Spring 1642
Parliament, still in session, drew ever closer to accusing the queen. It was a steady, terrifying approach, which would not waver nor hesitate. They impeached twelve bishops for treason, one after another, until a round dozen had appeared before the bar of the House, with their lives on the line. And then the word was that the queen was next on the list.
‘What shall you do?’ Hester asked John. They were in the warmth of the rarities room where a large fire kept the collection warm and dry though there was a storm of wintry sleet dashing against the grand windows. Hester was polishing the shells and precious stones to make them gleam on their beds of black velvet, and John was labelling a new collection of carved ivories which had just arrived from India.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I shall have to go to Oatlands to see to the planning for the gardens next season. I will learn more there.’
‘Planning gardens for a queen who will be beheaded?’ Hester asked quietly.
John met her gaze, his mouth twisted with anxiety. ‘I am following your creed, wife. I’m trying to survive these times. I don’t know what’s best to do other than to behave as if nothing has changed.’
‘But John –’ Hester started, but was interrupted by a knock at the front door, and they both froze. John saw Hester’s colour drain from her cheeks, and the hand that held the duster trembled as if she had an ague. They stood in complete silence and then they heard the maid answer and the reassuring chink of a coin as a visitor paid for entrance to the collection. Hester whisked her cloth out of sight into the pocket of her apron and threw open the handsome double doors to him. He was a well-dressed man, a country man, by the look of his brown suit and his weather-beaten face. He paused in the doorway and looked around at the grand, imposing room and the warm fire.
‘Well, this is a treat,’ he said in the round tones of the west country.
Hester moved forward. ‘You are welcome,’ she said pleasantly. ‘This is John Tradescant, and I am his wife.’
The man dipped his head. ‘I am Benjamin George,’ he said. ‘From Yeovil.’
‘A visitor to London?’
‘Here on business. I am a Parliament man representing the borough of Yeovil.’
John stepped forward. ‘My wife will show you the rarities,’ he said. ‘But first can you tell me what news there is?’
The man looked cautious. ‘I can’t say whether it is good or bad,’ he said. ‘I am on my way home and Parliament is dissolved, I know that much.’
John and Hester exchanged a quick look. ‘Parliament dissolved?’
The man nodded. ‘The king himself came marching in to arrest five of our members. You would not have thought that he was allowed to come into Parliament with his own soldiers like that. Whether he was going to arrest our members for treason or cut them down where they stood, I don’t know which!’
‘My God!’ John exclaimed, aghast. ‘He drew a sword in the House of Commons?’
‘What happened?’ Hester demanded.
‘He came in very civil though he had his guards all about him, and he asked for a seat and sat in the Speaker’s chair. But they were gone – the men he wanted. They slipped out the back half an hour before he came in the front. We were warned, of course. And so he looked about for them, and made a comment, and then went away again.’
John was struggling to hide his irritation with the slowness of the man’s speech. ‘But what did he come for, if he left it too late to arrest them?’
The man shrugged. ‘I think myself it was some grand gesture, but he bodged it.’
Hester looked quickly at John. He made an impatient exclamation. ‘Are you saying he marched his guard into the House to arrest five members and failed?’
The man nodded. ‘He looked powerfully put out,’ he observed.
‘I should think he was. What will he do?’
‘As to that … I couldn’t say.’
‘But then what will Parliament do?’
The man slowly shook his head. Hester, seeing her husband on the edge of an outburst and the man still thinking his answer through, had to bite her lip to keep silent herself.
‘As to that … I couldn’t say either.’
John took a swift step to the door and then turned back. ‘So what is happening in the City? Is everything quiet?’
The country squire shook his head at the mystifying speed of change. ‘Well, the Lord Mayor’s trained bands are to be called out to keep the peace, the king’s men have all gone into hiding, the City is boarded up and ready for a riot or … something worse.’
‘What could be worse?’ Hester asked. ‘What could be worse than a riot in the City?’
‘War, I think,’ he said slowly. ‘A war would be worse than a riot.’
‘Between who?’ John asked tightly. ‘A war between who? What are you saying?’
The man looked into his face, struggling with the enormity of what he had to say. ‘War between the king and Parliament, I’m afraid.’
There was a brief shocked silence.
‘It has come to this?’ John asked.
‘So I am come to see the greatest sight of London which I promised myself I would see before I left, and then I am going home.’ George looked around. ‘There is even more than I thought.’
‘I will show it all to you,’ Hester promised him. ‘You must forgive our hunger for news. What will you do when you get home?’
He bowed courteously to her. ‘I shall gather the men of my household and train them and arm them so that they can fight to save their country from the enemy.’
‘But will you fight for the king or for Parliament?’
He bowed again. ‘Madam, I shall fight for my country. I shall fight for Right. The only thing is: I wish I knew who was in the right.’
Hester showed him the main features of the collection and then, as soon as she could, left him to open the drawers and look at the smaller things on his own. She could not find John in the house, nor in the orangery. As she feared, he was in the stable yard, dressed in his travelling cloak, waiting for his mare to be saddled.
‘You’re never going to court!’ she exclaimed.
‘I have to,’ he said. ‘I cannot bear having to wait for scraps of news like this.’
‘You are a gardener,’ she said. ‘Not a courtier, not a Member of Parliament. What is it to you whether the king is quarrelling with Parliament or not?’
‘I am on the edge of it all,’ John said. ‘I know too much to sit quietly at home and nurse up my ignorance. If I knew less of them then I would care less. If I knew more then I could decide better what to do. I am halfway between knowledge and ignorance and I have to settle on one side or the other.’
‘Then be ignorant!’ she said with sudden passion. ‘Get into your garden, John, and set seeds for the gardens at Wimbledon and Oatlands. Do the trade you were born to. Stay home where you are safe.’
He shook his head and took both her hands. ‘I won’t be long,’ he promised her. ‘I shall go over the river to Whitehall and find out the news and then come back home. Don’t fret so, Hester. I must learn what is happening and then I’ll come home. It is better for us if I know which way the wind is blowing. It is safer for us.’
She left her hands in his, enjoying the warmth of his callused palms. ‘You say that, but you are like a boy setting out on an adventure,’ she said shrewdly. ‘You want to be in the heart of things, my husband. Don’t deny it.’
John gave her a roguish grin and then kissed her quickly on both cheeks. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘It’s true. Let me go with your blessing?’
She was breathless with the sudden casual embrace and felt herself flushing. ‘With my blessing,’ she repeated. ‘Of course you have my blessing. Always.’
He swung himself into the saddle and let the horse walk out of the yard. Hester put her hand to her cheek where his lips had briefly touched, and watched him go.
He had to wait for a place on the horse ferry at Lambeth,
and then the traffic on the City side of the river was busier than he had ever seen it. There were hundreds of people milling around in the narrow streets, asking for news and stopping ballad sellers and pedlars of news-sheets to demand what they knew. There were armed groups of men marching down the road, pushing people aside and demanding that they shout, ‘Hurrah! for the king!’ But then down another road would come another group shouting, ‘Hurrah! for Pym! No bishops! No Papist queen!’
John drew his horse back into a sidestreet, fearful of being caught up in a fight, when he saw two of these groups heading towards each other. But the royalists wheeled off quickly to one side, as if they were on an urgent errand that took them away; and the others took care not to see them, and not to give chase. He watched them go and saw that they, like himself, were not ready for a fight yet. They didn’t even want a brawl, let alone a war. He thought the country must be filled with men like himself, like the honest Member of Parliament for Yeovil, who knew that they were in the grip of great times, and wanted to take their part in the great times, who wanted to do the right thing; but were very, very far from knowing what the right thing might be.
John’s father would have known. He would have been for the king. John’s father had had a straightforward faith that his son had never learned. John made a wry face at the thought of the certainties of the man and of his own confused layering of doubts, which left him now still mourning one woman, half in love with another, and married to a third; in the service of a king while his heart was with the opposition; always torn both ways, always on the fringe of everything.
The crowds grew thicker around the palace of Whitehall and there were armed guards looking grim and frightened with their pikes crossed at the doorways. John rode his horse round to an inn and left her in the stable, and then walked back to the palace, jostled all the way. The crowd was the same strange mix of people. There were beggars and paupers and ill-doers in rags and shabby old livery who were there to shout and perhaps collect a few coppers for their hired loyalty. There were working men and women, young apprentices, artisans and market people. There were the serious black-coated preachers of the independent churches and sectaries, and there were the well-to-do merchants and City men who would not fight themselves, but whose hearts were in the fight. There were sailors from the ships in port, shouting for Parliament since they blamed the king and his French wife for the dangers of the Dunkirk pirates, and there were members of the London trained bands, some of them trying to impose order and find their men, and others running wild and shouting that they would die to defend the rights of Parliament. This motley crowd had a motley chant which ranged from the catcalls and boos of those who did not know what they cared for, to the regular call of those who knew their cause: ‘No bishops! No queen!’, and the new call which had come about since the king had taken a sword into the House of Commons: ‘Privilege! Privilege!’
John fought his way to the front of the mob at the gates to the palace of Whitehall and shouted, over the noise, to the guard.
‘John Tradescant! The king’s gardener.’
The man shifted slightly, and John ducked under the pike and went in.
The old palace of Whitehall was the most disorganised of all the royal palaces, a jumble of buildings and courts and gardens, dotted with statuary and fountains and alive with birdsong. John, hoping to find a face he knew, made his way towards the royal apartments and then was brought short as he rounded a corner and nearly collided with the queen herself.
She was running, her cape flying behind her, her jewel box in her hands. Behind her came the king, carrying his own travelling desk of papers and a dozen maidservants and manservants, each burdened with whatever they had been able to snatch up. Behind them came two royal nursemaids, running with the two royal babies in their arms, the five-year-old Princess Elizabeth trotting to keep up, and the two young princes, James and Charles, lagging in the rear.
John dropped to his knee as she saw him but she rushed towards him and he jumped to his feet as she pushed her jewel box at him.
‘Gardener Tradescant!’ she cried. ‘Take this!’ She turned to the king. ‘We must wait!’ she insisted. ‘We must face the rabble! We must face them down!’
The king shook his head and motioned for her to go on. Unwillingly, she went before him. ‘I t … tell you they have run mad!’ he said. ‘We must get out of the C … City! There’s not a loyal heart here. They have all run m … mad. We must go to Hampton Court and c … c … consider what to do! We must summon soldiers and take advice.’
‘We are running like fools from our own shadows!’ she shrieked at him. ‘We must face them and face them down or we will spend the rest of our life on the run.’
‘We are l … lost!’ he shouted. ‘L … lost! D’you think I want to see you dragged before the b … bar and impeached for treason? D’you think I want to see your h … h … head on a pike? D’you think I want to see the rabble take y … you, and the children, t … take you now?’
John joined the train of servants running behind them and followed them to the stables. All the way the quarrel between the king and queen grew more inarticulate as her French accent deepened with her temper and his stammer grew worse with his fear. When they reached the stable yard she was beside herself.
‘You are a coward!’ she spat at him. ‘You will lose this city forever if you leave it now. It is easier to run away than to retake. You must show them that you are not afraid.’
‘Ha … Hi … I fear nothing!’ He drew himself up. ‘N … Nothing! But I must have you safe and the children safe before I can m … make m … my m … move. It is your safety, Madam, that I am securing now. For myself I care nothing! N … ha … N … Nothing!’
John pressed forward and put the jewel box on the coach floor. He was reminded of the king’s odd mixture of shyness and boastfulness. Even now, with a mob hammering on the doors of the palace, the two of them were playing out their parts in a masque. Even now they did not seem to be completely real. John looked around, the servants were like an audience at a great play. No-one urged a course of action, no-one spoke. The king and queen were the only actors; and their script was a great romance of danger and heroism and lost causes and sudden flights. John felt his heart pounding at the noise of the crowd outside and knew the deep visceral fear of a mob. He had a sudden vision of them breaking down the gates and tumbling into the stable yard. If they found the queen beside her travelling coach with her jewel box beside her, anything could happen. The whole power of the royal family which the old Queen Elizabeth had so powerfully cultivated depended on the creation and maintenance of distance and magic and glamour. Let the people once see the queen swearing at their king like a French lace-seller, and the game would be up.
‘I will see you s … safe at Hampton Court and then I will return and crush these traitors,’ Charles swore.
‘You shall crush them now!’ she shrieked. ‘Now, before they gain their strength. You shall face them and defy them and destroy them or I swear I shall leave this kingdom and never see it again! They know how to respect a princess of the blood in France!’
At once the mood of the scene shifted. The king took her hand and bowed over it, his silky hair falling to shield his face. ‘N … never say it,’ he said. ‘You are q … queen of this country, queen of all the h … hearts. This is a faithful country, they I … love you, I love you. Never even th … think of leaving me.’
There was renewed shouting at the door. John, forgetting that he should stay silent, could not bear to see them taken like a pair of runaway servants in the stable yard. ‘Your Majesty!’ he urged. ‘You must either prepare for a siege or get the coach out! The crowd will be upon you in a moment!’
The queen looked to him. ‘My faithful Gardener Tradescant!’ she exclaimed. ‘Stay with us.’
‘G … Get up at the back,’ the king ordered. ‘Y … You shall escort us t … to safety.’ John gaped at him. The only thing he had thought to do was to bring the tw
o of them to a sense of urgency.
‘Your Majesty?’ he asked.
The king handed the queen into the coach where the two little princes, Charles and James, white-faced and silent, were waiting, their eyes like saucers with terror. Then the nursemaids and the babies bundled in and the king climbed in himself. John slammed the door on them. He wanted to tell them that he could not possibly go with them but he heard the rising volume of the crowd at the gates and he was afraid that they might argue with him, command his service, question his loyalty, delay again.
John stepped back from the coach, waiting for it to draw away; but it did not move. Nobody would do anything without a specific order and the king and queen were arguing again inside.
‘Oh! Damnation! Drive on!’ John shouted, taking command in the absence of any authority, and swung himself up beside the footmen clinging on the back. ‘Westward, to Hampton Court. And drive steadily. Don’t for God’s sake run anyone down. But don’t stop!’
Even then the footmen hesitated at the stable doors.
‘Open the doors!’ John shouted at them, his temper at breaking point.
They leaped to obey the first clear order they had heard all day and the great wooden doors swung open.
At once the men and women in the very front of the crowd fell back, as the doors opened up and the coach pulled out. John saw they were taken aback at the sudden movement of the doors, at the progress of the fine horses, and the wealth and richness of the gilding on the royal coach. The king’s ornate carriage with the plumes of feathers on each roof corner, and the huge high-stepping Arab horses harnessed with tack of red leather and gold studs, still had the mystique of power, divine power, even with a traitorous Papist queen inside. But those in the front could not get back very far; they were held steady by the weight of the crowd behind them, still pushing forward.