London - Edward Rutherfurd [400]
The England that awaited her was an unfamiliar country. With the execution of the king, the constitution had abruptly changed. The House of Lords was abolished. England was no longer called a kingdom, but the Commonwealth of England, governed by the House of Commons. Nor did anything seem likely to shake the new order. Cromwell, the new state’s great general, grew mightier every year. When the eldest son of the executed king, who proclaimed himself Charles II, had tried to enter his English kingdom with an army of Scots, he and the Scots had been utterly crushed. He was living uselessly abroad now. Cromwell had crushed the troublesome Irish too and completely subdued them. It was said he had shed much Irish blood. “But they are papists,” Martha said, “so perhaps it was necessary.” Even the Levellers in his own army had been brought to heel. The Commonwealth of England was in good order, ready to receive God’s law.
Of course, there was much to do. The shining city would not be built in a day. Thanks to Cromwell’s one weakness, his religious tolerance, Martha was sad to see that the churches of London remained in some confusion. “Many of these would probably be just as content whether they served a bishop, a Presbyterian assembly or any other form of authority,” she shrewdly judged. Nor were the people all as well-behaved as she would have wished. It was hard to promote perfect order in so large a city as London. What mattered was whether a society was striving to improve its morals, whether things were getting gradually better, or worse.
And the rule of the saints astonished her. Never before, in its entire history, had the old city seen anything like it. Even if, as usually happens, the changes were pushed through by an active minority, this godly few had broad support. The Londoners in the street were for the most part so soberly dressed that she might have been in Boston. The Sabbath was strictly observed: no sports were allowed; even going for a walk, unless to church, was frowned upon. No maypoles were permitted. The moral code was strictly enforced by the courts, too, with severe penalties for acts of gross immorality and fines for minor infringements. Her own husband had been fined a shilling, just before her arrival, for swearing a blasphemous oath. “You were rightly reproved, husband,” she told him with satisfaction. But best of all, for Martha, was the fact that the playhouses, closed at the opening of the Civil War, had now been boarded up and ordered never to open again. “Not a single play in all London,” she smiled. “The Lord be praised.”
How blessed she was too, she thought humbly, that her own family should be in such a healthy and godly condition. All Gideon’s were safely married now – for even Perseverance had been found a worthy, if silent husband. As for young O Be Joyful, his serious but loving nature was an inspiration to her. “You will be a fine carver of wood,” she told him, “because you will carve for the Lord.”
The one matter that puzzled her a little was the welfare of her husband. Gideon had been so insistent when he wrote that Dogget needed her moral guidance that, the day after her return, she had taken him aside and asked him what he meant. Whatever it was, Gideon had seemed embarrassed, reluctant to be explicit. “Is it drink?” she asked, “or