“I have news for you which will change the situation here entirely,” he announced. “The Edict of Nantes has been revoked. Toleration is ended.” After an appalled silence he continued. “All Huguenot pastors are banished; any caught will be executed. All Huguenots like yourselves will remain; none may leave. Your children will all become Catholic. That is the new law.”
They retired to the barn in silence. That night, at nearly midnight, Eugene quietly woke his children. “Wrap up as warm as you can and put on your boots,” he told them. “We’re leaving.”
As a man of God, Meredith knew he should not have done it, but as he came up the hill from London Bridge towards Eastcheap and caught sight of O Be Joyful’s woeful face heading directly towards him, he looked for cover. Thanking God for His providence, he stood in the shadow of a doorway waiting for the danger to pass.
With horror, therefore, after a brief pause, he heard a shuffling of feet, then a sigh, and saw not six feet away the familiar back of the craftsman as he sat down on the step right in front of him. Damn it, thought Meredith, now I’m trapped. There was only one choice. He must go up the stairs behind him. And five minutes later he was gazing out from the top of the Monument of London.
There were few more striking sights in London than the Monument. Designed by Wren as a single, simple Doric column to commemorate the Great Fire, it had been erected close by the spot in Pudding Lane where the huge conflagration had started. Constructed in Portland stone, it stood two hundred and two feet high and over its summit, made of gilt bronze, was a flaming urn that glowed and flashed when it caught the sun. The endless spiral staircase gave on to a balcony just below the urn, from which the drop was so sheer that it made many people dizzy. Having enjoyed the view – one could see up and down the Thames for miles – Meredith peeped over the edge to see if it was safe to descend. It was not: O Be Joyful was still there.
It would not be surprising if the woodcarver had things on his mind; it had certainly been an eventful year. In February, quite unexpectedly, without any sign that he was even unwell, King Charles had suddenly died. His Catholic brother James had therefore become King James II and all England had waited to see what would happen. To general relief, he had scrupulously observed the Anglican rite at his coronation in the spring; but there were hints that he hoped for more toleration for his Catholic subjects and clear signs that he would not have them abused. That summer, Titus Oates, finally exposed as a complete fraud, had been tied to a cart tail and whipped through the streets from Aldgate to Newgate. Personally, since he had no doubt that Oates was a rogue and a fraud, Meredith hadn’t the least objection to the sentence. More dangerous had been the Protestant rising that young Monmouth, foolishly thinking his popularity a much more powerful thing than it was, had tried to start down in the West Country. The regular troops, under the capable command of John Churchill, had easily crushed the rebels and poor Monmouth had been executed. But the sequel had been more disturbing. Judge Jeffreys, in summary trials that were immediately called the Bloody Assizes, had sentenced the rebels to hang by the dozen, and James had been so pleased that he had promoted Jeffreys to be his senior judge. Such thoughts, Meredith knew, were enough to cause O Be Joyful to plague him for hours.
As he grew older, Meredith found that he had less and less desire to concentrate upon such things. What, in the end, were these temporary affairs of men compared to the great mysteries of the universe? Especially when one of the greatest of all mysteries was being unravelled that very year in London?
It had been Halley’s idea, supported by Pepys, the then president, that the Royal Society should publish the theories which Isaac Newton, a rather dyspeptic Cambridge professor, had been expounding. For months now, as he prepared his great theory for publication, Newton had been sending a stream of requests to the Greenwich Observatory for astronomical information. From all this Meredith already had a fair idea of Newton’s system of gravity and it fascinated him. He knew that the attraction between two bodies depended upon the square of the distance between them; he also understood that two objects dropped from a height, regardless of their mass, should fall together at the same speed. And now, looking down, it suddenly occurred to him that the Monument itself would be an excellent place for such a demonstration. Indeed, he considered wryly, two objects dropped together just now should land on O Be Joyful’s head at exactly the same time.
Carpenter, two hundred feet below, was oblivious to these dangerous ideas. It was not the first time he had come to the Monument. Some months before, when he was admiring the fine carving of the panels at the base, a kindly gentleman had translated one of the inscriptions in Latin which accompanied it. Having described the course of the Great Fire, an additional sentence had been added a few years later:
But Popish frenzy, which caused
these horrors, is not yet quenched.
“For you know,” the gentleman had explained, “it was the papists who started the Great Fire.”
The fact that it was in writing, and upon such a great structure as the Monument must, O Be Joyful supposed, prove it beyond a doubt. And for another half-hour, while Meredith became rather cold above, he sat there and gloomily wondered what terrible things the Catholics would do next.
When everything was ready, they prayed. Then they put the children in the barrels.
Eugene’s father-in-law was a stout, sturdy man, not unlike a barrel himself. Eugene knew that the Bordeaux merchant was better placed to help them than most and he had also guessed that the sooner they left the better. “There will be so many other Huguenots trying to do the same thing that the escape routes will soon be jammed – or discovered by the authorities,” he told his wife.
Louis XIV, the Sun King as they called him, was an autocrat whose power even Charles I of England, with his belief in Divine Right, could hardly have dreamed of. The king who built the vast palace of Versailles and nearly destroyed the Protestant Dutch, and who could tear up the Treaty of Nantes, would certainly be thorough. Only an hour after they had sneaked into the merchant’s house, one of his children reported that the troops were on the quays, inspecting every ship.
Eugene’s faith in his father-in-law had not been misplaced. “The ship I’m putting you on is English. The captain and I have done business for years. He can be trusted.” He had sighed. “It’s your best chance.” It was sailing to the English port of Bristol.
Eugene thanked the merchant for putting himself at risk in this way and asked if he intended to follow them.
“No,” the older man replied sadly. “I shall have to convert.” He shrugged. “You’re younger. You also have a craft – you can work anywhere. But I’m a wine shipper. All I have is here and I still have five children to look after. So, for the moment anyway, I’ll have to be a Catholic. Perhaps in time the children will follow you.” It obviously caused him grief.
The main problem had been how to smuggle Eugene and his little family aboard. The merchant had been confident, though. “Five barrels among a hundred. You’ll be stacked towards the centre.” Tiny air holes had been drilled in the top of each cask. “I hope the captain will be able to let you out once you’re safely at sea,” he had continued. “But just in case . . .” His wife had provided each occupant with a flagon of water and two loaves of bread. “Remember, you may have to stay in there a long time,” he had carefully warned them all. “So you must eat and drink as little as possible.”
By mid-morning, the carts carrying the casks of wine were rumbling along the quay to where the English vessel was waiting. There was nothing in the least unusual about the sight. The shipper’s men and the English sailors began to load them, but in quite a leisurely fashion. The young officer in charge of the troops came over to watch carefully, placing himself near the merchant, whom he eyed from time to time, suspiciously. Suddenly he noticed that the men carrying one of the barrels seemed to be slightly off balance. He strolled over, drew his sword, and ordering the men to put their load down, drove it throug
h the top of the barrel.
1688
How massively, how graciously it rose upon its western hill. Already the walls were up and the roofing had begun. The huge Roman temple of St Paul’s stared down upon Ludgate as if it had been there first. And though over the cathedral’s central crossing there was as yet nothing but a great, gaping cavity, open to the sky, it was entirely clear from the arrangement of the supporting pillars what was to come. King James had thrown his full weight behind the project. Extra taxes for the building had been raised, and even if nobody had seen any drawings yet, everyone knew that Wren’s great cathedral would soon be surmounted by a mighty, popish dome. Though it was somewhat modified, O Be Joyful had no doubt that he was looking, essentially, at the great wooden model he had helped to make a dozen years ago. And with a Catholic king now on the throne, he knew that the conspiracy was complete.
Although, to his shame, he had continued to follow Grinling Gibbons’s orders, O Be Joyful had always tried when he could to avoid projects that seemed too papist. His work some years before in the rebuilt Mercers’ Hall in Cheapside had given him special pleasure, while two years ago he had managed to escape working on the frieze for a statue of the new Catholic king. At present he was working in the little palace of St James, and this too his conscience could allow him to enjoy.
But now on this bright morning of 9 June 1688, O Be Joyful Carpenter paused by St Paul’s and wondered if he had been right in the advice he had given last night to his friend Penny, recently arrived from Bristol. Certainly the Huguenot had seemed astonished.
“You, O Be Joyful, now support a papist king?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” He supported King James. After what had happened recently, it had seemed to O Be Joyful that he must. But as he thought of the Huguenot’s urgent voice and his worried face he wondered: was this all a trap?
It was twelve o’clock that morning when Eugene Penny caught up with Meredith. He had gone first to St Bride’s where the clergyman’s housekeeper had told him he was out, but suggested one or two places where he might have gone. Since then he had tried Child’s in St Paul’s, the Grecian near the Temple, Will’s by Covent Garden, Man’s at Charing Cross, three others in Pall Mall and St James’s, but at last it was in Lloyd’s, that the Huguenot found the clergyman sitting comfortably at a corner table and smoking a pipe. Surprised but delighted to see him after all these years, Meredith motioned him to sit down.
“My dear Mr Penny! Will you take coffee?” Of all the many conveniences of the new city since the fire, none had pleased Meredith more than the institution of the coffee house. There seemed to be a new one every month. Open all day, serving hot chocolate and coffee – which was always drunk black, though usually with sugar – the coffee houses of the city and the West End were more gentlemanly places than the old taverns and were rapidly developing strong characters of their own. Wits went to one, military men to another, lawyers to a third. Meredith, who enjoyed good conversation, liked to visit a different one every day, though he tended to avoid Child’s because it was full of clergymen. The clientele of the newly opened coffee house of Lloyd’s tended to be merchants and insurance men. It was a good clientele to have. There had long been rudimentary schemes for insuring ships and their cargoes amongst merchants, though house insurance, before the Great Fire, had been unknown. But that huge disaster, together with the fact that the new brick and stone London houses were far less likely to burn down, had given a huge impetus to the whole insurance business. Many of the better houses, and almost all ships, were now comprehensively insured. The assessment of risk and the provision of cover was becoming an informal science. Meredith himself had investigated the mathematics of it and delighted to discuss such arcane subjects as the proper premium to be paid on a vessel bound for the East Indies, with the men who gathered at Lloyd’s, where business was booming.
Having accepted a coffee and polished his spectacles, Eugene Penny diffidently enquired: “I was wondering – can you help me get my job back? I’d like to return to London.”
Until recently, it had seemed to Penny, providence had been on his side. Certainly three years ago, when the captain of the English sailing ship had cracked open the top of his barrel, told him that they were now safely at sea, and cheerfully informed him that an officer had stuck his sword right through the barrel next to him – which fortunately had been full of wine – he had reasonably assumed that God meant him to survive. Their reception in Bristol had also been encouraging. There was already a Huguenot community in the western port, and in the months that followed it greatly swelled. Nor were the English unwelcoming. Even in London where, especially in Spitalfields, there was now a flood of immigrants, many of whom had suffered great danger and hardship in leaving France, there was remarkably little resentment against the hard-working foreigners. The tale of their persecution shocked the Protestant English. When they heard, as they soon did, of Huguenot pastors in France being broken on the wheel, they were outraged. Scores of thousands of Huguenots like the Penny family came into England in these years, bringing the total French population in England to some two hundred thousand – a number large enough to ensure that, in due course, three out of every four Englishmen would have a Huguenot somewhere in their ancestry. With so many of his countrymen in London, Penny had decided to remain in Bristol, had found work and modestly prospered.
But he missed working for Tompion. There were some fine clockmakers in Bristol, but nobody like him. And so, two days ago, he had journeyed up to the capital, found his old friend Carpenter, and set out to plead with his former employer for a position.
But the great clockmaker had been annoyed when Penny had suddenly left before and he was not minded to forgive him now.
Penny had not been surprised, but it had been a bitter blow, especially when he had seen in the workshop the wonderful watches the great craftsman was making. So this morning he had sought out Meredith to ask him if he would intercede on his behalf.
“I do know Tompion,” Meredith agreed, but it seemed to the clergyman that there was still something more on Penny’s mind. After an awkward pause, an offer of more coffee, and a gentle enquiry as to whether there was anything else he could do to help, Meredith saw the Huguenot take a deep breath.
Penny had been in Bristol nearly a year before any suggestion of trouble had reached him, and even then he was not sure what to make of it. The king, wanting more tolerance for his Catholic co-religionists, had started appointing a number of Catholic officers to the army and some Catholics to his Privy Council. The courts had agreed, albeit reluctantly, that he was within his rights; but many people were outraged. “What about the Test Act?” the Puritans cried. The Bishop of London refused to stop his clergy preaching publicly against it, and was suspended. Penny was not sure what all this meant, but in the months of peace that followed he had put it out of his mind until, the following spring, a new development left all England stunned.
“It’s a Declaration of Indulgence,” Penny told his astonished family one April day. “Everyone is free to worship as they please.” Catholic King James, it seemed, irritated by opposition from the Church, had called in no less a Protestant than William Penn, the patron of the Quakers, and with his help had designed this remarkable edict. “It means that the Catholics are free to worship and to hold public positions,” he explained. “But it also means that all the other faiths may do so too – Calvinists, Baptists, even Quakers.” Such religious tolerance was not unknown in northern Europe. In Protestant Holland, for instance, Dutch Catholics and Jews worshipped freely and were never troubled by William of Orange. The Declaration would override the Test Act until Parliament repealed it.
In Bristol, Penny noticed, most of the nonconformist Protestants welcomed the news. The number of Catholics who would benefit was small, the number of Protestants far larger. “It benefits us,” a Baptist remarked to him, “so we welcome it.” They even sent the king a vote of thanks. But Penny himself was more cautious. He began to pay clos
e attention to the news that came from London. He read broadsheets; asked questions. He learned that the papal nuncio had gone to Windsor in state; all over the country, he discovered, the king was replacing the lord-lieutenant and the justices of the peace who ran the counties with Catholics. News came from Oxford that King James was trying to turn one of the colleges into a Catholic seminary. At the end of the year there was even news that the queen was pregnant again – though since, in fifteen years of marriage, she had never done anything but miscarry, nobody was much concerned by that. But taken together these things disturbed Penny profoundly. The phlegmatic English might accept them, but the Huguenots he knew, who had experienced the French king’s persecution, found them ominous. That spring, when King James announced that a Parliament would be called to turn this tolerance into law, and ordered his Declaration read in churches, Penny remained sceptical. “We were protected once, by the Treaty of Nantes,” he remarked. “And look what happened to that.”
Since there was little he could do about these fears, he had come to London to see Tompion anyway, and found his old friend Carpenter as well. But it was O Be Joyful who had provided the greatest surprise of all. Although the woodcarver hated popery, it seemed he was ready to support the king.
“So are the aldermen of London and the guilds,” he explained and then added, almost apologetically: “Things have changed.”
As he discovered what had passed in London, Penny saw how clever King James II had been. Since he wanted his Declaration passed into law, he needed a Parliament to vote for it. As the Tories, his natural supporters, were mostly Church of England men, they could not be relied on. But the opposition Whigs, inheriting some of the old Roundhead character from Cromwell, favoured toleration. King James II had therefore been securing Whig dominance in boroughs all over the country, so that they would send Whigs to Parliament. And nowhere had he been more thorough than in the city of London.