The King's General (33 page)

Richard himself was seated in the dining chamber of his headquarters, his wounded leg propped up on a chair before him.

"Greetings," he said maliciously, "from one cripple to another. Let us retire to bed and see who has the greatest talent for invention."

"If that," I said, "is your mood, we will discuss it presently. At the moment I am tired, hungry, and thirsty. But would you care to tell me what the devil you are doing in Ottery St. Mary?"

"I am become a free man," he answered, smiling, "beholden to neither man nor beast. Let them fight the new model army in their own fashion. If they won't give me the troops I do not propose to ride alone with Nephew Jack against Fairfax and some twenty thousand men."

"I thought," I said, "that you were become field marshal."

"An empty honour," he said, "signifying nothing. I have returned the commission to the Prince of Wales in an empty envelope, desiring him to place it up a certain portion of his person. What shall we drink for supper, hock or burgundy?"

24

That was, I think, the most fantastic fortnight I have ever known. Richard, with no command and no commission, lived like a royal prince in the humble village of Ottery M. Mary, the people for miles around bringing their produce to the camp, their corn, their cattle, in the firm belief that he was the supreme commander of His Majesty's troops from Lyme to Land's End. For payment he referred them graciously to the commissioners of Devon. The first Sunday after his arrival he caused an edict to be read in the church of Ottery St. Mary, and other churches in the neighbouring parishes, desiring that all those persons who had been plundered by the governor of Exeter, Sir John Berkeley, when quartering troops upon them, should bring to him, Sir Richard Grenvile, the King's General in the West, an account of their losses, and he would see that they would be righted.

The humble village folk, thinking that a saviour had come to dwell amongst them, came on foot from a distance of twenty miles or more, each one bearing in his hands a list of crimes and excesses committed, according to them, by Lord Goring's troopers and Sir John Berkeley's men, and I can see Richard now, standing in the village place before the church, distributing largesse in princely fashion, which sum of money he had discovered behind a panel in his headquarters, the house belonging to an unfortunate squire with vague Parliamentary tendencies, whom Richard had immediately arrested. On the Wednesday, being fine, he held a review of his troops-- the sight being free to the villagers--and the drums sounded, and the church bells pealed, and in the evening bonfires were lit and a great supper served at the headquarters to the officers, at which I presided like a queen.

"We may as well be merry," said Richard, "while the money lasts."

And I thought of that letter to the Prince of Wales, which must by now have reached the prince's council, and I pictured the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Edward Hyde, opening the paper before the assembly. I thought also of Sir John Berkeley and what he would say when he heard about the edict in the churches, and it seemed to me that my rash and indiscreet lover would be wiser if he struck his camp and hid in the mists on Darkmoor, for he could not bluff the world much longer in Ottery St. Mary.

The bluff was superb while it lasted, and the Parliamentary squire whom we had superseded keeping a well-stocked cellar, we soon had every bottle sampled, and Richard drank perdition to the supporters of both Parliament and Crown.

"What will you do," I asked, "if the council sends for you?"

"Exactly nothing," he answered, "unless I have a letter, in his own handwriting, from the Prince of Wales himself."

And with a smile that his nephew would call ominous he opened yet another bottle.

"If we continue thus," I said, turning my glass down upon the table, "you will become as great a sot as Goring."

"Goring cannot stand after five glasses," said Richard, "I can drill a whole division after twelve."

And rising from the table, he called to the orderly who stood without the door.

"Summon Sir John Grenvile," he said.

In a moment Jack appeared, also a little flushed and gay about the eyes.

"My compliments," said Richard, "to Colonels Roscarrick and Arundell. I wish the troops to be paraded on the green .I intend to drill them."

His nephew did not flicker an eyelid, but I saw his lips quiver.

"Sir," he said, "it is past eight o'clock. The men have been dismissed to their quarters."

"I am well aware of the fact," replied his uncle. "It was for the purpose of rousing them that drums were first bestowed upon the Army. My compliments to Colonels Roscarrick and Arundell."

Jack clicked his heels and left the room. Richard walked slowly and very solemnly towards the chair were lay his sling and sword. He proceeded to buckle them about his waist.

"The sling," I said softly, "is upside down."

He bowed gravely in acknowledgment and made the necessary adjustment. And from without the drums began to beat, sharp and alert, in the gathering twilight....

I was, I must confess, only a trifle less dazed about the head than I had been on that memorable occasion long before, when I had indulged too heavily in burgundy and swan. This time, and it was my only safeguard, I had my chair to sit in and I can remember, through a sort of haze, being propelled towards the village green with the drums sounding in my ears and the soldiers running from all directions to form lines L The King's General I23 upon the grass sward. Villagers leant from their casements, and I remember one old fellow in a nightcap shrieking out that Fairfax was come upon them and they would all be murdered in their beds.

It was, I dare swear, the one and only occasion in the annals of His Majesty's Army when two divisions have been drawn up and drilled by their commanding general in the dusk after too good a dinner.

'My God," I heard Jack Grenvile choke behind me, whether with laughter or emotion I never discovered, "this is magnificent. This will live forever."

And when the drums were silent I heard Richard's voice, loud and clear, ring out across the village green.

It was a fitting climax to a crazy fourteen days....

At breakfast the next morning a messenger came riding to the door of the headquarters with the news that Bridgwater had been stormed and captured by Fairfax and his rebel forces, the prince's council had fled to Launceston, and the Prince of Wales bade Sir Richard Grenvile depart upon the instant with what troops he had and come to him in Cornwall.

"Is the message a request or a command?" asked my general.

"A command, sir," replied the officer, handing him a document, "not from the council, but from the prince himself."

Once again the drums were sounded, but this time for the march, and as the long line of troops wound their way through the village and on to the highway to Okehampton I wondered how many years would pass before the people of Ottery St.

Mary would forget Sir Richard Grenvile and his men.

We followed, Matty and I, within a day or two, with an escort to our litter and orders to proceed to Werrington House, near Launceston, which was yet another property that Richard had seized without a scruple from the owner of Buckland Monachorum, Francis Drake. We arrived to find Richard in fair spirits, restored to the prince's favour after a very awkward three hours before the council.

It might have been more awkward had not the council been in so immediate a need of his services.

"And what has been decided?" I asked.

"Goring is to go north to intercept the rebels," he said, "while I remain in Cornwall and endeavour to raise a force of some three thousand foot. It were better if they had sent me to deal with Fairfax, as Goring is certain to make a hash of it."

"There is no one but you," I said, "who can raise troops in Cornwall. Men will rally to a Grenvile, but none other. Be thankful that the council sent for you at all, after your impudence."

"They cannot afford," said Richard, "to do without me. And anyway, I don't give a fig for the council and that snake Hyde. I am only doing this business to oblige the prince. He's a lad after my own heart. If His Majesty continues to haver as he does at present, with no coherent plan of strategy, I am not at all sure that the best move would not be to hold all Cornwall for the prince, live within it like a fortress, and let the^rest of England go to blazes."

"You have only to phrase that a little differently," I said, "and a malicious friend who wished you ill would call it treason."

Treason be damned," he said, "but it is sound common sense. No man has greater loyalty to His Majesty than I, but he does more to wreck his own cause than any who serve under him."

While Matty and I remained at Werrington, Richard travelled the length and breadth of Cornwall recruiting troops for the prince's army. It was no easy business.

Ine last invasion had been enough for Cornishmen. Men wished only to be left alone to tend their land and business. Money was as hard to raise as it had been in Devon, and with some misgiving I watched Richard use the same highhanded measures with 'he commissioners of the duchy as he had done with those of the sister county. Those ^ho might have yielded with some grace to tact gave way grudgingly to pressure, and Richard, during that summer and early autumn of I645, made as many enemies amongst the Cornish landowners as he had done in Devon.

On the north coast men rallied to his call because of his link with Stowe, the very name of Grenvile sounding like a clarion. They came to him from beyond the border, even from Appledore and Bideford, and down the length ofthat storm-bound Atlantic coast from Hartland Point to Padstow. They were his best recruits. Clear-eyed, long-limbed, wearing with pride the scarlet shield with the three gold rests upon their shoulders. Men from Bude and Stratton and Tintagel, men from Boscastle and Camelford. And with great cunning Richard introduced his prince as Duke of Cornwall, who had come into the West to save them from the savage rebel hordes beyond the Tamar.

But farther south he met with more rebuffs. Danger seemed more remote to people west of Truro, and even the fall of Bristol to Fairfax and the Parliament, which came like a clap of doom on the tenth of September, failed to rouse them from their lethargy.

"Truro, Helston, and St. Ives," said Richard, "are the three most rotten towns in Cornwall," and he rode down, I remember, with some six hundred horse to quell a rising of the townsfolk, who had protested against a levy he had raised the week before.

He hanged at least three men, while the remainder were either fined or imprisoned, and he took the opportunity, too, of visiting the castle at St. Mawes and severely reprimanding its commander, Major Bonython, because he had failed to pay the soldiers under his command within the garrison.

"Whoever I find halfhearted in the prince's cause must change his tune or suffer disciplinary action," declared Richard. "Whoever fails to pay his men shall contribute from his own pocket, and whoever shows one flicker of disloyalty to me as comman- j der, or to the prince I serve, shall answer for it with his life."

I heard him say this myself in the market place at Launceston before a great crowd I assembled there, the last day in September, and while his own men cheered so that the I echo came ringing back to us from the walls of the houses I saw few smiles upon the | faces of the townsfolk gathered there.

"You forget," I said that night to him at Werrington, "that Cornishmen are | independent and love freedom better than their fellows."

"I remember one thing," he answered with that thin, bitter smile of his I knew too I well, "that Cornishmen are cowards and love their comfort better than their King. ". j| As autumn drew on I began to wonder if either freedom or comfort would belong to \ any of us by the end of the year.

Chard, Crediton, Lyme, and finally Tiverton fell before Fairfax in October, and Lord Goring had done nothing to stop them. Many of his men deserted and came \ flocking to join Richard's army, having greater faith in him as a commander. This led to further jealousy, further recriminations, and it looked as though Richard would fall as foul with Goring as he had done with Sir John Berkeley three months earlier. There was constant fault-finding, too, by the prince's council in Launceston, and scarcely a day would pass without some interfering measure from the Chancellor, Edward I Hyde. '

"If they would but leave me alone," stormed Richard, "to recruit my army and to, train my troops, instead of flooding my headquarters day by day with despatches written by lawyers with smudged fingers who have never so much as smelt gunpow-I der, there would be greater likelihood of my being able to withstand Fairfax when he j comes."

Money was getting scarce again, and the equipping of the Army for the winter was.I another nightmare for my general. f Boots and stockings were worn through and hard to replace, while the most vital! necessity of all, ammunition, was very low in stock, the chief reason for this being! that the royalist magazine for the Western forces had been captured at the beginningj r>f the autumn by the rebels when they took Bristol, and all that Richard had at his disposal were the small reserves at Bodmin and at Truro.

Then suddenly, without any warning, Lord Goring threw up his command and went to France, giving as reason that his health had cracked and he could no longer shoulder any responsibility.

"The rats," said Richard slowly, "are beginning, one by one, to desert the sinking ship."

Goring took several of his best officers with him, and the command in Devon was given to Lord Wentworth, an officer with little experience, whose ideas of discipline were even worse than Goring's. He immediately went into winter quarters at Bovey Tracey and declared that nothing could be done against the enemy until the spring. It was at this moment, I think, that the prince's council first lost heart and realised the full magnitude of what might happen. They were fighting a losing cause....

Preparations were made to move from Launceston and go farther west to Truro.