by S K Rizzolo
“Bellingham was here in Bow Street, sir,” he told Graham. “I saw him myself when he came seeking a response to his letter of grievance. We sent him away.”
Lowering his head to his hands, Graham shuddered, then raised red-rimmed eyes. “Is it thought this man acted in concert with others? A treasonous plot?”
“No one knows,” said the boy. “He says he acted alone. The mails are to be stopped and a Cabinet Council called. They are examining Bellingham now abovestairs in the House. A crowd has gathered outside.”
“Let me go there at once,” said Chase urgently. “I will position myself in the throng and help to keep the peace.”
“Yes, yes,” said Graham, waving a distracted hand. “We will need to remain calm, only show our force as necessary. Leave me now while I go to Mr. Read and we ponder what is to be done.”
Chase found that the boy had offered no more than the simple truth, for the street outside the Commons was full of people. But having expected ugliness, even violence, he was not at all prepared for the mood of the people, which astonishingly was celebratory, even joyous. They stood shoulder to shoulder, from time to time breaking out in songs, cheers, and ear-splitting whistles.
“Down to hell with the Devil, and may the rest of the damned scoundrels go the same way,” Chase heard one man call out.
“God bless John Bellingham,” others cried. “Let all the Devil’s brood go to Hell so that poor people may live!”
Waiting there the rest of that endless evening until finally about one o’clock in the morning when the assassin was brought out under guard to be transported to Newgate, Chase felt that he had stumbled into an unrecognizable world. The gulf between rich and poor, the powerful and the weak, had never seemed so wide. Could they be stopped, these faceless masses who nourished hatred and revenge in their hearts? In that moment he doubted it. They had been injured; they would strike back, again and again. Here was the pattern.
The crowd pressed around Bellingham’s coach, their shouts clamoring, their bodies a heavy wall of flesh. Chase, who could not have moved, watched helplessly as men crawled over the coach like insects, perching on the wheels and mounting the box. Several managed to get the doors open and push their hands inside to wring Bellingham’s. The police struggled in vain to beat them back so that the coach could move, eventually resorting to whips, which they wielded with a strength born of fear.
When the coach, finally, was gone, John Chase allowed himself to be swept away down the street, one man alone in the laughing, cheering crowd.
Author’s Note
In my portrayal of the prophetess Rebecca Barnwell, I have “borrowed” biographical detail from the life of Joanna Southcott, born 1750. Southcott was a domestic servant, who at the age of forty-two felt the call of the Spirit to fulfill a great destiny. She established a ministry, wrote dozens of books and pamphlets, and attracted thousands of followers.
When she was sixty-four years old, she suddenly announced she was to give birth to a messiah “by the power of the Most High.” People showered Joanna with costly gifts like lace caps and silver cups and, believing that the Millennium approached, flocked to the metropolis to be on hand for the big moment. As the story goes, Joanna did appear to be pregnant, but as a year went by and no baby came forth, it became obvious her health was failing. She died a few days after Christmas in 1814, an autopsy later attributing her symptoms to “biliary obstructions” (whatever those are!) and the mass of her stomach to ordinary weight gain.
Of course, my version of Southcott/Barnwell’s history, including the love affair with Sir Roger Wallace-Crag and her later association with Jacobin conspirators, is purely fictional. Nonetheless, I am indebted to James K. Hopkins’ A Woman to Deliver Her People: Joanna Southcott and English Millenarianism in an Era of Revolution (University of Texas Press, 1982).
The profligate Prince Regent, whom the radical Leigh Hunt described as “a man who had just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country or the respect of posterity,” was indeed the target of threats around the time of this novel, though I don’t know of any actual conspiracies. And certainly Prime Minister Perceval had a strong inkling of the mood of the people before his own life became forfeit to John Bellingham’s bitter grievance. Perceval had received many threatening letters from the Luddites during the spring of 1812, such as this one about the frame-breaking bill that Lord Byron had ineffectually opposed:
The Bill for Punish’g with Death has only to be viewed with contempt & opposed by measures equally strong; & the Gentlemen who framed it will have to repent the Act: for if one Man’s life is Sacrificed, !blood for !blood…(qtd. in Sale, Rebels Against the Future, Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1995)
Finally, readers might find it interesting to note that on May 18 Byron rented a prime spot in a house overlooking Newgate Prison to see the assassin John Bellingham “launched into eternity” to the accompaniment of applause and congratulatory shouts of “God bless him!” I cannot but reflect that sentiments of this nature seem terrifyingly familiar these days.
December 18, 2002
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