dame Religion, as for punk;

Whose honesty they all durst swear for,

Though not a man of them knew wherefore:

When Gospel-Trumpeter, surrounded

With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded,

And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick,

Was beat with fist, instead of a stick;

Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling,

And out he rode a-colonelling…

Sir Samuel Luke was a Bedfordshire knight of approximately forty years. That is to say, since he was very particular, in the early March of 1644 he was still forty, but by the end of the month he was forty-one. Gideon Jukes might have made a pocketbook note of the date, had he known he was to encounter a famous man, a man who was fingered many years later as the original of the lead figure in Samuel Butler's popular chivalric satire Hudibras. As a printer he had an interest in bestsellers.

However, Gideon knew what he liked in literature, and it was never mock-heroic poetry. Besides, Butler claimed that Hudibras was modelled on a Devon man.

Sweating with apprehension and struggling for breath as the horse painfully bounced him about, Gideon was taken a day and a half's ride, including a night when he lay trussed up on straw in stables at Dunstable. He offered to give his parole but was told parole was only for officers; spies were hog-tied until they were hanged.

These dragoons were artists in causing apprehension. There was nothing like dangling upside down with his face against a hot, hairy horse to convince a prisoner to confess.

The ride ended at last at a walled market town in a part of the country unfamiliar to Gideon. They had travelled north-west, to where Bedfordshire met Northamptonshire. He regarded this as wilderness.

When the horses slowed to a stop, other beasts neighed greetings from close by. Gideon could hear the familiar unhurried noise of a musket-barrel being cleaned inside with a scouring tool. There were men's voices, leisurely and with occasional laughter, along with a faint waft of tobacco smoke. Their accents were English, though to a nervous Londoner they smacked discouragingly of marsh and fen. Gideon and Lambert reckoned that everyone in the Midlands had cowpox and no sense of humour, while all East Anglians had webbed feet and three ears.

Without warning, someone cut him free. He slid down off the horse. As he landed backwards and floundered to regain his balance on failing legs, he took sly note of his surroundings. He must be in a garrison town. They had arrived outside the gateway to an old castle, with colours planted before it — another black flag with those Bibles — headquarters, no doubt.

Gideon was pushed indoors, and taken up stone steps to a quiet upstairs saloon. Magisterial oak armchairs stood around a long table. The room was cold and fireless. Gideon, who felt desperately hungry, had noticed a faint scent of roast fowl as he blundered upstairs, but nothing was offered to him. From beyond the leaded windows came sounds of groups of tired horsemen, clattering home in the late afternoon as the light faded. No attempt was made to steal his money, had he had any. Gideon had been searched for weapons when he was first arrested, but he was neither stripped of his clothes nor kept tied up. The castle was secure; the town was fortified. There was no point in trying to escape. Perhaps he did not want to. Adventure was already calling.

A servant in a long leather apron carried in a candlestick. The man stood this at the centre of the table, then fussily pushed in a couple of the chairs, emphasising that Gideon was not to sit.

He did have company. A drippy-nosed Bedfordshire bumpkin of about fifteen had been kicking his heels in the room. When they were left alone together Gideon ascertained that the heavy-jowled young scowler was a free person, who wished to enlist. His mother had died; his father had remarried only two months later. The unhappy teenager found this so intolerable he had run away from home.

'Are you a soldier?' asked the youth, hopefully.

'A printer.'

'What do you print?' Always a dangerous question.

'Words.' It came out as if Gideon too were still a boorish, obstinate adolescent giving silly answers. Some memory made him add, 'I print the words. I never take responsibility for ideas.' The boy who had quarrelled with his father was unimpressed.

In then walked a civilian, a man with a downturned mouth, clad in a grey suit with slightly effusive white shirtbands, carrying a satchel of documents, bearing a goblet of claret, and eating an apple. He seemed to have recently partaken of a good supper and was now ready to clear off extra business before the day ended. Hudibras, the gallivanting, truth-defending hero, would possess a constant companion in his loyal squire, Ralpho. This secretary may have made himself the model for witty, prescient, courageous, loyal, level-headed Ralph. However, he introduced himself plainly as Mr Butler, secretary to Sir Samuel Luke, MP.

Samuel Butler was around thirty years old, roughly ten years older than Gideon. The son of a minor landowner, educated at Cambridge University, his interests were history and poetry, music and painting. But he needed to earn his living. As an administrative assistant in a garrison he brought intellect and culture, not to mention legible handwriting for letters and lists.

Any future poet would regard a printer as a hireling, a mere ink-stained artisan. A printer deplored a poet as a dilettante dreamer, whose much-revised effusions were a devil to disentangle for type-setting and — more important — brought in no money. However, at their first meeting Gideon, with his stomach rumbling violently, was simply offended by the way the man chomped so thoughtlessly on his fruit. It looked like a pippin. A little rough-skinned. Juicy, crisp and sweet.

The young boy, who seemed edgy and liable to steal the firedogs, had to be tackled first. Mr Butler ascertained that he was able-bodied and just of serving age (fifteen years to sixty-five). He came from a small village called Elstow, where his father, though a freeholder, worked as a maker and mender of pots and pans.

'A tinker?' The secretary looked askance. Though this boy's humble, pot-fettling background might one day seem romantic, in 1644 at Newport it counted against him to be the barely schooled son of a Bedford kettle-mender. Parliament had struggled hard to shake off the Royalist slander that the Earl of Essex led a disreputable rabble of decayed tapsters, released prisoners — and tinkers. Moreover here, one sniffing boy was much like another: very young recruits were a nightmare. Lads played the fool with gunpowder, whined about long hours on duty, drank, stole food, were scared to be in open country in the dark, missed their mothers and were dangerously uncoordinated when first put on a horse.

'So you are a ragamuffin.'

'I have had schooling; I can read and write.'

And curse and swear, lie and blaspheme against the Lord?' The boy nodded enthusiastically but Samuel Butler made preparations to admit him to Captain Ennis's company. A soldier was called to lead the recruit to the quartermaster.

'Robert Cox has come in,' the trooper mentioned to the secretary. 'News from Oxford.'

'I will take his report shortly — If the rabbits are ready to go up to Sir Samuel's father, there is correspondence too. The messenger must wait, though; I must copy it into the Letter Book. If Cox has acquired the latest Mercurius Aulicus, send it straight in to Sir Samuel. He will post it on to Sir Oliver, but he will want to read it first.'

Mr Butler's pen was dipped into an inkpot and applied with due formality in the regimental roll. He called after the tinker's lad, 'I forgot your name?'

'John Bunyan.'

Gideon Jukes had now met two notables of English literature. He had no idea. All he cared about was the secretary's apple. It had been reduced to a core, not tossed aside, but gently placed upon a sheet of used drafting paper. There it sat growing soft, while fuzziness spread about the nearest ink on the paper and the mouldings made by Samuel Butler's teeth started gently to go brown…

Having dispatched Bunyan, the secretary remembered his wine, sipped from the goblet, and immediately cheered up. 'And your name?'

'Gideon Jukes. Sir, I have not eaten for two days.'

'Well, well; credentials first… Age?'

'Twenty-three.'

'From?'

'The City of London.'

Butler was scowling. 'You were brought in.' That must be garrison code for an arrest.

Gideon let rip: 'I have been brought to misery. I was stopped in my honest business, insulted, kidnapped, threatened, starved, and joggled here on a cursed, mangy, thin-tailed, farting horse…' The future master of colourful tetrameters looked intrigued. 'Since your rob-dogs plucked me up, no one has even had the courtesy to tell me where I am, so I can put it in my petition of complaint!'

'Newport Pagnell.' It meant nothing. His friends and family would never think to look for Gideon here, even if they raised a ransom. 'Who are you for, Jukes?' It was a standard question, though Mr Butler had not asked it of the enlisting boy.

'For Parliament.'

'For Parliament and the King?'

'That rubric's a nonsense, a coward's refuge.'

Butler smiled slightly. 'So you say you are in the London Trained Bands?'

To Londoners there were no others worth mentioning. Gideon retorted proudly, 'I am in the Green Regiment, under Colonel John Warner, alderman and grocer. My troop is the third, that of Captain Robert Mainwaring. You may write to him to vouch for me, which he will do. He works at the Customs House, lives in Aldermanbury…'

At the secretary's silence, he realised a letter requesting validation had already been sent. They were hot on correspondence here.

'Why are you not at your work or with your regiment?'

Gideon held up his damaged fingers. 'Not safe with a musket. I need to practise dexterity'

'So why were you brought here?' asked Mr Butler, looking away from the missing digits shyly. 'Did you have a ticket for the road?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'I was doing loyal work.'

'There is an ordnance: you must be issued with a pass.'

'Apparently so,' replied Gideon. 'Hence I am deemed to be a spy.'

'That seems a reasonable deduction. Are you?' From a poet, this was refreshingly direct. Mr Samuel Butler had not yet settled into his future role. If he had a work in progress, he must be writing it secretly in his closet after his duties, scrawling couplets more as a refuge from the tedium of military life than in any hope yet of fortune and fame. 'Are you a spy, Master Jukes?'

'No.' Gideon, the quiet man, stood his ground monosyllabically.

Then the secretary asked him in a mild tone: 'Would you like to be?'

For a Cheapside boy, the relocation offer was an insult. So was the way they had pressed him to enlist here. 'After your poxy horse ride from Hell?'

'Then go home to your family'

Ah. It was an offer of distancing himself from his troubles. 'Oh I'll stay if I choose, sir!'

'Well, make up your mind, Master Jukes.'

'Very well, I shall try it.'

So, once London had vouched for him, Gideon took up a new career.

Newport Pagnell was, and is, a small English market town. Historically, it grew up beside the great North West Road, the old Roman military route across the Midlands towards North Wales. On the way to Northampton, it was fifty miles from London, fifteen from Bedford, thirty or more from Oxford. During the civil war Newport Pagnell was in the territory of the Eastern Association. Their committee regarded it as a hamlet on the road to somewhere else. But in the military context, to be within reach of those other centres justified Newport Pagnell's opinion that it was 'of considerable consequence'.

Gideon learned that the establishment of a Parliamentary garrison had been luck. At the end of 1643, the cavalier Sir Lewis Dyve had captured Newport Pagnell. Prince Rupert wanted to harry Parliament's Eastern Association; during the operation Royalists even briefly occupied Bedford and skirled around Northampton stealing cattle. However, less than three weeks later, Dyve evacuated Newport in haste as a result of an 'error': misunderstanding garbled instructions from the King.

As soon as Dyve decamped, his Parliamentarian neighbour, Sir Samuel Luke, nipped in. Any Royalist plan to invade the Eastern Association was abandoned, permanently, as it turned out. Parliamentary cavalry, under Oliver Cromwell, was quartered around Newport that winter, for security. By the time Gideon arrived they had moved off, but connections with Cromwell persisted and he heard the name regularly.

Newport proved valuable, just beyond the King's reach from Oxford yet close enough for informants to report whatever the King was up to. From here, Sir Samuel Luke tenaciously kept watch on the enemy. His activities ranged over a fifty-mile radius in all directions and sometimes his contacts went further.

Gideon rarely had direct conversation with his colonel, but came to know him well by sight: a short man, broad of beam and bulbous-bellied, with a full jaw, fleshy face, long straggling hair and a brocaded neckerchief, who busied himself continuously. 'He knows who you are,' people said. Anyone who rode back to the garrison with information could feel confident that his debriefing, whether taken by Samuel Butler or by one of the officers, would be passed to the colonel himself; if relevant, it would be relayed by letter from him to the field generals or even to Parliament, probably the same day.

Luke was educated, energetic and obstinate. Like his father, Sir Oliver Luke, who was still active at Westminster, Samuel was a traditional English country squire. Hardly a day went by without his sending conies to his father or giving presents of deer or game pies to other gentlemen whose goodwill might be useful. To Gideon, this country life of sport and vigorous ingratiation came as a shock. He did not expect to see hunting hounds bustling through the garrison, or to make way for Sir Oliver Luke's falconer, bearing his hawk upon his arm as he went from wood to park. Gideon had always known there were favours done in the City, and although he only mildly disapproved of the weekly rabbits sent up to London for Sir Oliver Luke, he had much stronger feelings about the regular handouts to other landowners: the does, the red deer pies, the braces of partridge or pheasant, the teal and snipe. All the local estates were carefully protected by orders from Sir Samuel, whether owned by Parliamentarians or Royalists. It made the war, in which honest working men were dying, seem a mere game to the gentry.

There was more congenial bustle at Newport: the visits of Sir Samuel's agent, Mr Love, who brought funds from the Eastern Association counties — or with more frequency took anguished letters from Luke, trying to wring out arrears in order to feed and equip the garrison soldiers; the arrival of carts from Sir Samuel's quartermaster in London, carts bearing military equipment of all kinds — together with Sir Samuel's wine supply; and the constant flow in and out of cavalry.

The regime was unique. When other garrisons took prisoners — known Royalists or suspected spies — they sent them to Newport for examination. From Newport itself, regular parties of horsemen rode out to find and beat up Royalist soldiers, whom they cheerfully killed or took prisoner, then they carried off provisions and horses. They roamed through villages near Oxford — Burford, Bicester, Woodstock — harrying the King's main field army. Then individual scouts, colleagues Gideon came to know, travelled even longer distances — Banbury, Chard, even Salisbury — to discover information about enemy troop movements.

One of the first questions Gideon had been asked was 'Do you ride, Jukes?'

'I have sat on a horse.'

'Do you ride?'

'Not as a cavalryman would.'

'Then learn.'

The next time new horses were brought up from Smithfield, one was allocated to him. He would never be a safe infantry musketeer again; the complicated manoeuvres with bullets and powder were now too cumbersome for his poor fingers. So he happily became a dragoon, armed with a musket and a long sword, neither of which he used frequently, while he struggled to lure good service from his lacklustre nag. Mostly, as part of Luke's team, he had to master questioning and listening. Once he had learned his way around the districts, he became a valued independent scout.

Luke's scouts diligently watched Royalist regiments. They counted groups of the enemy, noted their arms and the quality of their horses, and tried to discover where they were going. They picked up Royalist news-sheets. They questioned people in local villages after the enemy had been there to demand taxes, weapons, food, or quarters. They knew all the inns. They stopped and searched travellers. They developed relationships with tradesmen and pedlars. A horse losing a shoe would give a good excuse to gossip with a farrier. Market days were good cover.

Sometimes they organised real spies who went in disguise into Royalist towns and garrisons. This included Oxford. Gideon volunteered himself but was too tall and too flaxen-haired. The task called for men who could pass inconspicuously — and women; they had a she-intelligencer called Parliament Jane in Oxford. The task was dangerous. Parliament Jane's husband was hanged by the King at Carfax. Undercover scouts had a short life.

Riding around by himself gave Gideon time to brood.

It was symptomatic of his failing relationship with his wife, that he wrote to tell his parents and Robert Allibone he had joined the Newport Pagnell regiment, but not Lacy. A month after his arrival, a letter from his father informed him sadly that both Lacy and the baby, Harriet, had been ill and had died.

Gideon tried to ignore his relief. His problems did not end. Now he felt guilty for leaving them.

Joining up at Newport Pagnell in order to forget his troubles now seemed pointless — even though Gideon knew he had an aptitude and a liking for his new work. At fifty miles' distance from London it could have been easy to put his bereavement from his mind. Yet as he rode around, often solitary, he had time and opportunity to wrestle all the more fiercely with his doubts.

Had Lacy Keevil been already with child — and had she known it — when he married her? Had he been singled out as a fool? Who was the child's father? What was the Bevans' involvement? Remembering how eagerly they had pressed for the union, they must have known the situation. So were Bevan and Elizabeth simply Lacy's keepers at the time of her disgrace, adults forced to scurry round to find a solution when a young girl in their household had behaved foolishly? Or was there a darker motive in their rush to find her a husband?

Gideon was not entirely pitiless. He saw that perhaps Lacy herself had been cruelly used. All of their lives had been soured by whatever his wife had done — or had had done to her. Now Lacy was dead, along with her four-month-old baby, and she left Gideon damaged. He might never really find the answers to his suspicions, but he had lost all faith in women.

He threw himself into scouting as if to court danger and seek oblivion. He went forwards, but he rode in a grim mood.