There was a general murmur of disappointment at that. New Hall was merrier when the duke was at home, and there was always the chance of a glimpse of the king.

‘But you’ll go to him,’ Elizabeth said, rightly reading her husband’s contented serenity.

‘I am to meet him in London. And then I have to go down to the New Forest, looking for trees. He wants a maze,’ Tradescant said with ill-hidden delight. ‘Where I am to get enough yew from I don’t know.’

John only ever told half the story to the curious, and he always emphasised the things that they should hear. He was ready to tell that the young King Charles had already dismissed dozens of his father’s idle wastrel favourites, that the court now ran to a strict rhythm of prayer, work, and exercise. The king seldom drank wine, and never to excess. He read all the papers set before him and signed each one personally with his own name. Sometimes his advisers would find small-handed notes written in the margin, and he would ask them later to ensure they were obeyed. He wanted to be a king with an eye to detail, to the meticulous observance both of ceremony and the minutiae of government.

John did not tell them that he had no eye to the grander picture, he was incapable of visualising consequences on a long-term or big scale. He was faultlessly loyal to those he dearly loved, but quite incapable of keeping his word to those he did not. Everything to the new king was personal; and when a man or a nation displeased him, he could not bear to see them or think of them.

His sister Elizabeth of Bohemia, still in exile, still waiting for support from her brother, remained uppermost in his mind, and he ransacked his advisers for ideas, and his treasure chests for money to pay for an army to help her. John never mentioned to anyone, not even his wife, the long hours in the darkened rooms of the Dutch moneylenders, and the humiliation of finally seeing that no man in Europe had any faith in the partnership of the untried king and the extravagant duke.

It was not only the moneylenders who found the duke wanting. An itinerant preacher, his clothes ragged but his face shining with conviction, came to Chelmsford and set up to preach under the market cross.

‘You surely won’t go and hear him,’ John grumbled to Elizabeth as she laid his supper on the table and threw a shawl around her shoulders.

‘I should like to go,’ she said.

‘He’s bound to preach heresy,’ John said. ‘You’d much better stay home.’

‘Come too,’ she invited him. ‘And if he speaks nonsense we can stop at the Bush on the way home and taste their ale.’