It was not until two months later--on the 19th of September, if you
must have the actual date--that Peter Blood was brought to trial, upon
a charge of high treason. We know that he was not guilty of this; but
we need not doubt that he was quite capable of it by the time he was
indicted. Those two months of inhuman, unspeakable imprisonment had
moved his mind to a cold and deadly hatred of King James and his
representatives. It says something for his fortitude that in all the
circumstances he should still have had a mind at all. Yet, terrible
as was the position of this entirely innocent man, he had cause for
thankfulness on two counts. The first of these was that he should have
been brought to trial at all; the second, that his trial took place
on the date named, and not a day earlier. In the very delay which
exacerbated him lay--although he did not realize it--his only chance of
avoiding the gallows.
Easily, but for the favour of Fortune, he might have been one of those
haled, on the morrow of the battle, more or less haphazard from
the overflowing gaol at Bridgewater to be summarily hanged in the
market-place by the bloodthirsty Colonel Kirke. There was about the
Colonel of the Tangiers Regiment a deadly despatch which might have
disposed in like fashion of all those prisoners, numerous as they were,
but for the vigorous intervention of Bishop Mews, which put an end to
the drumhead courts-martial.
Even so, in that first week after Sedgemoor, Kirke and Feversham
contrived between them to put to death over a hundred men after a trial
so summary as to be no trial at all. They required human freights for
the gibbets with which they were planting the countryside, and they
little cared how they procured them or what innocent lives they took.
What, after all, was the life of a clod? The executioners were kept busy
with rope and chopper and cauldrons of pitch. I spare you the details of
that nauseating picture. It is, after all, with the fate of Peter Blood
that we are concerned rather than with that of the Monmouth rebels.
He survived to be included in one of those melancholy droves of
prisoners who, chained in pairs, were marched from Bridgewater to
Taunton. Those who were too sorely wounded to march were conveyed in
carts, into which they were brutally crowded, their wounds undressed and
festering. Many were fortunate enough to die upon the way. When Blood
insisted upon his right to exercise his art so as to relieve some of
this suffering, he was accounted importunate and threatened with a
flogging. If he had one regret now it was that he had not been out with
Monmouth. That, of course, was illogical; but you can hardly expect
logic from a man in his position.
His chain companion on that dreadful march was the same Jeremy Pitt who
had been the agent of his present misfortunes. The young shipmaster
had remained his close companion after their common arrest. Hence,
fortuitously, had they been chained together in the crowded prison,
where they were almost suffocated by the heat and the stench during
those days of July, August, and September.
Scraps of news filtered into the gaol from the outside world. Some may
have been deliberately allowed to penetrate. Of these was the tale of
Monmouth's execution. It created profoundest dismay amongst those men
who were suffering for the Duke and for the religious cause he had
professed to champion. Many refused utterly to believe it. A wild story
began to circulate that a man resembling Monmouth had offered himself up
in the Duke's stead, and that Monmouth survived to come again in glory
to deliver Zion and make war upon Babylon.
Mr. Blood heard that tale with the same indifference with which he had
received the news of Monmouth's death. But one shameful thing he heard
in connection with this which left him not quite so unmoved, and served
to nourish the contempt he was forming for King James. His Majesty had
consented to see Monmouth. To have done so unless he intended to pardon
him was a thing execrable and damnable beyond belief; for the only other
object in granting that interview could be the evilly mean satisfaction
of spurning the abject penitence of his unfortunate nephew.
Later they heard that Lord Grey, who after the Duke--indeed, perhaps,
before him--was the main leader of the rebellion, had purchased his own
pardon for forty thousand pounds. Peter Blood found this of a piece with
the rest. His contempt for King James blazed out at last.
“Why, here's a filthy mean creature to sit on a throne. If I had known
as much of him before as I know to-day, I don't doubt I should have
given cause to be where I am now.” And then on a sudden thought: “And
where will Lord Gildoy be, do you suppose?” he asked.
Young Pitt, whom he addressed, turned towards him a face from which the
ruddy tan of the sea had faded almost completely during those months of
captivity. His grey eyes were round and questioning. Blood answered him.
“Sure, now, we've never seen his lordship since that day at
Oglethorpe's. And where are the other gentry that were taken?--the real
leaders of this plaguey rebellion. Grey's case explains their absence,
I think. They are wealthy men that can ransom themselves. Here awaiting
the gallows are none but the unfortunates who followed; those who had
the honour to lead them go free. It's a curious and instructive reversal
of the usual way of these things. Faith, it's an uncertain world
entirely!”
He laughed, and settled down into that spirit of scorn, wrapped in
which he stepped later into the great hall of Taunton Castle to take his
trial. With him went Pitt and the yeoman Baynes. The three of them were
to be tried together, and their case was to open the proceedings of that
ghastly day.
The hall, even to the galleries--thronged with spectators, most of whom
were ladies--was hung in scarlet; a pleasant conceit, this, of the Lord
Chief Justice's, who naturally enough preferred the colour that should
reflect his own bloody mind.
At the upper end, on a raised dais, sat the Lords Commissioners, the
five judges in their scarlet robes and heavy dark periwigs, Baron
Jeffreys of Wem enthroned in the middle place.
The prisoners filed in under guard. The crier called for silence under
pain of imprisonment, and as the hum of voices gradually became hushed,
Mr. Blood considered with interest the twelve good men and true that
composed the jury. Neither good nor true did they look. They were
scared, uneasy, and hangdog as any set of thieves caught with their
hands in the pockets of their neighbours. They were twelve shaken men,
each of whom stood between the sword of the Lord Chief Justice's recent
bloodthirsty charge and the wall of his own conscience.
From them Mr. Blood's calm, deliberate glance passed on to consider the
Lords Commissioners, and particularly the presiding Judge, that Lord
Jeffreys, whose terrible fame had come ahead of him from Dorchester.
He beheld a tall, slight man on the young side of forty, with an oval
face that was delicately beautiful. There were dark stains of suffering
or sleeplessness under the low-lidded eyes, heightening their brilliance
and their gentle melancholy. The face was very pale, save for the vivid
colour of the full lips and the hectic flush on the rather high but
inconspicuous cheek-bones. It was something in those lips that marred
the perfection of that countenance; a fault, elusive but undeniable,
lurked there to belie the fine sensitiveness of those nostrils, the
tenderness of those dark, liquid eyes and the noble calm of that pale
brow.
The physician in Mr. Blood regarded the man with peculiar interest
knowing as he did the agonizing malady from which his lordship suffered,
and the amazingly irregular, debauched life that he led in spite of
it--perhaps because of it.
“Peter Blood, hold up your hand!”
Abruptly he was recalled to his position by the harsh voice of the clerk
of arraigns. His obedience was mechanical, and the clerk droned out the
wordy indictment which pronounced Peter Blood a false traitor against
the Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Prince, James the Second, by
the grace of God, of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland King, his
supreme and natural lord. It informed him that, having no fear of God in
his heart, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil,
he had failed in the love and true and due natural obedience towards his
said lord the King, and had moved to disturb the peace and tranquillity
of the kingdom and to stir up war and rebellion to depose his said lord
the King from the title, honour, and the regal name of the imperial
crown--and much more of the same kind, at the end of all of which he
was invited to say whether he was guilty or not guilty. He answered more
than was asked.
“It's entirely innocent I am.”
A small, sharp-faced man at a table before and to the right of him
bounced up. It was Mr. Pollexfen, the Judge-Advocate.
“Are you guilty or not guilty?” snapped this peppery gentleman. “You
must take the words.”
“Words, is it?” said Peter Blood. “Oh--not guilty.” And he went on,
addressing himself to the bench. “On this same subject of words, may it
please your lordships, I am guilty of nothing to justify any of those
words I have heard used to describe me, unless it be of a want of
patience at having been closely confined for two months and longer in a
foetid gaol with great peril to my health and even life.”
Being started, he would have added a deal more; but at this point the
Lord Chief Justice interposed in a gentle, rather plaintive voice.
“Look you, sir: because we must observe the common and usual methods of
trial, I must interrupt you now. You are no doubt ignorant of the forms
of law?”
“Not only ignorant, my lord, but hitherto most happy in that ignorance.
I could gladly have forgone this acquaintance with them.”
A pale smile momentarily lightened the wistful countenance.
“I believe you. You shall be fully heard when you come to your defence.
But anything you say now is altogether irregular and improper.”
Enheartened by that apparent sympathy and consideration, Mr. Blood
answered thereafter, as was required of him, that he would be tried by
God and his country. Whereupon, having prayed to God to send him a good
deliverance, the clerk called upon Andrew Baynes to hold up his hand and
plead.
From Baynes, who pleaded not guilty, the clerk passed on to Pitt, who
boldly owned his guilt. The Lord Chief Justice stirred at that.
“Come; that's better,” quoth he, and his four scarlet brethren nodded.
“If all were as obstinate as his two fellow-rebels, there would never be
an end.”
After that ominous interpolation, delivered with an inhuman iciness that
sent a shiver through the court, Mr. Pollexfen got to his feet. With
great prolixity he stated the general case against the three men, and
the particular case against Peter Blood, whose indictment was to be
taken first.
The only witness called for the King was Captain Hobart. He testified
briskly to the manner in which he had found and taken the three
prisoners, together with Lord Gildoy. Upon the orders of his colonel he
would have hanged Pitt out of hand, but was restrained by the lies of
the prisoner Blood, who led him to believe that Pitt was a peer of the
realm and a person of consideration.
As the Captain's evidence concluded, Lord Jeffreys looked across at
Peter Blood.
“Will the prisoner Blood ask the witness any questions?”
“None, my lord. He has correctly related what occurred.”
“I am glad to have your admission of that without any of the
prevarications that are usual in your kind. And I will say this, that
here prevarication would avail you little. For we always have the truth
in the end. Be sure of that.”
Baynes and Pitt similarly admitted the accuracy of the Captain's
evidence, whereupon the scarlet figure of the Lord Chief Justice heaved
a sigh of relief.
“This being so, let us get on, in God's name; for we have much to do.”
There was now no trace of gentleness in his voice. It was brisk and
rasping, and the lips through which it passed were curved in scorn. “I
take it, Mr. Pollexfen, that the wicked treason of these three rogues
being established--indeed, admitted by them--there is no more to be
said.”
Peter Blood's voice rang out crisply, on a note that almost seemed to
contain laughter.
“May it please your lordship, but there's a deal more to be said.”
His lordship looked at him, first in blank amazement at his audacity,
then gradually with an expression of dull anger. The scarlet lips fell
into unpleasant, cruel lines that transfigured the whole countenance.
“How now, rogue? Would you waste our time with idle subterfuge?”
“I would have your lordship and the gentlemen of the jury hear me on my
defence, as your lordship promised that I should be heard.”
“Why, so you shall, villain; so you shall.” His lordship's voice was
harsh as a file. He writhed as he spoke, and for an instant his features
were distorted. A delicate dead-white hand, on which the veins showed
blue, brought forth a handkerchief with which he dabbed his lips and
then his brow. Observing him with his physician's eye, Peter Blood
judged him a prey to the pain of the disease that was destroying him.
“So you shall. But after the admission made, what defence remains?”
“You shall judge, my lord.”
“That is the purpose for which I sit here.”
“And so shall you, gentlemen.” Blood looked from judge to jury. The
latter shifted uncomfortably under the confident flash of his blue eyes.
Lord Jeffreys's bullying charge had whipped the spirit out of them. Had
they, themselves, been prisoners accused of treason, he could not have
arraigned them more ferociously.
Peter Blood stood boldly forward, erect, self-possessed, and saturnine.
He was freshly shaven, and his periwig, if out of curl, was at least
carefully combed and dressed.
“Captain Hobart has testified to what he knows--that he found me at
Oglethorpe's Farm on the Monday morning after the battle at Weston. But
he has not told you what I did there.”
Again the Judge broke in. “Why, what should you have been doing there
in the company of rebels, two of whom--Lord Gildoy and your fellow
there--have already admitted their guilt?”
“That is what I beg leave to tell your lordship.”
“I pray you do, and in God's name be brief, man. For if I am to be
troubled with the say of all you traitor dogs, I may sit here until the
Spring Assizes.”
“I was there, my lord, in my quality as a physician, to dress Lord
Gildoy's wounds.”
“What's this? Do you tell us that you are a physician?”
“A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin.”
“Good God!” cried Lord Jeffreys, his voice suddenly swelling, his eyes
upon the jury. “What an impudent rogue is this! You heard the witness
say that he had known him in Tangiers some years ago, and that he was
then an officer in the French service. You heard the prisoner admit that
the witness had spoken the truth?”
“Why, so he had. Yet what I am telling you is also true, so it is. For
some years I was a soldier; but before that I was a physician, and I
have been one again since January last, established in Bridgewater, as I
can bring a hundred witnesses to prove.”
“There's not the need to waste our time with that. I will convict you
out of your own rascally mouth. I will ask you only this: How came you,
who represent yourself as a physician peacefully following your
calling in the town of Bridgewater, to be with the army of the Duke of
Monmouth?”
“I was never with that army. No witness has sworn to that, and I dare
swear that no witness will. I never was attracted to the late rebellion.
I regarded the adventure as a wicked madness. I take leave to ask your
lordship” (his brogue became more marked than ever) “what should I,
who was born and bred a papist, be doing in the army of the Protestant
Champion?”
“A papist thou?” The judge gloomed on him a moment. “Art more like
a snivelling, canting Jack Presbyter. I tell you, man, I can smell a
Presbyterian forty miles.”
“Then I'll take leave to marvel that with so keen a nose your lordship
can't smell a papist at four paces.”
There was a ripple of laughter in the galleries, instantly quelled by
the fierce glare of the Judge and the voice of the crier.
Lord Jeffreys leaned farther forward upon his desk. He raised that
delicate white hand, still clutching its handkerchief, and sprouting
from a froth of lace.
“We'll leave your religion out of account for the moment, friend,” said
he. “But mark what I say to you.” With a minatory forefinger he beat the
time of his words. “Know, friend, that there is no religion a man
can pretend to can give a countenance to lying. Thou hast a precious
immortal soul, and there is nothing in the world equal to it in value.
Consider that the great God of Heaven and Earth, before Whose tribunal
thou and we and all persons are to stand at the last day, will take
vengeance on thee for every falsehood, and justly strike thee into
eternal flames, make thee drop into the bottomless pit of fire and
brimstone, if thou offer to deviate the least from the truth and nothing
but the truth. For I tell thee God is not mocked. On that I charge you
to answer truthfully. How came you to be taken with these rebels?”
Peter Blood gaped at him a moment in consternation. The man was
incredible, unreal, fantastic, a nightmare judge. Then he collected
himself to answer.
“I was summoned that morning to succour Lord Gildoy, and I conceived it
to be the duty imposed upon me by my calling to answer that summons.”
“Did you so?” The Judge, terrible now of aspect--his face white, his
twisted lips red as the blood for which they thirsted--glared upon
him in evil mockery. Then he controlled himself as if by an effort.
He sighed. He resumed his earlier gentle plaintiveness. “Lord! How you
waste our time. But I'll have patience with you. Who summoned you?”
“Master Pitt there, as he will testify.”
“Oh! Master Pitt will testify--he that is himself a traitor
self-confessed. Is that your witness?”
“There is also Master Baynes here, who can answer to it.”
“Good Master Baynes will have to answer for himself; and I doubt not
he'll be greatly exercised to save his own neck from a halter. Come,
come, sir; are these your only witnesses?”
“I could bring others from Bridgewater, who saw me set out that morning
upon the crupper of Master Pitt's horse.”
His lordship smiled. “It will not be necessary. For, mark me, I do not
intend to waste more time on you. Answer me only this: When Master Pitt,
as you pretend, came to summon you, did you know that he had been, as
you have heard him confess, of Monmouth's following?”
“I did, My lord.”
“You did! Ha!” His lordship looked at the cringing jury and uttered a
short, stabbing laugh. “Yet in spite of that you went with him?”
“To succour a wounded man, as was my sacred duty.”
“Thy sacred duty, sayest thou?” Fury blazed out of him again. “Good God!
What a generation of vipers do we live in! Thy sacred duty, rogue, is to
thy King and to God. But let it pass. Did he tell you whom it was that
you were desired to succour?”
“Lord Gildoy--yes.”
“And you knew that Lord Gildoy had been wounded in the battle, and on
what side he fought?”
“I knew.”
“And yet, being, as you would have us believe, a true and loyal subject
of our Lord the King, you went to succour him?”
Peter Blood lost patience for a moment. “My business, my lord, was with
his wounds, not with his politics.”
A murmur from the galleries and even from the jury approved him. It
served only to drive his terrible judge into a deeper fury.
“Jesus God! Was there ever such an impudent villain in the world as
thou?” He swung, white-faced, to the jury. “I hope, gentlemen of the
jury, you take notice of the horrible carriage of this traitor rogue,
and withal you cannot but observe the spirit of this sort of people,
what a villainous and devilish one it is. Out of his own mouth he has
said enough to hang him a dozen times. Yet is there more. Answer me
this, sir: When you cozened Captain Hobart with your lies concerning the
station of this other traitor Pitt, what was your business then?”
“To save him from being hanged without trial, as was threatened.”
“What concern was it of yours whether or how the wretch was hanged?”
“Justice is the concern of every loyal subject, for an injustice
committed by one who holds the King's commission is in some sense a
dishonour to the King's majesty.”
It was a shrewd, sharp thrust aimed at the jury, and it reveals,
I think, the alertness of the man's mind, his self-possession ever
steadiest in moments of dire peril. With any other jury it must have
made the impression that he hoped to make. It may even have made its
impression upon these poor pusillanimous sheep. But the dread judge was
there to efface it.
He gasped aloud, then flung himself violently forward.
“Lord of Heaven!” he stormed. “Was there ever such a canting, impudent
rascal? But I have done with you. I see thee, villain, I see thee
already with a halter round thy neck.”
Having spoken so, gloatingly, evilly, he sank back again, and composed
himself. It was as if a curtain fell. All emotion passed again from his
pale face. Back to invest it again came that gentle melancholy. Speaking
after a moment's pause, his voice was soft, almost tender, yet every
word of it carried sharply through that hushed court.
“If I know my own heart it is not in my nature to desire the hurt of
anybody, much less to delight in his eternal perdition. It is out of
compassion for you that I have used all these words--because I would
have you have some regard for your immortal soul, and not ensure its
damnation by obdurately persisting in falsehood and prevarication. But I
see that all the pains in the world, and all compassion and charity are
lost upon you, and therefore I will say no more to you.” He turned again
to the jury that countenance of wistful beauty. “Gentlemen, I must tell
you for law, of which we are the judges, and not you, that if any person
be in actual rebellion against the King, and another person--who really
and actually was not in rebellion--does knowingly receive, harbour,
comfort, or succour him, such a person is as much a traitor as he who
indeed bore arms. We are bound by our oaths and consciences to declare
to you what is law; and you are bound by your oaths and your consciences
to deliver and to declare to us by your verdict the truth of the facts.”
Upon that he proceeded to his summing-up, showing how Baynes and Blood
were both guilty of treason, the first for having harboured a traitor,
the second for having succoured that traitor by dressing his wounds. He
interlarded his address by sycophantic allusions to his natural lord
and lawful sovereign, the King, whom God had set over them, and with
vituperations of Nonconformity and of Monmouth, of whom--in his own
words--he dared boldly affirm that the meanest subject within the
kingdom that was of legitimate birth had a better title to the crown.
“Jesus God! That ever we should have such a generation of vipers among
us,” he burst out in rhetorical frenzy. And then he sank back as if
exhausted by the violence he had used. A moment he was still, dabbing
his lips again; then he moved uneasily; once more his features were
twisted by pain, and in a few snarling, almost incoherent words he
dismissed the jury to consider the verdict.
Peter Blood had listened to the intemperate, the blasphemous, and almost
obscene invective of that tirade with a detachment that afterwards, in
retrospect, surprised him. He was so amazed by the man, by the reactions
taking place in him between mind and body, and by his methods of
bullying and coercing the jury into bloodshed, that he almost forgot
that his own life was at stake.
The absence of that dazed jury was a brief one. The verdict found the
three prisoners guilty. Peter Blood looked round the scarlet-hung court.
For an instant that foam of white faces seemed to heave before him. Then
he was himself again, and a voice was asking him what he had to say
for himself, why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, being
convicted of high treason.
He laughed, and his laugh jarred uncannily upon the deathly stillness
of the court. It was all so grotesque, such a mockery of justice
administered by that wistful-eyed jack-pudding in scarlet, who was
himself a mockery--the venal instrument of a brutally spiteful and
vindictive king. His laughter shocked the austerity of that same
jack-pudding.
“Do you laugh, sirrah, with the rope about your neck, upon the very
threshold of that eternity you are so suddenly to enter into?”
And then Blood took his revenge.
“Faith, it's in better case I am for mirth than your lordship. For I
have this to say before you deliver judgment. Your lordship sees me--an
innocent man whose only offence is that I practised charity--with a
halter round my neck. Your lordship, being the justiciar, speaks with
knowledge of what is to come to me. I, being a physician, may speak with
knowledge of what is to come to your lordship. And I tell you that I
would not now change places with you--that I would not exchange this
halter that you fling about my neck for the stone that you carry in
your body. The death to which you may doom me is a light pleasantry by
contrast with the death to which your lordship has been doomed by that
Great Judge with whose name your lordship makes so free.”
The Lord Chief Justice sat stiffly upright, his face ashen, his lips
twitching, and whilst you might have counted ten there was no sound in
that paralyzed court after Peter Blood had finished speaking. All those
who knew Lord Jeffreys regarded this as the lull before the storm, and
braced themselves for the explosion. But none came.
Slowly, faintly, the colour crept back into that ashen face. The scarlet
figure lost its rigidity, and bent forward. His lordship began to speak.
In a muted voice and briefly--much more briefly than his wont on such
occasions and in a manner entirely mechanical, the manner of a man
whose thoughts are elsewhere while his lips are speaking--he delivered
sentence of death in the prescribed form, and without the least
allusion to what Peter Blood had said. Having delivered it, he sank back
exhausted, his eyes half-closed, his brow agleam with sweat.
The prisoners filed out.
Mr. Pollexfen--a Whig at heart despite the position of Judge-Advocate
which he occupied--was overheard by one of the jurors to mutter in the
ear of a brother counsel:
“On my soul, that swarthy rascal has given his lordship a scare. It's a
pity he must hang. For a man who can frighten Jeffreys should go far.”