I married Palestine Ross in the last days of June and together we made ready for war. We set up in small rooms off Fetter Lane, close to the chapel where her father preached and where I went to be baptized into faith. The gathering storm was there in that temple and in chapels all through London. The pulpit words were little fires that scorched the hearts of all who listened. And like upright brands, with our heads aflame, we carried the light to anyone who would listen. Those who did not, we put aside in Newgate Prison. At night before sleep, my wife sang psalms and encircled me with gentle arms.
I worked for months in a carpenter’s pit, planing timber for Parliament’s navy until my arms outgrew my coat. In late summer I took leave of my wife. Giving her what coins I had, I left with Parliament’s troops under the command of Lords Fairfield and Essex. Their orders from Commons: to rescue the king from himself.
We were a ragged, out-of-step band of thousands, ’prentices, tradesmen, and untested soldiers. But in two months’ time we were drilled and marched and preached into good order. A new pike was given to me, and I learned the facings, doublings, and wheelings of field battle, all the while chanting, “How great be my God.”
I fought first at Edgehill at October’s end and killed my first Welshman, who, knowing me for a countryman, died cursing me to Hell. His words, spoken in Welsh, worked like acid until I imagined I wore his curses like pagan markings on my naked skin. Then came the killing of Cornishmen, Lancashiremen, Cheshiremen, and again more Welshmen, in countless, endless numbers, and I learned the torment of being known as a traitor to my own country. In overwhelming numbers the Welsh fought for the king, for the royal house of Tudor first took root in the harsh and spirited soil of Wales, and its men would not be severed from their pride except through the biting edge of a sword.
Battles were won and lost and won again. Men less base than I died drowning in their blood while merciless plunderers lived and gained in fortune. For every man that joined the fight, three would creep away under cover of night to far-flung counties. Soldiers gambled on the sly and kept time with the baggage whores that posed as washerwomen. Order slipped from the ranks like water down a chain.
In May of sixteen and forty-three we joined with a cavalry troop at Winceby and broke the Royalists’ ranks, taking eight hundred of the king’s men. Chief among our cavalry leaders was a tall, wiry man who charged his group of horsemen as though it were one body. His clothes, ill-fitting and coarse, hid limbs of hammered iron. So tight was his discipline that his men were taxed twelve pence for swearing and put in stocks for drinking. And for raping a woman, though she be the Whore of Babylon, hanging with a short rope. His voice, sharp and piercing, carried a mile or more across the battlefield, and it became the tuning gauge to all our rallying cries. His name was Oliver Cromwell.
One black evening, on a night with no moon, I huddled under my cloak as I ate my supper of bread and meat, both gone green with age. A man came out of the darkness and asked if he could share my fire. I knew his voice at once to be Cromwell’s and I gladly made room for him next to the warmth of the flames. I had heard his voice earlier as he went from soldier to soldier, stoking courage, giving solace, offering prayer. He was one of the few officers to ever do so and was greatly loved for it. We spoke of humble things: our homes, our wives, the pleasures of a man’s work far from the battlefield.
He asked me my age and if my father yet lived, a question for which I, sadly, had no answer. After a time, he rose to go but stood for a moment within the circle of light. He gestured out towards the many campfires filling the surrounding field in the thousands and said, “I know well the horrors of killing a countryman. Prayer and steady fasting give some comfort and yet will only serve to temper the pain. Your agony, which shows clearly on your face, gives the true measure and worth of your conscience.”
He nodded and gripped my shoulder fondly for an instant, as he might have done for one of his own family, and said, “Somewhere out there is my own son just your age, Thomas. I would not ask another man’s child to risk death and not my own.” He walked away, and I pondered on how many Royalists’ sons had paid other men, poor and untitled, to fight their battles; and it came to me in that moment that I would have followed Cromwell into the sea if he had asked.
Cromwell’s name, and leadership, soon became the banner for victories, and in June of ’forty-five his cavalry joined our infantry for the battle at Naseby, which brought thirteen thousand of our men against seven thousand of the king’s. We faced one another across a dry valley of heath, the sky a blue bowl above us. A strong northwest wind rattled the banners and trappings behind us. I was placed on the front line of pike hard by the right flank of Cromwell’s men. I could see Cromwell on his mount, his face filled with a savage joy. He was singing psalms and once even laughed. His darting eyes found me, and saluting me, he cried out, “Have you said your prayers, Thomas, for yourself, as well as for your enemies?”
I nodded, proud that he addressed me directly in front of the troops. His horse reared, nervous for battle, and bringing the horse to heel, he exhorted me, saying, “Never forget that God calls those he loves most to do that which is most hard. I remember it always, as should you.”
He spurred his horse about as the king’s nephew Prince Rupert began the charge and engaged the battle. And though the prince broke our lines first, Cromwell did win the day, capturing three thousand prisoners, most of them Welsh. Within a fortnight they would be paraded in the streets of London, hanged, or jailed. But I was no longer a Welshman; I was of no country anymore but that which embraced Cromwell.
The general had seen my way with a pike at Edgehill, piercing a horse and rider together like a spitted cod, so he elevated me to corporal, enlisting me into his New Model Army. Through town and countryside he fought, taking bread and praying with his common troops. He would always make time especially for me, giving me words of encouragement and, when needed, correction. Once he gave me, with his own hand, a prayer book which I carried under my breastplate, its weight like a shield over my heart.
His was the spirit borne up by the Holy Word after which we followed, like magpies upon the red-tailed hawk. Any Protestant man who had fought for the king but desired to pledge for Parliament was welcomed as a brother, regardless of birth. Those that were popish bred were reformed, or swept to dust.
We fought until the king was captured and brought to Commons as a betrayer to his own people. Even from his prison, Charles Stuart plotted with every foreign land, Catholic or Protestant, taking money, arms, and men to win back his throne. He went to his trial believing he had never done wrong, regretting only that he had not first hanged the dissenters and queried them afterwards. The king was tried as any common man and sentenced to death, Cromwell’s name writ largest upon the warrant.