Upheaval became country-wide. Rebellions began in Wales, where Parliamentary officers refused orders. In the north, the King's devoted supporter Sir Marmaduke Langdale took Berwick while Sir Philip Musgrove took Carlisle, in order to provide a clear invasion route for the Scots. They had been promised that the Prince of Wales would sail from Holland to join them. Rioting occurred in Norwich. Then throughout Kent — where Lovell was — a major uprising flared: Rochester, Sittingbourne, Faversham, Chatham, Dartford and Deptford were seized and the fleet was restive in the Downs, its anchorage off Kent. In May, nearby at Deal, a strange youth appeared, 'on foot, and in an old black ragged suit, without any companions but lice'. Keen locals welcomed this unlikely pretender, accepting his claim to be the Prince of Wales. Thomas Rainborough, then Parliamentary Vice-Admiral of the Fleet, rightly believed him to be an impostor, but the incident led to outright naval mutiny in which Rainborough was refused boarding of his own flagship. Although the sailors conceded he had been 'a loving and courteous colonel to them', they paid to send him (at the cost of sixpence) in a Dutch fly-boat, back to London with his wife and other relatives. The mutineers took nine warships and sailed to the Netherlands.
There were rumours that a large Royalist army, ten thousand men, had gathered in Kent. Juliana Lovell now believed Orlando was there, organising. If so, he probably wanted his estate back so he could sell or mortgage it to raise funds. He had deceived his wife, using her to achieve this for him, planning that if she succeeded, he would bankrupt them and destroy whatever inheritance their children might have had. Juliana seethed.
As the atmosphere in London became tumultuous, Juliana almost hoped the committee might refuse her plea. She wanted to return to Sussex. After a fruitless wait at Goldsmiths Hall one morning, she walked out for air and instead of taking her usual route to the bookshops around St Paul's, where she habitually window-shopped, her steps took her along Lothbury. It was a main thoroughfare, though notorious for its racket of metal-workers. She turned off for more peace into Basinghall Street, a narrow, winding cut-through that bent around Guildhall. From an overhead window, the measured notes of a tenor viol playing an air like a love song caught her attention. Attracted by the music, she entered a small print shop.
It was slightly dark and extremely busy. The great press dominated, with a tall desk for compositing. Papers were hung to dry on long wires. On the walls were large, faded publications, nailed up like posters, most of them about two years old as if someone had decorated the shop then: lists of two or three hundred victories ascribed to General Fairfax, surrounding large equestrian portraits of him or smaller busts of all the Parliamentary generals; memorials and elegies for the Earl of Essex, who had died in September 1646; she read: flnnals and most remarkable records of King Charles' reign… Wherein we may plainly see how the Popish, Jesuitical and Prelatical Malignant party have endeavoured the ruin of this church and kingdom but was by God's mercy most miraculously prevented…' There could be no doubt where the printer's sympathies lay.
They were selling a news-sheet called The Public Corranto. Juliana began to read the front page. The big- eared, buck-toothed apprentice clearly thought her a time-waster. Deeply suspicious, he operated the big press slowly as he watched her. He was eating slices of fruit pie from a delft plate. In a corner, almost unnoticed at first, a good-looking, dark-eyed woman in her late thirties was giving him a fractious look, as if she wanted him to save the pie. She was stitching together pamphlets; it was hard work, hardly a dainty thimble job. She had to press down the eye of the needle on a piece of slate to force it through the pages. Her fingers were red and sore, though she seemed to know what she was doing.
Juliana approached and smiled. She preferred doing business with a woman. They got into conversation, pleasantly enough, though both were wary. Holding a copy of the Corranto, Juliana asked after the latest news.
'Cromwell has been sent to Wales; the Lord General is taking men to Kent. The Earl of Warwick has succeeded Rainborough as admiral and gone to deal with the navy.'
'Do you think they will be successful?' Juliana asked, wondering what would happen to Lovell. 'It sounds as if the King has very great support now.'
'War will be short and brutal, so says Robert Allibone, the printer here.'
'Your husband?'
'No, no!' The woman blushed, and seemed conscious of the apprentice listening in. Before she looked down quickly, she glanced up to the ceiling, whence the sounds of the viol could still be heard, now playing a fugue. 'My name is Anne Jukes.'
'You work here?'
'I run my husband's grocery business, while he is away' In the New Model Army, thought Juliana nervously. Then, looking at the woman, and hearing that soulful music, she wondered on a whim, Perhaps her husband being away is convenient for her and she loves another… 'I come here to help with certain publications.'
Juliana nodded to the pamphlet Anne Jukes was now putting into piles. 'Revolutionary publications?'
Anne had identified this customer as a Royalist. Long-faced, despondent women in faded gowns often came into the print shop alone, after they had taken a bruising in committees. 'In the City, women are allowed to think!' And preach if we will, and make petitions, and pay our fees and join the Levellers… 'This is a discussion of Leveller principles, for those who sympathise. Our new newspaper called The Moderate will start next month.'
Since it was so heavily implied that Juliana would not want a Leveller pamphlet, she bought it anyway, and also The Public Corranto. Surprised, the woman offered her a slice of pie; it was of her own making and extremely good. She told Juliana the recipe. As Juliana walked back to Goldsmiths Hall, she continued to wonder for whom at the print shop Anne Jukes had brought in the pie.
Astonishingly, right at that moment when it seemed as plain as day Lovell must be engaged in the Kent rebellion, the Committee for Compounding agreed a fine and gave him back his lands. Juliana had been authorised to arrange the fine through Sir Lysander's bank, so she spent the rest of the afternoon making arrangements; she obtained a certificate of exemption from sequestration and as dusk fell she left Goldsmiths Hall for the last time.
Approaching the town house, she was trying to remember Anne Jukes's recipe for sweet pastry until she had a chance to write it down. She became aware of a young woman keeping step with her, a little too close behind her shoulder. Juliana's purse was empty, though to lose the hard-won land certificate would have been tedious after months of work to get it, and she would have been even more annoyed to have The Public Corranto snatched before she had read it. She could see the front doorstep of Sir Lysander's house, which she knew was a dangerous position where many householders were mugged as they struggled with their keys. Abruptly, she turned round and stared out her shadower.
It was a thin, pale urchin, dressed in a ragged shawl over a dirty yellow petticoat. The creature affected innocence and walked off. A man who had been following her then caught up and spoke. Safe from the intended theft, Juliana lost interest.
Chapter Forty-Seven — Covent Garden: 1648
Her name was now… something new. Who needed a name? She worked alone these days, swooping about the arcades at twilight like a bat, hunting. She had made Covent Garden her roost, homing in on this grand place as ideal for her purposes.
The Italian piazza in the old convent kitchen garden of Westminster Abbey had been designed in 1632 by the King's surveyor, Inigo Jones, for the Earl of Bedford, one of the main conspiring aristocrats who organised the Long Parliament and the King's downfall. Despite growing antagonism between them, the King had been one of the chief supporters of this first experiment of town planning, with the creation of the first public square in London. The square was surrounded on two sides by tall terraced houses, intended for fashionable society — 'the habitations of Gentlemen and men of ability'. To the west was the new church of St Paul, and to the south stood the existing mansion of the Bedford family, which faced onto the Strand, the major artery connecting the City of London with the court at Whitehall, or with Parliament at Westminster.
As with so many ambitious projects, money ran out. By the time Inigo was commissioned to build St Paul's Church, Lord Bedford ordered that he should make it no more expensive than a barn. The architect bravely responded, 'You shall have the handsomest barn in England!', but he had to endure further interference when William Laud, then Bishop of London, insisted that the church's altar should be on the east side, where an enormous Tuscan portico was designed as the main entrance. Two insignificant doors were added either side of it while a new
