Hugh Kenrick (27 page)

Basil Kenrick blinked in surprise at the reply. He could not decide whether it was Sir Henoch who was the object of his nephew’s contempt, or Lords, or him. He found himself in the paradoxical position of agreeing with the boy. The little twinge of hope he felt in his breast that he was winning Hugh over to his perspective vied with the sharp dread that the boy actually despised the very notion of the peerage. He recovered enough, after that moment, to say, “He is a man of parts, nephew, and deserves some respect. He is chief of a party of members in his House that can greatly assist Lords in preserving the strength of this country and advancing its interests. I have convinced him that he should divert his warlike oratory from inveighing against the colonies to chastising Newcastle, so that this likely war can be speedily prosecuted and brought to a quick end.”

“So, he has been allied with Mr. Hillier in the Commons?”

“That is true. And it is no impropriety. There are peers who control a dozen or more seats in the Commons. Our family is fortunate to have controlled merely one all these years. The squires of Dorset are quite independent, and will not be encroached upon, or bought. Likewise, we resist their encroachments.”

Hugh merely frowned at this remark.

The Earl felt obliged to add, “The politics of the Crown is rich in inconsistencies
and anomalies, nephew. Intrigue is the spice of a life of political action. You should not begrudge Sir Henoch’s political fortune. He was made a baronet at the king’s pleasure and by his assent, and there is no arguing against that, once the deed is done. It is exempt from examination.” The Earl seemed to smile. He was feeling wise and superior. He was reciting facts that he knew his nephew could not alter with his Whiggish sentiments. “And—it is not strictly a peerage, petit or grand,” he continued. “Someday, Sir Henoch may even be rewarded with a life peerage—a baronage, earldom, what have you—for whatever other services he may render to win the esteem of a ministry and the king. You should know that it is not uncommon for a mere member of the Commons to desert that House for Lords, though the late Earl of Orford, Mr. Walpole, early in his career, declined a title so that he might retain his influence in the Commons.”

The Earl droned on about the power of the House of Lords, repeating facts already known to Hugh, and would have for the rest of the morning, but for Hugh’s reminder that he must leave for Dr. Comyn’s school. But his uncle had the last word.

“Both Houses have been sitting to late hours. You will come to Lords directly afterward, and observe how natural gentlemen comport themselves and mediate the Crown’s and the nation’s affairs.”

Hugh dutifully complied. After classes later that afternoon, he deposited his books at Windridge Court, had a bite to eat, then walked reluctantly to the House of Lords. He was admitted to the Peers’ Chamber without trouble by the attendant at the doors, once he had identified himself. As there was no gallery for spectators here, he stood below the bar with other spectators, many of whom were members of the Commons, and observed with little interest a sitting of his uncle’s peers.

The Peers’ Chamber was measurably more impressive than was the Commons, longer by about thirty feet, and more spacious for its more than two hundred legal occupants. There was more light here from great windows that curved with the ceiling thirty feet above, and more warmth coming from an ornate fireplace on the side. Rows of benches for the peers rested below long tapestries on the walls on both sides, depicting the defeat of the Spanish Armada. A magnificent gilded throne, and the canopy of state raised above it, looked to Hugh to be in a decrepit condition; this was the seat of the king, when he deigned to make an appearance. To the throne’s right were seats for the archbishops of York and Canterbury, and
further on, beyond the fireplace, seats for the lesser bishops—all peers, the Lords Spiritual.

Facing them from the other side of the chamber were the benches of the Lords Temporal above the rank of baron, for dukes royal and dukes raised, for earls, marquesses, and viscounts. On cross-benches separating the Lords Spiritual and Temporal sat the barons. There had always been more earls than barons, more barons than viscounts, and one or two lonely marquesses. In between the barons and the throne were the tables and woolsacks (cushioned chairs) of the Lord Chancellor or Speaker and his clerks, and places for the Lords Chief Justice of the King’s Bench and Common Pleas, the Master of the Rolls, miscellaneous judges, and the Masters in Chancery.

The House of Lords acted, without ever having admitted it, as a senate, and viewed itself as a select body charged with the duty of checking the power of the Commons, though it was a standing question whether it acted on behalf of its members or for the nation. It often exceeded this implicit mandate, as when, in 1747, it reprimanded the editors of
London Magazine
and its rival
Gentleman’s Magazine
for having breached the privilege and secrecy of both Houses for publishing accounts of the trial of the Jacobite Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, and of other debates and occasions. Its members could be tried, but never punished, and were exempt from all corporal penalties but execution for a capital crime. A peer could only be judged by his literal peers; like the king, he was considered above the judgment of commoners; this was a political rationale, as well as an aristocratic one. It had been the privilege of Lord Lovat, though his hanging for treason was a public event that brought the city to a halt. The dignity of a peer was otherwise not to be subjected to whippings, brandings of the hand, the pillory, penal servitude, or other standard punishments.

The House of Lords debated the same matters as did the Commons, and its veto and amendment powers could steer the Commons in a direction more favorable to the peers’ sentiments and interests. If the two Houses could not reconcile by established procedures their differences on a resolution or bill, managers of the Houses would arrange a conference between them in the adjoining Painted Chamber, so-called because of the classical themed frescoes on its walls, the appointed lords seated at a long table, the appointed Commons men standing in deference, hats in hand. More private bills were debated in Lords than public; these naturally concerned land and property. Lords was also the “supreme” court of the land,
having final authority on cases that had exhausted the wisdom and purview of the law courts. Civil and criminal appeals from England, Ireland, and Scotland were the House’s chief business after the hearing and debating of public and private bills, in addition to adjudicating writs of error involving constitutional issues, impeachments of peers, and the swelling number of divorce cases.

The House of Lords considered itself, after the Privy Council, the exclusive and privileged advisor to the king, and any member, or group of members, or even the House as a whole, reserved the right to call personally on the sovereign to offer direction on policy, strategy, or controversy.

The Commons was especially jealous of Lords for its judicial prerogative, and resentful of the fact that Lords could foil its best constructed or most well-intentioned bills, for endorsement by both Houses was necessary for a bill to become law—after the king’s signature. Lords viewed the Commons as little better than an elected rabble and mouthpiece for the mob, and resented that House’s power over money and supply bills, not to mention the necessity of having to expend precious time and money every election to guarantee friendly blocs of seats in St. Stephen’s Chapel.

Hugh was aware of these facts, though the corrupt—and corrupting—link between the two Houses was not quite real to him. Parliament was an idealized abstraction, flawed in his mind only by a few technical blemishes, and by the fact that men like his uncle and Sir Henoch Pannell could have a role in it. Parliament the ideal and Parliament the fact sat in his mind in much the same manner as did his knowledge of the solar system: There was his conception of the sun and its six planets and their satellites, derived from charts and descriptions in books; and there was the orrery, that imperfect but still marvelous, whirling representation of it. As Hugh did not have a mathematician’s knowledge of the solar system, he did not have a solution to Parliament’s blemishes. He was certain, however, that there was something wrong with the institution, and this certainty stemmed not exclusively from a knowledge of politics or political history—which was growing formidable—but from the unflawed knowledge of his own existence, coupled with an implicit resolve that neither the solar system nor Parliament ought to be an impediment to his life.

Hugh stood for an hour below the bar, straining his hearing to listen to exchanges between some of the peers on some private enclosure bill. The spectators around him whispered or talked among themselves. His uncle sat in a row of other berobed and beribboned peers, and nodded to him
with cold approval. The earls on either side of him seemed to be asleep. The peers looked like guardians of some sacred responsibility. He knew that, in fact, it was less than what it ought to be. The scene before him was his future, or rather what his father and uncle insisted would be his future. He felt a terrific headache intrude upon his thoughts. The whispers and talk of the spectators and the speeches of the peers became painful. He turned and left for Windridge Court.

After that day, Hugh did not pursue any serious matter with his uncle. He listened to him, mentally shrugged, and escaped his uncle’s company when he could. His task was to endure the time with his uncle, and then depart for Danvers for the holidays. The Earl of Danvers simply wanted to make his nephew tolerable.

Hugh was obliged to spend almost every evening in the Earl’s company, sometimes alone with him, at other times at dinner with the Earl’s guests. Glorious Swain left a note with Hulton inviting him to an evening at a nearby coffeehouse; Hugh wrote a letter of apology to his friend, explaining his predicament, and left it at the Fruit Wench with Mrs. Petty.

The single Sunday with his uncle began with services at St. Paul’s Cathedral, where he and the Earl sat in a borrowed pew near other families of aristocrats. The minister on that day, in unctuous tones magnified by his canopied pulpit, weaved his sermon around certain passages from Richard Allestree’s
The Whole Duty of Man
, a popular devotional manual that preached against resistance against authority, and advocated passive obedience of a sovereign’s laws, regardless of the consequences. “For what matters it to our mere fleshly existence,” he spoke to the congregation, most of whose members were wealthier than he could ever dream to be, even for all his connections within the Anglican Church, “that it may be made miserable by the whims of a king, nay!—even by a king’s ministers? A king and his satraps will answer to God as surely as will their subjects! And who is to say that a king’s devilment is not a test by God of his children? A king is anointed, regardless of his character or personal construction, and to obey him is to obey God. His character, his vices, his weaknesses are all God’s concern, not ours. And so, I ask anyone, who can stretch his hand against the Lord’s anointed, and be guiltless?”

“I can,” replied Hugh, his lips moving in silence. His glance was raised to study the great dome above him when the minister’s words reached his ears, and he did not fully grasp the import of his reply until a moment later. He had been imagining the great feats of engineering required to erect the
dome and ensure that its walls and sides held it in place. It was a superb edifice, he thought, and ought to serve some better purpose than as a place for ministers to mouth platitudes and homilies for the instruction of posturing congregations. The place demanded reverence, he thought, for heroes of some kind, for greatness in some form; for the adoration of something other than an elusive, allegedly all-knowing and all-powerful ghost. The notion of God had always been superfluous to what drove Hugh to think and act as he did. God was irrelevant to all his purposes, great and small, absent from all his thoughts.

These thoughts stunned Hugh, but did not shake him. He had not committed apostasy, or deserted the faith; the faith had never found a comfortable home in his mind. It was the faith that deserted him, after a contentious and unprofitable tenancy.

Hours later, in the sanctum of his room, Hugh wrote these and companion thoughts in his notebook. He was pleased and proud for having had them.

*  *  *

The two weeks passed for Hugh Kenrick with excruciating slowness, gauged, it seemed to him, to the fall of stubborn, damp grains of sand in some malign hourglass. He found relief from his uncle and his awareness of time in his studies, at Dr. Comyn’s school, at Mr. Worley’s office, and in
Hyperborea
. As the day of his departure for Danvers drew nearer, he began to relax and congratulate himself for having endured his uncle’s presence and demands. He even generously credited his uncle for not being as autocratic as he knew the man could be.

Another respite from Windridge Court was an evening with Glorious Swain over supper at Shakespeare’s Head tavern in Covent Garden, where they lost themselves in talk about Romney Marsh’s novel and the virtues and vices of modern English literature.

Hugh felt reckless and invincible, enough so that he gladly accompanied his uncle to a rout at the Pantheon Pleasure Gardens on Oxford Street, two evenings before his departure for Danvers. The Pantheon was a smaller, more intimate version of Ranelagh, with a great brick stove in the center of its circular promenade. It had been hired for the evening by Guthlac Blissom, eighteenth Marquis of Bilbury. The Blissoms were an ancient family, as old as the Kenricks. The Marquis and the Earl were once
schoolmates at Eton and Cambridge, and the Marquis now controlled eleven seats in the Commons. Unlike the Earl, however, he professed a sincere though unreasoning belief in the country’s mercantilist laws and statutes, and would have been shocked to learn of his colleague’s arm’s-length connection to smuggling. Had he learned, he would have ventured to Lords and delivered an attack on the Earl of Danvers and on such law-breaking.