by Edward Cline
“Sir,” chuckled the Baron, “you are yourself a wealth of detail!”
“It is part and parcel of the career, milord,” said Jones, “to attend innumerable meetings and levees to audit the thoughts and assertions of friend and enemies alike. Now,” he said, gesturing with the stem of his pipe to the men across the room, “every one of those distributor chaps owes his appointment to connections in the Commons, connections leading from Mr. Grenville to Mr. Whateley and from him to the Board of Trade to hither and yon in our own bureaucratic mechanism. Quite an insidious, complicated pump works, indeed.”
The Baron looked thoughtful for a moment, then frowned. “In truth, sir, I cannot blame them, if they resign themselves to such a fate. The power of the Crown seems to all of us not a part of it like a great, unstoppable wave. Defy it, and it will crush you. Ride with it, and it may spare you.” Garnet Kenrick looked melancholy, and said wistfully, “I have been reading Mr. Hume, you know. He claims it is possible for a falling pebble to extinguish the sun, or a man’s fervent wish to alter the orbits of the planets around it. That we cannot be certain of immutable laws in man or nature. However, I do not think he ascribed that fanciful metaphysics to the tax farmer.” He shook his head sadly. “Even Mr. Hume did not believe that his mutable skepticism applied to the Treasury or Customs Board. Those institutions seem to be unalterable absolutes as is death.”
Jones grinned, pleased to hear the comment. “Milord, what a delightfully dark thought! I beg permission to use it in a letter, or in a speech. Mr. Hume may be proven wrong, after all, if the colonials succeed in defying the Crown! Oh, damn!” he said abruptly. “The great straw-shoe of the Commons has seen us, and advances rapidly!”
He nodded in the direction of Sir Henoch Pannell, who crossed the room and approached their table wearing a jaunty smile. The member for Canovan stopped and nodded to the Baron and Jones. “Good afternoon, your lordship, Sir Dogmael. You are looking cheerful in spite of your travails. May I sit for a moment?”
“Briefly, Sir Henoch,” answered Garnet Kenrick in the manner of a warning.
Pannell looked genuinely stung by this reply. “Not a second more than is necessary, your lordship,” he said. “I would not be so rude to my own company,” he added suavely. He pulled out the table’s only vacant chair and plumped down into it.
“What is the purpose of this intrusion, Sir Henoch?” asked Jones, relighting his pipe.
“It is in the way of a farewell, sir. Shortly I am to leave to join my wife in Marsden for the remainder of the season, and will return late fall to prepare for the session.” Pannell was Baronet of Marsden, in Essex, a property and title he had been awarded years before for his successful capture of the Skelly gang in Cornwall.
“Fare thee well, sir,” said Jones, lazily waving his pipe.
“Thank you, Sir Dogmael. By the bye, have you heard about your other stout friend, Mr. Benjamin Franklin?”
“We have heard many things about him, Sir Henoch,” said the Baron.
“Then perhaps you already know that, in his capacity as deputy postmaster for the northern colonies, he has accepted the appointment of collector of stamp revenues.”
“We knew that, sir,” said Jones. “What significance do you assign to the fact?”
“Not a significance, to be sure, but rather an irony. You know, of course, that he has been pestering the devil out of the Board of Trade and anyone else’s ear he can bend, to effect a change in the status of Pennsylvania from a proprietary to a royal colony, to better tax the Penns by the legislature there in order to raise funds for arms and men to combat the savages on the western frontier.” Pannell shook his head in feigned wonder. “Not dissimilar to the predicament the Crown finds itself in. It is one of the reasons we passed the Stamp Act. I almost sympathize with Mr. Franklin.”
“Surely, you have a reason for repeating this information, sir,” said Garnet Kenrick.
“I do, your lordship, and it is this: Without the least effort on Mr. Franklin’s part, and in fact quite contrary to his own known sentiments on the subject — and, between ourselves, quite tepid sentiments, if I may say so — he has been handed the profitable place of collecting all the stamp revenue he inveighed against.” Pannell chuckled. “Why, I know that he even criticized those Virginia resolves that seem to have been broadcast throughout the colonies. ‘Premature,’ I believe he called them.”
“Have you read them?” asked Jones.
“I was privileged to see that document, Sir Dogmael. It is but a fustian of treasonous fallacies! Well, why am I so surprised?” remarked Pannell with feigned insouciance. “It was composed by an alliance of lawyers and hard-scrabble planters!”
Jones shook his head. “I, too, have seen them, Sir Henoch. That document is an assertion of uncontestable truths.”
“We are obviously not of the same opinion.”
“I do not voice opinions, sir. I make observations.”
“I may say that, as well, sir. I see the makings of treason and sedition.”
Jones sighed tiredly. Then he smiled in challenge at his adversary. “Through tattered rags small vices do appear. Robes and furred gowns hide all. Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.”
Pannell chuckled again, waved a hand at Jones, but addressed the Baron. “There he goes again, your lordship, assailing me with Mr. Shakespeare!”
Jones’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “My compliments, Sir Henoch. You properly identified the weapon. But, can you identify the character who spoke those lines?”
“I confess I cannot, sir. Please, enlighten me.”
“King Lear, near raving mad, addressing blind Gloucester. Act four, scene five.”
Pannell laughed, and again addressed the Baron. “What else can one expect from this gentleman but the regular spoutings of a yearning actor?”
“There you are, sir,” said Garnet Kenrick with a wicked, unfriendly smile, “growing old in fraud, past your manly bloom, artfully adopting the ruses by which gay villains rise to reach the heights which honest men despise.”
Pannell snorted in surprise. “Mr. Shakespeare again, your lordship?”
The Baron shook his head. “No, sir. The late Mr. Charles Churchill, liberally paraphrased in your honor.”
“Well, what a relief! I must say, it is a pleasure to have been assailed by two poets, and in one day!”
“Please, Sir Henoch,” said Jones, “come to the purpose of your congeniality.”
“As I said,” replied the member for Canovan, “it is not so much anything but a farewell of sorts. My own, and to colonial blather. You see, your lordship, Sir Dogmael, I am quite satisfied that our course of action last session was right and proper. If so stalwart a huckster of colonial rights and immunities and privileges as Mr. Franklin is willing not only to concede our authority, but to allow himself a role in it, there cannot be the least credible objection to the tax among those of his countrymen who are far less informed of the matter. That is all I wished to say.”
“You are gloating,” said Jones, sitting back and puffing on his pipe. “But, oddly, that becomes you.” He paused. “Beware, Sir Henoch, and take care what you say, next session. You may find your likeness in the newspapers again.”
“Thank you for the warning, sir, and for permitting me some ecstasy, as well.” Pannell rose and bowed slightly to the Baron. “Well, the gay villain must take his leave, your lordship, and polish his glass eyes. An American over there needs this scurvy politician’s reassurances that we mean him and his countrymen no harm. Sir Dogmael.…” He nodded to the barrister, then turned and left.
“That man is impervious to insult, Mr. Jones!” observed the Baron with some astonishment. “He has the hide of a rhinoceros that you mentioned!”
Jones shook his head in regret. “I fear that I have trained him in the art, milord, these few years.”
“What hubris! Why is he so certain he is right?”
“Because he has
seen strong men falter in the employment of their principles — men such as Mr. Franklin — and this apparently permits him to believe in the practicality of compromise and the foolishness of principled certainty.” Jones shook his head. “It saves him the necessity of honor and the inconvenience of upholding it. So, he has no honor to offend or defend. Paradox solved!”
The Baron’s brow furled in thought. “That is a more fatal skepticism than Mr. Hume’s.” He added, a moment later, after watching Sir Henoch talk with his companions across the room, “And a sad vanity.”
Sir Henoch Pannell at that moment was consoling George Mercer with some advice: “Feel no shame about your commission, sir. Nor any trepidation. To be employed by the Crown in so vital a post is an honorable entrustment of duty. Do not doubt that. With all modesty, I offer myself as an instance. Long ago, I took a job, commissioner extraordinary of the revenue, on these very shores, and during my tenure I was mocked by my employers, shunned by my fellow countrymen in whose service I labored, and duped by outlaws and smugglers. A humiliating experience that called for iron mettle! Yet I persevered, and here I am today, and that dark and contentious adventure is in the past. My employers recommended me to the Court, where I received more honors, and those outlaws and smugglers perished by steel or hemp! But here is my main point: It was a necessary adventure, to occupy a low, despised place in the scheme of things, in order to advance to higher, envied places!” Pannell put a steadying hand on Mercer’s shoulder, and smiled blandly. “You, sir, would be wise to adopt the same view.” Then he picked up a tankard of ale and took a long gulp from it.
George Mercer blinked in understanding. But he replied with some worry, “Thank you for the advice, Sir Henoch, however, you have not dealt directly with Virginians. They may choose to risk the bayonet and the rope over submitting to the Act. I even took the liberty of advising Mr. Grenville of that possibility, when he was so gracious as to grant me an interview. The esteem in which they hold me now may not protect me, and my service to my country, for which I have sought only a just reward, may not absolve me, in this circumstance. They may despise me, and accuse me of disgrace, and heap upon my head all kinds of abuse!”
“What an absurdity!” exclaimed Pannell, slamming down his tankard. “Why, I am speaking with a Virginian this very moment! There is no God-given reason why all Virginians cannot, in time, and with the boundless patience of the Crown, example your own upstanding character, sense of expedience, excellent wit, and other fine qualities!”
Edward Montagu opined, “Sir Henoch is correct in his views, Colonel Mercer. Fate is on the side of the Act, and you can only profit from that fate.”
Thomas Whateley advised, “You have been entrusted with a patriotic duty, sir, and it is nearly treason to doubt the expediency of it.”
In addition to his other fine qualities, George Mercer was appointed on the strength of high praise by Lieutenant-Governor Fauquier and his Council, and by the Committee of Correspondence in the House of Burgesses. These recommendations were ignored by George Grenville for other kinds of appointments, except when he and his party decided to make Americans the cat’s paws for enforcing the Act.
George Mercer did not think of himself as anyone’s cat’s paw. The praise of the Lieutenant-Governor and his fellow countrymen, he thought, must count for something. Then there was his friendship with George Washington, another hero; who could oppose or defame a friend of that noble giant? And what helped to allay his doubts about the expediency and propriety of his commission was his more intimate acquaintance with his fellow colonials, and in particular his fellow Virginians. This knowledge was buttressed by the authority of George Grenville’s private assurances to him that, based on ample evidence from the past, in such instances as this one, colonial unity on any issue was a laughable oxymoron, and that, anyway, the Act would necessarily enforce itself if the colonials wished the protection of Crown and colonial law.
Armed with this sad vanity, George Mercer sailed on September 12th from England on the Leeds for Virginia. In the hold of that merchantman were sealed crates of stamps and stamped forms of almost every conceivable kind, destined for Maryland and North Carolina, as well as for Virginia.
Following a few days later in the wake of the Leeds, also bound for Virginia, was the Sparrowhawk.
* * *
Across an ocean, on another river, in another tavern, on the evening of the same day, a man said, “Live free, or die.”
Jack Frake stood to one side of the round table in the Olympus Room of Safford’s King’s Arms, and glanced around at the faces looking up at him in the candlelight, waiting for a response. The room was quiet. He pronounced the words as an ultimatum, even though he was proposing them as a motto for the Sons of Liberty.
This was a meeting of that society. Thomas Reisdale, who chaired the meeting, had already given his address on the evils of the Stamp Act and the best means to understand and oppose it in argument. His speech had caused some desultory debate among the Sons’ members, but the few doubters had been persuaded to agree with it.
Jack stood with a yellowed sheet of paper, from which he had read the words. When the agenda for this meeting had been decided on weeks ago, he had gone home to his study and taken out his copy of Hyperborea. From between its middle pages, he removed a folded letter that was stained with the sweat of forgotten labor and the blood of remembered battles. The letter was contained on both sides of a single sheet. It was written and signed by Redmagne and Augustus Skelly in the Falmouth prison, days before they were hanged. It was secretly conveyed to Jack by Simon Haslam, a local prosecutor, in a gesture of mercy and contrary to Commissioner Henoch Pannell’s orders that Jack was to have no further communication with his fellow prisoners.
In the letter, among the many things said by Redmagne and Skelly, there was this:
“We fill our remaining hours with mutual remembrances of great things and small in our individual and shared lives. These things are ours to remember, and you, brave and dear sir, are included in our reveries. We are cruelly parted at the moment, but we are still together, and will always be so, for we are certain that you will understand our new-found maxim: Live free, or die. Perhaps, someday, you will understand it better than we have, and attain a greater liberty than we can now imagine. And never mind that we have lived free, and are about to die. Incidentals are irrelevant to universal principles. Therefore, we bequeath this maxim to you, our heir in spirit.…”
Jack knew who had penned that part of the letter — Redmagne. It was in his hand. But both men had signed it. He did not need to read those words from the letter. He brought the paper to the meeting as a gesture of justice, as a mute witness, as though its presence here were a kind of vindication of its authors’ lives and actions, to complete some kind of connection between the leagues and years of the faraway past and the present moment.
Hugh Kenrick, sitting at Jack’s right at the table, spoke first, in a whisper of reverence. “What a marvelous sentiment!” After a moment, he asked, “Did you compose it?”
“No,” answered Jack. “Two very good friends, whose likenesses you were kind enough to preserve for me.” He looked down at his friend and saw that he understood. Jack folded the letter and dropped it into his coat pocket. Again, he faced the men in the room. “What say anyone to that as our motto?”
The room remained quiet. No one spoke.
“There is nothing to say to it,” said Thomas Reisdale, after a moment. “It is an eternal verity.”
All the other members nodded in agreement or voiced their consent.
“Now, to our banner,” said Jack. “I propose that we adopt this —” he paused to tap a finger on the East India jack that served as the organization’s table cloth “— but alter it so that it properly represents the unity of the colonies against the Stamp Act. With Mr. Safford’s permission, the jack can be altered, or we can contribute to the creation of a new one like it, but with significant differences.”
Steven Sa
fford spoke up from the back of the room. “I am willing to see it altered, if that is necessary.”
Jack nodded in thanks to the publican. “Fine. Mr. Reisdale, if you please.”
Reisdale’s inkwell, minutes ledger, and elbows were resting on the canton that bore the cross of St. George. The attorney promptly removed them.
Jack picked up a corner of the flag and pointed to the stripes. “There are thirteen stripes here, and each can represent one of the principal colonies, at least the ones that were most on Mr. Grenville’s mind when he and his placemen concocted the Stamp Act. I propose that they be left intact, except to have sewn on one of the white stripes the name of our organization.” He dropped the corner. “Is this agreed?”
The members said “Aye.”
“But why only thirteen stripes?” queried one of the members. “There are over twenty provinces that come under the Stamp Act.”
“We will not include the Canadian and Caribbean colonies, nor even the Floridas,” answered Jack. “We have had no news of protests from those quarters, so we may rightfully assume they will submit to the stamps.” He glanced around in search of disagreement with his reasoning. He saw none. He continued, and pointed to the canton. “I further propose that the cross here be replaced with a plain blue field with our newly adopted motto emblazoned in gold letters.”
One man asked, “Do you mean, replace the cross?”
“Yes.”
“That is too much, sir!” objected one of the former doubters. “Such a device smacks of…secession!”
Jack said, “Not so, sir. This is to be a private device of a private association. It is no more provocative than the Masons’ use of the compass in their own device.”
“This is true,” concurred Hugh. He continued. “Besides, the adopted motto does not agree with the canton as it is now. It needs a proper background, an agreeable field.” He paused. His face lit up, and his eyes became bright. “Cobalt, sirs,” he said. “A field of cobalt. The richest blue. A proper background for gold.”
