Take Courage (7 page)

“It's not my own saying,” disclaimed my father hastily. “I read it in a diurnal. An Arminian, Giles,” he went on in his usual courteous tones: “is one who believes, like Bishop Laud, that episcopacy is a divine institution, begun by Christ with his disciples, continued down through the practice of the Roman Catholic Church, and handed on to the Reformed Church of the present day.”

Mr. Ferrand looked vexed and doubtful. “In religion,” he said: “I am neither a fantastic Puritan nor a superstitious Papist, but a man who holds by Church and King.”

“You believe the King can levy taxes without the consent of Parliament?” cried Mr. Thorpe.

“What else can he do if Parliament refuse to make a proper grant?” said Mr. Ferrand crossly. “It is you Puritans who want us to fight for the Protestants abroad; very well then, you must pay for it.”

“Parliament did not refuse, they were dissolved before they could open their mouths,” grumbled Mr. Thorpe.

“They wove out delays,” contended Mr. Ferrand. “It was enough to anger any man. And the King, God bless him, is a very kingly man.”

At this Mr. Thorpe snorted, and my father's gentle face grew cold.

“The greater the office, the greater the duty,” he said.

“And the greater the privilege. You can't deny that, Robert Clarkson,” said Mr. Ferrand more cheerfully.

“You approve of these forced loans and illegal taxes, then?” demanded my father.

Mr. Ferrand's face clouded again. “If Parliament won't grant the King money, he is driven to such expedients,” he answered testily. “I tell you 'tis the fault of Parliament.”

“And I suppose it's the fault of Parliament too that those who refuse these pretended gifts are thrown into prison?” went on my father.

“Not many refuse,” said Mr. Ferrand.

“You are mistaken, Giles,” my father told him. “There are so many noblemen and gentry in prison now that it's said the prisons are the only merry places in London.”

“Talk, idle talk,” said Mr. Ferrand testily.

“That's a good tale about old Lord Fairfax,” put in Mr. Thorpe, laughing. We all listened attentively; for old Lord Fairfax, whose estates lay in Wharfedale nearby, was respected by my father because his family had suffered disinheritance in the old days for their revolt against their ancestors' Catholic religion, while the Ferrands admired him for his breed of horses, which were justly famous in the West Riding—Snowball, I remembered, came from the Fairfax stables. It seemed now that the old lord, being commanded by the King's Council to summon all the gentry of his division and require them to make a free gift to the King, had assembled them as ordered; but when they neither would make the gift nor dared deny it, he wrote such a skilful letter to the Council, mixing such bemoanings of hard times with such extravagant expressions of loyalty, that the Council knew not whether he meant to express refusal or submission, and so were uncertain what to do in the case. This tale of Mr. Thorpe's was the first intimation I had that taxes and such had to be paid by ordinary Yorkshire folk, and I was frightened by it.

“That's all very well,” objected Mr. Ferrand, vexed at being obliged to disagree either with the King or Lord Fairfax: “But how do you expect His Majesty to carry on a war abroad without money? Tell me that.”

“War!” exclaimed Mr. Thorpe. “It's neither peace nor war, as far as I can see. We declare war on these foreign lands, so that they are vexed and don't buy our cloth, but all the war we make is to send out puny expeditions under Buckingham, who does nowt as far as I can see but sit still and let his men rot.”

“If they are puny, it's because Parliament will not grant any money to pay for bigger ones,” shouted Mr. Ferrand, crimson. “Surely even you can see that! Cloth! Cloth! You think of nothing but your cloth and your pocket. If you thought of your trade less and England's good name more, it would be better for all of us, let me tell you, Thomas.”

“Religion must take first place in all our thoughts,” said my father austerely.

“Aye! It's a pity Will can't get himself a pulpit,” said Mr. Ferrand with some malice. “Well, I shall pay the gift His Majesty asks for, very gladly.”

“I am assessed for only ten shillings,” mused Mr. Thorpe, pursing his lips thoughtfully.

“But you won't pay, Father?” burst out John.

His voice was so clear and ringing that we all looked at him. He coloured, but held firmly on. “You will not pay a tax levied without consent of Parliament, surely, Father?” he said. His dark eyes glowed, his face was stern and set; I thought he had never looked so much a man or so handsome.

Mr. Thorpe wagged his head, uncertain, and Mr. Ferrand laughed sneeringly, looking sideways at him.

“If you don't pay, Thomas, you'll find yourself in the Tower, perhaps,” he said. “Or stay—since you're only assessed for a half score of shillings, you'll be sent for to London and made into a common soldier in St. Martin's Yard.”

“I should like to go to London,” put in Francis eagerly.

“That is not the argument,” piped up little David with the saucy air he often used to Francis.

“Who said it was, scholar?” drawled Francis haughtily.

“Hold your tongue, Frank,” bellowed his father, venting his own vexation on his son.

“Get your lute, Francis love,” lisped Mrs. Ferrand, hurriedly.

“Aye—if you've all done we'll have some music,” said Mr. Ferrand, glancing round the table at his guests and with an effort discarding his surly tone. “And no more politics. Pen, love, come and sit by me—that is, if your brother there will permit you to sit by an Arminian.”

He laughed, but not very heartily; he still seemed sore at being called by this foreign-sounding name.

I went to him without more ado, so as not to embroil him again with Will, for whom, now that I understood what was troubling him, I was very sorry. It would be a bitter disappointment to him indeed if, after all his anxious study, he could find nobody to give him a title to some curacy or benefice.

As the days went by and Will still stayed at home without employment, and the delay in his marriage kept him doubly dejected, David and I grew to hate Bishop Laud, who by his tyrannous enactments kept our good honest brother so wretched, and a little vexed with Mr. Thorpe too, whose conduct, to children's eyes, seemed severe and mercenary.

Then, after a long time of trial, at last the way was made clear for Will. Mr. Okell being old began to fail somewhat, and spoke of giving up his ministry. His parishioners, who valued him highly, begged him not to do so, but to take an under-minister instead. Since Mr. Okell had a private estate as well as his benefice, he was able to do this, and he offered the place to Will, and promised to obtain him a preaching licence from the Bishop. Will, dear lad, thought this preferment was, under Providence, due to his own eloquence and learning, but I thought more likely it sprang from Mr. Okell's great affection for my father. Whichever it was, Will now with great delight settled in a house on Church Bank, and married Elizabeth Thorpe. He made a worthy minister, very industrious; his sermons winning his hearers' goodwill by a kind of honest simplicity in them.

I thought that Francis would now ride over to Will's house for his lessons, and indeed at first he did so. But after a few weeks of this he suddenly, as Will—who was glad of the fee, his stipend not being large and Eliza proving a somewhat ineffectual manager—told me regretfully, broke off from his tuition; he did not mean to be a peering scholar, said Francis, so be hanged to stupid books. I was now as distressed by his breaking off lessons as I had been once before by his continuing them, and I urged Francis not to cease from mere caprice what must be of great use to him at the University. But he only laughed, and teasingly asked me why I was so set on sending him away where I could not see him, and at last one day little David, his blue eyes vexed, asked me why I troubled myself, since Francis had never meant to be a scholar. Mr. Wilcocke, he said, had told Mr. Ferrand a long time past that his son had no aptitude for learning, and he had then given up the notion of sending him to Oxford. Then why, I objected, had Francis continued so long with Will?

“To see you, Pen; why else?” said my little brother impatiently.

I could not deny this, nor deny altogether that it was sweet to me, but I was not quite pleased by the stratagem, for anything covert was abhorrent to me, and I was sorry that Francis should not go to Oxford. For what David said of this proved true enough, and Francis stayed on at home, growing from a lad into a young man, living what seemed to me a very idle life, riding about the country and professing to take care of his father's lands. His time being his own, he came much to our house, and would sit of an evening there and entertain my father, whose eyes worsened, with gossiping stories or playing on his lute. At these times I sat quiet and silent in the shadow, plying my needle; though indeed whenever I heard Francis's step my heart leaped, and at his voice my fingers trembled. Francis for his part gave me many fiery expressive glances, and many merry teasing smiles. He delighted to play love ballads to me on his lute, and sing them, and I delighted to listen. David
too was fond of music, so I often begged my love to play; it was so sweet to have Francis, and my father, and David, the three I loved best in the world, round our hearth, all peaceful and at ease, with no dissension but only friendliness between them.

For Mr. Ferrand, alas, had not got his wish, that there should be no more politics; from that time the talk in Bradford was increasingly of politics and religion, and this made an increasing discomfort in our visits to Holroyd Hall.

The King's necessity for money was such, that he was obliged to call a Parliament again. But like all his family he was very unlucky in his public utterances, these being based on his ideas of his own importance, not on what was right. On this occasion he chose to speak very haughtily to Parliament on its opening, in a manner forgiving them for their past conduct, when most men thought it was his conduct which needed to be forgiven. He threatened to use other methods of collecting money if Parliament did not promptly supply his needs, and then bade them not regard this as a threat, since he scorned to threaten any but his equals. The matter and the manner of these remarks being equally repugnant to free Englishmen, Parliament at once became very stiff-necked and contrary, and began a long contest with the King, as to whether they should first grant money or the King first grant redress of grievances. This contest swayed back and forth, first one side gaining an advantage, and then the other; the King continually sending messages to the Parliament to hurry with his subsidies, and the Parliament as regularly replying by long petitions on the just freedoms of Englishmen. When the King saw he would get no money without granting some redress, he at length assented to one of these petitions—but too late, for the Parliament, out of patience, had now begun to attack the Duke of Buckingham, as the great source of
all the country's evils. The King could not endure a word against his favourite, and though he had secured barely sufficient money to carry on his Court, which was very expensive, and his wars, which were very unsuccessful, he dismissed the Parliament for several months, to the great anger of many of his people.

How all this was argued and canvassed between my father and Mr. Thorpe and Mr. Ferrand, I remember sadly, as a continually rising warmth and discomfort in their discussions. Friendship was never so clear between them after the day on which my father called Mr. Ferrand an Arminian. It seemed as if by doing so he had divided Mr. Ferrand from himself by putting a different mark on him, as brands are put on sheep to show that they belong to different flocks. And everything which happened, in Bradford or in great affairs of state, seemed as it were to deepen the brand, to make the difference between the two flocks, the two kinds of men, appear more clearly. In our town, as it chanced, the magistrates about this time ordered that a stop should be put to the cockfighting and gaming in the Turls on Sunday afternoons. This was in truth a good and necessary thing, for the behaviour there had grown scandalously unmannerly and an offence to decent citizens, and in other times it would have passed as such; but many who were ill-disposed to the Puritan persuasion chose to look on the order as a prim puritanical invasion of the customs of merry England. Mr. Ferrand was one of those who thought so, for he loved all games and sports and wagering; my father and Mr. Thorpe took the other side. This, though it was but a small matter in comparison with the great affairs then carrying in Parliament, being local, loomed large in Bradford minds, and made men more decided in their notions of Puritans and Arminians, Parliament and King, respectively. And so with all things, large or small; the cut of a coat, the depth of a band, no less than the conduct of the war or the predestination of the soul, or the cruel sentences of the Starchamber, seemed to be matters to be decided by political argument.

As I look back over the years I see pictures of us in those times, myself sitting a little distance away beside Mrs. Ferrand and Mrs. Thorpe, listening in growing uneasiness to the men as their voices rose, Mr. Ferrand growing loud and overbearing, Mr. Thorpe red in the face and very homely in speech, my father striking his forefinger resolutely on the table to emphasise his points, striving to make his voice heard between them. It became little pleasure for the families to be together, for we could not keep the men off politics, nor turn their discourse when they had once embarked on those topics. I had always looked forward with joyous anticipation to our family meetings, because of Francis; but now I so often returned from them distressed and uneasy that I began really to dread them, and whenever Mr. Ferrand was present I longed for the moment when the gathering should break up and each family withdraw. Too often it did so with an angry man in its midst. Next day the three would be sorry for what they had said, and when they met again would make apologies in their several fashions, my father very clearly and graciously, Mr. Thorpe in a discomfited mutter, Mr. Ferrand in a confused bellow. But as time went on and the division between them grew, they began to think each other less agreeable persons than they had previously judged. Mr. Ferrand, as I could see, began to regard his brother-in-law and my father as tiresome fanatics, sound at heart doubtless and good fellows in the main, but led astray by too much prating; while my father and Mr. Thorpe were drawn close by their joint opinion of Mr. Ferrand as a man warm-hearted doubtless but stupid, with no soul above bowls. There was as yet no open breach between them, but they did not seek each other's company as frequently as hitherto, and Mr. Ferrand especially began to go elsewhere for his talk, being often seen with the Tempests of Boiling Hall.