The Equivocation of the Fiend

Tags

Act of Attainder, Assizes, Cain, Chief justice, Colchester oysters, Dame Alice Lisle, Ellingham, equivocation, Great Hall Winchester, John Hickes, Judas, Judge Jeffreys, Kings Bench, Machiavelli, Milk human kindness, Monmouth Rebellion, Moyles Court, Nelthorpe, Nero, Presbyterian, Satan, The Eclipse, The Rising Sunne, The Tower, treason, Wapping, Whigs, Winchester

A re-blog from August, 2013

 

 

THE EQUIVOCATION OF THE FIEND

Maybe a writ of Habeas Corpus will liberate me from my confinement

and then I can steal away from this loathsome Tower and gain passage

abroad, but there is no Court competent to assist me in this wise and now

I am fast losing strength.  I am supposed to be thankful for the protection

I have, while the country demands that a retrospective Act of Attainder

should result in my condemnation for multitudinous murders.

The wheel has come full circle.  A mob had congregated outside my

house in Duke Street and mocked the bills which announced the sale of

my property.  Women screamed, offering me their garters that I should

hang myself thereby and men raged, advising me to cut my own throat.

I downed another bottle of brandy and shut out their clamour.

However, I seemed to have one remaining friend – someone who knew of

my predilection for Colchester oysters.  A barrel had been left for me at

the Tower and I burst its bands eagerly.  Inside there was naught but

shells and a halter.  I apprehended its hint. The delivery youth jeered:

“Canst tell how an oyster makes its shell?”

He is not so dim as he looks.

Imagine: Chief Justice of the King’s Bench at thirty five and Lord

Chancellor before my fortieth birthday. I followed orders and to this

attribute my rapid promotion and even more sudden declension.I had

another birthday recently and there was none to exercise common

charity towards me, or to share a celebration. I stand accused of a

lack of the milk of human kindness.

I will never be permitted to forget the trial of Dame Alice Lisle. In

contrast, she was deemed to have shown exemplary, even saintly,

compassion and hospitality towards distressed fugitives, but there was

considerably more to the case than was imputed.

I was compared unfavourably to Nero, Satan, Cain and Judas, but I only

sent Whigs to Heaven. It was common practice to lash rogues with the

tongue and, after all, I cross-examined some of the deepest-dyed

criminals in the land. Their weeping and cries for mercy only served as

an irritant. How difficult it was to extract the truth from Presbyterian

liars and I grew adept at smelling one out at forty miles, hence the posy of

herbs that I was wont to hold to my nostrils. Severities may be properly

used, I believe, in common with Machiavelli, if they are appropriate with

national security.

Yes, Dame Alice, I turned a deaf ear to your plea and you could not hear

the foreman’s delivery of the verdict, by virtue of your three score years

and ten’s infirmity.

A witch, I thought, whose husband had been a regicide and now the old

crone was denying knowledge of the nature of the indictments against

John Hickes and Nelthorpe, initially denying their presence in her house,

Moyles Court. Subsequently she pleaded that she had understood Hickes’

offence to be merely illegal preaching.  She stressed that she had no

sympathy with the Monmouth rebellion, but I persuaded the jury to re-

consider their verdict and, on the third occasion, she was pronounced

guilty, and rightly so, for the Law recognised no distinction between

principals and accessories to treason.  “Let the old witch burn,” I ranted,

“and let it be this very afternoon!”

 

The interfering Winchester clergy appealed to me on account of her age

and sex and they gained a respite.  Our Sovereign commuted the sentence

to beheading, out of his merciful bounteousness.

Now the populace desire that I should shere her fate.  I am eclipsed- ha!-

a play on the title of the marketplace inn where she spent her final night,

before walking out of the first storey window, onto the scaffold.  They

said it was ever after “The Eclipse” as it drew all attention from its

neighbouring public house: “The Rising Sunne.”

Barter gave us the information.  She had entertained, concealed,

comforted and maintained the fugitive rebels.  The Devil had inspired her

to quibble, as do all witches.  Equivocation is the nature of the Fiend and

all his subjects.  I have oft-times heard his whine in the courtrooms

and the serpent-tongued dame tried to move me by a reminder that she had

bred a brat to fight for James, but, if she had been my own mother, I should

have found her guilty, notwithstanding her prevarication that she was being

charged with sheltering Hickes before he was convicted of treason  She stated

that subsequent evidence should not be admitted, since it had not been

available.

Very clever:  but anyone who harbours a traitor is as guilty as any who

bears arms, I believed, and I hold fast to the same conviction to this day.

“Nay, peace thou monster, shame unto thy sex,

Thou fiend in likeness of a human creature.

SEe thyself, devil!

Proper deformity shows not in the fiend

So horrid as in woman.

Shut your mouth, dame,

Or with this paper shall I stople it.”

The reference was lost on most in court.  Fools do those villains pity who

are punished.  Know this: that men are as the time is; to be tender-

minded does not become a sword.

It is more than three years since that fateful day in August in The Great

Hall of Winchester Castle.  Some say that a lady in grey haunts the inn

and that a driver-less coach has been seen in the grounds of her Ringwood

estate, drawn by headless horses and containing her phantom.

What is that nonsense to me?  Her head and body were given up to her

family, for burial at Ellingham and now the Whigs have all but canonised

her, raving about judicial murder.

Yet, when I attempted to escape from this hell-hle, no one would shelter

me in a cupboard, nor a malthouse and I was discovered at Wapping and

my disguise removed.  No port is free to me; no place that unusual

vigilance will not attend my taking.  So, here I lie, and suffer the

agony of passing these stones: a pain as sharp as the gravel of her drive,

but still I resort to my brandy.  I am bound upon my own wheel of fire.

My reins are rubbed with sulphurous flames.  The gods are just and of

our pleasant vices…  I waken to hear myself cry in the night and then a

distant rumble of carriage wheels approaches, or is it a more horrific

apocalyptic explosion?  Who is it that dare tell me who I am?

“What is that wailing?”  I shout to my guard.

“It is the cry of women, my good lord,” he replies through the grille, most

caustically.  “Come here most learned justicer.”  And then he laughs,

showing black tombstones in place of teeth.

“I have almost forgot the taste of fears.  I have supp’d full of horrors,”

I  answer, before I recall the context.  How malicious is my fortune that

I must repent to be just.

Equivocation – the only means of survival.  She was more skilled in its employ

than I.

 

 

(The grave of Judge Jeffreys was bombed by German aircraft during the war

and his remains scattered.  The grave of Alice Lisle can still be visited in

Ellingham churchyard.)

.

Debatable Lands

Tags

barmkin, bastle, black market, Bonnie Prince Charlie, border control, Brexit, debatable lands, donkey sanctuary, Easter bonnet, First Minister, haggis, Independence, Lent, Northumberland, Palm Sunday, Pele Tower, Presbyterian, re-moaners, reiver

(image: fortified tower by mattbuck)

[This is a continuation of my Augustus Snodbury saga…]

Diana Fotheringay- Syylk was sitting at her scrubbed pine table in

the kitchen of her pele tower.  She was writing to the church warden,

to apologise for the mule-ish behaviour of the Palm Sunday rescue donkey,

which had slipped its rein in the procession through the graveyard and had

made a dash for the appetising trimmings on Mrs Digby’s Easter bonnet.  This

had not tightened the bonds of fellowship, even though the nibbled headgear

had been sported by one who had contributed to the donkey sanctuary in the

past.  No, she- Diana- felt responsible for introducing such innovative practices

to a staunchly Presbyterian congregation.  She couldn’t help thinking that the

bonnet was a little premature and should have been left until well after Lent,

even if its wearer was the church warden.

Diana would always be a stranger here – a Sassenach.  Murgatroyd might

have saved a prime example of architectural heritage for the nation through

his restoration project, but neither she, nor her husband were of reiver stock.

Oddly enough, her erstwhile lover and the father of her beloved daughter, Dru,

was of that lineage, so she supposed Dru could trace her roots to the ‘Debatable

Lands’ too.

She raised her head and addressed her housekeeper, Mrs Connolly, who was

peeling a turnip (or was it a swede?  The two vegetables had lexical differences

depending on which side of the border they were being consumed.  Another

grave divergence.  I kid you not.)

Mrs C, what do you think Theresa May signified by ‘Brexit means Brexit?’

Ach, jist something like I meant when Ah tell’t ma wee yin ‘Bed means bed!’

Mind ye, Ah usually backed it up wae a swift toe tae the….

Please, Mrs C!

But Diana chuckled inwardly.

She was trying to sort everything out for Gus and Virginia’s visit.  Dru and

Nigel would also be arriving for their end-of-term Easter break.

It had not been a year since she and Murgatroyd had renewed their wedding

vows. What an event it had been, with Dru and Nigel AND Virginia and Gus

tying the tartan knot, in a combined nuptial service. Ah, so much had

happened in a short space of time.

Virginia had offered to put her own house on the market.  It had been her

previous marital residence.  She was worried that house prices might fall,

or the £ might plummet.  She and Gus were ‘Re-moaners’ and proud of it.

They were contemplating re-locating to the Borders, now that they had both

retired from St Birinus Middle.  The problem was that they did not know on

which side of the border to settle.  For this reason, the Debateable Lands

attracted them, in order to hedge their bets.

Dru and Nigel both had accommodation at their respective boarding schools,

but they had been keen to renovate some outbuildings in the pele complex, as

a way of getting themselves on the housing ladder.

Diana was keen on this, as she felt Dru would only conceive when she was away

from the stresses and strains of teaching.  Grand-children were on Diana’s

agenda and she liked the idea of them being on site.  If things became too

riotous, she could always retreat to her fortified bastle and barricade herself

in.

The problem was that the Scottish/ English border ran straight through their

barmkin.

Should’ Sturge’ effect Independence, then to which Csarina should they render?

Would Murgatroyd be evicted from half his property and have to remain in one

half of his complex?

Diana had an idea.

Mrs C, what if we were to transfer all the property to you – you know, put it

in your name?  If we only had permission as foreign residents to live in

the country for a proportion of the year, we could move the furniture

to the other side of the room; stay over there and you could call us your guests.

Nae borra!  Mrs C nodded enthusiastically.  Ah dinna ken whit that wee ny-

eh, that First Meenister is goin’ oan aboot.  Her granny came fae

Northumberland, so she’s practically a migrant hersel’.  An’ some o’ her pals

look like aliens tae, if Ah say so mahsel’.

Onywise, when Dru has her wean, we can put the whole shebang into its name. 

It’ll be born here, Ah take it?  Ach, Ah hope it’s a wee boy: a proper Bonnie

Charlie.

If there is ony Border Control, we will make a killin’, sellin’ haggis, shortbread

and whisky oan the Black Merkit. if they come to inspect, or patrol oor border,

we’ll jist drag the boxes ower tae the far side o’ the room.

But no one down south likes haggis, Mrs C…

It’ll be a different story efter Brexit, ye’ll see!  pontificated Mrs C.  They’ll a’ be

starvin’ ower there. 

And her eyes swivelled significantly, as she directed her stare to the other

side of the kitchen.

Mebbe we can dae a trade in barrels o’ pickled herrin’ tae.