The Love Child

He had lived in the midst of his enemies, posing as a Roundhead, he, the greatest Royalist of them all.

He had risked his life every minute of the day. He would do it again.

I was very uneasy.

We knew little peace from that moment. My mother went about the house like a pale ghost. My father was often at Court. I noticed how nervous my mother was becoming.

She was startled every time we heard the sound of horses’ hoofs in the courtyard.

We learned that the new King had heard Mass openly in the Queen’s chapel. The Quakers sent a deputation to him in which they testified their sorrow in the death of Charles and their loyalty to the new King. The wording of the petition was significant.

We are told that thou art not of the persuasion of the Church of England any more than we, and therefore we hope that thou will grant unto us the same liberty thou allowest thyself.

In April the new King and Queen were crowned. James showed his leanings clearly by arresting Titus Gates, and although none felt any great sorrow about that, it did indicate that the King wished for no voice to be raised against the Catholics. Titus Gates was made to pay a fine of one thousand marks, was defrocked and condemned to be whipped publicly twice, and every year of his life to stand five times in the pillory. This would perhaps be the worst ordeal of all, as he had gathered many enemies during his reign of terror.

It was May-a beautiful month. Twenty-five years ago Charles had come back to regain his kingdom, and for those years the country had been lulled into a sense of security and rich living. The Puritan rule was over; the meaning of life was pleasure. The King had set the example and the country was only too happy to follow. The reign had been marred only by the Popish Plot and the Rye House Plot; and both of these had been formed at the instigation of foolish, evil men.

Now the days of soft living were over. There was a new King on the throne, and he was a Catholic King in a country which was dedicated in the main to Protestantism.

It was said that Charles himself had been a Catholic; if he had been, he had also been too wise to show it openly. James had no such cynical wisdom, and in that beautiful month of May the menacing clouds hung over our house.

My father said quite casually, but I could tell he was hiding his excitement, “The Duke of Monmouth has sailed from Texel with a frigate and two small vessels.”

“So,” replied my mother blankly, “he is coming to England.”

My father nodded.

“He will not be such a fool…” she began.

My father said: “He is the King’s son. Many say Charles was married to Lucy Walter.

Most important of all, he will stand for the Protestant cause.”

“Carleton!” she cried, “you will not…”

“My dear,” he answered very soberly, “you may be sure that I shall do what I consider best for us all.”

He would say no more than that. But he was waiting. And we knew that one day the summons would come.

It was nearly three weeks later when it did.

Monmouth had landed at Lyme in Dorset and was appealing to his friends to join him.

He was going to make an attempt to take the throne from James.

On the day my father left for the West Country a Bill of Attainder was issued against the Duke and a reward of five hundred pounds offered to anyone who could bring him to justice, dead or alive.

My mother was inconsolable.

“Why did he have to do this!” she cried. “This will be civil war. Why do we have to take sides? What does it matter to me what King is on the throne?”

I said: “It matters to my father.”

“Does it matter more than his home…his family?”

“He was always a man for causes,” I reminded her.

She nodded, and a bitter smile touched her mouth. I knew she was thinking of her arrival here when she had come with her first husband-Edwin’s father-and how she met my father, who was then living at the utmost risk…for a cause.

“Monmouth will never succeed,” she said vehemently, “I know it.”

“And I know,” I assured her, “that my father is a man who will win through.”

It was a grain of comfort … nothing more. There was little we could do but wait.

It was then that she gave me the family journals to read and I learned so much about her and him that I was filled with a new tenderness towards them both.

News came from the West Country. Monmouth had taken Taunton and it seemed that the West was ready to declare for him. Flushed with victory, he had issued a counter proclamation to that of the King, offering five thousand pounds for the head of King James and declaring Parliament a seditious assembly.

“It was the braggart in him,” said my mother. He was young and reckless. He might be Charles’s son but he would never be the man his father had been.

“How can your father! How can he? Monmouth is doomed to failure. He has failure written all over him. I pray to God to guard your father.”

There was a jubilant message from my father. Monmouth had been proclaimed King in Taunton and was marching on Bristol.

We heard later that he did not reach Bristol, as the King’s army was approaching.