The Great Negro Plot

by Mat Johnson

  John Hughson, certainly, could not be that person. John Hughson was a buffoon, a bumpkin, a low-class fool barely able to imitate humanity during his own trial. There was no way he could have been the maestro. What this case needed, what this ambitious court needed, was to capture the mesmeric genius who all the other testimony hinted at. This true ringleader must be found, this shadow conspirator whose tentacles took such great hold that even doomed slaves had kept his name snugly under their dying tongues.

  So, Horsmanden and the assembled judges of the colony of New York were forced to ask themselves who would that perfect villain be? Of what must the man be composed? That he would be male was beyond question. That he was a stranger to the city—for how could one of their own possibly be guilty of such a heinous atrocity—was most probable, someone new to the area who had brought the trouble with him. That he would be a true God-fearing person was highly questionable. No, he would surely be a heathen, or even worse, a papal spy. An emissary sent to the New World by the pope himself to continue the Vatican's quest for global domination.

  Into this situation walked John Ury.

  John Ury, British-born schoolteacher, had recently arrived from Philadelphia. A modest but intellectual man of limited resources, of late he'd formed a business with Mr. Campbell, the schoolmaster, teaching their pupils classical linguistics. With few friends and a prudish, bookish manner that didn't endear him to the masses in this rough town, in the brief time he'd been in the city, John Ury had kept pretty much to himself. Most people who saw him would have taken little note. Now the court turned their attention to this slight man and observed: A stranger! And even more ominous to the judges, a stranger who taught and, therefore, spoke Latin. An almost definite indicator that the man was a Roman spy sent to overthrow the island in the name of the Catholic Church.

  In light of such overwhelming evidence, John Ury was grabbed off the street and, after "not giving a satisfactory account of himself," thrown in jail.

  Mary Burton was brought in the next day to seal the indictment for the prosecution. Burton had, since her first manipulated confession, proven herself continually helpful to the court. In fact, Mary Burton had been so extraordinarily helpful, that the initial group of some two dozen Africans she'd made reference to had now grown so far beyond her initial description that the sheer number of them would have made it physically impossible for all of them to fit into any single colonial home or even outbuilding at the same time—but why fret the details?

  Despite the fact that she had once claimed that the only whites in Hughson's tavern were the proprietor himself and his wife, Romme, and Peggy Kerry, Mary Burton now expanded the list to include John Ury, per the court's most earnest beseechment. The judges were very thorough in the matter, bringing Burton through in the morning to view Ury in his cell to make sure she got a good look at the man. Despite this effort to educate the witness before the fact, Mary, in her later testimony, had trouble getting the name right.

  "Yes, it was him," she pointed, declaring, "that man Mr. Jury that I had seen."

  The prosecutors exchanged looks among themselves, understandably a bit uncomfortable for the moment.

  "Miss Burton, are you sure about that, about the name of the accused?"

  "Oh?" looking around as to astutely gauge the room, "No, no, I am mistaken. 'Twas another. It was, maybe Doyle. Yes, Doyle."

  Mary faced the sudden rustling of the court, that look of disapproval she had previously avoided, and shifted again.

  "No, not Doyle," she stammered. "That was not it, I remember now. But it was something. I recall clearly now. Some of his names had . . . one syllable."

  In the end, Mary decided that the man suspected of being a Roman Catholic priest went by all three names, and that she'd seen him conspiring with Hughson since Christmas last. Not wanting to take all credit for the death sentence she had handed this man, Mary parted with a statement that the remaining Hughson detainee, daughter Sarah, had waited on him more than she, and could help the prosecution further.

  As pathetic as this latest condemnation was, it was still possible that, after the immediate fervor subsided, John Ury might have been released. Even for these compromised proceedings, Mary Burton's testimony had been woefully inadequate, particularly when it was to decide the fate of a white Englishman.

  John Ury's problems, however, extended beyond Mary Burton.

  Two weeks later, Will, once enslaved by Mr. Ward, was in the process of being prepared to roast alive after his own guilty conviction when he came to that last resort, what had become that rather common and banal idea of the moment: confession. The unique innovation that Ward's Will brought back to the game of self-preservation was that having heard the rumors and talk scuttling through the cells, he added Europeans back into the realm of the suspect. Slaves were still legally forbidden from testifying against whites, but the executioner's pit was surely not a court of law, and anyway what be law in times of terror?

  "Kane and another soldier, Edward Kelly, asked Quack to burn the fort so that they would be free of their obligation," Will desperately declared. "Even Kane's wife is guilty. She once pawned a stolen silver spoon. He did not care if the fort was burnt down."

  Will talked and talked, and the sheriff, for his part, paused to listen. And Will was right, his confession bought him time. Time enough for the executioner to stoke a good fire beneath where he was held. Tied with his back to the stake, Will lifted his legs one at a time from the fire as long as he could, his confessional cries eventually being replaced by cries of agony. Will was talking, then he was screaming, then he was burning. Raising his arms and eyes to the heavens above he cried for mercy. But no mercy came.

  William Kane was a forty-year-old soldier in the British Royal Service. Born in Athlone, Ireland, he now found himself incarcerated and bound before the court of New York.

  " 'Tis true, I took part in the stolen spoon bit, but I've never been at Hughson's establishment in my life," Kane insisted.

  "Then you deny that you are a conspirator in the recent uprising, that you do not take orders directly from your Catholic pope?"

  "I owe allegiance only to the Church of England, sirs. I am a Protestant born and lived, and have never had any association with the Papists."

  Kane was adamant, insistent, and by coming clean on his surely provable guilt in regard to the stolen silver spoon incident, seemed to be setting a believable defense for himself in regard to the most serious charges. It might have actually worked, too, if Mary Burton had not been in the building, poised to make yet one more accusatorial appearance.

  In the middle of William Kane's impassioned denial, a sudden outburst interrupted the courtroom, putting a stop to the proceedings. The under-sheriff addressed the judges. "Mary Burton, gentlemen, is outside the courtroom declaring that she had often seen William Kane at the Hughsons', too."

  The judges ordered Mary brought back into the courtroom, where she immediately began repeating her accusations.

  "He'd been consorting with them," Mary insisted when called to the stand. "With the blacks, talking of conspiracy!" It was another remarkably coincidental memory recall on behalf of young Mary, but for once it did not go unnoticed.

  In what Horsmanden would later describe as "an awful and solemn manner',' the chief justice, a recent addition to the proceedings after having been away on a special commission in Providence, interrupted Burton.

  "Must I inform you, young girl, as to the nature of an oath, and to the consequences of taking a false one?" the senior official warned.

  "Thank you, sir, but I know exactly what I'm doing," Mary continued self-righteously.

  At first, William Kane continued to insist upon his innocence in regard to the conspiracy. There is hope in all of us that the truth is our greatest defense, and Kane clung to this until it was made perfectly clear to him that this room wanted something different. "You must not flatter yourself with the least hopes of mercy," the prosecutor warned him, lest he get any ideas from
the chief justice. "Your only salvation will be through confession."

  There was nothing William Kane could do, but what had been done before. To betray everyone, even himself.

  "[His] countenance changed, and being near fainting," Horsmanden noted. Kane went flush, weak in the face of the reality of his situation. Visibly, he paused to compose himself. His life depended on a confession, a confession composed and strong enough, with performance to match, in order to save his life.

  "May I have some water?" Kane requested, buying time, waiting for inspiration to strike.

  Water swallowed, thoughts settled upon and composed, Kane declared, "I am ready to tell the truth now."

  "Though at the same time he seemed very loath to do it," Horsmanden noted of the several hours of confession that followed.

  William Kane did not disappoint, implicating several other whites as he wove these innocents into the newly tooled, general mythology of Hughson's sinister plan. Led by prosecutors, Kane would cooperatively corroborate this involvement of the recently arrested suspected papal spy John Ury to the mix, answering the court's leading questions, taking them exactly where they wanted to go.

  It was John Jury! Yes, it was John Jury! John Jury had been training these whites in the dark arts of the Catholic Church.

  John Ury was found guilty, and William Kane provided the damning testimony against him, even though he never could quite get his name right.

  " SUCH A PARTICULAR PERSON FORGOTTEN?"

  BECAUSE JOHNURY WAS WHITE, it would take more than a few bits of questionable accusation from the lips of William Kane and Mary Burton to bring him down. An entire canvas had to be created to give the schoolteacher appropriately ominous credence. It would mean not only incriminating just him, but also incriminating those around him. John Corry the dancing master? He was there, Kane verbally complied; he saw him at Hughson's all the time. Holt, another dancing master, did he not do the same? Yes, he did, Kane again agreed, despite the fact that the man, in his own deposition, denied even knowing John Ury. Edward Murphy? David Johnson? There were lots of whites mentioned by Kane. By design, it seemed, the larger the picture, the more difficult to deny

  For John Ury's part, he tried just that, giving a sworn, written statement to be entered into the court's record:

  John Ury, school-master, denies being any wise concerned in the conspiracy for burning the town and killing the inhabitants, says, that he never was any wise acquainted with John Hughson or his wife, or Margaret Kerry, nor did he ever see them in his life, to his knowledge.

  Signed,

  John Ury

  Ury presented his case for innocence hopeful that his word carried enough weight to squash all doubts. Whether it did in fact do so became moot because only moments after Ury's proclamation William Kane took the stand to testify to the opposite.

  "Jury was at John Hughson's with the dancing masters."

  "Of this you are quite certain?" the chief judge prodded.

  "Well, I must say, I never actually saw Jury with any of the slaves, but it was said to be so."

  William Kane made a point to say that he had never actually seen John Ury with any of the slaves, as opposed to all those other whites he'd placed with the Africans. It was a minor nuance to a court that had little time for subtleties, but it was a fairly major gap for one whose life was still hanging in abeyance.

  If John Ury—who had the distinct benefit over all of the others who had previously been prosecuted by this court thus far, given that he was both white and educated—had had only Mary Burton's and William Kane's accusations to contend with, he might have actually had the advantage in the proceedings. Unfortunately for Ury, however, the court had induced another white voice to join the chorus to his damning. Considering their success in the past in procuring testimonies from deponents whose very life depended on complying with the court's wishes, there could be no better source than young and vulnerable Sarah Hughson. The girl had already seen the court put to death both her mother and father, but young Sarah remained alive on a stay of execution. Who had a better understanding of the comings and goings of John Hughson's pub but his own daughter? What other white person left still breathing would be as eager to save herself?

  Despite all this, all she had to lose, Sarah remained defiant of the court. Repeated requests were sent to her to join in the condemnations of John Ury, and repeated refusals were returned. Sarah, lacking in years and racked by fear, still managed to hold out, rejecting any offer to damn more people to a similar fate. However, the weight of Sarah's own mortality came to a head on the date of the day of her impending execution. So finally, the last Hughson left in custody broke. The court now had what it wanted, a new funnel for its imagination.

  "I had often seen Ury, the priest, at my father's house," Sarah told the judges. "He used to come there in the evenings and at night, and I have seen him in company with the Negroes." The testimony came strained, painfully, but once it started flowing it came creatively as well, the girl actively imagining what his Papist evil could be. To Sarah's mind, it must be dark. It must be arcane. It must be satanic, like the darkest whispered rituals.

  "I have seen him several times make a round thing with chalk on the floor, and make all the Negroes then present stand round it," Sarah described. "He used to stand in the middle of the ring, with a cross in his hand, and there swore all the Negroes to be concerned in the plot, and that they should not discover him, nor any thing else of the plot, though they should die for it."

  It was as everyone thought: Ury had been baptizing the Negroes and forgiving their every sin as well, just as Popish priests were known to. Without sin or fear of damnation, the beast that was the Negro was free to do anything. One could only shudder with the propensity of such thoughts.

  The most detailed account of John Ury's life would come from Joseph Web, a carpenter and house joiner, who had hired Ury to tutor his children after overhearing him reading Latin (and noticing Ury looked a bit down on his luck). The picture Web constructed of the man was more mundane than menacing.

  According to Web, John Ury had told him that he was an outcast from the Church of England who'd been run out of London after the publication of an unpopular pamphlet. That he'd come to New York looking for work after a brief stay in London. Ury could be heard to read prayers at night in the Church of England style. The only ambiguous marks Web made on John Ury's person were his testimony to the effect that Ury sometimes had a "dark, obscure, and mysterious manner," and that he'd once tried to buy some confectionary that wasn't shaped like animals, possibly looking for wafers for a sacrament.

  "I was once ordained by a bishop of the Church of England, and liked to preach, particular against drunkenness and debauchery of life," Web alleged Ury bragged.

  In addition, Web said John Ury was also insistent that all who attended his little Bible studies be true to their own denomination, whether Presbyterian or Lutheran or Church of England. As for John Ury's relationship to Africans, Web relayed only one discussion.

  "They have souls to be saved or lost as well as other people," the relatively progressive Joseph Web said he opined to the pious schoolmaster.

  "They are not objects of salvation," John Ury replied.

  "What would you do with them then, would you damn them all?"

  "No," claimed John Ury "Leave them to the Great Being that has made them, he knows best what to do with them. They are of a slavish nature, it is the nature of them to be slaves. Give them learning, do all the good you can, and put them above the condition of slaves, and in return they will cut your throats."

  Despite evidence presented against John Ury's portrayal as the Great Black Leader, the court would hear none of it.

  "Ury seemed to be well acquainted with the disposition of them," was Daniel Horsmanden's sole summation.

  The trial of John Ury would take place on the twenty-ninth day of July, 1741. After the crier had cried, and the charge of leading the conspiracy been brought, it was again Mary Bu
rton called to the stand.

  "Mary, give the court and jury an account of what you know concerning the conspiracy to burn down the town and murder and destroy inhabitants, and what part you know the prisoner at the bar has acted in it," Mr. Chambers, the prosecutor, instructed her, careful to make sure his star witness handled this special occasion with care. "Tell the whole story from beginning, in your own method, but speak slow, not so hastily as you usually do, that the court and jury may the better understand you."

  "Why, I have seen Ury very often at Hughson's about Christmas time and New Year, and then he stayed away about a fortnight or three weeks, and returned again about the time that Hogg's goods came to our house," Mary told the room, going on to place Ury at the tavern at all the important times. It was clear, according to Mary, Ury ministered to the whites while instructing the slaves to burn the fort, the Fly, and the city beyond. "I heard Ury tell them they need not fear doing it, for that he could forgive them their sins as well as God Almighty, and would forgive them."

  Not to be outdone by Sarah Hughson, Mary brought in a new and creative ring to her story, one altogether menacing and supernatural. "After I was called upstairs by the schoolmaster, then dismissed, he was angry and shut the door to the room again." Mary squinted her eyes weirdly and peered around suspiciously before continuing. "I looked under it, and there was a black ring upon the floor, and things in it that seemed to look like rats."

  "Rats?" the prosecutor repeated incredulously.