Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [462]
A moment later he saw the door open and made out, quite distinctly, the face of John Moody, who evidently had come to collect the priest.
He stepped back into the bedchamber.
And now Edward Shockley had to make the most important decision of his life.
For several long seconds he stood there. There was so much to consider.
However minor his wife’s part in this matter, it was treason. He knew very well where his own loyalties lay – with Queen Elizabeth. That being so, what could he do except tell Walsingham’s men about them? His wife might go to prison; John would be put to the rack – they would want to know his accomplices.
Moreover, if he did not inform on them then he was an accomplice, and liable to terrible punishments himself.
How long, he wondered, had she lied to him?
It was as he thought of their years of marriage that he took his decision. It was brave. He did not know if it was right.
Very carefully, he replaced the letter exactly where he had found it. Then he stole out of the house.
He would keep an eye on his wife to make sure that she neither did, nor came to, any further harm.
The times were dangerous, for people of conscience.
What he did discover, a few days later, was Forest’s real game.
It was so simple, he was amazed he had not seen it before.
It was all a question of politics, and, of course, the Forests’ social ambition.
The mark that a man had entered the gentry was that he became a Justice of the Peace. Whether he had any desire to either help the community, or sit in judgement on his fellow man had nothing to do with it, at least in Forest’s case and many like him. This he had already achieved. But the next, and grander step, was to sit as a Member of Parliament. There were two ways to do so. The first was to be chosen as one of the two knights of the shire. But this was still out of reach of the Forests. Under the general guidance of Pembroke, this honour passed, usually, in rotation amongst the greatest county families; Penruddock, Thynne of Longleat, Hungerford, Mompesson, Danvers, and a dozen more. But after this, there were still the two citizens returned by Salisbury, and the two burgesses from fifteen boroughs. Indeed, so rich was the county of Wiltshire in parliamentary seats, having thirty-four in all, that already ambitious men from far afield came there to find seats, and since the townspeople were often unwilling to pay the heavy expenses of their own burgesses attending Parliament, they were often glad to have a rich gentleman who could pay for himself. Many of the boroughs were also under the control of the local magnate. The few electors of Wilton almost always did as Pembroke told them; in the north the Seymour family controlled the towns of Marlborough and Great Bedwyn; the Bishop of Winchester controlled several boroughs. Why, there was even the deserted hillfort of Old Sarum, which had been bought by a gentleman named Baynton, but which still, though long since empty, had a handful of electors in the village below who duly sent their two burgesses to Parliament.
Forest was looking for a borough for his son.
So far he had failed to find one. Pembroke had politely refused him: he had good men of his own; so had a dozen others.
It was November when Forest broached the subject to him.
“My son wishes to stand for Salisbury,” he told Edward. “I hope you will support him: your word carries weight.”
Of course! This was the reason for the bribe, for the introduction to Wilton, and, no doubt, for Giles’s unexpected interest in the poor. In all the boroughs in Wiltshire, the citizens of Salisbury were the most independent: even Pembroke himself, ten years before, had only been able to foist a candidate upon them once.
“Truly I must be his last port,” he considered. And, the thought could not help occurring to him, Forest would be prepared to pay handsomely for the service.
He waited a day. The struggle with his conscience was short.
“I’ve no objection to your son,” he told his one-time partner. “But the burgesses will