The Daughter of Time

‘They were actually worse than the I.R.A. because there was a fifth column element in it. They were financed from Holland, and their arms came from Holland. There was nothing forlorn about their movement, you know. They expected to take over the Government any day, and rule Scotland. All their preaching was pure sedition. The most violent incitement to crime you could imagine. No modern Government could afford to be so patient with such a menace as the Government of the time were. The Covenanters were continually being offered amnesties.’

‘Well, well. And I thought they were fighting for freedom to worship God their own way.’

‘No one ever stopped them from worshipping God any way they pleased. What they were out to do was to impose their method of church government not only on Scotland but on England, believe it or not. You should read the Covenant some day. Freedom of worship was not to be allowed to anyone according to the Covenanting creed – except the Covenanters, of course.’

‘And all those gravestones and monuments that tourists go to see—’

‘All Tonypandy. If you ever read on a gravestone that John Whosit “suffered death for his adherence to the Word of God and Scotland’s Covenanted work of Reformation”, with a touching little verse underneath about “dust sacrificed to tyranny”, you can be sure that the said John Whosit was found guilty before a properly constituted court, of a civil crime punishable by death and that his death had nothing whatever to do with the Word of God.’ He laughed a little under his breath. ‘It’s the final irony, you know, that a group whose name was anathema to the rest of Scotland in their own time should have been elevated into the position of saints and martyrs.’

‘I wouldn’t wonder if it wasn’t onomatopoeic,’ Carradine said thoughtfully.

‘What?’

‘Like the Cat and the Rat, you know.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘’Member you said, about that Cat and Rat lampoon, that rhyme, that the sound of it made it an offence?’

‘Yes; made it venomous.’

‘Well, the word dragoon does the same thing. I take it that the dragoons were just the policemen of the time.’

‘Yes. Mounted infantry.’

‘Well, to me – and I suspect to every other person reading about it – dragoons sound dreadful. They’ve come to mean something that they never were.’

‘Yes, I see. Force majeure in being. Actually the Government had only a tiny handful of men to police an enormous area, so the odds were all on the Covenanters’ side. In more ways than one. A dragoon (read policeman) couldn’t arrest anyone without a warrant (he couldn’t stable his horse without the owner’s permission, if it comes to that), but there was nothing to hinder a Covenanter lying snug in the heather and picking off dragoons at his leisure. Which they did, of course. And now there’s a whole literature about the poor ill-used saint in the heather with his pistol; and the dragoon who died in the course of his duty is a Monster.’

‘Like Richard.’

‘Like Richard. How have you been getting on with our own particular Tonypandy?’

‘Well, I still haven’t managed to find out why Henry was so anxious to hush up that Act as well as repeal it. The thing was hushed-up and for years it was forgotten, until the original draft turned up, just by chance, in the Tower records. It was printed in 1611. Speed printed the full text of it in his History of Great Britain.’

‘Oh. So there’s no question at all about Titulus Regius. Richard succeeded as the Act says, and the sainted More’s account is nonsense. There never was an Elizabeth Lucy in the matter.’

‘Lucy? Who’s Elizabeth Lucy?’

‘Oh, I forgot. You weren’t on in that act. According to the sainted More, Richard claimed that Edward was married to one of his mistresses, one Elizabeth Lucy.’

The disgusted look that the mention of the sainted More always caused on young Carradine’s mild face made him look almost nauseated.

‘That’s nonsense.’

‘So the sainted More smugly pointed out.’

‘Why did they want to hide Eleanor Butler?’ Carradine said, seeing the point.

‘Because she really had married Edward, and the children really were illegitimate. And if the children really were illegitimate, by the way, then no one would rise in their favour and they were no danger to Richard. Have you noticed that the Woodville-Lancastrian invasion was in Henry’s favour, and not in the boys’ – although Dorset was their half-brother? And that was before any rumours of their non-existence could have reached him. As far as the leaders of the Dorset-Morton rebellion were concerned the boys were of no account. They were backing Henry. That way, Dorset would have a brother-in-law on the throne of England, and the Queen would be his half-sister. Which would be a nice reversal of form for a penniless fugitive.’