An Instance of the Fingerpost

by Iain Pears

  I gather that he has already sent Cola’s words to Wallis, old and blind though he now is, and daily expects to hear his opinion. I can imagine what that will be: Wallis triumphans, or a variation thereof. It is only to set the matter aright that I bother to put down a true version of events. It will be a disjointed account, as I am often interrupted by business, but I will do my best.

  I should start by saying that I quite liked Cola; he cut an ungainly figure, but pictured himself a gallant and made something of an entertainment during his brief stay in Oxford by the gaudiness of his clothes and the air of perfume that he left behind him. He was constantly pirouetting and bowing and paying bizarre compliments, quite unlike the majority of Venetians, who I understand normally pride themselves on their gravity and look askance at English exuberance. His dispute with Lower I do not pretend to understand; how men could come to blows over such trivialities escapes me. There is, surely, something undignified in two gentlemen fighting over the right to be seen the more artisanal: Lower has never mentioned anything of the matter to me and I cannot judge whether or no he has anything to be ashamed of. That acrimonious and foolish business aside, however, the Venetian had much to commend him, and it was unfortunate I did not encounter him in easier circumstances. I wish I could talk to him now, for there is much to ask. Above all, I do not understand why – it is the most glaring of his omissions – he never mentions in his memoir that he had known my father. It is strange, for we talked much of him on the occasions we met, and Cola spoke of him warmly.

  Thus my opinion of the Venetian, from what I knew of him. I suspect that Dr Wallis will paint a different portrait. I never quite understood why that worthy divine so took against the man, but I am fairly certain that he had no real reason to do so. Wallis had some strange obsessions and, of course, a profound dislike of all papists, but often would be just plain wrong: this was one of those occasions.

  It is generally known that, until Mr Newton eclipsed him, Dr Wallis was considered the finest mathematician this country has ever produced, and this reputation has obscured his occult activities for the government and the malice of his character. Frankly, I have never been entirely certain what either of them do that is so wonderful: I can add up and subtract to get the estate accounts in order, and I can place a bet on a horse and calculate my winnings, and I cannot see why anybody should need to know more. Someone once tried to explain Mr Newton’s notions, but they made little sense. Something about proving that things fall. As I had taken a bad drop from my horse only the previous day, I replied that I had all the proof I needed on my backside. As for why, it was obvious that things fall because God has made them heavy.

  However clever he was in matters such as these, though, Wallis was no judge of character and made fearful mistakes; Cola, I think, was one of them. Because the poor man was a papist and desperately trying to ingratiate himself, Wallis assumed there was some sinister motive behind it all. Personally, I take people as I find them, and Cola never did me any harm. And as for being a papist, that is not my concern; if he chooses to burn in Hell there is nothing I can do to save him.

  Despite his amiability, though, it was clear to me at least that Cola was a fool in many respects, an example of the difference between learning and wisdom. I have a theory that too much learning unbalances the mind. So much effort goes into squeezing in knowledge that there isn’t enough room left over for common sense. Lower, for example, was a desperately clever man but got nowhere; whereas I, with no education to speak of, have great position, am a Justice of the Peace and also a Member of Parliament. I live in this vast house, built especially for me, and am surrounded by servants, some of whom even do my bidding. A fine achievement, I submit, for someone who was born, through no personal fault, with less than nothing and who once narrowly escaped Sarah Blundy’s fate.

  That young woman, you see, was a harlot and witch, despite the prettiness and the strangeness of manner which so captivated Cola. Now, in my mature years and having come closer to God, I am astonished at my carelessness in placing my soul in peril by consorting with her. However, as I am a just man, I must state the absolute truth: whatever her other crimes and however much she deserved to die, Sarah Blundy did not kill Dr Robert Grove. I know this for a fact, for I also know who did kill him. Had Cola been more mindful of the Bible, he would have realised that the proof lay in those notebooks he carried to jot down the words of others. He reports that at the dinner in New College Grove had a dispute with Thomas Ken, who stormed out muttering the words ‘Romans 8:13.’ Cola remembered the reference, wrote it down and entirely missed its significance; indeed he missed the significance of the whole occasion, failing even to understand why he was invited in the first place. For what is this passage? Unlike him, I took the trouble to find out, and it confirmed the belief I have held all these years: ‘For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die.’ My friend Thomas was convinced Grove did indeed live for fleshly pleasure, and a few hours later he died. Had I not known better, I would have called that a remarkable prophecy.

  I accept readily that Thomas was tormented beyond endurance before he acted, for I knew well Grove’s qualities and defects. I had suffered much from his barbs as a child myself, when he had taught me as part of his duties in Sir William Compton’s household and, although I knew him well enough to see the good that lay therein (once I was large enough not to be beaten by him, for he was formidably strong in his arms) I knew how hurtful his wit could be. Thomas – poor, slow, honest Thomas – was too easy a target for his sallies. So much and so mercilessly did he taunt my friend I might even claim that Grove brought his fate upon himself.

  And myself? I have to relate my journeys, not one, but several, all undertaken at the same time in my quest for prosperity and (dare I say it) salvation. Some of what I will say is public knowledge already. Some is known only to myself and will cause great consternation amongst the atheists and the scoffers. I doubt not that what I say will be scorned by the erudite, who will laugh at my presentation and ignore the truth that lies within. That is their concern, for I will tell the truth, whether they like it or not.

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  IT IS MY desire to set out clearly my account of events, and not bother with the sillinesses indulged in by so-called authors trying to earn spurious fame. God forbid that I should ever suffer the shame of publishing a book for money, or of having one of my family so demean themselves. How can one tell who might read it? No worthy book has ever been written for gain, I think; occasionally I am forced to listen to someone reading to while away time in the evening and, on the whole, I find it all quite absurd. All those elaborate conceits and hidden meanings. Say what you mean to say, then be silent, is my motto, and books would be better – and a lot shorter – if more people listened to my advice. There is more wisdom in a decent volume on husbandry or fishing than in the most cunning of these philosophers. If I had my way, I’d mount them all on a horse at dawn, and make them gallop through the countryside for an hour. That might blow some of the nonsense out of their fuddled minds.

  So I will explain myself simply and directly, and I have no shame in saying that my narrative will reflect my character. I was at Oxford intended for the law; and I was intended for the law because, though the eldest and only son of my family, I was going to have to earn my living, so low had we sunk in misfortune. The Prestcotts were a very old family but had suffered considerably during the wars. My father, Sir James Prestcott, had joined the king when that noble gentleman raised his standard at Northampton in 1642, and he fought courageously throughout the Civil War. The expense was enormous, as he maintained a whole troop of horse at his own charge, and he was shortly reduced to mortgaging his land to raise money, confident that this was a wise investment for the future. No one, in those early days, seriously considered that the fighting would end in anything other than triumph. But my father, and many others, reckoned without the king’s rigidity and the growing influence of the fanatics in Parliament. T
he war went on, the country suffered, and my father got poorer.

  Disaster occurred when Lincolnshire – where much of the family property was – fell wholly into the hands of the Roundheads; my mother was briefly imprisoned, and much of our revenue confiscated. Even this did not shake my father’s resolution, but when the king was captured in 1647, he realised that the cause was lost and so made such peace as he could with the new rulers of the land. In his opinion Charles I had thrown away his kingdom through his folly and mistakes, and no more could be done. Father was reduced to virtual poverty, but at least retired from the fray rich in honour, content to resume his life.

  Until the execution. I was only seven on that terrible winter’s day in 1649, and yet I recall the news of it still. I think every man alive then can remember exactly what they were doing when they heard that the king had been beheaded in front of a cheering mob. There is now nothing which more brings home to me the passage of the years than to meet a grown man who does not recall, as his strongest memory, the horror that the news produced. Never in the history of the universe had such a crime been committed, and I remember vividly how the sky turned dark and the earth rocked as the anger of heaven was loosed on the land. It rained for days afterwards, the sky itself weeping for the sinfulness of mankind.

  Like everyone else, my father had not believed it would happen. He was wrong. He always had too good an opinion of his fellows: perhaps that was his downfall. Murder, perhaps: such things happen. But a trial? To execute in the name of justice the man who was its very fount? To lead God’s anointed on to a scaffold like a criminal? Such blasphemous, sacrilegious mockery had not been seen since Christ Himself suffered on the Cross. England had sunk low: never in their worst nightmares did anyone suspect it could sink so very far down into the sulphur. My father gave his loyalty entire to the young Charles II at that very moment and vowed to dedicate his life to achieving his restoration.

  This was shortly before my father’s first exile, and before I was sent away from my family for instruction. I was called formally to his room, and went with some trepidation as I assumed that I must have misbehaved, since he was not a man who gave himself much to his children, being too occupied with more important matters. But he greeted me kindly and even permitted me to sit, then told me of what had happened in the world.

  ‘I will have to leave the country for a while, to mend our fortunes,’ he said. ‘And your mother has decided that you will go to my friend, Sir William Compton, and receive instruction from tutors while she returns to her own people.

  ‘You must remember one thing, Jack. God made this country a monarchy, and if we stray from that, we stray from His will. To serve the king, the new king, is to serve your country and God in equal part. To give your life for that is nothing, to give your fortune less still. But never give your honour, for that is not yours to give. It is like your place in the world, a gift from the Lord which I hold in trust for you, and which you must guard for your children.’

  Though I was seven at the time, he had never talked to me with such seriousness before, and I adopted as much gravity as a childish face can manage, and swore that he would have cause to be proud of me. I managed not to cry as well, although I remember the effort most strongly. That was strange; I had seen little of him or of my mother in my life, and yet I thought of his imminent departure with great despondency. Three days later, both he and I left our house, never to return as its owners. Perhaps those guardian angels we are told watch over us knew this, and played melancholy music and saddened my listening soul.

  For the next eight years, there was little for my father to do. The great cause was lost, and he was in any case too poor to participate. Such was his distress that he was forced to leave the country and seek his living fighting as a soldier, as did so many other Royalist gentlemen. He went first to the Netherlands, then served Venice, fighting on Crete against the Turks in the long, miserable siege of Candia. But when he came back to England in 1657 he immediately became a central member of that group of patriots, later known as the Sealed Knot, which worked incessantly to bring Charles back from exile. He endangered his life, but did so joyfully. They might take his life, he said, but even his worst enemy would acknowledge him to be an upright, honest man.

  Alas, my good father was wrong, for he was later accused of the most base treachery, which malevolent lie he never shook off. He never knew who accused him, or even what the charges were, so could not defend himself and refute the allegations. Eventually he left England once more, forced out of his own country by the malicious hiss of the gossip-mongers, and died of grief before his name was cleared. I once saw a horse on my estate, a handsome, grand beast, driven to distraction by the incessant viciousness of flies which buzzed all around it. It ran to escape its tormentors, not knowing where they were; when it flicked its tail to drive one off, ten more came to replace it. It ran across an open meadow, fell and broke its leg, and I watched the saddened stablehand dispatch it for its own good. So are the great and noble destroyed by the petty and mean.

  I was just eighteen when my father died in his lonely exile and it marked me for life. The day I received the letter that told me he had been buried in a pauper’s grave, I broke down in sorrow before a violent anger gripped my soul. A pauper’s grave! Dear Heaven, even now the very words make a coldness seep through my body. That this courageous soldier, this best of Englishmen, should end in such a way, shunned by his friends, abandoned by a family which would not even pay for his funeral, treated with contempt by those for whom he had sacrificed everything, was more than I could bear. I did what I could eventually: I never found where he had been buried, and could do nothing for his body, but I built him the finest memorial in the whole county in my church, and I take everyone who comes to see it and meditate on his fate. It cost me a considerable fortune, but I do not begrudge one penny of the expense.

  While I knew my family had been greatly reduced, I was not yet aware of how much we had suffered, for I understood that, on my twenty-first birthday, I would obtain full title to the estates which had been supposedly protected from the government by an assortment of legal devices. I knew of course that these lands would come burdened with so much debt that it would take me years to re-establish myself as a person of moment in the county, but this was a task I relished. I was even prepared to endure several years at the bar, if necessary, to accumulate those riches which lawyers find so easy to come by. At least my father’s name would be perpetuated. The ending of a man’s life is but death, and that comes to us all in the fullness of time, and we know we have the blessing that our name and honour continue. But the demise of an estate is true extinction, for a family without land is nothing.

  Youth is simple, and assumes that all will be well; part of the estate of manhood consists in learning that God’s Providence is not so easily understood. The consequences of my father’s fall did not appear to me until I left the seclusion of a home where, although I was not happy, I was at least protected from the buffeting of the outside world. Then I was sent to Trinity College, Oxford, for, although my father had been a man of Cambridge, my uncle (who had charge of me when I left Sir William’s house) decided I would not be welcome there. The decision spared me no grief, as I was as rejected and despised for my parentage in the one university as I would have been in the other. I had no friends as none could resist cruelty, and I could not tolerate insult. Nor was I able to mix with my own, for although enrolled as a gentleman-commoner, my snivelling, mean uncle allowed me scarce enough money to live as a servitor. Moreover, he allowed me no freedom; alone of my rank, my small money was given over entire to my tutor and I had to beg even for that; I was subjected to the discipline of a commoner and could not leave town without permission; I was even forced to attend lessons, although gentlemen are exempt from instruction.

  I believe that many men see my manner now and consider me a rustic, yet I am far from such; those years taught me to hide my desires and my hatreds. I learnt swiftly that I woul
d have to endure several years of humiliation and solitude, and that there was little I could do to alter that. It is not my way to rage uselessly against a situation I cannot change. But I noted those who were heartless, and promised myself that, in due course, they would regret their coarseness. Many of them have done so.

  I do not even know that I greatly missed the temptations of society, in any case. My attentions have always been focused on my own people, and my childhood prepared me little for more promiscuous intercourse. Such reputation as I had was of a surly, ill-tempered fellow, and the more this grew, the more I was left in a solitude which was broken only by my forays among the townsfolk. I became an adept at disguise, leaving my gown behind me and walking the streets like a citizen with such confidence that I was never once challenged by the proctors for improper dress.

  But even these excursions were limited, for once I shrugged off my gown, I also shrugged off my credit and had to pay ready money for my pleasures. Fortunately, the urge for diversion came on me only infrequently. For the most part, I engaged my mind with my studies and consoled myself by conducting such investigations as I could into greater matters. I was gravely disappointed in my expectation that I would soon learn enough to proceed with the getting of money, however, for in all the time I was at the university I learnt nothing of the law whatsoever, and was somewhat derided by my fellows for having any such expectation. Jurisprudence there was aplenty; I was swamped in canon law and the principles of Aquinas and Aristotle; I came to have a nodding acquaintance with the Justinianic code, and acquired something of the art of disputation. But I looked in vain for instruction on how to launch a suit in Chancery, to contest a will or query the provisions of an executor.