Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [468]
NATHANIEL: But can you not see – once you destroy kingship, you destroy the natural order. Even if the king be wrong, he is the anointed monarch: our ancient privileges are bound up with his. Take away the king, and who governs?
OBADIAH: Men of God.
NATHANIEL: Presbyters. Why, their tyranny would be worse than the king’s. I have heard it said: new Presbyter is but old priest writ large.
EDMUND: The king may rule, but only by consent of Parliament.
NATHANIEL: Then Parliament usurps the king – steals his ancient rights. Tell me this, by whose authority do they then rule instead? Who calls them to govern? I say, if the old order is gone, then there’s no authority in England. The Parliament might as well be summoned by the people themselves.
EDMUND: That is a foolish charge.
NATHANIEL: It is not. If you destroy the authority of the king, Brother Edmund, then it will one day be the mob, the people themselves who will rule. And that would be chaos and tyranny combined.
EDMUND: I see we shall never agree.
The debate of the Shockley family was over. There was nothing more to say.
Nathaniel looked at his eldest brother with affection. Though only a few years separated them from the two older brothers, he and Margaret had grown up like a second family of old William. The stern side of their father’s nature was reserved for his two older sons and the youngest boy and girl, though they were not spoiled, led a more free and easy existence, creating their own little world apart. In a way, it seemed to Nathaniel, they had been children longer. He was sometimes sorry for Edmund who, he knew, always laboured hard under the burden of being the next head of the family. He remembered the times, as a child, when his serious older brother used to come and play with him gazing almost wistfully at his childish pranks. Edmund was a good scholar. He had studied the law with stern application. One day he might even have gone into Parliament.
But all that must be set aside now. They were children no longer.
“You mean to fight for the king?” Edmund asked gloomily.
“I do.”
It was a serious business, yet, having made his decision, he felt almost cheerful.
There was a long pause, while Edmund looked grave.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” he said with sadness. “You must leave this house.”
Nathaniel smiled. How like his eldest brother: the melancholy voice of authority. He could see that it was said almost against Edmund’s own will.
“I have no wish to do so,” he replied blandly.
“I am sorry for it. But I am head of the family now.”
Obadiah nodded in support.
Poor Obadiah. Their father never liked him, and though William had tried to disguise the fact, Obadiah certainly always knew it.
He had not been kind to Obadiah himself: in fact, he had teased him ever since he could talk. He had always hurt his brother’s morbid vanity by refusing to take him seriously. Once, when he was ten, he had taunted him into such a frenzy that the thin, dark adolescent, who then was suffering from painful face acne, had rushed at him in an uncontrollable rage and bitten him on the hand. He had never forgotten it. Obadiah would not be sorry to see him go.
He gazed at his brothers mildly.
“I run the farm.” It was Margaret. They had almost forgotten her. Now the three brothers turned.
She had taken little part in their arguments. She had no wish to. Besides, an instinct for self-preservation had told her that she must keep clear of the conflict. She had the child to think of. But now she knew she must be firm.
“Our father left me in charge of it: you heard him. And I shall never close the doors to any of my brothers, whichever side they take.”
The will of William Shockley was very clear. Each of the three brothers was left a sum of money: Margaret, because she alone of his children properly understood them, was left half the water meadows together with the tenancy of the whole farm until her marriage or death, when they were to pass