The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [200]
Was he within his rights? Not a doubt of it. But with his typical lack of tact, the Stuart king had managed to find an entire population that was naturally well disposed towards him and alienate them at a single stroke.
When the political quarrels of the seventeenth century have finally died away – which as yet, in England, they have not – Charles Stuart will surely emerge on to history’s page, once and for all, neither as a villain nor a martyr, but as a very silly man.
And now every cottager’s right to his ancient common rights was to be listed. To Pride it seemed interference for its own sake. Alice had other ideas.
‘The word in London’, her father had told her the day before, ‘is that the king wants to make an inventory of the whole area. And do you know why? He wants to offer the New Forest and Sherwood Forest together, as security for a loan! Imagine it,’ he continued with a shake of the head, ‘the whole Forest could be sold off to pay the king’s creditors. That’s what’s behind all this, in my opinion.’
When Pride had finished his brief account she thanked him pleasantly and then enquired: ‘Where’s Gabriel Furzey? Shouldn’t he be here?’
‘Probably,’ Pride answered truthfully.
‘Well.’ Alice might be only eighteen, but she knew she wasn’t standing any nonsense from Gabriel. ‘You tell him from me, if you please, that if he wants his rights recorded he’d better come now. Otherwise they won’t be.’
So, grinning quietly to himself, Pride went off and delivered the message.
When one looked at Gabriel Furzey and Stephen Pride, it was not hard to guess what the attitude of each might be to the inquiry. Pride – lean, keen-eyed – was every inch an independent inhabitant of the Forest. But he had his relationship with authority too. His ancestors might have grumbled about the existence of any outside order in the Forest, but natural intelligence and self-interest had led the Prides, for a long time now, into a calculated relationship with the powers that be. When the representatives of the vills attended the Forest courts there was sure to be a Pride or two among them. Occasionally one would even take a junior position in the Forest hierarchy – an under-forester, for instance, or one of the agisters who collected the fees. Here and there a Pride had graduated from the tenant into the yeoman class, owning land in his own name; and as often as not, when the local gentlemen chose some yeomen to sit with them on juries they’d be glad enough to choose a Pride. Their reason was very simple: these Prides were intelligent, and, even in a disagreement, men in authority know that it is always easier to deal with an intelligent man than a slow-witted one. A gentleman forester felt on firm ground if he said, ‘Pride thinks he can take care of that,’ or ‘Pride says it won’t work’.
And if some well-meaning person were to suggest that Pride might have been doing a little discreet poaching on the side, the informer was more likely to be met with a quiet smile and a murmured, ‘I dare say he has,’ than any thanks – there being always a sporting chance that the gentleman receiving this information had been doing a little of the same himself.
But Gabriel Furzey, short, adipose – Alice used to think, rather harshly, that he resembled an irritable turnip – had not reached an accommodation with anyone and, as far as Pride knew, had no plans for doing so.
When Stephen told him