London - Edward Rutherfurd [373]
All the Virginia growers knew that the tobacco plant exhausted the soil. Most plantations at this time were exhausted after seven years. It was not a huge problem, for the whole continent of America lay before the settlers. They just set up a new plantation further inland. In three years, Jane knew, Wheeler’s farm would be exhausted and she would have to move. But by then, also, she would have saved a comfortable sum of money. Enough, perhaps, to do something else, she thought, as she gazed towards the sea.
Some people might find Henry proud, but Julius could only admire him for the courageous way he had assumed the leadership of the family. Sir Jacob had never recovered from his stroke: his right side was paralysed and he could not speak. He was a sad sight and some children might have wanted to hide him. But not Henry. On his orders, once a week, immaculately dressed and followed by his two sons, Sir Jacob was carried in a litter to the Royal Exchange so that people could pay their respects to him. “And to our family too,” Henry told Julius. “No matter what happens, hold your head high.” Henry had style.
His father’s incapacity caused a change in Julius’s life too. He had been expecting to go to Oxford himself that year, but within a month Henry had informed him: “Young brother, I need you. I can’t do all this alone.”
Henry soon left the everyday accounting and shipping arrangements to Julius. “You’ve a head for figures,” he said. But Henry made one very shrewd move. “I am buying a parcel of land, just along the ridge from Bocton,” he announced one day.
“Whatever for?” Julius demanded.
“To grow hops,” came the cheerful reply. “For hopped beer. Everybody’s doing it.” And he turned out to be right. The English brewers, having developed a strange darker brew of beer using imported hops, were now finding it cheaper to buy locally if only farmers would produce. A good contract was soon signed with the Bull brewery of Southwark; and in the years that followed, even when trade was poor, the Bocton hop-gardens provided a steady flow of income.
But Henry’s true genius, Julius soon discovered, was in making powerful friends. It was amazing how he did it. Within weeks of his return he seemed to know everyone, not only in the city but at court as well. While Julius checked the accounts, often as not Henry would be out hunting, or dining with a great lord, or attending a court entertainment at Whitehall. At first, Julius had assumed that this was only to raise the family’s social position. But then one afternoon, striding by in his hunting clothes, Henry had nonchalantly dropped a document on the table: it was a contract, for a huge consignment of silk, signed by no less a person than Buckingham, the most powerful favourite at the royal court. “Friends in the right places,” Henry had murmured. “That’s all you need.”
Monopolies were the thing. Strictly, of course, the great trading companies were monopolies: their charters, giving them exclusive trading rights in distant regions, were probably necessary to make such great investments possible. But the ones Henry spoke of were little, pettifogging affairs. “You want to open an ale-house? You need a licence: apply to a favourite. You need gold thread? A friend of mine has the monopoly. A tiny monopoly, Julius, is still worth a fortune. And all courts do it.” The court of the Stuarts, he might have added, more than most.
Yet, as he reached adulthood, it was this very quarter – the royal court – that began to give Julius cause for concern.
There was no use denying it: all was not well between the new House of Stuart and the people of England.
The character of King James did not