Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [486]
It was the parish priests and preachers who ruled – men like Strickland of St Edmunds and his colleagues at St Thomas’s and St Martin’s – all staunch members of the Presbyterian Westminster Assembly. They preached from pulpits that had been moved, in the Presbyterian manner, to the centre of the church. They preached in the cathedral too.
“’Tis just what every church should be now, a parish church for preaching,” Obadiah explained to Samuel and Margaret. And when Margaret objected that the great building seemed to her to be something more than a mere local church, he replied impatiently: “Only the papists in the past made the thing so monstrously large.”
The building had not gained from the change in regime. That very year, the tower of St Edmund’s church had collapsed; and although the belfry door had been renewed, other damage done by the soldiers in the chapter house had not. Even that was not all. When, to defend England’s trading interests against constant and arrogant Dutch competition, Cromwell had been forced to fight a brief war with the Netherlands too, a party of Dutch prisoners had been casually left, this very year, in the cloisters for weeks. “And a fine havoc they have made in there as well,” Margaret said with disgust. Part of the close was a rubbish dump; in another area, butchers had set up a little abattoir and were selling their meat there too. The bishop’s palace was made into tenements, and partly used as an inn; coaches had been allowed through on the north eastern and western sides and had churned up the turf and broken gravestones in the churchyard.
But if the buildings had not gained, the local vicars had. For now, instead of their lowly lodgings in the town, the council had bought them fine houses in the close where they lived with all the dignity of the canons they had ousted.
Obadiah had a house in the close. He lived in sober state.
He did not go often to the farm, but he let Samuel know that he was always welcome at the handsome house in the close and Samuel was proud that his brother was such an important man in the city. The preacher took a genuine interest in the boy, too, because he saw that he had a quick intelligence.
Besides, as he quietly but remorselessly reminded Margaret, it was he, Obadiah, who was in practice head of the family now. It was something Margaret could not deny.
If only Edmund had been there.
But Edmund had gone.
Samuel always remembered him as a quiet, gentle figure.
After the visit of young Moody, and his strange outburst, Samuel could sense that some kind of watershed had been passed. There was a new closeness between Margaret and Edmund and a feeling of peace and family affection came over the whole household. It was Edmund who acted as his first tutor, teaching him to read and write and parse a little Latin.
Yet there was also, after a little time, a sense of withdrawal. Edmund was still head of the family, but he seemed content to leave the running of the farm to Margaret and Jacob Godfrey. He grew a little thinner each year. Samuel remembered him mostly sitting or walking alone, not unhappily, but thoughtfully, as if some great debate were occupying his mind.
Then, in the spring of 1649, just after King Charles was executed, he left.
It was over a year before Samuel saw him again. Whenever he asked his sister where Edmund was, she had answered only: “Near London”; and if he asked when he would return she would only say: “I do not know.”
Edmund did not return, but one spring they visited him.
It was a long journey, almost to London; but when at last their little carriage bumped up St George’s Hill, Samuel found to his surprise that their destination was an extensive farm, not unlike those he knew at Sarum. And his surprise was greater still when, staring at a group of roughly dressed labourers trudging up the slope towards the house, he saw Edmund amongst them.