Philippa Gregory - Earthly Joys

“Will the king do this for us?” a man asked.

“Once he is rid of false advisers he will certainly do it for us,” the preacher answered.

“What, and break down his own park gates?”

“There is enough land. The commons and wastes of England are vast. There is more than enough land for us all, aye, and for all the city men too, and if we need more then we have only to look around. Why! The very gardens of New Hall would feed fifty families if they were brought under the spade! There is wealth in this country! There is enough for us all, if we can take the surfeit from the wicked men and give it to the children in need.”

Elizabeth felt a gentle hand on her elbow. “Come away,” John said softly in her ear. “This is not preaching, this is ranting: a sermon with more treason than writ.”

Silently, she let him draw her away from the crowd and back up the lane to their home. “Did you hear it all?” she asked as they entered the house.

“I heard enough,” John replied shortly.

J looked up at their entrance and then dropped his head and went on with his supper.

“He blamed the duke for everything,” Elizabeth said.

John nodded. “Some do.”

“He said that without his bad advice the king would give land away, and make no more wars.”

John shook his head. “The king would live as a king whether or not my lord was at his shoulder,” he said. “And no king gives away his land.”

“But if he did…” Elizabeth persisted.

John pulled out his stool and sat beside J at the table. “It is a dream,” he said. “Not reality. A dream to whisper to children. Think of a country where every man might have his own garden, where every man might grow enough for his own pot, and then grow fruits and flowers as well. This is not England, it is Eden. There would be no hunger and no want, and a man might draw his garden in the ground and plant it as he wished, and watch it grow.”

There was a silence in the little room. John, who had been meaning to deride the preacher’s vision, found himself tempted at the thought of a nation of gardens, of every park an orchard, every common a wheatfield, and no hunger or want.

“In Virginia they cut their land from the forest, however much land they want,” J said. “It need not be a dream.”

“There is no shortage of land here either,” John said. “If it were shared equally among every man and woman. There are the commons and the wastelands and the forests…there is enough land for everyone.”

“So the preacher was right,” Elizabeth said. “It is the surfeit of the few which brings poverty to the rest. The rich men enclose the land and use it for parks and for wilderness. That is why there is not enough for poor people.”

John’s face closed at once. “That is treason,” he said simply. “It is all the king’s. He must do with it as he wishes. No one else can come along and ask for land as if it were free. It all belongs to the king.”

“Except for the acres which belong to the duke,” J remarked slyly.

“He holds it for the king, and the king holds it for God,” Tradescant said, repeating the simple truth.

“Then we must pray that God wants to give land to the poor,” J said, getting up from the table and pushing his bowl irritably to one side. “For they cannot survive another summer of plague and failed harvest without help, and neither the king nor the duke is likely to ease their pains.”

Tradescant had thought that complaints about the duke were in the mouths of ignorant men, boys like J, women like Elizabeth, and wayside preachers, whose opinions might disturb a man’s peace but would not challenge him. But then the king called Parliament to Oxford, sitting outside London to escape the plague which made the streets of the city a charnel house. The king’s debts forced him to deal with Parliament, though he suspected their loyalty and hated their self-importance.

Once they were in place they were not obliging. They refused to settle the massive bills of the court and instead the simple country squires confronted him with a long list of complaints against the duke and demanded that he be brought before a committee to be examined for his faults.

“I can’t settle to anything, not knowing what is happening,” John said to Elizabeth. He was working in their own garden at the little house at New Hall, planting peas in straight orderly rows. She saw that his fingers trembled slightly as he pressed each one into the earth. “They say they want him impeached! They say they want him tried for treason!”

“Do you want to go to him?” she asked, keeping her voice colorless.

John shook his head. “How can I? Without orders?”

“Won’t he send for you?”

“If I can serve him, he will send for me. But there’s no reason for him to think that I might serve him. He won’t need a gardener at Oxford!”

“But he uses you for all sorts of work,” Elizabeth said. “Dirty work,” she thought to herself. “Private work,” she said out loud.

John nodded. “If he sends for me I will go,” he repeated. “But I may not go until he orders me.”

She thought his head drooped a little at the thought of the duke in trouble or danger, and not thinking to get help from Tradescant. “I have to wait,” John said.

One of the duke’s servants brought the news from Oxford to New Hall. The steward saw John in the stable yard and sent down a message for him to come into the house, to the central household office.

“I knew you would want to know that the duke will not face his accusers!” William Ward beamed. “I knew you would have been worried.”

John snatched off his hat and threw it in the air like a boy. “Thank God for it! Thank God!” he exclaimed. “I have been sick with worry these ten days. I thank God that they have seen sense. They threw out the charges, did they? Dismissed them? Who can stand against him, eh? Mr. Ward? Who could think wrong of him when they see him and hear him speak?”

Mr. Ward shook his head. “They did not dismiss the charges.”

“How so? They must have done! You said…”

“I said he would not face his accusers…”

“So?”

“They had him impeached on eight counts,” the steward said, his voice low and shocked. “They charged him with everything from the ruination of the Navy, to stealing from the king. They even accused him… they said he was implicated… they called him to account for the murder of King James.”

John went pale. “Murder?”

The steward nodded, his face as horrified as John’s. “They named it. They called it murder. And they named him as the regicide.”

“My God,” John said softly. “What did he answer?”

“He gave no answer. The king had his accusers arrested and dissolved the parliament. He sent the members back to their homes. He will not hear them.”

For a moment John was relieved. “The king stands his friends, then. And his enemies are the king’s enemies.”

William Ward nodded. Then John saw the disadvantage. “And since the accusers were imprisoned, are the accusations withdrawn?”

Slowly, the steward shook his head. “No. That’s the rub. His accusers are imprisoned without trial in the Tower, but they do not retract.”

“Who are they? The damned liars. Who?”

“Sir Dudley Digges and Sir John Eliot.”

Tradescant went white to his collar. “But Sir John is my lord’s closest friend,” he said quietly. “They have been like brothers together since they were children.”

William Ward nodded.

“And I sailed to Russia with Sir Dudley; he’s not a man for false accusations, he’s a man of most careful honor! Why, I’d trust his judgment as I’d trust my own. We were shipmates on a long hazardous voyage and when he was sick I nursed him. I’d have gone with him overland to Moscow if I could have done. He’s a fine man, a fair man. He’d not bear false witness against anyone. He would not do it.”