reputations would be made. But to begin with, Prince Rupert was away again, escorting the Queen to Holland.
Impatient for action, Lovell had already looked at other positions. In May, the King had finally acknowledged that the upheaval in the country necessitated a Lifeguard of Horse to protect his royal person. Lovell at that time appeared briefly with Sir Thomas Byron, one of seven distinguished brothers on the Royalist side, who was the Lifeguards commander. The trial posting failed to please the fastidious Lovell. By August, he had attached himself to Sir
John
Byron, another of the brothers, who had ridden into Oxford on the 28th of the month with two hundred men.
This Byron was a chin-up commander with black brows and a moustache like a thick black ingot struck above his upper lip. He was famous for fighting even when there was no need; he survived being wounded in the face with a pole-axe and he would earn himself the nickname ‘the Bloody Braggadocio’. His flamboyance failed to convince Lovell. Perhaps, for him, Sir John Byron was just too colourful. He burned so brightly he would overshadow subordinates, offering little to compensate. So when Sir John Byron rode away, Lovell stayed behind in Oxford.
‘Was that permissible?’ Edmund anxiously suspected that the highhanded Lovell had deserted Byron’s colours.
‘Never join the first troop you see,’ snorted Lovell. Whenever he spoke as a soldier, with that experienced cynicism, the awed Treves accepted his words open-mouthed.
Lovell joked that there were still five other Byron brothers whose commands he could assess until he found one that suited him. But he knew what he wanted: service with Prince Rupert, working out of Oxford.
‘Any fool can see this is the place,’ Lovell barked. ‘Hell’s teeth, the King is wasting himself, struggling to capture Hull, just because it is supposed to be a good northern port and contains a mighty magazine —’
‘A magazine?’ asked Edmund.
‘An arsenal. Left over from the Scottish Wars — but while King Charles has been faddling outside the gates like a butter maid, the magazine is whipped away and bundled down the road south to Parliament… What’s left? Bristol is held by the rebels. Warwick is a hotbed of dissent. Nottingham and York are too remote to contemplate.
Oxford is
central, well disposed to the King, easy to supply, easy to access, defensible, and best of all, rich enough and gracious enough to host a royal court.’
‘So …?’
‘So, let us sit here until the court arrives.’
Us,
thought Edmund, feeling proud.
While they waited for the court to find them, Lovell’s plan to marry Treves to Juliana Carlill flickered into life.
Lovell had heard of this heiress whose guardian wanted to find her a husband. Anyone more observant than Treves might have noticed the source of the tale was servants’ gossip in an alehouse. Only a deep cynic would wonder whether the information had been deliberately planted among the potboys by the girl’s associates, to snare some well-to-do scholar. Orlando Lovell, like many a passionate schemer, never supposed that anybody other than himself had the skill or the bravado to plot.
Once he had ascertained that the girl was young and alone in the world, supported only by an elderly bachelor guardian, Lovell declared that these people were innocents, waiting to be plucked. It was up to Edmund, Lovell urged, to snap up the unguarded prize before some quicker man stepped in ahead of him.
Orlando Lovell liked to make things complicated. He implied to Edmund that the proposal to find Juliana a husband had been initiated by the Queen. Henrietta Maria was then at her highest peak of influence. Given that the King was an indecisive cipher to his tenacious French wife, ambitious men would do well to respect her suggestions, Lovell said. Treves was too unworldly to doubt the Queen’s involvement, let alone suspect Lovell of inventing it.
When, urged by his perturbed
Impatient for action, Lovell had already looked at other positions. In May, the King had finally acknowledged that the upheaval in the country necessitated a Lifeguard of Horse to protect his royal person. Lovell at that time appeared briefly with Sir Thomas Byron, one of seven distinguished brothers on the Royalist side, who was the Lifeguards commander. The trial posting failed to please the fastidious Lovell. By August, he had attached himself to Sir
John
Byron, another of the brothers, who had ridden into Oxford on the 28th of the month with two hundred men.
This Byron was a chin-up commander with black brows and a moustache like a thick black ingot struck above his upper lip. He was famous for fighting even when there was no need; he survived being wounded in the face with a pole-axe and he would earn himself the nickname ‘the Bloody Braggadocio’. His flamboyance failed to convince Lovell. Perhaps, for him, Sir John Byron was just too colourful. He burned so brightly he would overshadow subordinates, offering little to compensate. So when Sir John Byron rode away, Lovell stayed behind in Oxford.
‘Was that permissible?’ Edmund anxiously suspected that the highhanded Lovell had deserted Byron’s colours.
‘Never join the first troop you see,’ snorted Lovell. Whenever he spoke as a soldier, with that experienced cynicism, the awed Treves accepted his words open-mouthed.
Lovell joked that there were still five other Byron brothers whose commands he could assess until he found one that suited him. But he knew what he wanted: service with Prince Rupert, working out of Oxford.
‘Any fool can see this is the place,’ Lovell barked. ‘Hell’s teeth, the King is wasting himself, struggling to capture Hull, just because it is supposed to be a good northern port and contains a mighty magazine —’
‘A magazine?’ asked Edmund.
‘An arsenal. Left over from the Scottish Wars — but while King Charles has been faddling outside the gates like a butter maid, the magazine is whipped away and bundled down the road south to Parliament… What’s left? Bristol is held by the rebels. Warwick is a hotbed of dissent. Nottingham and York are too remote to contemplate.
Oxford is
central, well disposed to the King, easy to supply, easy to access, defensible, and best of all, rich enough and gracious enough to host a royal court.’
‘So …?’
‘So, let us sit here until the court arrives.’
Us,
thought Edmund, feeling proud.
While they waited for the court to find them, Lovell’s plan to marry Treves to Juliana Carlill flickered into life.
Lovell had heard of this heiress whose guardian wanted to find her a husband. Anyone more observant than Treves might have noticed the source of the tale was servants’ gossip in an alehouse. Only a deep cynic would wonder whether the information had been deliberately planted among the potboys by the girl’s associates, to snare some well-to-do scholar. Orlando Lovell, like many a passionate schemer, never supposed that anybody other than himself had the skill or the bravado to plot.
Once he had ascertained that the girl was young and alone in the world, supported only by an elderly bachelor guardian, Lovell declared that these people were innocents, waiting to be plucked. It was up to Edmund, Lovell urged, to snap up the unguarded prize before some quicker man stepped in ahead of him.
Orlando Lovell liked to make things complicated. He implied to Edmund that the proposal to find Juliana a husband had been initiated by the Queen. Henrietta Maria was then at her highest peak of influence. Given that the King was an indecisive cipher to his tenacious French wife, ambitious men would do well to respect her suggestions, Lovell said. Treves was too unworldly to doubt the Queen’s involvement, let alone suspect Lovell of inventing it.
When, urged by his perturbed
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