Cromwell's Cat Read online

  TOMKINS

  “Maj?”

  MAJ

  “Badly for them, I think.”

  TOMKINS

  “Putting it mildly. Day 1 – January 20th: Maj, here, is brought in and the charge read: ‘Charles Stuart, being admitted King of England, and therein trusted with a limited power to govern by and according to the laws of the land, and not otherwise, hath been and is the occasioner, author, and continuer of these unnatural, cruel and bloody wars and therein guilty of all the treasons, murders, rapines, burnings, spoils, desolations, damages and mischiefs acted or occasioned thereby. For these reasons, on behalf of the people of England I do impeach…’(That’s John Cook, counsel for the prosecution) ‘…I do impeach the said Charles Stuart as a tyrant, traitor and murderer, and a public and implacable enemy to the Commonwealth of England’ …I think they covered everything apart from saying you were unkind to cats. If they left anything bad out it clearly wasn’t on purpose. – “Bradshaw then asked you, Maj, for your plea and you said…?”

  MAJ

  “What I told you before: “I would know by what power I am called hither, what authority. Let me see a legal authority warranted by the Word of God, the scriptures, or warranted by the constitution of the kingdom and I will answer. It is not a slight thing you are about. There is a God in heaven, that will call you, and all that give you power to account”

  TOMKINS

  “Not quite what Bradshaw was hoping to hear – but he wasn’t Chief Justice of Chester for nothing. He came back with the clincher: ‘We are satisfied with our authority.’ That put you in your place, Maj – I don’t think. And that was when I saw Crumb’s head drop a further few inches. I think Bradshaw must have seen it too out as his next move was to close proceedings for the day and order you to be removed.” End of Day 1: Maj on top and the court banking on the power of prayer (the next day being Sunday) to turn things around.

  RHODRI

  “And did it?”

  TOMKINS

  What do you think, Rodders?

  RHODRI

  “…erm…not much.”

  TOMKINS

  Not at all.” Go on, Maj.”

  MAJ

  “They wanted to prove me guilty. But under the law the only way they could do that was to get me to enter a plea of ‘not guilty’. Then they could bring in all their witnesses to show I’d waged war on my subjects, laid waste the land and done all they said I’d done. That was the case they wanted to make – for the world to see. But…”

  CATRIONA

  “If you pleaded guilty or refused to plead, the law required them to treat that as a confession, so no witnesses needed, no case made.”

  TOMKINS

  Exactly right, Catriona, well-remembered. Do you wonder Crumb prefers his dream?

  MAJ

  “But give me the real world any time. True nothing would change the result but at least here I could make my case, while preventing them from doing the same. That’s some consolation. Go on, Tomkins”

  TOMKINS

  “Monday 22nd – Day 2: more of the same – the court asserting their authority and Maj here and the rest of the world persisting in their refusal to recognise it.”

  MAJ

  “If power without law may make laws, may alter the fundamental laws of the kingdom, I do not know what subject he is in England , that can be sure of his life or anything that he calls his own”

  TOMKINS

  “And Bradshaw, having had the weekend to consider his reply, got it wrong – again: ‘The court sits here by the authority of the Commons of England and all your predecessors and you are responsible to them’”

  MAJ

  “Show me one precedent. The Commons of England was never a Court of Judicature. I would know how they came to be so.”

  TOMKINS

  Crumb’s head now buried in his britches.

  MAJ

  “I do require that I may give in my reasons why I do not answer the charge.”

  TOMKINS

  “Bradshaw again: ‘It is not for prisoners to require.’”

  MAJ

  “Sir, I am not an ordinary prisoner! Show me that jurisdiction where reason is not to be heard.”

  TOMKINS

  “ ‘We show it you here – the Commons of England’ – I don’t think he really meant to say that. But truth will out. And so ends Day 2 with you, Maj, again winning hands down and Crumb more than ever wishing himself back in Ely. And so it went on, didn’t it, with Bradshaw requiring Maj’s answer and you requiring his authority.”

  MAJ

  “They could kill me (and would) – but not by law.”

  TOMKINS

  So the witnesses gave their evidence in private, which brings us to the end of the week and the court re-assembling to pronounce sentence…

  MAJ

  “The verdict being ‘Guilty’ because of my refusal to plead. What they wanted but not how they wanted to arrive at it.”

  TOMKINS

  “And that’s just about where we reached in the dream.”

  MAJ

  “Where I made my ‘offer’ ”

  TOMKINS

  “And Bradshaw wouldn’t listen…as Crumb foresaw… Crumb! Come on, time to stop dreaming… Hang on, he’ll be with us in a minute…Come on, wake up. That’s it. Bradshaw wouldn’t listen to Maj’s offer, Crumb, as you predicted”

  CRUMB

  “I did?”

  TOMKINS

  “In your dream.”

  CRUMB

  “My dream? Oh yes.”

  TOMKINS

  “And here’s where dream and reality merge with Bradshaw commanding that the sentence be read: ‘This court is in judgment and conscience satisfied that Charles Stuart…erm… hath been and is the occasioner, author, and continuer of the said unnatural, cruel, and bloody wars, and therein guilty of High Treason…’”

  READERS

  “Yes, yes, yes – as we heard at the start…”

  TOMKINS

  “As you say – guilty as charged – …For all which treasons and crimes this court doth adjudge that he, the said Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of this nation, shall be put to death by the severing of his head from his body’.”

  MAJ

  “Will you hear me speak a word, Sir?”

  TOMKINS

  “That took Bradshaw aback. He thought he’d heard the last of you: ‘You are not to be heard after the sentence. Take him away’”

  MAJ

  “I may speak after the sentence. By your favour, Sir, I may speak after the sentence ever”

 
TOMKINS

  “By this time the guards are all around you, Maj, finally silencing you and forcing you from the hall.”

  MAJ

  “I am not suffered to speak. Expect what justice other people will have!”

  TOMKINS

  And with that, Maj is gone – next to be seen three days later on the scaffold – in front of an even bigger crowd in Whitehall. Everybody was there – well almost everybody “Just one exception, eh Crumb?”

  CRUMB

  “I had other business, army matters to attend to. If that excuse sufficed Tom Fairfax* for the trial it would do for me now”

  TOMKINS

  “Wouldn’t do for you to be seen watching from a window now would it, Crumb – gloating over Maj’s death & looking a bit too much like a man with a plan. I mean – putting it in cat-speak: if I take on the top-cat it’s for one purpose only…”

  ALAN

  “To become top-cat yourself.”

  TOMKINS

  “Got it in one, Alan. You see where I’m heading with this? Maj here is top-cat and is being – how shall we say – removed? Leaving a vacancy at the top…for… someone?”

  CRUMB

  “But it’s not true. It’s not true. You know it’s not. Nothing could be further from my thoughts”

  TOMKINS

  “Of course it couldn’t. I know that. But when did the truth bother the newssheets? What was it you said about Pragmaticus: “If it’s plausible, print it…”

  KAREN

  “And if it’s not plausible?”

  TOMKINS

  “Print it anyway and make it plausible.’ So, Maj being killed and you watching from the window – eyeing the vacancy? No, that wouldn’t do but you did need to know and so…?”

  CRUMB

  “Alright, alright. Yes, I placed you there instead!”

  TOMKINS

  “Brilliant! A plain russet-coated cat sitting in the window watching the execution. Nobody’d think twice. We do it all the time – not executions, I mean, but watch from windows. So I’m Crumb’s eyes and ears in the Banqueting House giving him a live feed from the window of the events unfolding on the scaffold outside and the only person better placed was you yourself, Maj, with the best view in the house…erm on the…erm scaffold itself. How would you feel about telling Miss M and friends how it looked from your angle?”

  MAJ

  “Yes, Tomkins. Yes, I could do that – happy to, if that’s what you want. ‘Dead man talking’ so to speak.”

  READERS

  “Yes please. Yes, yes – just wait till we tell our teachers!”

  TOMKINS

  “That’s settled then – you and me, Maj.” Here we go again: three, two, one…

  **********

  TOMKINS

  …and here we are, Whitehall: the Banqueting House. “Go for it, Maj.”

  MAJ

  “They kept me waiting. They kept me waiting! I think the least they could have done was kill me on time.”

  TOMKINS

  “As opposed to giving you time to kill? Sorry, just slipped out.”

  CRUMB

  “There’s an explanation for that.”

  TOMKINS

  “In a minute, Crumb.”

  MAJ

  “They made me wait four hours.”

  TOMKINS

  “I think you’d better explain a bit more, Maj.”

  MAJ

  “They set a time of between ten in the morning and five in the afternoon on 30th – a freezing January day (I’d put on two shirts for fear of shivering and seeming to fear my death – which I didn’t, but they’d be happy for it to seem so). They came for me at St James’s just before ten, found me waiting. We crossed the park and entered Whitehall, and crossing the street by Holbein Gate I could see the banqueting house, the black scaffold, the soldiers, the crowd – the street full to overflowing plus every vantage point occupied – all windows and rooftops…”

  TOMKINS

  “All windows bar one – with just a cat sitting in it.”

  MAJ

  “I’m sorry, Tomkins. I can’t say I noticed. No offence.”

  TOMKINS

  “None taken – what every cat works for – to watch unseen.”

  MAJ

  “But I did have other things on my mind. So ten thirty in the morning – I was there and everything and everyone was ready. But nothing happened – not then, not for the next three and a half hours”

  KAREN

  “Payback, you think?”

  MAJ

  “How do you mean, Karen?”

  KAREN

  “You spoilt their trial. Was this their way to spoil your execution?”

  MAJ

  “I wouldn’t put it past them. It certainly felt like that.”

  KAREN

  “If so it failed, your Majesty. Everyone said so. There’s a famous poem by Andrew Marvell. Can I read you a bit?”

  TOMKINS

  “I’m sure Maj would love to hear that Karen but first, Crumb, your explanation”

  CRUMB

  “Cock-up, not conspiracy – and I was furious. As you say, your Majesty, having brought you here we should at the very least have had the courtesy to kill you on time. But the Lord’s chosen ones had forgotten that when one king died the next was at once proclaimed – and here they were about to kill their king. So they had to pass a bill to make it illegal to proclaim a new one – rush it through all its stages– and that took all the morning. Would never have happened if Harry Vane* hadn’t turned his back on us. Would that he hadn’t.”

  TOMKINS

  “So, here we are: two in the afternoon and finally Maj, you come out of the banqueting house and onto the scaffold…”

  MAJ

  “I’ve never seen so many people, so many – and so quiet. Not jeering or abusing – not like some at the trial, but I suspect they were put up to it. No, this was more like the end of a play, Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’ say, or ‘Hamlet’, with the audience watching open-mouthed as the tragedy unfolds. Quite eerie. I wanted to speak to them, directly, to reach out to them, my people, just like an actor in the theatre but, unlike the theatre and kept out of reach by the soldiers, there was no way the people could hear me. So I said what I had to say – no Bradshaw here to interrupt me – for those who’d come after…”

  CRUMB

  “Never wondering, I suppose, your majesty, who might have made sure that the brachygraphers, the shorthand writers were there on the scaffold to take down your last words?”

  MAJ

  “
No, General Cromwell, I hadn’t thought. Not the ‘chosen instruments’ I imagine. If it was you, I thank you for the courtesy. So I shan’t speak in vain…erm…”

  TOMKINS