Empire

by Edward Cline

  Hugh shook his head. “You over-credit me, sir. I was merely the linstock. Mr. Henry was the gun.”

  John Proudlocks shook Hugh’s hand and said, “That Mr. Henry, sir, he is the sachem of a band of warriors new to me…warriors of the mind. You are all…brave! I am glad I witnessed this day. Thank you.”

  Jack Frake could do little else but beam proudly at Hugh. He was lost in a wonder he had not felt in years, not since he found himself in the caves of Marvel in Cornwall, and met a crew of heroes called the Skelly Gang. The words, emotions, and spirit he had experienced here in this chamber somehow matched the words and spirit he had known in the caves. He was thinking of the night, long ago, when he sat on a beach with other men, waiting for a galley to land contraband goods, and he had turned over in his mind the cruel irony of being a free man only in the night, and in the caves. We must move in darkness, and exile ourselves to the shadows. And here were men who were stepping boldly from the caves, from the darkness, and from the shadows! What a moment! he thought. What a leap, from the caves to the sunshine of this chamber!

  Etáin glanced at her husband, and noticed a special, almost wistful kind of happiness in his face, and was happy for him.

  Jack offered his hand to Hugh. “Well done, my friend.”

  Hugh felt, besides his own pride, an odd, almost incongruous vindication. He, too, saw the happiness in Jack’s eyes, and in his entire manner, and as he reached out to grasp his friend’s hand, sensed that he was reaching across all their years to congratulate the boy he had never known but whose story he knew. For a long moment, which was only a half-second, he was confused by the phenomenon of congratulating Jack, when it was Jack who was congratulating him. Then it became clear to him: He was congratulating himself for the story of his own youth, whose victories now included this day. In that timeless moment, he was the boy Hugh Kenrick meeting the boy Jack Frake; they recognized and saluted each other, then parted to live their lives and become what each was now, up to and including this moment. He saw in Jack’s eyes that he felt this meeting, too.

  Their hands clasped, and they shook twice. “Thank you, Jack,” said Hugh.

  As the sergeant-at-arms and usher herded spectators out of the chamber, Thomas Jefferson shyly approached Hugh. “Mr. Kenrick,” he said, “I am in your debt, and Mr. Henry’s. What heroic oration! I could not help but think, as I listened to you and him,” he added haltingly, “that if Mr. Henry is a Jason of some new Argonauts in search of the golden fleece of liberty, then you are his Lynceus, who can see so many leagues ahead over the prow of the Argos! What an adventure lies in the future for us now!” He shook Hugh’s hand, almost as if it were a presumption to touch him. “I shall come tomorrow, to witness a further episode of this adventure!” He bowed to Hugh and his party, then turned and rushed out.

  Outside, in the Capitol courtyard, stood a number of planters and merchants, among them Reece Vishonn. Vishonn accosted Hugh and offered his compliments, which he qualified with fearful concern. “I don’t know if the Governor will stand for such talk, Mr. Kenrick,” he remarked. “He may postpone the next session until heads have cooled.”

  Hugh shrugged. “These are our protests, sir, not his own. All he can do is dissolve the Assembly for our having made them.”

  The party made its way down Duke of Gloucester Street into the evening sun. Etáin, walking between Jack and Hugh, linked her arms through theirs.

  Edgar Cullis trailed behind them, convinced of the correctness of his votes, but wondering now what the consequences would be. He was afraid.

  Chapter 10: The Treason

  The bluntness of the resolves was not the only thing that moved the conservative leadership and membership of the House to oppose Henry and his party. It was also the twin fears of the abrupt challenge to their hegemony by the younger members, most of whom represented counties west of the fall line, and of reprisal by the powers in London. Even though they begrudgingly agreed with the resolves and the reasoning behind them, it was imperative that they work to defeat them. In that goal, however, lay a vexing conundrum: to support the resolves, in a public forum, would be to concede leadership to those who originated and advocated them; to oppose them would elicit the certain contempt and censure of the electorate, which would express that disapproval in the next elections.

  Further, they knew that the king, on the advice of his Privy Council, as punishment for the resolves, could just as soon revoke the charter that allowed them to meet in political assembly, as allow the powers of the legislature to be whittled away over time by the Stamp Act and similar acts in the future. Hugh Kenrick’s prediction on this point was not lost on those who disagreed with him.

  And so the older burgesses and their leaders cursed their predicament, and while cursing it fumed with each other and with themselves over the stark reality of that predicament and the best way to insulate themselves from it. Determined to maintain their hegemony, they chose to argue for civility, loyalty, tradition, and the preservation of the General Assembly against two potent enemies: those who wished to assert their rights and liberties, and those unseen men who could destroy them.

  The next morning the lobby and public space were crowded with more spectators than had come the day before. Word had spread in the town that an unusually lively and rancorous debate took place over the Stamp Act, and people came to hear and see for themselves what the burgesses were saying and proposed to do. Peyton Randolph, John Robinson, and other older burgesses looked askance at the larger mob that milled beyond the railing, and knew why its size had almost doubled: No mere political controversy could have or ever had attracted such interest; secretly, they knew that it was a moral issue, and that they were caught between the uncomfortably close poles of a moral dilemma.

  In a mood of spite for Henry, his party, and the spectators, Robinson drew out the business of minor bills as long as he could, for hours, until there was nothing left to do but ask Peyton Randolph to report the committee’s resolves from the day before. The crowd, Robinson furtively noted, had not dwindled, but seemed to have grown.

  Jack and Etáin Frake, John Ramshaw, John Proudlocks, and Wendel Barret had come early enough again to find seats on the same bench. Reece Vishonn and Ralph Cullis stood in the crowd behind them. Thomas Jefferson again found himself standing at the lobby door.

  Well into the reading and voting on the resolves, more spectators arrived, among them a middle-aged Frenchman, the Chevalier d’Annemours, who entered Williamsburg at noon from Yorktown in a riding chair, and who went immediately to the Capitol because he had been told by an innkeeper that important things were happening there. Under the alias of Alphonse Croisset, commercial agent, the nobleman had been touring the colonies, and had spent the last month in Maryland and Virginia, on behalf of the French government, reappraising the colonies’ legal and illegal trade potential. Standing just outside in the House lobby with other spectators, he had to crane his neck and strain his ears to appreciate what was transpiring inside.

  Hugh Kenrick and Edgar Cullis this time sat on the first tier of benches, several places down from Patrick Henry. Hugh was tired. He had sat up half the night before, after having supper with his friends, assuring his colleague from Queen Anne that all the resolves were worth voting for, and that he should not change his vote on any one of them. “If the House adopts these five, then the sixth and seventh stand a chance, too. The five alone will give Parliament pause for thought. The sixth and seventh will cause Mr. Grenville and his party to choke on their brandy. Remember what I said about bullies.”

  “I remember,” said Cullis. “But these bullies have a navy, and an army not a week’s march from here! We…we could be hanged!”

  Hugh had shrugged. “You are only conceding my argument, Mr. Cullis.”

  Today, many older burgesses glared at Hugh from across the floor. He could not decide whether it was from pure malice, or resentment for having raised truths they had rather not have heard. He found himself imagining what Dogmael
Jones must have endured in the Commons, a single man among hundreds, defying a political process manipulated by shrewder and less scrupulous men than any who practiced here.

  Reluctantly, Peyton Randolph rose and read each of the resolves to the House as though he were reading obscene literature. Some desultory debate occurred between members on both sides of the chamber. The first three resolves passed by the same margin: twenty-two to seventeen. When Randolph finished reading the fourth, George Wythe rose again to protest. “I maintain that proper deference must be shown to Parliament, and I remind the gentlemen across the floor that, should these resolutions pass, they will be read by their lordships in the upper House, by His Majesty, and by eminences throughout the kingdom too numerous to name here. We will seem to be upstart renegades, not only by England, but also by our fellow colonials here. I cannot imagine a more distasteful consequence!”

  Patrick Henry rose and was recognized by Robinson. He asked, “If this House elects to wait on Parliament, sir, may I ask in what capacity? Ought we to wait idle in the foyer of those eminences’ concerns, in the mental livery of a menial, while they complete the latest business of oppressing the good people of England, not daring to whisper the persecution of their own brethren, lest it somehow insinuate our own?” He turned sharply away from Wythe, whose eyes were wide with anger, and addressed the House. “Some men in this chamber may prefer to approach the bar of Parliament, hats in hand, on raw knees, as humble supplicants, in search of redress and restitution. I, sirs, prefer to wait for Parliament to call on me, to beg my forgiveness for that body’s attempt to dupe and enslave me and this my country!”

  He was answered, not by anyone from the other side, but by an assenting murmur among the spectators. Henry did not seem to take notice of the sound, and sat down. Robinson, Bland, Wythe, and their party, however, all glanced in the direction of the spectators in a range of expressions from disgust to trepidation to indifference. The Speaker ordered the clerks to conduct a vote. William Ferguson rose and read the fourth resolve for a last time. His colleague, Clough Anderson, marked down the Ayes and Nays as each burgess rose and spoke. The fourth resolve passed and was adopted by the House by the same margin as the day before, twenty-two to seventeen.

  Peyton Randolph rose and read the fifth resolve. The Speaker could not contain his emotion as he heard again the words of that resolve; he gripped the cane in his hand and the arm of his chair, eyes closed in agony, as though a physician were lancing a boil. Spectators who had not heard the resolve read yesterday gasped or groaned in surprise. Patrick Henry, Colonel Munford, and others in that party sat calmly as Randolph read from the document that had been prepared from Henry’s law book page. Edgar Cullis, next to Hugh, fidgeted nervously in his seat.

  Immediately Randolph finished, almost all the older burgesses rose to be recognized. But Randolph had not taken his seat after his chore was finished, and Speaker Robinson nodded to him. Acting now not as Attorney-General or committee chairman but as burgess for the City of Williamsburg, Randolph said, in a somber, almost petulant tone, “The gentleman who authored this resolve and those that have already passed this House, together with the gentlemen who endorse them, accuse the steadier members of this body of wishing merely to suggest, not to affirm, of choosing to insinuate, not to state, the alleged means and ends of the act in question. I now most emphatically protest that view, because it denigrates not only the Crown, Parliament, and His Majesty, but the characters and motives of those here who have argued for the just independence of this body for perhaps many more years than certain of those gentlemen have trod the earth. I insist here that we are neither oblivious nor indifferent to the dangers to our liberty contained in this act. We are rendered a disservice by those who say we are, and our honor is consequently besmirched.”

  Randolph exercised his privilege as the second most powerful man in the House to step away from his seat and stand near the Speaker’s chair. “However,” he continued, “I, for one, in a gesture of Christian virtue, am willing to forgive and forget those charges and that impetuous slander. I maintain, in agreement with another offended gentleman here, that this particular resolution, more than any of the others that have passed this House — resolutions whose adoption by us can only disgrace us — is nothing less than an invitation to tragedy! It imputes Parliament and His Majesty no honor, no room for doubt, no capacity for error, no quantum of dignity. It grants them no sphere for honorable concession or conciliation. There is no charity in any of these resolutions, no tolerance for human frailty, no allowance for misguided intention.”

  Randolph strode to the middle of the floor and pointed a finger at each of the burgesses on the opposite side. “You gentlemen,” he said with embittered warning, “who rear your heads in anger and toy with the hilts of your swords, you, sirs, who by endorsing these resolutions confess an ignorance of the difference between foolishness and wisdom, mark my words: You will rue this day and your enthusiasm if this particular resolution is transmitted to London! You forget the virtue of moderation, you think only of yourselves, of your pride, of some book-bound, airy abstraction of liberty! In doing so, you also forget those who will surely suffer the same penalties as you will bring upon yourselves! And penalties there will be!”

  He walked back in the direction of the Speaker, and paused across from Henry. He gestured to that burgess. “This particular resolution is presumed to rest on a rock foundation, when the gentleman here who authored it asserts himself that its substance depends on the Crown’s benevolent favor! This House has, in the past, met the Crown in the bountiful pasture of conciliation, and come away from it with the successful preservation of our independence here. But enter that field clad in the false armor of righteous certitude, and you will find ranged against you the lawful guns that will check your advance to folly and anarchy! I ask you gentlemen to remember what happened here not a century ago, when Nathaniel Bacon presumed to challenge the lawful authority of the Crown!” Randolph scoffed once, and glanced down at Henry with a withering look. “This, too, is my country, and I will do everything in my power to prevent a repetition of that chaos, misery, death, and destruction!”

  Randolph returned to his place near the Speaker’s chair. “That curious colony to the north, Massachusetts, has a number of times in the past drunk the heady wine of revolt, but, in the end, settled for the calming beverage of accommodation, and has grown and prospered from the lesson. Are we to be less wise than that province?” He paused. “Accommodation, gentlemen! Only accommodation with the Crown as a partner in empire has brought about the liberty we enjoy today, and fruits of liberty. If, however, we presume to elevate ourselves above the Crown and its lofty ends, we can only guarantee our own ruin, and that of the Empire! The Empire may recover from that misadventure, but I can assure this House that our place in it will be its meanest and most pitiable element — and justly so. When once Virginia was great and prosperous, it will be poor and despised. Gentlemen, our future is in your hands.” The Attorney-General bowed slightly to both sides of the House, then strode purposefully to his seat.

  Hugh Kenrick rose before any other burgesses could. Robinson was obliged to recognize him. Hugh said, “We who endorse these resolves are neither ignorant of the difference between foolishness and wisdom, nor oblivious to the virtues of those who have trod the earth before many of us came into it. Virtue, said Socrates, springs not from possessions — and I mean here not merely our tangible wealth, but our liberties as well — not from possessions, but from virtue springs those possessions, and all other human blessings, whether for the individual or society. In these circumstances, the virtue which that gentleman accuses us of lacking has become a vice. Call it moderation, or charity, it will not serve us now. We exercise the virtue of righteous certitude, for it alone has the efficacy that conciliation and accommodation have not. That virtue is expressed — and I believe that the honorable Colonel Bland there will concur with me on this point — that virtue is expressed in one of the origin
al charters of this colony, and in the first charter of Massachusetts, and has merely been reiterated in these resolves, but in clearer language. Moral certitude is a virtue itself, and in this instance is a glorious one, because it asserts and affirms, in all those charters and resolves, our natural liberty and the blessings it bestows upon us!”

  Hugh’s mouth bent in a devilish grin, and he wagged a finger at the members on the other side. “Let us not imbibe the hemlock of humility, duty, or deference, sirs! Socrates did not have a choice in that regard. We have. Should we choose to rest on the virtue boasted of and advocated by that more experienced gentleman, that will be a more certain path to the despair, defeat, and regret he fears, and we will have nothing left that we can call our own!” Hugh glanced around once more, then took his seat.

  “Damn that boy!” muttered Peyton Randolph to himself.

  “Bravo!” whispered Etáin Frake.

  “That was shot straight through their gunport!” chuckled John Ramshaw.

  “My friend,” Jack Frake addressed the figure on the bench, “you are glorious in your own right.”

  “What a sublime contest!” exclaimed Thomas Jefferson. Like most of the spectators who stood with him, he was completely enthralled by the drama taking place in the chamber. And like them, he did not seem to notice that he was pressed by bodies front, back, and on his sides. He was tall, though, and could see over the heads of the crowd before him. A few more spectators arrived at this moment, nudging Jefferson and others around him further into the public space.

  “Pardon, s’il vous plait! I cannot see!” complained one of the newcomers. Jefferson, surprised, turned briefly to see a short, wiry Frenchman standing on tiptoe to peer over the heads and shoulders that blocked his view.

  The older burgesses, in the meanwhile, sat stunned and mute. The contradictory prospects of ruin by adoption and ruin by accommodation caused their many minds to spin fruitlessly in search of rebuttals. Both arguments were convincing. Given the time to compose their thoughts over Madeira, soothed by an evening breeze, they may have devised a riposte. But there was no time. Many of them, too, realized that there was nothing to say.