by Robin Blake
FIVE
Lawson’s Livery kept its own riding and coaching horses, but also housed the mounts of many townspeople – such as me – who did not have their own stables. The majority of horses were boxed in a large yard on the edge of town and brought to the smaller stables at Old Shambles when needed by their owners. The proprietor was a staunch supporter of the government, and what he had to say to the thirty people who gathered in his yard the next morning didn’t please all of them.
‘I have above fifty horses in my care,’ Lawson told us, ‘and I’ll be damned if I’ll let them fall into the hands of the rebels. They must go into the country for safety. You will all have to do without your horses until the danger is past.’
There were a few cries of dissent.
‘They’re not yours to do with as you please, Jack Lawson. I make my own mind up what’s to do with my gelding.’
‘It won’t be up to you – it’ll be the soldiers when they take him and give him to a dragoon who will flog him to death. I remember ’fifteen. The only things they were desperate for were powder and horses, and they helped themselves until this town was stripped bare.’
‘Don’t forget girls. They stripped them bare an’ all.’
There was some laughter, but Lawson was in no mood for jokes.
‘I will let the old horses stay in town – any over twenty years – as they’re no use in warfare. The rest are coming away.’
‘Where are you taking the horses, Jack?’ someone called out.
‘The lesser number that knows that, the less likely the bloody Scotch’ll find them out. You may trust me. The Corporation does, isn’t that right, Alderman Grimshaw?’
Heads turned to locate Ephraim Grimshaw, a former Mayor of Preston who was still the most formidable power on the Corporation. He had been standing at the edge of the meeting. Now he shouldered his way to the front and held up his hand.
‘Mr Lawson has given his assurances that the horses will be cared for as well as ever, and will, of course, be returned to their owners. But I want to emphasize – please! – it would be unthinkable to let half a hundred prime animals be added to the rebels’ strength. Lord Derby, who has himself (I am sure) already dispersed the stables at his own house, would be scandalized. And the figure this Corporation would cut in London – well, we’d be a laughing stock. So we consider this a capital idea.’
The meeting broke up, with the numbers of men grumbling being roughly balanced by those who welcomed Lawson’s scheme.
‘It’s a precaution worth taking, I suppose,’ said Nick Oldswick the watchmaker, as we left together. He was a notorious Jacobite. ‘It’s a hard choice for one like me: I can’t afford to lose my horse, but I don’t want the Chevalier to lose the war – or his life.’
‘Then you should prepare yourself. History says he will lose the war, at least.’
‘Not the latest history. The battle near Edinburgh wasn’t even a close heat. General Cope got a thrashing. We must wait for the next and that’ll decide the issue.’
‘But where will that be?’
Oldswick shrugged.
‘Not here, I hope.’
Everyone I spoke to gave a different opinion, with no one sure where the decisive engagement would be fought. The gloomiest considered that history would be repeated and it would be here in Preston. Others saw the rebels crossing the Mersey into Cheshire, where they would be cut to pieces by Cumberland’s army – or vice versa. Yet others considered the rebels would give Cumberland the slip and press on to London, where they would batter the militia and trained bands on Finchley Common. Or vice versa.
Lawson looked after three horses of ours: Goody, a sober mare of fifteen, the eight-year-old gelding, Patrick, and old Jones, who was now twenty-two and fit enough, though a little stiff about the legs and cloudy in the eyes. We never sold Jones or sent him to the slaughterhouse because we were too fond of the old fellow, but nowadays I only rode him to picnics and the like. However, it meant that while Goody and Patrick would be whisked away to the country, I would still have a riding horse available, if only a very slow and thoughtful one.
‘It is a good precaution,’ said Fidelis when I told him of Lawson’s move. ‘If the Prince is to win, it had better be by fair play and not stealing horses.’
We were at the Turk’s Head Coffee House and I had given him a concise account of what occurred at Lawson’s. Fidelis had not been at the meeting as he stabled his own two hacks at his bachelor house on Fylde Road, which he called Scrafton’s Roost, having built the place from the winnings of a particularly fierce gamecock called the Sultan of Scrafton. Having your own stable was more expensive than paying Lawson’s monthly fees, as he had to employ a handler, and in bargaining for oats and hay he had none of Lawson’s advantage. Yet a doctor could not put in hazard his ability to ride out to a patient at a moment’s notice. Fidelis needed his horses close at hand.
The customers at the Turk’s Head were not like those at Porter’s. This was generally a wittier, wiser constituency, sceptical about politics and more interested in opinion and literature, art and music. But the atmosphere even here was loaded with the suspicions and secrecies that attend these moments of high national uncertainty. Customers were talking in quieter tones than usual. Their neighbours at the next table may not be trusted and those on the other side might be plotting. Such were the times.
‘By the way,’ I said, ‘that piece of broadcloth – Matty washed it last night and it is dry now.’
I had it folded up in a linen bag, which lay on the table between us. Fidelis took it out. The tartan was a chequerboard, each square the same size, a symmetric arrangement of pale orange, pale green and muddy brown.
‘Congratulations, Luke,’ I said. ‘If this is part of the costume of one of the dead men – the older one, I suppose – then your deduction from the fellow’s brown knees has been vindicated.’
‘It looks as if the killers, while throwing a body and a head into the Ribble, also threw in some of their victims’ clothing.’
‘My understanding is that all the Highland families have their own pattern. If so, this can help us identify the dead man. Who is there near at hand and might know one pattern from another?’
‘William Douglas?’
‘Let’s try him.’
Douglas’s butchery was a few doors from the top of Turk’s Head Court, at the corner of School Lane. The butcher spoke with a pronounced, but not impenetrable, Scotch accent, and hewed his meat with a ferocity to match, so that Fidelis and I walked up there in high hopes that he would provide us with the clan name of the tartan.
Douglas put down his cleaver and looked attentively when I showed him the blanket, which he told us was called a plaid, pronounced ‘pladd’.
‘I believe all the Highland families or tribes have different designs,’ I said.
‘You must call then clans, Mr Cragg.’
‘Very well, clans. Do you know which one this belongs to?’
Douglas pushed out his lips and shook his head.
‘I’m from Musselburgh,’ he told us, ‘a fair way from the wilderness. This is a Highland plaid, I’m fairly sure of that. But I don’t know the clans’ codes. I’m sorry, gentlemen, but as you are here, can I interest you in a cut of this lovely brisket – perfect for braising?’
Politely declining, we left Douglas picking up his cleaver to return to work. I suggested that we try MacGowan the cartwright, whose yard was outside the Fisher Gate bar. This was an even worse idea as MacGowan told us he had been born and learned his trade in Dundalk in Ireland.
‘Where is a genuine Scotchman in this town?’
We were strolling back along Fisher Gate when the answer appeared in the shape of MacLintock emerging right in our path through the door of the Mitre Tavern. He looked in some way disorderly, as if making an escape.
‘They’re building up to fisticuffs in there.’ he said to us while knocking the dust off his hat. ‘Nobody knows a bloody thing and they’re all in a
panic and firing questions at anyone they think might give them answers. And when you say you can’t, they bloody turn on you. They menace you.’
I knew that, being a Presbyterian from Glasgow, MacLintock did not take kindly to the Highlanders. But that might not preclude some knowledge of their ways.
‘May I fire a question of my own at you, Mr MacLintock?’ I said. ‘I promise you I won’t menace you if you can’t answer.’
He nodded and I showed him the plaid.
‘Can you identify the clan?’
He looked over it judiciously.
‘How did you get this?’
‘It was in the river.’
‘With that headless body of yours?’
‘It was merely found washed up nearby. I am curious.’
He shook his head.
‘I know some of the tartans, but I cannot be sure of this one. In Glasgow we prefer the Highlands to be contained in the Highlands, if you understand me. How they like to live is foreign to us and most rebarbative.’
He put on his hat and then doffed it with a small bow.
‘I would be interested to know how this Highlander and his garments came into the River Ribble. And so, I am sure, would the Lord Lieutenant. Good day, gentlemen.’
Fidelis and I exchanged a sharp glance. That reference to Lord Derby. What did it mean?
‘Is he, MacLintock, presuming to inform his lordship of events in Ribchester?’ I said as MacLintock moved off down a side street. ‘It’s none of his business.’
‘It might be if he happened to be a confidential informant of Lord Derby.’
‘I don’t believe it. We are falling in too much with general suspicions. Not everybody is a spy.’
‘So MacLintock was only advancing a course of action – that you apply to Lord Derby for intelligence in this matter. It is not a bad suggestion.’
This was true: it was by no means a bad suggestion and, parting from my friend, I went directly to Patten House, Lord Derby’s residence in Church Gate. I had reasonable hope of finding him in residence. Although it had no soldiers, Preston was a more central headquarters for directing the defence of Lancashire than Derby’s country seat at Knowsley, for it sat at the heart of a natural web of news and information.
If you wanted to meet the Lord Lieutenant at Patten House, you had to do so on his own terms. You craved an audience; he graciously inclined his head, or shook it, according to his own decision. There would often be a long wait in the room beside the entrance reserved for supplicants.
But I was in luck. The Earl invited me to go up to him directly. I found him in his shirtsleeves leaning over a map table. He was plotting a line with a pair of compasses.
‘I hope this is important, Cragg. I am very busy.’
‘My lord, two naked bodies have been discovered in the country around Ribchester. Both were decapitated.’
‘Well? You are the Coroner. You know what to do.’
‘I have an interesting problem of identification, with a possible bearing on the military situation. There was a tartan plaid nearby, and Doctor Fidelis’s examination has shown evidence that one of the men may have been a wearer of the kilt.’
Still bent over his map, Derby half turned to me.
‘Highlanders at Ribchester?’
‘There was a note with one of the bodies – in the mouth, as a matter of fact. It was an exculpatory note, claiming that the men were killed by covenanters loyal to King George.’
‘Do we know when this was?’
‘We believe the victims may have come two days ago.’
‘You are holding an inquest?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘And this note in the mouth – an unusual procedure, I must say – was it signed?’
‘It was unsigned, my lord, except that the author claimed to be a loyal covenanter.’
He straightened his back and laid down the compasses.
‘Run through the facts in a little more detail, would you?’
Lord Derby listened to my account with close attention. I could see how the strain of the political and military circumstances showed on his face.
‘So you have no idea of who these supposed covenanters were?’ he said at last. ‘Was not this man Pilling one of them?’
‘I don’t think so. His story is that the human remains were foisted on him from another parish and I am inclined to believe him. His own reason for removing them again was that he didn’t want the parish to bear the expense of an investigation. So he carted them secretly elsewhere.’
‘But not secretly enough, evidently. As far as that goes, you have done well, Cragg. But I am wondering what brought these two men into Lancashire in the first instance.’
‘Were they scouts for the rebel army?’
‘The rebels are still at Carlisle. I don’t think they would yet be sending scouting parties as far south as this. But letters are another matter. I am beginning to think that these two men must have been messengers from the Pretender to his supporters in this county.’
‘And instead of delivering their message, they ran into trouble and met their deaths.’
‘Precisely.’
Lord Derby moved from the map table to his writing table, on which were heaped numerous pieces of paper. He sifted through these until he came upon one, which he abstracted from the pile.
‘Here is a list of the more prominent Jacobites in Lancashire, compiled by my zealous deputy, Sir Henry Hoghton. He has the tendency of seeing traitors in the cracks of his own boots, and there is no proof that all on the list intend to join the rebels, but never mind. Let us just see who we’ve got that the Pretender might write to, and where they live.’
He moved back to the map and planted his finger on the town of Blackburn.
‘Townley Hall. They are rank Jacobites there, unquestionably. But I fancy we are looking for a house north of the Ribble.’
He looked again at the list and his finger came down much closer to Preston.
‘This is the only one, I think.’
He was pointing to a spot north-east of Preston, not far from the village of Goosnargh. I moved to his side and read the name.
‘Barrowclough Hall?’
‘Yes. Do you know Sir John?’
‘I know he’s a member of Parliament – a Tory of the old school, by repute.’
‘Just so. He’s exactly the kind of fellow the Pretender would try to contact. Sir John is very rich and was in his younger days a courtier of Queen Anne. He’s still active in certain parts of London society, and keeps a town house in Grosvenor Street, though one doesn’t see him at court. And, of course, he is an outright Jacobite.’
‘Then if my two dead men – one of them at least a Highlander – had been to Barrowclough Hall, how and why would they have met their deaths? If Sir John’s politics are as you describe, one would expect them to have been received civilly at the very least. Instead, they were killed, and their bodies savagely mistreated afterwards.’
‘But suppose Sir John happened not to be at home at the time. They would then have been received by Mr James Barrowclough – a fish with a very different look in his eye.’
‘They are brothers?’
‘Father and son. James is unmarried and lives at the Hall.’
‘And you imply that he doesn’t quite agree with his father’s point of view on everything?’
‘That is putting it mildly. They hate each other.’
‘Suggesting that Mr James Barrowclough would be no supporter of the rebels.’
The Earl gave me an ironical smile.
‘James Barrowclough is a rich subject of study in himself, Titus, as you must find out.’
The Lord Lieutenant was impatient to return to his maps, so I took my leave, after promising I would inform him if anything material came out of the inquest. Back at the office I mentioned to my clerk in passing that I was interested in the affairs of the Barrowclough family, and especially in the character of Mr James Barrowclough.
; ‘Do you know who minds their legal business?’
‘Rudgewick and Tench,’ he said. ‘I’ll find out what I can.’
He clapped his hat on his head and went out. An hour later Furzey was back, with James Barrowclough’s whole life story at his fingertips.
‘I’ve spoken with Chapman, the head clerk at Rudgewick’s,’ he said. ‘Young James was always athwart his father. He refused to go near either Oxford or Cambridge but took himself off to Europe where he made the Grand Tour as far as Rome, then looped back to the Low Countries and settled for a year at Leiden to study the science of medicine at the university there.’
‘How could he do all that without his father’s support?’
‘Because James is rich in his own right. An uncle on his mother’s side left him ten thousand pounds while he was still a schoolboy.’
‘And yet he lives with Sir John at Barrowclough Hall.’
‘Well, they live in the same house, but James is in the east wing and his father’s in the west, with comical results. When they meet in the rooms between, Chapman says they agree on nothing. Sir John likes to employ a keyboard musician; Mr James detests the sound of the harpsichord. Mr James revels in chemical experiments; Sir John abominates the smell. Sir John loves the hunt and maintains his own pack of hounds; Mr James favours shooting and keeps a pair of Belgian pointer dogs. And so on.’
But according to Chapman’s report to Furzey, it was politics and religion that caused the deepest rift between the Barrowcloughs. Sir John hankered after the Stuart restoration, but Mr James, having observed the Old Pretender at his papist rituals in Rome, found nothing to recommend the fellow. As far as religion was concerned, Sir John was a High Anglican with an unshakeable devotion to church ceremonial and the sacred hierarchy stretching down from kings, bishops and cathedral deans to the beneficed clergy, with their tithes and their parish courts. Mr James, on the other hand, had been a year in the Netherlands, where he’d caught the contagion of enthusiastic religion, and a passionate hatred of everything resembling Roman Catholicism. On his return to England he was entranced by the preaching of George Whitefield and John Wesley. He hosted them during their preaching tours of Lancashire and, to the great annoyance of his father, built a Calvinist chapel or meeting room in the grounds of the hall.
