Cromwell's Cat Read online

  TOMKINS

  “In cloud cuckoo land perhaps, but not in the real here and now where this cat is on his eighth life and still hopes to make it a good one. So Crumb, back to business – something else you said in that same speech – how religion mattered – to the Lord. Can you remember?”

  CRUMB

  “erm…no, Tomkins. Mind’s a blank.”

  TOMKINS

  “Help me out, you lot. You must have heard something in your history lessons.”

  RHODRI

  “He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, I wish he trust God for the liberty of his conscience and you for the liberty he fights for’.”

  CRUMB

  “No, that was to parliament – only not this one.”

  MAJ

  “The Long Parliament, after the Battle of Naseby, wasn’t it, General Cromwell? When I heard that I remember thinking ‘That’s good. They’re never going to agree on that.’”

  TOMKINS

  “And how right you were, Maj.”

  KAREN

  “ ‘The magistrate hath his supremacy and he may settle religion according to his conscience’.”

  TOMKINS

  “Right parliament, wrong speech, Karen.”

  CRUMB

  “Hang on, hang on, it’s coming back to me – how religion mattered – to the Lord, you said?”

  TOMKINS

  “Yes.”

  CRUMB

  “I told them ‘Religion was not the thing first contended for, but…’ ”

  TOMKINS

  “That’s it. That’s the one.”

  CRUMB

  “ ‘…but God brought it to that issue at last – and gave it to us by way of redundancy and at last it was that which was most dear to us.’ ”

  TOMKINS

  “That’s it, Crumb, that’s it. ‘And at last it was that which was most dear to us’! To you, Crumb, not to God. There’s your problem – and God’s. He wants you to settle but your religion gets in the way. Humans all over!”

  CRUMB

  “What?”

  TOMKINS

  “They’re your thoughts, Crumb – or rather your fears. You daren’t even think them, but they’re there at the back of your mind and that’s what I’m picking up on. Everything else, how great a problem so-ever – like the Major-Generals – can be set aside if need be. But not religion. Oh no”

  CRUMB

  “Of course not – because it matters…because everything else is but dross and dung in comparison.”

  TOMKINS

  “Aha – thought it wouldn’t be long before that one came out for another airing. And now the Arbroath dross has something to say. Go on, Catriona.”

  CATRIONA

  “Even if your digging your heels in and refusing to budge means the settlement the Lord looks for may stay tantalisingly out of reach?”

  CRUMB

  “Why do you ask? Do you know something we don’t?”

  CATRIONA

  “I’m not allowed to say: you know that. But it has to be a possibility and, if you want to achieve the settlement the Lord looks for, might you not have to be prepared to compromise on religion as you already are on everything else?”

  CRUMB

  “But not on freedom of conscience.”

  CATRIONA

  “No, but the parliament accepted that, didn’t they – and included it in the constitutional bill, which you rejected?”

  CRUMB

  “Indeed – and defined so narrowly and the right to list the excluded heresies and blasphemies reserved to themselves so that, like the bishops and Presbytery before them, it threatened to turn into a persecutors’ charter…”

  CATRIONA

  “Only if you let it.”

  CRUMB

  “…a persecutors’ charter – aimed at the army: and this at the very time they proposed cutting their pay, halving their numbers and replacing them with a locally-raised militia”

  CATRIONA

  “As had been more or less implied by the Instrument.”

  CRUMB

  “An aspiration, yes, to be achieved over time. Not at once and not when we were faced by an imminent Royalist uprising.”

  TOMKINS

  “Karen?”

  KAREN

  “Didn’t they have a late change of heart and offer to confer with you on heresies to be excluded?”

  CRUMB

  “Too little, too late.”

  KAREN

  “How so? The parliament was still sitting – you might have accepted the bill and the nation might yet have settled.”

  CRUMB

  “Too little, because John Lambert would not see his carefully contrived government, designed to avoid the dangers of monarchy on the one hand and democracy on the other – he would not see that cast aside so carelessly. Too late because he left me in no doubt that, his experiment being abandoned, he would walk away.”

  KAREN

  “And you believed him?”

  CRUMB

  “Why would I not? He had done so before, remember, when at the last minute he and his friends declined all part in the Nominated Parliament – so destroying the balance we had sought and leading to the excesses that followed – excesses that the world won’t forget and we are yet dealing with. I could not let that happen again with another government – the Lord would not let me. With the army in a ferment and a royalist rising imminent I had to keep Lambert on board.”

  TOMKINS

  “Maj – you wanted to say something?”

  MAJ

  “I did indeed. So the settlement, General Cromwell, which you say the Lord looks for – and which that parliament might have been best placed to deliver – was sacrificed to keep John Lambert happy?”

  CRUMB

  “Deferred, Majesty, not sacrificed.”

  TOMKINS

  “Looked very much like a sacrifice to me, Crumb.”

  MAJ

  “Me too, the betting up here was heavily against you.”

  CRUMB

  “I hoped there would come a time when, if need be, I might defy John Lambert to do his worst. But not then.”

  TOMKINS

  “Hands going up all over the place – Catriona first, then Karen”

  CATRIONA

  “So the lame duck Protectorate…”

  KAREN

 
“…for which ‘bottomless’ John Lambert had failed to think beyond Protector and council passing ordinances for the first nine months, to be then confirmed by the parliament…”

  CATRIONA

  “…limped on into the unknown! Not a sacrifice? You don’t believe that. You can’t believe it!!”

  KAREN

  “Come on, confess!”

  BOTH

  “Confess!”

  CRUMB

  “Stop! All right, I confess.”

  KAREN

  “Aha! He wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition!”

  CATRIONA

  “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

  CRUMB

  “Erm??? ”

  KAREN

  “Sorry, LP. Televsion again – won’t mean anything to you ”

  MAJ

  “Does up here, though. Favourite show ever. Even the Lord Himself has been heard to laugh – or so they say. Everyone quotes it “Our chief weapon is surprise…”

  CATRIONA

  “…surprise and a ruthless search for historical truth! Our two weapons… a ruthless search for historical truth, coupled with surprise… and a hot-line to heaven! Three! Our three weapons are…!”

  KAREN

  “So, General Cromwell, settlement being ‘deferred’ as you put it, but being impossible without a parliament, am I right?”

  CRUMB

  “Yes.”

  KAREN

  “And the next parliament having to meet…”

  CRUMB

  “Before January 1657.”

  KAREN

  “erm 1658?”

  CRUMB

  “In your terms, yes.”

  KAREN

  “How did you intend spending the time before then?”

  CRUMB

  “By suppressing the royalist rebellion and making them pay for their own putting down by means of the Decimation Tax, which meant the country at large would not have to foot the bill; and by dividing the nation into eleven regions each with a major-general in charge to police the royalists and see there would be no repeat.”

  KAREN

  “You turned England into a police state! You thought that was what the Lord was looking for? Is that right?”

  CATRIONA

  “And beware: a wrong answer carries fifty strokes of the cat.”

  CRUMB

  “No, that wasn’t the idea at all.”

  CATRIONA

  “Wrong! Start stroking.”

  CRUMB

  “Let me explain.”

  CATRIONA

  “Only when you’ve started stroking. OK by you, Tomkins?”

  TOMKINS

  “Always. Stroke away.”

  CATRIONA

  “So, LP – off you go. Let’s see how good you are at multi-tasking. Can you talk and stroke at the same time?”

  CRUMB

  “We didn’t think – I didn’t – that the Lord looked for the major-generals. But he sought settlement and without them there would be none. They were a necessary evil and being there, I thought, might do some good…”

  CATRIONA

  “Keep stroking.”

  CRUMB

  “…by reforming manners, suppressing unlicensed alehouses and ensuring that the laws against drunkenness, blaspheming, Sabbath-breaking and stage plays were enforced as the saints had long demanded and the Lord would approve”

  ALAN

  “Wrong again, LP. The Lord did not approve – as appeared in the next election in the summer of 1656…”

  CRUMB

  “John Lambert and the Major-Generals wanted that – they thought they could guarantee a pliable parliament. I disagreed. I told them it was too soon”

  ALAN

  “It was still wrong, whoever was behind it. The nation at large, unlike the saints, was not happy with the idea of no more cakes and ale – and they showed it in the members returned to parliament – many of whom had to be barred from taking their seats. Pride’s Purge all over again.”

  KAREN

  “So your providences now, General Cromwell, would suggest whatever the Lord is looking for it is not a police state …not even one of the Saints, by the Saints and for the Saints.”

  CATRIONA

  “And that, I’m afraid is another fifty strokes of the cat. OK, Tomkins?”

  TOMKINS

  “Need you ask? A hundred strokes is letting him off lightly”

  MAJ

  “And what you’ve told us, General Cromwell, just confirms what Tomkins said at the start of the chapter – another instance of the Lord looking for settlement and your religion getting in the way.”

  TOMKINS

  “Won’t be the last, either.”

  CATRIONA

  “I’m sure it won’t and with the perjury involved that will mean more strokes of the cat. It’ll be a wonder if you survive”

  TOMKINS

  “Oh I’ll tough it out.”

  CATRIONA

  “Not you, Tomkins. So, LP, here we are…here we… erm, Tomkins, where exactly are we? I’ve forgotten.”

  TOMKINS

  “Don’t worry, Catriona – you’re not alone. 1657, remember? The second protectorate parliament – culled and garbled by council and major-generals – over a hundred members prevented from taking their seats and fifty more resigning in protest. But then those that remained getting their revenge by voting down the major-generals and offering you, Crumb, a constitution of their own devising”

  CRUMB

  “ The Humble Petition and Advice?”

  TOMKINS

  “All you ever wanted, but at a price.”

  CRUMB

  “Which I fear I cannot pay.”

  TOMKINS

  “Which you have to pay. This is what I was talking about. Tell them why you can’t pay the asking price.”

  CRUMB

  “The kingship?”

  TOMKINS

  “Your famous ‘feather in a man’s hat’ “

  CRUMB

  “Because the providences in question, as clear and unclouded as they were, declared not only against you, Majesty, but against monarchy itself and I would not now seek to set up that which Providence has cast down.”