The Popish Midwife: A tale of high treason, prejudice and betrayal

by Annelisa Christensen

  But then, stranger than before, the circle round me widened as the soldiers pushed the crowd several paces further away from me. Although this would not prevent my being hit by more accurate arms, this small belt would save me from those whose aim was less true.

  The square filled right back to the church. People surrounded the tall, stone, ribbon-free maypole meant for the spring dance, next to which was a youngster, hoisted up on a dirty man’s broad shoulders. I recognised the brat as one I had birthed, and looked to his father, one I knew nearly as well as his wife. Many husbands of the women I had birthed were suspicious of me and resented my role in the bedroom. I had seen the birth of five of this man’s brats. Whether he cast a stone I never knew, for I lost sight of him among other people.

  At the edge of the crowd, donkeys carried baskets of eggs and rotten vegetables. To the front, some women were let through the wall of soldiers and began to pass out their wares to the nearby crowd.

  ‘Papist whore!’

  As if the insult signalled the onset of the assault, it begun.

  The stones, and mud, vegetable stalks and oyster shells flew at me, slowly to start with. People had to be strong and accurate to reach me over the heads of the soldiers, but the stronger ones hit hard, mostly on my arms which were the most difficult to protect. All the while, insults flew with more accuracy, more often reaching their aim.

  ‘Home burner!’

  ‘Stinking witch!’

  Suddenly, one of the sheriff’s men begun shouting and shaking his loaded hands in the air. An oyster shell filled with mud and horse droppings landed nearby, cracking and splattering its contents in my direction. A first miss. They would get better as the hour moved along. This I had seen before. I could only hope they would expend themselves or the missiles ere the hour’s end.

  Another Oyster shell, and a piece of cauliflower stalk, together hit the leg of the pillory. The shell bounced, the cauliflower burst apart. I thought of the wood paddle beneath my cloak. If I took it out, I could use it to protect myself, but mayhaps it would be taken from me. But, if I did not use it, then what use was it!

  Why did the guards neglect to fix me in? That was unusual providence, for it left my hands free to defend myself. Some hard thing flew at me from the other side and caught in my skirt, so it did not hit my leg. I backed into the pillory.

  The timber would protect my head from the one side, and my board from the other. I might protect myself quite ably after all. Whether someone had designed this so, I did not know, but for this mercy I was indebted. I took out my paddle and looked out over the scene, filled with fresh courage.

  Bitter, dirty faces screamed back at me. Some persons hung out of windows overlooking the street, others used their balcony window seats to cast longer throws, though most of these landed short amongst the people. Sometimes a person would pick up the thing that hit him and throw it back at the window.

  The wall of soldiers allowed only over-arm throws, so most weapons rained from above. They hurt, but not nearly so much as a throw straight from the shoulder! Worst were the strong and sure shots from the women within the soldier circle, with close aim at all exposed parts of me, my face most favoured. By and large, I succeeded in batting these away, but those that found me pained me more.

  This was a play already written. It would be acted out until its end.

  ‘Papist plotter!’

  ‘Traitor! Traitor!’

  ‘Fire starter! London burner, go back to Italy!’

  No matter how great the harm to my body by stones and shells, at this time the anger in the words cut me more, but I could only fend off the tangible. The other hits I must take. The missiles cracked and thudded against the board beside my head with no break. I thanked God and my husband for their protection, and even the sheriff, who did not take the shield from me.

  People had collected piles of things to throw at me by their feet, and so they did not run out.

  Then I smelt the smoke. It came from behind the people, at the far side of the square. Black plumes rose away from the buildings, for none wished for another city-burning. My books. Any they had found would be in that fire. It may be that none survive to tell my tale. Perhaps every person wishing to read the book had already read it.

  If I had hopes my words would make a difference, they were burned in that moment. I could not clearly hear him over the sound of the clattering of stones and shells against my board, but one of the sheriff’s men held up each copy and shouted something before he added it to the flames. Persons near him clapped and cheered. A boy grabbed one from the pile and threw it in the flames.

  I saw an oyster shell near my foot, filled with manure and mud to give it weight, and stepped my boot down hard on it with a satisfying crunch. A stone hit hard on my paddle and dropped to the ground. I do not know why, but I picked it up and placed it in my pocket. My head became empty of all thoughts.

  ‘Here, she’s picking up the stones,’ shouted a woman. ‘Let’s give her more!’

  The stones came hard and often; I do not know where they found their fresh supply. I battered as many as I could from my face, but some hit my arms and sides and belly. Each on its own was a sharp punch, the pain short-lived, but the small stones that hit previous bruises hurt worst.

  Another pebble landed behind me and rolled towards me feet. Without thinking, I once more picked it up and put it in my pocket to join the first. None would throw it again.

  ‘She thinks she will send them to the Pope, so he can martyr her!’ I long since stopped searching for who shouted. Finding one in so many was an impossible task.

  My mouth stretched in a straight line, a wry smile, to think of the Pope receiving a bag of stones. I was tempted to do so.

  Someone threw a large lump of earth, flattened by a cart’s wheel, which fell short on the soldiers below. I had not seen before how many of the missed shots fell on them. They took punishment for something they did not do, but I could not care.

  It was the duty of the king’s men to defend the monarch. In defending me, they did so. If the words I writ had been untrue, I would have stood against the king and God when I took my oath; yet, though the words were true, they still found me guilty of saying them. I could not be else but guilty. Strange, then, they defended me against the wicked mob!

  With defiance I shouted, ‘I am innocent! I wrote only the truth!’ I did not expect they would hear me, and it merely earned me one of the sheriff’s men poking an open sore on the leg with a stick. I kicked it away and spat at him, which only made him laugh when he thought I had missed. I was satisfied to see he did not wipe the white bubbles from his shoulder.

  That satisfaction did not live long in me. Amongst rotting and mouldy food, and dry clods of earth, were oyster shells from the river Thames that occasionally caught a glancing blow on the sharp side. Then a large stone hit me solidly above my ear, and a pain shot through the whole of me, shocking my legs so my toes prickled, and my legs buckled. I fell to my knees, throwing my hands forward to catch my fall, and trapped my fingers under the paddle.

  Woe betide me should I let go of it.

  What was desolation if it was not this!

  The handle of the board was just out of reach and, when I went to reach for it, my head spun madly. The missiles stopped, or if they came they did not hit me, for I was below the heads of the soldiers, and they could not see me. I thought to stay there a while, but abrupt hands reached under my armpits and dragged me back to my feet, where I wobbled precariously.

  A fresh onslaught came even before the sheriff’s men removed themselves from the dais. An egg, the smell of which made me retch, splattered squarely on my brow and dripped down, so my eyes stung. Some touched my lips, and I tasted an age, saved specially for the pillory. I wiped the smelly substance from my eye. Strings of it hung between my face and hand. Bad egg on the face was the like of being spat upon.

>   When I had regained my balance, I reached down and grabbed the paddle. It would have been so easy for one of the soldiers to grab it, or for one of the sheriff’s men to kick it off the dais, but they had not. Nor had they taken it from me. Odds teeth, a strange mercy!

  Did they not see? Any one of those that stood before me might one day thank me, when they were cast in the debtor’s prison, or wrongly accused and left without victuals to die, that I spoke up for them. My pride did not prevent fresh pummelling. I dared them to throw something, and they did. Another stone rattled to the boards and I bent to retrieve and pocket it. I had a few now, maybe eight or ten. The weight of them banged against my leg as I batted away another.

  How much time had passed, fifty minutes, an hour? The church clock had not yet struck. Surely I had done my penance. If each minute tarried more, I believe the clock would stop altogether and run backwards!

  There was Mrs Chenery, a neighbour, come to see the spectacle. Her sole interest would be to gather tasty tidbits to share. My story would be told as far and wide as Oxford tonight, and in Gretna Green, no doubt, by the morning. Watching another’s torment was a miserable bedfellow to such curiosity, but such a one as she did the work of the law, spreading news of what should happen if a person dared speak against Government or king.

  In my naïve days, I knew, with conviction, any found guilty in the court of law must be so, but now I knew, with equal conviction, innocence or guilt of any wrong-doing was uncertain. Again, I tilted back my chin and looked in the face of the mob. Stones, shells and rotting things were small reparation for speaking the truth. My conscience must speak out. If need be, I must stand alone until others stood beside me for, if I would stand down, there would be none with whom others could stand with.

  I waited for the church bell to strike one, but still it did not. If I did not know the mechanical precision of it, I might have thought they had stopped the clock to make me suffer further.

  A tiny hurled pebble clattered against the paddle and I batted it away. Again, I tottered and lost balance, and again the sheriff and his men were quick to pull me back to my feet. Would they allow me no respite?

  The soldiers around me took nearly as much flak as I. Apart from missiles slung from the crowd, an occasional stone I batted away would land hard on one of my protectors. I did not care enough about it to alter my aim.

  Though somewhat guarded by the soldiers, my arms ached from batting stones, my head hurt from the strain, and my eyes wished to flow, not merely from the wrong done to me, but from pieces of dirt and shell that shattered off the paddle. I refused to wipe the grit away lest the crowd thought I cried. But I could not prevent my eyes blinking.

  The name-calling did not abate. If what they said was true, I was the cause of all that ailed London.

  I have done you no wrong! It was not I! I clammed my mouth. Denial would give reason for more anger.

  At length, the clock struck one. At last, I was done.

  The sheriff and his men did not move. Nor did the crowd-beast go back to work and leave me be.

  ‘My time is up.’ I shouted. I shook my fist. If the sheriff heard, he did not show it. ‘Sheriff! I have done my time!’ Again I shouted. This time he turned and in his eyes and the set of his mouth was determination. He would not yet finish this. If he did not enjoy the occasional stone or root hitting him, he enjoyed that I was the target.

  Suddenly, without seeing any end, what was unbearable became torture. Perhaps he wished for some hard thing to hit my eye, as it had done a man a few years ago, then he could give my husband leave to take my broken remains back to our house and he would have none more of me.

  If I pleaded, if I begged, there was no use in it. Somewhere amongst the other voices, drowned in the opposing clamouring sea, one shout for my release.

  The sheriff shouted back, ‘We did not start at twelve; we will not end at one!’

  There was no point to returning the argument. It was true that I had started after I was supposed to start, so I conceded they should finish after I was supposed to finish. Unless higher authority spoke against this, his was the voice the soldiers would obey.

  But it was not mere minutes I stood there longer. Another hour passed ere the sheriff ended the mob’s rule, and only then because the crowd that should have returned to work became unruly.

  Perhaps some of them protested how the rules had been broken, and once a single rule is broken, who can tell what rules might be kept and what others might not? Skirmishes broke out, and a few tried to break the wall of soldiers. All told, there must have been four hundred soldiers in the square. I thanked the Lord for that, for otherwise the Beast would surely have torn me to pieces.

  When the men lost control, the sheriff gave the command, ‘Bring her down!’ Two soldiers, that had likely taken some battering themselves, climbed on the dais and took an arm each. They pulled me down, and now, at ground level, I was out of sight of most of the crowd. I was dragged roughly, and without consideration, through the alleyway the soldiers formed to hold back the throng, back towards Newgate.

  I had been pilloried one time out of three and had two more times ahead, yet, in one day I had done the time of two. I vowed the king would hear of this!

  I was thrown into another cell, different from before, and thanked our Father for the mercy, for I could lie on the mangy, flea-filled bedding and nurse the considerable bruises I did not even like to look at.

  In pain I slept until the cock crowed the following day.

  Revealing the truth hurt, but my life was yet spared.

  27

  18th day of November, 1683

  ‘Hold tight to life, most beloved flitter-mouse. Do not let go now, I beg of you. It be not your fate to leave me, but mine to leave you.’

  ‘Let me go, Pierre. I cannot bear more. If only I might walk beneath the sky once more or…or…’ My voice broke. ‘Or...if I might see my children one last time, I could die. Even one sniff of that vile Arabian coffee house brew might prevent Death from entering this door.’

  A stay of three years and more at the king’s pleasure, with but two months’ freedom between the two times in court, had pinched flesh from my bones and fortitude from my heart. I would rather lie down in the grave next to truth that had long since died than stay another day in that place.

  ‘It does not please me to hear you discouraged, Lizzie. You will be revived, I am certain.’ For days, the rowdy prison noises surrounded our silence, closing us in together. Pierre never left my side. I laboured to slide my arm over the thin blanket and find his hand, desiring the warmth of his old, warm skin on mine. I could find no strength to take it further than the edge of the bed.

  ‘Pierre.’ I said his name and it was enough for him take my hand and raise it to his lips. His cheeks were damp. He would likely follow me from this world sooner than live without me. I thought of the children as orphans. ‘You must find someone to care for our children, Pierre, a mother for them.’

  ‘They need no other mother than you, Lizzie. They yearn for your return home, as do I. You cannot die. I am old and I refuse you to die before me. If ever you obey me, you must obey me in this. Do you recall that time when life was near beaten from you?’

  I did. I recalled pain so grim that I prayed for God to relieve me. This malady that ailed me now had crept upon me in a manner most insidious, rather than that infliction of violence.

  That they took light and freedom from me, could not alone bring me to languish in this way. There was no place in this world where God could not be with me, and so long as this was so, my spirit was free and I had no reason to die that I might find him. But, if this prison was my sole world, then I no longer had reason to live. In this place, I could not be a mother, nor a wife, nor a midwife. I could ask for charity, but not give it. And, in taking, I was no longer the woman I knew myself to be.

  I likely slept awhile, fo
r then Pierre was talking.

  ‘…the incompetence of the hangman. I tell thee, Lizzie, ‘tis a noise I cannot forget, ever…in the same way you could never forget the screams from the gaol that night. Remember you that? The people did scream, not for the entertainment of the execution, but for the axe to be taken from him before he struck again. They dare not see him miss his mark one more time. It was a sight most gruesome, most grisly. Not even the distance of three score paces to Powys House, could prevent Lady Powys faint at the sight of blood spraying from his gaping neck onto the spectators! I never liked the dreadful man, a greater traitor there never was, but I could not wish such a death on the Devil.

  ‘And if you had heard his screams as I did,’ said Pierre, ‘you might have mistaken him for the Devil, for I assure you, it was all too grim! A man close to the beheading told me that, even in death he had berated that hangman, Ketch, for such shoddy work, for he had paid well for a quick strike. Though his head hung half on and half off, he called the man a dog for treating him so barbarically.’

  Pierre’s voice faded. In the dimming light, I saw he was shaking his head, perhaps to cast out the ghastly image.

  ‘Was it…was it someone we know, Pierre?’ It seemed there would be no end to such undeserved Catholic deaths.

  ‘Lord Russell, my dear. May his soul rest in peace. Have you forgot? You asked me about his death but a short while ago.’

  ‘Lord William Russell? But does he not stand against the Duke of York becoming King for his faith?’

  ‘’Tis your fever that makes you forget. It was four months since he died, and I have told you of it time and again, but I cannot rid myself of such horrid sight. Remember? He was condemned for his fiendish part in the Rye House Plot.’

  ‘As I was condemned for the Meal-Tub Plot,’ I murmured.

  ‘No, ma chérie. You were never proved guilty of that. You were found guilty of another deed. You exposed the Government and king’s prison in a way they could not like. That is not treason.’