Marple and the Chartists 7

Marple

December, 1842

Question from student (Caroline):What happened after he died?

John: On the day that King Charles' head was struck from his shoulders, on the scaffold set up outside his own banqueting chamber of his palace at Whitehall, we threw down the Monarchy and proclaimed a Republic, though we had little idea as to what constitution might shape it.

They chose me, and made me Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster as well, and for the next four years I signed the orders of the Government of England, “John Bradshawe, President” where another had lately signed “Carolus Rex”. Autocracy was not my way though, nor would the Parliament have allowed it. Although I was the name and face of authority, I was the expression of their Will.

And I was diligent in effecting my duties, ensuring the collection of taxes so that our armies in Ireland and Scotland, where war still raged, should be provisioned and paid, and that our navies should defend our shores and our interests overseas. Cromwell respected me, if sometimes begrudgingly, for his wife had to counsel him to pay me due regard. Under my tutelage the Council of State engrossed proposals for taxation reform, land reform, and common law reform.

Would that the Parliament had been as diligent as the Council of State, and put into effect the laws we proposed, but it argued and procrastinated, and let time slip through its fingers.

Student 8 (Susan): What happened about Cromwell when all this was going on?

John: Oliver Cromwell was covered in warts and full of his own importance. He was a man born before his time. He took over as head of the Parliament and before long had set himself up as a supreme ruler, as if he had been king himself. When he dissolved Parliament a few years after the trial, I spoke up roundly against him.

Student 9 (John): Were the people of Marple for you or for the King?

John: The landowners of this area - the Mainwarings, Booths, Brooks and Ardernes - were all Puritans. In 1642 residents of Marple signed a document supporting both King and Parliament. My brother Henry of course was a Puritan, so he was on our side. But he wasn’t a killjoy Puritan. He was a very convivial man, who spent a lot of money at a pub in Disley called the Leather Bottle. Henry didn’t die before the Restoration. He was brought to trial for his part in the court martial of the Earl of Derby but he was dealt with leniently. His defence was that his name did not actually appear on the Earl’s death warrant. He was imprisoned for a month and then released. He died in March 61 or 2.

Student 10 (Emily):And how did the country take to you after it was all over?

Cromwell's patience broke on the twentieth of April 1653, and he marched his gunmen into the House, declared it dissolved and took away the Mace, calling it a “Bauble”.

One day, as we knew he would, he came to the chamber of the Council of State, where for the last time I presided over an emergency session. Cromwell, with his musketeers at his side, told us “Gentlemen, if you are here as private citizens you shall not be disturbed, but if as a Council of State, this is no place for you.”

To this I replied “Sir, we have heard what you did at the House in the morning, and before many hours all England will hear it. But, sir, you are mistaken to think that Parliament is dissolved, for no power under Heaven can dissolve them but themselves.”

Therefore I gathered in my house such men as might overthrow him; Wildman, Haslerigg, Scott, Weaver and Bishop. We planned to bring in an army of three thousand Scotsmen under General Monck to put down Oliver, but were discovered, and while some were placed under arrest, Cromwell yet feared to apprehend me as much as I feared his retribution.

But the guns won, and the Parliament was dissolved. To give Cromwell his due, his estimation of me was not diminished, for he confided to his brother in law, Major General Desborough that “None had dared stand against him save honest Bradshawe, the President.” Those fair words could not purchase my sanction for what Cromwell had done, and though I was excluded from his hand-picked Parliament which replaced the lawful one, when the next year he was forced to call a Parliament by proper election I was brought in as Member for Cheshire, and carried my opposition into the debating chamber. I made myself a thorn in his side, for I would have an Oliver rule England on his own no more than I would have a Charles.

When he dissolved that Parliament, having made himself King in all but name, I deemed it prudent to withdraw from London and attend to my commission as chief Justice of Chester and North Wales, especially when in 1656 Cromwell arranged the election in such a way as to deny me victory in Cheshire. Having cheated me of my Commons' seat he attempted to strip me of my Judge's office, but I defied him and went about my circuit, though not without difficulty. There were now two parallel authorities in the land; Cromwell with his Major Generals and soldiers; Parliament with its Judges and civil courts. This made for some nice confusion, such as when I ordered that rascally old delinquent Sir Owain Wynne of Gwydyr to act as Sheriff of Denbighshire, and he informed me that he did not know whom to obey, the Major Generals or me. When I said “me”, his response was that he was “aged sixtie foure, an unwieldie man, having had of late a shrewde fitt of sicknesse and a nastie bodie ever since, and unfitt for travel.”

So I dispensed such justice as I could, being conscious that while my own health was beginning to fail, it was well known that Oliver's was much worse. He died on September 3rd, 1658, the anniversary of two of his greatest victories, a sign from God, if ever there was, that the mighty should make no presumption. His cronies set up his useless son Tumbledown Dick in his place as Lord Protector, but he lasted no more than four months before Parliament was recalled and I was again elected as its Member for Cheshire.

Once more I was offered the Presidency but I declined. My wife Mary had lately died, leaving me bereft, childless and with the hand of time weighing upon my shoulder. Like Cromwell before me I was subject to fits of fever, and though I took my seat in the Parliament and in the Council of State, I came less and less to the House, spending my time in my mansion at Fonthill in Wiltshire which a grateful nation had bestowed upon me.

Parliament, in any case, was by then swarming with Royalists once more, calling for the younger Charles Stuart to be brought in as King; blaspheming, and mocking all our work, all our struggle, sweat and blood.

 One day when these Royalists arrived and boasted with much profanity, I told them “I am now going to my God, I had not stayed there to hear His great name blasphemed,” and I stood down from Parliament.

I died on Halloween, 1659, and was buried in the Henry VII Chapel Westminster Abbey, in Cromwell’s vault, with all the honours befitting a former head of State, but the Republic was not long in falling, and my detractors not long in destroying my reputation. In their pamphlets I was a witch, a taker of bribes, an adulterer and above all a King-killer. The last I do not deny, but the rest of it I refute vehemently, in the presence of my Saviour, what I did, I would do again.

When Charles Stuart the younger was at last brought in as the second King of that name, I was dug up along with Cromwell and Ireton, and my corpse barbarously mistreated and we were decapitated and our heads were stuck on poles on the gibbet at Tyburn so that all the loyal populace to see that justice had been done. This happened on the anniversary of his father’s execution. Many years later our skulls were still there in place when another head joined them.

But there were those who snatched up the small bones of my fingers and took them as relics to Virginia and to the islands of the Caribbean. Hence this poem.

On a mountain above Martha's Bay in Jamaica, there stood a cannon engraved with this inscription:

Near this gun lies the dust of John Bradshawe

Who fairly and openly adjudged Charles Stuart,

Tyrant of England to a public and exemplary death.

Pass not on till thou hast blessed his memory,

And never, never forget that rebellion

against tyrants is Obedience to God.

A prophet in his own country is ever disregarded. Even while I held the highest office of State, my clerk laughed at me, thinking I did not know what he was doing, but I signed the papers he wrote at my dictation, and I saw what he had written. He showed no mercy to my broad Cheshire vowels. I said that four ships should be sent to Scotland. He wrote fower.

Bradshaw’s Ghost, was a scurrilous royalist trace which was published at the time of the 1660 restoration. Since I had died on Halloween, 31st October - the people added the title of Witch to that of King Killer and Regicide.

Student 11 (Robert): Did you regret what you had done?

John: War impoverishes a nation. Fortunes are expended on armament and to make good the damage crops are left unplanted. Men who would till are instead fodder for the gun. Tithes and taxes remain uncollected and in the absence of revenues, the servants of the state go unpaid or taken compensation in other forms. So instead of wages I was frequently paid in the confiscated lands of Royalist Malignants. I came into possession of Greenways, a fine mansion near Rudyard in Staffordshire, and made this my seat when I was in Cheshire for the Assizes.

I was given a very bad press. I am called a monster, a bugaboo, a turnip jack o’lantern. They said I chopped of the hands of an old poor woman for stealing firewood. I prosecuted bad men on the State’s behalf, and defended honest men against its overbearing power. My loyalty was to justice.

But as you have asked, if I had to do it again, I would do so.

Question 12 (Simon): Do you know how you are remembered now in Marple?

John: No, you tell me.

Another student:(Ann): From your will in 1653 there was a £700 endowment for a free school in Marple, but as your estates were confiscated after the Restoration this bequest could not be paid. But the school continued. In 1718 the amount due to the master was £4 12 s per annum and the curate filled the position. This endowment was further augmented by a grant of £100 from your relative Thomas Bradshaw in 1739. Your school still exists today.

All the students together: And we have this poem about you.

Marple Hall, about John Bradshaw

And he who did the doom pronounce

By whom his head should fall

Came back at length a broken man,

To die at Marple Hall

And in no grave his body lies,

No tablet doth disclose

That in the sepulcher at last

John Bradshawe found repose.

I was so pleased when my play was finally written, and couldn’t wait to show it to my teacher.