The Rebellion of Jane Clarke (28 page)

Although the Clarke and Winslow characters referenced in this novel are entirely fictitious, the legal feud between the families that swirled around the Satucket mill valley for generations is fact. Some of these cases may be found in the Massachusetts Archives/Judicial Archives, but the
Winslow v. Clarke
qui tam
was considered interesting enough to have been included in
The Legal Papers of John Adams,
where Adams’s successful defense of Clarke is documented. Josiah Paine’s
A History of Harwich,
Benjamin Bangs’ Diary
, and Dean Dudley’s
History and Genealogy of the Bangs Family in America
all give brief but colorful accounts of other cases between the families, including the one involving Winslow’s horse.

In 1773 John Adams wrote of the trials of Captain Preston and the soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre: “The death sentence would have been as foul a Stain upon this country as the executions of the Quakers or Witches, anciently. As the Evidence was, the Verdict of the Jury was exactly right.” Adams’s fellow townsmen disagreed. Writing again in 1815 Adams said, “To this hour, my conduct in [the trial] is remembered, and is alleged against me to prove I am an enemy to my country, and always have been.” But Adams always believed that his participation in the trial was “one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.”

In the course of Thomas Preston’s trial John Adams was greatly helped by the testimony of one Jane Whitehouse, who lived near the British sentry, Hugh White, on Royal Exchange Lane, and was present at the scene; she cast the first strong doubt that it was indeed Preston who gave the order to fire, giving vivid testimony of the townsman in the dark cloak. Hugh White, in the thick of his own troubles, reached out to Jane Whitehouse to protect her from harm.

After his trial Thomas Preston wrote a warm thank-you to Auchmuty but none to Adams or Quincy. Many years later, when Adams was serving in London as minister for the newly formed United States of America, he and Thomas Preston passed in a London street without speaking; Preston had greatly resented Adams’s refusal to “try the town.”

John Adams’s career being so well exposed of late, there is no need to list his accomplishments here, but Henry Knox’s are perhaps not as well known. Knox’s testimony at the massacre trials may have been somewhat partisan, but his efforts to avert the carnage were acknowledged by both sides. The year following the massacre Knox opened his own bookstore, spending his spare time in an intense study of military science and artillery. In 1774 he married the daughter of a confirmed Tory, but this did little to sway his politics. He volunteered for service in Washington’s army in 1775, and his incredible feat of transporting the cannon captured at Fort Ticonderoga to Dorchester Heights was in large part responsible for driving the British from Boston on March 17, 1776. From that point on Knox was one of George Washington’s most trusted henchmen—his artillery played large roles in the battles of Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, and Yorktown—and he served as secretary of war from 1785 to 1794.

My two previous historical novels,
The Widow’s War
and
Bound,
highlighted James Otis’s rise to political fame, beginning in 1761 with his famous speech arguing against the Writs of Assistance and promoting Man’s natural right to life, liberty, and property. The young law student, John Adams, in attendance at the speech, called Otis “a flame of fire,” and later declared that on that day “the child independence was born.” Otis was the driving force behind the boycott of British goods, and his speeches and pamphlets and other writings greatly influenced the course of American politics through the 1760s. But by 1769 Otis’s career had begun its reverse trajectory. Although Otis’s conflicted mind had already begun to slip prior to the attack at the British Coffee House in 1769, that event dramatically accelerated his decline. He began to waver in his convictions; his behavior grew more erratic; by the time of the Boston Massacre he was no longer an effective participant in the political scene. His family found it necessary to remove his firearms, and later that spring it was announced that he had “retired” to the country; in fact he had been carted out of town in a “straight-waistcoat” and left in his family’s care at Great Marshes, or West Barnstable, on Cape Cod. In 1771 Otis’s friends and relations petitioned the court to have him declared a “Non-Compos Distracted or Lunatic Person and a proper object for a Guardian.” His brother Samuel served as his legal guardian for most of the remainder of his years. At one point Otis paid a visit to his old enemy, Governor Thomas Hutchinson, and apologized for “ruining the country,” but by 1775 his politics had come around again. He is listed on the official roster of militia from Barnstable who set out for Lexington in support of the minutemen who stood against the British there.

Otis exited the political stage much as he came onto it. In 1783, shortly after the peace treaty between Britain and America had been signed, he was standing in the doorway of his custodian’s farmhouse, watching an approaching storm, when he was struck by a bolt of lightning and killed.

In writing
The Rebellion of Jane Clarke
I relied heavily on Hiller B. Zobel’s
The Boston Massacre,
Frederic Kidder’s
The History of the Boston Massacre, Legal Papers of John Adams,
Diary and Autobiography of John Adams,
Adams Family Correspondence,
and numerous accounts of the day found in the
Boston Gazette
at the Boston Public Library. Esther Forbes’s
Paul Revere and the World He Lived In
was additionally helpful with general background.

My thanks to Kathleen Remillard, Nina Gregson, and the rest of the staff at Brewster Ladies Library, Lucy Loomis at Sturgis Library, Mary Sicchio at Cape Cod Community College, and Elizabeth Bouvier and Jennifer Fauxsmith at the Judicial Archives/Massachusetts Archives, for their assistance with the historical research.

My agent Andrea Cirillo always had my back but accepted no excuses, no matter how inventive they became. My editor Jennifer Brehl’s patience and care saw that every word remained on track. My readers Nancy Carlson, Jan Carlson, Diane Carlson, and John Leaning were, as usual, ready, willing, insightful, and supportive. I don’t have the words for all my husband, Tom, contributed to the cause, although the words “lobsters on the porch” do come to mind.

I would also like to thank doctors Monica Piecyk, Jane Watts, and Eric Woodard, massage therapist Barbara Coughlin, and the gang at Rehabilitation Hospital of Cape Cod—particularly, Jennifer Avery, Jennifer Hardigan, and Kristen Marston—for getting me back at the keyboard after a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis sidelined me for months. Without their fine care and concern this book would never have seen the light of day.

THE REBELLION OF JANE CLARKE.
Copyright © 2010 by Sally Gunning. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-0-06-178214-5

EPub Edition © 2010 ISBN: 9780061997051

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