Chesapeake (23 page)

The ordinary men who made up the assembly—factors and shipowners and farmers, but no priests—judged that even though the charter gave all prerogatives to the distant proprietor, they were in a better position to determine what was needed in Maryland. ‘We will write the laws, and the proprietor will judge as to their efficacy.’

‘It’s to be the other way around,’ Leonard Calvert pointed out. ‘We propose and you dispose.’

‘You have it backwards,’ the stubborn assemblymen said, and a struggle with profound implications ensued. Lord Baltimore, in London, was one of the wisest and most conscientious of the colonial proprietors, and he saw danger in allowing a rabble to draft and execute laws; that was the responsibility of men with wealth and position. To the owner of a colony went the power to rule. Baltimore was never a despot, but neither was he a fool.

On the other hand, Edmund Steed, who by virtue of his early settlement at Devon was clearly the oldest Marylander in existence and one of the most devoted, saw that in a new world, new ways were essential. ‘We must govern ourselves as far as occasion permits, and on the day we surrender our right to formulate laws for lands we know so well, we surrender our right to be free.’

‘Do you oppose the Lord Proprietor?’ he was asked.

‘On all other points I submit to his superior judgment. He has erected this palatinate and made it a refuge. I bow before him, and before his brother, the lieutenant governor. But on the fundamental question of who should frame laws for a free palatinate, I bow to no one.’

‘Not even the king?’

This was a fearsome question to put in that winter of 1638. For anyone to counter the will of the king, or even question it, was to run the risk of being charged with treason, and there were many in Virginia who waited to bring that charge against the Marylanders. But for a Catholic whose very life had been elevated by the acts of Good King Charles, to question would be ingratitude, the worst sin a gentleman could commit. Edmund Steed, aware of the difficult position in which he stood, replied, ‘The king will quickly see that Marylanders are entitled to all the privileges of free men in England.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

Steed would not be badgered into sponsoring treason. Ignoring the question, he began his patient work with the other delegates, reasoning with them night after night. Always he insisted that if they surrendered on this basic point, they would lose everything—‘We are to be free men in a free society.’ Others, watching his stubborn defense of their liberties, came to regard him as their leader.

Steed of Devon, they called him, and through the critical last five days
of January he held his forces together, and into February and March and on into the hottest days of July. He was everywhere, pleading with his farmers and factors to stand fast: ‘If we can last through August, we shall have won.’

The role of revolutionary leader was not one he had aspired to. Indeed, he was by nature pusillanimous. As a young man he had denied his Catholicism to avoid confrontation; in his early days at Jamestown he had participated in none of the cabals; he had fled to Devon to escape the embroilments of Jamestown; and he had shown little heroism in trying to hold on to Meg Shipton. His life had been quiet and withdrawn; he had not even allowed Simon Janney to discuss war with the Choptanks, yet here he was, Steed of Devon, stalwart defender of the Maryland conscience. From constant study of the classics he had become a classic man.

In London, Lord Baltimore refused to concede, and in the palatinate his brother Leonard was equally stubborn, so on a blistering hot day in August the test of strength occurred. In the rude building tormented by flies the speaker put the question: ‘How many believe that the laws sent us by Lord Baltimore, and approved by his deputy, Leonard Calvert, our beloved lieutenant governor, must be approved by this assembly?’ Calvert voted yes, and so did the secretary of the palatinate, who announced in a powerful voice, ‘And I have in my hand the proxies of fourteen others.’

The speaker then asked for the votes of those who rejected Lord Baltimore’s laws, preferring ones framed by themselves. ‘How say you, Steed of Devon?’

Edmund rose, bowed respectfully to Lord Calvert, then looked at the men who had stood by him through the painful months. ‘I say that our laws should be drafted here, by the people of Maryland.’ Thirty-six others voted in favor of local rule. Maryland would be a self-governing colony.

There was no celebration that night; the victorious citizens did not feel that they had humbled a tyrant, for Lord Baltimore had never been one. They had merely established a principle, after nearly seven months of debate, and each man who went to his boat next day knew that he had done a good thing.

Edmund Steed, fifty-seven years old that hot summer, was tired when his men brought up his new ketch, and he fell back on pillows as the trip across the bay got under way. He had argued too long to find any triumph in his victory; he had seen too intimately the struggle that had taken place between two good principles. Each side had right and wrong, with his only slightly the stronger.

We have won freedom, he brooded, but if we abuse it, or vote for cheap personal advantage, it won’t be worth having. We are familiar with the
abuses of kings, but because what we now attempt is new, we can’t foresee its abuses. They’ll come.

He wished that his sons could be with him now, to discuss these great questions which had so exercised him during the fetid months in the capital. How good the clean air of the Choptank would be at the end of such labors. When the headlands guarding his island appeared and the ketch sailed between them, he felt as if he were entering the gates of a paradise few men would ever know: the broad river, the birds, the infinite life beneath the waves, the good fields and the worship of God.

As the ketch passed the western end of his island he noticed that recent storms had eaten away vast chunks of land; trees were falling into the bay at regular intervals and the fields on which tobacco should have been growing were collapsing in brown aggregations of mud.

‘As soon as I reach home,’ he muttered, ‘I must attend to those banks.’

The commission was not executed, for as the ketch entered Devon Creek he experienced an overwhelming tiredness and fell back upon the cushions. One of the servants, noticing his collapse, hurried to him in time to hear a final injunction: ‘Have them say Mass.’

HOW LIKE AN ANIMAL HE LOOKS, THE JUDGE
thought as he studied the prisoner in the dock. Not bold like a lion, nor graceful like a deer or a decent horse, but sly and mean and shifty. He’s an animal, that’s for certain, but what kind?

As the judge asked himself this question the prisoner’s attention was directed not to the devastating evidence being marshaled against him, but on a fly which he had been trying to catch. Suddenly, with animallike swiftness, he closed his hand and trapped it. Then he bent over to pull off the wings, one at a time. When the mutilated fly tried to escape, his tormentor reached out a thick, spatulate thumb, holding it over the fly for some moments, moving it about as the insect twisted. Then, grinning, he dropped his thumb heavily and crushed the fly. Only then did he look up at the judge.

‘A ferret!’ the judge whispered to himself. ‘Damn me, he’s a true ferret.’ And in certain respects the judge was correct, for the prisoner had the pointed face of that crafty animal, the stunted ears, the long sharp nose. Pockmarked and with shifty eyes, he was repulsive, and the shock of uncombed blanched hair only added to his beastly appearance. When he grinned, his dark teeth looked pointed.

The judge adjusted his wig and scowled: A true animal, that one. Then he listened as the damaging record unfolded: three chickens stolen from the Widow Starling, lashes and two months in jail; silver-headed cane stolen from John Coolidge, Esquire, lashes and six months in jail; and now three loaves of bread stolen from baker Ford. His long experience on the London bench had taught him that persistent thieves rarely reformed and that the sooner they were permanently removed from society the better.

‘It’s a gallows offense, Timothy Turlock,’ he growled, staring at the indifferent thief, ‘and you shall be hanged.’

But before such a sentence was actually passed, the prisoner’s mother, a short, wheezing woman of many troubles, arose and pleaded that her counselor, the Reverend Barstowe, be heard in extenuation. That angular clergyman rose and bowed deferentially; he had known young Turlock from birth and had an even lower opinion of him than the judge, but he did consider hanging too grave a punishment for mere theft, and he moved to the bench, where he whispered urgently to the judge.

‘Well,’ the judge finally announced to the waiting court. He sniffed three times, adjusted his snuff, and showed obvious self-satisfaction with the felicitous way in which he was expressing himself. ‘You should be hanged, Timothy Turlock, but Reverend Barstowe has offered an ingenious proposal.’

He stared down at the prisoner, who gave no sign of being interested in any proposals, ingenious or not. He was twenty-eight, master of no trade, never employed steadily, a confirmed dependent on his hardworking mother, who had not taught him to stand straight or pay proper deference to his superiors, in addition to which he had pimples.

‘Reverend Barstowe has a brother,’ the judge said, ‘captain of a ship plying to our colonies in Virginia.’ Timothy stared at the ceiling; he had never heard of Virginia. ‘And Captain Barstowe has out of the goodness of his heart volunteered to carry you to Virginia … for indenture to some planter there.’ The prisoner showed no emotion.

‘Turlock!’ the judge thundered. ‘Come to attention. Do you know what an indenture is?’ He did not. He heard his mother on the bench behind him crying forlornly at the prospect of losing her son, so he assumed it must be some frightening punishment.

‘It means,’ the judge explained, ‘that you will owe the gentleman in Virginia who buys your indenture seven years of just and fair labor.’

This sounded ominous to Turlock, and he could understand why his mother was weeping. ‘After which,’ the judge continued, ‘you will be a free man.’ He paused dramatically. ‘A free man, Turlock, with all the rights and privileges accorded to free men.’

The word
free
galvanized the prisoner. He was not to spend more months in jail. He was not to be hanged. He was to be free, so that any punishment involved—the indenture the judge kept talking about—was irrelevant. ‘Do you understand the terms?’ He nodded vigorously. ‘Seven years of honest labor.’ He agreed heartily. ‘And during those years, to learn a trade?’ Oh yes. ‘And instant death if you ever set foot in England again?’ Indeed.

His mother, hearing the official words of her son’s life banishment, broke into fresh tears, which irritated her son. He wanted this irritation to end, but there was more. Captain Barstowe was summoned, and he
came forward like a mighty tyrant in some Asian country. He was accustomed to acquiring indentures in the London courts and was well acquainted with ways to make them yield a profit.

His calculating eye appraised young Turlock in an instant: Lazy, stupid, ill-bred, rebellious, a born troublemaker, probably eats like a pig. Well, seven years in the tobacco fields of Virginia will cure him. The captain estimated that he could sell this one for upwards of twenty pounds, for he was of workable age.

The judge addressed the captain. ‘Do you promise this court to convey this prisoner to Virginia, at no cost to the crown?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Do you promise never to sue the crown for this prisoner’s passage money?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘And do you understand that you must recover your cost by sale of this prisoner’s indenture to whatever gentleman in Virginia will have him?’

‘Uh-huh.’

Normally at this point, in what had become a routine procedure in the English courts, the judge should have closed the hearing and ordered the papers of indenture drawn, but on this occasion the judge was perplexed, and he asked the sturdy captain, ‘Do you really think you can find a buyer for this one?’

‘In Virginia,’ the captain said from long experience, ‘they’ll take anything.’ So the indenture was drawn.

Captain Barstowe had been perceptive in his estimate of young Turlock, except that the young criminal proved even worse than expected. The ship had not been four days into the Atlantic before crew members came to Barstowe protesting that Turlock had stolen from them, and when his bag was searched, it was found to contain a staggering assortment of knives, caps and scrimshaw. There was only one solution: Timothy Turlock was lashed to the mast to receive ten stripes, but at the first blow he howled so piteously, and whimpered with such soul-searing anguish, that Captain Barstowe’s judgment was addled. It was the custom in all English quarters for any man given the lash to bear at least the first six blows with gritted teeth, and some took a dozen in silence to prove their manhood; none on board could recall a grown man carrying on like Turlock, and after eight stripes accompanied by unbroken howling, Barstowe growled, ‘Cut him down.’

Turlock whimpered all that day, but had a glorious revenge. Hiding in a corner of the galley, where he sought to steal a pair of sharp knives, he found himself next to a tureen of soup intended for the officers. Glancing quickly about to assure his safety, he ripped open his drawers, pissed in the soup, then took up a position near the mess, where he could watch with deep satisfaction as the captain dined.

When Barstowe’s ship sailed into Jamestown in late 1636, he unloaded tableware and kegs of nails first, then paraded his seven indentures onto the wharf, offering them for sale at the various tobacco docks. Two women servants were gobbled up quickly, as were the two strongest-looking young men, but the captain found trouble disposing of his last three.

One man was suspiciously old, but was finally got rid of at a bargain price to a planter who required a clerk to keep track of his shipments to London. The second was so pitifully lame in his left leg that he would be of small service in the fields, but when he proved that he could write, a group bought his contract, intending to use him as schoolmaster to the children of three plantations.