Free Take Courage by Phyllis Bentley Page B

bringing forth good, and the evil evil, mingled in the result as in the cause. Buckingham was gone, it was true, but the King chose Bishop Laud as his near counsellor in Buckingham’s place, and thereafter the affairs of the nation steadily worsened. For while the Duke was a careless, licentious man, who cared something for honour and glory but more for luxury and ease, and was not ill disposed to any man who was not ill disposed to him, Laud was a fanatic, a man, as folk said, too fierce and cruel for his coat, too savagely contentious to wear the garb of the servants of the Prince of Peace. Under his direction, the King’s Council pressed the Duke’s murderer hard to say if he was instigated by the Puritans; this he denied and was not to be shaken in his denial, but many people disbelieved him.
    Amongst these was Mr. Ferrand. The very next Market Day after the news of the Duke’s death reached Bradford, my father suddenly stumbled into our house in the middle of the morning, looking white and shaken, and sat himself down heavily in a chair by the door. I ran to him and asked him what was wrong; he told he, gasping, that Mr. Ferrand, on a disagreement over the price of some wool, had snatched the fleece from my father’s hand, saying he did not care to sell wool to a murdering Puritan.
    â€œA murdering Puritan!” repeated my father in amazement. “He called me a murdering Puritan!”
    He seemed so dazed and shaken that I coaxed him to stay at home for an hour and rest, and he fell asleep in his chair. When he awoke it was dinner time, but he could eat nothing; he pushed his trencher away irritably, and sat sideways at the table, musing.
    â€œEngland is tearing herself into halves, Penninah,” he said at length, shaking his head. “I pray God mend the rent.”
    Mr. Thorpe came in then, seeking him, and he roused himself and went back to the market.
    I believe it was this shock, of Mr. Ferrand’s words, which began my father’s illness; certainly it was the growth of political faction which fed it.
    The King, out of grief for the Duke perhaps, put off the reassembling of the Parliament till the next year, and meanwhile levied illegally such taxes and impositions as the country groaned under. Merchants were haled before the Council for not paying customs dues and the like, and one having the courage to complain that in England nowadays buyers and sellers were more screwed up than under the Turks, he was committed to prison without trial, and condemned to pay a fine quite out of proportion. This touched all merchants very nearly, and my father and Mr. Thorpe and other clothiers of Bradford spoke of it long, looking grave and shaking their heads. Then the Parliament met, and very swiftly ordered enquiries into all these violations of rights and liberties; and then, instead of granting the King the taxes as he urged them, fell to discussing that right of higher nature, the religion of the soul, which as they nobly said they preferred above all earthly things whatever. This made the King very angry, and when they began to attack his favourite Laud for his Arminianism, he instructed the Speaker of the House not to put any motion pointing at Laud, to the vote. Then the Parliament-men were bitterly angry in their turn at this invasion of their privileges, and two held the Speaker down in his place, and another locked the door of the House of Commons so that the King’smessenger could not enter, and they rapidly passed a remonstrance saying that all who brought in innovations in religion, or levied taxes without the consent of Parliament, or paid such taxes, should be reputed enemies of the King and the nation. The next Monday the King dissolved the Parliament, and it was very clear from his harsh expression and bitter scoldings that he never meant to call another; and there were the people of England lying helpless and without defence in his hand as regards money, and for