Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [463]
Forest’s face was a mask.
“Will you vote for him?”
“No.”
It was so easy to say. It was only the truth.
He never heard a word about his share in Wilson’s profitable voyages again.
In the year of Our Lord 1585, the city of Salisbury was required by Her Majesty’s Privy Council to make contributions towards the expenses of the anticipated invasion by King Philip II of Spain.
We understand it be your honour’s pleasure and commandment, that there should forthwith be provided, in readiness for the service of Her Majesty, a last of powder and five hundredweight of matches, to be kept here as a store.
Whereupon we have had consideration, and so find that the charge of this provision will require a great sum of money to be presently levied and disbursed . . . our humble suit is . . . it would please you to respect the poor estate of this City, subject to many charges to maintain a great number of very poor people . . . and to mitigate as much as may be thought convenient. . . .
It took Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council three applications before the burghers of Salisbury finally, and most unwillingly, raised a loan to pay for the modest precautions against the invading force that was to become known as the Spanish Armada.
In 1586 John Moody and his family left Sarum. The sour mood of the time had made them feel unwelcome. Edward Shockley did not try to stop them. They did not have to go very far. Fifteen miles to the west, in the villages around Shaftesbury, they found a region where, under the aegis of the great Catholic family of Arundel, a community of recusant Catholics survived. Here they found friends, and a chance to worship as they wished, although in secret. As far as Edward Shockley knew, no more Jesuits had come to his house in Salisbury.
Events then moved swiftly. In 1587, after she had become involved in a plot of high treason against Elizabeth, that was probably set up as a trap by the subtle Walsingham, Mary Queen of Scots was executed. Her son James in Scotland protested: but not very loud, for he never liked her, and it was clear that he himself, as long as he remained on good terms with the English, was the most likely person to succeed the childless Elizabeth when she died.
Not so Philip of Spain. That most Catholic of monarchs could no longer hold back after such an outrage. In 1587, a chain of beacons were lit on hills all over the south of England to announce that the great fleet of galleons called the Spanish Armada had been seen off Plymouth.
It was a stupendous force. The mighty galleons that rolled down the Channel very nearly succeeded in their conquest.
“The fact is,” one of the seafaring Wilson boys confided to Edward Shockley afterwards, “even Drake couldn’t have stopped them. All we did was follow them.”
But thanks to a series of fortunate winds, and one brief, but successful engagement, Philip’s huge fleet was blown first up the Channel, then northwards to the rocky coasts of Scotland where many were wrecked.
“We were saved by luck,” Shockley declared, “not by preparation.”
But, fantastic luck though the wreck of the Armada was, England was saved, and the island returned once more to years of peace; even Edward Shockley, as he entered his old age and the last decade of the reign of Elizabeth, was, in his modest way, optimistic for the future.
In particular, he loved to go to Wilton House, to which, about once a year, he was invited to see the players. Many troops of actors passed through the great mansion in those sunlit years. Once at least, they included an actor named William Shakespeare.
THE UNREST
1642: AUGUST
The funeral guests were leaving. Inside, the family waited tensely as, one by one, the visitors filed past the big oak staircase, out of the panelled hall and through the low doorway of the big farmhouse into the afternoon sunlight outside.
As soon as they had gone, the family conference must begin – the conference that might break the Shockleys for ever.
If only it were not necessary.