Cromwell's Cat Read online

  TOMKINS

  “Maj, you wanted to come in?”

  MAJ

  “If I may. Though it pains me to admit it, I grant the Lord might be thought to have declared against me but to have declared against monarchy itself seemed to me at the time – and ever since – to be a bit of a stretch. In your own terms, General Cromwell, was it not carnal reasoning – what man and in particular the army wanted – not God”

  TOMKINS

  “Man proposes…God despairs.”

  MAJ

  “I’ll tell him you said that, Tomkins.”

  TOMKINS

  “He’s not my God: tell him what you like. Besides I think he’d be delighted somebody understood – even if it was only a cat.”

  ALAN

  “’Only a cat’? How sickeningly self-depre-cat-ing.”

  TOMKINS

  “Wasn’t it? We like to self-depre-cat every so often. Makes you humans love us all the more.”

  MAJ

  “But, LP – getting back to the business in hand: if the Lord had declared against monarchy, why did you later say you thought a government with somewhat monarchical in it might be best? And why, when John Lambert presented you with the Instrument of Government in 1653 did it contain the offer of the kingship…?”

  CRUMB

  “Which I turned down. It was wrong then. It is wrong now.”

  MAJ

  “To you perhaps – but not to others. Not to Lambert at that time, not to the members of parliament a year later (your son Henry included), who proposed offering you the crown, or the crowds who gathered in Whitehall six months later fully expecting your coronation.”

  TOMKINS

  “Reader alert! Reader alert! Everyone wants to get in on the act. Go on Rodders and then Karen.”

  RHODRI

  “Kingship was gone – but not forgotten – or so we were taught. How could it be with royalists around the country constantly plotting to restore it and to place your son, Majesty, on the throne. And the best way to kill off their hopes – and to settle the nation – might it not be to restore it – but with a different king and a new and better constitution – as is here proposed?”

  KAREN

  “And if everything points to that as being the safest way to settlement, and all that stands in the way is your reluctance, General Cromwell, to accept the crown, may it not be that you in turn are blinding yourself to the Lord’s providences, which are now clear and unclouded not against but for monarchy. Others see it, why cannot you?”

  CRUMB

  “Because, as I said earlier, the Lord’s way with me in particular has been that in what I have acted I have seen nothing before me. I would keep it that way.”

  MAJ

  “True, General Cromwell, but studying your every move as closely as I do from up here – I am after all still an interested party – is it not also true that you only ever saw providence with the benefit of hindsight & the help of others?”

  CRUMB

  “Which others?”

  MAJ

  “Well, different ones at different times – erm…1651 for example – the Battle of Dunbar: and your army facing defeat, if not rout. But then the Scots got ahead of themselves and turned certain victory into ignominious defeat. All praise to the Lord – but the Scots helped – much to my regret?”

  CRUMB

  “I suppose you could look at it that way.”

  MAJ

  “And 1653 – the dissolution of the Rump, which you hoped up to the last minute to avoid, but in that case – as you just said – the parliament forced your hand and, scarce knowing what you did, you went and dissolved them. ‘The Lord’s doing – none of mine’ – remember? God’s providence again – but the parliament instrumental”

  RHODRI

  “And before you were up there to keep an eye on things, Majesty – in 1648 the army, demanding your trial and execution, which you, General Cromwell at last went along with – again as you told us – not what you wanted?”

  CRUMB

  “No indeed.”

  RHODRI

  “But with the Rump on life-support and Ireton’s Agreement of the People (his new Magna Carta) dead in the water, you had no choice. God’s providence again – and you learned to live with it.”

  MAJ

  “Well said, Rodders – point well made. Providence for you, General Cromwell, only ever seemed to become apparent after a nudge or more from others. But now, there are no others. There is no-one to force your hand, so you must decide: and that means either sticking with what you know – or taking a leap in the dark which, whatever the evidence, you cannot bring yourself to do”

  CRUMB

  “So you think, Majesty I should accept this new constitution – with the title of King?”

  MAJ

  “I hope you won’t as that, I fear, would do nothing for my son Charles’s hopes (slim as they are) of one day inheriting the crown. But for that very reason, if I were you, – yes: I would. I would accept the constitution with the title King.”

  CRUMB

  “And you, readers – hands up those in favour of kingship. Well, that’s pretty conclusive – and, I fear, pretty wrong.”

  MAJ

  “What? How can you say that?”

  CRUMB

  “Because, as you’ve just shown, Majesty, if the Lord wants something special of me He takes it out of my hands. I do not know in advance what He looks for. It takes others’ actions to show it: the Scots, the army and the parliament in the cases you mention. Each moved first, spurring me to act and only afterwards understanding His providence. And so it must be now if I am again to go out of my way.”

  MAJ

  “And yet you take this new offer from the parliament to be the Lord’s will?”

  CRUMB

  “And there you see my problem. All my life I have longed for a parliament that would covet the best things, that would endeavour after the best things – and I have been disappointed. Either they have proved lovers of their own selves or enemies of the army – or both. But here we have a parliament at last that answers my expectations and truly I must needs say it makes me in love with this paper…”

  TOMKINS

  The aforesaid Humble P & A

  CRUMB

  “…indeed – with it and all things in it, the kingship only excepted. I look upon it as having things in it that have the liberty of the people of God so as they have never had it. I think they have provided for the liberty of the people of God and of the nation; and I say ‘He sings sweetly that sings a song of reconciliation’. ‘Tis what the Lord looks for; what I have looked for these eight years past; and what must now be signed, sealed and delivered over to a thankful nation”

  TOMKINS

  “But?”

 
CRUMB

  “They make the whole dependent on the title.”

  TOMKINS

  “Which for you would be a ‘going out of the way’?”

  CRUMB

  “I cannot see it otherwise.”

  TOMKINS

  “But look at it another way: may not the fact that this parliament, as you’ve just said, is offering the settlement so much desired and so long denied be itself the Lord’s way of pointing you the way: not, as in the past requiring you to go out of your way – but requiring it of you and parliament together? They have opened the door and it is for you now to enter in”

  CRUMB

  “By accepting the crown?”

  TOMKINS

  “If there is no other way. Completing the work and making the nation happy! So Crumb, will you? It’s crunch time: the parliament needs to know and I need my dinner”

  CRUMB

  “I know.”

  TOMKINS

  “You promised, remember: if I stuck with you through this, the hardest decision of your life, we’d break for dinner at the end of the chapter.”

  CRUMB

  “I haven’t forgotten.”

  TOMKINS

  “And you also know I can’t think when my stomach starts thinking for me. So make up your mind before food fills all my thoughts. What’s it to be: to settle or not to settle.”

  CRUMB

  “To settle, of course. No question.”

  TOMKINS

  “With the kingship?”

  CRUMB

  “…erm…”

  TOMKINS

  “The parliament makes that their sinnykwaynun.”

  CRUMB

  “The parliament, not the Lord. He wants us to settle, by which he means a new government established by parliament’s authority and with the army nowhere in sight. That is what the nation longs for and what the parliament proposes in this offer of government by a single person…”

  TOMKINS

  “A king.”

  CRUMB

  “…a single person, whom they call king, and a parliament. To the Lord, I am persuaded, one title will do as well as another”

  TOMKINS

  “Make up your mind – food looming ever larger. I’m picturing my favourite: succulent, sensational Whitehall rat”

  CRUMB

  “Kingship is not so much a title as a name of office implying the supreme authority, so the signification goes to the thing not the name and one name will do as well as another.”

  TOMKINS

  “Not to the parliament. To them ‘Lord Protector’ will not say ‘our troubles are now behind us’”

  CRUMB

  “But other things in the paper will. And over time the nation will come to realise that. The church settled and safe, freedom for tender consciences, and parliament which ever since the abolition of the House of Lords has run the risk of being arbitrary and despotic by first passing laws and then judging and sentencing offenders under them – that danger averted by the creation of a second chamber – the House of Lords by another name. The nation will see it and smile.”

  TOMKINS

  “And the army?”

  CRUMB

  “Will not smile, certainly; but most will accept it. And those that cannot…”

  TOMKINS

  “John Lambert?”

  CRUMB

  “Him for one – I will deal with them in due course. But for the present – have they not already suffered enough in having their – I should say ‘our’ – attempted settlement as in the Instrument of Government set aside less for what it contained than for those who dreamt it up? I would have no other hard thing put upon them unnecessarily ”

  CATRIONA

  “Feigned necessity, imaginary necessity…?”

  CRUMB

  “Thanks for reminding me, Catriona. There is nothing feigned about the need to settle.”

  TOMKINS

  “Nor about my dinner time.”

  CRUMB

  “Alright, alright. Since I have to decide and would not put a feigned necessity on the Lord’s providence my answer has to be that I do not think the thing necessary and I would not that the parliament should lose a friend for it. I cannot undertake this government with that title of king.”

  TOMKINS

  “Brilliant! Well done, Crumb. Got there at last. We’ll see what the parliament makes of that. I’ll report back in the next chapter. But now, come on everyone – dinner time. Who’s for a bite of Prime Whitehall Rat? Maj?”

  MAJ

  “Thanks for the offer, Tomkins, but food’s not high on our priorities up here – however tempting.”

  TOMKINS

  “What about the rest of you? Oh of course, I forgot, you can see but you can’t touch.”

  RHODRI

  “Sadly. You’re on your own, Tomkins – your very own ‘Deli-cat-essen’?

  KAREN

  “ ‘Delicat-rat-essen’ – even better.”

  TOMKINS

  “What?”

  KAREN

  “Fine food for cats. Shame we can’t join you – we might be able to market that here in Massachusetts. ‘Prime Whitehall Rat – a feast fit for kings (and next best things) – and their cats’”

  TOMKINS

  “It’s like ‘A rat is for sharing, not just for dinner’. You could add that to the tin – with a picture of me on the front.”

  ALAN

  “What is it that makes Whitehall Rat the best? The others, that are not good enough.”

  RHODRI

  “Now we’re cooking with rat.”

  TOMKINS

  “Gotta go. See you in Chapter Nine.”

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Towards A Place of Rest’

  KAREN

  “LP?”

  CRUMB

  “Yes, Karen?”

  KAREN

  “Is this where you set about making what haste you can to be gone?”

  CRUMB

  “What? Where did you get that idea?”

  KAREN

  “I don’t know – just came to me. This is the final chapter, isn’t it?”

  CRUMB

  “Is it?”

  TOMKINS

  “Ninth chapter – ninth life – has to be.”<
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