American Heroes (12 page)

To all outward appearances the whole affair was now patched up. Lane once more became executor of the will, though the agreement between him and the widow Keayne this time provided that she should have simply an annuity of twenty pounds and possession of the new house in Boston. Furthermore, he stipulated that if any more debts appeared “that hath not as yet beene taken notice of,” and beyond the value of the estate, the overseers of the will should take steps to assist him in the payments. On this basis the couple lived quietly together for the next four years. Edward became well established as a Boston merchant and attested his prosperity to his neighbors by sporting a London hat with a silver hatband. Anna meanwhile demonstrated that this time her marriage was genuine by giving birth to two children, a boy and a girl. The little girl, named after her mother, died at the age of eight months, but the boy, named after Edward, lived until 1680, meeting his death at the age of eighteen in Leyden.

Early in 1664 Anna sailed for England, on what business is not known, but it was evidently understood in Boston that her husband would shortly follow. Before he could do so, however, he was dead. When Anna returned to Boston two years later, it was with a new husband, also a Bostonian who had been visiting England, Mr. Nicholas Paige. Now once more the rumors began to spread. It was said that Anna had married Paige before Lane had died, for some persons had received letters from Paige before the latter event in which he made mention of his wife. Since there were bound to be enemies in Boston of any descendant of Robert Keayne, the grand jury soon got wind of the matter and conducted an investigation, which resulted in an indictment against Anna for adultery. Before the trial took place, Anna gave herself away by proposing to the Court of Assistants a question to be resolved by the magistrates: “whether a woman may not have children by a man that is not in the eye of the world accounted her husband and yet not be accounted an adulteresse.” The cat was now out of the bag, and in the trial that followed evidence was produced that the boy who bore the name of the late Edward Lane was really the son of Nicholas Paige. Richard Cooke came into court and affirmed that “about two yeares since upon Mrs. Hannah Lanes going for England this deponent was desired to come unto the house of Mr. Edward Lane…at which time this deponent did heare Mrs. Lane acknowledge that the Children which She then had had were Mr. Page his Children and not mr. Lanes.” The whole truth came to light, however, when the following document, dated December 6, 1663, was brought forth:

Confronted with the situation that was now apparent, the magistrates and the jury could not agree whether or not Anna Paige, formerly Anna Lane, should be punished for adultery. The matter was therefore brought before the General Court of the colony, where, as the record reads,

Apparently the General Court was as puzzled by the case as the inferior court had been; but just as Governor Endecott had decided that Anna's first marriage had not been truly annulled, the court now, in 1666, must have decided that neither the first nor the second marriage had been truly a marriage. Thus although it was clear that Anna had committed “much wickedness,” the court was not ready to say that she was guilty of adultery, and so she escaped virtually scot-free.

Having thus come out of danger, she and her husband began to take cognizance of her former estate. Besides the pasture he had granted her in the paper renouncing her as his wife, Lane had assigned her, in a paper dated four days earlier, the mansion house of Robert Keayne “wherein I the said Edward Lane now Dwell.” This grant was made on condition that she make no further claims whatever to his estate. Twelve days later Lane, who was evidently a sick man, made out another paper. Stating that he did not know “what condition he the said Edward Lane may fall into or what Providences as concerning himselfe may fall out in one regard or in an other &c.,” he transferred his property to Richard Cooke and John Wiswall of Boston, merchants, in return for his maintenance and for payments of all his debts.

Accordingly when Anna and her new husband returned from England, they found Richard Cooke and John Wiswall installed in the possession of most of her grandfather's property. Now the whole thing became apparent to Anna: it had all been a plot on the part of Richard Cooke from the very beginning. It was he who had persuaded her to marry Lane in the first place, he who had carried to her the pieces of gold and the messages of affection. After the annulment it was he who had persuaded her of Lane's sufficiency and had brought them together again. He had even been present when the paper was drawn up in which Lane assigned her the mansion house in return for a resignation of all other claims to the estate. She had been so desperate at the time to free herself that she had not thought of what she was so blithely resigning; and yet twelve days later Cooke, with his accomplice Wiswall, had it all in his own hands, even the rich farm at Rumney Marsh that had been her grandfather's pride. And then when she returned home from England, Cooke, wearing her grandfather's big ring and Lane's hat with the silver band, had furnished the principal evidence against her in the trial for adultery. It was only too clear that the whole business had been deliberately, diabolically planned.

She had good evidence of Cooke's malice toward her now that he had her estate. Several people were ready to report his reaction when he heard that she and her husband were returning from England. On the day when the news reached Boston, Ursula Cole and Alice Tilly both informed Cooke about it and warned him that she was coming to recover her lost property. Cooke replied that he would see her hanged if she tried to do it. John and Mary Mansfield told Anna how Cooke had stormed about the matter, how he had accused her of poisoning her husband, how he had sworn to “vse all the meanes he Could to have her hanged, and had said that if he failed to get her hanged in Boston, “he had a sonn in Barbadious: that should goe from thence to England: to prosecute the Lawe to hange hir there.”

The case seemed to be open and shut, and Anna promptly petitioned the General Court to recover from Cooke and Wiswall all the property that Lane had given them. She demonstrated that her marriage to Lane had been a conspiracy on the part of Cooke to get her property and her grandfather's into Lane's hands so that Cooke might eventually have it for himself. He had known that Lane was impotent and that therefore there could be no heirs; he had also known that Lane was sick and could not live long. He had even offered that fact to her grandmother as a reason for allowing the second marriage. The widow Keayne—who had since become Mrs. Samuel Cole—came into court and testified that Cooke had told her that Lane “was very sickley and would not live aboue Three or four years and Therefore fear not but Lett your Daughter have him and she may Quickley have an other husband.” Mrs. Cole was convinced that Cooke from the very start had “not only Indeavored to ruin my Daughter but mee.”

Anna rested her case not just on this evidence of conspiracy but likewise on the claim that her second marriage with Lane was not valid, because it had never been consummated. Therefore, she said, the contract which depended upon that marriage and which put the estate again into Lane's hands was likewise invalid. It was “Founded vpon the same mestake of a marriage as the former and upon the same Ground: Cann not bee of aney force to the prejudice of your petetioner.”

But the General Court was weary of this eternal squabble over Robert Keayne's property and refused to believe the story that to Anna was so obvious. To her melodramatic pleas the icy reply was given that it was not thought “suiteable to reuive troubles to the Court” in a matter that had already been settled once before. Having herself failed, Anna persuaded the overseers of the will to make a similar plea the following year (1667), but they, too, were denied. With this rebuke she gave up the struggle for a while and settled down to a happy and normal life as Mrs. Nicholas Paige. Neither she nor her husband had forgotten the injury that Richard Cooke had done them, but justice was not yet to be had. They would bide their time, and someday, perhaps, the opportunity to recover their lost heritage would come. In the meantime there was no use crying over spilt milk. Nicholas had some capital of his own, and by careful investments and hard work gradually increased it. Before many years passed, he had become one of the leading merchants of Boston and recouped by his ships and shops as much as he and Anna had lost through the machinations of their enemies.

Anna's new husband was a bold and likable man, of generous impulses but shrewd in all his public actions. Though not disposed to reckon overmuch with religious scruples in his commercial dealings, he had sense enough never to offend Puritan sensibilities. He did his best to gain the friendship and respect of his community, especially of those men who seemed best qualified to help him. As a result, each new turn of events found him more firmly established in public favor and personal security. When King Philip's War threatened the colony's existence in 1675, Captain Paige won esteem by commanding a cavalry troop that helped to whip the savages into submission. A year later, when Edward Randolph came to enforce the Navigation Acts in Boston, Paige gained the commendations of his fellow merchants by threatening to knock Randolph on the head if the latter attempted to board his ships. Before long, however, Nicholas saw that the wind was not blowing in that direction. He and a number of other prominent citizens, including Joseph Dudley (Anna's uncle), made friends with Randolph so that by 1685 the customs officer was writing letters to Dudley in which he sent his respects to “Mr. Page and his lady.”

In the ensuing revolutions that rocked the colony, Paige played his hand with consummate skill. When the charter was revoked and Joseph Dudley became president of the Council for New England, Nicholas invited him to live at Boston in the house that he and Anna had acquired there. Since Dudley's own house was in Roxbury, he gladly agreed to live with the Paiges, where his hostess would be his own niece. When Andros arrived as governor of the Dominion of New England in 1686, Paige kept in the good graces of that ruler, too; but when the people of Boston gathered together to overthrow the tyrant in 1689, Paige was on the scene, not exactly assisting the process but apparently not hindering it either. While the people called for Dudley's blood along with that of Andros, they had such confidence in Captain Paige that they placed Dudley in his hands for safekeeping. When stable government was finally established under a new charter in 1691, Paige had weathered the storm safely. What is more, he had recovered Anna's property, not only the houses and lands in Boston but the farm in Rumney Marsh as well.