– CHAPTER 50 –
Don’t Be a Tit
As a doctor’s wife, Mrs. Pell saw that Huncks’s wound was likely mortal. She dispatched a message to her husband by fast rider: “Huncks dying. New Haven danger possible. Make haste.”
Toward late afternoon, the King’s Highway became a dust storm of hooves. Winthrop rode at the head of thirty of his Connecticut militia. Dr. Pell brought twenty of his Westchester Trained Band. Dr. Pell’s house became a fortress an army would hesitate to attack.
Dr. Pell did what he could, but the ball had nicked Huncks’s liver. Bile was emptying into the abdominal cavity, turning his water black.
Pell and Winthrop and Underhill kept vigil at Huncks’s bedside. Thankful nursed him as she had at the Cobb farm. Balty, unable to govern his emotions, stood his own miserable watch alone in another room.
The delirium began. Huncks slipped in and out of consciousness. Winthrop left, hiding his face. He had to return to New York to attend to the hand-over. He took only a few of his militia with him.
* * *
Thankful nudged Balty, who’d dozed off.
“It’s time,” she said. They hugged. Balty went in alone to Huncks’s room.
Huncks was propped on pillows, whisky jug cradled in his right arm. Balty sat on the bed and took his hand.
Huncks opened his eyes.
“Who’s that?”
“It’s me, old cock. Balty.”
Huncks frowned. “Balty? We met?”
“I should hope so.”
“We . . . serve together?”
“I suppose you could call it that.”
“Where?”
“Well, let’s see. Boston. Hartford. New Haven. Here, in Fairfield. Oyster Bay. New Amsterdam. New York.”
“New York? Where’s that?”
“Not so far.”
“Bird,” Huncks said. “There was a bird.”
“Mm. Parrot. Name of Johann. Frightful thing. Didn’t much care for you. Look, old man, I wanted . . . I wanted to say thank you.”
“For what?”
“Looking after me.”
“Don’t be a tit. Balty . . .”
“I’m here.”
“No. Balty. Did he get his knighthood?”
“Oh. Yes. He did. He did. His majesty created him Baron . . . Baron New Huncks. Very grand title.”
Huncks’s lips moved. Balty leaned in.
“What is it, old man?”
“What . . . now? Balty always asking . . . what . . . now?”
“What a bother he must have been to you.”
Huncks shook his head. “Brother Balty. What . . . now . . .?”
“Get some rest, old man. I’ll take first watch.”
* * *
Huncks had told Thankful he wanted to be buried alongside the Cobbs. She told Winthrop, who smiled and said: “Just like Huncks to request burial behind enemy lines.” Before returning to Breuckelen, he gave instructions to the captain of his militia.
* * *
The next day an unusual cortège made its way along the King’s Highway from Fairfield to New Haven. At the head of it rode a captain of Connecticut militia. Behind him, a carriage drawn by four horses carried a coffin draped with the flag of the Connecticut Colony. Balty and Thankful followed behind, at the head of a troop of twenty mounted militia.
Word of the procession passed quickly up the highway.
They were met at the New Haven line by a dozen New Haven constables forming a barricade across the highway to deny them passage.
The Connecticut captain and the young New Haven sergeant each insisted on superior authority. Muskets were raised. But when the name of the man in the coffin was revealed, the New Haven sergeant ordered his men to stand down. The cortège was allowed to pass. As it did, the sergeant removed his hat.
Huncks was laid to rest beside Bartholomew and Amity and Micah, by the stream at the foot of the red cliff. A volley was fired in salute and a guard posted over the grave for one month, the period of mourning officially proclaimed by the Governor of the Connecticut Colony.
Over the years, people who’d heard versions of the story came to see the grave of the man whose name over time was lost, known only as The Judge Hunter.
– EPILOGUE –
November 24th, 1664. Today arrived from New England by one of Col. Nicholls’s ships a letter from Brother Balty. Mirabile dictu.
No surprise—he reports lack of success in his endeavor. But joyous news! He intends to stay on in New England—says he has information as to the whereabouts of the regicide judges. Whalley and Goffe doubtless guaranteed to die of old age. God save New England.
Bro Balty’s letter oddly full of “thees” and “thous.”
My wife naturally in a grievous state and blaming me. Great haranguing. Boxed her ears.
To my barber, to arrange with him to keep my perriwig in good order at 20s. a year, which will make me go very spruce.
And so to bed.
Historical Notes
The bloodless seizure of New Amsterdam in 1664 by the English, cunningly plotted by George, Lord Downing and Charles II’s brother, the Duke of York, led to a copious spillage of blood a year later, with the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. It was during that conflict that the Dutch carried out their daring nighttime raid on the English fleet in the Medway, burning, among other ships, the Royal Charles, which had brought Charles II home to England after his exile (with Pepys aboard). That and other disasters on the English side brought Charles II’s reputation low and weakened his rule. Downing, who had avidly fomented war with Holland, prospered. Land once his, on which he built and sold houses shoddily made on the cheap, still bears his name as the residence, since 1735, of British prime ministers—Number 10 Downing Street. The official Number Ten website acknowledges that Downing was “miserly and at times brutal.”
In 1672, during the third war between England and Holland, Richard Nicholls, who took New Amsterdam without a shot fired, and Edward Montagu, First Earl of Sandwich, were both killed at the Battle of Solebay.
Barbara Palmer, Countess Castlemaine, principal mistress to King Charles II, bore him five illegitimate children. Seldom has the title “Lady of the Bedchamber” been more faithfully undertaken. Her descendants include Diana Spencer, erstwhile Princess of Wales; Sarah Ferguson, erstwhile Duchess of York; Mitford sisters Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah; philosopher Bertrand Russell; and British prime minister Anthony Eden.I Many hated her. Pepys adored her.
The land Dr. Thomas Pell bought from Wampage, chief of the Siwanoy, is now Pelham, Pelham Manor, the eastern Bronx, and southern Westchester County. Pell died in 1669. His descendants include the U.S. senator from Rhode Island, Claiborne Pell.
Thirty years after cofounding the Colony of New Haven, the Reverend John Davenport found himself defeated—politically by the absorption of New Haven into the Connecticut Colony, and spiritually by the rise of Arminianism (the Dutch theology that rejected original sin and predestination). He returned to Boston and became pastor of the First Church there, dying of apoplexy on March 15, 1670, age seventy-two. His descendants include Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox and Maxwell Perkins, the legendary editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. Yale University’s Davenport College bears his name.
Captain John Underhill, warrior and Indian fighter, died in the Quaker faith on his farm at Oyster Bay in 1672. The plot of land he owned when he lived in New Amsterdam is the site of Trinity Church in lower Manhattan. His sister-in-law played an important role in the Flushing Remonstrance of 1657, which resulted in the Dutch West India Company granting rights to Quakers. The Remonstrance went on to influence the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, establishing freedom of speech.
Following the British seizure of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant was recalled to Amsterdam in disgrace and blamed for the loss, by his neglectful and indifferent employers at the West India Company. He eventually returned to Manhatoe
s and lived out his life in tranquility at Bouwerie Number One. He died in 1672. Russell Shorto notes that his tombstone in St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery “manages to get both his age and his title wrong.” His descendants include former New York governor, U.S. senator, and U.S. secretary of state Hamilton Fish; writer Loudon Wainwright Jr., under whom the present author studied journalism at college; and singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III.
John Winthrop (the Younger), Governor of the Connecticut Colony, was a man of abundant scientific curiosity. In England, he gazed at the heavens with Charles II through his majesty’s “royal tube.” Winthrop owned a three-and-a-half-foot telescope in Hartford. In 1664, the year of events related here, he observed a fifth moon of Jupiter. In 1892, the Lick Observatory in California confirmed its existence. Winthrop died of a severe cold in Boston in 1692. His direct descendants include former senator and secretary of state John F. Kerry.
Neither Edward Whalley nor his son-in-law William Goffe was ever apprehended. An incident during the conflict known as King Philip’s War gave rise to the so-called legend of the Angel of Hadley. On Sunday, September 1, 1675, the Massachusetts town of Hadley came under Indian attack. The settlers, at pains to get themselves organized, were surprised by an aged man with white hair and military bearing, who appeared suddenly and rallied them to repel the attack. The old man, whom no one had seen before, disappeared and was never seen again. According to the legend, this was Goffe, who had been hiding for many years in the local pastor’s house. Seeing the Indians approaching, the old soldier sprang into action. The episode furnished inspiration to Sir Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Samuel Pepys was eyewitness to the execution of Charles I, the Restoration, the execution of the first of the men who condemned Charles I to death, the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London. (It was Pepys who informed the king and his brother, James, Duke of York, that the city was on fire.) He rose to be secretary of the admiralty. His career ended in 1688 after the Glorious Revolution deposed the Catholic James II who, as Duke of York and Lord High Admiral, had successfully schemed to seize New Amsterdam. Pepys died on May 26, 1703. Despite their stormy marriage, his myriad infidelities, and the importunings of his brother-in-law Balty, he remained devoted to Elizabeth. She died in 1669, leaving him grief-stricken. He never remarried. The six volumes of his diary, which he kept in his own shorthand, were deciphered and published in 1825. Pepys is considered by many to be the greatest diarist in the English language.
Balthasar de St. Michel came to his brother-in-law’s defense in 1673 when Pepys was maliciously (and falsely) accused by his political enemies of “popery.” He wrote a letter for the record, staunchly (and falsely) asserting his sister’s Protestant bona fides. An elusive figure, Balty disappears from history as casually as he enters it.
The curious “glacial erratic” boulder atop West Rock Ridge State Park in New Haven, Connecticut, is known as Judges Cave. Here, in 1661 (and perhaps again in 1664), two of the men who signed the death warrant of King Charles I hid from their pursuers. Their first stay ended when they were surprised by the growl of a catamount and decided to seek refuge elsewhere. A plaque noting what took place here ends with a paraphrase of Benjamin Franklin’s design for the Great Seal of the United States: “Opposition to tyrants is obedience to God.”
* * *
I. Per an unsourced entry in Wikipedia.
Sources
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, which Sam kept from 1660 until 1669. Pepys laid down his quill for fear the diary might be ruining his eyes. Our loss—he lived until 1703. To him we owe much of what we know of life during that decade: the Restoration, the Great Fire of London, the Plague, royal gossip, executions galore. Historians tell us what happened. Pepys tells us what it looked, felt, sounded, and tasted like. The alert reader—that is, all of you—will recognize that all but the first diary entry and a few extracts are of the author’s devising. It is most Earnestly and Prayerfully hoped that these pastiches will be seen as a token of Homage. For further reading, see Claire Tomalin’s Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self (New York: Knopf, 2002).
Second, and no less indispensable, Russell Shorto’s superb The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America (New York: Doubleday, 2004). It was in these pages that I learned, among a thousand other shimmery details, that grumpy old Peter Stuyvesant had a soft spot for tropical birds.
Research happily included rereading a book—by any measure, the book on our Puritan forefathers—by my college tutor, mentor, and friend Kai T. Erikson: Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: Wiley, 1966). It was in these pages, forty years ago, that I first learned of the unusual—indeed arresting—form of protest by Quaker women in old New England.
I’m in debt to the fine scholarship and narratives of the following authors and works.
Books
Ackroyd, Peter. Civil War: The History of England, Vol. III. New York: Macmillan, 2014.
Blue, Jon C. The Case of the Piglet’s Paternity: Trials from the New Haven Colony, 1639–1663. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015.
Daniels, Bruce C. New England Nation: The Country the Puritans Built. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Demos, John. The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America. New York: Knopf, 1994.
Frasier, Antonia. Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration. New York: Knopf, 1979.
Gunn, Giles, ed. Early American Writing. New York: Penguin, 1994.
Hawke, David Freeman. Everyday Life in Early America. New York: Harper, 1988.
Jaffe, Eric. The King’s Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route That Made America. New York: Scribner, 2010.
Jordan, Don, and Michael Walsh. The King’s Revenge: Charles II and the Greatest Manhunt in British History. New York: Pegasus, 2016.
Karr, Ronald Dale, ed. Indian New England, 1524–1674: A Compendium of Eyewitness Accounts of Native American Life. Pepperell, MA: Branch Line Press, 1999.
Lipman, Andrew. The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015.
Malone, Patrick M. The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics Among the New England Indians. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
Nicolar, Joseph. The Life and Traditions of the Red Man. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.
Pagliuco, Christopher. The Great Escape of Edward Whalley and William Goffe, Smuggled Through Connecticut. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2012.
Shapiro, James. The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.
Shonnard, Frederic, and W. W. Spooner. History of Westchester County, New York, from Its Earliest Settlement to the Year 1900. New York: New York History Co., 1900.
Spencer, Charles. Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980. Reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Wilbur, C. Keith. The New England Indians: An Illustrated Sourcebook of Authentic Details of Everyday Indian Life. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 1996.
Pamphlets
All of the following were addresses delivered at St. Olave Hart Street’s annual Pepys Commemoration Service.
de la Bédoyère, Guy. Pepys and Shorthand. May 20, 2010.
Latham, Rt. Hon. Sir David. The Convivial Pepys. May 25, 2011.
May, Simon, Esq. Pepys and St Paul’s School. May 27, 2009.
McCullough, Peter. Pepys and Faith. May 25, 2012.
Skeaping, Lucie. Pepys’s Musical World. May 25, 2007.
Skipp, Matt. Pepys and the Theatre. May 26, 2005.
Walker, Rev. Andrew. Pepys, Hooke and the Renaissance Spirit. May 25, 2006.
Woodman, Captain Richard.
Pepys and Trinity House. May 28, 2008.
Finally, my thanks to the indispensable Wikipedia. I endeavored to rely only on information whose source is certified by footnoted entries.
Acknowledgments
I’m indebted to John Tierney, for his valiant friendship and unstinting generosity as first responder. Greater love hath no man than he who reads draft after draft after draft, without complaining. LF.
Thanks and hats off to my good and dear friend, one of America’s preeminent artists, William C. Matthews, for the inspired jacket of the book.
Greg Zorthian lent me his eagle eyes and caught many a typo and infelicity. He also told me that the final scene made no sense at all, as written. Thank you, Z.
My stepdaughter Kingsley Trotter, now embarking on a brilliant legal career, provided encouragement and diligent editing. Thank you, Kake.
A shout-out to my young friend Emmett Foxe.
In addition to being a source of support, my clever and loving wife, Dr. Katherine Close, provided her doppelgänger colleague Dr. DeVrootje (Chapter 19) with his insight into how Huncks might recover from his injury.
I’m thankful, too, to my agent Amanda Urban. What would her name have been if she lived in Puritan New England? Probably not “Binky.” How about “Fabulous”?
At Simon & Schuster, thank you, Eloy Bleifuss, Martha Schwartz, Cynthia Merman, Larry “Dismas” Hughes, and Emily Simonson.
Finally, but never leastly, Jonathan Karp. This book is our twelfth together. I am the luckiest author in the world. Thank you, my very dear Mr. Karp.
About the Author
PHOTOGRAPH BY KATY CLOSE
Christopher Buckley is the author of seventeen previous books, including Thank You for Smoking and Losing Mum and Pup. This novel, set in the seventeenth century, is his second work of historical fiction, following The Relic Master, set in the sixteenth century. His aim, quixotic to be sure, is to write novels set in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries and—Grim Reaper permitting—twenty-first. Good luck with that.
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