Rebels and Traitors (33 page)

By the Scots’ treaty with Pym, religion in England was to be reformed. It would be a requirement for everyone to swear allegiance to the Covenant. In full, the oath ran to 1,252 words. Its salient clauses included:

In two words: no Popery.

Strong puritans would never wear it. At any mention of ‘Form’ and ‘Directory’, Independents leapt back, sucking their teeth. For them, the rigid and interfering rule of Presbyterianism was just as loathsome as the hierarchical Roman Catholic Church. There would be trouble. Members of Parliament and army officers at various levels were soon trying to duck the Covenant, even though taking the oath had become a requirement of public life. However, the first result suited them: an enormous army of Scots came marching over the border to support the Parliamentary cause in brotherhood.

This forced a change in the King’s strategy. So far the flamboyantly rich and powerful Earl of Newcastle, recently created a marquis, had dominated the north despite all the strivings of Parliamentary commanders, notably Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas. Now Newcastle was compelled to abandon marching south. The Fairfaxes were too dangerous and he had to manoeuvre frantically against the Scots.

In Yorkshire, the Scots joined Sir Thomas Fairfax, who was fresh from a stinging rout of Royalists at Nantwich. Caught suddenly on the hop, Newcastle was forced to take refuge in the important city of York. York was then systematically besieged. Meanwhile in the south, Waller had checked the Royalist forces under Hop ton in an encounter at Alton, Prince Maurice was tied up in a long-drawn-out siege at Lyme and Essex had shown himself able to contain any moves by the King. Parliament’s other main army was a force from the Eastern Association under the Earl of Manchester, together with his so far little-known deputy, Oliver Cromwell. Already successful, this army was therefore ordered north to co-operate with Fairfax and the Scots — a formidable liaison.

King Charles reckoned his crown depended on the fate of York. He sent Prince Rupert with all the men who could be spared. Both Orlando Lovell and Owen McIlwaine went, McIlwaine now raised to the rank of colonel. Their departure, one of so many that punctuated Juliana’s life, entailed the usual intense activity that preceded a big expedition. Life revolved around kit and tack, with the men giving wholly unnecessary domestic instructions in a desperate last-minute wish to control their households, while the women concealed their real independence and disguised their fears.

After those men had ridden off again, when the whirlwind quietened, Juliana Lovell and Nerissa McIlwaine settled by the parlour fire. The baby fell asleep in his cradle; Tom was a placid child. They had bread and cheese for toasting, should the mood take them. A maid sang in the kitchen as she tended a cauldron of netted cabbage and a Dutch pudding. Mistress McIlwaine leaned forward and poked up the coals just enough to make a flame leap, without waste. Juliana pulled a shawl more cosily around her shoulders. As they relaxed together and enjoyed the peace that had settled on the empty house, each woman wore a slight smile, though they did not meet one another’s eye. That would have been acknowledgement of their unspoken thought:
We are rid of the men. Now we shall be more comfortable!

While they waited for news, or the men’s return, they found suitable occupation for ladies of repute. They kept their diaries and wrote letters to their husbands. Juliana sewed and read. Nerissa strummed a lute in between organising her kitchen maid. Sometimes they went out and walked in college grounds, though this was fraught with problems. New College Grove, where grand cavalier madams in revealing gowns paraded to impress crass gallants, had acquired a louche reputation. Younger female Royalists, small-minded teases, had tormented the college dons with what they called playfulness and the elderly academics viewed as nuisance committed by hussies. For women who wanted to avoid being thought so wanton, it was best to avoid wandering in the colleges — which now stank of horses and worse — and instead apply themselves to good works: bringing baskets of salves and bandages, Juliana and Nerissa would nurse wounded soldiers.

Their great challenge was the castle, where Parliamentary prisoners were held. Ever since the first large group arrived, a thousand men brought in after the fall of Cirencester in the winter of 1642-3, the condition of prisoners at Oxford had been notorious. The Cirencester captives had been driven to a field for inspection by supercilious officers who threatened them with hanging; they were penned up in a cold church, stripped and starved for two days, then driven through snow, barefoot and hatless, some without even britches, their hands tied with matchcord. On arrival at Oxford they were paraded like cowed dogs before the King and his two gloating young sons. Lucky ones were put in churches. The most unfortunate were incarcerated at the castle, where deplorable treatment was doled out with the aim of persuading them to repent, change sides and join the King’s army.

Originally, the castle had been run by a sadistic provost marshal called Smith, an appalling man who treated his prisoners with Turkish’ cruelty. The elite, about forty gentlemen, were kept in one small room in Bridewell, the paupers’ prison; they were beaten, tortured by burning with matchcord and kept up to their ankles in their own excrement. Some imprisoned puritan ministers were hounded with insults by Smith and made to sleep on the stone floor with not even foul straw beneath them. As for the common soldiers, Smith denied them medical attention and packed them so closely together, men had to sleep on top of each other. He allocated a penny-farthing a day to feed them, but no fresh water. They drank ablution water after Royalist soldiers had washed, they drank from muddy puddles in the yard, they even drank their own urine. Men died daily, either from this neglect or from the after-effects of torture; two had their fingers burned to the bone for trying to escape. The corpse of a hanged man was flung into an officer’s cell where it putrefied for several days until a large bribe secured its removal.

Eventually forty prisoners broke out and escaped to safety, then told all. Smith became such a byword for brutality that even his own side disowned him. The London Parliament debated the issue and the Oxford Parliament had him imprisoned after three days in the pillory.

Now conditions in the castle were better, but still imprisonment was viewed as a just punishment for rebels, and a deterrent. Those who refused the option of changing sides might be lucky enough to be freed in a prisoner exchange, but that was rare; they could fester in cramped cells for years. For food, clothes and writing materials, they had to rely on friends outside; when held in enemy strongholds, this was impossible. Their lives passed from the humiliation of capture through malnutrition, depression and despair. Sores, diarrhoea and arthritis commonly afflicted survivors. With no exercise, no glimpse of outside light, and nothing to do but carve their names on prison walls, some would begin to hallucinate. Weakened, if they then caught jail fever, they soon perished. Many would die. All knew that death was the most likely end for them.

Nerissa McIlwaine and Juliana Lovell were willing to bring food and medicine to men held in the castle. The prisoners were allowed rare inspection visits from their own side, visits which cheered them, because they knew they were not entirely forgotten. But requests to bring charity were rebuffed. Nerissa and Juliana were turned away by an assistant jailer in the castle gateway on the Mound. ‘Ladies, they are nothing but rebels and traitors. Execution is all they deserve.’

‘If we abandon our civility and humanity’ Nerissa McIlwaine lectured him, ‘we deny ourselves grace.’

When the two women were then asked scornfully why they should want to help the enemy, their answer was simple. Juliana explained: ‘If our own husbands are ever captured, we hope some good woman among the enemy will show them kindness.’

It did not convince the jailer, who never did allow them in.

At the beginning of July, a crucial battle took place. It was known that Prince Rupert was blazing through the north at the head of a large army, which with reinforcements had reached over fourteen thousand horse and foot. Heading up through Cheshire and Lancashire, he had stormed Stockport and Bolton, met resistance at Liverpool, crossed the Pennines, reached Skipton Castle and surprised his opponents by bursting out at Knaresborough. On Rupert’s sudden approach, the Parliamentarians raised the siege of York and began moving away south. Although Lord Newcastle wanted to rest his exhausted garrison and wait for the enemy’s armies to disperse in their own time, Prince Rupert always preferred to fight. The Parliamentarian allies, who numbered between twenty and thirty thousand, far more than even his large array, heard of his eagerness and turned back to give battle. The Royalists, with the pick of the ground, drew up on Marston Moor. They had plenty of space on clear moorland, protected by a road and a significant ditch that would hamper enemy charges.

Word reached Oxford on the 9th of July that Prince Rupert had accomplished a great Royalist victory. It was reported that one of the Parliamentary leaders, the Earl of Manchester, was slain, and that Sir Thomas Fairfax and the Scots general David Leslie had been captured. General rejoicing broke out. Bonfires blazed. Ale flowed in the streets. Church bells rang.

Three days later the King, with his own troops in the west, received the Prince’s dispatch telling the true story. Marston Moor was a disaster, a bloody defeat. The North was lost. York was lost. The intended march on London would never happen. The King’s best troops were destroyed. Lord Newcastle’s famous infantry, his Whitecoats, had stood and died to a man. Their bankrupt commander had fled to the Continent. Prince Rupert’s fabulous reputation lay in shreds.

Parliament had found a new hope in Oliver Cromwell. For him the battle was a personal triumph; first his leadership of his Ironsides’ had scattered Rupert’s elite cavalry, then intelligence and discipline enabled him to rescue the situation elsewhere at the crucial time. Through Cromwell, Marston Moor could be a crucial turning point in the civil war.

Accurate accounts of the battle were quickly printed in London. Reality filtered up the Thames Valley to the Royalist headquarters. From Oxford’s perspective, the battle in the north seemed far away and hard to appreciate. The false atmosphere of rejoicing died only slowly. For a long time no wounded men were brought south; few wives heard for certain whether they had been widowed; there were no eye-witness stories. It seemed unreal. The King, who had been pottering about on his endless manoeuvres against Essex and Waller, was currently penned in the West Country so his reaction was not witnessed. Prince Rupert was thought to have taken refuge at Chester with the rags of his cavalry but no one knew that for sure, or could say when, if ever, he might reappear in Oxford.

Life went on.

That Marston Moor was critical would slowly be accepted. The King, ever hopeful, ever sanguine when faced with losses, reassured despondent supporters that reverses would happen and that fortune might change in his favour again. Charles soon seemed justified when, after defeating William Waller at Cropredy Bridge, he was offered a great chance: the Earl of Essex wandered through Dorset and Devon, capturing Royalist houses and relieving Lyme and Plymouth, then calamitously continued on into the Cornwall peninsula. With Waller defeated, King Charles was safe to follow Essex. The Parliamentarians reached an area where the population was Royalist to a man. Eventually Essex was completely trapped at Lostwithiel. Though his cavalry cut their way out and Essex himself escaped by sea in a fishing smack, the infantry were starved into surrender. They laid down their arms and were allowed to march out, though every possible indignity, insult and hardship were inflicted on them by the King’s men as they struggled to walk home across England.