SH03_Sparrowhawk: Caxton

by Edward Cline

  Jack nodded. “Does your father share your views on it?”

  “No,” Hugh said. “His mind, too, stalls on that subject, and loses verve, and purpose. But his is not an exclusively English fault. So many learned colonials are similarly affected.”

  Jack rose and refilled Hugh’s glass from a decanter, and then his own. “We colonials,” he said as he put down the decanter, “sooner than most Englishmen, will be pressed to choose between that corpus mysticum and our liberties.”

  Hugh nodded once. “But only after first grasping that there can be no lasting agreement between them. They must learn that there is no such thing as a good king, only an unambitious one who confers an illusory stability.”

  Jack smiled and touched Hugh’s glass with his own. “A toast then to the Skelly gang, my friend, and to the Pippins, and to ourselves, as their rightful heirs.”

  Hugh grinned. “And to all men of like mind — and God damn the king!”

  When they finished downing their drinks, Jack said, “I will have some letters to friends in England ready by the time you leave. Will you carry them over and post them?”

  “As many as you wish,” said Hugh. “I will spend at least six weeks there. Is there anyone you would wish me to see and speak to?”

  Jack shook his head. “No. I would say Captain Ramshaw, but he must be at sea by now. Very likely your ships will pass each other.”

  When Hugh returned to Meum Hall, he went to his own library, took down an atlas of English maps, and turned the pages to Dorset. There were almost a dozen boroughs in the county, including Onyxcombe, which his family had controlled for generations, and whose political boundaries enclosed the village of Danvers and the Kenrick estate. The other Dorset boroughs, such as Poole, Corfe Castle, Lyme Regis, and Weymouth, ranged in type of franchise from scot and lot to householder to freeman.

  Onyxcombe, however, was the only burgage; the Kenrick family was its major freeholder, owning nearly all the land and buildings in the borough, except for the Brune and Tallmadge estates, and so held the solitary vote. Onyxcombe was anomalous again in that it was one of the few boroughs in the entire country that returned a single representative to the Commons; most others sent two. The Kenrick family had never tried to influence the elections in Poole, the borough nearest to Onyxcombe, nor attempted to usurp the control which the merchants there had over the port. Poole was the homeport of the Busy, the Nimble, and the Ariadne. All three vessels also regularly called on it to unship Newfoundland fish, Carolina rice, Virginia corn, and New England timber, as well as Continental cargoes. His father was all too pleased with the corporation of Poole, and had amicable ties to many of the freemen-merchants who retained the franchise.

  As he studied the maps, Hugh wondered which borough his father had acquired control over. And whichever it was, he also tried to imagine his father rising in the Commons to address its tightly packed audience. For all that he found admirable in his father, he did not think he could number among his virtues a gift for public speaking. After a while, Hugh closed the atlas. It was fruitless to try to surmise the details of his father’s new career.

  Chapter 18: The Journey Home

  A round of bon voyage suppers was held in Hugh’s honor in the weeks before his departure. At the home of the McRaes, he promised he would bring Etáin some new sheet music; her mother, French newspapers; and her father, new pattern books, catalogues, and copies of Gentleman’s Magazine. At Enderly, he assured Reece Vishonn that he would return with some new agricultural books the planter had read about, and wished the man’s children, James and Annyce, the best happiness for their weddings.

  Jack Frake gave a farewell supper at the King’s Arms the night before Hugh was to board a sloop that would take him to Philadelphia. Here, too, he made a list of things that other men requested. The most unusual request came from John Proudlocks, who expressed curiosity about the subjects he heard his employer and others discuss with a seriousness that intrigued him.

  “Would you bring me a copy of the British constitution, Mr. Kenrick?” he asked. “A tattered copy, not a new one. I can only afford what is called a ‘second-hand’ copy.”

  Everyone seated around the wide table glanced at the Indian. One man suppressed a snort, another a giggle. Hugh threw a reproving look at them. Jack turned wordlessly to Hugh, and waited to hear how he would answer the request.

  Hugh said, “You could not afford a copy of our constitution, sir, tattered or new, for one does not exist. Mr. Reisdale can vouch for this. It is, you see, a great pile of precedents and decisions, not all of them reasonable, accumulated over centuries, and collected in a hundred tomes. Our constitution is the common law, which is everywhere around you, like the air.” He paused when he saw the disappointment on Proudlocks’s face. “Our constitution excludes much of Parliament’s mischief, which is also everywhere about you.”

  “Like the vapors of smoldering horse dung,” remarked Reisdale.

  The men all laughed. Hugh said, “I will, however, try to find a digest of our constitution’s salient points. Also, my father writes that an eminent jurist has given a clear presentation of it in a series of lectures at Oxford University, and has published them in a book. I happen to want a copy of it myself.”

  “Which jurist, sir?” asked Reisdale.

  “William Blackstone, of the Middle Temple, I believe.”

  “I am not acquainted with him. I would be interested in reading what

  he has to say.”

  Hugh asked Proudlocks, “What is your interest in the subject, sir?” The man looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “I have heard

  much babble about it lately among you gentlemen. Some say this constitution is in trouble, that its protection will be denied us. Others say it will cause us trouble, because it will allow the Crown to possess us. I wish to know how this can be.” He paused. “I wish to judge for myself.”

  “A wise policy, sir,” said Hugh. He beamed, and glanced briefly at Jack, who sat next to Proudlocks. He was happy that his friend could make such afriend. Then he rose and exclaimed, gesturing to Proudlocks, “Gentlemen! Hic de nihilo crevit homo! — He is a self-made man!”

  “Hear, hear!” seconded Reisdale. He was echoed by others around the table.

  Proudlocks seemed to blush at the compliment paid him, but grinned in grateful acknowledgment.

  Jack tentatively raised his glass of port to Hugh. “If you have a family coat-of-arms or crest, my friend, you ought to discard its motto and adopt that one.”

  “Though first substituting ego for hic,” added Reisdale.

  “I will think on that suggestion,” remarked Hugh. “Gentlemen, I am happy to have you as company. While I am away, I shall miss you all.”

  “As we shall you,” said Steven Safford. “You are one of us, now.”

  Jack Frake rose to propose a toast. Looking at Hugh, he said, “Long live Lady Liberty.”

  Hugh took up his own glass and raised it in answer. “And to the memory of those who knew her, and to those who know her today.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Hugh reviewed his instructions to William Settle for managing Meum Hall.

  “How long do you plan to stay, sir?” asked the overlooker.

  “At least six weeks. Probably longer. It would not be worth going if the stay were shorter than the voyage. I hope to return by September. I doubt that I could bear a longer absence from this place.”

  He gave last instructions to the housekeeper, Mrs. Vere, and to Beecroft, then visited the tenants’ quarter and said goodbye to its residents. His trunks were loaded onto a cart, and Spears, the valet, drove him down to Caxton’s waterfront.

  It was a dry, crisp morning. At the pier, waiting for him, were Jack Frake, John Proudlocks, Thomas Reisdale, and the McRaes. They came aboard with Hugh to talk until the sloop was ready to embark. It was the Amherst, formerly the Nancy, renamed in honor of the British general who had secured the surrender of Montreal and thus closed Canad
a to the French.

  The Amherst took Hugh to Philadelphia, where he stayed with Otis Talbot while waiting for the Roilance to take him to England.

  As the Roilance, driven by a good westerly wind, plunged through the whitecaps toward England, Hugh stood at the stern and watched the continent shrink to a thin, dark line on the bobbing horizon. He felt that he was leaving home, a place he had made his own, a place that gave him the same experience as Hyperborea. “You are one of us, now,” said Steven Safford at the supper. He had not attached any special importance to the remark when he first heard it. Now it recurred to him for a reason he understood too well, prompted by the sight of the tenuous, receding vision in the west. For the first time, a question formed in his mind, and it caused him a poignant sadness, because he knew that it would require an answer: Could he still call England home?

  Then the line in the west disappeared beneath the waves, and, once again, he was surrounded by mere ocean. He turned to lean against the rail, and looked up at the pennants snapping in the breeze above the full sails.

  He saw one crewman climb the web-like rigging, intent on some task, oblivious to the wind that whipped his jacket. But Hugh imagined he saw a man ascending Mount Olympus.

  Chapter 19: The Homecoming

  “I boast a constituency of one — your father.” Sir Dogmael Jones grinned and indicated Baron Garnet Kenrick with a brief gesture of his hand.

  Hugh Kenrick glanced from the serjeant-at-law to his father, who sat at his desk, placidly watching him for his reaction. Hugh frowned, then also grinned, though not in amusement. He asked Jones, “For which borough?”

  “Swansditch, milord,” answered Jones. The barrister grinned again. In his grin were a hint of self-effacement and a touch of contempt for the whole business. He began pacing back and forth, and spoke as though he were lecturing law students at the Inns of Court. “Swansditch is a dreary, cankerous collection of tenements, warehouses, and odoriferous alleys that clings to the eastern fringe of Southwark like an incurable lesion. It is on the Thames, some distance downriver from London Bridge, and is nearly always gripped in a smoky mist or fog. In area, it is not much greater than the Covent Garden market, roughly one hundred paces by one hundred. The place once served the same purpose as Smithfield; cattle, sheep, and horses were driven to it from Surrey and Kent for sale. I suppose there were once swans and a ditch or canal there that would account for the name. The ditch has become a kind of boulevard, if only for the profusion of evillooking weeds and crippled poplars that line its sides. It was, they say, filled in with rubble from the Great Fire, and since then with naval debris, silt, offal, and the carcasses of innumerable, luckless livestock. As to the swans, if any ever domiciled there, they have long past anyone’s memory fled to more salubrious climes. Among the living, there are perhaps a dozen or two souls who are the borough’s constant inhabitants, though they have not the vote. They are mostly employed in the warehouses, or by the borough’s only solvent enterprise, a carriage-maker’s works that neighbors Southwark.

  “Swansditch, like Onyxcombe, is the odd borough that sends but a single member to the Commons. A Mr. Robert Ingoldsby, a factor of leather and linen goods and a career contractor for the Army, held this seat for nigh on twenty years, until he unexpectedly expired last Michaelmas from a surfeit of wrong mutton. His own warehouse and works were situated in Southwark. There are many men like the late Mr. Ingoldsby in the Commons, contractors, and merchants, and bankers who come to life on the benches only when a bill for economy threatens to abridge their incomes or appointments. They do not go to the Commons to acquire fortunes; fortunes they already have. They are there to preserve them, or for the prestige, or to justify their idleness. If a contract or preferment happens to come their way…well, and why not? They vote this way or that not in hopes of earning Crown lucre from a grateful administration or from colleagues, but from purblind loyalty to foibles or friends, or from eclectic inclinations governed by the quality of their dinners or of the day.

  “But, I digress. To continue: Mr. Worley, of Worley and Sons, your family’s agents here, had had some business with Mr. Ingoldsby, and alerted your father to his demise. Your father subsequently purchased the tenements and the leases on the other properties from his widow for a sum that has allowed her to retire comfortably and indefinitely to Bath to take its waters for her rheumatism and its society for her widowhood. Too late did an agent of the Marquis of Rockingham approach the dear lady with an offer to purchase; the money was paid, and the transfer of ownership registered with the courts a week before he essayed an interest. Mrs. Ingoldsby was rather put out by the late offer, as she undoubtedly could have gotten more from the Marquis, but the deal was done. Proprietorship of the tenements and leases secures for your father not only the income from the properties, but the vote for him to nominate and elect the candidate — and therefore the seat. I am certain you know how these things work.

  “One qualification for a person to claim a seat in the Commons, of course, is that he own landed property of some kind. Your father was kind enough to loan to me, at least on paper, the price of some indifferent pasturage in Wandsworth.” The barrister paused to shrug. “It little mattered to me what I owned, only that it would permit me a place on the benches. So, I was duly chosen by his lordship in a by-election the duration of a whore’s wink, after all other formalities were observed.” Jones chuckled. “I journeyed to Swansditch out of curiosity, and to introduce myself to its inhabitants. Some of the sober ones were not aware that a change in representation had occurred. Others were not even cognizant of the fact that the borough had ever been represented.” He sighed. “A remarkably dormant constituency, Swansditch.

  “In conclusion, milord, it is from this rotting, decrepit pedestal that I shall speak in the Commons.” The barrister bowed slightly, then resumed his seat in an armchair, took up a glass from a little table by it, and finished his Madeira. “Or,” he added, “should I fail miserably to rise in time to attract the Speaker’s finger, it will be a mere roost, from which I may at least audit the warblings of ambitious fools, the querulous misgivings of the cautious, and the trembling confusions of the timid.”

  The two older men waited for Hugh to respond. This time, Hugh rose from his chair, paced for a moment or two in thought, then turned and, glancing at both his father and the barrister, asked, “Why?”

  “To begin with,” answered his father, “I cannot sit by and watch the country drift so aimlessly. Not any more. It is a corrupt system, our Parliament, but we shall attempt to either overcome the corruption, or make it work for us…for liberty.” Garnet Kenrick paused. “You know that I become a lump of coal when I am expected to speak before any audience larger than can sit at a long table. Sir Dogmael here will become my voice.” He smiled at the barrister. “He has had much practice at it.”

  Jones said, “Why do I wish to sit in the Commons, that great colosseum of cowards, caitiffs, and compromisers? To begin with — Mr. John Wilkes.”

  * * *

  Steady westerly winds over an untroubled ocean, together with fair weather and smart seamanship, allowed the Roilance to cross from Philadelphia to Portsmouth, England, in six weeks. From Portsmouth Hugh took a coastal packet to Dover; from Dover an inn coach to Canterbury; from Canterbury another coach to an inn yard near Charing Cross in London. There he hired a hackney to take him and his luggage up the Thames to Chelsea, and finally to the doorstep of Cricklegate on Paradise Row. It was on a warm, cloudless mid-June afternoon that he raised the brass knocker on the door, let it fall once, and braced himself for the reception he was certain to receive.

  The maid who opened the door recognized him with open-mouthed surprise, and blurted, “Master Hugh!” Her exclamation was loud enough to be heard in the rest of the house, and was followed by a joyous shout from somewhere inside. His parents rushed into the foyer. They paused in pleased shock at sight of the tall, tanned, strapping young man standing in the doorway, the young man who was their son. The
y hurtled forward to embrace him.

  After a moment, Garnet Kenrick grasped his son’s shoulders and held him away at arm’s length. “Look at him, Effney! My God, the colonies have done well by him! You’ve grown a few inches, Hugh, and you’re almost as dark as an Arab!”

  Effney Kenrick wiped the tears from her cheeks and laughed. “Yes, Garnet, look at him!” She poked her son playfully on his arm and chest with delicate fingers. “I would pity the boxer put in the ring with our Hugh! Why, he is worthy of a statue!”

  “A statue!” exclaimed the Baron. “No, not quite. Perhaps a portrait. Yes! We shall have one commissioned of you during your stay!”

  Hugh was as happy to reunite with his parents as they were with him. An energy of animating joy overcame his exhaustion from the voyage home and the journey from Portsmouth. At one point, he asked, “But, where is Alice?”

  “She is at the academy,” answered his mother. “Bridgette will fetch her later in the afternoon.” Bridgette, who was his former governess, was now his little sister’s. The woman stood in the background with Owen Runcorn, the family’s major domo, watching the reunion.

  Hugh raised a hand and touched the silver that had appeared in his father’s dark hair. “You, sir,” he said with jesting fondness, “are beginning to acquire more wisdom.”

  Garnet Kenrick chuckled. “Your mother predicts that, in a few years, it will be so white, I will not need to wear a wig. Not that I often do.”