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John waved his whip and turned the horse towards Lambeth and the ferry. Hester watched him go and then turned back to the house.
The court was due at Oatlands in late October so John was busy as soon as he arrived planting and preparing the courts which were enclosed by the royal apartments. The knot gardens always looked well in winter, the sharp geometric shapes of the low box hedging looked wonderful thinned and whitened by frost. In the fountain court John kept the water flowing at the slowest speed so that there would be a chance for it to make icicles and ice cascades in the colder nights. The herbs still looked well, the angelica and sage went into white lace when the frost touched their feathery fronds behind the severe hedging. Against the walls of the king’s court John was training one of his new plants introduced from the Ark: his Virginian winter-flowering jasmine. On warm days its scent drifted up to the open windows above, and its colour made a splash of rich pink light in the grey and white and black garden.
The queen’s orangery was like a jungle, packed tight with the tender plants which would not survive an English winter. Some of the more handsome shrubs and small trees were planted in containers with loops for carrying poles and John’s men lifted them out to the queen’s garden at first light, and brought them in again at dusk so that even in winter she would always have something pretty to see from her windows. John placed a lemon and an orange tree, both trained into handsome balls, on either side of the door to her apartments, like aromatic sentries.
‘These are pretty,’ she said to him from her window one day as he was supervising the careful placing of some little trees in the garden below.
‘I beg your pardon, Your Majesty,’ John said, pulling off his hat, recognising the heavily accented voice of Queen Henrietta Maria at once. ‘They should have been in their places before you looked out.’
‘I woke very early, I could not sleep,’ she said. ‘My husband is worried and so I am sleepless too.’
John bowed.
‘People do not understand how hard it is sometimes for us. They see the palaces and the carriages and they think that our lives are given up to pleasure. But it is all worry.’
John bowed again.
‘You understand, don’t you?’ she asked, leaning out and speaking clearly so that he could hear her in the garden below. ‘When you make my gardens so beautiful for me, you know that they are a respite for me and the king when we are exhausted by our anxieties and by our struggle to bring this country to be a great kingdom.’
John hesitated. Obviously it would be impolite to say that his interest in the beauty of the gardens would have been the same whether she was an idle vain Papist – as he believed – or whether she was a woman devoted to her husband and her duty. He remembered Hester’s advice and bowed once more.
‘I so want to be a good queen,’ she said.
‘No-one prays for anything else,’ John said cautiously.
‘Do you think they pray for me?’
‘They have to, it’s in the prayer book. They are ordered to pray for you twice every Sunday.’
‘But in their hearts?’
John dipped his head. ‘How could I say, Your Majesty? All I know are plants and trees. I can’t see inside men’s hearts.’
‘I like to think that you can give me a glimpse of what common men are thinking. I am surrounded by people who tell me what they think I would like to hear. But you would not lie to me, would you, Gardener Tradescant?’
John shook his head. ‘I would not lie,’ he said.
‘So tell me, is everyone against the Scots? Does everyone see that the Scots must do what the king wishes and sign the king’s covenant, and use the prayer book that we give them?’
John, on one knee, on cold ground, cursed the day that the queen had taken a fancy to him, and reflected on the wisdom of his wife who had warned him to avoid this conversation at all costs.
‘They know that it is the king’s wish,’ he said tactfully. ‘There is not a man or woman or child in the country who does not know that it is the king’s wish.’
‘Then it should need nothing more!’ she exclaimed. ‘Is he the king or not?’
‘Of course he is.’
‘Then his wish should be a command to everyone. If they think any different from him they are traitors.’
John thought intently of Hester and said nothing. ‘I pray for peace, God knows,’ he said honestly enough.
‘And so do I,’ said the queen. ‘Would you like to pray with me, Gardener Tradescant? I allow my favourite servants to use my chapel. I am going to Mass now.’
John forced himself not to fling away from her and from her dangerous ungodly Papistry. To invite an Englishman to attend Mass was a crime punishable by death. The laws against Roman Catholics were very clear and very brutal, and clearly, visibly, flouted by the king and queen in their own court.
‘I am all dirty, Your Majesty.’ John showed her his earth-stained hands and kept his voice level though he was filled with rage at her casual flouting of the law, and deeply shocked that she should think he would accept such an invitation to idolatory and hell. ‘I could not come to your chapel.’
‘Another time, then.’ She smiled at him, pleased with his humility, and with her own graciousness. She had no idea that he was within an inch of storming from the garden in a blaze of righteous rage. To John, a Roman Catholic chapel was akin to the doors of hell, and a Papist queen was one step to damnation. She had tried to tempt him to deny his faith. She had tried to tempt him to the worst sin in the world – idolatory, worshipping graven images, denying the word of God. She was a woman steeped in sin and she had tried to drag him down.
She closed the window on the cold air without saying farewell or telling him that he could rise. John stayed kneeling until he was sure that she had gone, and that the audience was over. Then he got to his feet and looked behind him. The two assistant gardeners were kneeling where they had dropped when the window opened.
‘You can stand,’ John said. ‘She’s gone.’
They scrambled to their feet, rubbing their knees and complaining of the discomfort. ‘Please God she does not look out of the window again,’ said the younger one. ‘Why will she not leave you alone?’
‘She thinks I am a faithful servant,’ J said bitterly. ‘She thinks I will tell her the mood of the people. What she does not realise is that no-one can tell her the truth since any word of disagreement is treason. She and the king have tied our consciences in knots and whatever we do or think or say we are in the wrong. It makes a man want to cut loose.’
He saw the gardeners looking at him in surprise. ‘Oh, waste no more time!’ John snapped impatiently. ‘We’ve kneeled enough for one day.’
Winter 1639 (#ulink_49c32f31-3fa7-57ff-b83a-88c292221d2a)
The court always spent the long Christmas feast at Whitehall, so John was able to leave the royal gardens at Oatlands dormant under a thick frost, and go home to Lambeth in November and spend Christmas at home. The children had made him little presents of their own for Twelfth Night, and he gave them sweets and fairings bought from Lambeth winter fair. To Hester he gave a couple of yards of grey silk for a gown.
‘They had a blue silk too but I did not know what you would like,’ he said. He would have known exactly what Jane would have preferred; but he seldom observed what Hester was wearing. He had only a general impression of demure smartness.
‘I like this. Thank you.’
After the children had gone to bed, Hester and John stayed by the fireside, drinking small ale and cracking nuts in companionable domestic peace. ‘You were right about being cautious at Oatlands,’ John said. ‘In Lambeth the news was all of a war against Scotland. The northern counties are armed and ready, and the king has called a council of war. They say that the militia will be called up too.’
‘Do they really think that the king would go to war over a prayer book? Does he really think he can fight the Scots into praying with Archbishop Laud’s words?’
John shook his head in disagreement. ‘It’s more than the prayer book. The king thinks that he has to make one church for all his kingdom. He thinks one church will bind everyone together, bind us all together under his will. He has taken it into his head that if the Scots refuse their bishops then they will refuse their king.’
‘You’ll not have to go?’ Hester asked, going straight to the point.
John grimaced. ‘I may have to pay for a substitute to go soldiering in my place. But perhaps they will not muster the Lambeth trained bands. Perhaps I may be excused since I serve the king already.’
Hester hesitated. ‘You would not publicly refuse to serve, as a matter of conscience?’
‘It would certainly go against my conscience to fire on a man who has said nothing worse than he wants to worship his God in his own way,’ John said. ‘Such a man, be he Scots or Welsh or English, is saying nothing more than I believe. He cannot be my enemy. I am more like a Scots Presbyterian than I am like Archbishop Laud, God knows.’
‘But if you refuse you might be pressed to serve, and if you refuse the press, they could try for treason.’
‘These are difficult times. A man has to hold clear on to his conscience and his God.’
‘And try not to be noticed,’ Hester said.
John suddenly realised the contrast in their opinions. ‘Hester, wife, do you believe in nothing?’ he demanded. ‘I have never had a word from you of belief or conviction. All you ever speak of is surviving and avoiding awkward questions. You are married into a household where we have been faithful servants of the king and his ministers since the start of the century. My father never heard a word against any of his masters in all his days. I didn’t agree with him, that’s not my way; but I am a man of conscience. I hold very strongly to the belief that a man must find his own way to God. I have been a man of independent belief since I was old enough to think for myself, praying in the words of my own choosing, a Protestant, a true Protestant. Even when I have wavered in my faith, even when I have had doubts, profound doubts, I am glad to have those doubts and think them through. I have never run to some priest to tell me what I should think, to speak to God for me.’
She met his gaze with her own straight look. ‘You’re right. I believe in surviving,’ she said flatly. ‘That’s all, really. That’s my creed. The safest route for me and mine is to obey the king; and if I do happen to think differently to what he commands – I keep my thoughts to myself. My family works for noble and royal patrons, I was brought up around the court. I am loyal to my king and loyal to my God; but, like any courtier, my first interest is in surviving. And I fear that my creed is going to be as thoroughly tested as any other in the next few months.’
The press gang did not come for John. But he did receive a letter from the Mayor of London. John was to pay a tax demanded personally by the king to finance the war against the Scots. The king was marching north and desperately needed money to equip and arm his soldiers. And more soldiers would be coming, soldiers from Ireland, and mercenaries from Spain.
‘The king is bringing in Papists to fight against Protestants?’ John demanded, scandalised. ‘What next? French soldiers from his wife’s country? Or the Spanish army? What was the point of us defeating the Armada, fighting to stay free of Papist powers, if we now invite them in?’
‘Hush,’ Hester said. She closed the door of the parlour so that the visitors in the rarities room could not hear her husband’s shout of outrage.
‘I will not pay!’
‘Wait and see,’ Hester advised.
‘I will not,’ John said. ‘This is a matter of principle to me, Hester. I will not pay money to an army of Papists to march against men who think as I do, whose consciences are as tender as mine.’
To his surprise she did not argue but bit her lip and bowed her head. John looked at the top of her cap and had a sense at last of being master in his own house and impressing on his wife the importance of principle.
‘I have spoken,’ he said firmly.
‘Yes indeed,’ she said quietly.
Hester said nothing to disagree with John, but that day, and every day thereafter, she stole from the little collection of coins which the visitors paid until she had enough to pay John’s tax without him knowing, if the tax collector came back.
He did not return. The Lord Mayor of London, with the great men of the City behind him, was not inclined any more than John to hand over thousands of pounds’ worth of City gold for the king’s war against an enemy who was a natural ally. Especially when the king was demanding money without the agreement of a parliament.
1640 (#ulink_0ddea66d-102a-5481-8a69-f69b67874e28)
In the absence of any voluntary money the king was forced to call a parliament. For the first time in ten years the squires and landlords returned to Westminster with a belief that they might now get back to the proper task of advising the king and running the country.
Hester went to find John in the orchard with the news of the new parliament. The buds on the apple trees were fattening and splitting and showing white and pink petals as crumpled as ribbons crammed into a pocket.
‘Perhaps the king will listen to the voice of the people,’ John said hopefully.
‘He might,’ she said. ‘But he is listening to the old Earl Strafford and to the queen. Two voices instead of the one. Will he listen to the voice of the people in preference to the voice of his own wife, who is trying to gather an army of English Papists and a Spanish army for him?’
John thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not.’
Hester nodded. ‘Takings are down for the gardens,’ she warned. ‘People are not ordering plants and seeds. This should be our busiest time of the year but it’s as quiet as winter. No-one can think about gardens while the king is half at war with the Scots and has called a parliament which is filled with men who disagree with him.’
‘We can manage for a short spell,’ John said.
‘We earn more in the spring than we do for all the rest of the year,’ she said. ‘I have been looking at the account books. We have to make money in spring. A war starting in springtime is the worst thing that could happen for us. If the uncertainty carries on till June or July we will not make a profit this year.’
‘What about the rarities?’
‘There are more visitors because there are more people in the city,’ Hester said. ‘The country gentry who have come in for the parliament are curious to see Tradescant’s Ark. But if the business between the king and Scots grows more serious I think they’ll stop coming too. A trade like ours depends on people feeling safe enough to spend money on pleasure: on visiting, on rarities, and on their gardens. A country at war does not plant gardens.’
‘I still have my post at Oatlands,’ John pointed out. ‘And I will succeed my father as chief gardener and draw his wage.’
Hester nodded. ‘If the worst comes to the worst we can live on your wages.’
‘At the very worst we can close the Ark and live at Oatlands,’ John said. ‘The house there is only little; but we could manage for a while if we cannot afford to keep the Ark open.’
‘I’m not sure that I would want to live in the grounds of a royal palace in times like these,’ Hester said cautiously.
‘I thought you were such a royalist?’
‘I don’t want to take sides,’ Hester said. ‘Not when I don’t know exactly what the sides will be. Nor when I don’t know which side will win.’
The sides became rapidly clearer after the king’s army, unenthusiastic and poorly paid, were defeated by the Scots who went on to occupy Newcastle and Durham and hammer out a peace with the king which would force him to call a new parliament in England. It became clear to everyone in the country, except perhaps to the king and the queen, that the Scots and the Independent English thinkers had the king on the run. Hester started a correspondence with Mrs Hurte, the mother of John’s first wife, who kept her eyes and ears open in the City and was as sceptical as Hester, and rightly concerned for the safety of her grandchildren.
The new Parliament will impeach Strafford, just as the old one was wild to impeach Buckingham. If J has ever had any dealings with the Earl, or if his father kept any correspondence, it should be hidden or, better yet, burned. They are saying that Strafford is a traitor prepared to wage war against his own country for the benefit of the king and queen. They will accuse him of treason – treason against the people of England, and once one royal servant is accused how many others will be charged?
Hester went upstairs to the attic and opened John’s old chest of papers. The Tradescants had supplied seeds and young saplings to the Earl but there were no incriminating letters left from the years when John Tradescant had been known as a discreet man who regularly visited Europe and could be trusted with a letter or a message.
The Earl was a loud-mouthed unattractive old man, twisted with gout and losing his sight. He had been a relentless force in Ireland, hammering a Protestant will on a Catholic people; but he was old now. The king had recalled him to England only for the unscrupulous clarity of his advice, and been indebted to him for the suggestion that if towns did not send enough money for the king’s army their aldermen should be hanged in their robes to clarify the urgency of the situation. The Earl had walked past John in the gardens of Oatlands a dozen times and never wasted more than a glance on him.
The Tradescants were safe from any accusation of complicity with the king. But many royal servants slipped away and went abroad, or retired to their country estates. Others were not so quick or careful. In December, Archbishop Laud was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower to await the pleasure of the Houses of Parliament.
Hester did not pray from any prayer book at evening prayers that night but read from the King James Bible as the only text which did not define the household as for or against the king.
‘No prayers?’ John asked her quietly as the household went about its last tasks of the day and Hester counted out the bedtime candles.
‘I don’t know any more what words God would prefer,’ she said drily. ‘And no-one knows what man requires.’
Spring 1641 (#ulink_3c7923e6-4020-562b-869f-f954758cd239)
The day that Strafford was called to account in the great hall at Westminster there were no visitors to the Ark at all. Everyone who could get a ticket or a pass to see Strafford at bay before his accusers was in the city. Even the streets were deserted.
In the unnatural silence of the house at Lambeth there was suddenly a thunderous knock on the front door. Frances went running to open it, but Hester darted out from the rarities room and caught her in the hall.
‘Frances! Don’t answer it!’
The girl halted at once.
‘Go round to the gardens and find your father. Tell him to go to the stables, saddle a horse, and wait till I send a message.’
Frances caught the note of urgency in her stepmother’s voice, nodded, white-faced, and ran. Hester waited until she was out of sight, smoothed down her apron, straightened her cap, and opened the door.
It was a gentleman usher of the royal household. Hester showed him into the parlour. ‘My husband is not here at the moment,’ she said, deliberately vague. ‘I can send a message for him if it is urgent.’
‘The king is at Whitehall and wishes to see him.’
Hester nodded. ‘I shall have to write to him at Oatlands,’ she said. ‘He is the king’s gardener at Oatlands, you know. May I tell him why the king wants him?’
The gentleman usher raised his eyebrows. ‘I should have thought it would be enough to tell him that he is wanted,’ he said rudely.
Hester bowed slightly. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But if the king requires some plants or seeds then we need to know at once, so that we can prepare them. Or if he wants some rarities delivered …’
‘Oh,’ the man said. ‘I see. The king is buying a hunting lodge at Wimbledon for the queen. They want Mr Tradescant to design a garden.’
