Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [483]
Sarum had been quiet. Though a huge force of ten thousand clubmen had met the Roundhead army near Shaftesbury the previous year, Cromwell’s troops had been well-disciplined and there was no looting. Now Margaret hoped she could look forward to better times.
Strangely, despite the victory of his cause, Edmund was pessimistic. It seemed the war had brought him nothing but sadness, and though he was always so pleasant with her and the child, if she came upon him suddenly when he was alone she would often see a haunted look in his eye, as though some deep anguish troubled him.
Sometimes, after he had been sitting for hours alone, lost to the world, she would hear him mutter:
“For what have we fought?”
Occasionally he had nightmares too. Once in the middle of the night she heard him cry out in his sleep: “Nathaniel!”
But she did not understand the depth of his agony: for she knew nothing of the terrible secret of Naseby.
From time to time Obadiah would come down from London. He seemed less uneasy with himself than he had ever been before. The Presbyterians were stronger every day: their stern Puritan church, with its councils and elders, was a mighty force in the land now. Not only was Obadiah’s party in the ascendant, but away from his family he had made a name for himself and won respect. Whatever his faults, Edmund occasionally reminded his sister, Obadiah was a good scholar.
It was on a visit of Obadiah’s early in 1646 that Margaret caught a glimpse of the doubt troubling Edmund’s mind, when the two brothers had discussed the political situation.
There was much to discuss. For now that the king was almost defeated, what should be done next? Was Parliament to rule without him, or was the king to be returned under strict conditions? And in either case, what sort of rule should England now have?
Obadiah had no doubt.
“Parliament will rule now, with or without the king. And England will be Presbyterian.”
Obadiah had been in London for most of the war, preaching and acting as tutor to the children of a number of prominent Parliament men. Edmund knew very well that the uncompromising attitude he expressed exactly reflected the views of many Members of the Parliament now in power.
“But not all those against the king’s tyranny are Presbyterian,” he reminded his brother. There were Anglicans, Baptists, many Sectaries.
“They must be crushed, like the Catholics,” Obadiah replied. “There shall be one religion in England and Scotland now.”
Had not the troubles of the past been due to the failure of England to achieve a single unified religion? So Obadiah thought.
“Your rule will be strict.”
“Yes.”
“And the army?” He thought of the men he had fought with: no Presbyters but lovers of religious freedom.
“The army will be disbanded as soon as its work is done.”
“And paid? Some of our cavalry have not been paid by your parliament for forty weeks,” he reminded Obadiah.
“They will be paid as far as possible,”
“Then,” the question he had so often asked himself recently, “what have we fought for?”
“For the rule of a Presbyterian parliament, the abolition of all bishops, the destruction of the Anglican Church, and the extirpation of the papists.”
“That is freedom?”
“Yes.”
“And who shall elect this Presbyterian parliament?”
“Those who do so now.”
Edmund pursed his lips.
“Those who fought,” he reminded Obadiah, “want more than that.”
The Model Army had provided more than an efficient fighting force; with its new cadre of junior officers and independent-minded men, it had become the focus for radical thought. The stout yeomen and artisans Edmund had come to know and respect were speaking of new freedoms: not only freedom to worship, but for free men to elect their representatives to Parliament.
“They say that every man who owns a household should vote,” Edmund stated. “There are a few who could even say all men should vote.