Caxton (23 page)

“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.”

* * *

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. They 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!”

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.”
Hugh turned to Effney Kenrick, saw the admiring worship in her eyes
for him, and embraced her. “But you, mother, are as beautiful as ever!”
She returned the embrace. “My magnificent son!”
Hugh espied Runcorn and Bridgette over his mother’s head. He disengaged, went to them, and shook the former valet’s hand before the man
could protest. Runcorn blinked at the gesture, and blinked again when
Hugh bussed a startled, blushing Bridgette on the cheek.
Then a man stepped into the foyer from a room that adjoined it. He
was a lean, elegantly dressed man with more silver in his hair than had
Garnet Kenrick, tied in back with a plain ribbon. A pockmarked face and
intense black eyes, however, made him look feral and dangerous. Under
one arm he held his hat, in the other hand a silver-knobbed, silver-tipped
mahogany cane.
Hugh frowned in surprise and the effort of recognition. “Mr. Jones…?”
Sir Dogmael Jones, barrister, serjeant-at-law at the King’s Bench,
reader of law at the Serjeants’ Inn, and now a bencher or manager of that
Inn, nodded in greeting. “
Sir
Dogmael Jones,” he said, “though
mister
will
suffice, milord.”
Hugh went to him and offered his hand in greeting. Jones glanced once
at it, smiled, then shifted his cane to his other hand so that he could clasp
the one offered him. As he shook it, he said, “Welcome home, milord Danvers. Your apparent excellent health and vigorous presence of mind substantiates what your father has told me about you, which is that you have
met with much success in Virginia.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Hugh. He studied for a moment the man who
had defended his friends in court years ago. “You, too, are looking much
wiser.”
Jones grinned. “Wiser — and bolder. As are you, milord.” He put on
his hat, and turned to address Garnet Kenrick. “Milord, I shall take my
leave now. I will not intrude upon this occasion.”
The Baron shook his head. “No, sir. Stay. We have a spare room.”
Jones shook his head in turn. “Thank you, milord, but, no. I have business I should see to in the City. My protégé there needs counseling on how
to present to his students the matter of public places and the laws that
govern them. I shall return on the morrow, if that is convenient.”
“Convenient, and necessary, sir,” said the Baron.
Dogmael Jones performed a series of brief bows to the Kenricks, followed Runcorn to the front door, and left the house. Hugh glanced at his
father in silent inquiry.
The Baron said, “It will be explained on the morrow, when he returns.
No more about it until then. For the moment, we must make amends for
your long but profitable absence.”
“You must tell us more about Meum Hall, and Caxton, and Virginia,”
said Effney Kenrick.
Hugh laughed. “Fewer people live in Caxton than in Chelsea. You could
very likely fit them all inside this house.”

* * *

Wilkes and liberty. They were to become the slogan, battle cry, and
excuse for an extraordinary movement in politics and lamentable excesses
by mobs of men who could neither read, nor vote, nor much think.

The Treaty of Paris, signed in February, 1763, signaled a succession of
events that was not to end for twenty years. The blood and treasure
expended by Great Britain to acquire an empire, would now be spent on
preserving it. How, the lords and ministers of the Crown knew not. Not yet.
With the coming of peace, matters submerged by the pressures and exigencies of the Seven Years’ War abruptly bobbed to the surface. In England, the
recessional allowed the Crown’s servants to ponder the vexingly delicate
problem of how to pay for, govern, and profit from the empire. In the
colonies, the hiatus permitted their more thoughtful and inquisitive subjects to more closely examine their relationship with the Crown and their
true place in the empire.

Following soon in the
Roilance
’s wake were mail packets and merchantmen from the colonies bearing news of a dire event, an event as troubling as the news their captains, passengers, and crews read in the taverns
and coffeehouses of Plymouth, Falmouth, Portsmouth, and Dover. The
Treaty immediately birthed these events as overtures to everything else: an
Indian uprising on the western frontiers, and a Crown rebellion against the
British constitution, aided and abetted by Parliament. The uprising, led by
Ottawa chief Pontiac, served eventually to provide the Crown with some
rationale for more tightly policing and more efficiently exploiting the
colonies. The rebellion, sanctioned by First Lord of the Treasury George
Grenville and Crown attorneys, prepared the government and Parliament
for steps to be taken against fellow citizens, both at home and abroad. Englishmen suddenly found themselves assaulted by terrifying, painted, merciless savages on one hand, and by pale Oxford alumni and gentlemen
lawyers on the Privy Council on the other, in both instances for the sake of
upholding a status quo.

The Treaty obliged the French to leave North America, and their
departure created a vacuum that was filled by the stern, unyielding policies
of British Governor-General and commander-in-chief of North America Sir
Jeffrey Amherst, Knight of the Bath. Unlike the French, Amherst refused
to patronize the Indians. And when they struck, neither did he wish to
employ the colonial militia to check them, for he despised colonial fighting
prowess. The Indians, accustomed to being consulted by the generous
French, and advised by their agents that the English victory would mean
an end to their freedom to roam the forests and rivers at will, bridled at the
unresponsiveness of the British. Pontiac persuaded several western tribes
to make war on the settlers and British outposts. By May of 1763 every outpost had fallen to their attacks but Detroit and Fort Pitt, which were
besieged. Settlers and soldiers alike were butchered indiscriminately, or
captured and subjected to torture and grisly death. It was a blind, desperate
strike against the new power, against a force which neither side fully comprehended, intended to thwart the inexorable progress of a vigorous culture
as it advanced westward. It was doomed to fail, and did, three years later.