A Ship for The King Read online

  ‘The First Lion’s Whelp, Your Grace.’

  Buckingham’s face visibly brightened. ‘A Whelp, by God! No, Goring, you may not. She is mine and I shall reserve her for myself.’ He smiled at Faulkner. ‘Pray refresh yourself, Captain, while I digest His Majesty’s wishes.’

  Faulkner withdrew with the young staff officer, who introduced himself as Captain Charles Aylwin, and accepted a glass of wine and a slice of sausage. After a few moments the man identified as Goring led the other senior officers out and Aylwin went in to see the Duke, emerging a few moments later to beckon Faulkner inside. Buckingham stood, his doublet fully buttoned, all trace of his former déshabillé eradicated.

  ‘Captain, you have doubtless seen the state to which we are reduced and that the army is under orders to embark. The commands that you have brought are quite impossible. I shall come aboard your Whelp at daylight, by which time the embarkation will be completed and we may weigh and proceed home.’

  ‘I shall make the necessary preparations, Your Grace.’

  If Faulkner expected any personal advantage to accrue to himself for the conveying of His Grace the Duke of Buckingham on his homeward passage, he was to be, yet again, disappointed. No flag flew at the Whelp’s main-truck to reveal the presence of the Lord High Admiral of England: that remained at the masthead of the flagship. The Duke’s passage in the Whelp allowed him to enter England quietly without ceremony so that he was at the King’s side before the reports of the extent of the military disaster reached His Majesty. Being alongside the King enabled Buckingham to smoothly explain the losses of men and matériel, usually by blaming the conduct of others. The consequences of this were to be dire: the King learned nothing about military operations nor ever lost the habit of foisting the blame for his own later military incompetence upon the shoulders of other men.

  Unaware of all this, the departure of the Duke left Faulkner with a false sense of his own importance and orders to take the Whelp out on a cruise and – within the limits of his stores – wage war upon French commerce before laying her up for the winter at Deptford.

  In this, however, Faulkner achieved a modest success, enhancing his own growing reputation by taking four French coasting vessels off the island of Marcouf before escaping over the horizon, only to make a brief appearance at Harfleur where he put the local fishing fleet to flight after taking three of their number. He was most lucky in discovering a laden merchantman at anchor off St Valéry en Caux which he carried off under the noses of the French ashore. Thereafter, and fearing the pursuit of a ship-of-war such as they had encountered on their outward passage, he headed for the Thames where the Whelp was paid off and the evidence of his prizes entered before the Prize Court. With Buckingham owning the Whelp he anticipated no problems in securing favourable adjudications and before Christmas he was able to pay those men who answered his summons to Deptford the monies due to them. His officers, Brenton and Eagles especially, all pocketed sums which, though modest enough, pleased them mightily. As for himself, he was some two hundred pounds better off, though he had enriched Buckingham by three times that amount.

  Though no great exploit, the cruise of the Whelp under Faulkner was sufficiently known about to persuade the Court of Trinity House to take notice of him. Mainwaring advised him to invest in a London ship, and Faulkner purchased the majority shareholding in a 200-ton snow named the Perseus, all of which caused his election as a Younger Brother of the Trinity House.

  Early the following year Faulkner’s new ship was among those chartered to convey to the newly established colony of Maryland – named in honour of the Queen who was thus known at Court – some of the fifteen hundred orphans and homeless children found on the streets of London. The business detained Faulkner in London for several months and in this manner he took no part in Denbigh’s resumption of operations from the île de Rhé in support of the Huguenots of La Rochelle that year. Denbigh had married a sister of Buckingham’s and thereby obtained the chief command. However, his stay in the Pertuis Breton was short-lived – a mere seven days – before he returned home, to the fury of the King who had given his word to support the Protestant cause.

  These circumstances enraged the public, many of whom were inflamed at the King’s treatment of Parliament over the Petition of Rights, which he first approved and then, entering Parliament in person, promptly repudiated. The populace of London, always sensitive to political turmoil, began to appear on the streets in a bloody mood. Milling crowds called for Buckingham’s impeachment even as the Commons solemnly attributed all the ills of the kingdom to Buckingham’s malign influence on the King. The Duke was reliably reported to have brushed aside the powers of Parliament, claiming that neither the House of Lords, nor the House of Commons, could touch the hair of a dog if it lay under the King’s protection. The implication was clear: he was, alongside the King, above Parliament. The matter came to a head when a mob murdered the Duke’s physician, Doctor Lambe, attaching to the corpse a placard which asked:

  Who ruled the Kingdom? – The King.

  Who ruled the King? – The Duke.

  Who ruled the Duke? – The Devil.

  Meanwhile, in taverns and ale-houses the doggerel was roared out that:

  Let Charles and George do what they can,

  The Duke shall die like Dr Lambe

  Only vaguely aware of these disturbances, Faulkner’s preoccupation with his Maryland venture was abruptly ended when he received orders to recommission the Whelp and join a squadron then forming at Deptford where Buckingham would embark for Portsmouth. Yet another expedition was intended to sail for France, a move widely regarded as stupid and designed solely to recover the King’s reputation in Europe, of which no one anticipated success, except Buckingham and the King himself.

  Though thought to be concerned about the Duke’s safety, the King accompanied Buckingham to Deptford where the Lord High Admiral once again embarked. Faulkner, keen to ensure that nothing went wrong with the firing of salutes and the getting under way of the squadron, took no part in the ceremonials of embarkation. Indeed, he was not happy until the ships had cleared The Downs and stood down Channel where the cool breeze blew away the complications of the shore. He was beginning to loathe the predominance of political argument that seemed about to tear the country asunder; it seemed that every street corner produced its orator, even in the purlieus of Wapping and along the Ratcliffe Highway. Even the Brethren of Trinity House – good seamen to a man – whose main concern was the regulating of pilotage on the Thames and the dispensing of charity to the wretched wounded and incapacitated seamen of the King’s ill-run navy and their widows and orphans, were not averse to falling into violent argument over the rights of the King versus those of the Parliament.

  From time to time he encountered Mainwaring there and his old protector seemed bowed under the weight of his duties and responsibilities. ‘We must hold together,’ Mainwaring had asserted, ‘else our legitimacy will be compromised.’

  To which another of their number, a Younger Brother named William Rainsborough, had interjected, ‘Aye, Sir Henry, you are right, but does our legitimacy derive from the will of the King, or is it for the benefit of the poor? His Majesty had left us in our beneficent goodness to attend to the abuses he promotes under His Grace of Buckingham . . .’

  ‘But these differences are passing, Rainsborough,’ Mainwaring had maintained.

  ‘Let us hope so, Sir Henry. Let us hope so,’ Rainsborough had responded.

  The Duke’s squadron joined the other men-of-war and transports assembled at Spithead towards the end of August. Again the season was late and within a month the equinoctial season would be upon them, but still Buckingham delayed, almost as contemptuous of the weather as he was of the common people of England. He sent orders for his captains to join him ashore for breakfast on the 23rd and Faulkner received his summons the night before, ordering a boat for early next morning. He was fortunate in having again secured the services of Brenton and Eagles, along with
many of his former hands who, hearing of the hot press sent out to round up all available seamen for the new expedition, had chosen to volunteer with the ‘lucky’ Captain Faulkner.

  That morning Faulkner arrived at the Sally Port early and made his way to Buckingham’s quarters, where he learned the Duke was in conference with Monsieur Soubise, the Huguenot representative. After a confused buffet with some two score of captains and officers jostling for viands in a small room in which Soubise’s own suite were also milling, Faulkner heard his name called. Summoned to Buckingham’s side as he made to leave the room, the Duke introduced him to the King’s secretary, Carleton, whom Faulkner recognized from the audience at Whitehall Palace. They had left the main room and were in the entrance lobby, approaching the door to the street where a coach waited for Buckingham. Having attended to the formalities, the Duke drew on his gloves, saying:

  ‘Captain Faulkner, be so kind as to conduct Mr Secretary Carleton to your Whelp, weigh anchor and carry him through the fleet, so that he may convey a report of our strength and preparedness to the King.’

  Buckingham did not wait for an acknowledgement for he turned immediately to an officer on his far side. Faulkner was in the act of addressing Sir Edmund Carleton when he was shoved rudely aside. Losing his balance, he stumbled and swung round as a powerful man, having pushed Faulkner aside, plunged a knife into Buckingham’s chest.

  ‘Villain!’ cried the Duke, plucking the blade from his own body and falling back into the arms of those behind him as blood started from his breast and mouth. Cries of ‘Murder!’ and ‘Assassin!’ alerted the others, including the Duchess of Buckingham in the rooms above, so that she and her sister, the Countess of Anglesey, rushed on to the landing. Their screams added to the pandemonium below where Buckingham lay in his own gore, the life ebbing fast from him. As someone slammed the doors closed, others cried out for the whereabouts of the murderer and a man stepped forward.

  ‘I am he,’ he said calmly, from the open door of the adjacent kitchen. At first few heard him in the hubbub and then Carleton grabbed Faulkner’s arm.

  ‘Seize and hold him!’ he said and, as others realized the man had confessed to his crime, the rasp of swords being tugged from their scabbards added to the uproar. Swiftly Faulkner, Carleton and several men surrounded the assassin and denied others the presumed right to summarily execute the murderer, who remained quiet and self-possessed throughout, until in due course, his victim having been declared dead, he was taken away in irons.

  ‘He did not deny it,’ Faulkner subsequently told Mainwaring. Soon afterwards La Rochelle capitulated, only four of its fifteen thousand inhabitants remaining, most reduced to living skeletons thanks to their trust in King Charles and the Duke of Buckingham. As for those English seamen who had taken part, none held their heads high except perhaps John Felton, Buckingham’s executioner.

  ‘He was a gentleman, a lieutenant owed arrears of pay for his services before La Rochelle and, so I am told,’ explained Mainwaring, ‘a man who confessed the crime without torture, claiming he had killed the Duke so for God and this country . . .’ Mainwaring shook his head. ‘They say that when brought to the Tower the people cheered him and set him up as David as opposed to Goliath, and when imprisoned in the Tower the Earl of Dorset threatened him with the rack if he did not reveal his accomplices. Do you know what he said?’

  Faulkner shook his head.

  ‘“I am ready for that. But I must tell you that I will then accuse you, my Lord of Dorset, and none other.”’

  ‘I heard he was hanged at Tyburn,’ Faulkner said.

  ‘Aye and is gibbeted at Portsmouth. The King wanted him racked but the Attorney-General demurred – he was too popular.’

  ‘What make you of such a man and such a deed, Sir Henry?’ Faulkner enquired.

  Mainwaring looked at Faulkner and saw in the question the deficiencies of the education that he had conferred upon his protégé. ‘John Felton preceded the executioner, Kit. Buckingham had far over-reached himself and his death by Felton’s hand only puts off a day of coming evil. Parliament already had its hounds on My Lord Duke’s trail and it was only a matter of time . . .’ For some moments Mainwaring stared at Faulkner and then asked, ‘Are you still minded to make something of Bristol?’

  Faulkner looked up. He had not considered the matter of his future since again laying up the Whelp at Deptford. ‘I do not know. I have connections here with the Trinity House and yourself, not to mention the Perseus . . .’ The image of Katherine Villiers floated into his mind’s eye. Almost without thinking he asked, ‘What of Mistress Villiers? Have you heard of her?’

  ‘Mistress Villiers? Do you still yearn after her, Kit?’

  ‘I entertained some hopes . . .’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘I understand that her cousin’s fate has ensured that she stands high in the Queen’s favour.’ Mainwaring paused. ‘I think, Kit, she is beyond your grasp.’

  ‘I fear so.’ Faulkner caught Mainwaring’s eye. ‘In that case I shall make my way to Bristol, if the Trinity House will approve my decision.’

  ‘I have no doubt but that can be arranged. I am being pressed to stand for election as Master . . .’

  ‘And I hear that you are betrothed, Sir Henry,’ Faulkner said with an assumed cheerfulness, ‘in which case allow me to drown my sorrows and drink to your health.’

  ‘Over a good dinner, Kit, after which you shall meet my bride-to-be.’

  ‘That I should very much like.’

  Part Two

  A Ship for the King

  Seven

  High Barbary

  January – September 1637

  ‘Is that Captain Faulkner?’ Faulkner peered from beneath the wide brim of his hat from which the torrential rain poured as from a downpipe. Driven by a strong westerly wind the winter rain lashed the two men cruelly as they met in the narrow street. ‘Who asks?’

  ‘Captain William Rainsborough. It is Faulkner, is it not?’

  ‘Indeed it is, though one is like to meet the devil on such an evening.’

  ‘Aye. God help sailors on such a night.’

  ‘Amen to that. Do you have business with me, Rainsborough?’

  ‘I do . . .’

  ‘Shall we then adjourn; the King’s Head is hard by.’

  ‘By all means, Faulkner, by all means. Anything to get out of this damnable rain.’

  Inside the tavern Rainsborough threw off his sodden hat, gloves and cloak, shaking his long dark hair as he kicked out a stool from under a table. He was a well-made and imposing man whom Faulkner recalled from the Trinity House. They shook hands. ‘What brings you to Bristol, Captain?’

  ‘Please call me William. I know you to be a Younger Brother of the London House and that is partly why I am here.’

  ‘I am indeed, as I know you to be too. And, by the way, I am known to my friends as Kit.’

  ‘Well then, let us have a glass before I answer your question . . .’

  ‘Allow me, I am known here . . .’ Faulkner called for wine and food as the two men drew up chairs as close to the fire as they could, though the tavern was not crowded that wet evening.

  With a tankard in front of each of them Rainsborough said, ‘I am come to see you and ask you to join our expedition. I will be frank with you, I would rather have stayed in London where I have much to occupy myself, but in deference to Sir Henry Mainwaring’s wishes I am here to solicit your assistance.’

  ‘I know of no expedition,’ Faulkner replied. ‘Indeed the very word is like to numb me since I was associated with Buckingham’s ill-fated expeditions to La Rochelle.’

  ‘Well this is no repeat of Buckingham’s policy, though it is something that man might have undertaken with better effect upon the country and his own standing therein. No, we are intending an expedition to Sallee, to attack the pirates’ stronghold there and break them so that they no longer terrorize our coasts. We have petitioned the King and he is in favour but, and with Our Gracious Majesty the
re is usually a but, there are insufficient King’s ships ready, though two may be made available. This is a mercantile venture, an armed mercantile venture, though we will sail under the King’s commission and therefore make of ourselves his servants for the purpose.’

  ‘And I assume the King wishes us to subsidize this expedition ourselves,’ Faulkner said ruefully.

  Rainsborough smiled and took a swig of his ale. ‘Not quite,’ he answered after wiping his beard, ‘we provide the ships, the officers and men, but a portion of Ship Money will be placed at our disposal to fund contingent expenses plus the commissioning of such men-of-war as the royal dockyards yield.’

  ‘Ship Money is not a phrase to be talked of here in a loud voice.’

  ‘I was not aware of using a loud voice,’ Rainsborough rejoined.

  ‘In a manner of speaking, I mean,’ Faulkner said, aware that Rainsborough’s bonhomie was conditional. ‘Though much of Bristol sides with the King, there are those who do object to such a tax. But what of me, William? Why dost though come all the way to Bristol to see me? Just because Sir Henry Mainwaring wished you to?’

  ‘In part, but also because the Perseus mounts twenty guns of heavy metal, we know you have her properly manned with a gunner and competent mates and we would have her in the squadron. As she is presently lying in the Pool I wanted a quick decision.’

  ‘Surely there are plenty of London ships mounting such artillery?’

  ‘Aye, but not many are owned by Brethren. Besides, she is a fine ship and we wish to charter her, preferably with you in command since her present master is unwell and has had no previous naval experience.’

  ‘I know him to be unwell, though not sufficiently indisposed to be replaced, which he will not like . . .’

  ‘Come, Kit, are you willing or no?’

  Faulkner smiled. ‘Did you think that I was so rooted in this place that you could not winkle me out?’

  ‘I had heard you were comfortably placed. When a man has amassed a fortune he is reluctant to leave his hearth and his fortune in the hands of others. Besides, you are married, are you not? When a man marries he is less predictable.’