Forgotten Names

Forgotten Names

The abandoned church has no roof. The altar wall and south transept are held up by timber and scaffolding. Inside, the burial plaques of the local notables are still visible, recording long lives and many children, whose life journeys had barely begun. On its own, by the font, is an elongated memorial, puzzling in its brevity. ‘ET, died 28 November 1718, age 84; GT died 7 May 1721, age 85.’

Edward was eight when the war broke out. Men were fighting in other parts of the land; he knew not why. Father spoke of great deeds, of evil men and kings of blood. Once he went with his father to Westminster. ‘Today you will hear of the birth of a new world, the governance of the Lord’s anointed.’

All he heard was long, ponderous speeches. Despite the hard benches, he fell asleep. Later, he listened to the Member for Huntingdon instructing father on his duty. The Member was very ugly, with warts upon his face. Edward found him stiff and stern. ‘He is a great hero,’ father told him. ‘A fine general, who will bring down the king.’

So it was, though the war dragged on for years, until Edward feared he would at last be called upon to fight. Once it was over, father became graver than ever. ‘I have a solemn duty to perform,’ he told Edward, ‘such as no man in England has ever done before. I will be reviled by some, feted by others. Tomorrow, I will kill a king.’ The death warrant was signed, the king beheaded. The Lord Protector brought back peace, if not equanimity, to the land.

As a corn merchant, father thrived, for people must always have bread. Not so wealthy as to excite envy, not so underhand as to engender hate among the peasantry. The family prospered. Mother cast around for a suitable wife for her son. Edward had already made his choice, Lord Ducane’s youngest daughter, Gertrude.

They met in secret, behind haystacks as the harvest progressed; on the hunting field as the followers dispersed and fell away; more publicly at balls and assemblies. As lovers do, they exchanged tokens, promises and excited, stolen kisses.

His Lordship, finally apprised of the situation, reacted with fury. A match between the two was impossible, he roared. His daughter and the son of a mere corn merchant! Besides, the girl was already promised to the Earl of Bedford’s second son.

Both Bedford and his son were in exile with the Pretender, with no expectations of returning to the country. And these were new times, where a man was judged by his honesty and his piety. Many was the merchant who could command more ready wealth than an Earl or a Duke. Gertrude would not be happy with anyone else.

‘Why should I care if the girl is happy or not? Her duty is to marry who I command and bear him children. Who knows? The first son may die and our grandson will be heir to the earldom of Bedford. We will wait for the old times to return.’

The old times did not return. Gertrude was twenty. Her contemporaries were well married, her elder sisters matriarchs with nurseries full of squalling children. Corn merchant and Lord conferred. An engagement was agreed upon. A long one, insisted the Lord, the wedding in the autumn following the bride’s twenty-first birthday. By then the Pretender may have returned to seize his throne.

No longer forced to meet in secret, the lovers were ecstatic, riding across the flat eastern landscape together, creeping across landings in the middle of the night, romping in wood and water meadow. Advised by the local wise woman, their couplings came to nothing, serving only to bind them closer together.

In the summer, news of the Lord Protector’s illness filtered through, borne on the grapevine which reached out from Westminster to Huntingdon and the east. His Lordship insisted on postponing the wedding. Prospects for the harvest were not good, there was a mysterious illness among the cattle and rumours the plague was about once more. Father agreed. Quietly, he moved half of his financial wealth to the low countries, despite his religious principles lending it out at a good rate of interest to Spaniards and Catholics.

The Lord Protector died the following year. Out of respect, the wedding was postponed once more. The lovers became frantic, ignoring all decorum and locking themselves in private rooms for hours at a time. ‘Tumbledown Dick’, the new Protector, could not keep the warring factions of parliament and country together. Anarchy threatened. The Pretender was recalled.

Along with him came Bedford and his sons.

A new wedding was mooted. Edward resisted; Gertrude resisted; father resisted. Threatened to go to law. Lord Ducane and the Earl of Bedford conferred. Such impertinence was not to be endured.

The new king was vengeful. For over ten years he had trailed around the courts of Europe: no money, no kingdom, no hope. His father lay in his grave, set there by ungrateful subjects and a rebellious parliament. Those responsible would be punished. Men who had signed the death warrant of the old king will find they had signed their own death warrant. Even the dead regicides were dug up, their bones and their graves desecrated.

Father fled, taking Edward with him. In Antwerp he was murdered in an alley. Edward fled again. From the Low Countries and Italy he wrote letters to his parish priest. On Sundays, Lord Ducane’s cook found them tucked inside her prayer book and forwarded them to their real destination.

There was a marriage. The bridegroom’s mother cried. The bride cried.

Years passed. Letters were sent and received. Gertrude failed to conceive a child. Her lessons from the wise woman had been well learned. In Amsterdam a quiet Englishman with a Spanish name grew rich, having neither child nor wife to provide for.

The Earl’s second son died. Gertrude was heartbroken, took to her bed. Determined on a pilgrimage to Rome to atone for her sins. Took the cook’s daughter with her as a travelling maid.

Travelling was slow in the days of bad roads and lazy horses. One required money and patience for an audience with Pope or cardinal. It was five years before she appeared in England again, her sorrow assuaged, her girth enhanced. The Earl granted her a small stipend and a tiny cottage, where she took in two children, orphaned by the French wars, as directed by the Holy Father as her penance.

Kings came and went: Charles, James, William. The orphans grew up, settled on lives of their own, though they never forgot Gertrude.

In the first year of the new, Queen Gertrude married again, at the age of sixty-seven. ‘No fool like an old fool,’ sneered the gossips. ‘And to a foreigner, a dirty Spaniard.’

Together they lived in perfect harmony, visited by the orphans and their offspring. Gertrude grieved longer and harder for her second husband than for her first, but she declared herself too old and frail to make a second pilgrimage.

They were buried in the nave of the village church. Only the families of the orphans and the cook’s daughter attended the funeral. For two years the grave was left without a stone. One of the orphans provided one at last. There must have been a mistake by the mason, for the i