Here in Lambeth we are well but troubled, as is everyone in the kingdom, by the continuance of the war. Food is very scarce and there is no coal to be had at all. There has been petty fighting on the roads into London and we never know whether meat for the markets will be driven in or not. Our men are called up to serve in the City trained bands but they have not yet been sent outside the bounds of the City, so when they are stood down they come back to work. We try to keep the Ark and the gardens open as normal and we are trading a little. There are still people who want to live as if the war were not taking place and they still want to know that gardens are growing and that strange and rare beautiful things can still be seen. It is very pitiful to me when a young gentleman comes to order some seeds or plants or trees before he goes off to join either the king or the Parliament army, and I know that he is planting for his heir and does not expect to see the trees grow. It is at those times that I realize what wickedness this war is and will be, and I confess, I blame the king very much for standing so upon his rights and driving his people into rebellion.
I did not think I would ever be able to say it, but I am glad you are not here, husband. I miss you and so do the children but I do not know how a man could keep his wits and bear the sorrow of this kingdom, especially one like you who had served the king and the queen and seen them reap the consequences of their folly. There are rights, God-given rights, on both sides of the argument and all a woman can wonder is why the two sides cannot come together and resolve to live in peace. But they cannot, they will not, and God help them we all suffer while they hammer out the victory one on the other. Parliament is now in alliance with the Scots and they have sworn to defend each other against the king. But the Scots are a long way away and the king’s armies are very close, and everyone seems to think he has the advantage. Also, he has now recruited a Papist Irish army and we are all most afraid of their coming.
What seems more and more certain to me, when this is all over, is that we shall see the king in London again with his liberties barely trimmed, and those who have stood against him will have to pray God that he is more generous in victory than he was in peace time. Prince Rupert is said to be everywhere, and the other commander of the armies is the queen, so you can imagine how the king is advised between those two. Prince Maurice serves also and they have taken Bristol and Devizes this summer. Against the wealth of the king, the Parliament army makes a pitiful showing. The king has commanders who have fought all over Europe and know how it should be done, Prince Rupert has never lost a battle. Against them the Parliament puts plowboys and apprentice lads into the fields and the gentlemen mow them down like barley. We hear constantly from the Parliament of little battles which are fought at places of no name and mean nothing but are hailed as great victories.
However, the king has not yet approached London – and the City remains firmly against him. Your father-in-law, Mr. Hurte, has provided his own regiment to defend the City, he says – as all the merchants do – that the king cannot rule the City again. But since all the other great towns of the kingdom are falling to the king one by one then clearly, London cannot hold out alone – especially if the queen prevails on her French relations to join her husband. If a French army marches on Westminster the Parliament will have been defeated indeed, and I think it will be harder to be rid of the French Papists than it was to invite them.
Worse than the French Papists will be an Irish army. The great fear is that the king is planning all the time to flood the kingdom with Irishmen, but I cannot believe that such wickedness is in his mind. Not even he, surely, would sow such a whirlwind. If they could ever be prevailed upon to leave, what Englishman would ever trust the king’s word again?
The king holds Oxford of course, and his friends hold garrisons all the way up the Great North Road to Scotland. The queen holds York, and while she is in the field I have no hope of peace. The king’s army must march on London soon, and those of us who know not what to think (and that is most of us) can only hope that the city surrenders quickly.
The children are well, though running wild with neither school nor society to tame them. I will not let them go to the city which is full of the plague again, spread I am sure by the traveling soldiers who come and go from battle to village. I have had a one-way door set in our wall so that we can give food to passing paupers without any one of the servants having to open our front door. The bridge over the stream I have had made into a little drawbridge and we pull it up at night. I have completed the wall around the Ark and garden and sometimes I feel that I am a Mrs. Noah in very truth, peering over the edge of the Ark as the waters of the end of the world arise and swirl around me. It is on such nights that I feel very lonely and very afraid and I wish that I were with you.
Johnnie says that he will be a soldier and fight for the king. He has an etching of Prince Rupert on his black horse pinned to the head of his bed and makes most bloodthirsty prayers for his safety every night. He is a handsome, brave boy, as clever as any child in the kingdom. He is reading and writing in Latin and English and French, and I have set him to making the plant labels in English and Latin which he does without error. He misses you very much but he is proud of having a Virginia planter for a father, he thinks you are daily wrestling with bears and fighting Indians and prays for your safety every night.
Frances is well too. You would hardly recognize her, she has grown in these last few months from a girl to a young woman. She wears her hair pinned up now all the time and her skirts very long and elegant. I always knew she would be beautiful but she has surpassed my hopes for her. She has such a dainty prettiness about her. She is as fair as her mother, Mrs. Hurte tells me, but she has a lightness of spirit which is all her own. Sometimes she is too flighty, I am aware of it, and I try to reprove her, but she is such a merry dear that I cannot be too strict. She manages the garden in your absence and I think you will be proud of her when you return. She has a real way with plants and growing things. I often think it is such a shame that she cannot take your place in very truth and be another Tradescant gardener as she always wished to be.
It is her fate which is my greatest worry if the fighting should come near to London. I think that Johnnie and I could survive anything but a direct attack, but Frances is so pretty that she attracts notice wherever she goes. I dress her as plainly as I can and she always wears a cap on her head and a hood to cover her hair when she goes out, but there is something about her which turns men’s heads. I have seen her walk down the street and people simply look at her as if she were a flower or a statue, something rare and fine which they would like to take home with them. A wealthy man, whom I will not call a gentleman, visited the garden the other day and offered me ten pounds to give her to him. I had Joseph show him off the premises as quickly as you would wish, but it shows you the anxieties which I suffer over her. One of the kitchen maids – a fool – told Frances that the gentleman had taken a fancy to her and made an offer which was not of marriage, and before he had gone I am sorry to say that she climbed up on the garden wall, turned her back on him, and upended her skirts to show him her bum. I pulled her down and spanked her for indecency, and then thought she was crying most pitiably for shame, but when I had her right way up again I saw she could not speak for laughing. I sent her to her room in disgrace, and only when she was gone did I laugh too. She is a great mixture of minx and child and young lady, and I fancy the fine gentleman would have got more than he had bargained for.