'The whole world (saith he) lies in wickedness, in malignity; the world lies in troublesomeness. The greatest part of the great ones of this world do basely and wickedly against God! When may a man be said to do gloriously? — When he does things others have no heart for, or are afraid to do. When he holds on, notwithstanding discouragement, 'blow high or blow low, rain or shine, let men smile or frown'… I need not tell you what discouragements the noble Champion met with, but through all he was able to do God's work and to serve his generation… It is nothing for a man to serve his generation when he hath wind and tide on his side.'
Colonel Rainborough had never had wind and tide on his side, thought Gideon rebelliously. He assessed the man for himself quietly, and decided Rainborough was perhaps never intended for the political greatness that was being put upon him now. But when the colonel's life was cut short, he was only thirty-eight years old, probably still finding his way. He was great enough to terrify his enemies and to give heart to his friends, through what he was and the thought of what he might have become. He was honest and fearless, worthy of the affection and respect that were shown to him that day at Wapping, worthy of the real grief that affected so many people. Gideon Jukes, for one, felt as if he had lost a father for the second time. It left him more disheartened than he had ever been since the war started seven years before.
Brooks was outspokenly critical of those who now held power:
'If Parliamentmen and men in the army, and in the City, and round the Kingdom did believe more gloriously, they would do more gloriously for God, in their relations and places than now they do…
'The more I think of the gallantry and worth of this Champion, the further off I am from discovering his worth. I think he was one of whom this sinful Nation was not worthy; he was one of whom this declining Parliament was not worthy; he was one of whom these divided, formal, carnal Gospellers was not worthy. He served his Generation faithfully, though he died by the hands of treachery… They honoured him in life and they showed no small respect to him in death: He was a joy to the best, and a terror to the worst of men.'
Chapter Fifty-Two — St Katharine's and Newgate: 1648-50
The boom of the great guns had an unexpected benefit in the depot that housed the young people who had been 'spirited'. As soon as the cannonade began, all the keepers rushed to see what was going on. Most of their charges were too subdued or too youthful to take advantage. But for one troubled soul, the great funeral at Wapping provided an escape.
Her name was temporarily Alice Smith. She chose it to sound respectable on the indentures they had given her. Six months after she was taken from Covent Garden, she ended up in a holding-house, or depot, in St Katharine's-by-the-Tower, moved there from St Giles-in-the-Fields as the day for shipment to Virginia or the Indies grew closer. The second civil war, with the navy revolt and blockades downstream in the Thames estuary, had delayed transportation and given her a respite, but towards the end of the year the young people were told their boat would come soon.
During her captivity — though it was never openly called that — she had come to regret her agreement to emigrate. She was by nature more suspicious than the other kidnapped young people. She kept her ears open. Soon, the situation began to worry her. She overheard a pair of desperate parents begging to have their stolen child returned. She noted how the staff spoke among themselves of their kidnapped charges' fates. Always ready to believe she had been lied to for the gain of others, Alice Smith began to fear that once she reached her destination she would find that the 'service' she had signed up for was not mild housework with respectable colonists but hard manual labour out of doors on plantations, in conditions close to slavery. Once she arrived overseas, it would be too late. She asked as many questions about conditions as she dared. When this was discouraged, she soon disbelieved all the glowing promises.
She stayed at the depot, because it was an easy life — so far. She had shelter and food. Even the meagre daily diet was better than she had been used to; her health and with it her inbuilt truculence began to revive. She kept alert for news of their ship, and was keyed up to abscond. When the matron and staff ran out to watch Rainborough's funeral procession, she decided to waste no more time. So she calmly filled an apron with whatever she could carry, then she slipped out of an unguarded door and made off.
St Katharine's was a forbidding area. It lay beyond the Tower, outside the city walls. Less than a hundred years before, this had been an empty quarter used only for drowning pirates on the foreshore; convicted pirates were by tradition chained to ramps until three tides had passed over them — a story that had been told to the spirited youngsters in the process of subduing them. Alice was not afraid of long-dead pirates — though she turned instinctively away from the river.
The main feature of this parish was a charitable foundation for the poor, the Royal Hospital or Free Chapel. Founded and supported by various queens of England, it had been a Catholic institution but was spared by Henry the Eighth during his dissolution of monastic orders, because it had belonged to his mother. The hospital was regarded with suspicion because, even when nominally Protestant, it was run by lay brethren and sisters. Like so many religious properties, it had attracted the poor and helpless until it became the centre of a rat's nest of lanes and mean streets, containing perhaps a thousand houses where stick-thin, dull-eyed paupers struggled against starvation and disease. As with all the liberties beyond London's walls, the area became a haven for illegal trades and the outsiders who practised them. The small, stinking cottages and dilapidated tenements housed a lawless English underclass and foreigners who were no better. The alleys had suggestive names: Dark Entry, Cat's Hole, Shovel Alley, Eagle and Child Alley, Axe Yard and Naked Boy Court. This grim district was a natural place to position the depot for stolen children: rough, unfriendly, secret and rarely visited by anyone respectable.
In some ways it was no worse an area than Southwark, across the river, where 'Eliza' and Jem Starling had holed up the previous year. There were just as many seamen on this side, with watermen of all types, especially the drunken, unemployed variety. Among the wrongdoers who had emerged like fleas at the funeral commotion were prostitutes looking for clients and vagabonds planning to pick pockets as the great procession of mourners wended up Wapping High Street. Astute ones had adorned their dishevelled coats with sea-green ribbons so they would blend in.
Alice' picked her way through the tangle of unpaved lanes and alleys, stepping over piles of litter and runnels of nightsoil, while keeping an eye out for people throwing slops from the teetering tenements above. Nobody seemed to observe her. The dark, filthy courtyards seemed deserted, though she knew better than to feel secure here. Any unguarded moment could have pitched her into worse trouble than she had left behind. She pulled in her skirts and scurried past East Smithfield, where some of the most degraded brothels in London huddled, although the neat lines of little houses had once been pleasant dwellings occupied by hardworking hatters and shoemakers. Now the clothes they once made, so worn they barely held together by threads, were sold second, third or fourth hand in Rosemary Lane. That was where the public executioner lived, the man who had lopped off the heads of Strafford and Laud, or so turnkeys were wont to tell the children at the depot. And he will come for you too, if you give us any trouble!' It was a fetid little street crammed with sour taverns and totters' stalls, where Alice' managed to sell for a penny what she had stolen from the depot. Before leaving the lane, she carried out a swift piece of stall-robbery and fled with a tattered hood that would help to disguise her.
She went west. So she entered the City, by chance reversing the processional route which Thomas Rainborough's cortege had taken earlier that day. The streets remained subdued. Unsure where to turn, she began a long walk that would bring her back towards the Strand and Covent Garden where she had worked her way in misery before. This time she turned off, reluctant to be spotted again by the man who had lured her. Instead, she slipped into the disreputable alleys around Giltspur Street, north of the Old Bailey.
She survived there for six months. Time had no meaning for her, days, weeks and months slipping by as once again she deteriorated. She heard they beheaded the King, but the tentative start of the Commonwealth meant little at gutter level. Then, since the life of the dirt poor stayed unchanged by the absence of monarchy, one day she walked into a house where a maid had left a door open; she stole a silver charger, which was a felony. When she tried to fence the plate, a thief-taker informed on her; she was brought, spitting protests, before a particularly dyspeptic magistrate. It was her first mistake, so she hoped to get off with a fine and a whipping. Transportation to the colonies was a possibility that made her smile grimly, since she had escaped it once when she was spirited. But her manner was so defiant, she was despatched to Newgate Prison under sentence to be hanged.
She knew what to do; she 'pleaded her belly'. Examined physically by a jury of matrons', to check her story,
