The first time i understood that the things I read in the diurnals could concern ordinary people like ourselves was over the matter of Will’s getting a place.
I had read about the course of affairs in the King’s first Parliament, how the members granted the King the right to levy taxes for one year only, and then before promising him any more supplies began to make petitions about religion and bring accusations against the Duke of Buckingham, which angered the King so much that he dissolved that Parliament, so that it sat no more. My father shook his head over this and said it was a bad augury for a new reign, and I in my childish way agreed gravely, and was angry about the Duke and grieved that the young King should be so misled; but to me it was like an old historical tale or a piece out of the Bible, something that roused one’s feelings strongly and gave one moral instruction, but was all over long ago and a long way off. I was glad when the King was obliged to call another Parliament because he needed money for wars abroad and the Court at home, and could not get what he needed without a Parliament’s consent; but I had no notion that it would ever concern us in Bradford. But then, to put the members in a proper humour for granting subsidies, the King had sermons preached to both Houses of this new Parliament by a man whose name I heard for the first time, namely Bishop Laud. This Laud told the Parliament flatly that the King was God’s lieutenant on earth, and the King’s power was God’s power—the blood came into my father’s face when he heard this, and Will struck the table sharply, crying: “Divine Right! What did I tell you? Divine Right!” Will’s temper had been very uneven of late, so that David and I were quite uncomfortable with him; but I had no notion that this bad Bishop, with his Arminian views, as they were called, could have anything to do with Will’s crossness. But not long after, this same Bishop had it proclaimed that nobody might discuss, either in writing or preaching, opinions contrary to the doctrine and discipline of the Church. It was our Vicar, Mr. Okell, who told us this one evening when he called to see my father on some churchwarden business. It was a cold night and we were all sitting round the fire.
“Discipline!” said my father, making a wry face. “I hate the word. True religion cannot be imposed by order, from above, as the Arminians seem to think.”
“Aye,” began Will, “and besides——”
Then suddenly he coloured up and his mouth shook, and with a strange cry he sprang from his chair and rushed away from us. Mr. Okell looked after him kindly, then turned towards my father with a question in his eyes. My father shook his head, and Mr. Okell shook his own white head in sympathy. I stole away after Will, and found him upstairs in the cold loom-chamber, his head buried in his hands, groaning. I asked if he were sick, but he told me “No,” and bade me leave him, somewhat roughly. I was perplexed, but since neither he nor my father, even when Mr. Okell had left us, offered to tell me what was wrong, I did not like to ask. Some while later David, who shared a bed with Will, confided to me that he thought Will was wretched because he wanted to be married and Mr. Thorpe would not let him. As the marriage treaty between Will and Eliza had long been signed, this puzzled me still further, and I thought David must be wrong, for I noticed that Will was always most put out after we had been reading the diurnals.
Indeed the news was not good, for Laud’s sermon having provoked the Parliament, it did not hurry to grant any subsidies, but began to attack the Duke; whereupon the King hastily scolded and dissolved it, before it was six months long. Parliaments, he said, were altogether in his power—an observation fit to madden any Englishman. What was worse, having no subsidies lawfully granted him, he now began to levy them illegally, without consent, and began also to demand loans from the gentry, and to tax merchants’ goods entering the country from abroad; and many of the Arminian clergy began to preach sermons, exhorting their people to pay these loans and taxes. This all seemed to me very wicked, but still it did not strike me that it could happen nearer than London, for in Bradford we had no such sermons, Mr. Okell being a staunch Puritan and no lover of either the King or Laud. About this time Will began to spend more hours at the loom and fewer at his books, and his temper grew worse daily, but I was still quite in the dark as to why it should be so.
Then one day, when we were all dining at Holroyd Hall, it was made clear to me. The occasion was Francis’s birthday; the Ferrands had many guests, and we were all at table. Mr. Ferrand was joking in a rather lewd way, as he loved to do, and he suddenly asked Will in a loud jovial tone when he was going to get a benefice and be able to marry. Poor Will coloured to his ears, and began stammeringly to explain that nowadays it was not easy for a young man of his views to find a Bishop or patron to appoint him. At once I saw the whole matter, for Mr. Thorpe, as his uncomfortable look now showed, would not wish Will and Eliza to marry till Will was in a fair way to gain his living.
“It is said that Bishop Laud gives the King lists of clergy marked O and P,” went on poor Will, more vehement as his anger gained on him: “O for Orthodox, who are to have promotion, and P for Puritan, who are not. Others with benefices in their gift take the cue, for fear they will be had up for heresy before the court of Starchamber.”
“And very properly,” roared Mr. Ferrand in his loud cheerful voice. “You cannot have a Church without a government; you cannot have these Puritans doing just as they choose. A set of dirty arrogant rascals, saving your presence, Tom and Robert, preaching all over the place and behaving saucily to their betters. We must have decency and order.”
“You are an Arminian, sir!” cried my father sternly on a sudden.
Mr. Ferrand looked taken aback. “What do the Arminians hold?” he enquired doubtfully.
My father, his sudden warmth gone, smiled and replied: “They hold all the best bishoprics and deaneries in England.”
At this Mr. Thorpe laughed very heartily. “That’s good! That’s good, Robert!” he cried. “What do the Arminians hold? They hold all the best bishoprics—ha, ha, ha!”
“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.