SH03_Sparrowhawk: Caxton

by Edward Cline

  “This nasty man made such a disgraceful scene,” wrote Mr. Stannard, “that Mr. McRae and I were obliged to request the assistance of Sheriff Tippet, who posted a constable in the main house to ensure that Mr. Swart did not depart with anything from the inventory or do damage to what remained. Mr. McRae and I, together with Mr. Tippet and a few other citizens, were present to escort Mr. Swart forever from the property. We rode with him as far as the Hove Creek bridge, and bid him adieu as his wagon clattered across it.”

  In his letter to his father, Hugh described Brougham Hall and Caxton, then dwelt on a number of ideas that would guarantee the plantation’s solvency:

  “…Many merchants here in Philadelphia defy the law and contrive to be paid in Crown specie for the goods they manage to sell to factors in the various outports of Britain. If they did not subvert the law, they would be in a bad way and little could be accomplished in the way of trade between the mother country and these colonies. There is such a shortage of coin here that a needlessly complex system has grown up of barter, tobacco notes, colonial paper, and foreign coin, all fixed to the value of sterling; and the merchant farmer, artisan, mechanic, or planter who can pay for necessities with hard money has an advantage over his perhaps more prosperouslooking brother in trade, whose prosperity is in fact owned by a distant creditor. Mr. Talbot is one of the former, I am happy to say, and his credit and solvency are as solid as the Portland Bill. Now, although many Virginia planters live in a more gorgeous style and manner than do a great many landowners in England, it is at the price of continual indebtedness to their London agents. I do not propose to put Meum Hall in such a precarious circumstance, and herein suggest that the value of the tobacco and other material Captains Eales and Rowland take out on the Ariadne and Mr. Worley’s Busy be reimbursed in part with coin, British or foreign, it matters not which….”

  Following a discussion of other means of ensuring success, Hugh added, “Of course, the foregoing methods are in direct contravention to the ruinous wisdom of the Board of Trade and Parliament. At the moment, Father, my only advice to these powers is that the Crown acquire an interest in a silver or gold mine in Mexico or Alto Peru. God knows it makes war on the Spanish for more specious reasons than that. If it were not for Lord Anson and his treasure-gathering prowess, in what penurious state would the Crown be this year? But, I believe that we would both agree that, whatever our Mint’s policies or shortcomings, I should receive credit in your books for five hogsheads of tobacco, and be paid again for five, if I ship you five. I will await your reply in Virginia….”

  Two days before his departure, almost a month after his return from Caxton, a mail packet arrived in Philadelphia, bringing Hugh a letter from his mother. In it she announced the marriage of Reverdy Brune and Alex McDougal by the vicar of St. Thraille’s Church in Eckley, Surrey. “The banns were posted here for some time,” wrote Effney Kenrick to her son, “but I spared you the news of that. I suppose the Brunes and McDougals felt that a ceremony here at St. Quarrel’s would have been awkward and perhaps cheeky enough to provoke interference by your uncle….”

  Hugh felt a brief pang of loss when he read the news. He could not decide whether it was a pang of disgust or regret. And the emotion passed. He put the letter away with his other correspondence in a trunk, not because of its contents, but because it was a letter from his mother.

  On the following Tuesday, he boarded the brig Tacitus, bound for ports in Chesapeake Bay, including Yorktown and Caxton. Four days later, he stepped ashore in Caxton, and hired a cart and horse to take him to Meum Hall.

  Chapter 8: The Newcomer

  Hugh Kenrick was a true aristocrat. This everyone in Caxton knew before the wind and current had carried the Amelia a mile up the York River on the October afternoon of his departure. The news, eagerly spread by Arthur Stannard and Reverend Acland, shocked the planters, townsmen, and their families out of their post-victory ball lethargy. Reece Vishonn, once he had recovered from his amazement, began to talk with other planters about having a welcoming banquet for Hugh Kenrick. “But only after a decent interval has passed,” he explained to the others over a meeting at the Gramatan Inn, his favorite “place of public retreat.” “We must allow his lordship to settle into his new home.” The banquet was scheduled for November at Enderly.

  In the mid-November issue of the Caxton Courier, at the top of a back page column of advertisements and announcements, there appeared this notice:

  The Honorable Hugh Kenrick, lately removed to this county, desires all who would deal with him and his property in future to send their regards, courtesies, business, etc., to his residence, Meum Hall, formerly Brougham Hall. He further desires that persons favor him with the address of Mister Kenrick, in private company, in public, and in correspondence. Salutations in any other form or style will not be acknowledged either by him or by his agents. — Hugh Kenrick, Esq.

  The notice in the Courier bewildered the planters. They could understand neither the design nor the motive behind such a request, and neither Mr. Stannard nor Mr. McRae could enlighten them much on the matter.

  “Why would he wish anyone to flout the courtesies due his rank?” asked Henry Otway. “It don’t make sense!”

  Mr. Stannard could only shrug his shoulders. The Courier notice was printed three days before the scheduled banquet, to which Hugh had accepted the invitation. “I cannot say, sir,” he answered. “I can tell you that his purchase of Brougham Hall was contingent on Mr. McRae and me respecting that very same dictum. When we enquired, he said to the effect that such courtesies have no place here, and that they were tiresome to him.”

  “Balderdash!” exclaimed Vishonn. He was not only disappointed and confused, but vexed; he somehow felt cheated of the opportunity to entertain a person of high station and possibly lucrative connections. “Is he ashamed of his rank? Many of his rank ought to be, but not that lad!”

  Mr. Stannard shrugged again. “Who is anyone to question the wishes of a baron, sir? But, I must warn you, Mr. Vishonn: Honor his preferences, or he may never again set foot inside your house. Mr. McRae and I can vouch for the steadiness of his mind. He is a determined young man.”

  Jack Frake, who had heard the news about his new neighbor a day after Hugh Kenrick had sailed back to Philadelphia, also read the notice. He did not venture an opinion on the subject to anyone. He waited.

  * * *

  The leading planters of Queen Anne County, descendants of the last century’s Cavalier adventurers, entrepreneurs, and settlers, inherited a presumption of aristocracy. Their reasoning was that if it had not been for the Commonwealth and Protectorate, they would have come naturally into the landed aristocracy that remained after the passing of the Cromwells and the return of the Stuarts. Many of the planters were distantly related to faraway, ennobled descendants of families that had survived the strife and turmoil of that very different age, the high points of which were the Glorious Revolution, the accession of an unambitious monarchy, and the Act of Settlement.

  Yet, were they offered the chance, not one of them would have traded his status in Virginia for a baronial estate in England. In the colony, while they carried no titles, they wielded some power and influence, were allotted some prestige, and commanded much respect. Ladies and common womenfolk curtsied to them in public, merchants, artisans, and tradesmen doffed their hats to them in greeting, and humble farmers, landless dependents, and slaves made room for them on the road and in Caxton’s streets. And, just as in England, first sons had uncontestable claim to all that their fathers owned, once their seniors had passed on to their final reward. Queen Anne County was Tory in attitude and tradition, Whiggish in practical politics, and comfortably complacent in a re-created English venue of the planters’ yearnings and imagination.

  The Caxton aristocracy — headed by Reece Vishonn, represented in the House of Burgesses by Edgar Cullis and William Granby, and in full control of the county court and church vestry — respected Jack Frake, but did not count him one
of their own. They were obliged to respect him, if only because he was once a confidant of the late John Massie, and also that man’s son-in-law. That he had proved himself a crop master also counted for something in their scale of approval. Also, they were grateful that he was himself a gentleman, and had retained the name of the plantation he had inherited.

  And, they were relieved that he was a solitary man. It did not escape their constant notice that he did not so much avoid their company, as neither seek it, nor miss it, nor depend on it. Their encounters with him were nearly always accidental or happenstance. He was approachable by them, but did not often approach his fellow planters. He did not envy them their power, riches, or respectability. These omissions saved them the effort and obligation to value him as an ally in their common concerns. The respect Jack Frake commanded and which they granted him chafed against their gentlemanly sensibilities. A gentleman in everything but his parental lineage — they had heard stories and rumors about his Cornish background — he was too admirable to detest and openly ostracize, as they did Amos Swart. A commoner in everything but his bearing, character, and hard-won wisdom, Jack Frake could not be forgiven his criminal past. Were they certain that he had been reformed and remolded by the late John Massie, his fellow planters might have deigned to overlook Jack Frake’s status as a former felon.

  But they sensed that John Massie had had little to do with the character and purpose of the man who now owned Morland, that the key to Jack Frake’s character and actions lay in his criminal past. They knew nothing about the Skelly gang, other than that it had been a smuggling ring eradicated by the Crown, and that Jack Frake had been a member of it. They could not reconcile the phenomena of Jack Frake and a band of cutthroats. They sensed that he was merely a felon matured, that he had never been reformed, was not reformable, and would spurn any attempt to reform him. They could not decide whether he would view such an attempt as a grave offense to his character, or dismiss it with amused contempt. Nor could they decide if the violence he could visit on any one of them with pistols or swords on a field of honor was worse than the violence he could inflict on their self-respect. They suspected that the latter was worse. So, they left him alone.

  Only Reverend Albert Acland seemed to understand Jack Frake, and was unafraid to express what he truly thought of him. Attendance in his church was mandatory, and a person who neglected to regularly audit his services could be arrested and either fined, jailed, or put in the stocks. He could not recall the last time he had seen Jack Frake among the congregation. The Massie family pew stall was usually vacant on Sundays, or occupied by strangers. But the men who had it in their power to punish Jack Frake as a religious truant, would not make him answerable. The men who served as county judges and parish vestrymen were also the leading planters, on whose beneficence and largesse Stepney Parish and Reverend Acland depended. They refused to even discuss Jack Frake or the possibility of privately reprimanding him for his transgression.

  Reverend Acland attributed their obstinacy to insipid favoritism; he also strongly suspected that they feared the owner of Morland. Resentment and righteous contempt festered in his mind. He was powerless to bring Jack Frake to justice. He took his revenge on the other planters by preaching frequently and insistently to them at services against pride, power, negligence, arrogance, and all the other sins which he — and they — knew they were guilty of committing. If you will not answer to me for your calculated, gross oversight, he reassured himself, I will remind you that you will someday be answerable to God. Reverend Acland was an exception to the rule among Anglican ministers in the colony. His sermons were delivered with the fervor and persuasiveness of a New Light divine.

  * * *

  Forewarned by the notice in the Courier and Arthur Stannard’s earnest assurances, Reece Vishonn in turn impressed upon his fellow planters the importance of heeding Hugh Kenrick’s wishes. The welcoming banquet, as a result, was a qualified social success — qualified only because of the grudgingly observed request, together with a formal distance that the young newcomer seemed to place between himself and his host and host’s guests. Hugh Kenrick’s only compliment to the company was that “Virginia planters are, as a rule, better garbed and better read than their counterparts in England, and certainly more hospitable.”

  Mr. Vishonn and his guests did not know what to make of Hugh Kenrick. Here was a true aristocrat who paradoxically disdained his rank, or seemed to be indifferent to it. His mien implicitly mocked their pretensions to being a colonial, disenfranchised elite, and this made his presence uncomfortable to them.

  Although it was a less spectacular event than he had hoped for, Reece Vishonn felt the satisfying relief of knowing that Mr. Kenrick had no political plans and had shown no evidence of interest in usurping his position as the county’s de facto leader.

  This was subtly confirmed for the master of Enderly by Hugh Kenrick near the end of a brief speech of thanks to his host and his companions. “In conclusion, allow me to cadge a line from the unfortunate Polonius, which he addressed to King Claudius, and which will indicate my sole purpose for having come to this fair setting: ‘Let me be no assistant to the state, but keep a farm and carters.’”

  Before the company could answer with applause, one of the guests laughed, and rose to reply, “You may rest assured, sir, that you will encounter no manslaughtering Hamlets here. Swords there are aplenty, but nary an arras!”

  Only then did the rest of the company fully grasp the meaning of Hugh Kenrick’s words and applaud. He bowed slightly to the speaker. “Thank you, Mr. Granby, for a worthy riposte. Rest assured that I am not the hiding kind, neither of myself, nor of my designs.”

  “What do you make of him?” Vishonn asked Ralph Cullis after Hugh Kenrick and most of the guests had departed. The banquet had been a midafternoon dinner, and now the sun was beginning to touch the western horizon. The host, Cullis, and Reverend Acland sat together in Vishonn’s spacious study with glasses of claret.

  “He is an amiable fellow, sir,” said Cullis. “Charming to a fault, wise ahead of his years, earnest, thoughtful, already a lodestone of distaff speculation — I have heard my daughter Eleanor remark that he is the most eligible bachelor in these parts — excepting, perhaps, your son James,” added the planter, referring to his host’s son. “But, he is remote of deportment. I could not help but think, throughout the affair here, that he was merely humoring us.”

  Vishonn frowned in disagreement. “Not my impression, sir! I would say that he is shy, and had his property on his mind. He confided in me that today the rest of his things from Philadelphia had only just arrived.” He paused. “I would say that he is a brave and enterprising fellow to undertake such a sticky problem as Brougham Hall. He did not show it, but I sensed alittle fear in him concerning the project. He knows it will be no mean feat to return old Covington’s place to its former glory.” Vishonn turned to Reverend Acland. “And you, sir? What do you say?”

  “It remains to be seen whether Mr. Kenrick is a Polonius or a Hamlet, sir,” said the clergyman. “I did not engage him much in conversation — he is skillful at not speaking with persons with whom he does not wish to speak — but observed his commerce with you others. He is too young to be so gravely melancholy.” Acland smiled in expectation of appreciation by the two other men of his allusion to the “melancholy Dane.”

  But Ralph Cullis merely stared blankly at him, while Vishonn scoffed. “Melancholy?? Gads, sirs! Forgive me for saying so, but that’s a most tilted appraisal! He is a lively, spirited, strong-keeled fellow, no more melancholy than I am!” but he paused to add, “However, you seem convinced of your observation, Mr. Acland. Why?”

  The clergyman shrugged once. “Perhaps he has come here to expiate some great sin, or to absent himself from the sins of others. My friends and brothers of the cloth in England have some intelligence about his family. It is not complete, but it indicates a stormy household, in which Mr. Kenrick has been as much sinned against, as has sinned.”
Reverend Acland paused to sip his claret. “The truth of one or the other will emerge only after he has been among us for some time. He strikes me as a man who is struggling to quell some racking torment. I would be flattered if he came to me for spiritual consolation or advice, but he has not yet crossed the threshold of our church.”

  Whatever that torment may be, sir, thought Reece Vishonn, I earnestly hope that it is nothing into which you may sink your righteous teeth.

  Ralph Cullis toyed with the temptation to remark on the slim odds of Hugh Kenrick being lashed or fined by the sheriff for nonattendance, but thought better of it and settled for clearing his throat.

  Reverend Acland departed shortly after this exchange to take advantage of the waning daylight. Vishonn and Cullis pondered Hugh Kenrick’s marriage prospects, but only briefly, for all the planters but Henry Otway had eligible daughters, and an unspoken rivalry among the families had ensued to win the prestige of claiming a baron for a son-in-law and a baroness for a daughter. The two gentlemen also ventured speculation about Hugh Kenrick joining their Freemason’s lodge. They concluded that they could not predict how he might reply to an invitation. Finally, as Ralph Cullis prepared to leave, he asked his host the question that was on their minds all day: “I wonder what Mr. Frake will make of him, and he of Mr. Frake?”

  Reece Vishonn barked sharply once in a laugh. “Of this I’m certain, Mr. Cullis,” he answered. “They will either find themselves to be brothers in spirit, or they will be two wild boars, and we shall be witnesses to a savage brawl!”