Not so Philip of Spain. That most Catholic of monarchs could no longer hold back after such an outrage. In 1587, a chain of beacons were lit on hills all over the south of England to announce that the great fleet of galleons called the Spanish Armada had been seen off Plymouth.
It was a stupendous force. The mighty galleons that rolled down the Channel very nearly succeeded in their conquest.
“The fact is,” one of the seafaring Wilson boys confided to Edward Shockley afterwards, “even Drake couldn’t have stopped them. All we did was follow them.”
But thanks to a series of fortunate winds, and one brief, but successful engagement, Philip’s huge fleet was blown first up the Channel, then northwards to the rocky coasts of Scotland where many were wrecked.
“We were saved by luck,” Shockley declared, “not by preparation.”
But, fantastic luck though the wreck of the Armada was, England was saved, and the island returned once more to years of peace; even Edward Shockley, as he entered his old age and the last decade of the reign of Elizabeth, was, in his modest way, optimistic for the future.
In particular, he loved to go to Wilton House, to which, about once a year, he was invited to see the players. Many troops of actors passed through the great mansion in those sunlit years. Once at least, they included an actor named William Shakespeare.
THE UNREST
1642:
AUGUST
The funeral guests were leaving. Inside, the family waited tensely as, one by one, the visitors filed past the big oak staircase, out of the panelled hall and through the low doorway of the big farmhouse into the afternoon sunlight outside.
As soon as they had gone, the family conference must begin – the conference that might break the Shockleys for ever.
If only it were not necessary. If only the coming civil war, which had all Sarum in an uproar, need not intrude into the sanctuary of the family home, which should always be inviolate. For months they had all known that it could come to this. Now, with their father gone . . .
Sir Henry Forest went first. Before leaving the hall he turned, his cautious black eyes taking in all the remaining family, and bowed stiffly. Sir Henry Forest, Baronet, their senior neighbour – their friend, if he was any man’s friend. Which side would he take in the coming conflict? Who knew? When he had gone, others followed suit: friends, neighbours, old Thomas Moody with his son Charles, from Shaftesbury; after them, tradesmen like the Mason family and others of Salisbury; lastly the farmworkers led by Jacob Godfrey. For three generations now, since Piers Godfrey the carpenter had worked for the Shockleys in Salisbury, the Godrey family had remained close to the Shockleys. Many had tears in their eyes: for all felt a real regret and affection for the memory of the widower William Shockley whose sudden death had taken Sarum by surprise.
Now the family was alone, but the hall was quiet – each of them knowing that, once this last silence was broken, they might never be at one again. The four Shockleys stood, as motionless as the banisters on the broad oak stairs that gleamed darkly behind them, waiting. From outside, where the footsteps had departed, they could hear the distant, sullen tolling of the church bell. Four of them: three brothers and their sister.
Margaret Shockley: twenty years old, magnificent, with her proud, strong body, her golden hair and blue eyes that could flash with such splendid anger that people in Sarum used laughingly to say: “She’s the best looking of all the boys.” Tall Margaret waited silently.
One thought filled her mind: the baby.
He was hers to take care of – hers and no one else’s – and they were not going to stop her, any of them. The baby, resting in an upper room. He needed her.
He was still so small and defenceless. He had been hers ever since her poor step-mother, during that terrible, endless labour two years before had turned to her and whispered: “If the child lives, Margaret, he’ll be yours.” Her three brothers had all been there too, she reminded herself, just three days ago when William Shockley mustered his breath to say:
“Margaret: whatever your brothers do, you must live here and look after Samuel.” Then he had paused before adding: “And my water meadows.”
Little Samuel – that tiny, fair-haired bundle of joy. Jacob Godfrey’s wife had had him to nurse at her breast – and how Margaret would have loved to be able to do that too. But it was she who had done everything else, rocked the baby in her arms, taken him with her into her bed and, week after week, lain happily, feeling his tiny warmth beside her.
Her father’s water meadows – those wonderful man-made irrigation systems running down beside the River Avon below the farm that he had bought when he was young. He had built them before she was born and they had made his farm the finest in the area; she would look after those too.
She looked at her brothers. Edmund, at thirty the eldest, the head of the family now: always serious, dutiful, sober, his brown hair cut straight just above the shoulder; he had their mother’s hazel eyes, their father’s broad, rather heavy-set figure. Obadiah, the Presbyterian minister, hater of priests and bishops; though he was only twenty-seven, the black hair that was plastered close around his pale oval face before curling up at the shoulders was already greying at the temples. His eyes were slate-blue, striking, even from a distance, such as when he was in the pulpit. Obadiah, with his arrogant, lisping speech; as a child he had been vain; he was full of spiritual indignation now he was a man: a born Puritan preacher, she thought. People did not love Obadiah. He knew it, and could not forgive them.
And Nathaniel: fair like herself, gallant, only twenty-three. Even now, how nonchalant he looked, his golden hair falling past his shoulders, his elegant lace cuffs a contrast to the solemn plain cloth of both brothers; in his hand was the long clay pipe he loved to point casually at Obadiah whenever he swore one of his favourite blasphemous oaths, just to make sure the preacher did not miss it. Her own Nathaniel, her kindred spirit whom she loved even though he was often irresponsible.
She knew her brothers so well.
In the coming crisis she might have to protect Nathaniel. And she knew she must protect the child.
When she thought of the causes of this great storm that was about to engulf them, to Margaret at least it seemed that the whole matter was the fault of the king – the king and his terrible doctrine of divine right. That was why Sarum and half the country was up in arms; that was why her family was about to be torn apart; and in her heart, she cursed him.
When old Queen Elizabeth died childless at the turn of the century, the logical and proper choice as her successor had been her cousin James Stuart of Scotland, the sober-minded son of the beheaded Mary Queen of Scots.
At first it had seemed the new regime would bring happy times. England and Scotland, though each remained a separate kingdom with its own Parliament and Church, at last shared a single monarch. The king and both his peoples were mainly Protestant. There had been peace, at last, with Spain. And had not the start of the Stuart dynasty seen such glories as Shakespeare’s greatest plays performed in London, the opening up of the trade with the newly found continent of America, and the preparing of the noblest book in the English language – King James’s Authorised Bible? Why had it all turned sour?
Because James and his son Charles understood neither of the countries that they ruled.
They hated the Protestant Presbyters of Scotland who would have none of their bishops; they despised the proud Parliament of England.
Worse: the self-styled scholar James believed that kings ruled by divine right and that no one, even parliaments, should interfere with their actions.
Worse still: his son Charles I, governing through his hated favourites Buckingham and Strafford, had vigorously put his father’s ideas into practice.
It was Edmund, at last, who broke the uneasy silence, motioning his sister and brothers to sit at the old oak table. He himself sat in the chair at the head.
He looked unhappy. It was obvious that he had been steeling himself for this job for many hours. The other three waited silently as he opened the proceedings.
“The king’s commission of array is issued and he has raised his standard at Nottingham. Parliament has voted Lord Essex ten thousand men to oppose him.” He paused, looking from one to the other. He looked at young Nathaniel sternly. He knew where Obadiah stood.
“This family will fight,” he declared, “for the Parliament.” It was an order. If it was obeyed, the family might still come through together.
There was a long pause. Then young Nathaniel, very quietly:
“Brother Edmund, I cannot.”
A sound of disgust from Obadiah. Edmund winced. He had expected as much, yet hoped not to hear it.
He put a restraining hand on Obadiah, who was about to leave the table.
“Stay,” he commanded gently. “Let us not part like this. One last time, we shall discuss.”
Up and down the country, during those days, families were faced with the same terrible decisions. Great issues were at stake, fundamental to the constitution of State and Church, that would cause not only the kingdom to be riven, but brother to fight brother, to kill or die.
The final debate within the Shockley family was conducted in a calm and solemn manner. The arguments were familiar to them all, but now came the irrevocable taking of positions. The questions which must decide the issue came almost like a catechism.
EDMUND
: Do you say that the king may rule without Parliament?
NATHANIEL
: He has the right to do so.
EDMUND
: But it is not the custom. Can the king tax illegally? What of ship-money?
No issue had been more furiously fought than the tax, owed only by ports, that Charles had tried to impose on inland towns as well. In Parliament, brave men like Hampden and Pym opposed him. At Sarum, the Sheriff in successive years was unable to collect even half of it.
NATHANIEL
: If the king needs money for war, his loyal subjects should support him.
EDMUND
: To any amount? Is that right?
NATHANIEL
: The Parliament just called granted him nothing. Is that right?
EDMUND
: May the king summon men before his prerogative courts and ignore ancient common law?
NATHANIEL
: He has the right.
EDMUND
: Do you approve?
NATHANIEL
: No. But this is not cause to take up arms against him.
EDMUND
: So – you believe then, that the king is not subject to the laws and customs of this realm but may do as he pleases?
Here was the heart of the matter. The privileges of Parliament, the ancient common laws, the liberties of Magna Carta, the custom, won centuries before, that the king cannot tax without the consent of Parliament: these were the rights that the parliamentary lawyers claimed that the king must observe. If a king is free to alter ancient privileges and customs, then, they claimed, the liberties of the people are left at the whim of tyrants.
NATHANIEL
: The law derives from the king.
EDMUND
: Not in England.
Indeed, part of the trouble between king and Parliament was that the constitution of England was not the Stuarts’ model. In Spain and France, Catholic rulers were building absolute, centralised monarchies beyond anything Charles I tried, that were to last another hundred and fifty years. But then they had not the combination of Puritan merchants and an ancient Parliament trained in dispute and conscious of its privileges to oppose them.
OBADIAH
: Do you refuse the rights of Puritans to worship as they please?
NATHANIEL
: I support the English Church – as does the king.
OBADIAH
: So he says. Do you support Laud and his bishops then?
Nathaniel laughed. He had hardly ever met a man that did, certainly not in Sarum.
The High Church Laud, whose authoritarian ways had driven numbers of Puritans across the dangerous ocean to America, was scarcely popular even with Charles’s supporters, and least of all his attempts to summon laymen to answer charges before his ecclesiastical courts. In Sarum, such ideas were especially unpopular.
For early that century, after over three centuries of dispute, the townspeople of Salisbury had at last persuaded the king to grant them a charter of their own. The town was no longer subject to the bishop’s court: now the bishop only ruled the close. The interfering churchmen were being driven back.