But it was no chance that Edward Wilson should have requested a private interview with Bishop Erghum himself the next morning.
As always, he was deferential.
“You’ve heard that someone tried to rape Shockley’s wife last night, Your Grace.”
Erghum nodded. The family was disgraced, but he had no sympathy for crimes of this kind. “Bad business,” he said bleakly.
“Your Grace, I saw the man who did it.”
Erghum looked surprised.
“Then tell my bailiff at once, man. He’ll lock him up.”
Wilson looked at the floor carefully while he paused.
“I should prefer not.”
Erghum scowled at him. What was the fellow up to?
“Why?”
“It might be unwise, Your Grace. In these troubled times.” He paused again. “It was Portehors, Your Grace: your chaplain.”
Erghum glowered at him.
“Nonsense. He has an irreproachable character”
Wilson shook his head.
“Not quite.” And he outlined, in meticulous detail, what was known of Portehors’s affair with the ironmonger’s wife. “Of course, he’s a young man . . .” he suggested indulgently.
The bishop eyed him warily. His instinct told him that part of the story might be true.
“And you identified him running out of Shockley’s house?”
“I fear so,” Edward bowed respectfully.
“Anyone else see his face?”
“My two apprentices. But I have told them to say nothing. After all, we surprised him before the worst . . .’
“Yes. Yes.”
Erghum now saw what he was driving at, but he waited for Wilson to make the next move.
“The city is very disturbed at present,” Wilson went on calmly. “No harm was actually done. But if after Your Grace’s known anger with the Shockleys an affair of this kind were to come to court, I thought . . . the townspeople . . .” he trailed off and waited in an attitude of apparent obedience for the bishop’s instructions.
Though Bishop Erghum knew that he could never be sure exactly what Wilson had done, he thought he could guess most of it; and he admired the rogue’s cunning. It was also true that there had been troubles between some of the rowdier elements in the town and his bailiff recently; with the tense situation in the whole country at present, it was madness to tempt them to fury over a crime by his chaplain real or supposed.
He’s caught me nicely, he thought, and aloud he said: “So you want me to leave the Shockleys alone?”
Wilson said nothing.
“Control their boy,” Erghum growled. “I’ll have no Lollards here. You understand?”
Wilson bowed deeply, and the bishop waved him away.
Stephen Shockley was delighted when Wilson suggested that Martin go to Calais to conduct some business for him that autumn. It took the young man several months. And during this time, the bishop seemed to have forgotten about the mill. Cecilia Shockley’s assailant was never found.
And in later years, when Edward Wilson looked back on his long life, he never had reason to alter his favourite opinion, but could only laugh when he remarked:
“Most men are fools.”
THE ROSE
1456
There was an air of excitement in the town. Already, many of the narrow gabled houses were sporting decorations of flowers or richly dyed cloths from their overhanging eaves. In the streets, groups of brightly dressed men and women were moving cheerfully about, some to inns, others to the halls of the craftsmen’s guilds from which the sounds of celebration could be heard. It was early evening, but it would still be light for many hours.
For tomorrow was a great day.
It was by coincidence that the four intriguers each left their houses in the different wards of the city exactly as the former Bishop Erghum’s clock in the great belfry in the cathedral close struck six o’clock.
Each of the four men had a particular task to accomplish that evening. Their names were Eustace Godfrey, Michael Shockley, Benedict Mason, and John Wilson.
The excitement in the city of Salisbury had nothing to do with events in the outside world to which, for over half a century, its citizens had consistently paid as little attention as possible.
Yet there had been no lack of drama in England’s recent past. The valiant son of John of Gaunt whose huge Lancastrian estates lay over tracts of Wessex near Sarum, had seized the throne from his unhappy cousin Richard II, and so begun the rule of Lancaster. Next, the usurper’s son Henry V had won most of the kingdom of France at his famous battle of Agincourt; though since then, inspired by that strange sixteen-year-old girl Joan of Arc, the French had been gradually winning their country back again. They were stirring times.
In Sarum however, these great events abroad were only noted because of a brawl between a party of soldiers on their way to France and some of the town youths on Fisherton Bridge. Apart from this, the town paid its modest subsidies and took no further notice.
“There’s no profit in these foreign wars any more,” Shockley told his son. “It’s trade we want.”
Now yet another drama was unfolding. For only the year before the battle of St Albans had begun that high feudal drama, that sequence of battles between the rival branches of the royal family, Lancaster and York, that would later be known as the Wars of the Roses – a misleading title, as it happens, since though the white rose was the emblem of the house of York, the red rose was only adopted by the royal house in later, Tudor times.
Lancaster, in theory, meant the king. In practice, however, it meant his council, which had for thirty years been dominated by powerful magnates: first, until his death, by the French king’s great uncle Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, and now by his strong-willed wife, Margaret of Anjou.
For Henry VI of England was another of those unfortunate weakling kings, like Henry III two centuries before, who were such a feature of medieval history. Like his ancestor, he had a passion for building; but he also had a more serious disability. For unfortunately, when his father after Agincourt had married the daughter of the mad King of France, he had probably introduced the French king’s mental instability into the house of Lancaster. Only two years before, poor Henry VI had remained for months at nearby Clarendon during one of his fits of insanity.
The citizens of Salisbury cared nothing for these royal quarrels either. If royal visitors came, its aldermen donned their robes to receive them. They supplied minstrels to Clarendon. But the battles between the factions of Lancaster and York were fought by retainers or hired mercenaries and the people of the town went steadily about their business, wiser in their humble trading than the noble lords in their dynastic folly.
And what of the great event so eagerly anticipated at the cathedral? For in 1456, after centuries of application, the most recent negotiation, which itself had been started almost fifty years ago, seemed close to success. At last Sarum was to see its great Bishop Osmund canonised. Salisbury would have its own saint. The business might be concluded in months. Even now, the representatives of the dean and chapter were working for the great cause in Rome. No one doubted the value of the would-be saint, and his miracles – meagre though they were – were believed.
But the stately cathedral was sealed off in its private world behind the walls of the close, and the citizens of the town paid little attention to that either. For although the great schism had been settled in the early years of the century and the popes ruled over a united Catholic Church from Rome once more, that rule was passive. No terrible Interdicts fell upon the king or his people; Italy was far away and there were few foreign priests on the island now. The townspeople had their craft guilds and religious fraternities, with their own chapels and chantries – not in the huge and solemn cathedral but in the smaller parish churches of St Thomas, St Martin and St Edmund in the town itself. Religion too was a local affair, from which the outside world of bishops and popes could be excluded.
&n
bsp; As far as the cathedral was concerned, the citizens of Salisbury cared about only one thing: the fact that the Bishop of Salisbury was still the city’s feudal overlord: and this they hated, not because his rule was oppressive, but because they resented any interference.
This resentment was nothing new. Even a century and a half before, the mayor and aldermen had tried unsuccessfully to throw off this feudal yoke and get a town charter of their own; but in recent years the friction between the bishop and the town he owned had become greater. The last bishop, Ayscough, had been especially unpopular and when Jack Cade led a brief and confused revolt in Kent six years before, a party of Sarum men, inspired by the rebellion, actually killed the bishop on Salisbury Plain. The ringleaders were hanged and the king sent a quarter of Jack Cade’s dismembered body to be strung up in the market place to encourage the people to good behaviour in future. But the quarrel still went on. Successive mayors had done all they could to ignore the new bishop, and only two years ago, mayor Hall had tried once again to get a new town charter from the king.
“The truth is, we don’t want the bishop – and we don’t need him,” Shockley remarked. It was a parochial self-confidence which most of the merchants in Salisbury shared.
For no place in fifteenth century England was more fortunate than Sarum.
Two things mattered: first, it was so perfectly situated.
To the north lay the sweeping chalk ridges where huge flocks of sheep grazed, and beyond them one entered the rich cheese and dairy country of north Wiltshire.
“Chalk and cheese,” the men of Wiltshire would say to describe their country. And Salisbury was the central market for all.
While wars and trading disputes in Europe had weakened many of England’s ports, Salisbury lay at the centre of a network of the three most successful: to the east was London, to the west Bristol, and to the south, closest of all, lay Southampton.
Second, the region produced cloth. And cloth was the key to everything. When Shockley and Wilson had started to engage in cloth exporting the previous century, they had joined a growing business. Now it had surpassed all others. While the trade in exporting raw wool had gradually declined, hitting many great cities like Winchester, Lincoln and Oxford, the areas that were strong in cloth had boomed. Salisbury lay at the very heart of the business. Not only did the city itself manufacture its rays and other textiles, but all over the western part of ancient Wessex, from Wiltshire to Somerset, the huge broadcloth business was at its greatest. Fortunes were being made by great merchants and landowners, like the soldier adventurer Fastolf. Every village now seemed to have its weavers and dyers, every stream – and swift flowing streams were abundant – its fulling mill. The place where the five rivers met was a focal point for trade, drawing in wealth all over the rich heartland of Wessex.
The town was organised for business: from the lowliest apprentice serving his seven long years’ apprenticeship in his craft, to the great men of the council of forty-eight and the inner group of twenty-four merchants who directed its affairs.
But today, in the thirty-fourth year of the reign of King Henry VI, the place was organised for a great festivity.
For tomorrow was the eve of the feast of St John.
There were several feasts of St John. There was the feast of St John of Patmos in May; of St John’s Day in Harvest in August, to remember the beheading of John the Baptist; but by far the greatest celebration was the one about to take place: the feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist. And the importance of this great feast was not surprising: for the Nativity of St John fell on Midsummer’s Day.
On Midsummer’s Eve 1456, well aware of the town’s good fortune, the citizens of Salisbury had reason to celebrate.
At six o’clock, Eustace Godfrey left his house in the Meadow ward at the south east corner of the city.
His handsome face was determined but cheerful as he made his way towards New Street. He wore a long, red robe lined with fox fur – his best – and on his head was a small circlet of gold. For the plan in his head this evening would, he was sure, put his family on the road back to their former glory; and as always when he began a new project, he was optimistic.
For tonight he was going to marry off both his children.
His confidence seemed well-founded.
“After all, anyone in this city would be proud to marry a Godefroi,” he reminded his wife.
It was his grandfather who had finally sold the Avonsford estate. Like nearly every landlord in England, even great magnates like John of Gaunt and the Bishop of Winchester, the Godefroi family had found it was more economic to let all their land to tenants; for rising wages and a general agricultural depression had gradually made their estates too costly to run themselves. But whereas the large landholders still had handsome rents to live on, the Godefrois had not, and they failed to keep their expenditure down. By 1420 the lords of Avonsford had sold their manor and the remaining land to the Earl of Salisbury and, no longer lords of anything, they had gone to live in Salisbury.
By the time of Eustace’s father, the family themselves had adopted the anglicised name of Godfrey by which they were known in the town; though it still annoyed Eustace to discover a lowly merchant or craftsman who bore the same name and to think that other men might not make the distinction.
For he was still a nobleman. When the reeves collected the rent for his house he always made sure that their records correctly entered: Eustace Godfrey, Gentleman. He was pleased that the tall, four-storeyed house with its courtyard was in the ward furthest removed from the bustle of the town and nearest to the precincts of the close and the handsome old hall of the Grey Friars. From the top floor windows he could see the roof of the bishop’s palace: and when recently some houses in the close, formerly reserved for the clergy, had been rented to laymen, he had nearly moved to one of them. He liked to feel that he lived close to the bishop.
His most treasured possession was the heavy parchment scroll that bore the splendid Godefroi family tree. Nothing gave him more joy than to know that his wife, the daughter of a brewer from Wilton and to whom he had been devotedly married for twenty years, still looked at this document with awe.
Almost equally treasured were his children: Oliver, a good-looking, intelligent young man of nineteen studying for the law, and Isabella, sixteen, slim and dark, of whom he could only shake his head and murmur: “She is a jewel.”
Now it was time that the boy should make an alliance and the jewel should be bestowed.
He had considered the opportunities carefully, and also the advantages his children had. About the former he was optimistic but a little hazy; about the latter, certain.
“You have a noble name,” he told Oliver. “And equally important – you have connections.”
And connections there were, of a kind.
There was the bishop, for instance.
Godfrey did not share the townsmen’s scorn of the cathedral – indeed, during the last half century the diocese had been blessed with several distinguished and scholarly bishops, great men like Chandler and the noted preacher Hallam. The ancient Use of Sarum had even been adopted as the best order of church services in St Paul’s Cathedral in London now. The present incumbent, Bishop Beauchamp of Salisbury, was a figure of great importance, close to the royal house where other members of his noble family held high office. He was also chaplain to the noble Order of the Garter, and often at Windsor, which lay in his own diocese. Godfrey had taken care to draw himself to Beauchamp’s attention; only months before, he had made a modest donation towards the expenses of the negotiations for Osmund’s canonisation in Rome. When the bishop passed, he bowed politely and always, he noted carefully, the bishop had returned the bow with a smile. They had spoken on several occasions, which gave Eustace the opportunity to explain carefully to the bishop exactly who he was. The fact that Beauchamp, now that he knew, did not greatly care, had never occurred to him.
Once, he had met an even greater figure: for the old connec
tion of his family with the knights of Whiteheath had not been completely forgotten, and on one of his visits to their estate, he was taken into Winchester and introduced to the great Beaufort himself. From this single meeting, when the mighty Bishop of Winchester conversed with him freely, although Beaufort himself had now been dead nearly ten years, he liked to think that he was in touch with the royal Council itself.
That was not all.
“These are dangerous times,” he told Oliver. “We need a foot in both camps.”
The great royal house of York, cousins to the king, had not only raged against the dominance of the Bishop of Winchester and the Lancastrian Council. When the king had gone mad two years before, the Duke of York had been made protector of the kingdom; the king had recovered but since then there had been a constant struggle for power between the two factions, until in May 1455 the dispute broke into an armed conflict at the battle of St Albans. Since the start of the year, the country had been quiet. The energetic queen was once again in control with her Council; York had returned as the King’s Lieutenant to Ireland. But there was still only a weak and half mad king with a single baby son. Who could tell what might happen next?
Of all the magnates on the Yorkist side none were greater than the members of the powerful family of Neville. Their estates were vast and they had acquired them by marriage, intrigue, and by fraud. By marriage with the Montagues they had obtained the earldom of Salisbury and successfully claimed the ancient right to the third penny – a third of all the royal revenues arising in the county. The earl, though seldom seen in Wiltshire, still held huge estates there; his possessions even included the little castle by the harbour at Christchurch, and if the Yorkist party were to take power he would surely become stronger than ever. Even now, though the Lancastrians ruled the Council, the earl and his mighty son Warwick held the fortified town of Calais just across the Channel, which they refused to give up.