Cromwell's Cat Read online

  KAREN

  “What about therapy?”

  TOMKINS

  “Who said that? Oh, hi Karen. What was that?”

  KAREN

  “Therapy – counselling. That might work.”

  TOMKINS

  “And what exactly is ther…erm…whatever?”

  KAREN

  “Like confession but for non-Catholics. Works for everyone – well everyone here in America”

  TOMKINS

  “Like visiting the wise woman you mean? Like when they used to come to consult Mistress Margery”

  KAREN

  “I guess so.”

  TOMKINS

  “But we don’t have a wise woman?”

  KAREN

  “No, but you have the next best thing.”

  TOMKINS

  “Which is?”

  KAREN

  “Someone who’s sat in on countless consultations.”

  TOMKINS

  “Yes?”

  KAREN

  “Our very own wise cat.”

  TOMKINS

  “Wise-cat? Who? Where?”

  KAREN

  “You.”

  TOMKINS

  “Me?”

  KAREN

  “Who else? You have to know how a consultation works.”

  TOMKINS

  “ ‘Course I do. ‘Course I do…but as I may have nodded off once or twice during Mistress Margery’s boring bits – could you just refresh my memory…?”

  KAREN

  “Well the patient (that’s you General Cromwell) lies on a couch and the therapist…”

  TOMKINS

  “Wise-cat.”

  KAREN

  “…you, Tomkins…”

  TOMKINS

  “Lies beside him. Of course I do. Now I remember! Come on Crumb”

  KAREN

  “No. You sit up on a chair out of sight and take notes.”

  TOMKINS

  “Are you sure? I’m a lot better at lying alongside.”

  KAREN

  “But not as his therapist. He talks and you listen.”

  TOMKINS

  “Can I purr?”

  KAREN

  “I don’t see why not, but you don’t interfere…”

  TOMKINS

  “Alright.”

  KAREN

  “…and on no account do you sleep.”

  TOMKINS

  “Not even a little nod off, a cat-nap during the…?”

  KAREN

  “No, no nodding off. The ‘boring bits’ as you call them can be most revealing. So, do you want to give it a try?”

  TOMKINS

  “Crumb?”

  CRUMB

  “What have we got to lose?”

  KAREN

  “Off you go then, Tomkins.”

  TOMKINS

  “What, is that it? Are we finished already? That was easier than I thought.”

  KAREN

  “No – you start by asking him what’s worrying him.”

  TOMKINS

  “I know what’s worrying him. He just told us – he’s worried he failed Harry, who it seems has now died, and that together they failed the Lord. What’s not to know?”

  KAREN

  “We know it, but you’ve got to get him to tell it. It’s all in the telling.”

  TOMKINS

  “OK Crumb, tell away. I’m all ears.”

  CRUMB

  “Well it’s like… erm…Harry and I – we worked as a team: he thought things through and I then drove them through – and together, I believe, we did the Lord’s work. But at the purge – for my own reputation (and with his approval) I left all to him – the thinking, and the driving – with the result that the parliament was purged and not dissolved…”

  TOMKINS

  “And that worried you?”

  CRUMB

  “It did. Had I been there, as I told you in the last chapter, I would have driven through the dissolution and so left the field clear for the kingdom to be re-modelled, as the Lord’s providences seemed to portend, re-modelled under the Agreement – Harry’s new Magna Carta. Regular parliaments elected on a fairer franchise, freedom of conscience in religion, equality before the law, which would be simpler and more accessible and no longer a case of the longest purse wins. No killing of kings, which I was ever persuaded was not in the Lord’s mind…”

  MAJ

  “Well said, General Cromwell – that’ll do you no harm at all up here.”

  KAREN

  “Sssh, your Majesty, no interruptions during the consultation.”

  MAJ

  “Sorry.”

  CRUMB

  “…the monarchy surviving, the army reduced with arrears paid and indemnity for crimes committed. The kingdom reformed and at peace: what, I believe, the Lord looked for. All that might have been had I been there to drive through the dissolution and so I say I failed Harry and together we failed the Lord.”

  TOMKINS

  “But Crumb…erm… I’ll call you Patient A, if I may – helps me keep a proper professional distance. Is that alright with you, Patient A”

  CRUMB

  “As you wish, Tomkins.”

  TOMKINS

  “Erm – ‘Wise cat’.”

  CRUMB

  “Get on with it.”

  TOMKINS

  “Didn’t you say, Patient A, that the Lord willed what happened? Then how can you argue He wanted something different?”

  CRUMB

  “By reading the signs – taken together they will give you an idea if you’re on the right track or not. But sadly that may not be until you’ve already gone badly wrong”

  TOMKINS

  “I see. Tell me about the signs…(It’s good this)”

  CRUMB

  “Well for a start – consider how signally the Lord blessed the army in all their engagements with the enemy. And being the parliament’s army we took that to be a blessing on the parliament. But no sooner was the first civil war over than the parliament set abo
ut disbanding the army…”

  TOMKINS

  “But the war being over, didn’t it make sense to disband the army and so reduce the cost to the people? Didn’t you say so yourself at the time?”

  CRUMB

  “Yes, but not without paying arrears and honouring the troops, whom the Lord had so clearly blessed. Was that what He looked for? I didn’t think so. Then He gave us victory in the second civil war and our enemies in the House saw that once again as the time to settle with the king…”

  TOMKINS

  “That’s you, Maj.”

  MAJ

  “Yes, I got that.”

  CRUMB

  “…to settle with the king and disband the army. We thought that a very evil requital and not at all what the Lord looked for. But we were yet the parliament’s army so in blessing us He blessed them. But did He?…”

  TOMKINS

  “Well, did he?”

  CRUMB

  “Might it not be He blessed the army but not the parliament? Might He not have been saying: ‘The parliament gave birth to the army but it is now only the army that seeks My settlement. The parliament are most of them back-sliders and self-seekers. The kingdom must be re-modelled and it is only My army will do it. So dissolve the parliament…with the consent of like-minded members of course… and then follow the path so painfully worked out by Harry Ireton in his Agreement of the People, to which I hazard to guess the Levellers (with a little huffing and puffing. You know they cannot help but huff and puff) – will subscribe – even my most prodigal son Freeborn John Lilburne in whom I delight but whom I would not care to face in a court of law…”

  TOMKINS

  “Patient A, shall we keep Freeborn John for another day – always the best place for him”

  CRUMB

  “You do well to remind me.”

  TOMKINS

  “Stick to the story, if you will.”

  CRUMB

  “If that was what the Lord looked for – a re-modelling of the kingdom – then we failed Him. We failed Him then and in the parliament ever since. The Agreement lay before them – a dead letter; Harry’s nomination to the Council of State was rejected; and when troops were chosen for Ireland Harry’s regiment was among them. It goes without saying I was happy to have him with me over there, but the parliament were more than happy not to have him at Westminster pressing the case for reform. My failure and not what the Lord wanted, I am persuaded of it. And it was Ireland killed him, thus robbing me of my best friend and the Commonwealth of their best hope that this parliament might yet be made to do the Lord’s work. And while they were failing so dismally the Lord again blessed the army with victory at Dunbar, where we stared defeat and ignominy in the face until He intervened and made the Scots as stubble to our swords. He blessed the army there and a year later at Worcester, but not the parliament, never this parliament whose interest then as now seems ever to be to free themselves from the curse of the army. Not what the Lord looks for.”

  TOMKINS

  “Then as now? Have you slipped in another little time-lapse? Now being…?”

  CRUMB

  “April 1653. I’m sorry. Did I not make that clear?”

  TOMKINS

  “No, you must have forgotten – but it’s good to know we’re getting on. So: April 1653…”

  CRUMB

  “The army once more demanding an immediate dissolution and the parliament, with itch-arse Haselrig* at the helm, determined to give it them but in such a way as to produce the opposite of what they desire. They are even now debating the Bill for a New Representative…”

  TOMKINS

  That’s a parliament to you

  CRUMB

  “…indeed, a new parliament – but for their own ends – not ours, not the Lord’s ”

  TOMKINS

  “You seem very sure of that, Patient A?”

  CRUMB

  “Never surer.”

  TOMKINS

  “That’s not like you, Crumb…erm Patient A…”

  CRUMB

  “The army is demanding a forcible dissolution – a step, I told them, the consideration of which made my hair to stand on end. If they dissolve the parliament and then call a new one then the parliament is not the supreme authority but they are who call it. That cannot be what the Lord looks for. And the parliament? Their goal as ever is to cross the troublesome people of the army, of whom it goes without saying I am the most troublesome. Well they can cross me, dismiss me, dispense with my services any time they like. I ask nothing more than to be allowed to retire into a private life. I have begged it again and again as they very well know. But if they mean that as a first step to crossing the army, no! That too is not the Lord’s way”

  TOMKINS

  “Purr, purr…zzzzzzzzzzz”

  KAREN

  “You think they intend a change of general?”

  CRUMB

  “I do, Karen. The Bill for a New Representative providing, as it does, for a new parliament every two years, what more like than that they intend the general also to change? Every new parliament would then appoint their own: – it might be the same, or some other but either way one who they were assured would take and not give them orders. And as with the general, so with his officers and that way they will be disposed of, while those of the parliament sit in perpetuity. That, I fear…”

  CATRIONA

  “Hang on, hang on…Members of parliament to sit in perpetuity?”

  CRUMB

  “That’s what I said.”

  ALAN

  “But isn’t this a bill for a new parliament?”

  CRUMB

  “Which I fear they mean to use to recruit members from the old.”

  KAREN

  “Hold on, General Cromwell…”

  CRUMB

  “Patient A”

  KAREN

  “Sorry, Patient A. You’re going a bit fast for us there. They mean the new parliament to recruit members from the old?”

  CRUMB

  “That is my fear.”

  KAREN

  “How?”

  CRUMB

  “By such means as only Itch-Arse could conceive. Remember, for four years we’ve been told nothing would do good for the nation but the continuance of this parliament and to that end it must be recruited by new elections to vacant seats of which there are many. That not being acceptable to the army and they moving ever closer to a forcible dissolution, Itch-Arse believes he has found the answer. He means to drive through the Bill for a New Representative to meet next November 4th, the present parliament not dissolving until the day before (though adjourned for some of the interim) and charging themselves before they dissolve with scrutinising the new members. They will then veto those who fail
to satisfy the qualifications, – and replace them with – who else? – members of the present house not already elected! So the election of a new parliament becomes a recruitment of the old by stealth, by sleight of hand. That is my fear and it has Itch-Arse written all over it”