Rebels and traitors Read online

  'Well, Gideon, your mother has sent you some jumbles.'

  A packet of cinnamon-flavoured pastry twists was handed over and Gideon went back to work. John Jukes made his farewell; Allibone noticed that he brushed away a tear. Gideon, too, wiped his inky nose on his shirtsleeve.

  Those first jumbles were hidden away and eaten in secret, but within the month Gideon opened up, so when his mother sent him treats he would share them. Margery Allibone, a brusque woman, older than her husband, whose cooking was merely adequate, once asked if Gideon's mother would pass on the jumbles recipe. The printer went further. Cookery books, herbals and household manuals were favourites with the public; he nagged for Parthenope to compile a Good Housewife's Closet, which he could illustrate with woodcuts and sell to anxious brides. But Parthenope was about to acquire a daughter-in-law, Lambert's wife, and felt the need to preserve her position by guarding her knowledge. When the Jukes wanted to be gracious to the Allibones, they sent raisins or Jamaica pepper.

  Gideon stayed out his term. For the full seven years of his indenture, he was a typical apprentice: clumsy, scatterbrained and sleepy. He went from delivering parcels to operating the press, learning the tricks and pitfalls. He was taught that typography was critical; for hours he sat at the high compositing desk, mastering fast use of the box of type, with vowels in the middle compartments, frequent consonants next and X, Y and Z at the outer edges. He learned how to tighten the form so the lines of type were clenched fast, how far to turn the lever to lower the press — first once, then again for the second page — how to regulate the amount of ink on the pad, how long the wet sheets needed to dry. He watched how Allibone negotiated with the Stationers' Company who registered books and controlled publication; how he commissioned work from authors, both professional and amateur; how he extracted debts from dilatory clients; how he organised bookbinders; how he kept a careful list of decent importers of paper, and ink and pen suppliers; how he handled people begging him to print subject matter he disapproved of (which was very little) or knew he could not sell (rather more).

  Gideon was paid nothing, but had freedom to read. If he had a fault as a worker, it was his tendency to get caught up in the words. Correctly setting and spacing the text was hard enough, without losing his place as he read on obliviously through the manuscript pages. Many a time Robert Allibone threatened to show him what it was like to have a harsh master who beat him — though, being addicted to reading himself, he never did.

  For anyone interested in politics, there would soon be no better trade. However, at first the outlook for printers was poor, and it grew worse before it got better. Censorship prohibited publication of all foreign and domestic news. Then in 1637, three years after Gideon's indentures, the King's Star Chamber issued a draconian Decree concerning Printing. This aimed to suppress seditious books, particularly those which did not accord with the High Church ideals of the reforming new Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. It insisted on registration of all printed works by the Stationers' Company. Fines for seditious authors were reinforced by fines for their printers; Allibone somehow escaped penalties, but it was an anxious period.

  Then, another four years later, when King Charles was forced to call a Parliament, the Star Chamber was abolished. At once, printers began selling books without official registration. Pamphlets and news-sheets immediately flourished; every Fiery Counterblast bred a Witty Riposte. Anyone with a burning cause could promote his opinions, whether he brazened it out openly, hid under a false name or tantalised with his initials only.

  By chance, Gideon Jukes had been positioned right at the heart of this. He finished his apprenticeship, at the age of twenty, the same year that the King would at last summon a Parliament. He had seen the old regime; now he experienced a great rush of excitement at the new.

  One of the first decisions Gideon then made as an adult was to join the London Trained Bands.

  England had no standing army. Trained Bands had been established by Queen Elizabeth. They were local militias, where men were drilled every summer in the use of pike and musket in order to defend the realm against foreign invasion. Generally viewed as a joke, poorly equipped, badly trained and liable to desert, in most of the shires the Trained Bands were truly inefficient though in London the situation was different. The London Trained Bands were greatly superior.

  Gideon's father was an enthusiast; he had been a captain of the Artillery Company, the high-minded theorists of the Trained Bands, for as long as Gideon could remember. Once a month in summer John would put on a buff coat and collect his weapons. He would proudly march off to an enclosed piece of ground on the western edge of Spitalfields, the Artillery Garden, where the company met to practise under the guidance of hired professional soldiers. Jukes and his comrades read up old campaigns and composed passionate military treatises. None had ever fired a shot in anger. All were convinced they were experts. After the thrill of parading, these companionable hobbyists always adjourned to an alehouse. Their feasts were legendary; the utensils, plates and tureens they used for dining were their most tenderly guarded equipment.

  Lambert Jukes was an enthusiastic regular of the Trained Bands' Blue Regiment. He too revelled in wearing uniform, firing practice shots, and drinking with comrades after drill. 'You are just weekend warriors!' grumbled Gideon. 'Posturing amateurs. Your bullets have no bite.'

  Membership of the Trained Bands was compulsory for householders, though they were allowed to send substitutes and many instructed an apprentice or servant to attend for them. Deep political foreboding made Allibone attend training sessions in person. He was in the Green Regiment, which Gideon began to eye up warily.

  London was astir. In 1641 Gideon was released from his indenture, a qualified journeyman printer. Taller and less thickset than his older brother, he was now nonetheless strong — toned by working the press and shouldering paper bales. He had the square features, pale skin and fair hair that ran in his family, suggesting that if Viking raiders had not made their mark in the remote past, at least Swedish or Danish seamen had been spreading joy among the ladies of medieval or Tudor London. Allibone had made him a good all-round printer, although he would never be a perfect compositor. 'Your thoughts wander! What are you dreaming of?'

  Calm and good-natured, Gideon merely smiled. He felt diffident of discussing it but was wondering what his future could be, a second son without a patron, passed fit to be a journeyman but with no money to start up in business.

  The solution came, though in a sad manner. Robert Allibone's wife died. Gideon's brother Lambert had served his grocery apprenticeship with a master whose wife ordered the lads about, but Margery was no bully and rarely came in the print shop. Gideon had always known that she and his master were devoted. He occasionally overheard what he knew were the sounds of lovemaking; at first a fascinated boy, he came to be a young, frustrated bachelor who covered his ears. Frequently, Fleet Lane would be filled with the slow measure of the Allibones playing musical duets on large and lesser viols which they had owned since they first married.

  Once widowed, Robert sought change. He decided to move to new premises in the City and asked Gideon to go with him as his partner. Gideon eagerly accepted. They set up at the top end of Basinghall Street, close to the Guildhall, between Cripplegate and Moorgate. At the north end were fair houses with long gardens, while southwards were smaller premises and closeted alleys. Walking for a few minutes, across Lothbury, with its noisy copper shops, and down Ironmongers Lane, Gideon could reach the Jukes's grocery shop. He had not quite come home to mother, but he was well within reach of Bread Street; he could reacquaint himself with the glory of her Dutch pudding. Nowadays puddings were mixed as a joint effort by Parthenope and Lambert's pretty wife Anne, a dark-eyed, sensible girl from Bishopsgate; as soon as it was seen that she had a light touch with manchet rolls, Anne had fitted in with her mother-in-law. The women worked peacefully together in the kitchen, where John Jukes often nodded on a settle nowadays, dawdling into
his senior years with his head as full of schemes as ever. Lambert effortlessly ran the business.

  Gideon was welcomed back. Since he would be sharing premises with Allibone, he would cause no ructions with Lambert. His mother took a new look at her returning son, this twenty-year-old with fair hair and a loping stride, who had reached manhood with a scathing view of the world, but was apparently now content with his own place in it. She wondered what other concerns would call him, and whether she would live to see his future. Mothers like to believe their sons are marked for greatness. Parthenope, whose head was filled with musings whenever her hands were busy in a mixing bowl, knew that it mainly led to disappointment. But Lambert, who had never given her a moment's qualm, had also never given her the feeling of potential she experienced with Gideon. So she made him some mock-bacon marzipan — two-tone stripes in a whimsical streaky pattern — while she pretended he was just a troublesome boy again, needing rosewater for his acne. And she waited.

  Gideon liked to take Robert home as a guest to dinner. However, it happened infrequently, after a mishap when a piece of skewer was unfortunately left in a veal olive; it splintered into the unwary printer's hard palate.

  Gideon had always known that Robert Allibone was sceptical of authority. All through his apprenticeship Gideon had spotted that their shop sold some inflammatory material. The master never involved his apprentice. Seditious 'almanacs' were only ever printed by himself; they were kept in a locked cupboard and were quietly passed to customers who knew in advance what they were buying. Gideon now started reading them.

  Once they moved to Basinghall Street, Allibone's yearning for reform became more open. 'Print brings knowledge. What we publish can show the people their rights and liberties.'

  He had chosen his new premises deliberately, to bring him amongst others of a like mind. Basinghall Street seemed close to respectability as it wound around the Guildhall and several livery company halls. But Gideon soon realised that their narrow shopfront was less important than their even more ramshackle back door. Behind where he and Allibone worked and civilly served aldermen with tide tables and news-sheets, accessible through adjoining yards and over a wall with convenient footholds, lay Coleman Street. This was a hotbed of radical printers and several extreme religious groups had meeting-places there. This was where the women preachers gathered and gave soaring sermons to their free-thinking sisters, and occasional free-living brothers. Coleman Street also contained the Star Tavern, which was to become famous as a haunt of Parliamentarian conspirators.

  Chapter Four — London: 1641-42

  Gideon felt he was living at the turn of an extraordinary period. All generations complain about the government, but he felt a distinct tingle that this would be different.

  Nobody really intended to start a civil war. Most past wars had been fought against foreign aggressors. Others were to decide who should be king, not whether a ruler was a bad king — though if he was a bad king that helped to validate any usurper. In a highly unusual gesture, Scottish King James had acknowledged that he was invited to succeed Queen Elizabeth by his new English subjects. His son Charles never entertained any such concept; Charles believed God had given him authority, which none could question. Puritans and other Independents, who talked to God directly, heard a different message. Why would the Lord have chosen a rickety, ill-educated, devious autocrat, married to a manipulative foreign Catholic, a man who was at once desperate to be loved and yet had an impressive flair for causing offence? While earnest subjects tried to find a compromise, a compromise the King never thought necessary, the nation slipped by a series of shunts and bumps into armed conflict. Since there were neither foreign aggressors nor pretenders to the throne, people called it a war without an enemy.

  It was never foreseen that the struggle would turn into a revolution. Everyone was clear that it was treason for subjects to take up arms against the king. On both sides there was horror of the coming bloodshed. On both sides there were many who hoped to preserve the peace.

  There was, initially, a 'junto' of aristocrats setting up to challenge the King's authority after he took back their traditional powers and privileges to grant to his own favourites. The earls of Northumberland, Warwick, Bedford, Hertford, Pembroke, Leicester and Essex were men of land and lineage whose ancestors had held great power; they were also backed among others, by lords Saye and Sele, Mandeville and Brooke. These plotted secretly, how to wrest back influence the King had taken from them. They all owned homes in the country where they were out of reach of the court, and also houses in London between which they could flit like sociable moths, right under the King's nose. Their family trees were so interconnected they could scarcely be untangled to draw them on paper, as intricately linked by blood and marriage as lace, with a web of younger brothers, stepsons, sons-in-law, even bastards. They were patrons to others, further down the social chain yet educated and energetic — lawyers, secretaries and men of business — who would eventually be significant in the House of Commons. The junto members were Presbyterians and puritans; they loathed the bishops' influence in secular affairs. They cultivated their own links with foreign states. Some had considered escaping to the New World to form a godly commonwealth more to their liking. But instead they were colluding with friends, and although it was treason to invite a foreign army into England, they formed an alliance with Scotland which would have very long-term consequences.

  The King became embroiled in dispute with the Scots. They were to feature frequently and often cynically in events. Back in 1637 in Edinburgh, a kerbside cabbage-seller called Jenny Geddes had flung her stool at the head of the Dean of St Giles Cathedral, bawling in protest when he used the hated new Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Two years later, encouraged by the English earls' junto, the Scots rebelled in arms against the King's imposition of High Anglican bishops. They were pacified. In 1640 they rebelled again.

  Desperate for money to finance an army, the King summoned a Parliament for the first time in eleven years. Gideon barely remembered the last time this happened, though he paid attention now. He could not vote. He did not own freehold property.

  New members were returned after a hotly contested election. They insisted they would only grant the King funds after discussing abuses of royal prerogative. The King testily dismissed this 'Short Parliament' after only three weeks.

  The Scots invaded England. The King raised some troops, a rabble who were soundly thrashed. Advancing south, the Scots demanded,?850 a day merely to keep a truce. In November the bankrupt King caved in and summoned the 'Long Parliament'. It passed an act that it could sit in perpetuity and it was to last for almost twenty years.

  This time members were determined to take control. The King's closest and most hated advisers, the Earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud, were impeached: accused of treason and thrown into the Tower of London. Other royal supporters fled. Radical members of the House of Lords were imposed as Privy Councillors. Of course there was no way to force the King to follow their advice.

  To Gideon, this was a heady period, when it seemed reform could not be stopped. Strafford was tried and executed. Ship Money was declared illegal. The hated Courts of High Commission and Star Chamber were abolished. The seditious pamphleteers, Burton, Bastwick and Prynne (author of Histriomastix, the book which had libelled the Queen for performing in masques), were pardoned.

  In August the King travelled to Scotland to negotiate peace. In November he set out for home. During his absence, members of the House of Commons had taken a detailed audit of their complaints. An emergent reformer called John Pym compiled a Grand Remonstrance, a daunting state-of-the-kingdom review. The Remonstrance would be read out to the King in full by messengers from Parliament; they would need vocal stamina. A bitter compendium of over two hundred clauses listed every possible grievance in church and civil life. Singled out were unjust taxes, with an enormous list of land encroachments, distraints of trade, monopolies and fines. The most impassioned outcry condemned the e
vils of the Star Chamber, which had organised censorship.

  Even while it was in draft, secret copies of the Grand Remonstrance circulated in Coleman Street. In next-door Basinghall Street, Robert Allibone quoted with relish: '"Subjects have been oppressed by grievous fines, imprisonments, stigmatisings, mutilations, whippings, pillories, gags, confinements, banishments!"

  Gideon snatched the copy. '"After so rigid a manner as hath not only deprived men of the society of their friends, exercise of their professions, comfort of books" — ho! ho! — "' '"use of paper or ink, but even violated that near union which God hath established between men and their wives, whereby they have been bereaved of the comfort and conversation one of another for many years together, without hope of relief…" — Comfort of books — this is excellent for our trade, Robert!'

  'We shall see…' Allibone was rightly cautious. Printers would soon be summoned to the bar of the House of Commons to account for seditious material, and in coming weeks an order would be given to collect certain books from stationers and burn them. 'The conclusion is good.' Allibone retrieved the paper. '"That His Majesty may have cause to be in love with good counsel and good men"

  Gideon pulled a face. 'Why not simply say they hate the cut of his beard?'

  Revolts come and go but young men remain the same. At twenty, Gideon Jukes was obsessed with beard and whisker design. With fair hair and equally fair skin-tones, the current fashions made him look from almost any distance as if he had a long upper lip and a pointed chin. He had let his hair grow down to his shoulders, an unsuccessful experiment to show he was no longer an apprentice, but was tormented by whether or not to remain clean-shaven.