David Liss - A Spectacle Of Corruption

“My name’s Weaver,” I said.

“And what do they have you for?”

“For a killing in which I took no part.”

“Oh, that is always the way, isn’t it? Only the innocent end up here. Never been a man condemned who done what they said. Except me. I done it, and I’ll say so like the honest man I am.”

“And what do they have you for?”

“For refusing to live by the law of a foreign usurper, is what. That false king on the throne took away me livelihood, he did, and when a man tries to take it back, he finds himself thrown in prison and sentenced to hang.”

“How did the king take away your livelihood?” I asked, without much real interest.

“I was in the army, don’t you know, serving Queen Anne, but when the German stole the throne, he thought our company too Tory in its tone and had us disbanded. I never knew nothing but soldiering, so I couldn’t think of how to make my living but by that, and when I couldn’t do that no more, I had to find another way.”

“That way being?”

“Riding out on the highway and stealing from those what support the Hanoverian.”

“And were you always quite certain to rob only those who support King George?”

He laughed. “Perhaps not so careful as I might have been, but I know a Whiggish coach when I see one. And’s not as though I never did try to make my living in honest ways. But there’s no work to be found, and people are starving upon the street. I was not about to be one of those. Anyhow, they nabbed me with a stolen watch in me pocket, and now I’m to hang for certain.”

“It is a small crime,” I told him. “They may prove lenient.”

“Not for me, they won’t. I made the mistake of being taken in a little gin house, and the constable what took me heard me raise a toast to the true king just before he dragged me away.”

“Perhaps that was unwise,” I observed.

“And the gin house was called the White Rose.”

The entire world knew that the white rose was a symbol of the Jacobites. It was a foolish place to be arrested, but men who broke the law were often foolish.

I knew that support for the Chevalier was common among thieves and the poor- I had many times been in the company of men of the lower sort who would gladly raise a bumper in the name of the deposed king’s son- but such toasts were generally not taken very seriously. Men such as this, who had lost their army positions after the Tories had been purged, often took to robbing the highways and smuggling, joining gangs of other Jacobite thieves who told themselves that their crimes were but revolutionary justice.

As I write this memoir, so many years after the events I describe, I know I may find some readers too young to remember the rebellion of ’45, when the grandson of the ousted monarch came close to marching upon London. Now the threat of Jacobites seems no more serious than the threat of bugbears or hobgoblins, but my young readers must recollect that, in the days of which I write, the Pretender was more than a tale to frighten children. He had launched a daring invasion in 1715, and there had been numerous plots since to return him to the throne or stir up rebellion against the king. As I sat in prison, a general election loomed upon us, the first to take place since George I acceded to the throne- so this election was widely seen as one that would determine how much the English had come to love or hate their German monarch. It therefore seemed to us likely that at any time we might be subject to an invasion in which the Pretender would take up arms in order to reclaim his father’s throne.

The Jacobites, those followers of the son of the deposed James II, saw this moment as their finest opportunity in seven years to retake the throne for their master. Outrage toward the ministry and, less openly, toward the king had been running hot ever since the collapse of the South Sea Company stock in the fall of 1720. As the Company sank, so too did the countless other projects that had taken root in the seemingly fertile soil of soaring stock prices. Not just a single company but an entire army of companies had been destroyed in an instant.

As wave after wave of financial ruin crashed upon our shores, as riot from food shortages and low wages kindled like dry straw in a drought, as men of great wealth lost their fortunes in a flash, discontent with our foreign king’s government rose and overflowed. It was later said that in the months following the bursting of the Bubble, the Pretender might have ridden into London without an army and found himself crowned without the loss of a drop of blood. That may or may not be the case, but I can assure my readers that I have never before or since seen hatred toward the government as volatile as it was in those days. Greedy Parliamentarians scrambled to screen the South Sea Company directors- that they might better screen their own profits from the Company’s stock fraud- and the crowds grew angrier and more vicious. In the summer of 1721 a mob descended upon the Parliament itself to demand justice, an unruly throng that dispersed only after three readings of the Riot Act. With an election imminent, the Whigs, who controlled the ministry, realized that their grasp on the government might be loosening, and it was widely believed that if the Tories could return a majority, King George would not remain our monarch long.

I write now with a political understanding I did not possess at the time, but I knew enough of the public resentment toward the king and his Whig ministers to understand why this thief’s political inclinations should have reflected so ill on him. Thieves and smugglers and the impoverished tended to lean toward the cause of the Jacobites, whom they saw as dashing outcasts like themselves. After the Bubble burst, and more men than ever before were struggling for bread, thieves and brigands began to appear in unprecedented numbers.

“It is very hard,” I told him, “that a man should be hanged for saying what men have always said.”

“I think so too. It is not as though I’ve killed anyone. Not like you.”

“I haven’t killed anyone either,” I said. “Not anyone for whose murder I’ve been charged, at any rate.”

At this he laughed. “The name is Nate Lowth,” he said. “What did you say your name was again?”

I stood up now. This Lowth, with all his chatter, seemed to help me find the fire I needed to act. I walked over to the windows that looked out on the hallway. There were bars, of course. I examined each one to see if it might be loose.

“Weaver,” I called over. “Benjamin Weaver.”

“Sod me!” he shouted. “Benjamin Weaver the fighter in the cell next to me. Isn’t that the most rotten luck in the world?”

“How so?”

“Why, on hanging day, when a man can shine his brightest, no one will give a fig for poor Nate Lowth. They’ll all be there to see Weaver swing. I’ll just be a mere tidbit to whet their appetites.”

“I intend not to make myself conspicuous,” I told him.

“I appreciate your neighborly gesture, but it may not be in your hands. They’ve heard of you, and it’s your end they’ll want to gaze on.”

None of the bars were so loose as I would like, so I picked up the file that the woman had given me and reexamined the metal that blocked my path. The bars were too thick to saw through. It would take me all night and more, and I had no intention of being in my cell when the sun came up. Instead, I began to chip at the stone around the bars. The metal of the file was strong enough that it did not bend or snap. I used a blanket to muffle the sound as best I could, but the icy crack of metal on stone still echoed through the hallway.

“What’s that noise?” Nate Lowth asked.

“I don’t know,” I told him between blows. “I hear it too.”