Now I’ll spare you a recitation of my career under John Churchill, as you’ve no doubt heard a slanderous version of it from brother Jack. Much of it consisted of long marches and sieges on the Continent-very repetitive-and the rest has been parading around Whitehall and St. James, for our nominal purpose is to guard the King.
Lately, following the death of Charles II, John Churchill spent some time on the Continent, going down to Versailles to meet with King Louis and biding in Dunkirk for a time to keep a weather eye on the Duke of Monmouth. I was there with him and so when Jack came through aboard his merchant-ship full of cowrie-shells I went out to have a brotherly chat with him.
Here the tale could turn ghastly. I’ll not describe Jack. Suffice it to say I have seen better and worse on battle-fields. He was far gone with the French Pox and not of sound mind. I learnt from him about you. In particular I learnt that you have the strongest possible aversion to Slavery-whereof I’ll say more anon. But first I must speak of Monmouth.
There was a Mr. Foot aboard God’s Wounds, one of those pleasant and harmless-seeming fellows to whom anyone will say anything, and who consequently knows everyone and everything. While I was waiting for Jack to recover his senses I passed a few hours with him and collected the latest gossip-or, as we say in the military, intelligence-from Amsterdam. Mr. Foot told me that Monmouth’s invasion-force was massing at Texel and that it was certainly bound for the port of Lyme Regis.
When I was finished saying my good-byes to poor Jack I went ashore and tried to seek out my master, John Churchill, to give him this news. But he had just sailed for Dover, London-bound, and left orders for me to follow on a slower boat with certain elements of the regiment.
Now I’ve probably given you the impression that the Grenadier Guards were in Dunkirk, which is wrong. They were in London guarding the King. Why was I not with my regiment? To answer I would have to explain what I am to John Churchill and what he is to me, which would take more time than it would be worth. Owing to my advanced age-almost thirty-and long time in service, I am a very senior non-commissioned officer. And if you knew the military this would tell you much about the peculiar and irregular nature of my duties. I do the things that are too difficult to explain.
Not very clear, is it? Here is a fair sample: I ignored my orders, cast off my uniform, borrowed money on my master’s good name, and took passage on a west-bound ship that brought me eventually to Lyme Regis. Before I embarked I sent word to my master that I was making myself useful in the West, where I had heard that some Vagabonds wanted hanging. As I’m certain you have perceived, this was both a prophecy of what was soon to come, and a reminder of events long past. Monmouth had set sail for Dorset because it was a notorious hotbed of Protestant rebellion. Ashe House, which was the seat of the Churchill family, looked down into the harbor of Lyme Regis, which had been the site of a dreary siege during the Civil War. Some of the Churchills had been Roundheads, others Cavaliers. Winston had taken the Cavalier side, had brought this riotous place to heel, and he and his son had been made important men for their troubles. Now Monmouth-John’s old comrade-in-arms from Siege of Maestricht days-was coming to make a bloody mess of the place. It would make Winston look either foolish or disloyal in the eyes of the rest of Parliament, and it would cast doubts on John’s loyalty.
For some years, John has been in the household of the Duke of York-now King James II-but his wife Sarah is now Lady of the Bedchamber to the Duke’s daughter, the Princess Anne: a Protestant who might be Queen someday. And among those Londoners who whisper into each other’s ears for a living, this has been taken to mean that John’s merely putting on a show of loyalty to the King, biding his time until the right moment to betray that Papist and bring a Protestant to the throne. Nothing more than Court gossip-but if Monmouth used John’s very home ground as the beach-head of a Protestant rebellion, how would it look?
Monmouth’s little fleet dropped anchor in the harbor of Lyme Regis two days after I had arrived. The town was giddy-they thought Cromwell had been re-incarnated. Within a day, fifteen hundred men had rallied to his standard. Almost the only one who did not embrace him was the Mayor. But I had already warned him to keep his bags packed and horses saddled. I helped him and his family slip out of town, following covert trails of Vagabonds, and he despatched messengers to the Churchills in London. This way Winston could go to the King and say, “My constituents are in rebellion and here is what my son and I are doing about it” rather than having the news sprung on him out of the blue.
It would be a week at the earliest before my regiment could come out from London-which amounts to saying that Monmouth had a week to raise his army, and that I had a week in which to make myself useful. I waited in a queue in the market-square of Lyme Regis until the clerk could prick my name down in his great book; I told him I was Jack Shaftoe and under that name I joined Monmouth’s army. The next day we mustered in a field above the town and I was issued my weapon: a sickle lashed to the end of a stick.
The next week’s doings were of some moment to John Churchill, when I told him the tale later, but would be tedious to you. There is only one part you might take an interest in, and that is what happened at Taunton. Taunton is an inland town. Our little army reached it after several days’ straggling through the countryside. By that time we were three thousand strong. The town welcomed us even more warmly than Lyme Regis; the school girls presented Monmouth with a banner they had embroidered for him, and served us meals in a mess they had set up in the town square. One of these girls-a sixteen-year-old named Abigail Frome…
Shall I devote a thousand words, or ten thousand, to how I fell in love with Abigail Frome? “I fell in love with her” does not do it justice, but ten thousand words would be no better, and so let us leave it at that. Perhaps I loved her because she was a rebel girl, and my heart was with the rebellion. My mind could see it was doomed, but my heart was listening to the Imp of the Perverse. I had chosen the name of Jack Shaftoe because I reckoned my brother was dead by now and would not be needing it. But being “Jack Shaftoe” had awakened a lust I had long forgotten: I wanted to go a-vagabonding. And I wanted to take Abigail Frome with me.
That was true the first and possibly the second day of my infatuation. But in between those long sunny June days were short nights of broken and unrestful sleep, when fretful thoughts would dissolve into strange dreams that would end with me shocked upright in my bed, like a sailor who has felt his ship hit a reef, and who knows he ought to be doing somewhat other than just lying there. I’d not bedded the girl or even kissed her. But I believed we were joined together now, and that I needed to make preparations for a life altogether different. Vagabonding and rebellion could not be part of that life-they are fit for men, but men who try to bring their women and children along on that life are bastards plain and simple. If you spent any time on the road with Jack, you will take my meaning.
So my Vagabond-passion for this rebel girl made me turn against the rebellion finally. I could flirt with one or the other but not with both; and flirting with Abigail was more rewarding.
Now came word that the militia-my old regiment of local commoners-was being called up to perform its stated function, namely, to put down the rebellion. I deserted my rebel regiment, crept out of Taunton, and went to the mustering-place. Some of the men were ready to throw in their lot with Monmouth, some were loyal to the King, and most were too scared and amazed to do anything. I rallied a company of loyal men, little better than stragglers, and marched them to Chard, where John Churchill had at last arrived and set up an encampment.