Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [509]
And Old Sarum belonged to the Pitts. For around the turn of the century both the ruin and much of the village below had been bought by one Thomas Pitt whose discovery of a huge diamond had given him the nickname Diamond Pitt. Owning the borough was more profitable than ever. Would-be members of Parliament were paying well for a seat; one could even pawn the borough to another landowner. And for the whole of the eighteenth century, with one break when they pawned it to the Prince of Wales, the family which produced two of England’s greatest Prime Ministers owned Old Sarum.
This was the world that young Adam Shockley knew. One would have to say that, in the great calm of eighteenth century England, it was typical.
Prince Charlie’s advance was rapid. His Highland army took Preston. Then, the large if disorganised force moved on to Derby. George II was abroad; England was short of troops, but the king’s son, the Duke of Cumberland, was collecting a force to oppose him. The French, who had promised to support the Stuart heir, did not.
Bonnie Prince Charlie had made his call.
And nothing happened.
Adam could not understand it. Day after day, while he was white with excitement, his father went gruffly about his business at the Forest estate, as usual. The friends who had often sat with him after dinner showed no sign of arming either.
In the first week of December, he could bear it no longer. One morning, he confronted his father.
“When are we going to ride,” he demanded, “to fight for the Prince?”
Jonathan Shockley looked at him in surprise. What was the foolish boy talking about? It was a fault of his character that, while he enjoyed a quick and rather caustic turn of mind, he did not always bother to explain himself to his slower witted son. He would read the vicious diatribes of the Tory poet Alexander Pope to his friends, or sit by himself of an evening and laugh till he wept at the dry satire of the author of Gulliver’s Travels, that other fine Tory, Dean Swift. But when it came to such mundane matters as his child, he did not always trouble to while away the hours in his company.
“You may be,” he said with a snort. “I haven’t time.” And he left the house.
It was a betrayal. Mortified and confused, Adam went up to his room and wept.
The truth of the matter was that, in England at least, the Jacobite cause had been dead for a generation. Of course, when things went wrong, a country gentleman would curse those damned Hanoverians, and men with a certain turn of mind, like Jonathan Shockley, might speak of the king over the water. But what was the good of a cause to a gentleman after dinner, if it was not already lost? Besides, the Stuarts were still tainted with Catholicism. No sane man in England wanted that trouble again.
The next morning, soon after dawn, Adam Shockley went quietly to the place where Nathaniel’s sword hung. Carefully, he took it down. He had never held it before. It was heavy. But as he looked along the great steel blade he felt a thrill of excitement and awe. Once again, the ancient sword would do its work in the service of the true-born king.
Five minutes later he was in the stables with his pony, and soon afterwards, the gate keeper of the close, who had only just opened the gate at dawn, was astonished to see the small figure on his pony canter by, in possession of a sword that seemed almost as big as he was.
There were few people stirring as he left the town and took the road towards Wilton. At Wilton he took the northern road that led up the Wylie valley towards Bath. He had a guinea in his purse.
It was not until he was almost past Grovely Wood that Jonathan Shockley, cantering on his big grey mare, came up with him.
The gatekeeper had come to the house soon after dawn, to enquire if he knew his son had left. When he had heard the man’s story and seen the sword gone from the wall he was at first completely baffled. But then he remembered the boy’s foolish question of the day before.
“By