Britannia’s Son (The Duty and Destiny Series, Book 4)

by Andrew Wareham

  “You should have a servant, Captain Jackman, a man such as Sir Frederick’s Bosomtwi,” she said.

  He would look out for one, was the reply, would seek a good pair of men from the crew of the Nymphe when they recommissioned her. They advised him to look about in the valley in the coming month – he would not find a coxswain there, of course, but there was no end of young men at their wit’s end for work, many of them willing perhaps to go to sea.

  The valley was experiencing a new prosperity following enclosure. The farms with their drained, fenced fields were producing three and four times as much as before, feeding themselves and the farmhands and with a surplus of grain and beans and peas going to the markets that snapped them up at a price that increased each year. There was money in coins circulating in the valley now, men who had rarely seen twelve pennies in a month handling silver shillings every week. The farmers, tenant and yeomen, were richer than at any time in history, and their labourers were making a living, but they comprised fewer than one half of the old population of the valley. The Common and waste were gone and there was no way for men out of regular employment to feed themselves and their families.

  Under the old champion ways the cottagers had been able to survive from casual labour at harvest and sowing time, from their gardens and from the cow and geese on the Common, the rabbits in Warren and waste, hurdle-making, nutting and berrying and mushrooming, home-brewing and wine-making, fishing the ponds and sloughs – but all except the labour was gone, and they could not stretch the wages of ten weeks of work to last a year.

  Men were forced out, to the towns, the army, the sea – some emigrated, any of the major holders willing to pay a family’s fares, Upper Canada and America the most common destinations though a few with trades ended up in the Sugar Islands – but in the early years too many could not make up their minds to go, and were unable to make a living if they stayed. The harsh winters of the decade were going some way to solve the problem – children and the elderly did not do well in leaky, cold, tumbledown shacks when snow lay thick – but many were claiming the Poor Law.

  The system developed at Speenhamland was rapidly becoming the norm in the country. The poor were to be entitled to a dole equal to but never exceeding the earnings of the poorest paid unskilled labour in the locality and when the price of corn rose too high they were to be given loaves of bread sufficient for the family each day. Where possible none of the dole should be given in money that could be wasted on luxuries such as tobacco or alcohol. The children immediately became a problem, for their parents lacked the pennies that would educate them – dame school cost as much as nine or ten pence a week, thirty shillings in a school year of forty weeks. Few labourers’ children ever had more than four years in school, but in a family of ten or twelve surviving children that could easily amount to seven pounds ten shillings a year from an income totalling thirty or forty pounds, counting cottage and food from the farm. School fees had always accounted for almost every penny in cash seen in the family. When the cash income disappeared, so did education, and the children ran wild, ignorant of the courtesies of life, rude, unlettered and, in their own turn, unemployable.

  The problems had surfaced immediately after enclosure and the four landowners, aware that some would arise, had taken the obvious steps, the ones that had provided a partial solution elsewhere. Recruiting sergeants from the Dorsets and the Guards had become a fixture in the local villages. The Guards were especially enthusiastic because the Dorset farmboys came tall, six-footers not uncommon, and, if they had to be taught which was ‘left’ before they could commence drill, it was a small price for the size they wanted – and whoever heard of an intelligent, educated Guardee, in any case, they would not wish to embarrass their officers. A steady stream of volunteers left the valley, a trickle in summer and autumn, a flood in the starveling days of winter and spring. Young girls were encouraged to go into service in the big houses and local towns, places found for them, and a few boys could go to apprenticeships in the towns, their indentures bought by the estates. Still too many of the able-bodied poor remained, however, to become a reservoir of disease, unrest and minor crime, poaching especially.

  Sir Geoffrey whose coverts were the largest and who therefore suffered most, was outraged. Mr Robinson, sycophant by profession, echoed his fire. Lord Partington was torn by his religion between charity and condemnation of vice. Frederick, being a self-taught Utilitarian, objected to the waste, and his Elizabeth wished to give food to the children whilst starving the adults into busy virtue. Between them they mirrored the sentiments of the rich and politically powerful of the country as a whole and were quite unable to develop a coherent response to the problem they feared their own enclosures had created.

  The four landowners comprised the bench of the Bride Valley and sat weekly in Petty Sessions, sentencing misdemeanours and remanding their felons to Quarter Sessions or Assize, whichever came first. Magistrates from the Petty Sessions were deputed by the Lord Lieutenant of the County to sit on Quarter Sessions where they acted collectively as a High Court judge, guided by the hopefully learned advice of a local attorney appointed Clerk to the Court. It was a system very similar to that of the Court Martial, and just as capable of being fair or casually unjust. Assizes, equally a lottery for the accused, were presided over by a High Court Judge on Circuit of Oyer and Terminer – the most famous locally being Bloody Judge Jeffereys, his memory still green a century after he had filled the local gallows.

  Frederick, youngest yet far the most distinguished of the four, was naturally selected for the Quarter Sessions. He rode off accompanied by Jackman, who had not quite been able to select a servant, on his way back to Portsmouth and orders – from what he had been told he expected to be sent back to the Mediterranean, but he knew very well that that meant no certainty at all; orders commonly changed several times between commissioning and sailing.

  Frederick returned ten days later, having sat first in Poole and then in Dorchester, staying in the hotel rather than attempting the long ride each day. He was in a sombre mood, Bosomtwi, who had watched him fret, equally depressed.

  “He not happy, isn’t it, milady – he had to watch the hangings, to be legal, but he don’t like it none!”

  Elizabeth had fast learned a wife’s skills and took him to bed early, exorcised his demons as well as she knew how, reflecting the while that the burdens of duty could sometimes be very light indeed.

  “Well, husband?”

  “Very well, wife – thank you!” He rubbed his shoulder – it was almost better, had stood up to the strain very well. “Justice in England, ma’am – a disgrace to the word!”

  He nestled into the down-filled upper pillow that rested on the bran bolster and pulled the blankets about them, his arm around her, left hand resting companionably on her bare buttocks, open legs across his thigh and feeling the wet warmth of her.

  “The first four cases we heard, all in Poole, were the most serious, capital and rightly so. A group of six caught in possession of smuggled goods, on the foreshore and fired on the dragoons who found them, wounding a trooper – they hanged, despite one being no more than thirteen or so – he was carrying a sabre. Then a most wicked man who got his own daughter with child and then strangled her when her belly began to show – her little sister saw and feared she would be next and ran to the vicar with the tale; he was hanged half-dead having attempted self-murder.”

  “Vile, Frederick, utterly vile!”

  “The third was a house-breaker, caught in the act and carrying a pistol and a knife – he was equipped to murder and could expect no mercy.”

  Elizabeth nodded, possession of property made her unforgiving of burglars.

  “The fourth, a young man, a farmer’s son of a little education – his sweetheart left him for another and he took a fowling piece and killed both and waited by their bodies to be taken up. He wanted to die, he said. I hope he did not change his mind, for we could find no reason why he should not.”

/>   He fell silent, his hand starting to stray.

  “And the others, husband?”

  “At Dorchester. Poachers caught under arms – if you are to kill deer or pheasants then you must have guns. Beggars who were in a group of three, carrying sticks when they demanded alms of a young woman, of gentle birth, a lady, in the street – no reason to suppose they were not walking staffs, bright daylight in a busy town, but she screamed in terror. A group of farm labourers who conspired to refuse to work for a farmer who had cut their wages – an unlawful combination in restraint of trade. A starving labourer who took a bull calf for his family. A pair of whores who rolled a mark, the son of a respectable family.”

  He explained the last, aware that the words had meant nothing at all to her.

  “Finally, a tutor in Latin and Greek who showed the boys under him a thing too many of classical habits.”

  Again she did not understand, forced him finally to a clinical description of what had been placed where.

  “And did you hang him for that, Frederick?”

  “We did.”

  “Good – had I been their mama I should have been most upset! What of the others?”

  “The bloody-minded brutes would have turned off each and every one of them, but for my arguments. I spoke for the poachers first – said they were too skilful to waste in time of war - they should go to army or navy, preferably to sea where there was little of game to poach. They could see the reason in that, took my argument favourably. Next came the beggars, and I said nothing for them, for there was no sympathy at all and they were all three more or less crippled, could not go to the army or to sea or even to transportation to be labourers overseas. The combination, I said we should be careful not to make local heroes of them, hanged for standing up to their masters, we wanted no more of their sort – let them just be fools who shouted their mouths off and ended up transported to Botany Bay. They agreed with that, said it made good sense, and suggested the whores go too, them not liking to hang women.”

  “And the man who killed the calf?”

  “It was a bull calf out of a milker, not a meat animal. It was not wanted for breeding and would have been slaughtered by Christmas. Killing it did not deprive a farmer of a valuable animal, and his children were hungry. I said the army, but they wanted death. We hanged him, for if I had argued long I would have lost all my influence, and the poachers and the combination would have been turned off too.”

  His hands strayed further and she held him tight, thrusting her breasts against him.

  “Bosomtwi said you had to watch the hangings.”

  “That is the law, it seems. We stood there on the balcony looking over the square, at much the same height as the gallows platform, the mob surrounding, filling every inch of space, leaning out of the windows, even a few on the roofs. They cheered the ones they thought went well, booed the villains and the cowards. They laughed at the boy smuggler when he wept and cried out as he was stood under the beam, all six together. And I must go again next quarter, and every quarter when I am ashore, my love – it is my duty.”

  “And this is my duty, and my love for you, my poor captain. Come along now, gently, don’t hurt your shoulder…”

  Bosomtwi returned home to Long Common, conflicting duties driving him to his wife’s side.

  Ablett stayed at Abbey and developed a taste for evenings in the White Boar at Bredy. Five nights in a row he sat in the one bar, quietly with a pint or playing crib or dominoes with the older men, his back turned to the noisy youngsters at the big table in the centre of the room.

  “They’re spending a bit free, Old George,” he commented to his dominoes partner. “Double-six makes fifteen for eight,” he continued triumphantly. The opposition knocked and double-three was followed by three-six and six-blank which took them round the corner and half-way down the home leg to roars of delight.

  “Daft bunch of buggers! They got a ‘friend’, a good old pal stumping up the ackers – one of the gentry from Bridport, except ‘e ain’t no gentleman born, not one of the Quality as is, not like Sir Frederick or my lord. Talks to they, ‘e do, about ‘Rights’ and ‘ow they should stand up for theyselves and get they’s Common back. Tells ‘em all the old shit, so ‘e do,” Old George sneered, “thick they be, bunch o’ bloody joskins, what small bit o’ brains they got, they sits on! ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’ You must ‘ave ‘eard that one, Mr Ablett.”

  Ablett nodded, old as the hills that one was.

  “Well, I’ll tell thee ‘oo the bloody gentleman was – ‘e was the bugger ‘oo’d got a big stick in one ‘and a bloody noose in t’other!”

  “Their friend buying, you say?”

  “Puts a pair of gold guineas across the bar, so ‘e do. Says they should tell the bloody gentry where to go, there’s more of they than there is of crawlers up at the Big Houses.”

  Ablett nodded, listened, played on.

  “So, sir, I reckon they’ll be burning a few ricks soon – showing what they can do, like. Mr Robinson’s, I expect, because everybody thinks he’s an arsehole!”

  “When do they meet next, Ablett?”

  “Saturday evening, sir, in the barn behind the White Boar, all paid for right and tight, sir.”

  “Who are they, do you know?”

  “Mostly off of Robinson’s and my lord’s, sir – no work and little spare money on the one hand, tight-fisted old scrub on the other. At a glance, sir, they’re all young men, unwed. No work, no money, nothing to keep a wife on, so the girls won’t look at them.”

  Frederick nodded, sat at his desk, thought a few seconds, leant back in his chair, shrugged.

  “Best to stop it before it starts, I think.”

  Ablett nodded – he felt sympathy for the men, there was nothing for them in the valley; he believed also that they were weak fools for not getting out. There was always some way out for a young man – the sea, the West, the army, the factories in the North Country, London – they did not have to stay and whine. They could not all be kings, but they need not be queens, either!

  “Yeomanry or dragoons and the Assizes, Ablett?”

  “Sabre half and hang the rest, sir? Gives us a bad name, sir. A hot press might be a better bet.”

  “Is there anything in Bridport at the moment?”

  “Pair of 74s, sir, watering, the hoys not able to get out this week.”

  There had been a nasty easterly wind forcing the blockading squadrons to sail close inshore against a possible breakout and leaving the hovellers and hoys rarely unable to cross the Channel from Bridport.

  “Carriage, please, Ablett – we are off a-visiting.”

  Ajax accompanied by Hercules – Frederick felt a proprietary pride as he saw her in the bay, commented how well she looked. Ablett nodded gravely – he had lost too many friends and mates taking her that day, knew that they had both been very lucky to survive.

  Frederick passed a shilling piece to a fisherman mending his nets at the quay, the weather having decided him not to go out to sea that morning.

  “Do you know who is senior of the pair?”

  “Thank ’ee, sir. Ajax led in, sir. Dunno who got her though, sir. I could take you out, if you wanted, sir.”

  Half an hour and they were approaching Ajax, larboard side.

  “Permission to board?” Ablett roared. “Captain Sir Frederick Harris.”

  A few seconds delay, then a lieutenant appeared. “Starboard, if you please, sir.”

  Presumably a stickler for formality, the unknown captain, if his lieutenant on harbour watch was so insistent on the respect due to rank.

  Man-ropes and side boys, Marines, pipes – the full rigmarole; Captain Ainslie welcoming him, the first time they had met since parting on Hercule, as she then was, off Antigua.

  “Sir Frederick, a pleasure, sir! I have followed your career with interest since we last met!”

  “Captain Ainslie! I believe I have never had the opportunity to thank you for yo
ur Gazette letter, so very flattering, sir!”

  They walked together to Ainslie’s cabin, drank a welcoming glass while Frederick explained his problem and the solution he had devised for it. Ainslie’s eyes gleamed – he had been more than a year on blockade, starting with a thin crew had lost men at the normal rate of two or three every month dead or so disabled as to be of no further use to him, was becoming embarrassed by the shortage of bodies, almost unable to man a full broadside.

  “So, Captain Ainslie, was I to have, say, six farm wains on the quay mid-afternoon, say two o’clock land time, then we could quietly make our way to Bredy village where you could pick up twenty or thirty young fellows of an active turn of mind.”

  “And the revolutionary gentleman?”

  “No great sense in leaving him behind, sir.”

  “None at all! The experience will broaden his mind, give him a closer view of the sufferings of the poor!”

  The wains were hidden in the barns of one of Lord Partington’s tenants, nearest to the village, and sixty foremast jacks, almost all men who had been pressed and saw no reason why anyone else should not be, sat behind the hedgerows, nudging each other and chuckling quietly. A steady trickle of men came into the White Boar, most carrying a tankard or leather pot into the barn. Dusk fell and a gig pulled up and a pair of middle-aged, prosperously dressed, portly townsmen clambered down, adjusted cuffs and collars as they shrugged out of their greatcoats, picked up fat portfolios, strode tall and self-important into the barn. There was a shout of applause, cheering and boot-stamping as they stood against the light in the doorway.

  “To your places, gentlemen,” Ainslie’s premier directed his Third and three midshipmen, grinned at Ablett. “Did I not see you aboard Hermione a few years ago, Mr Ablett?”