by Edward Cline
Chapter 38: The Pillory
HUGH KENRICK KNEW THAT GLORIOUS SWAIN WAS RIGHT—RIGHT, AT least, about the consequences of rashly identifying himself to anyone as one of the missing Pippins. Upon cooler reflection, he privately conceded Swain’s points, but their rightness only magnified his sense of helplessness, which in turn fed his anger. He had taken an oath, but now wondered if, in the act of not breaking it, the oath would instead break him.
It was dusk when he paid the driver and stood to watch the hackney leave the courtyard. He walked over to the spot where Dolman and the stablemaster said they found Brice Blissom. Rain had washed the blood away. What happened here many nights ago did not seem real to him, either. Nor did the idea of Glorious Swain committing the act. Then he remembered his friend’s warnings in the garret, and the slap on his face. The reality of Brice Blissom’s death returned.
That evening, Hugh sat at an open window in his darkened room and watched the lights of vessels move up and down and across the Thames below, and let the distant rumble and rattle of wheels over Westminster Bridge soothe his mind. He had accepted all of Swain’s arguments, but one: that he was the future. That is, he did not reject it. His life and future were his, as much as were his hands and feet. It was not an issue of accepting or rejecting such things; they were simply there. He did not know that there was something to be glimpsed, or something others struggled to be. The notion was so alien to him that he could not grasp it; it was as foreign to him as was the Corpus Mysticum. That, at least, he could grasp, for it was something he could observe, analyze, and abstract. He did not know how to observe and abstract himself. The idea smacked of vanity. He could not decide whether it was ludicrous or sublime.
It must be sublime, he concluded; Swain was not a man who wasted time on absurdities. And it must be wisdom, an elusive fragment of it he would perhaps acquire in the future that Swain had forbidden him to forsake.
* * *
Hugh had promised Swain not to reveal his association with the convicted Pippins. Such a promise, under such circumstances, is merely a lid fixed atop a boiling caldron of anger. Either the lid will be shot away by the mounting pressure, or the caldron will explode, leaving the lid intact. The first sign of the oath’s inadequacy occurred two days later, when Hugh allowed himself an innocent exception to the oath, took time away from his duties at Swire’s Bank, and went to Serjeant-at-Laws Inn to enquire after Dogmael Jones. He found the man in the near-empty library of the Inn, sitting at a table laden with law books and documents. He introduced himself, saying that he had been one of the spectators in the courtroom.
Jones was not wearing his wig and gown. He was a tall, lean, pockmark-scarred man with silver-streaked black hair tied in back with a plain ribbon. He bowed cordially to Hugh, and gestured for him to sit across the table from him. A bottle of wine and a half-filled glass stood on top of an ancient, worn tome. “What is your interest in the matter, milord?” asked the barrister.
“I thought you should have won,” answered Hugh.
“As did I,” replied Jones. “Do you know the men?”
After a pause, Hugh answered, “I was acquainted with them, through their trades.”
“I see.” Jones scrutinized Hugh for a moment. “Did you see the poster?”
“Only in the courtroom, sir.”
“Of course.”
Swain and Benjamin Worley had told Hugh enough about the trial that he could ask informed questions. These he put to Jones, together with some on points of law. Jones smiled in appreciation of the questions. He gestured to the books and papers. “You catch me here in the midst of preparing a reading for students, come the next term. Statutes and precedents and rules of law.” He paused to pour more wine into his glass. “Here’s to public places.” He tilted the glass back and swallowed the red liquid.
Hugh knew then that the man was half-drunk.
Jones noted the observation on his visitor’s face. “Physicians bleed their patients to purge them of infirming humors. Why can’t a man bleed a bottle to purge himself of pain?” He grinned. “Well, do you want to know how injustice was done? All right. On paper, I won the case. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind about that. King’s Counsel would even concede that. But when Milord Grainger examined my own arguments with malice aforethought, he lost it for me. I had not expected that tactic. I had heard he was a fair man.”
“But, how?”
Jones shrugged. “He made an issue of public places, and those secret names. You were there. You heard him. I neglected both matters in my presentation, as they were not germane. But he flung them into the air for the jury to see, like a juggler at St. Bartholomew’s Fair, for the mob to coo and crow over—while the twin thieves of protocol and privilege picked our pockets! Of course, he did not instruct the jury to disregard his own digression, and I could not instruct him to…instruct.” Jones picked up the bottle again and poured another glass.
“Why would he want to sabotage your case?”
“Why?” chuckled Jones. “Why, indeed? To get himself a crown,” said the barrister in the manner of a quotation, “or, at least, a coronet. Milord Master of the Rolls, I have it on good authority, is to be bestowed the Viscountcy of Wootton and Clarence, in Staffordshire, by a grateful king acting on the advice of those who have heard something of his prudence. Well, sixteen silver balls on a hat, versus the lives of five men—who could quarrel with such a trade?” Jones leaned back in his chair and passed a hand over his eyes, then studied the glass of wine in his hand. “Well, there’s some justice in that reward. ‘The last was I that felt thy tyranny,’ said the ghost of Clarence to King Richard on the eve of battle. ‘Despair and die!’” Jones emptied his glass again, and set it down with a thump on the tome. “I’ll bet he never reads that tragedy again, the right honorable bastard!”
“That was the ghost of Buckingham,” corrected Hugh.
Jones shut his eyes for a moment, then smiled. “Milord, you are right. Wrong ghost, wrong crime! I’ve misplaced my lines. Here, then, is Clarence: ‘I wash myself to death with fulsome wine.’ Slightly paraphrased, as Mr. Cibber and Mr. Garrick are wont to do on the stage.” He picked up the bottle again and drained the last of its contents into his glass. “Is that all you wish to know, milord?”
“Yes,” answered Hugh. “Thank you.”
Jones rose, holding his glass. “Then you will please excuse me, while I imbibe my certain quietus, prepare to stump my students, and ponder the prerogatives of public places.”
Hugh rose also. “Public places? That is the third time you have mentioned that, as though it were a lesion that inflamed your mind.”
“I confess the notion confounds me, milord.”
Hugh looked thoughtful. “Perhaps the confusion lies in its definition, sir,” he suggested.
Jones was about to taste the wine again, but he paused to study his visitor. After a moment, he grinned and winked. “Spoken, milord, like a true Pippin. Thank you. I shall harry that definition.” He bowed in deference.
“Good day to you, sir,” said Hugh. He turned and walked away, but glanced back at the barrister. The glass, still full, now sat on top of the ancient tome. And Sir Dogmael Jones still stood, his back to him, fingers drumming a tattoo on the table, apparently deep in thought.
* * *
Between the soaring twin turrets and weathercocks of Northumberland House at Charing Cross strode a gold-plated bronze lion atop a rococo pediment, looking as though he were stalking prey below. Just south of the long facade of this building, the statue of swordless Charles I commanded the juncture of Whitehall with Cockspur Street and the Strand. The space there was wide enough to accommodate the pillory and the crowds it attracted. The pillory itself was not a permanent structure; it was dismantled and stored near a bailiff’s house until the courts produced a fresh batch of felons. When it was up, merchants and tradesmen who leased shops at the crossroads rarely complained of the ruckus and inconvenience of the crowds; an excursion to the pillory wa
s regularly fitted into many a lady’s and gentleman’s daily itinerary of shopping, social calls, and idleness.
Every six weeks, the hangings at Tyburn Tree near Hyde Park on the western outskirts of London drew thousands of spectators. The punishments at Charing Cross drew mere hundreds. Always there were men and women on the pillory, at times only two, often as many as six. Their sentences ranged from two hours to a whole day. The size and character of a crowd depended on the notoriety of the crimes or the felons. Whatever was not a hanging offense was a punishable offense. Adulterers and adulteresses were exhibited here to endure the ribald and coarse catcalls of the crowd. So were buggers and mollies—sodomites—who provoked so furious a wrath that often they were fortunate to be released from the pillory alive, barely able to see through their own blood. So were prostitutes and wagtails, or any women found guilty of lewd behavior. False cambists, or forgers of bills of exchange or other money instruments, took their turns at the pillory, as did receivers of stolen goods and defrauders of tradesmen. Apprentices who beat their masters, and artisans who beat their apprentices, were exposed to public judgment. Servants lucky enough to win a jury’s sympathy, when the appraised value of the property they stole was less than forty shillings, were sentenced to stand here instead of on the hangman’s cart beneath Tyburn Tree.
And like Tyburn Tree, pillory days took on the character of a street fair. Enterprising vendors put up food and drink stalls nearby, or circled the crowds noisily hawking fruits, refreshments, potions, and snuff from wheelbarrows. Touts roamed the crowds selling places closer to the pillory, or illegal lottery tickets, or programs listing the schedule of felons and their crimes. Others, working on commission for the felons themselves, or for a prison chaplain, hustled to sell the prisoners’ personal confessions, histories, or protestations of innocence in penny pamphlets, for there was a great market for the printed lives of criminals. Pickpockets and cut-purses, drawn naturally to great numbers of distracted people, worked stealthily and discreetly in the crowd, and joined in with their own curses and epithets. A handful of constables, watchmen, beadles, and mounted javelin-men with their red-tasseled spears were posted around the pillory by the presiding sheriff or bailiff to prevent rescue attempts and to control the crowds. If a felon or his family was rich enough, private guards could be hired to keep the crowd far enough away from the prisoner to reduce the risk of harm to him.
For many felons, time on the pillory was tantamount to the death sentence, for there were those among the spectators who, for lack of any other amusement or diversion, were professional tormenters. These were usually street urchins and idle men. They would come ready with bags slung over their shoulders crammed with the dross and scourings of the city: stones, dead cats and rats, blocks of wood, horses’ hooves, rotten eggs, dung, and slaughterhouse offal. Their aim was practiced, accurate, and often deadly. What they did not themselves hurl at the prisoners, they sold to game or roused spectators. For some of these rogues, pelting the pillory was the only cathartic of their aimless, abridged lives; for others, the gross sales of missiles for the use of lawful mobs enabled them to sustain themselves for another day or week.
If a prisoner was maimed, or died from his injuries at the pillory, the law, age-old custom, and public approbation allowed it. The possibility was integral to the punishment. When a prisoner expired on the pillory, a coroner’s jury would simply return a finding of “willful murder by persons unknown,” and no investigation would be made. The London Evening Auditor was not the only newspaper to note that, on pillory days, “there are usually more criminals and miscreants in the crowds, than there are on view.”
The pillory itself was a marvel of simplicity. It consisted of as many upright posts as a platform would accommodate. Attached to each post were two transverse boards, an upper one, hinged, and a stationary lower one. The upper board could swing up to allow a prisoner to place his neck and wrists in the sockets of the stationary, then swing down to complete the holes and be locked to the lower. The average height of the boards forced most men and women to stand in a bending position. The posts were often connected at the base to an iron bar that would permit a hangman, safely out of the way of missiles, to turn the posts, and thus the prisoners, for the crowds on all sides to see.
Swordless Charles, sitting high above the pillory, did not witness what transpired beneath the nostrils of his steed. The golden lion of Northumberland House, gazing down on it all, seemed to give it his kingly consent.
From Windridge Court, Charing Cross was Hugh’s only egress to Worley’s offices on the Lawful Keys and Swire’s Bank on Lombard Street. He could have paid a waterman to row him from the Whitehall Stairs to Lion Key downriver, but he chose to pass through the juncture every morning. He thought he could accustom himself to the spectacle, so that, when their time came, the sight of the Pippins, standing with their heads and wrists locked between the boards, and exposed to the taunts and abuse, would be bearable. He had never ventured to Tyburn Tree, for he thought that a fascination with the executions there was morbid, strange and unhealthy. He had seen pillories before—in London, in Danvers, in Canterbury—and, without pausing in his business to gape, assumed that justice was being done. Nor was he a stranger to the gibbets that travelers encountered on the roads and turnpikes, those iron cocoons of the decaying remains of brutal highwaymen, planted aloft at the scenes of their crimes.
Soon enough, though, he realized that he was deceiving himself. He could endure the sight of a pillory and the raucous crowds that surrounded it. He knew that what he could not endure was the sight of the Pippins on one. They had been found guilty of blasphemous libel, of putting up seditious posters, yet they were not criminals. The Crown said they were. He knew they were not.
They would be pilloried—because of him. Elspeth and Abraham were dead—because of him. The Society had been the excuse for striking back—at him. It was he who had been the object of malice, that of Mathius and of Brice Blissom. How could he abandon the three surviving Pippins? How could he not share their punishment? He began to feel absurdly guilty for not having been arrested, tried, and sentenced to the same punishment. Then he thought of Glorious Swain, who felt guilt neither for his freedom, nor for having killed the Marquis.
His guilt fought quietly with his sense of injustice. Laws existed that could punish men for thinking. Men could use those laws to punish others. Men could corrupt a court to seek an end that would get them some lucrative preferment—such as the Viscountcy of Wootton and Clarence. The guilt clashed also with his shattering disappointment that such a thing could happen in England. But, he asked himself: Why should he be so surprised? There was his uncle, who could sit in Lords and wield power. There was Henoch Pannell, who could sit in the Commons and wield power.
I do not wield power, he thought, and yet I am feared. Is that such a vain observation? John Hamlyn had tried to crush him. His uncle had tried to crush him. As had Brice Blissom. Yet Glorious Swain said that he was the future. Did his uncle and Pannell see that, too?
Hugh spent many evenings at home, sitting at his desk, spinning his brass top on its cleared surface, thinking, pondering, attempting to reconcile a host of opposites. He could not. The top would spin until it began to wobble, and he would put a finger on it so that it would not fall.
Chapter 39: The Lawless
“ONE MAY CURSE IN FRENCH, AND STILL SOUND BEAUTIFUL AND profound.”
“Oh, no! One may not curse properly in French at all!”
“Depend on it, gentlemen: If you are cursed by a Frenchman, you would not need to understand a word he says, to know that you are not being called beautiful or profound!”
The guests and hosts at the table of the supper room at Windridge Court laughed at this exchange between Garnet Kenrick, John Swire, and George Formby. James Pursehouse, the fourth partner of the bank, had bitten into his mince pie and found a stone. His muttered curse in French had provoked the exchange. Hugh was present, sitting next to his sister, Alice, now
ten years old. Garnet Kenrick sat at the head of the table, next to his wife. Swire’s and Formby’s wives were also at the table.
Hugh merely smiled. His uncle arrived first at the London home, followed by his parents and sister two days later. He had already moved most of his things to Cutter Lane, and had seen the Earl only briefly in one of the hallways. In a week, he was to begin a new term at Dr. Comyn’s school. Hugh would not speak to his uncle under any circumstances, except in reply. His uncle would not tolerate being snubbed by his nephew, at least not in company or in public. Effney Kenrick worked hard to keep them apart. Hugh was here tonight because the Earl was not.
Neither Garnet Kenrick nor his wife could penetrate the grim reticence of their son. They had never seen him so preoccupied before, and they knew not with what. They were certain it had nothing to do with the estrangement between their son and the Earl.
“Has Reverdy slighted you in a letter?” asked the Baroness gently one day.
“No,” Hugh had said with a warm, incredulous smile.
“Has Mr. Worley done something I should know about?” asked the Baron. “In the business, that is.”
“No,” said Hugh. “His sons lost some wares that were to go to Spain while Mr. Worley was serving on a grand jury, that is all.”
“Are you in any trouble…or difficulty?”
“No,” replied Hugh. “Aye, there’s the rub,” he added, more to himself than for his parents’ benefit.
“What do you mean, Hugh?” asked his mother.
“Yes, what do you mean?” echoed his father. Mistaking Hugh’s quotation from Hamlet for some attempt at wit, he tried to use wit to coax an explanation from his son. “Leave moping about to the likes of that morose Dane, and drop that Melpomenic mask!” He followed this with a laugh and an inviting smile.
Hugh had merely grinned weakly, shaken his head, and would not explain what he meant.
