‘I hope that when you are a man you will be a gardener in a peaceful country,’ she said fervently.

At the end of March there was extraordinary news which came into the city as gossip and was confirmed within the day in broadsheets and pamphlets and ballads. Despite all premonitions and fears, despite all likelihood, the Parliament army, working men officered by those who had never been gentlemen at court, had met the king’s army at Alresford outside Winchester, fought a long, hard battle and won a resounding victory. It was all the more impressive because the battle had turned on a cavalry charge by the royalists which, for once, did not end in a rout of terrified Parliament infantry being cut down as they fled. This time the Parliament men stood their ground, and the king’s horse, thrown back into the twisting, deep lanes of Hampshire, could not come around again, could not regroup, while the Parliamentary infantry doggedly and determinedly slugged their way uphill to Alresford ridge, and were in Alresford before nightfall.

There were bonfires all over Lambeth that night, and precious candles showed at every window. The next Sunday there was not a man, woman nor child who did not attend a service of thanksgiving. The tide of the war had ebbed for a moment, for a moment only; and no cavaliers would be riding through the narrow streets of Lambeth for a month or two at least. And there would be no Papist Irish murdering soldiers either. The news came filtering through that the Parliamentary forces had captured all the Irish-facing ports of Wales. The king could not bring the Papists into England. Even in Scotland the small royalist forces were being driven back.

‘I think the king will have to come to terms with Parliament,’ Alexander said to Hester one evening in April. ‘He’s on the defensive for the first time and the royal army is not one which fights well in retreat. He doesn’t have the advisors or the determination to carry on.’

‘And what then?’ Hester asked. She had a basketful of sweet pea pods from last year in her lap and she was shelling the seeds ready for planting. ‘Do I unpack the rarities from their hiding places?’

Alexander considered for a moment. ‘Not until peace is declared,’ he said. ‘We’ll wait and see. It maybe that the tide is turning at last.’

‘D’you think the king will make peace with Parliament and come meekly home?’

Alexander shrugged. ‘What else can he do?’ he said. ‘He has to come to terms with them. He is still king: they are still Parliament.’

‘So all this pain and bloodshed has been for nothing,’ Hester said blankly. ‘Nothing except to teach the king that he should manage his Parliament as his father and the old queen managed theirs.’

Alexander looked grave. ‘It’s been an expensive lesson.’