The King's General (9 page)

They married in due course, and although it ended in separation (for this I blame the war), at least they had some early happiness together, for which I hold myself responsible.

My godchild Joan was another of my victims. She was, it may be remembered, the child of my sister Cecilia, and some ten years my junior. When John Rashleigh, Mary's stepson, came down from Oxford to visit us, he found Joan at my bedside, and I soon guessed which way the wind was blowing. I had half a thought of sending them to the apple tree, but some inner sentimentality forbade me, and I suggested the bluebell wood instead. They were betrothed within a week and married before the bluebells had faded, and not even Jonathan Rashleigh could find fault with the marriage settlement.

But the war years were upon us before we were aware, and Jonathan, like all the county gentlemen, my brothers included, had more anxious problems put before him.

Trouble had been brewing for a long while now, and we in Cornwall were much divided in opinion, some holding that His Majesty was justified in passing what laws he pleased (though one and all grumbled at the taxes), and others holding to it that Parliament was right in opposing any measure that smacked of despotism. How often I heard my brothers argue the point with Jack Trelawney, Ranald Mohun, Dick Buller, and other of our neighbours--my brothers holding firmly for the King, and Jo already in a position of authority, as his business was to superintend the defences of the coast--and as the months passed tempers became shorter and friendships grew colder, an unpleasing spirit of distrust walking abroad.

Civil war was talked of openly, and each gentleman in the county began to look to his weapons, his servants, and his horses, so that he could make some contribution to the cause he favoured when the moment came. The women, too, were not idle, many--like Cecilia at Maddercombe--tearing strips of bed linen into bandages and packing their storerooms with preserves for fear of siege. Arguments were fiercer then, I do believe, than later when the fighting was amongst us. Friends who had supped with us the week before became of a sudden suspect, and long-forgotten scandals were brought forth to blacken their names, merely because of the present opposition to their views.

The whole business made me sick at heart, and this whipping up of tempers between neighbours who for generations had lived at peace seemed a policy of the devil. I hated to hear Robin, my dearly loved brother with his tenderness for dogs and horses, slander Dick Buller for upholding Parliament, vowing he took bribes and made spies of his own servants, when Dick and he had gone hawking together not six months before. While Rob Bennett, another of our neighbours and a friend of Buller's, began to spread damning rumours in return against my brother-in-law Jonathan Rashleigh, saying Jonathan's father and elder brother, who had died very suddenly within a week of each other many years before, during the smallpox scourge, had not succumbed to the disease at all but had been poisoned. These tales showed how in a few months we had changed from neighbours into wolves at one another's throats.

At the first open rupture between His Majesty and Parliament in '42, my brothers Jo and Robin and most of our friends, including Jonathan Rashleigh, his son-in-law Peter Courtney, the Trelawneys, the Arundells, and of course Bevil Grenvile, declared for the King. There was an end at once to family life and any settled way of living. Robin went off to York to join His Majesty's Army, taking Peter Courtney with him, and they were both given command of a company almost immediately.

Peter, showing much dash and courage in his first action, was knighted on the field.

My brother Jo and my brother-in-law Jonathan went about the county raising money, troops, and ammunition for the royal cause, the first no easy matter, Cornwall being a poor county at the best of times, and lately the taxes had well-nigh broken us; but many families, with little ready money to spare, gave their plate to be melted down to silver, a loyal if wasteful gesture which I had many qualms about before following it myself, but in the end was obliged to do so, as Jonathan Rashleigh was collector for the district. My attitude to the war was somewhat cynical, holding no belief in great causes; and, living alone now at Lanrest with only Matty and the servants to tend me, I felt myself curiously detached.

The successes of the first year did not go to my head, as they did to the rest of my family, for I could not believe, which they were inclined to do, that the Parliament would give way so easily. For they had many powerful men at their command, and much money--all the rich merchants of London being strongly in their favour-- besides which I had an uneasy suspicion, which I kept to myself, that their army was incomparably the better of the two. God knows our leaders wanted nothing in courage, but they lacked experience; equipment, too, was poor, and discipline non-existent in the ranks. By the autumn the war was getting rather too close for comfort, and the two armies were ranged east and west along the Tamar. I had an uneasy Christmas, and in the third week of January I learnt that the worst had happened and the enemy had crossed the Tamar into Cornwall. I was at breakfast when the news was brought us, and by none other than Peter Courtney, who had ridden hot-foot from Bodmin to warn me that the opposing army was even now on the road to Liskeard, he with his regiment, under the command of Sir Ralph Hopton, being drawn up to oppose them, and Hopton at the moment holding a council of war at Boconnoc, only a few miles distant.

"With any luck," he told us, "the fighting will not touch you here at Lanrest, but will be between Liskeard and Lostwithiel. If we can break them now and drive them out of Cornwall the war will be as good as won."

He looked handsome, flushed and excited, his dark curls falling about his face.

"I have no time to go to Menabilly," he told me. "Should I fall in battle, will you tell Alice that I love her well?"

He was gone like a flash, and I and Matty, with the two elderly menservants and three lads, all that were left to us, were alone, unarmed and unprepared. There was nothing to do but get the cattle and the sheep in from pasture and secure them in the farmstead, and likewise bolt and bar ourselves within the house. Then we waited, all gathered round the fireside in my chamber upstairs, and once or twice, opening the casement, we thought we heard the sound of cannon shot, dull and intermittent, sounding strangely distant in the cold clear air of January. Somewhere about three in the afternoon one of the farm lads came running to the house and hammered loud upon the entrance door.

"The enemy are routed," he called excitedly. "The whole pack of them scattering like whipped dogs along the road to Liskeard. There's been a great battle fought today on Braddock Down."

More stragglers appeared, who had taken refuge in the hedges, and one and all told the same story, that the King's men had won a victory, fighting like furies and taking nigh a thousand prisoners.

Knowing that rumour was a lying jade, I bade the household bide awhile and keep the doors fast until the story should be probed, but before nightfall we knew the victory was certain, for Robin himself came riding home to cheer us, covered in dust, with a bloodstained bandage on his arm, and with him the Trelawney brothers and Ranald Mohun. They were all of them laughing and triumphant, for the two Parliament divisions had fled in dire disorder straight for Saltash and would never, said Jack Trelawney, show their faces more this side of Tamar.

"And this fellow," he said, clapping Robin on the shoulder, "rode into battle with a hawk on his wrist, which he let fly at Ruthin's musketeers, and by God, the bird so startled them that the lot of them shot wide and started taking to their legs before they'd spent their powder."

"It was a wager I had with Peter," smiled Robin, "which, if I lost, I'd forfeit my spurs and be godfather to his next baby."

They rocked with laughter, caring not a whit for the spilt blood and the torn bodies they had trampled, and they sat down, all of them, and drank great jugs of ale, wiping the sweat from their foreheads and discussing every move of the battle they had won, like gamesters after a cockfight.

Bevil Grenvile had been the hero of the day in this, his first engagement, and they described to us how he led the Cornish foot down one hill and up another in so fierce a charge that the enemy could not withstand them.

"You should have seen him, Honor," said Robin, "with his servants and his tenants drawn up in solemn prayer before him, his sword in his hand, his dear, honest face lifted to the sky, and they all clad in the blue-and-silver livery, as if it were high holiday. And down the hill they followed him, shouting, 'A Grenvile, a Grenvile,' with his servant Tony Paine waving his standard with the griffin's head upon it. My God, I tell you, it made me proud to be a Cornishman."

"It's in his blood,"said Jack Trelawney. "Here's Bevil been a country squire for all his life, and you put a weapon in his hand and he turns tiger. The Grenviles are all alike at heart."

"I wish to heaven," said Ranald Mohun, "that Richard Grenvile would return from slaughtering the savages in Ireland and come and join his brother."

There was a moment's awkward silence, while some of them remembered the past and recollected my presence in the room, and then Robin rose to his feet and said they must be riding back to Liskeard. Thus, in southeast Cornwall, war touched us for a brief space in '43 and so departed, and many of us who had not even smelt the battle talked very big of what we had heard and seen, while those who had taken part in it, like Robin, boasted that the summer would see the rebels in Parliament laying down their arms forever.

Alas, his optimism was foolish and ill judged. Victories we had indeed that year, throughout the West, as far as Bristol, with our own Cornishmen covering themselves with glory, but we lost, in that first summer, the flower of our Cornish manhood.

Sydney Godolphin, Jack Trevannion, Nick Slanning, Nick Kendall, one by one their faces come back to me as I review the past, and I remember the sinking feeling in the heart with which I would take up the list of the fallen that would be brought to me from Liskeard.

All of them were men of noble conduct and high principle, whom we could ill spare in the county and whose loss would make its mark upon the Army. The worse tragedy of the year, or so it seemed to us, was when Bevil Grenvile was slain at Lansdowne.

Matty came running to my chamber with tears falling down her cheeks.

"They've killed Sir Bevil," she said.

Bevil, with his grace and courtesy, his sympathy and charm, was worth all the other Cornish leaders put together. I felt it as if he had been my own brother, but I was too stunned to weep for him.

"They say," said Matty, "that he was struck down by a pole-axe just as he and his men had won the day and the enemy were scattering. And big Tony Paine, his servant, mounted young Master Jack upon his father's horse, and the men followed the lad, all of them fighting mad with rage and grief to see their master slain."

Yes, I could picture it. Bevil killed on an instant, his head split in two by some damned useless rebel, while his boy Jack, barely fourteen, climbed onto Bevil's white charger that I knew so well, and with the tears smarting his eyes brandished a sword that was too big for him. And the men, with the blue-and-silver colours, following him down the hill, their hearts black with hatred for the enemy.

Oh, God, the Grenviles... There was some quality in the race, some white, undaunted spirit bred in their bones and surging through their blood, that put them, as Cornishmen and leaders, 'way ahead above the rest of us. So, outwardly triumphant and inwardly bleeding, we royalists watched the year draw to its close, and I644-- that fateful year for Cornwall--opened with His Majesty master of the West, but the large and powerful forces of the Parliament in great strength elsewhere and still unbeaten.

In the spring of the year a soldier of fortune returning from Ireland rode to London to receive payment for his services. He gave the gentlemen in Parliament to understand that in return for this he would join forces with them, and they, being pleased to receive so doughty a warrior amongst their ranks, gave him six hundred pounds and told him their plans for the spring campaign. He bowed and smiled--a dangerous sign had they but known it--and straightway set forth in a coach and six, with a host of troopers at his side and a banner carried in front of him, the banner being a great map of England and Wales on a crimson ground, with the words "England Bleeding" written across it in letters of gold. When this equipage arrived at Bagshot Heath the leader of it descended from his coach and, calling his troopers about him, suggested to them calmly that they should all now proceed to Oxford and fight for His Majesty and not against him.

The troopers, nothing loath, accepted, and the train proceeded on its way to Oxford, bearing with it a quantity of money, arms, and silver plate, bequeathed by Parliament, and all the minutes of the secret council that had just been held in London.

The name of this soldier of fortune, who had hoodwinked the Parliament in so scurrilous a fashion, was Richard Grenvile.

7

One day towards the end of April '44 Robin came over from Radford to see me, urging me to leave Lanrest and to take up residence, for a time at any rate, with our sister Mary Rashleigh at Menabilly. Robin was at that time commanding a regiment of foot, for he had been promoted colonel, under Sir John Digby, and was taking part in the long-drawn-out siege of Plymouth, which alone among the cities in the West still held out for Parliament.

"Jo and I are both agreed," said Robin, "that while the war continues you should not live here alone. It is not fit for any woman, let alone one as helpless as yourself.

Deserters and stragglers are constantly abroad, robbing on the highway, and the thought of you here, with a few old men and Matty, is a constant disturbance to our peace of mind."

"There is nothing here to rob," I protested, "with the plate gone to the mint at Truro, and as to harm to my person--a crippled woman can give little satisfaction."