London

  But she was not sure about the meeting this morning. Thomas had insisted upon it, and after all his kindness over the last few years, she had not felt she could refuse him. He had even come down, hours before, and tactfully taken the children out for a long walk, so that she could see her visitor alone. But did she want to see him?

  Peter. In the first weeks after Rowland’s death, she could not even bear to hear his name. When she heard he had left London for the north, she was glad. Once or twice, in the last two years, she had considered writing to him, but had not done so since she did not know what she should say. And now he was coming to see her. All the monks in England, of course, were now without a home. As each monastery was dissolved, they had to leave. Most were being given pensions, not ungenerous. Some had become parish priests; some left holy orders and even married.

  “I will see him,” she had told Thomas finally, “but you must make one thing clear. I cannot take him in to live with me. I hope he does not think I can.”

  At mid-morning there was a knock at the door and the sound of footsteps entering the little house. And then she saw her husband.

  Few people in Rochester, in the years that followed, paid any special attention to the Brown family. Her neighbours remembered that Susan Brown had been a pious widow and that she had married again. It was said that her new husband, Robert Brown, had been a monk, but no one seemed certain. He was a quiet man, devoted to his wife and stepchildren, who referred to him affectionately as “father”. He became a schoolmaster at Rochester’s ancient school; and he seemed happy in his work and in his loving family, though sometimes, it seemed to those who came to know him a little, he wore a rather wistful expression which suggested that he might still secretly hanker after the life of the cloister he had left.

  When he died, ten years after coming to Rochester, his wife was so upset that the priest heard her call softly to him, “Rowland,” which, he believed, had been the name of her first husband. But the priest knew that, in their grief, people sometimes became confused, and he thought no more about it.

  In the decades that followed, no family could have been less conspicuous. Susan was determined to keep it so. The girls married; young Jonathan became a schoolmaster. Their inner faith, of course, was Catholic. But after all that had passed, she advised them: “Whatever happens, keep your own counsel. Be silent.”

  The final years of King Harry were grim. He became bloated and sick. The fortune he had stolen from the Church was wasted in extravagant palaces and useless foreign ventures to satisfy his craving for glory. Wives came and went. Even clever Cromwell fell from favour and lost his head.

  The king had managed to produce an heir in the end, by the third of his six wives. The boy Edward, everyone said, was brilliant but sickly, and it soon became clear that his tutors, Cranmer and his friends meant to take their new boy king even further from the true Catholic faith after King Harry died. But even Susan was astounded when she discovered how far they meant to go.

  “Cranmer’s Prayer Book,” she said to her family, “need not have been so bad. After all, it is mostly a translation of the Latin rite and I’ll agree that his language is beautiful.” But the doctrines the English Church were now espousing were no longer just those of reformers. They were entirely Protestant. “The miracle of the Mass is utterly denied,” she cried. Priests could marry. “I’m sure that suits Cranmer,” she remarked acidly. But, in a way, even more shocking to the senses was the physical destruction which the Protestants demanded. She saw it most painfully one day when, visiting London, she slipped into Peter’s little church of St Lawrence Silversleeves.

  The change was truly astounding. The little church had been stripped. The dark old rood screen which her brother had loved was gone. They had burned it. The walls were whitewashed. The altar had been taken away and a bare table placed in the middle of the church. Even the new stained glass windows had been smashed. She knew this vandalism had been taking place everywhere, but here in her brother’s church it hurt her more. Do they really imagine, she wondered, that by breaking up everything beautiful they can purify their own sinful souls? But despite all these horrors, she stuck to her rule: be silent.

  Nor when the Protestant boy king died and his sister Mary came to the throne, did Susan allow herself to rejoice too soon. True, Mary as the daughter of poor, Spanish Queen Katherine, was a devout Catholic. True, she swore to return England to the true Church of Rome. “But her nature is obstinate,” Susan judged, “and I fear she will handle the business badly.” And alas, that was how it turned out. Despite the protests of her people, she insisted upon marrying King Philip of Spain. The Catholic cause from now on, in the minds of many Englishmen, came to mean that they would be subject not only to a Pope, but to a foreign king as well. Then came the burnings of Protestants. All the leaders of the reform were sentenced. When Cranmer burned, she felt sorry for him. When cruel old Latimer went to the stake she only shrugged. “He did worse to others.” But soon the English were calling their queen “Bloody Mary”; and when, after five unhappy years, she died childless, it did not at all surprise Susan that England’s religion was still an open question.

  There remained only one of King Harry’s children, Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, and Susan was sure that she could not return England to Rome. For if the Pope in Rome were the true authority, then her mother’s marriage to the old king must have been invalid. She herself, therefore, would be a bastard and could not legitimately sit on England’s throne. The religious settlement that Elizabeth constructed was perfectly logical, therefore. The question of the Mass was described by a formula so mysterious that with enough good will you could read it either way. A degree of religious ceremony was maintained. The Pope’s authority was denied, but Elizabeth tactfully called herself Supreme Governor, instead of Supreme Head of the English Church. To Catholics therefore she could say: “I have given you a reformed Catholicism.” To Protestants: “The Pope is denied.” Or as Susan put it drily: “Bastard child; bastard Church.”

  Yet even Susan had to admit, Elizabeth was showing wisdom. For as the whole of Europe drew into two huge, and increasingly hostile religious camps, the position of England’s queen was not an easy one. While she temporized with the great Catholic powers and even hinted that she might marry one of their princes and return England to Rome, she was faced in London and the other cities with an increasingly Protestant people. This was not surprising. Intelligent merchants and artisans, having once got their English Bible and Book of Common Prayer, liked thinking for themselves. Their trading partners, in the Low Countries, in Germany, even in France, were often Protestant too. Gradually the more extreme forms of Protestantism made headway. Puritans, these people began to call themselves. Even if she had hated the Protestants – and secretly she was in sympathy with them – Elizabeth could not have stopped this development without resorting to tyranny and bloodshed.

  So instead, she and her wise minister, the great Cecil, had adopted an English compromise. “We do not seek to look into men’s hearts,” they said. “But outward conformity we must require.” It was a humane and necessary policy; and even Susan, on the whole, was grateful for it. So that, to her own surprise, when the Pope in Rome grew impatient with the English queen and threatened excommunication if she did not return her kingdom to the fold, Susan found herself saying irritably: “I wish he would not.”

  Only one thing, in those years, drew from her a cry of fury. This was the publication, in 1563, of a single, stout book. It was known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs; and it was an astonishing feat of propaganda. For this book, carefully written to evoke every man’s pity and rage, described in detail the martyrs of England – by which it meant those Protestants who had perished under Bloody Mary. Of the Catholics who had suffered martyrdom before then, it said not a word. That some of these Protestants, like vicious old Latimer, had been burners and torturers themselves, it conveniently forgot. The sale of the book was prodigious. Soon, it seemed, only Catholic
persecution of Protestants had ever existed.

  “’Tis a lie,” Susan would protest. “And I fear it will persist.” It would indeed. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was destined to be read in families, to give warning to children, and to shape English people’s perception of the Catholic Church for generations.

  Yet, apart from this one outburst, the silence of Susan continued. She had had her fill of trouble; she was determined to live at peace. And peace she was granted, at least in this life, except for one minor disturbance.

  After a long career at court, where he never really advanced, her brother Thomas took a wife late in life. She was a girl of good family and some fortune, but some small blemish on her character, Susan suspected, had prevented her getting married. She gave him a son, then died. And not long after that, Susan received a letter from her brother informing her that he, too, was not long for this world and intended sending his infant son and heir to Rochester, “where I know you and Jonathan will look after him.”

  And so it was, in the last years of her life, that Susan found herself with a new charge, a handsome little fellow with auburn hair and, she had to confess, great charm. His name was Edmund.

  Sometimes, though, she wondered if he was not just a little too wild.

  THE GLOBE

  The long years of Queen Elizabeth I were remembered as a golden age, but to Londoners living at the time they were more varied. Firstly, for the most part, there was peace. Elizabeth was naturally cautious, and thanks to her father’s extravagance, she could not really afford to go to war. There was also modest prosperity. All men’s lives, even those of the tiny minority in the towns, still depended on the harvest; and Elizabeth was usually lucky with her harvests. There was adventure, too. Though seventy years had passed since Columbus found America, it was not until Elizabeth’s reign that English adventurers like Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh set out on the voyages of exploration – in truth, a mixture of piracy, trade and settlement – that began England’s huge encounter with the New World.

  But the defining event of the reign took place when Elizabeth, having avoided large-scale war for thirty years, was at last, unavoidably, forced into it. The cause was religion. If the Reformation had dealt the Catholic Church a mighty blow, Rome had risen to the challenge: with dedicated orders like the Jesuits, even with the dreaded Inquisition, the Church set out to win back what was lost; and high on the list was the schismatic kingdom of England. Nothing could disguise where Elizabeth’s true sympathies lay; and many of her subjects, led by the stern Puritans, were urging her even further into the Protestant camp. Exasperated at last, the Pope told England’s Catholics that they no longer owed loyalty to the heretic queen. Indeed he wished there were someone to depose her. One candidate was her Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. Cast out by the Protestant Scots and held in a northern English castle, this romantic, wayward lady was an obvious focus for any Catholic plots. Unwisely however, she was caught in one of these and Elizabeth had been forced to order her execution. But there was another candidate, mightier by far than foolish Mary.

  King Philip of Spain had hoped to obtain the Crown of England for his Habsburg family when he married Mary Tudor. Now he might win it by conquest – a chance to perform a great service for the true faith. “This is nothing less,” he announced, “than a holy crusade.”

  At the end of July 1588, there set out from Spain the greatest fleet that the world had ever seen. The Armada’s mission was to land on the shores of England a huge army against which Elizabeth’s modest militia would be helpless. Philip was sure that every true Catholic in England would rise to support him.

  On the little island, Englishmen trembled. But they prepared to fight. Every suitable vessel made ready at the southern ports. Great beacons were set up on hills all the way along the coast to signal the Armada’s approach. As for the Catholics, Philip was wrong. “We are Catholics, but not traitors,” they declared. But most memorable of all was the speech Elizabeth made, dressed in full armour, as she came to join her troops.

  Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength in the goodwill of my subjects; and therefore I am come . . . being resolved in the midst and heat of the battle to live or die amongst you all; to lay down for God, my kingdom and for my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust.

  I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman: but I have the heart and stomach of a king – and a king of England too.

  As the massive galleons advanced up the English Channel, a huge storm arose, and harried by the little English vessels, the Spanish were confounded; the storm continued day after day until at last they were blown all the way round the rocky coast of Scotland and Ireland where many were wrecked. Only a fraction ever returned home and King Philip of Spain, honestly mystified, wondered if this were a sign. The English had no doubt. “We were saved by the hand of God,” men said. The Roman Catholics, henceforth, were seen as dangerous invaders. God, clearly, had chosen England as a special haven: a Protestant island kingdom. And so it would remain.

  At the hub of the fortunate kingdom, London bustled as never before. Seen from a distance, the old place looked much the same. The medieval city still rose on its two hills within the ancient Roman walls, and in several places the surrounding fields and marshland still came to the city gates. On the skyline, however, the spire of St Paul’s had gone, struck by lightning, leaving only a stubby square tower, somehow less medieval than before; and in the east, the Tower had now acquired four gleaming onion domes at its corners, giving the place a more festive air, like a Tudor country palace.

  Within its confines, London had swelled. The houses had grown taller: three or four timbered and gabled storeys now jutted out over the narrow streets and alleys. Unused spaces were being filled up: the old Walbrook stream between the two hills had almost disappeared under houses now. Above all, the great enclosed precincts of the old monasteries, dissolved by King Harry, were being colonized. Parts of the old religious houses were workshops; the huge Blackfriars precinct was rebuilt as fashionable houses. And the population was swelling, not because families were growing – for age and disease, in crowded Tudor London, still took away more than were born – but because of a stream of immigrants from all over England, and from overseas, especially from the Low Countries, where Protestants fled the persecuting Catholic Spanish. At the end of the Wars of the Roses, London had perhaps fifty thousand souls; by Elizabeth’s last years, four times that number.

  And in busy London there now grew up one of the greatest gifts that the English genius was to leave the world. For in the reign of Elizabeth I began the first and greatest flowering of the glorious English theatre. Yet it is less generally known that in Elizabeth’s final years, when William Shakespeare had written only half his plays, the English theatre almost came to an end.

  1597

  Earlier that spring afternoon, there had been a cockfight and now they were baiting a bear. The circular pit of the Curtain, from which the actors’ stage had been temporarily removed, was about fifty feet across, with two tall tiers of wooden galleries enclosing it. The bear was tethered to a post in the centre by a chain which was long enough to allow it to bump into the barriers at the spectators’ feet. The bear was a splendid beast: already it had killed two of the three mastiffs which had been set on it and their bodies, pulped and bleeding, lay in the dust. But the remaining dog had put up a tremendous fight. Though a blow from the bear’s mighty paw had flung him right across the pit, he would not give up. Weaving and springing he had attacked again and again, savaging the bear’s hindquarters, driving it to a frenzy of indignation and even twice sinking his teeth into its throat when it grew tired. The crowd roared: “Well done, Scamp. Go for him, boy!” Bears were seldom killed, but the pluckiest dogs were often saved to fight another day. As the mastiff was called off, the onlookers shouted their approval.

  None cried more heartily – “Bravely fought! Noble hound!” – tha
n the handsome, auburn-haired young man in the gallery, surrounded by a group of friends who hung upon his words. He was obviously one of the young gallants of the town. His doublet was richly embroidered, dagged and – this was the fashion – formed into a stiffened curve over his midriff. Though some young men still favoured the medieval hose, which certainly showed off a fine leg and, indeed, the buttocks too, he had gone over to the newest style: a pair of woollen stockings and above these, made of the same material as the doublet, the billowing breeches known as galligaskins, secured at the knee with ribbons. On his feet were embroidered shoes, tucked into outer slippers lest the mud should soil them. Around his neck, a starched ruff, white as snow. Over his shoulders, also matching his tunic, a short cape. It was a fashion, echoing the shape of Spanish armour, that made him look both elegant and manly.

  From his waist hung a rapier, its pommel embossed with gold, and at the back, a matching dagger. He wore gloves of soft and scented leather and in his right ear a golden ring. Upon his head was a high brimmed hat from which there sprouted, like fountains, three gorgeous plumes which added a foot to his height. This was the dress with which, in Elizabeth’s last years, a man decked himself out for immortality upon the stage of life. But there was one more prop to make the costume complete. With studied nonchalance, Edmund Meredith held it in his right hand. It was long, curved and made of clay.

  It was a pipe. Some years before the queen’s favourite, Walter Raleigh, had learned the use of the tobacco plant from the American Indians and brought it back to England. Soon the expensive Virginian weed was all the rage amongst the fashionable. Edmund Meredith, as it happened, did not much like the taste of the pipe, but he always had one with him in a public place, to take away from his nostrils the smells, real or assumed, of the common people: “the garlic-breaths and onion-breaths,” as he liked to call them.