Juliana discovered eventually that Orlando had had only a slight acquaintance with the Irish couple. A chance meeting in the street as he rushed about in despair had brought this happy result. For his wife, the accident was to be a double joy for it initiated one of the main female friendships in her life.
As a consequence of inspecting their bleak room, Mistress McIlwaine subjected the landlord to inspection; she took his measure in one scathing bat of an eyelash, then berated Lovell for ever leaving Juliana alone in the beastly Smithers’s vicinity. She suggested the Lovells should board with herself and Major Owen McIlwaine in St Aldate’s. McIlwaine was a tall, lean man with a strong nose and large ears, who read widely and loved his wife. He was well liked by his soldiers and Lovell said he was a caring, efficient leader.
For the Lovells, this was a notable move up. Not only were they now well placed, directly opposite Christ Church where the King lodged, but the houses were large and splendid. At that time St Aldate’s famously contained three earls, three barons, several baronets and various knights. Overcrowding was rife, with a census recording 408 ‘strangers’ packed into seventy-four houses, along with original townspeople. Even so, the neighbourhood was coveted. The McIlwaines possessed resources; they rented a whole house and though periodically they shared it with other officers, who brought their wives, children and sometimes soldiers or servants, the Lovells nonetheless were given a good chamber of their own, where the small family eventually stayed for eighteen months. Now they lived in panelled rooms with ornamental plaster on the ceilings and decorated over-mantles above lofty fireplaces. From who-knew-what money, Lovell had made one flamboyant payment of rent, which he would probably not repeat, though it gave them a guilt-free start. Juliana felt able to use her grandmother’s fine table- and bed-linen, as she dared to believe that she had her own establishment at last. In the great four-poster bed with its old embroidered drapes, her second child would be both conceived and born.
She was to know grief in that house as well as snatched happiness, but for a long time mainly pleasure — particularly the pleasure of living among congenial people, people who gladly extended their friendship. Although the McIlwaines were a quiet pair, who allowed Juliana plenty of privacy, they also had access to society. They were connected to the royal court because they worshipped at the Queen’s Catholic chapel in Merton. There was music; there were plays and masques; for the men there was tennis and bowling. There was fine dining in the colleges as well as simple food and good company at home. For those who could bear its deprivations, Oxford even held a sense of excitement. It was inconceivable that the King would lose either the war or his crown; the city had the air of a temporary adventure which everyone would one day remember nostalgically.
Juliana, so young and completely inexperienced, had wise guidance as she learned motherhood with her first baby. Nerissa had borne children, though none was with her now. Juliana sensed that the McIlwaines had endured much tragedy, perhaps back in Ireland. At any rate, Nerissa helped with a light hand; perhaps she was reluctant to love the infant Tom Lovell too much. Despite developing a great fondness for Juliana herself, her warmth was tempered with restraint, as if nothing in life could be trusted to last.
Differences of religion only came between them with courtesy on both sides. Early in their acquaintance Nerissa did ask Juliana if she was a Catholic, since she was partly French. Roxanne Carlill had always maintained herself to be a Huguenot, though on her death-bed she had begged for a Catholic priest and Juliana, despite her distaste, had somehow found one. Whatever her grandmother’s origins, Juliana herself had been brought up a general-duty Protestant. Her father had read aloud to her from a King James Bible. She shook off the question with a light laugh. ‘I am but a quarter French. So I am a Catholic only on Mondays and Wednesday afternoons — and never on a Sunday, which prevents discovery’
That first winter was bleak, with endless grim weather and heavy snow. It was good to be in an ordered house where roaring fires were built in the kitchen, and lodgers were welcome to drape their ice-stiffened cloaks over chair-backs and stuff their mud-splashed boots with old news-sheets to dry out near the hearth overnight. In January the Houses of Parliament at Westminster offered a pardon for all Royalists who submitted, took the Covenant — the Presbyterian oath — and paid a significant fine to compensate for their past delinquency. Despite their anxieties as the war continued, few at the King’s headquarters paid much heed to the offer.
Besides, there were now two Parliaments. The King called for all loyal members of Parliament to assemble at Oxford, which already had lawcourts, a Mint and the royal presence. The Oxford Parliament met with considerable numbers present — forty-four Lords and, more surprisingly, over a hundred Commons, which was about a quarter of the lower house. It was not a success. Though these were the loyal’ members, ironically the King found them no more compliant than the rebels in Westminster. He raved to his wife about ‘the place of base and mutinous motions — that is to say, our mongrel Parliament here’. It was not in his nature to wonder why neither body was tractable.
In March 1644, as the weather cleared, Prince Rupert left for action in the North Midlands, Lovell with him. In April the pregnant Queen was sent away to Exeter by the King, who feared for her safety during her confinement. Once again came rumours that the Earl of Essex intended to lay siege to Oxford; at the end of May Essex and Waller made a determined effort to entrap the King. Essex marched through nearby Cowley and Bullingdon Green to Islip, and then advanced on Woodstock, which was a mere walking distance away; as an act of bravado the King spent a day hunting at Woodstock. Meanwhile Waller forced a crossing at Newbridge and came as close as Eynsham. Parliamentary soldiers strolled up to inspect the town defences, like spectators at a fair. Shots were fired. The King tricked Essex and quietly escaped with four and half thousand men by an all-night march. Lighted matchcord was left, hung on the hedgerows, to fool Essex that the royal army was still there. (This trick was used in so many engagements, it was surprising anyone was ever taken in by it.) The Parliamentary encirclement of Oxford ended, temporarily, though the panicky townsfolk only relaxed slowly.
Also at the end of May, Prince Rupert was ordered to the north. It was occasioned by a treaty John Pym had concluded with the Scots, just before he died in December 1643. Dismayed by the fact that three-quarters of the kingdom was then in Royalist hands, Pym had taken up the Scots’ offer of help. They too were alarmed by the prospect of victory for the King, which would inevitably mean further attempts to overthrow their Presbyterian system. News that Charles was negotiating to bring over an Irish army for his own assistance, made them even keener.
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:
calling to mind the treacherous and bloody plots, conspiracies, attempts, and practices of the enemies of God, against the true religion and professors thereof in all places …we have now at last (after other means of supplication, remonstrance, protestation, and sufferings), for the preservation of ourselves and our religion from utter ruin and destruction … resolved and determined to enter into a Mutual and Solemn League and Covenant, wherein we all subscribe, and each one of us for himself, with our hands lifted up to the Most High God, do swear …and shall endeavour to bring the Churches of God in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, Confession of Faith, Form of Church Government, Directory for Worship and Catechising; that we, and our posterity after us, may, as brethren, live in faith and love, and the Lord may delight to dwell in the midst of us.
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.
While the King exulted, Parliament hastily summoned the Eastern Association troops back south. They were to join with the rags of Waller’s army and prevent the King from sweeping to victory. A second battle was fought at Newbury. Weak deployment by the Earl of Manchester allowed the King to evade what should have been a decisive action. This was the occasion when Oliver Cromwell’s exasperation with Lord Manchester brought him to argue for a new kind of army, which would be concentrated under one tried and determined commander. But while that idea was discussed in Parliament, the year ended with the same kind of stalemate as previously, Marston Moor almost seeming to count for nothing.
In Oxford one Sunday in early October a terrible fire occurred. For the garrison, the townspeople and those left behind by the field armies, this assumed much more importance than any aspect of the war. It began when a foot-soldier who had stolen a pig was roasting the beast in a cramped dwelling near the North Gate. The little house caught light. Fanned by a high north wind, flames spread rapidly. A frightening conflagration raced through much of the western area, from George Street south through St Ebbe’s, destroying houses, stables, bakeries and brewhouses. As well as providing billets for soldiers, this was an area of labourers and artisans, who lived in cramped small cottages with too many thatched roofs and wooden chimneys. Oxford houses at the time tended to be built with timber rather than brick or stone. Their beams, bargeboards and decorative pargeting were grey with age and tinder-dry; the closeness of the buildings helped the flames to leap ferociously through entries and passageways.
Juliana had smelled smoke. Soon the McIlwaines’ house was threatened. It survived, but not before Juliana and her friend had begun frantically gathering what they could — Juliana could carry little more than the baby. Outside, only half-hearted fire-fighting efforts were being attempted, for there was no good access to water. Ladders were brought to rescue trapped people — or to enable thieves to take advantage of abandoned houses — but the streets were full of fleeing, screaming inhabitants, who rushed in all directions not knowing where to take refuge. Some carried bundles of possessions, but most were just concerned to save their skins.
Feeling the approaching heatstorm and panicking, the women rushed out into the High. Nerissa pulled Juliana to safety in Christ Church, where the large quadrangle and heavy stonework would offer protection if the fire leapt across the street. Eventually the blaze was extinguished, however, and they were able to return home, finding the house still as they had left it, though every room and everything they owned was blackened with soot and smuts and stank of smoke. They coughed for days. The reek lasted weeks. Juliana found herself sniffing obsessively and peering through the windows in case a new fire had started. She slept badly and remained on edge.
Collections of money were started for homeless people, many of whom had lost their trades with their workshops. Relief was haphazard. The destitute would still be begging for assistance two decades later. Eighty houses were destroyed. Bread and beer were hard to find, since brew-houses, bakehouses and malthouses were destroyed. The butchers’ stalls in Queen Street had also gone. There was food, however. Oxford always had a good supply of provisions. The King repeatedly ordered every household to lay in stocks to survive a siege.
At the end of the month, unexpectedly, Juliana came in from the market and saw boots warming by the fire, boots with enormous bucket-tops and butterfly-shaped leather patches on the insteps, which held mighty spurs. McIlwaine and Lovell had returned. Juliana found her husband in their room, face down, spread-eagled on the bed.
At first, Juliana convinced herself Lovell was unchanged. He and the colonel seemed more reticent and jaded, though neither had been badly wounded. They spoke only briefly of the battle of Marston Moor. McIlwaine had managed to get away with Prince Rupert, which saved his life; had he been captured, he would have been shot for being an Irishman. After hiding all night in a beanfield — a story loved by his enemies though rather played down by him — Rupert rendezvoused with his surviving men at York then refused an appeal from the Marquis of Montrose to fight in Scotland and instead rode back across the Pennines, picking up stragglers. Meanwhile Lovell had lost his horse and was captured by Roundheads after lying for hours in a damp gorse patch. Unlike most of the fifteen hundred prisoners taken after the battle, he somehow escaped. In subsequent weeks at home, he said little of what had happened to him.
The men’s dark memories only slowly became apparent. When their husbands first reappeared, Juliana and Nerissa exchanged discreet glances, asking no questions. When Lovell came to the kitchen, where Colonel McIlwaine was tasting small pies as warily as if he had never seen a pie before, Juliana brought Tom to his father. It was six months since he had seen the child. Lovell responded with polite remarks on how Tom had developed. He held the boy; he held him close for a long time, staring at the fire. But he was not taking joy in his infant, merely using him as a comforter.
That night in bed, Juliana was shocked by the new force and urgency of Lovell’s lovemaking. A foolish girl might have preened herself that he had missed her — which no doubt was true. Yet she realised that as he worked out his passion, he had locked himself away within some misery he might never share with her. The man was obliterating his disappointments through sexual effort. His ferociousness was a punishment — though hardly Juliana’s punishment, for what had she done wrong? She provided wifely consolation, but she found it frightening and painful. In the end, Lovell’s extreme passion roused her — she could not help herself — but after they fell back exhausted, they lay silent and uncommuning. Dry-eyed in the darkness, Juliana did not sleep.
She felt used like a whore. She could not help being angry.
As she surveyed her bruises the next day, while Lovell still lay in a dead sleep, she wondered if a similar scene had taken place in the McIlwaines’ bed. Going downstairs, she almost believed that she heard a man weeping, though she could not believe it. Nerissa McIlwaine did not appear that morning and when Juliana did find her, quietly spreading herself damson jam on a crust of bread, it seemed impossible to ask intimate questions.
Some time before the end of that year, the Lovells’ second child was conceived.
The King wintered at Oxford serenely. There was no sign that anything would ever change.