Virgin Earth

Winter 1639

The court always spent the long Christmas feast at Whitehall, so John was able to leave the royal gardens at Oatlands dormant under a thick frost, and go home to Lambeth in November and spend Christmas at home. The children had made him little presents of their own for Twelfth Night, and he gave them sweets and fairings bought from Lambeth winter fair. To Hester he gave a couple of yards of gray silk for a gown.

“They had a blue silk too but I did not know what you would like,” he said. He would have known exactly what Jane would have preferred; but he seldom observed what Hester was wearing. He had only a general impression of demure smartness.

“I like this. Thank you.”

After the children had gone to bed, Hester and John stayed by the fireside, drinking small ale and cracking nuts in companionable domestic peace. “You were right about being cautious at Oatlands,” John said. “In Lambeth the news was all of a war against Scotland. The northern counties are armed and ready, and the king has called a council of war. They say that the militia will be called up too.”

“Do they really think the king would go to war over a prayer book? Does he really think he can fight the Scots into praying with Archbishop Laud’s words?”

John shook his head in disagreement. “It’s more than the prayer book. The king thinks he has to make one church for all his kingdom. He thinks one church will bind everyone together, bind us all together under his will. He has taken it into his head that if the Scots refuse their bishops then they will refuse their king.”

“You’ll not have to go?” Hester asked, going straight to the point.

John grimaced. “I may have to pay for a substitute to go soldiering in my place. But perhaps they will not muster the Lambeth-trained bands. Perhaps I may be excused since I serve the king already.”

Hester hesitated. “You would not publicly refuse to serve, as a matter of conscience?”

“It would certainly go against my conscience to fire on a man who has said nothing worse than he wants to worship his God in his own way,” John said. “Such a man, be he Scots or Welsh or English, is saying nothing more than I believe. He cannot be my enemy. I am more like a Scots Presbyterian than I am like Archbishop Laud, God knows.”

“But if you refuse you might be pressed to serve, and if you refuse the press, they could try for treason.”

“These are difficult times. A man has to hold clear onto his conscience and his God.”

“And try not to be noticed,” Hester said.

John suddenly realized the contrast in their opinions. “Hester, wife, do you believe in nothing?” he demanded. “I have never had a word from you of belief or conviction. All you ever speak of is surviving and avoiding awkward questions. You are married into a household where we have been faithful servants of the king and his ministers since the start of the century. My father never heard a word against any of his masters in all his days. I didn’t agree with him, that’s not my way; but I am a man of conscience. I hold very strongly to the belief that a man must find his own way to God. I have been a man of independent belief since I was old enough to think for myself, praying in the words of my own choosing, a Protestant, a true Protestant. Even when I have wavered in my faith, even when I have had doubts, profound doubts, I am glad to have those doubts and think them through. I have never run to some priest to tell me what I should think, to speak to God for me.”

She met his gaze with her own straight look. “You’re right. I believe in surviving,” she said flatly. “That’s all, really. That’s my creed. The safest route for me and mine is to obey the king; and if I do happen to think differently to what he commands – I keep my thoughts to myself. My family works for noble and royal patrons, I was brought up around the court. I am loyal to my king and loyal to my God; but, like any courtier, my first interest is in surviving. And I fear that my creed is going to be as thoroughly tested as any other in the next few months.”

The press gang did not come for John. But he did receive a letter from the Mayor of London. John was to pay a tax demanded personally by the king to finance the war against the Scots. The king was marching north and desperately needed money to equip and arm his soldiers. And more soldiers would be coming, soldiers from Ireland, and mercenaries from Spain.

“The king is bringing in Papists to fight against Protestants?” John demanded, scandalized. “What next? French soldiers from his wife’s country? Or the Spanish army? What was the point of us defeating the Armada, fighting to stay free of Papist powers, if we now invite them in?”

“Hush,” Hester said. She closed the door of the parlor so the visitors in the rarities room could not hear her husband’s shout of outrage.

“I will not pay!”

“Wait and see,” Hester advised.

“I will not,” John said. “This is a matter of principle to me, Hester. I will not pay money to an army of papists to march against men who think as I do, whose consciences are as tender as mine.”

To his surprise she did not argue but bit her lip and bowed her head. John looked at the top of her cap and had a sense at last of being master in his own house and impressing on his wife the importance of principle.

“I have spoken,” he said firmly.

“Yes indeed,” she said quietly.

Hester said nothing to disagree with John, but that day, and every day thereafter, she stole from the little collection of coins the visitors paid until she had enough to pay John’s tax without him knowing, if the tax collector came back.

He did not return. The Lord Mayor of London, with the great men of the City behind him, was not inclined any more than John to hand over thousands of pounds’ worth of City gold for the king’s war against an enemy who was a natural ally. Especially when the king was demanding money without the agreement of a parliament.