Rebels and Traitors (61 page)

‘The King will never accept our demands,’ grumbled Gideon. And if Parliament will not either, then they must go the way of the King.’

And what will that be, I wonder!’ mused Rainborough. ‘Tell me, lads, do either of you have a vote for Parliament?’

‘I shall do, sir, now my father has died.’ Lambert was a little awkward about it since he had never yet used his vote.

‘I have no estate,’ Gideon said ruefully. ‘My partner and I run a print business, but we rent our premises, so neither of us can elect a representative.’

‘Yet no one can deny that you have an interest in the country!’ exclaimed Rainborough. It was a rare attitude in an officer. Gideon wondered what pamphlets his colonel had been reading.

Though night had drawn in, there was still just enough light in the sky for them to make out Rainborough’s face. He had strong features, a pleasant expression, and long hair, pretty thin on top. He turned to Gideon, peering at his soldier’s features. Perhaps the fair-haired lank with the short coat had been pointed out to him. ‘You are the man of mine who went to Holmby House?’

‘Sergeant Gideon Jukes, sir.’

‘My brother.’ At Lambert’s proud declaration, Rainborough looked surprised, perhaps having presumed the gap in years between these two made them father and son. ‘The man who found the press at Oxford,’ put in Lambert again loyally.

‘Was that not Sexby?’

‘Sexby
wanted
a press,’ Gideon conceded, staying polite. Then he laughed quietly. ‘Truly I found it, however.’

‘You had a busy time!’ Rainborough commented. They all let the subject drop, which avoided any awkwardness over whether his soldiers’ mutinous actions had had the colonel’s sanction.

He asked where they were billeted. He began to walk them back that way, like a tolerant parent steering stay-out children home by twilight. They pooh-poohed the dangers of the area, although Rainborough told them about an obsession of his: children and servants who were snatched off the streets, kidnapped or ‘spirited’ away. These mites were collected by ship and transported to the New World.

Are these not going to a better life?’ asked Lambert in puzzlement.

‘The waifs mostly find they are sent to work like slaves in the plantations,’ growled Rainborough. He knew something of America; his sister had married the governor of Massachusetts’ son and his brother William had lived there until he returned to England to fight in the civil war. His tone lightened. ‘However, I have no fear the intrepid Jukes brothers will be nabbed!’

Thomas Rainborough’s own brother was a fellow-radical. William was younger; he had shared Thomas’s early life of seaborne adventure when they both put money into Ireland and later went there on an expedition to help quell rebellion. William would one day involve himself in dangerous activites, but Thomas had more to him now. Rainborough sensed it was the other way around with the two Jukes. Lambert was a true diamond, but Gideon had a sharper edge.

The unfairness in their position was not lost on Rainborough. Why should Lambert Jukes inherit the family home and business, and a vote for Parliament, simply because he was born first, whilst his brother was entitled to neither property nor representation? Their colonel detected no rancour between them. He knew they had both fought, both risked injury and death, both endured rain and snow, starvation and terror for the same cause. Now they deserved equal rewards. As his political ideals formed, this encounter could only strengthen Rainborough’s audacious new opinions.

The next morning, Rainborough led the four regiments across London Bridge. The gates had indeed been opened from inside by supporters, so the troops were able to march into London steadily and peacefully. The citizens marvelled at their discipline.

As Rainborough occupied the eastern parishes and his men filed through the city towards Westminster, Fairfax and the remainder of the New Model were drawn up west of London. Parliament was trapped between this pincer movement, the purpose of which went unstated, though it must have been obvious.

The Lord Mayor and aldermen, always quick to ingratiate themselves, met Fairfax at Hyde Park; the Common Council of the City of London welcomed him at Charing Cross. Fairfax himself rode ceremonially into New Palace Yard at the Houses of Parliament. The fugitive Independents from the Commons and Lords were reinstated.

Fairfax was appointed Constable of the Tower of London. When he visited the Tower, he asked to see a copy of
Magna Carta
that was kept there. Taking off his hat, he observed, ‘This is that we have fought for, and by God’s help we must maintain.’ Obsequiously wooing him, the City presented the Lord General with a gold bowl and ewer, valued at a thousand pounds and overflowing with gold coins. He was given a newly created Tower Guard.

London was under control. The army removed to new headquarters at Croydon. The Agitators called for a purge of Presbyterian MPs. Six of the hated Eleven fled abroad. Although Fairfax opposed purging Parliament, Cromwell went with an armed guard to oversee passage of a ‘Null and Void Ordinance’, which cancelled outright all legislation that had been passed while the Independent members were fugitives.

That August, the King was transferred to Hampton Court. Fairfax stationed the New Model Army at Putney, midway between Westminster and Hampton Court. Colonel Thomas Rainborough was living at his brother William’s house in Fulham, convenient for the army. The King was still secretly negotiating with Presbyterians. Charles again rejected Ireton’s liberal
Heads of the Proposals.
Parliament offered instead the sterner proposals that had been previously under discussion while the King was a prisoner in Newcastle; this would pacify the Scots, who devised them, and perhaps make the
Heads of the Proposals
seem less alarming. Everyone was becoming more Machiavellian.

In September, there was a pause to regroup. Oliver Cromwell visited John Lilburne in the Tower. The hot-headed Leveller refused to pledge he would cause no ‘hurly-burlies’ in the army if he was released, then he roundly denounced Cromwell as a hypocrite. Even so, there was official softening towards the Levellers and Richard Overton was unconditionally released from prison. But in the army, factions were strengthening. It was perceived that the libertarian Colonel Rainborough might become a rival to Cromwell. Cromwell was known to be visiting the King and was admittedly bedazzled; Rainborough paid no such court to Charles. Relations between Cromwell and Rainborough became so strained that at an Army Council meeting in the middle of the month Rainborough openly stormed at Cromwell, ‘One of us must not live!’

Trying to ensure loyalty in the navy, Parliament appointed new Admiralty commissioners, including the radical MP Henry Marten, who was often seen as disreputable because he had a wife but lived openly with his mistress, and Thomas Rainborough. Vice-Admiral Batten, a pro-Royalist at heart, fled by sea to Holland, taking valuable ships with him. Rainborough was nominated as his replacement. In theory this meant Rainborough was no longer in charge of his army regiment, though in the crucial coming weeks, he and they took a relaxed attitude to that.

The Army Council decided
they
would negotiate directly with the King, instead of Parliament. Scottish lords were visiting Charles at Hampton Court, promising to help him regain his throne and urging him to escape. In Parliament, Oliver Cromwell made a speech in which he dissociated the army leadership from Leveller principles and advocated keeping the monarchy. But only eight days later, Cromwell was in the chair when the Council of the Army met at Putney for what was to become a debate not simply about the position of the soldiers who had won the civil war, but about much wider constitutional issues and the liberty of the individual.

Gideon Jukes was not a regimental Agitator but in the way that had become his trademark he turned up anyway, looking as if he had an invitation. On several days he managed to be present.

Putney lay five miles outside London, on the south bank of the Thames. There was no bridge, though ferries carried people over the water. It was a pleasant, countrified outlying suburb full of market gardens, through which travellers and traders from many parts of the country passed on their journey to the capital. In the last days of October and the beginning of November 1647 it was chilly, though not too exposed.

The debates took place in St Mary’s Church. A large medieval parish church with a square bell tower, it had a lofty chancel, which was borrowed for these unprecendented meetings. Several times consensus seemed so difficult to achieve that before afternoon debates the Army Council held morning prayer meetings to seek divine guidance. At Ireton’s urging, those took place in private houses. His brother hosted one. The council might discuss civil issues in a ‘steeple house’ for convenience, but God would make his will felt in men’s hearts.

The church was packed. Gideon Jukes stood, bare-headed, among the soldier Agitators while the officers sat down around a large table and kept on their hats. The distinctions struck him. As he waited for the first debate to start, Gideon even mused whether to put back his own hat defiantly. Rebel though he was, he would have felt too uncomfortable. He had grown up in a society that was riven by grades and privilege. Kings took precedence over princes and barons over earls. Scholars must not look or behave like gentlemen of leisure. Women must not dress too sumptuously. Artisans should never walk abroad without signs of their trade; apprentices must be marked by their aprons and short hair. But these rules were coming under scrutiny.

Gideon remembered hearing of a strange, tense meeting that had taken place in a garden in Cambridge. Fairfax and his senior officers had met the King, now their prisoner, for an all-day discussion. One peculiarity was that they produced Cornet Joyce to exonerate Fairfax from involvement in the Holdenby abduction. Joyce was an extremely junior officer, yet when he was let loose to explain himself he argued with his sovereign fearlessly. Another issue that aroused much comment was that when Fairfax and Cromwell came into the King’s presence, neither knelt.

The council met for almost a fortnight. Fairfax was absent, ill, for the first week. As well as much physical damage caused by battle-wounds, he had a history of painful gout and kidney stones. It was not suggested he ducked out of the debates. There were two points on which Thomas Fairfax was resolute: he deplored the autocratic behaviour of King Charles and he demanded justice for his soldiers. Ultimately, it was Fairfax who summoned this council.

Cromwell took the chair instead. It was a forum to discuss the fate of the whole kingdom, so several civilian Levellers, foremost among them John Wildman, were allowed to join the meeting. Any officers who wished to do so could attend, together with the four Agitators from each regiment. Almost 150 men had congregated. Many did not speak, but all heard the discussions.

Pressed in behind several rows of spectators, Gideon could see mainly the backs of men’s heads and only part of the conference table; the faces of those seated were often hidden from him by the high crowns and sweeping brims of their hats. How many great oak tables, he wondered, had army officers sat around gravely in conference? How many battered inn-boards had hosted radical leaders as they midwived revolutionary ideas? He was impressed by the lack of subservience here. The future of England had already been argued, chewed, wrested from tradition and superstition by countless groups of thoughtful people. He found it striking how many at this council spoke fearlessly as individuals and how genuinely those of all ranks struggled to find answers. Soldiers spoke for themselves, not cowed by even their most senior officers.

After three-hour prayer-meetings, the debates were long and intense, continuing into the night. Sometimes Gideon squeezed from the room to seek natural relief. Outside, he shook his long legs and stretched his back while he tried to clear his head. Other men smoked, though not many; that was a filthy cavalier habit. Nobody stayed out long. Everyone was eager not to miss anything important. Hardly anyone left Putney. Only once did Thomas Rainborough disappear, explaining the next afternoon that he had been ill and so had ridden to London overnight to see his doctor. It was thought he had really been consulting radical civilians.

Most members of the council came with fixed opinions, though they were willing to hear other points of view; occasionally someone retracted. The language was plain, but speakers thought on their feet and syntax sometimes suffered. They responded to what they heard. They struggled to develop their own ideas. There were quarrels and rebukes; there were brief apologies. Men spoke from their hearts. They grappled with concepts that went far beyond their original grievances. Their agenda was to decide what they had been fighting for and how they wanted to live in peacetime. That took them into fundamental questions about the rights of man.

Although Cromwell and Ireton tried to confine discussion to the points raised in
The Declaration of the Army
(which Ireton wrote), they were soon pressurised by Wildman and others into having
The Agreement of the People
(which Wildman wrote) read out and discussed.
The Agreement was,
by seventeenth-century standards, a terse paper, claiming in a few short clauses
‘that as the laws ought to be equal, so they must be good, and not evidently destructive to the safety and well-being of the people’.
It ringingly concluded with
‘These things we declare to be our native rights’:
the rights and rules for government for which the soldiers had fought, but which endless negotiation with the King threatened to deny them
.