The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “Stay,” said Charles. “Not content with being alternates, Claiborne and Bennett see to’t two of the commissioners are lost at sea during the passage, and step ashore at Point Comfort with full authority over both Virginia and Maryland!”

  “The man’s a Machiavel!”

  “They reduce Virginia; Bennett appoints himself Governor and Claiborne Secretary of State; then they turn to Maryland, where the rascals in Providence greet ’em with open arms. Good Governor Stone is deposed, Catholics are stripped of their rights wholesale, and all Father’s authority is snatched away. As a last stroke, Claiborne and Bennett rouse up the old Virginia Company to petition for wiping Maryland off the map entirely and restoring the ancient boundaries of Virginia! Father pled his case to the Commissioners for Plantations, and while it lay a-cooking he reminded Cromwell that Maryland had stayed loyal to the Commonwealth in the face of her royalist neighbors. Cromwell heard him out, and later, when he dissolved Parliament and named himself Lord Protector, he assured Father of his favor.

  “Governor Stone meanwhile had got himself back into office, and Father ordered him to proclaim the Protectorate and declare the commissioners’ authority expired. Claiborne and Bennett muster a force of their own and depose Stone again favor of the Puritan William Fuller from Providence. Father appeals to Cromwell, Cromwell sends an order to Bennett and Claiborne to desist, and Father orders Stone to raise a force and march on Fuller in Providence. But Fuller hath more guns, and so he forces Stone’s men to surrender on promise of quarter. No sooner doth he have ’em than he murders four of Stone’s lieutenants on the spot and throws Stone, grievously wounded, into prison. Fuller’s bullies then seize the Great Seal, confiscate and plunder, and drive all Catholic priests out of the Province; Claiborne and his cohorts raise a hue and a cry again to the Commissioners for Plantations; but ’tis all in vain, for at last, in 1658, the Province is restored to Father, and the government delivered to Josias Fendall, whom Father had named to represent him after Stone was jailed.”

  “Thank Heav’n!” said Ebenezer. “All’s well that ends well!”

  “And ill as ends ill,” replied Charles, “for that same year, Fendall turned traitor.”

  “ ’Tis too much!” cried Ebenezer.

  “ ’Tis plain truth. Some say he was the tool of Fuller and Claiborne; however ’twas, Cromwell being dead and his son a weakling, Fendall persuaded the Assembly to declare themselves independent of the Proprietary, overthrew the whole constitution of the Province, and usurped every trace of Father’s authority. ’Twould’ve been a sorry time for us, had not Charles II been restored to the throne shortly after. Father, Heav’n knows how, made peace with him, and obtained royal letters commanding all to support his government and directing Berkeley of Virginia to aid him. Uncle Philip Calvert was named governor, and the whole conspiracy collapsed.”

  “Dare I hope your trials ended there?” asked Ebenezer.

  “For a time we suffered no more rebellions,” Charles admitted. “I came to St. Mary’s as governor in 1661, and in 1675, when Father died, I became third Lord Baltimore. During that time our only real troubles were assaults by the Indians and attempts by the Dutch, the Swedes, and others to snatch our land by the old hactenus inculta gambit. The Dutch had settled illegally on the Delaware River, and Governor D’Hinoyossa of New Amstel stirred up the Jhonadoes, the Cinagoes, and the Mingoes against us. I considered making war on him, but decided against it for fear King Charles (who had already broken sundry of my charter-privileges) might take the opportunity to seize the whole Delaware territory. I lost it anyhow in 1664, to his brother the Duke of York, and could not raise a word of protest.

  “The year I became Lord Baltimore the Cinagoes (what the French call Seneques) descended on the Susquehannoughs, and they in turn overran Maryland and Virginia. The outrages that followed were the excuse for Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia and the cause of much unrest in Maryland. Some time before, in order to harness the malcontents in the Assembly, I had restricted suffrage to the better class of citizens, and held the Assembly in long session to avoid the risk of new elections; but even this failed to quiet things. My enemies intrigued against me from all quarters. Even old Claiborne reappears on the scene, albeit he was well past eighty, and, posing as a royalist again, petitions the King against me—to no avail, happily, and ’twas my indescribable pleasure not long after to hear of the scoundrel’s death in Virginia.”

  “ ’Tis my pleasure as well to hear of’t now,” declared Ebenezer, “for I’d come to fear the knave was immortal!”

  “I was accused of everything from Popery to defrauding the King’s revenues,” Charles went on. “When Nat Bacon turned his private army on Governor Berkeley in Virginia, a pair of rascals named Davis and Pate attempted a like rebellion in Calvert County—urged on, I think, by the turncoats Fuller and Fendall, who ranged privily about the Province. I was in London at the time, but when I heard of the thing, I straightway had my deputy hang the both of ’em. Yet not four years later the traitor Fendall conspires with a new villain to incite a new revolt: This was the false priest John Coode I spoke of, that puts e’en Black Bill Claiborne in the shade. I squelched their game in time and banished Fendall forever, though the conniving Assembly let Coode off free a a bird, to cause more trouble later.

  “After this the intrigues and tribulations came in a greal rush. In 1681, to settle a private debt, King Charles grants a large area north of Maryland to William Penn—may his Quaker fat be rendered in hell!—and immediately I’m put to’t to defend my northern border against his machinations. ’Twas laid out in my charter that Maryland’s north boundary is Latitude Forty, and to mark that parallel I had long since caused a blockhouse to be built against the Susquehannoughs, Penn agreed with me that his boundary should run north o the blockhouse, but when his grant appeared no mention at all was made of’t. Instead there was a string of nonsense fit to muddle any templar, and to insure his scheme Penn set out a lying surveyor with a crooked sextant to take his observations. The upshot of’t was, he declared his southern boundary to be eight miles south of my blockhouse and resorted to every evasion and subterfuge to avoid conferring with me on this outrage. When finally we treed him and proposed a mutual observation, he pled a broken sextant; and when our own instrument showed the line in its true location, he accused me of subverting the King’s authority. So concerned was he that the boundary fall where he wished, he proposed a devil’s bag of tricks to gain it. Measure north from the Capes, he says, at the short measure of sixty miles to the degree; lower your south border by thirty miles, he says, and snatch land from the Virginians; measure two degrees north from Watkin Point, he says. Then I ask him, ‘Why this measuring and land-snatching? Why not take sextant in hand and find the fortieth parallel for good and all?’ At last he agrees, but only on condition that should the line fall north of where he want it, I must sell him the difference at a ‘gentleman’s price.’ ”

  “I cannot fathom it,” Ebenezer admitted. “All this talk of sextants and parallels leaves me faint.”

  “The truth was,” Charles said, “Penn had sworn to his Society for Trade that his grant included the headwaters of the Bay, and he was resolved to have’t. When all else failed he fell to plotting with his friend the Duke of York next door and when to my distress the Duke took the throne as James II, Penn conjures him up that specter of a hactenus inculia again and gets himself granted the whole Delaware territory the which was neither his to take nor James’s to grant, but clearly mine.

  “Matters reached such a pass that though I feared to leave the Province to my enemies for e’en a minute, I had no recourse but to sail for London in 1684 to fight Penn’s intrigues. Now for some time I had been falsely accused of allowing smugglers to defraud the King’s port-revenues and of failing to assist the royal tax collectors, and had even paid a fine for’t. No sooner do I weigh anchor for London than my kinsman George Talbot in St. Mary’s allows a rascally beast of a tax collector to anger him and
stabs the knave dead. ’Twas a fool’s act, and my enemies seized on’t at once. Against all justice they refuse to try him in the Province, but instead deliver him to Effingham, then governor of Virginia—who, by the way, later plotted with the Privy Council to have the whole of Maryland granted to himself!—and ’twas all I could manage to save his neck. Shortly afterwards another customs officer is murthered, and though ’twas a private quarrel, my enemies put the two together to color me a traitor to the Crown. Penn, meanwhile, commenced a quo warranto suit against my entire charter, and with his friend on the throne I doubt not what would have been the result: as’t happened, the folk of England just then pressed their own quo warranto, so to speak, against King James, and Penn’s game was spoilt, for the nonce, by the revolution.”

  “I cannot tell how relieved I am to hear it!” Ebenezer declared.

  “ ’Twas my loss either way,” sighed Charles. “When James was on the throne my enemies called me disloyal to him; when he went in exile, and William landed in England, all they cared to remember was that both James and I were Catholics. ’Twas then, at the worst possible time, my fool of a deputy governor sees fit to declare to the Assembly his belief in the divine right of kings and, folly of follies, makes Maryland proclaim officially the birth of James’s Catholic son!”

  “I tremble for you,” Ebenezer said.

  “Naturally, the instant William took the throne I sent word to the Maryland Council to proclaim him. But whether from natural causes or, as I suspect, from the malice of my enemies, the messenger died on shipboard and was buried at sea, and his commission with him, so that Maryland remained silent even after Virginia and New England had proclaimed. I sent a second messenger at once, but the harm was done, and those who were not crying ‘Papist!’ were crying ‘Jacobite!’ On the heels of this misfortune, in 1689 my enemies in England caused me to be outlawed in Ireland on charges of committing treason there against William in James’s behalf—though in sooth I’d never in my life set foot on Irish soil and was at the very moment in England expressly to fight the efforts of James and Penn to snatch Maryland from me! To top all, in March of the same year they spread a rumor over Maryland that a great conspiracy of nine thousand Catholics and Indians have invaded the Province to murther every Protestant in the land: the men sent to Mattapany, at the mouth of the Potomac, are told of massacres at the river’s head and, rushing there to save the day, find the settlers arming against such massacres as they’ve heard of in Mattapany! For all my friends declare ’tis naught but a sleeveless fear and imagination, the whole Province is up in arms against the Catholics.”

  “Blind! Blind!”

  “ ’Twas no worse than the anti-Papism here in London,” said Charles. “My only pleasure in this dark hour was to see that lying Quaker Penn himself arrested and jailed as a Jesuit!”

  “I’faith, it cheers me, too!”

  “Naught now remained but for the conspirators to administer the coupe de grâce. This they did in July, led by the false priest Coode. He marches on St. Mary’s with an armed force, promotes himself to the rank of general, and for all he’d used to be a Catholic himself, shouts Papist and Jesuit until the whole city surrenders. The President and Council flee to Mattapany, where Coode besieges ’em in the fort till they give up the government to him. Then, calling themselves the Protestant Associators, they beg King William to snatch the government for himself!”

  “Surely King William hanged him!” Ebenezer said. Charles, who had been talking as rapidly and distractedly as though telling a painful rosary, now seemed really to notice his visitor for the first time since commencing the history.

  “My dear Poet…” He smiled thinly. “William is at war with King Louis: in the first place, for aught anyone knows the war might spread to America, and he is most eager to gain control of all the colonies against this possibility. In the second place, war is expensive, and my revenues could help to pay his soldiers. In the third place, he holds the crown by virtue of an anti-Papist revolution, and I am a Papist. In the fourth place, the government of Maryland was imploring him to rescue the Province from the oppression of Catholics and Indians—”

  “Enough!” cried Ebenezer. “I fear me he snatched it! But by what legal right—”

  “Ah, ’twas wondrous legal,” said Charles. “William instructed the Attorney General to proceed against my charter by way of scire facias, but reflecting afterwards on the time such litigation would require, and the treasury’s dire need for food, and the possibility of the Court’s finding in my favor, he asks Chief Justice Holt to find him a way to snatch my Maryland with less bother. Holt ponders awhile till he recalls that jus est id quod principi placet, and then declares, in all solemnity, that though ’twould be better the charter were forfeited in a proper inquisition, yet since no inquisition hath been held, and since by the King’s own word the matter is urgent, he thinks the King might snatch him the government on the instant and do his investigating later.”

  “Why,” said Ebenezer, “ ’tis like hanging a man today and trying his crime tomorrow!”

  Charles nodded. “In August of 1691 milord Sir Lionel Copley became the first royal governor of the crown colony of Maryland,” he concluded. “My rank fell from that of count palatine, with power of life and death over my subjects, to that of common landlord, entitled only to my quit-rents, my port duty of fourteen pence per ton on foreign vessels, and my tobacco duty of one shilling per hogshead. The Commissioners of the Privy Seal, be’t said to their credit, disputed Holt’s decision, and in fact when the quo warranto was instigated the allegations against me fell to pieces for lack of evidence, and no judgment was found. But of course ’twas precisely because he foresaw this that William had leaped ere he looked: you may depend on’t he held fast to Maryland, and clasps her yet like a lover his mistress; for Possession is nine points of the law in any case, and with a king ’tis parliament, statute book, and courtroom all together! ’Tis said in sooth, A king’s favor is no inheritance; and A king promiseth all, and observeth what he will.”

  “And,” added Ebenezer, “He who eats the King’s goose shall choke on the feathers.”

  “How?” Charles demanded angrily. “D’you twit me, fellow? Think thee Maryland was e’er King William’s goose?”

  “Nay, nay!” Ebenezer protested. “You misread the saying! ’Tis meant to signify merely, that A great dowry is a bed full of brambles, don’t you know: A great man and a great river are ill neighbors, or A king’s bounty is a mixed blessing.”

  “Enough, I grasp it. So, then, there is your Maryland, fellow. Think you ’tis fit for a Marylandiad?”

  “I’faith,” replied Ebenezer, “ ’twere fitter for a Jeremiad! Ne’er have I encountered such a string of plots, cabals, murthers, and machinations in life or literature as this history you relate me!”

  Charles smiled. “And doth it haply inspire your pen?”

  “Ah God, what a dolt and boor must Your Lordship think me, to burst upon you with grand notions of couplet and eulogy! I swear to you I am sorry for’t: I shall leave at once.”

  “Stay, stay,” said Charles. “I will confess to you, this Marylandiad of yours is not without interest to me.”

  “Nay,” Ebenezer said, “you but chide me for punishment.”

  “I am an old man,” Charles declared, “with small time left on earth—”

  “Heav’n forbid!”

  “Nay, ’tis clear truth,” Charles insisted. “The prime of my life, and more, I’ve laid on the altar of a prosperous, well-governed Maryland, which was given me in trust by my dear father, and him by his, to husband and improve, and which I dreamed of handing on to my son a richer, worthier estate for my having ruled it.”

  “Marry, I am in tears!”

  “And now in my old age I find this shan’t be,” Charles continued. “Moreover, I am too aged and infirm to make another ocean passage and so must die here in England without laying eyes again upon that land as dear to my heart as the wife of my body, and wh
ose abducting and rape stings me as e’er did Helen’s Menelaus.”

  “I can bear no more!” wept Ebenezer, blowing his nose delicately into his handkerchief.

  “I have no authority,” Charles concluded, “and so can no longer confer dignities and titles as before. But I declare to you this, Mr. Cooke: hie you to Maryland; put her history out of mind and look you at her peerless virtues. Study them; mark them well! Then, if you can, turn what you see to verse; tune and music it for the world’s ears! Rhyme me such a rhyme, Eben Cooke; make me this Maryland, that neither time nor intrigue can rob me of; that I can pass on to my son and my son’s son and all the ages of the world! Sing me this song, sir, and by my faith, in the eyes and heart of Charles Calvert and of every Christian lover of Beauty and Justice, thou’rt in sooth Poet and Laureate of the Province! And should e’er it come to pass—what against all hope and expectation I nightly pray for to Holy Mary and all saints—that one day the entire complexion of things alters, and my sweet province is once again restored to her proprietor, then, by Heav’n, I shall confer you the title in fact, lettered on sheepskin, beribboned in satin, signed by myself, and stamped for the world to gape at with the Great Seal of Maryland!”

  Ebenezer’s heart was too full for words.

  “In the meantime,” Charles went on, “I shall, if’t please you, at least commission you to write the poem. Nay, better, I’ll pen thee a draft of the Laureate’s commission, and should God e’er grant me back my Maryland, ’twill retroact to this very day.”

  “ ’Sheart! ’Tis past belief!”

  Charles had his man fetch him paper, ink, and quill, and with the air of one accustomed to the language of authority, quickly penned the following commission:

  CHARLES ABSOLUTE LORD & PROPRIETARY OF THE PROVINCES OF MARYLAND & AVALON LORD BARON OF BALTIMORE &t To Our Trusty and Welbeloved Our Dear Ebenezer Cooke Esqr of Cookes Poynt Dorset County Greeting Whereas it is our Desire that the Sundrie Excellencies of Our Province of Maryland aforesaid be set down in Verse for Generations to Come and Whereas it is Our Conviction that Your talents Well Equip You for that Task &t We Do Will and Command you upon the Faith which You Owe unto Us that You do compose and construct such an Epical Poem, setting forth the Graciousness of Marylands Inhabitants, Their Good Breeding and Excellent Dwelling-places, the Majesty of her Laws, the Comfort of Her Inns and Ordinaries &t &t and to this Purpose We do Name and Entitle You Poet and Laureat of the Province of Maryland Aforesaid. Witness Ourself at the City of London the twenty-eighth Day of March in the eighteenth Year of Our Dominion over Our said Province of Maryland Annoq Dom 1694