The Popish Midwife

by Annelisa Christensen

  Captain Richardson again stood as he had stood before, puffed up like a fighting cock. ‘They have both sworn before us that she,’ he pointed an ironic finger, fattened from his prisoners’ pockets at me, ‘gave them money and told them she would maintain them.’

  He did turn my charitable deed against me, twisting and turning the facts as they had heretofore. But I was not a priest that could rise above such malice. I balled my fists at my side and spoke through clam-teeth to hide my anger.

  ‘You are not an evidence against me, you are not sworn.’

  The captain’s smug smile did not upturn his moustache in the way a good smile should do. Any dubious kindness he had once shown me was gone. ‘But this that I say is already sworn.’

  Weston said, ‘Go on with your witnesses.’

  They did not allow me to call Mary Johnson to prove her fruitless search to find my witnesses, nor would they let me have Mrs Corral answer as to whether or not I had sent her husband away, for they said it did not signify since I could have done it without her knowledge.

  If they would not allow me prove my words, I did not know how I might defend myself. I could only cast myself on the mercy of the court now.

  ‘I have done then, My Lord for, not having time to get my witnesses, I cannot make my defence so fully as I would have done.’ I raised my chin with my hands once more holding the rail before me. ‘I desire you to consider I am a poor ignorant woman. I did not think further than publishing what others had told me. So, if I have erred or offended, I have done so in ignorance.’

  For the first time since we were in court together, Weston faced me equally, but his voice held only derision. ‘I do verily believe there are more wits than yours concerned in this book, Though you bear the name, I am sure you do not have wit enough that it is yours alone, though you acknowledge your part in it. By doing so, you are against the king, for you must know the king hath set out a proclamation that no books shall be printed without a license.’

  I had waited on one to say such thing, though I durst bring it to the trial myself, for I stood on quicksand with it. ‘I never heard it. I was under close confinement when the king set it out.’

  Weston was triumphant. ‘No, I deny that, for you were set free the first day of Trinity-term, and the proclamation came out towards the end of it.’ He seemed more knowledgeable of my business than I gave him credit for.

  I could not remember all of it, but I was certain he was mistaken in that; Trinity Term ended the day after my release, and I was not out of the company of my husband and children all that day, and that was at home. ‘I was not…’ I started saying.

  ‘She now does confess she knows of it,’ said the triumphant Attorney General over me, ‘because she speaks of the time the king made the proclamation, yet that was before her book was written. She wrote her book knowing she did it against the king’s will.’

  I had verily set myself into a trap, and had been found in it! I looked to Mr Collins, my counsel. I had nothing to lose by roping him in to aid me now. ‘I desire my counsel speak for me.’

  Mr Collins, that had yet done nothing for me, did nothing more. ‘I have nought to say for her,’ he said. He turned to me. ‘And if you had said less for yourself it would have been better.’

  The light shone in Weston’s eye. He nimbly summed up my case. ‘He says he hath nothing to say for you. And so there is but one question: guilty or not guilty? The indictment is that you published this libel, and if the matter of it be so proved, as is done, then what can counsel say but that you can disprove the witnesses?’

  ‘Well, My Lord,’ I said, ‘then I beseech you consider that I am a woman and deal with me in mercy as well as in justice.’

  ‘Mrs. Cellier,’ said Weston. ‘I have said before, I have reason to suspect that, though you bear the name on this libel, some of your wicked priests are the authors of it. I am not noted to use great severity towards man nor woman, whether or not of your party but, when I see so much malice as is comprised in your book, then I think it not severe that you, who stand at the stake for all, must bear the blame of all. If you will tell us who assisted you in this wicked business, that will be something towards the mitigation of your fine, but if you will take it on yourself, you must suffer the consequence.’

  ‘I beseech you, My Lord,’ I said, clasping my hands together, ‘have some compassion! His Majesty acknowledged before the council that I had suffered for him. I lost my father and my brother both in a day for him and, if you have no compassion for me, have some commiseration for my loyal parents that lost their estates for him.’

  If the judges had any kind of tenderness at all, I prayed my plea would blunt the severity of punishment on me, for now punishment was certain. I had not seen any kindness in any of them, nor did I expect any. Weston’s next words proved me right.

  ‘If you have done service for His Majesty and thereby deserved dispensation of him, His Majesty would not fail to recompense you for it, for he is generous of nature, but here we are to proceed according to the rules of law.’

  ‘But pray have some mercy in your justice,’ I said one more time, desiring him to change his mind. I wrung my hands in anguish as he dismissed further words from me by facing my supposed twelve peers.

  ‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ he said, ‘this gentlewoman, the prisoner, stands indicted…’

  John Ainger, the indifferent juror, took off his unfashionable brown felt hat and clamped it to his chest in apology. ‘Sir, we have not heard one word that hath been said.’

  The courtroom thundered and roared with laughter and shouts, as the words of the jury speaker provided them with new fuel.

  ‘Not heard!’ Weston wore his horror for all to see. ‘That is extraordinarily! Why did you not say so! It had been well if you had told us this before.’ Weston slipped a finger beneath the front of his periwig and scratched, jiggling it so it did not sit as straight as it should. ‘How very strange.’

  The Lord Mayor opened and closed his mouth a few times, perhaps not thinking of anything to say, before banging his gavel hard on the wooden block on the table. When that did not immediately quieten the courtroom, he resorted to standing and shouting, ‘Silence! Anyone not silent will be removed immediately!’

  The Lord Mayor pointed to those that were the noisiest and the men at arms moved to take them out. They struggled and shouted, but the rest of the court became serious. And quiet. Into that hush, Weston spoke again.

  ‘I will acquaint you with as much of the evidence as falls under my information. The business is this, she stands indicted here for writing and publishing of a very scandalous libel. But pray did not you hear Penny prove that she sold it?’

  John Ainger said, ‘We heard the three first witnesses.’

  ‘That was all that was necessary to hear. Therein was the proof of her libel!’

  Nevertheless, Baron Weston took the next ten minutes to explain in full what had gone before. He did not spare me as a villain most terrible in his summation. This time the court was listening. After naming the book as the libel, he placed the evidence into several parts.

  The first part, he said, was an insinuation against the Protestant religion, saying how I had turned from Protestants, and accused Protestants of murdering the king, being the first King Charles, and other ungodly deeds. He asked by what right did I pretend they were called Protestants, and turn Papist, when so many more of that religion adhered to the loyal party of the king?

  Then he took the longest part to describe how false was such villainous insinuation; a more rhapsodic speech he could not have made. Rather than nourish and teach seditious principles, he said, there was more fidelity, honesty and generous trust amongst Protestants, than among all the nations of the world.

  ‘For, is it not so, friends in other places will be no better than our enemies here?’ he said, raising our countrymen above all others, except the
Germans that are famed for their honesty and integrity to one another. He then described the French, the Italian, the Spaniard, or any sort of the Levantine people as living ‘like so many wolves, especially in those places where the Popish religion is professed’.

  ‘Pray, My Lord, I say, I only called them Protestants,’ I said, for he had missed that part. He took no notice of it now, but clasped the front of his jacket and trod the floor before the jury and went on without a break in his words.

  ‘Now after this insinuation, there is another part of the book recited in the indictment. It is common knowledge that the Popish party labour mightily to cast the horrid barbarous murder of the magistrate, Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, off themselves and onto other persons. For the plot is a thing of so heinous a nature that, if it should stick, it would make their party odious to all mankind.

  ‘Mrs Cellier hath taken upon herself to tell the world that Prance, a principal witness, was tortured, and his evidence against those persons executed for Sir Godfrey’s murder was false evidence, extorted from him in gaol by ill and cruel usage.

  ‘As well you know, the laws of the land do not permit torture, the last of that kind being the Jesuit Edmund Campion, stretched upon the rack in the twentieth year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. None other has been racked in any of the reigns since then, not in that of King James nor in that of the first King Charles, and Mighty God in Heaven knows that there hath been none in this King’s reign!’

  At this, Weston stopped, turned himself to the jury and held his hands wide with the full drama of holding the stage. He paused only briefly, then he rode on:

  ‘Our government is the most lawful and merciful as any nation under Heaven. But, here is Mrs Cellier saying such ways were used against Prance contrary to the law. If this was so, why did she not proceed in a legal way against the persons she supposed made these transgressions of the law? Was it not her duty? If there had been such persons, she ought to have indicted them, for they are highly punishable for such extraordinary ways!’

  Then Weston described the events of the day we heard Prance scream; of how Harris, the turnkey, said it was a woman in labour then turned us away when we offered our help; and of how the gaolers dare not tell what was the noise, but that they could not endure it; and how the prisoners heard him cry, ‘What would you have me confess? Would you have me belie myself? I know nothing of it’, and such other words as these.

  ‘Whereupon, we called Prance,’ said Weston.

  Weston then described how Prance was today questioned, and upon oath told how he was kindly used in prison, that he was under no compulsion, and that my book was a libel against the Government. Then he recalled how Fowler had turned in Corral the coachman, for his part in the murder of Sir Godfrey. And how, on examination by the Lord Mayor before today, Corral had denied any threat against him in gaol, or attempted corruption of him by the laying down of five hundred pounds, with the offer of more if he should confess.

  Weston walked to the middle of the bar, behind which sat the jury, and the spirit that made him passionately pace the floor moved into his hands and face so that he became most animated.

  ‘And Fowler,’ said Weston, ‘testifies that he was never in gaol with Corral in his life, never with him, nor with any noblemen, and he never saw any such cruel usage as Mrs Cellier wrote. The whole story plays false.’

  The last part of it, but the worst, Weston explained, was how I had defamed all persons in my libel, and monstrously defamed and scandalized His Majesty the king and his government.

  ‘She wrote,’ he said, reading from his notes, ‘Whenever His Majesty shall please to make it as safe and honourable to speak the truth, as it is apparent it hath been gainful and meritorious to do the contrary, their villainy will not want witnesses to testify the truth of more than she had written.

  ‘She supposes, that the king,’ he continued, ‘by the countenancing of lies, and giving pensions to liars, chokes the truth, and makes it dangerous for those that know the truth to divulge it to the world, which is a very vile scandal upon the king and government.’

  With his jaw clamped shut and the muscles in his cheek bulging, Weston grabbed the bar in front of him and, like a man with a fever, came so close he saw himself in each juror’s eye. He had not heretofore shown such force of manner.

  ‘And, that still is not the least of it!’ he said, ‘She said she could have written more!’

  The silence that followed this speech was not broken, as it had been throughout the whole trial, by shouts and laughter and persons in all places talking. It went on. In it, all the eyes of the court came and rested on me, until the hatred and anger and desire for my death forced me to look down at my hands, still clasping the bar in front of me. I could not bear to see them so openly exposed, and took them into my cloak. One of the judges put down his fan and, though the clunk of it was not loud, it was heard by all. As I feared was my heart beating in my chest. I had never so dearly desired the return of the noise.

  I feared the condemnation of my very soul, by every man and woman there, would be upheld by the Lord as he did all judgements made on Earth, and I near fell to fainting. What had I done but good to deserve such reproach?

  It was, perhaps, not so long a time as I thought it, for then Weston continued to talk as if that long silence had not happened at all. I lost hope I could in some way turn it around.

  ‘I must tell you this,’ Weston said, ‘these are the matters of the libel, in which the clauses are truly set down in the indictment, for I did examine them one by one. The proof of her ownership comes from four sworn witnesses. Downing, the printer, has testified that Mrs Cellier said she wrote the book, and paid for the publishing and correcting of the first twenty two folios. Mr Penny bought her book, and asked her if it was hers, and she told him it was, and that she could have written more. Mr Stevens, the messenger of the press, saw her sell her books on more than one occasion, and was told by the printer that it was her book. And Fowler of the Half-Moon Tavern bought two of the books from her after he was told he was famous in it.

  Now, you might doubt she was the author of the book,’ he said, ‘but the manner she did own it at the publication, by selling it as hers, is to me under the notion of express evidence of the fact. I leave to you as judges of that fact, and expect your verdict in the case’

  I looked up to see Weston walk from the jury and return to the table where he had kept my book and his notes.

  Mr Attorney General said, ‘There are three matters in the indictment. First, that she writ it; second, that she caused it to be printed; and third, that she caused it to be published. Now if you find her guilty of any one of these, though I think you have heard evidence enough for all, you are to find her guilty.’

  Then Ainger, the spokesman of the jury, desired they might have the book with them.

  Weston said, ‘They can have neither the book nor any paper else unless she will consent to it. Mrs. Cellier, will you consent?’

  I could see no reason for giving them any thing they wished, if they wished to condemn me with it, so I said, ‘No.’

  ‘Then they cannot have it by law,’ said Weston.

  The jury returned after half an hour, a trifling while to discuss the facts fully. They could not have time to talk about any of it, whether they thought me guilty or not guilty.

  The Counsellor of the Crown asked, ‘How say you, is Elizabeth Cellier guilty of the writing, printing, and publishing of the libel for which she stands indicted, or not guilty?’

  ‘Guilty,’ said Ainger.

  There was a great shout of triumph and rejoicing. Did none care that it was not the truth that was tested, but only that I wrote about it? Nay, they would rather silence me.

  ‘She must stand committed to receive the judgement of the court,’ said Weston.

  ‘Will you give me leave to speak a word?’ I had nothing to lose by asking.

>   Now Weston had the answer he looked for, he seemed to be less hard. ‘I cannot give you any judgement, for by the custom of the city, that is to be done by the recorder or his deputy. So, what you will say to the court, you must say on Monday when the Sessions are done.’

  I wished those that condemned me to hear my words, and so I spoke regardless. ‘What I would say is only this. I am a woman, and wherein I offended, I offended out of ignorance. And if the offence be mine, let not others suffer for me. Have mercy in judgment, and consider my loyal parents and relations, and the services they did His Majesty. Let this fault be wiped out by that service and duty I and my parents paid him or, at least let the punishment of this offence be mitigated, in consideration that all my life, ever since I had the first use of reason, I have been a loyal subject.

  ‘These things will be considered on Monday, not now,’ said Weston haughtily over the jeers and taunts of the courtroom.

  24

  11th day of September, 1680 (after the trial)

  ‘Hang ‘er! ‘Hang ‘er from the rafters!’ shouted one man, with his head gleaming like an egg and not a single hair.

  ‘In the stocks! Let us have her!’ called another, better-spoken man, whom I did not see.

  ‘Ay, midwife, here’s a stone relic with a cross you can pray to… here, take this!’

  This woman’s voice was not unlike a frog’s. A stone flew toward me across the court, I turned and it hit me on the shoulder. Everyone laughed and the crowd grew rowdy. I looked to see who had thrown the stone but, in so many faces, I saw only the delight that I was to be punished. Any reason was reason enough. I looked down and saw the stone that hit me lying on the floor. Sure enough, there was paint on it that looked like the long body and one arm of a fast drawn cross. The rest of it was hidden on the side of the stone I could not see.

  ‘Oi, Bess, give ‘er another ‘un!’

  None would have stopped the zealous Bess throw another stone. Rather, they would have filled her hands with pebbles from the river shore. The sheriff’s men laughed. The judges talked and laughed between themselves, purposefully taking no notice of the goings on before them. Why should they not let the mob have me, and save them the trouble?