Queen Elizabeth’s cunning compromise had not been enough to preserve her island kingdom’s peace. The terrible religious forces that the Reformation unleashed had now divided all Europe into two armed camps who would war with each other, at a huge cost in human life, for more than a century. Whichever way the Queen of England turned, she found herself beset with danger. She deplored the extremes of the Catholic Inquisition. She shared the horror of her Puritan subjects when, one terrible St Bartholomew’s Day, the conservative Catholics of France massacred thousands of peaceful Protestants. Yet she could not sanction the growing Puritan party in England who wanted, through an increasingly radical Parliament, to destroy her compromise Church and dictate to the queen herself. Even if her natural inclination was to move towards the ordered world offered by traditional Catholicism, that did her no good either. For since she couldn’t deliver her country to Rome, the Pope had not only excommunicated her but absolved all Catholics from allegiance to the heretic queen. Elizabeth couldn’t tolerate that: the Roman Church was outlawed in her realm.
The English Catholics did not rise in revolt, but they took all the steps they could to preserve their religion. And few places in southern England contained more loyal Catholics than the Winchester diocese. Even at the start of the reign, thirty priests there had resigned sooner than put up with Elizabeth’s compromise Church. Many of the better sort, as the gentry and merchant class were called, quite openly maintained their Catholic faith. One of the Pitts women was put in the Clink prison by the bishop for defying him and the queen’s secretary Cecil himself sent word to Albion to keep his wife quiet.
‘I cannot control her; she does not live in my house,’ Albion sent word back. ‘Although I couldn’t curb your mother’s tongue,’ he privately confessed to Clement, ‘even if she did live with me.’ His father had died not long after and it seemed the authorities had decided to ignore the Lady Albion since then.
But Clement always lived in dread. He strongly suspected that she harboured Catholic priests. The Isle of Wight and the inlets on the Southampton stretch of the southern coast were natural places to land Roman priests, and the loyal Catholic gentry, the recusants as they were already being called, were ready to give them shelter. These priests were strictly illegal now; no less than four had been discovered in the Winchester diocese recently and taken away for burning. Any day, Clement expected to hear of his mother’s arrest for harbouring priests. She would not even exercise caution. The crimson she was wearing, he thought, was a typical case in point.
When, twenty years before, the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots had been thrown out of her own kingdom by the Scottish Presbyterians, she had soon become the focus of every Catholic plot to overthrow her heretic English cousin. Held under house arrest in England, the wilful exile schemed endlessly until at last, at the start of 1587, Elizabeth had been practically forced by her own council to execute her.
‘She is a Catholic martyr,’ the Lady Albion had immediately declared and within a week she had come to visit her son, wearing the martyr’s crimson for all to see.
‘But must you openly defy the queen’s council and the bishop in this way?’ he had asked in a plaintive tone.
‘Yes,’ she had answered simply. ‘We must.’
We. That was the trouble. Whenever his mother spoke to him of the necessity of dangerous acts, she always spoke of ‘we’ – to let him know that in her mind he was infallibly included.
Ten years ago his mother had finally come into her cousin’s large inheritance. She became, therefore, a very rich woman, free to leave her fortune where and how she pleased. She never spoke of it. Neither did he. The idea that he could be loyal to the sacred cause in order to inherit her money was as unthinkable as to imagine that he would see a penny of it if he wasn’t. The nearest hint she had ever given of her position was once, when he had mentioned that his father had been short of money before his death, to remark: ‘I could not help your father, Clement. He was a broken reed.’ And in those words he thought he could hear, like a soft snap, the sentence of poverty for those who disappointed her.
‘We’, therefore, it was. The fact that she had yet to give him anything, that he now had a wife and three children and that, if he displeased the queen’s council he could count upon losing the several posts in the Forest that provided his modest income – these considerations, of course, must mean nothing if he were to keep her good opinion as they both stood before the most high God.
‘What do you desire of me, Mother?’ he managed to say at last.
‘To speak a word or two alone. I could not do it at the wedding.’ The celebration at Salisbury had been a large affair: one of her nieces had been marrying into a prominent Sarum family. To talk without risk of being overheard would have been difficult.
‘I have received a letter, Clement.’ She paused, looking at him solemnly. He wondered uneasily what was coming next. ‘From your sister. From Spain.’
Spain. Why had his mother insisted on marrying his sister to a Spaniard? A foolish question, really. Even the French, in her eyes, were not truly reliable in matters of religion compared with the Spanish. Back in Mary Tudor’s reign, when King Philip of Spain and his courtiers were in England, she had lost no time in making friends among the Spanish nobility. And sure enough, as soon as his sister Catherine reached the age of fifteen, his mother had boarded a merchant ship at Southampton and departed without so much as a by-your-leave for Spain. Once there, the whole business had been arranged in a trice. With the promise, no doubt, of a handsome dowry, Catherine had been betrothed to a Spaniard of impoverished but impeccable family – he was even related, distantly, to the powerful Duke of Medina Sidonia.
He had not seen her since then. Was she happy? He hoped so. He tried to visualize her. He had his father’s fair hair, but she was dark like her mother. She had probably turned into a completely Spanish lady by now. In which case, he thought glumly, you could be sure what her views were about the present crisis.
When King Philip of Spain had married Catholic Mary Tudor he had naturally supposed that he was adding England to his vast Hapsburg family domains. He had been disappointed when, at her death, the English council had politely but firmly told him he wasn’t wanted. Not that you could fault his persistence: he had offered repeatedly to marry Elizabeth, who had played him along for years. But the King of Spain was not to be trifled with. Not only had this English queen spurned him; she made friends and flirted marriage with his rivals the French. Her seafaring buccaneers – they were legalized pirates, really – raided his shipping; she aided the Protestants who rebelled against Spanish rule in the Netherlands. She had proved to be a heretic and the Pope wanted her deposed. When, at the start of 1587 she had executed the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots it was the final excuse he needed. With the Pope’s blessing he prepared a huge fleet.
The Spanish attack upon England would have taken place that very summer if that boldest of English buccaneers, Sir Francis Drake, had not sent fire ships into Cadiz and destroyed half the Spanish fleet. By the end of the summer, as Clement and his mother were contemplating the family wedding in Salisbury, though the danger seemed to be past that year, few people imagined that Philip of Spain had given up. He would surely try again. It was his nature.
‘We shall soon be delivered, Clement.’ It was ‘delivered’ as far as his mother was concerned; not ‘invaded’.
‘You have definite news?’
‘Don Diego’ – this was Catherine’s husband – ‘has risen far. He is to be a great captain in the army that will come.’ She smiled with satisfaction. ‘It will come, Clement, with the banner of the true Church. And then the faithful of England will rise.’
He had no doubt that she believed it. Encouraged largely by contact with people like the Lady Albion, the Spanish Ambassador had assured his royal master that at least twenty-five thousand Englishmen under arms would flock to join the Catholic army as soon as it set foot on English soil. It had to be so. Wasn’t it God’s wi
ll? And Queen Elizabeth herself, whatever she might say, was by no means confident of the loyalty of her Catholic subjects. The fact that some of the southern shore defences might be in the hands of Catholic sympathizers had already caused her loyal Secretary Cecil some alarm.
Yet would they rise? Albion’s own estimate was different. English Catholics might not like Queen Elizabeth much, but they had lived under her rule for thirty years, now. Few of them wanted to be subjects of Spain. ‘English Catholics long for the return of their religion, Mother,’ he said. ‘But few of them want to be traitors.’
‘Traitors? We cannot be traitors if we serve the true God. They are afraid.’
‘Doubtless.’
‘So they must be given heart. They must be led.’
He said nothing.
‘You lead part of the muster in the Forest, Clement. Is it not so?’ All along the southern coastal regions, musters of men had been raised in every parish – a local militia to resist the Spanish if they landed. ‘And the muster point for the Forest is down by the shore battery?’
‘Yes.’ He had been quite proud of his work with the muster that spring, even if they were still poorly armed.
‘But you do not mean, of course, to oppose the Spanish when they land?’
‘I?’ He stared at her. Did she imagine he was going to act the traitor – join the Spanish – for the faith?
But now she smiled. ‘Clement, I have news that will bring you joy. I have a letter for you.’ She reached into her black gown and from some secret recess drew out a little roll of parchment which she handed to him in quiet triumph. ‘It is a letter, Clement – a warrant – from your brother-in-law, Don Diego. He gives you your instructions. There may be more in the spring. They are coming next summer, without fail. God’s will be done.’
He took the letter from her in a daze. ‘How came you by this?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘Through your sister, of course. There is a merchant who carries me her letters. And other things.’
‘But, Mother. If this should ever be discovered. Cecil and the council have spies …’ And very good ones; it was well known. ‘Such a letter …’ He trailed off. Such a letter, intercepted, meant death.
She observed him silently for a moment or two; but when she spoke, her voice was surprisingly gentle. ‘Even the most faithful may be afraid,’ she said quietly. ‘This is how God tests us. And yet,’ she continued, ‘it is the very fear of God that also gives us courage. For you see, Clement, we cannot escape Him. He is everywhere. He knows all, judges all. We have no choice but to obey Him, if we believe. So it is only lack of faith that holds us back, that keeps us from rushing to His arms.’
‘Faith is not always easy, Mother, even for the faithful.’
‘And it is for that, Clement,’ she went on earnestly, ‘that He sends us signs. Our Blessed Lord performed miracles; the saints, their very relics, cause wonders even now. Why, here in the Forest, does not God send us a marvellous miracle every year?’
‘You speak of the oak trees?’
‘Of course, what else?’
It had been remarked upon for many generations now that there were three magical, or miraculous trees in the New Forest. They were all to be found in the area to the north of Lyndhurst; all three were old. And unlike any other oak trees in the Forest, or anywhere else in Christendom for all that Clement knew, they burst all three into green leaf for a mysterious midwinter week, at the feast of Christmas when everything else was bare. The Christmas Green Oaks, or the Green Trees they were called.
No one knew how and why it happened. Their breaking into leaf was against all nature. No wonder, then, if to pious Lady Albion and many like her, this reminder of Our Lord’s crucifixion, of the three crosses upon Calvary and of the resurrection of the dead, was seen as a sign that the divine message is everywhere and that the Holy Church sends forth new shoots in any season of the year.
‘Oh, Clement.’ Her eyes now grew suddenly misty. ‘God’s signs are everywhere. There is nothing to fear.’ She was looking at him with such emotion. It was the nearest thing to maternal affection he could ever remember seeing. ‘When we are delivered from heresy and King Philip rules, this will only lead to your glory.’ She smiled so tenderly. ‘But if – which I cannot think – it should be God’s will that this business fall out otherwise, I had rather see you, my dearest son, raised on a scaffold, even torn limb from limb, than that you should forsake your God, your Heavenly King.’
He knew she meant it, every word. ‘You know what my instructions are?’
‘To lead your muster, Clement, silence the shore battery and help the Spanish to land.’
‘Where?’
‘Between Southampton and Lymington. The Forest shore will not be easy to defend.’
‘You expect me to reply to this letter?’
‘There is no need.’ She beamed. ‘It is already done. I sent a letter to your sister, and Don Diego will convey it to the King of Spain himself. I have told them that you may be relied upon. Even unto death.’
He gazed southwards, over the Forest, towards Southampton and the distant blue haze by the coast. Was her letter, perhaps, already in the hands of Cecil’s spies? Would he live to see Christmas? ‘Thank you, Mother,’ he murmured, drily.
But his mother did not hear him. For she was already signalling to the servants to bring her litter.
The oak tree stood just apart from the wood.
The afternoon was warm.
In the wood, smooth, stately beech trees soared up to share the canopy with crusted oaks. The ground was mossy. All was quiet except for the faint rustle of the leaves and the tiny popping sound as, now and then, a green acorn fell to the ground.
Behind the tree, on a slight incline dotted with young oaks, lay a green glade down which the shadows stole at sunset.
Albion was alone as he rode towards the tree.
Oak: the genus Quercus, sacred since ancient times. There are five hundred species of oak tree upon the planet, but the island of Britain since the ending of the Ice Age contained mainly two: quercus robur, the common or pendunculate oak, whose acorns grow upon little stalks; and quercus petraea, the sessile oak, whose leaves have fewer lobes and whose acorns grow side by side with the leaf. Both kinds grew on the sandy New Forest soil. The common oak produced more acorns.
Albion gazed at the tree with pleasure. He had a particular interest in trees.
The New Forest and its administration had not changed greatly in the last four hundred years. The royal deer were still protected; the midsummer fence month still in force; the verderers still held courts and the foresters their bailiwicks. From time to time, also, gentlemen regarders – knights of the county often as not – would survey and check the Forest boundaries, although a steady trickle of small land grants to private individuals down the generations had made this a more complex task than it had been in olden times. But one change had been taking place. It was subtle, sometimes vague, yet increasingly present.
No one could say exactly when it had begun, but there had been an informal management of the trees in the Forest for centuries. The woodland crop was important: rods, poles, branches for wattle fencing, brushwood, fuel for fires and for charcoal. The trees supplied so many of man’s needs. Most of the supply came from the smaller trees and bushes like the hazel and holly. To obtain straight poles from a hazel, for instance, it would be cut just above the ground, causing it to send up multiple shoots which could be harvested every few years. This process was known as coppicing. More rarely, with oak trees, a similar cutting took place about six feet up, causing a mass of spreading shoots to emerge. This was termed pollarding, and the resulting tree with its stocky trunk and fan of branches was known as a pollard oak.
The only trouble with coppicing was that, when you had cut the underwood, the deer and other forest stock would come and eat up all the new shoots, destroying the whole process. And so the practice had grown up of inclosing small areas, usually with a low earth wall and
a fence, to keep the animals out for three years or so, until the new shoots were too sturdy to be eaten. These inclosures were known as coppices.
A century earlier, just before the Tudors came to the English throne, an act of parliament had finally regulated the coppices. Inclosures could be made under licence and fenced for three years to allow regeneration. Since then the period had been extended to a generous nine years. These coppices were valuable and were leased out.
But beyond this activity there was the question of timber – of the felling of whole trees for the construction of large buildings, ships or other of the king’s works. In ages past there had been little need for timber from the New Forest, although huge trees might be provided for a cathedral church or other great project from time to time. But as building activity slowly rose in the Tudor period, the royal treasury began to look more carefully to see what income could be derived from its timber. In 1540, King Henry VIII had appointed a surveyor general to oversee the income, including that from timber, from all the royal woodlands, with a woodward for each county where the royal woodlands lay. The New Forest was not only, nowadays, a preserve for the king’s deer; very gradually the faint consciousness was stealing through the glades that it might also be a huge store of royal trees.
A few years earlier, Albion had managed to get himself appointed as the woodward for the New Forest. This had brought him some extra income; it had also caused him to learn a good deal more than he had ever known about trees. He had even become quite interested in them for their own sake. He looked with approval and even admiration, therefore, at the stately old oak.
It was a great, spreading oak; although its spread came naturally, and not from any pollarding. It was also famous. The first reason for its fame was that, situated some three miles or so north of Lyndhurst, it was one of the three curious trees that broke into leaf for a week at Christmas. But even this magical fact was not all for, somewhere in its long life, it had acquired a second reputation.