Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [451]
There was an audible laugh in the crowd.
Then Nellie Godfrey’s voice rang out as she made her own lightning deductions from what she saw of the family group before her.
“Why,” she shouted – and it seemed to Edward Shockley that there was not a man or woman that side of Fisherton Bridge would would not hear. “’Tis Abigail Mason who’s just burned her husband so she can get another.”
Edward stared. Was it possible that Abigail had grown paler? She visibly buckled, as if she had been hit and winded. And she said not a word.
He looked from one to another. He saw Abigail’s eyes smouldering with rage and hate – the hate not of someone who has been found out, but who has been told a truth about themselves they did not realise.
As he stared first at the terrible fire, then at the pale figure who stood before it, it seemed to Edward Shockley, tortured for so long by his own conscience, as if the scales had fallen from his eyes.
The agony of England and Mary Tudor was nearly over.
In Sarum, in 1557, Bishop Capon died, Queen Mary appointed three vigorous Catholic preachers to uphold the faith at Sarum, but the bishop himself was not immediately replaced.
In 1557 also, Philip of Spain made one of his rare visits to his unloved queen. He came only for troops, to be used in his quarrel against the French. The English unwillingly supplied them, and Pembroke led seven thousand men to rout the French. It was a brief triumph. In January 1558, after Pembroke himself had returned, the French struck back and attacked Calais. Philip, more anxious to make gains for Spain in Italy, let them take it. So fell the last territory England was ever to hold in France. The loss was a saving to the British exchequer, for Calais had been expensive to keep, but a blow to England’s prestige.
It broke Mary’s heart.
But neither her husband nor her people cared for the Catholic queen any more. Cardinal Pole, her great ally, had been recalled from England by a new pope, who hated the proud aristocratic legate. In November 1558, isolated and sick, Mary Tudor died.
During her reign, some two hundred and eighty were burned: a small number, as the dismal records of religious persecution go, but enough to tell the islanders that they wanted no more. The last victims due to stand at the stake in Sarum were never executed. The under-sheriff, given the writ for their execution, tore it up. Before it was renewed, the queen had died.
Mary’s burnings were over, and it was time for England to find a compromise in this new world between the dangerous extremes that had destroyed so many people of conscience.
It was fortunate for the people of the island that, at this point in their history, two people with the necessary political and spiritual talents should have appeared upon the national stage: Elizabeth I of England, and Bishop John Jewel of Salisbury.
1580
It was mid-afternoon and few people were about. Edward Shockley had been to the village of Downton to the south and had made his way up, past the edge of old Clarendon Forest, returning to Salisbury a little earlier than expected.
At the corner of the street he paused, in mild surprise.
A stranger was coming out of his house. He appeared to be an artisan of some kind. He would have hailed him, but a moment later the stranger had turned right towards the market place and Edward was too tired to follow him, Odd though. He wondered who it was.
He went slowly down the street. It was good to be home.
There were few more contented men in Sarum than Edward Shockley. At last he had found peace.
For years he had lived in fear; worse, he had lied to his wife and despised himself. Now, as he looked back, it seemed to Edward Shockley that there were several causes. One, to be sure, was his own weakness. He did not deny it. But there had been another cause, too. He had not known what he believed himself. He had had a conscience, of a kind, but no cause.
Now he had one. It was the cause espoused