by Edward Cline
Meanwhile, in that other country….
PART I
Chapter 1: The Moment
The fog had cleared, and the moon and stars were brilliant, and the white sails of faraway ships on an invisible horizon were sharp and almost luminescent as they glided past on their grand, unknown errands. In time, there was a hint of a horizon in the east, and the stars began to fade in deference to a sun still unseen. It was a quiet, precious time, when he knew that the world was not so much focused on him, as he was on the world, through a special lens in his soul. It did not strike him without warning; he had experienced this moment often before. At times, however, the clarity was stressed by an ineluctable intransigency. This was such a time.
Jack Frake stood in a space on the side of the bluff that overlooked the York River on a far edge of his property, a rough length of bare rock hewed by rain and wind ages ago and sheltered beneath a cluster of black locust trees above. He had discovered it shortly after his arrival at Morland as an indentured felon. He claimed it as a kind of sanctuary, a place to pause and think and reflect in the necessary closure of solitude. He came here after long periods of living and dealing with other men. It served the same purpose as the cubbyhole on the cliff of Cornwall he once repaired to as a boy.
He was thinking of the words he had written about the colonies and England last night in his study:
“What cleaves us is as wide as the ocean that separates us. It is a distance between souls, between minds, between ways of looking at things. That ocean helped to create that cleavage. It removed our ancestors for a time, as it once removed us, from the immediate concerns and power of kings and the ambitions of men who would be kings, and allowed us to see what could be accomplished without them. It allowed us to see clearly — those of us who bothered to see — what was necessary for men to live their lives unfettered by allegiances to the arbitrary and superfluous. For it not only obliged us to rely on our minds to master nature here, but to look at ourselves in a cleaner, more radical light, and to see what was possible within ourselves and without. And, once we had done that, that other cleavage in soul and mind between the nations became as much a fact as the ocean, and there was no returning to an ignorance of it. Once that was done, we could bow no more, neither to nature nor to kings nor to men who would be kings.…”
There was one word, or one brief expression, that would identify one side of that cleavage and explain why no reconciliation with the other was possible. The answer still eluded him, after all these years. The problem did not distress Jack Frake. He knew that the answer would come to him, in time. His soul, or his being, shone with a certitude as bright as the rising sun.
Etáin’s constant reminder to him over the years had been that so many men had yet to catch up with him. The years had passed, and now it was no longer a matter of so many men. Nor was it a matter of the colonies catching up. Rather, it was a country that was beginning to catch up with him, a country that was beginning to see itself as such, and not as a collection of deferential dependents. A series of crises and protests, intervals of escalating violence and retaliation, were convincing his fellow Americans that no reconciliation was possible with men who intended to rule. He had known it for years. No, he thought. For decades.
Such certitude does not breed vanity in a man. Pride, yes. Impatience, yes. Even a persuasive, unanswerable arrogance. But, never vanity.
He reflected now on the years that had passed, on all the events that populated them, the events that had impelled his fellow Americans closer to his state of certitude. Closer, but not quite there. Not quite able to grasp the sense that, regardless of the wisdom or ignorance of the men in power, regardless of their intentions or benevolence, those men were either the blind or willing pawns of an idea that would not die until it had been challenged and refuted.
Gone were many of the men in power who had contributed to the widening cleavage. George Grenville. Gone. Thomas Whateley, his protégé. Gone. Charles Townshend, who wished to relieve England of the burden of taxes by imposing them on America. He had read that Townshend, when he proposed his duties in the Commons, laughed at the idea of a distinction between internal and external taxation, and had sneered at the gallery that as a consequence he did not expect a statue to be erected in his memory in America. He was gone, too, as well as most of his taxes, except the one on tea. And it was that remaining tax that was going to undo the empire.
Gone, too, were many of liberty’s friends. Wendel Barret, who died with his Courier. Dogmael Jones. Murdered in London. Thomas Reisdale, who three years ago succumbed to his exertions during a Herculean effort to produce pamphlets excoriating the establishment of three more vice-admiralty courts and a Parliamentary assertion that resistance to authority constituted treason.
Reisdale had already received a polite reprimand from Lieutenant- Governor Fauquier for being the author of a Maryland-printed pamphlet attacking not only the Townshend duties, but the article appended to it that empowered the establishment of a civil list. “Liberty can be rebuffed by the cowardly and the meek and the indifferent,” he had written in his last pamphlet, “and even suffer attrition among its champions, but its value can never be refuted. It can be denied men, but never erased from their minds once they have tasted it. We have indeed tasted it, but now must find the courage to keep it.”
Jack remembered his last words to Reisdale after reading the pamphlet one evening in the lawyer’s home. “What you are saying is that we will not suffer being branded transported felons of another kind, and taken back across the ocean to certain death.”
Reisdale had laughed and slapped his head. “God, man! I wish I had thought of that!”
The next morning a servant found him dead in his library. In the course of the mourning for the passing of its resident “antiquarian,” Caxton was astounded when Edgar Cullis, also a lawyer, read Reisdale’s will, and revealed that the late scholar had left his entire property to John Proudlocks, his student in law. By Virginia law, Proudlocks, as an Indian, could not own such property. But no one contested the will, not even Reisdale’s distant relations. As a tribute to his mentor, Proudlocks renamed the property “Sachem Hall.”
Proudlocks had then chosen to accept Jack Frake’s offer to underwrite a journey to London to study law at the Middle Temple. “If I am to understand the coming troubles,” he told his friend and employer, “I must see their source myself. I cannot be satisfied with my book-learning. I must observe the enemy on his ground, before I engage him on my own.”
Jack Frake agreed with his purpose and reasoning. Through a transaction with Hugh Kenrick and his father, he wrote a draft on Swire’s Bank in London to sustain Proudlocks during his sabbatical. He also agreed to oversee Sachem Hall during Proudlocks’s absence. Garnet Kenrick even found him rooms in London near the Middle Temple, and he was a frequent guest of the Kenricks in Chelsea. Proudlocks was due to return any day now, most likely on the Sparrowhawk. Jack Frake had received a letter from him three months ago, reporting that his studies were completed.
Four years ago John Ramshaw had sold his interest in the Sparrowhawk and retired to Yarmouth, Norfolk. “I have sold my place in Norfolk on the Roads,” he wrote Jack Frake, “and have consented to advise the shipbuilders here for a consideration. Parliament has taken the joy out of the business, and I confess I am at sixes and sevens about how to confound its repeated imprecations.” He corresponded regularly with Jack Frake about commerce and politics. The Sparrowhawk itself had been careened and refitted twice since repeal of the Stamp Act and the merchantman was now commanded by Elyot Geary, the son of one of Ramshaw’s ship husbands in London. The new captain and master had retained the secret compartment in the vessel that churned out counterfeit Crown forms, allowing Jack and Ramshaw and other York River planters to keep their heads above the waters of an indebtedness desired and imposed by the Crown.
Jack was almost envious of the northern colonies, for they had picked up Patrick Henry’s torch of 1765 and with
it singed the Crown at every opportunity. He had been kept apprised of events up north by Hugh, whose network of correspondents there sent him regular letters about the tumult and rebellion among the citizens and in the various legislatures. Otis Talbot and Novus Easley in Philadelphia, and other friends and acquaintances of Hugh sent him a constant stream of letters. And now there were two Virginia Gazettes, competing with each other to see which would broadcast the latest news first.
And, as nominal head of the Queen Anne Sons of Liberty, Jack Frake received many letters himself from the heads and secretaries of similar organizations throughout the colonies.
The events recurred with ever-growing force, like the waves that first lapped, then scoured, and finally swept over the sandy banks of the York as a prelude to an approaching storm, working with the moon and tides. The moon in this instance was the idea of liberty; the tides, the tumult.
It was coming to a climax. Soon the storm would burst.
* * *
On that same morning, the 24th of May, a lone figure paced back and forth in the piazza of the Capitol in Williamsburg. Another figure, a statue, seemed to watch the figure below with benign unconcern.
The life-size statue was of white marble, poised atop an ornate white marble pedestal nearly the height of the statue, enclosed by an iron balustrade. It stood in the middle of the covered walkway that connected the House of Burgesses with the General Court and Council chambers. Its back was to the doors to the Council, and faced the doors to the House, as though to remind emerging members of the House of the Crown’s authority. The figure could have been mistaken for that of George the Third; it was actually that of a lowly peer, the late Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt, Governor of Virginia.
The figure struck a regal pose without being imperious, the left arm akimbo, its hand clutching the cap of Liberty; the right arm extended, its hand holding a roll of parchment, a symbol of Virginia’s original charter. It was the classic stance of a contemporary orator. The head was pudgy, from cheek to nose, but seemed to be grafted to the torso of a thinner man who happened to have a prominent paunch. Its expression was fatherly, untroubled, and serenely stern at the same time. It sported a court wig, and meticulously detailed court robes whose fur-lined hem was bunched near the figure’s heels and calves.
The pedestal had required perhaps nearly as much labor to sculpt as the statue itself. It was lavishly ornamented with intricate decorative orders and motifs of acanthus leaves, papyrus, garlands and shells. On one side of the pedestal was inscribed a florid dedication to Botetourt, with the date the General Assembly had voted to “transmit his illustrious character to posterity,” in July 1771. Beneath it were the words: “Let wisdom and justice preside in any country, the people will rejoice and must be happy.” On the back of the pedestal were the carved figures of Britannia with her shield and spear, and America with her bow and quiver, each holding an olive branch over an altar marked “Concordia.”
The statue had been the commission of Richard Hayward, a prominent London sculptor, and was erected in the piazza exactly a year ago. It had cost £950, exclusive of shipping, insurance, and other charges, plus the pay of the mason who had accompanied it from London to supervise its installation.
The burgesses had commissioned the statue of Botetourt as a measure of their lingering esteem for a gentle, royal master. But, many had thought, it was curious that a lord known to be hostile to the colonies’ assertions of right would be honored as an ideal governor, and not Francis Fauquier, his predecessor, who had occupied the Palace for ten years and had been nominally sympathetic to Virginia’s straits.
Botetourt had been a practiced, effective courtier, devoted to the Crown. When he spoke, burgesses imagined themselves being swaddled in rich, warm, comforting velvet. Few burgesses and Council members could resist his smoothly imperial though cordial manner. He dissolved the Assembly after the House had passed three resolutions in protest of the Townshend Acts, but was forgiven with the understanding that he was merely doing his duty. His smile had assured even his committed foes in the House that he meant no harm and bore them no malice, and that he would work to reach rapprochement between the colony and the mother country.
Botetourt had been precisely the kind of governor that Hugh Kenrick and a few other burgesses believed every man should fear. Instead of being a courtier to the king, he had played courtier to the Council and House. Botetourt, said Hugh occasionally during the Governor’s tenure, represented a delusion, a false alternative. Hugh’s dislike of him was buttressed by information that his father had sent him, that Botetourt had voted for the Stamp Act and against its repeal, and had spoken effectively in Lords on those subjects.
Botetourt had been accommodating and pleasant company, yet “royal” in every sense. He had such an effect on Virginians that he distracted them from the contentions between the colonies and the mother country, convincing Virginians that reconciliation was not only possible but a pleasant state of affairs to achieve, as well. But, he was just as capable of dissolving the General Assembly as was Fauquier. Botetourt had dissolved the Assembly of 1770 over resolutions adopted by the House in protest of resolves adopted by Parliament, which asserted Parliamentary authority to the extent that it would tax the colonies in any case whatsoever and take to London for trial any colonial charged with treason.
The sets of resolutions contradicted each other. Botetourt resolved the contradiction by dismissing the House. It was common action taken by most royally appointed governors in the colonies.
Many had been seduced by Botetourt’s easy civility. But, now they were burdened with what Hugh Kenrick had also warned the House about years ago, a veritable lord-lieutenant answerable to no legislature and scornful of colonial presumptions of self-governance, Lord Dunmore, Botetourt’s successor and the second royal appointee who literally began to govern. This man had dissolved the Assembly twice so far, and prorogued it as often as it pleased him. It was likely he would dissolve it again, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow.
It had taken most colonials nearly a half score years to grasp that it was fruitless to attempt compromise or reconciliation with a wolf. A wolf, after all, sustained itself on prey. The colonials did not believe themselves prey, but neither did they believe that the Crown was closed to compromise, nor did they believe that it would deny them their rights as Englishmen. They expected reciprocity. What they got over the years were growls and gestures of bellicosity and repeated attempts to clap them in regulatory and economic irons.
Hugh Kenrick paused in his pacing now and then to glance up at the statue. He had voted against the resolution honoring Botetourt and against the “unanimous” resolution to erect the statue at “public expense.” He was not by nature a cynic, but he could not decide if the expensive gesture was an expression of sincere affection on the part of his fellow burgesses, or a sly act of mollification. Then he stopped and faced the statue. He thought to himself: Wendel Barret deserved a statue. And Dogmael Jones. Thomas Reisdale had earned at least a medallion. But this man? He still felt a touch of disgust with the House for having decided to honor the memory of Botetourt. “People who are not happy, certainly do not rejoice,” he muttered thoughtfully to himself.
“That is not an answer the Crown our Sphinx would wish to hear, Sir Oedipus,” said a voice from over his shoulder. “Prepare to be eaten.”
Hugh turned to see the smiling, freckled face and green eyes of Thomas Jefferson, burgess for Albemarle.
“And what answer to the riddle of Crown purpose would you give, Mr. Jefferson?” asked Hugh. “One that would cause it to sheathe its claws and teeth?”
“I am tempted to say no answer but a sincere and prolonged curtsy of gratitude. Clearly, it does not like the sound of our voices. And then, instead of ending itself, as it did when Oedipus gave it the correct answer, ours would grow in magnitude and consume us all.”
“Well, perhaps it is not truly a sphinx, but a lion in disguise.”
Jefferson laugh
ed. “Now, there are some claws and teeth!”
The piazza was becoming busy with arriving burgesses and Council members, and the pair descended the steps in the bright late-morning sun to talk in private on the clipped lawn nearby. Hugh had corresponded with Jefferson over the years since repeal of the Stamp Act, and with other burgesses who fought for Patrick Henry’s resolves nearly ten years ago. Their letters dwelt not only on politics — their exchanges on the “Farmer’s Letters” pamphlets of John Dickinson revealed some disagreement on a few issues, and on the letters of “Junius” in the London Public Advertiser, they both agreed their author was someone in the War Office — but were mutually informative and served as opportunities to address and articulate ideas that demanded more and more of their intellectual labor. They agreed that a British-American empire was feasible, and took heartened interest in an idea circulated by Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania, that of a “Plan of Union” of Britain and the colonies.
“Today’s sitting promises to be very interesting,” said Hugh. It was ten-thirty. He had encountered Jefferson earlier at breakfast in Marot’s Coffee-house, where the tall red-head had confided that he, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, and George Mason planned to persuade Robert Carter Nicholas, the treasurer, to introduce a resolution calling for “a day of prayer, fasting, and humiliation” on the first of June in support of Boston, closed by Parliament by the Boston Port Act until the destroyed tea had been paid for. Hugh promised to vote for the resolution, although, he said, “I do not believe that fasting, prayer, and humiliation are proper substitutes for action.”
Jefferson now answered, as they strolled leisurely on the grass, “Interesting, and necessary. Colonel Washington will distract the Governor and travel with him tomorrow to the Porto Bello lodge to talk land and inspect the place. He will not mention the resolution. You know that land is a favorite subject of His Excellency, and whets his appetite at the expense of his caution. This will allow Mr. Nicholas to introduce our resolution without interference, and allow the Gazettes to print it and broadsides for distribution.”
