Bloods revolution, p.19
Blood's Revolution, page 19
‘I am most gratified, my lords, that you should come to my court to tender such noble expressions of piety and godliness,’ said James with a cold fixed smile. ‘But was there perhaps another matter, something more urgent than your good wishes for my health, that you wished to mention? If so, please be so good as to speak of it.’
Bishop Mews cleared his throat; he scratched briefly at the scar under his face patch; he straightened his spine. ‘It concerns Your Majesty’s Declarations of Indulgence,’ he said finally. ‘The royal proclamations that you have commanded to be read this Sunday from every pulpit, in every Anglican Church, in every corner of the nation. The, ah, the thing is, Your Majesty, we think, that is we all feel . . . we have in fact all put our names to a document, that makes clear that, ah . . .’
Of course it was about the Indulgences, how could it be anything else? James felt the first glow of anger begin to warm his belly. A little over a year ago he had issued a Declaration of Indulgence, an announcement that granted broad religious freedom in England (he had issued one for Scotland, too) and this message stated that his subjects would henceforth be allowed to worship in their homes or chapels as they each saw fit. It also ended the requirement for men to take oaths of loyalty to the Established Church of England before taking any public office. It meant that Roman Catholics – and dissenting Protestants, and other non-Anglicans – could be magistrates, or Army officers, or hold official positions in the corporations. The Declaration had been ignored, indeed it had been actively opposed by the Church of England, the Justices of the Peace, the Army – more or less anyone with any power. Its opponents had claimed it was unconstitutional, that the King could not change the laws of the land by royal decree. Only the two Houses of Parliament could make the laws that bound the people of the Three Kingdoms, they argued, and a King could not announce to his subjects willy-nilly what he decided was legal and what was not.
In April of this year, 1688, James had reissued his Declaration. He was out of patience with his Protestant subjects and determined to impose his will on the Three Kingdoms. This time he had insisted that his proclamation be read out to every congregation in every church all across the country. He wanted everyone in Britain to know that Catholics and Calvinists, Quakers and Baptists, non-Anglicans of all and any stripe, would no longer be persecuted for practising their particular faith.
It was a fine vision: one these hidebound Anglican bishops were trying to spoil.
‘We humbly wish to present to Your Majesty with a petition,’ said Peter Mews, finding his voice. He kept his head bowed, and James saw that he was holding a vellum scroll. ‘A petition that has been signed by seven senior bishops of the Church of England, including The Most Reverend William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, in which we humbly ask Your Majesty to withdraw his Declaration of Indulgence and rescind your policy, for we cannot in good conscience allow this—’
‘Enough! I have heard a sufficiency already on this subject from your master, my lord Archbishop of Canterbury. I do not wish to hear any more on this matter.’ James’s anger was at boiling point. ‘I reject your God-damned petition. Here and now. It is rejected. The Declaration of Indulgence stands – and if you will not implement it in your churches, I shall have you all arrested and tried for sedition.’
‘Your Majesty, we speak for the whole of the Church of England, the Established Church of this your kingdom, we speak for all Anglicans in your—’
‘I said: Enough!’ James rose from his throne. ‘I am King of England. I am also the Supreme Head of the Church and I say that you shall read out my Declaration.’
Bishop Mews said nothing; he continued to stand there holding out his scroll.
If James had had a sword in his hand at that moment, blood might well have been shed on the black-and-white chequered floor of the Red Audience Room. The King calmed himself with an effort of will. He was conscious of the eyes of the French Ambassador on him, watching, looking for weakness, ready to report his lack of self-discipline to his master in Versailles. James took a deep, cleansing breath.
‘I have changed my mind,’ he said. ‘I shall, in fact, accept this foul petition – for it is evidence of a seditious libel. You hand to me, my lord Winchester, not a document signed by the bishops of England, but a warrant for all of your arrests.’
A footman stepped forward and took the scroll from Bishop Mews’s hands.
‘But Our Lord taught us to be merciful,’ said James. ‘And so I shall give you one final chance to recant. Will you, or will you not, instruct your priests to read my Declaration to all their congregations this Sunday, and the next Sunday as well?’
‘Alas, your Majesty,’ said Peter Mews, his face drawn and grey. ‘We cannot countenance that illegal action, not now, not ever, and so, it is with great regret that on behalf of the seven of us, I must humbly refuse to obey your royal command.’
‘Last chance, your lordships, or I shall have you taken directly to the Tower to await your trials. If you seek a martyrdom, I shall be more than content to provide it.’
Bishop Peter Mews made a low bow, but said no more.
‘You – none of you – have anything to say on this matter?’
Jonathan, Lord Bishop of Bristol took a step forward. ‘We are all of one mind, Your Majesty. We must obey our consciences – and the rightful law of this land.’
‘Very well,’ said the King. ‘Guards! Remove these men from my sight!’
Chapter Twenty-one
25 May 1688: Mincing Lane
The carriage was a marvellous affair of sky blue and scarlet paint, with touches of gilding on the pillars and windows, and a magnificent coat of arms with a pair of foxes rampant gules on an azure field on the door. It drew up to the corner of Mincing Lane and Tower Street and came to a halt beside the blue-painted front door of the narrow brick house. A white-wigged groom stepped off the seat at the back of the vehicle, pulled down the folding steps, twisted the handle and opened the coach door.
A vision in a blue and gold suit of clothes stepped delicately out into the mud of the street on scarlet calfskin high-heeled boots. A ginger wig was piled on the top of the gentleman’s head under a broad, ostrich-plumed hat, and a clever pair of beady brown eyes examined the tall, thin house with great interest.
The gentleman walked carefully up the three stone steps and rapped loudly on the door with his silver-headed cane. He turned fully around, while he waited for his knock to be answered, and surveyed the street, noting the middle-class dwellings, the shops and all the small places of business in this thoroughfare in the heart of the City of London: the high, narrow, almost Dutch-looking houses, their front rooms fitted with lace-curtained sash windows looking out on to the traffic; the apothecary’s window diagonally across the street, which was filled with coloured bottles of unguents, dried bundles of herbs and murky pickled creatures in huge glass jars; the coffee house, two doors further down, a place occupied by wafting smoke and noisy bustle, the gentlemen clearly seen through the big windows, gesticulating happily as they talked, the aroma of a freshly roasted brew wafting across and cutting delightfully through the usual street smells.
He turned back and looked up with approval at the fashionable and expensive fan-shaped panel above the front door, hinged at the bottom and filled with triangular segments of glass in every hue of the rainbow so it resembled a male peacock’s tail.
‘Good morrow to you, sir,’ said the maid peering out of the open door.
‘I am Henri d’Erloncourt. Is the master of the house at home today?’ he said. ‘Or the mistress? I am a very old and dear friend of Lieutenant Holcroft Blood.’
He advanced without invitation and the girl made way for him, flustered, saying that the master was away, but that the mistress was at home, then taking the ostrich-plumed hat and gorgeous crimson and sky-blue cloak from this unexpected visitor.
D’Erloncourt seated himself in a large oak chair, while the maid disappeared to summon Elizabeth. He observed the layout of the ground floor with interest; the narrow central hall, in which he now sat, well illuminated by daylight from the peacock-fan window above the front door, and with a room on either side. By craning his neck around, he could see that one was a study of some kind, with a writing desk and comfortable leather-covered chair, and the other was a dining room with a long, shining wooden table. The stairs ran up from the hall on the right-hand side, and on the left a dim corridor led towards a kitchen, and presumably a pantry and scullery and so on for the servants. He tried to imagine what the house must cost to rent – a hundred and fifty pounds per annum, perhaps – his old friend Holcroft was doing well. Certainly, he was richer than the penniless, awkward boy he had known as a page in the Duke of Buckingham’s service. But that had been a lifetime ago – much had changed and they were both different men now.
‘My dear Monsieur d’Erloncourt!’ The booming female voice almost shocked him out of the chair. He took in the large blonde woman, fashionably dressed in a violet taffeta gown, who was advancing on him down the hall stairs. ‘You are most welcome in our humble home – but alas, my dear sir, Lieutenant Blood is away in the north at present on Ordnance business. Nevertheless, you simply must come into the parlour and share a pot of chocolate. I meet so few of Holcroft’s friends.’
Henri allowed himself to be conducted up the stairs, and along a corridor that doubled back towards the street side of the house. The mistress’s first-floor parlour was on the left. And there was a large chamber, Henri noted, a formal withdrawing room, off to the right, and another set of stairs leading up to the second floor, where there were presumably bedrooms and chambers for the servants. As they turned left into the parlour, Elizabeth prattled away at an astounding pace and volume, jumping from topic to topic, and Henri found it difficult to follow what she was saying. She’s nervous, he thought. And wondered why.
While Elizabeth rang to summon the maid, and ordered chocolate and pastries, Henri peered out of the parlour window, looking down on the street below, and saw that his carriage had become an object of interest to the local urchins, and his coachman was pretending to act all fierce and threatening them with his whip.
Ensconced with Mistress Blood in the parlour, with a pot of chocolate poured out, and a cup in his hands, he gave an amusing and embellished account of his time with Holcroft in Buckingham’s service, and it was made clear to Elizabeth that he and her husband had been the best of friends under their dear old Duke.
Then Henri set out to make himself agreeable to his hostess, telling her about his aristocratic family, again with a few touches of imaginative fiction, of his gilded life in their hôtel in Paris and at the Palace of Versailles, where all the nobility of France was gathered at Louis XIV’s glittering court. Recognising immediately that she was the type to enjoy this, he let slip a few salacious and fabricated snippets of gossip about the libidinous court of the Sun King.
‘My goodness! Three women in the King’s bed all at the same time. I don’t think I should like that very much if I were Madame de Maintenon, his mistress!’
‘Madame knows how to love the King,’ said Henri, with a saucy wink. ‘When to indulge him and – most importantly – when to bite her tongue and say nothing.’
Elizabeth was enjoying herself. She had not realised how lonely she would find married life. When Holcroft was in London he worked long into the night at the Tower – the survey and map-making task had occupied him entirely – and he came home late and dog tired almost every evening, wanting only to eat and sleep before he went off early the next morning back to the Ordnance. Some nights they barely talked. And when she tried to engage him in a jolly conversation about this or that, he looked annoyed and broke off their chat or complained of a headache and said he wanted to be left in peace. For the past few months, he had not been home at all, staying up in Yorkshire on some tiresome King’s business in Hull.
Now that she reckoned up the time, she realised that she hadn’t laid eyes on him since January. Elizabeth was lonely and feeling more than a little neglected. She was used to the busy, warm, noisy family house in Gray’s Inn Lane, with her two sisters and her mother and father and all the servants. Here in this cold, narrow house in Mincing Lane, with only her dull maid and cook to talk to, she was truly bored.
‘You must have some more of this chocolate, my dear Henri,’ she said.
And when she had poured out the thick black liquid, she continued: ‘And do tell me, sir, how are the ladies of fashion wearing their hair this season in Paris? Is it still all tumbling curls at the temple, like our own Queen Mary, or have things moved on?’
She would not be so bored, she was sure, if they would only go out a little more. But Holcroft seemed to have no interest in either attending or throwing parties – nor did he invite his fellow officers and their ladies to dine with them. And there was his parsimony – he was quite well off, everybody said so, but he lived like a pauper. Or like a bachelor. She would dearly like to have more money to spend on clothes but when she had bought a new silk gown a few weeks into the marriage, Holcroft had discovered how much it had cost and had insisted that she send it back to the dressmaker. Neither her tears nor her anger had moved him. Back it went.
On the other hand, this handsome French gentleman, with his beautiful clothes and exquisite taste and his glamorous tales of life in the Palace of Versailles, was much more to her taste – she was excited that Holcroft had such a wonderful friend, and surprised that he had never mentioned him. She arranged herself on the chair, pushing her shoulders back to display her bosom more prettily. She wished she had had time for the maid to arrange her hair properly. Not that she wished to start an affair de coeur with this handsome young Frenchman, no, no, she was a respectable married woman, but a little flirtation never hurt anyone.
When the chocolate was gone, she asked Henri if he’d care to stay for dinner.
‘My dear Elizabeth, I would simply adore to take up your kind invitation, but alas, I am spoken for. I am to dine with the Ambassador today – indeed, I am already rather late. Such has been the pleasure of our conversation that I completely lost track of the time. I must bid you good day, my dear, and reluctantly take my leave.’
‘But you must call on us again, Monsieur – promise me that you will pay me the compliment of another visit. And soon!’
Henri d’Erloncourt looked at her – this sad, lonely woman was quite appalling, her voice alone made her insupportable, but he knew that if he wanted to he could easily make her his mistress. He suppressed a shudder. The thought of bedding her!
He said: ‘That would be delightful, my dear. Perhaps I might be permitted to visit again when your husband is back from his travels in the north. It would be an honour to dine with you and renew my acquaintance with dear old Holcroft. Or, if you prefer, we could dine in the suite of apartments in White Hall that the Ambassador has been kind enough to assign me when I am visiting your beautiful country. We do have a simply marvellous chef at the Embassy.’
‘That does sound wonderful. We would not be imposing, I hope?’
‘Not at all! It is settled. It will allow me to repay you for this perfectly delicious chocolate. You will come to the Embassy when Holcroft is back. Yes? When do you expect him in London again? Do you know the date when he will return?’
‘Holcroft will be back at the beginning of next month. I believe he said in his last letter the third or the fourth of June. He said he had nearly completed his duties in Hull. And I know that he would be delighted to dine with an old friend.’
‘I shall send you and Holcroft an invitation at the earliest opportunity, my dear Elizabeth, and I shall anticipate our next meeting with the greatest of pleasure.’
Chapter Twenty-two
3 June 1688: Yorkshire
Ten miles south of York, on a pot-holed road that led north towards that city from the market town of Selby, Holcroft Blood walked his tired horse along in the gloom of early evening and pondered his wasted day. He had been riding alone on the roads around Yorkshire, on the Great North Road mostly, all of this day and the last, up as far as Darlington in the north and Doncaster in the south, without achieving his aim.
After a busy five months, the fortifications of the port of Kingston upon Hull were in as good order as could be expected given the amounts of money that had been allocated by the Board of the Ordnance for the task and now, under the supervision of a master gunner, the cannon were being cautiously test-fired into the grey waters of the Humber. Holcroft had absented himself from the firings – knowing that Enoch Jackson, who he had brought north with him as an assistant and to a certain extent bodyguard, would be thorough and careful, and would make a detailed report – but not without a twinge of guilt at this small dereliction of his duty.
In truth, he was tired from long hours of hard labour over many months; indeed almost since he had been recalled from Sheerness the summer before he had been working like a dog. As well as his normal duties casting, proofing and testing the King’s cannon, he had been given the task of surveying the Tower for an accurate bird’s eye view of the royal palace, which he had completed to Lord Dartmouth’s satisfaction before Christmas. However, instead of being allowed a short respite, Dartmouth had told him that he was to be sent to Hull to review and rebuild the fortifications and, additionally, he had asked that, in his spare time, he undertake a review of the accounts of the expenditure of the Ordnance Department over the past three years with an eye on identifying areas of overspending and finding some offices where significant savings might be made.
