confidence of the gentry in their security of tenure and to the power of the monarch to impose his will on their feudal dummy5
ambitions. It was to be a tragic irony of history that this gracious home, with its noble aspect and high- mullioned windows, was to feature in the most famous and melancholy chapter in our brief chronicle of former days.'
Audley shook his head at the text. It was maybe tragic, but hardly ironic that Standingham had received a bloody nose during the Civil War; the village was simply running true to form. Even the fact that it had been staunchly Parliamentarian, following its lord of the manor as so many places had done, and yet had still managed to ruin itself although Parliment had won the war, was a predictable occurrence. He could only hope that in reviving the family fortunes Charlie Ratcliffe had also reanimated the slumbering fiend who turned every Standingham event into a misfortune.
The track beside the bus stop sported a mouldering notice-board bearing the legend NO THROUGH ROAD, but, if the Reverend Musgrave's map could be relied on, it led nevertheless straight up the ridge to the old sallyport beside one of the bastions along the south rampart.
'Had the Lord of the Manor of Standingham been young and vigorous when King and Parliament parted from one another on the great issue of England's liberties in the year 1641, then he would dummy5
have assuredly have followed his inclination toward the banner of one or other of the belligerent parties—'
Very true. The Reverend Musgrave could no more resist stating the obvious than he could pass up the chance of using a ringing adverb or adjective.
'And, conversely, had he been old and unversed in the arts of war he would doubtless have stood aloof from the fratricidal strife which then ensued
—'
True again. So presumably the lord of the manor, Sir Edmund Steyning, had been neither young and vigorous nor old and unversed in the arts of war—
'But it chanced that Sir Edmund Steyning was neither.'
Bingo!
'In Edmund Steyning, it might be said, piety and enthusiasm for the Protestant cause combined with a fiery and martial spirit which no physical handicap could altogether extinguish. From his dummy5
earliest manhood he had followed the drum, first under the veteran Dutch commanders in their long war against Catholic Spain and then under the greatest captain of the age, the veritable 'Lion of the North', King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, in his homeric struggle against the Imperial tyranny of the Holy Roman Empire on behalf of German Protestantism.''
There was no doubt where the Reverend Musgrave's sympathies lay. No doubt he had also thundered from his pulpit against Catholic emancipation in his own time, so he certainly wouldn't miss a chance of recalling the armed Catholic might of the Counter-Reformation—
'It was on the glorious field of Breitenfeld, when his hero and mentor smote the Catholic power, that the accident befell which ended Sir Edmund's active career. For, while attending to his duties with the Swedish field artillery which was a novel feature of Gustavus's army, he was desperately wounded by the premature explosion of a quantity of gunpowder. Although attended by the king's own surgeon, his life was despaired of for many weeks; and even when that indomitable spirit and iron will which sustained him throughout his life had triumphed over his injuries, it was in a body so shattered by war that no thought of further service could be entertained.'
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The track levelled between two low brick walls. Peering over the parapet of one, Audley realised he had reached the line of the Great Western Railway's extension which had once been attracted by the Reverend Musgrave's 'happy juxtaposition of communications'. He was glad that the old Methodist minister was no longer alive to see the change which another century's educational and scientific blessings had wrought on the railway: its tracks had long since been torn up and young trees were already pushing their way up through the granite chippings. So far as Standingham was concerned, the railway age was as much part of bygone history as Sir Edward de Stayninge's crenellated manor.
'It was to his patrimony at Standingham that the crippled hero returned, from a Europe now wracked by the worst excesses of the Thirty Years'
War, which had reached its apogee in an unparalleled outburst of ferocity, unsurpassed since the fall of the Roman Empire, with the last vain and discredited attempts of the Papalists to impose uniformity on the unconquerable Protestants of the North.'
Hadn't it been six of one and half a dozen of the other? Or was it that Musgrave had had to contend with a Newman-trained Catholic priest in his combined parishes? No matter
—
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'Yet even here, amongst the lush water-meadows of the Irthey and the Harwell, the stormclouds of war were gathering. Debarred by his physical infirmities from taking part in the events which preceded the English Civil War, Sir Edmund was yet not unaware of their genesis, which were borne upon him not only because of his staunch Protestant sympathies, but also because of the excesses of his Catholic neighbour, Lord Monson, ever a favourite with the Queen and her priests.'
Enter the Demon King himself, good old Black Tom!
And here was another sign, a printed poster pasted on to hardboard: PRIVATE. TRESPASSERS WILL BE
PROSECUTED. To which, in an egalitarian spirit which Charlie Ratcliffe ought to have approved, someone had added BALLS with a red felt-tipped pen.
'It seems likely, indeed, that Monson's enmity and depredations, threatened in times of uneasy peace, had already animated Sir Edmund to plan that unique and formidable line of circumvallation which, even after the ruinous passage of two and a half centuries, yet remains for the discerning student of fortification to marvel upon; and which, with the aid of his willing and sturdy tenantry, he was to encompass so speedily when the war commenced.'
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Audley looked around him. The Irthey ridge, which he had been steadily climbing, was now so heavily wooded that he had passed into the line of old Edmund's circumvallation almost without noticing it. But here, where the track passed through what had seemed like a natural cutting in the hillside, he had actually come upon what the Reverend Musgrave required discerning students of fortification to marvel upon.
