London - Edward Rutherfurd [406]
But greater than all these confusions was the fact that nobody, including Cromwell, could make up his mind how the Commonwealth should be governed.
Everything was tried. At first, Parliament was to rule; but Parliament agreed nothing, quarrelled with the army and refused to dissolve itself. Cromwell kicked them out, as he did their successors in a series of constitutional experiments. Cromwell had already made himself Protector, and what was left of the Parliament was so weary of the army by now that they suggested he become king under the old constitution. “We didn’t fight for that!” the army of saints cried. “But he very nearly took their offer,” Julius noted. “So much for Puritan rule.”
Patiently, therefore, he waited. If Martha and Gideon ruled the parish, he did nothing to provoke them. Meredith delivered his Last Sermon many more times and when he finally departed, he did so in style. Giving the sermon at St Paul’s Cross itself, before an audience of hundreds, and having chosen from the Book of Revelation for his text, he had reached his crescendo, his gaunt face upturned just as the sun, breaking through cloud, smote upon it. “I saw a new heaven and a new earth,” he cried. “He carries me away to a great and high mountain, and shows me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven.” Looking now at his audience for the last time he called to them: “Come with me, dearly beloved, come to that place.” Then, staring up, straight at the sun, his arms outstretched towards it: “He calls to me, He that is Alpha and Omega, He calls to me now: ‘Come hither. Come hither.’” At which he fell, with a crash, from the pulpit, never to rise.
Despite his differences with Meredith, Julius had come to tolerate him, and after his death he became quite friendly with Richard, the preacher’s son. He was a clever young man, had studied at Oxford and, as he confessed to Julius, would have liked to enter the priesthood if he could have done so as an Anglican. Instead, he had studied medicine and was setting up as a physician. He had his father’s secret scepticism and enquiring mind.
The only subject which continued to embarrass Julius was Jane Wheeler. He heard that Dogget had died three years after their departure; he was very glad indeed that she remained safely distant, down in Petty France.
But if he was sometimes haunted by guilt over Jane, his secret mission, and his loyalty to the late king’s two sons, did much to salve his conscience. He was not alone, of course. Together with a dozen other loyal souls, he continued to send letters with every kind of intelligence to the exiled Stuart king-in-waiting in France. And he was overjoyed when, in 1658 Oliver Cromwell unexpectedly died.
The collapse of the Commonwealth took just over a year. Cromwell’s son, who was pleasant but unambitious, gave up the succession almost at once. Parliament and the army continued to quarrel. Having watched for nine months, Julius dared to write in person:
If your Majesty will compromise with Parliament, which your father never would, and if you pay off the army, which the present Parliament doesn’t want to, then this kingdom may be yours.
One day, a discreet messenger arrived with tidings that gladdened Julius’s heart.
“The king thanks you for your steadfast loyalty, which neither he nor his father ever forgot.” Here the messenger grinned: “He is a much merrier fellow than his father, you know. Says he’d sooner compromise with a barrel-load of