Rebecca and The Bloody Codes

[Eulalia]

I think 'Rebecca and the Bloody Codes' is definitely one of the classics
we've been privileged to have published on CruxForums - a well-wrought, gripping plot
(keeping us guessing to the last - will she be saved? if so, how and by whom?)
lively dialogue, lots of well-researched historical (and dialectal) detail,
yet that's used in the narrative in ways that are relevant and supportive,
creating a very credible 18th century London - with all its sights, sounds and smells!
Thanks for giving us such a splendid Christmas tale!

 

[old slave]

maybe English cruxers from down south have heard

Once upon a time I lived near Oxford, certainly knew of 'the willies'.
Once you know a word, it's difficult to remember where though, but I thought it was more general than 'down south'.

 

[old slave]

As @Praefectus Praetorio has kindly remarked, I played a very modest part in proof-reading but perhaps more enjoyably suggesting ways that the arisocracy would have been addressed by their lessers, and would have addressed each other. This seems to be a topic we British instinctively understand, like doffing our cap, knowing our place, thanking other drivers for any little kindness, apologising over any little thing. If there were any mistakes of protocol and/or precedence, I humbly agree to the prescribed punishment.

And no, I had no idea about the ending, and feared Rebecca would perish in her gentle hanging.
The fact that she survived has brightened up my Christmas no end.

 

[connoisseurs]

I once compared your story with food and told you that it is no fastfood. Now I can tell you that it is a first class five-course-dinner. But to make sure you don´t get sated and complacent, I´ll give you only 1 Michelin star.
I hope you are hungry for the next star

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

I once compared your story with food and told you that it is no fastfood. Now I can tell you that it is a first class five-course-dinner. But to make sure you don´t get sated and complacent, I´ll give you only 1 Michelin star.
I hope you are hungry for the next star

Thank you so much. I'd like a second star, but doubt I deserve the first. Right now, I only have one project going, Friday Night Barbara to resume a week from Monday. I'm trying a "real-time" story in which the action of each day is posted on that day of the week.

Beyond that, which should last three or four more weeks, I have no current plans.

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

To my dear friends, (for I consider my readers my friends) thank you so much for helping to make Rebecca such an enjoyable experience for me. It has been exhausting and invigorating at the same time. I started with a detailed plan and timeline to end it by Christmas with some limited research to add a little fun and background characters to the story.

Soon, the wonderful engagement and responses of my readers made me feel an obligation to add more research and historical verisimilitude. I wrote and re-wrote time after time to improve the effect. And then your responses encouraged me further. The cliché "labour of love" came to mind again and again as I worked. It was no cliché to me!

Any decent writer writes mostly to please himself, and I did here. But the obvious pleasure found by YOU, enhanced the experience for ME, incomparably! Thank you!

 

[Eulalia]

Once upon a time I lived near Oxford, certainly knew of 'the willies'.
Once you know a word, it's difficult to remember where though, but I thought it was more general than 'down south'.

Yes I heard an old lady down (or, as it's Oxford, up) there use that phrase, it's a memorable one.
I don't think it's so common in the north. In Scots a 'willie' is a willow rod, bendy and quivery,
so it's also a name for a weak character, and maybe that could be the origin, = makes me tremble.

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

In Scots a 'willie' is a willow rod, bendy and quivery,

Of course that makes for a fine punishment tool as young Jesus learned in the Norfolk(?) folk story/song,
So Mary mild fetched home her child,
She laid him across her knee
And with a bundle of withy twigs
She gave him thrashes three.

“Oh bitter withy. oh bitter withy
That causes me to smart.
Oh the withy shall be very first tree
To perish at the heart.”

 

[twonines]

Of course that makes for a fine punishment tool as young Jesus learned in the Norfolk(?) folk story/song,
So Mary mild fetched home her child,
She laid him across her knee
And with a bundle of withy twigs
She gave him thrashes three.

“Oh bitter withy. oh bitter withy
That causes me to smart.
Oh the withy shall be very first tree
To perish at the heart.”

Of course, birch, willow and hazel withies were the punishment implements of choice before the devlopment of Empire allowed the import of various types of cane which quickly became preferred alternatives.

 

[twonines]

indeed, the already missed Speaker Bercow frequently reprimanded Honourable Members
for 'chuntering from a sedentary position'


I think it's more specifically an alternative to 'the creeps', 'the heebie-jeebies' etc.,
first recorded 1896, and pretty common at least around London -
maybe English cruxers from down south have heard it, at least in their younger days?
Lots of etymological speculation on the internet, none of it very convincing.

Quite common around the Potteries area in the 1940s and 50s.

 

[Migoz2]

With the proviso that I have ony been here a few months, and, although I have been reading the 'back catalogue', I feel I have only scratched the surface of what is stored here, so I haven't read everything that is available. But I want to say that this is one of the two best long pieces that I have read on here. From the start, it was clear that it was going to be a well-researched, well-written story. But it very soon developed into something with real depth and poignancy. I stopped commenting for a while because I was so emotionally invested in Rebecca and the injustices being inflicted upon her.

The ending actually leaves me conflicted. It arises perfectly from the narrative, and is lovely just in time for Christmas. But I had steeled myself for the more realistic, dark ending. In the end, seeing as it is nearly Christmas, I am going to relax into the Dickensian conclusion, seeing as that is the author it reminded me of throughout.

Superb work, PrPr.

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

WARNING!
DO NOT OPEN THE ATTACHED UNTIL AFTER READING THIS

Here is the other ending, where Rebecca is not saved. Please don't open unless you understand this. You may skip this with no problem. But once you've read it, it might be hard to unread.​

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

With the proviso that I have ony been here a few months, and, although I have been reading the 'back catalogue', I feel I have only scratched the surface of what is stored here, so I haven't read everything that is available. But I want to say that this is one of the two best long pieces that I have read on here. From the start, it was clear that it was going to be a well-researched, well-written story. But it very soon developed into something with real depth and poignancy. I stopped commenting for a while because I was so emotionally invested in Rebecca and the injustices being inflicted upon her.

The ending actually leaves me conflicted. It arises perfectly from the narrative, and is lovely just in time for Christmas. But I had steeled myself for the more realistic, dark ending. In the end, seeing as it is nearly Christmas, I am going to relax into the Dickensian conclusion, seeing as that is the author it reminded me of throughout.

Superb work, PrPr.

Thank You. I presume you enjoyed the late Dickensian additions of the interfering neighbor, Simon Nose, who was central in getting Rebecca arrested on multiple charges, the "gentle" Hangman, Jacob Stretch, and the empathetic clergyman, Clement Pity?

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

There are three Appendices that will be attached to the archive. Here they are for your reference.

Characters, in Order of appearance – ages at time of events described

Rebecca Godwyn – from Dartford in Kent, 18

Tavern Keeper in Greenwich

Simon Nose -Interfering neighbor of William Dodge, 61

Mr. Howard Todd – Watchman in St. Giles Parish, 28

Mr. John Fine – Keeper of St. Giles’ Watchhouse, 43

Sir Elliott Grabbe – Self-made man, very wealthy, 37

John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey known as Lord Hervey - English courtier and political writer and memoirist, 26

Sir Francis Page – Justice of the King’s Bench. His coarseness and cruelty earned him a reputation as ‘the hanging judge,’ 62

Justices King and Rabe – King’s Bench

Toby and Jacks – henchmen working at Ramsey house prison, ages unknown – even by them.

Mr. Always Fair – Attorney in the employ of Sir Elliott Grabbe, 36

Owen Spite – assistant to Mr. Breaker, 47

Allan Breaker – Keeper of Ramsey House Prison, 34

Dorcas Bye – Mistress of Ramsey Prison House, 49

George Augustus, Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, Duke and Marquess of Cambridge, Earl of Milford Haven, Viscount Northallerton, Baron Tewkesbury, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 39

Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton - a powerful Jacobite politician and rake, 25

James – Duke of Wharton’s Valet

Robert – a footman to Sir Elliott

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (née Pierrepont) - English aristocrat, letter writer, and poet, 33

Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach (Wilhelmina Charlotte Caroline) Princess of Wales, wife of George, 40

William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath - an English Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1707 to 1742 when he was created the first Earl of Bath by King George II, 39

Charles Douglas, 3rd Duke of Queensberry, 2nd Duke of Dover - Scottish nobleman, extensive landowner, Privy Counsellor and Vice Admiral of Scotland, 24

John Gay - was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera (1728), a ballad opera. The characters, including Captain Macheath and Polly Peachum, became household names, 37

Tommy Godwyn – Rebecca’s oldest brother, 16

William Dodge – Rebecca’s cousin, a London entrepreneur, 30

Anne Grabbe – Sir Elliott’s wife, 26

Jacob Stretch – Hangman, 48

Reverend Clement Pity, 45

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

Special and Dialectical Terms

Abbot - a man who is a brothel keeper

Abel-Ackets - a blow on the palm of the hand with a twisted handkerchief and was a punishment among seamen who sometimes played at cards for wackets, the loser suffering as many strokes as he lost in games.

Abide – wait, bear, endure, Kentish

Act-about - to play the fool, skylarking, Kentish

Addle - to be dazed or confused, Kentish

Addle-headed –stupid or foolish, Kentish

Afore –before, Kentish

Air and Exercise - a flogging at the cart's tail

Allow - to think of, consider or regard

Amidships – belly

Amorous Congress - sexual intercourse

Anatomy – a skinny person

Apple Dumpling Shop - a woman's bosom

Baddest – in the early 18th century, usage was just changing from baddest as the superlative of bad to the newer form, worst.

Bagnio - A whore house

Bagpipe – give a blowjob

Bain't – not, be not, Kentish

Baked – exhausted

Balum Rancum - a dance by naked prostitutes.

Bannocking – a hiding, a thrashing, a beating for instruction, Kentish

Banyan – a loose dressing robe modeled on Japanese style and name

Bayer – to bear, Kentish

Beard splitter - a ladies’ man or a man adept at wenching.

Beast with Two Backs - intercourse.

Beau Nasty - Someone well-dressed but dirty.

Better-Most - the best, something superior, Kentish

Blanket Hornpipe - sexual intercourse. This was a was a socially acceptable and indirect term.

Blood and 'ounds! - an exclamation. Short for Christ’s Blood and Wounds.

Blowse - a slattern, a wench

Blue stocking – an educated woman

Blunderbuss - A stupid, blundering fellow.

Bog Orange – potato

Brand-irons - The fire-dogs or cob-irons which confine the brands on an open hearth.

Brothren – brothers, Kentish

Brush - have a short romantic and unimportant fling.

Bryest – breast, Kentish, from Old Frisian.

Bryesten – breasts, plural of bryest.

Buck fitch - an old lecher

Buck of the first head - man who surpassed his companions in debauchery.

Buffle-headed - confused and stupid.

Bull Calf - A great hulkey or clumsy fellow.

Bushey, Virginia Waters, Staines – coach stops near London.

Buttock-ball - a dance attended by prostitutes

Calèche – light, 2-wheeled carriage drawn by a single horse, with a folding hood and seats for 2 passengers with another for the driver on the splashboard.

Capias Writ - capias ad respondendum, court order which permitted an officer to take the defendant into custody.

Cheesy bug – woodlouse, Kentish

Christened by a Baker - freckled

Clicker - one who shares out the booty with the rest of the gang.

Coach wheel - a crown piece (5 shillings)

Commodity – cunt

Conveyancer - a thief

Convivial society - A polite term used by the upper crust to describe sexual intercourse.

Corporation - a large belly

Covent Garden Nun - prostitute

Cry roast meat - boast of one's good fortune

Cunningham - A simple fellow, a fool. Origin unclear but believed to be a slur on the Scottish surname.

Dabster, a dab hand - somebody very skilled at something

Dance on air – hang

Dancing the Tyburn Jig – one of many euphemisms for hanging derived from the Tyburn tree. Some others were: “take a ride to Tyburn” or simply “go west.”

Death's Head Upon a Mop-Stick - poor, miserable, emaciated fellow.

Diddleys - breasts

Draggle-tail - a nasty, dirty slut

Drey -18th century term for the place where the driver or coachman sat to drive the horses or oxen. Derived from the term for a squirrel’s nest.

Drury-Lane Vestal – a whore, a play on Vestal Virgins

Duke of Limbs - tall, awkward, ill-made fellow.

Enough to make a dog laugh – very funny

Eve’s custom house – cunt, in the meaning of a fee collection for entering

Fais ce que tu voudras, 'Do what you wish', was the motto of the original Hellfire Club in 1718

Fanteeg - to be flustered, Kentish

Felonious without benefit of clergy - legal term of the time distinguishing capital crimes

Flash the gentleman - pretend to be a gentleman

Flats and sharps – weapons (flat blades and sharp points)

Forma Consueta – in customary or usual form.

Foul a plate - dine with someone

Fussock - lazy fat woman.

Game of Flats – lesbian sex

Game pullet - a young, desirable whore.

Genital commodity – virginity as a commodity to be purchased

Gentleman’s usher – penis

Give one her oatmeal - to punish, an oblique pejorative reference to the Scottish.

Glamour – the Scottish Makar Allen Ramsey wrote in 1721 “when devils, wizards and jugglers deceive the sight, they are said to cast glamour o’er the eyes of the spectator.”

Godeminche – a dildo

Grandly – greatly, Kentish

Green-bag - a lawyer

Grope under gore – reach under a girl’s skirts, archaic even in 1723

Ha'ant - haven't, Kentish

Handful – anxiety, Kentish

Harem köle kız - harem slave girl, Turkish

Head of the yard – glans

Hedge whore - An itinerant harlot, who bilks the bagnios and bawdy-houses, by disposing of her favours on the wayside, under a hedge; a low beggarly prostitute.

Heft - weight

Hoden horse - (also hooden or ooden) a hobby horse carried by a man under a sackcloth. Part of a Kentish tradition at Yuletide, similar to wassailing.

House of Civil Reception - a brothel

House of Commons - a privy

Hue and Cry – “Stop Thief.” The law required every able bodied person to pursue and catch the criminal.

Huge – very, Kentish

Idden – is not, Kentish

Irrigate - take a drink

Itchland - Scotland

Iten – it would be, Kentish

Jawsy - a chatterbox

Jerry Sneak - a henpecked husband

Jimmy Round - a Frenchman (from Je me rends)

Jolly nob – head

Just-arse – common disrespectful term of a judge. Even used sometimes today by the criminal class.

Kicksees – breeches

Laced mutton – whore.

Lark – Masturbating between a woman’s breasts. Modern version, titty bang

Line of the old author - a dram of brandy

Little Prince George – Prince George William of Great Britain (13 November 1717 – 17 February 1718) was the fifth child and second son of George and Caroline of Ansbach. He died aged 3 months, 4 days. The current youngest child, Princess Mary of Great Britain, would be that same age on June 9th, in four more days.

Lobcock - large relaxed penis, also a dull inanimate fellow.

Lord of the Manor of Tyburn - term for the public hangman.

Louse-land – Scotland

Man-trap – vagina

Marygold – a lady bird, Kentish

Mate – husband, companion

Mend – mind, Kentish

Milk the pigeon - try and do the impossible.

Mither – mother, Kentish

Molly - An effeminate or gay man.

Navigate the Windward Passage – to have anal sex.

New Holland – Prior appellation for Australia

Nihil dicit – “she said nothing”. It is the failing of the defendant to put in a plea or answer to charge. In this case, judgment is granted against the defendant, as she said nothing as to why the court should not act.

'Od Rabbit It! - a minced oath

Ordinary - a tavern serving food and drink.

Peaky - unwell, ill-looking

Pego – penis

Pikey - traveller on the turnpike, i.e. a vagabond or ruffian

Pole – old surveyors measure, also called a rod, 16.5 feet.

Pratts – buttocks

Prime Article - a wench or a handsome girl

Proper – excellent; beautiful; peculiarly good or fitting, Kentish

Puss – general pejorative for women

Radical - a troublemaker or rebel.

Ridotto – Fancy Ball, often a masquerade, became popular in Late Restoration

Ringle - to put a ring in a pig's nose, Kentish

Roast – arrest

Roby Douglas with one eye – the anus

Ruckartig - with a jerk, sudden, Kentish

Saint Geoffrey’s day – never, based on the idea that no St. Geoffrey existed.

Sawney - a Scotsman

Scapegallows - someone who narrowly escaped the gallows.

School Butter – having received a flogging, a cobbing, or a whipping.

Scithers - scissors

Scotch Bait - a halt and a resting on a stick, as practiced by peddlers, a rest taken as one walks along.

Scotch Chocolate - brimstone (sulphur) and milk.

Scotch Fiddle - itchy rash caused by eating an excess of oatmeal.

Scotch Greys - lice.

Scotch Mist - a penetrating, drizzling mist that bordered on rain.

Scratch - another name for the Devil.

Scratch-land – Scotland

Second Hellfire Club - The First Hellfire Club known was founded in London in 1718, by Philip, Duke of Wharton and a handful of other high society friends

Shake a cloth in the wind – be hanged

Sheriff's picture frame - the gallows.

Shiners – money

Shool – to beg, Kentish

Shoulder-clapper - the person who arrested for a debt.

Spirit of hartshorn – smelling salts

Squire of the placket - a pimp

Stand Bail – take responsibility or put up security for an accused to return to court. The English Bill of Rights of 1689 proclaimed “that excessive bail ought not to be required.”

Strum – fuck

Sugar stick - penis

Swayer – swear, Kentish

Talk like an apothecary - talk nonsense

Tallywags – testicles

Taradiddle - fib or lie, Kentish

Terrible – extremely

Thingumbobs - testicles.

Thomas - penis.

Thorough cough - cough and break wind simultaneously.

Three-Penny Upright - a cheap prostitute who dispensed her favors standing against a wall.

Till – gentle, Kentish

Tilter – a small sword

Tip the velvet - French-kiss

Tol-lol - pretty good

Topping – wealthy.

Topping Fellow - someone who was at the top of his profession.

Topping Man – self-made rich man

Toss Pot or a Tosspot - a drunkard.

Treddles – sheep droppings, Kentish

Trost – trust, Kentish

Tup - have carnal knowledge of a woman.

Turned up - acquitted or discharged

Tutt - clutter (noun)

Twelver - shilling.

Twiddle-diddles - Testicles.

Two Handed Put - sexual intercourse

Unlyernt - not taught, Kentish (from Frisian)

Vampish – perverse, Kentish

Vaugh – dirty, nasty, filthy, Kentish

Viend – fiend, Kentish

Wagtail - a lewd woman.

Wap, to - meant to copulate or to strike, resulting in a lewd double meaning to the accusation.

Watergate - a vagina wet with arousal

Werr - very, Kentish

Weter – water, Kentish

White Lily – the lily is often a symbol for a virgin or virginity, used by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and, contemporary to our story, Alexander Pope.

Whitter – complain, Kentish

Wid –with, Kentish

Will jill – a hermaphrodite, Kentish

Willies, to give the - phrase, to exasperate, Kentish

Without fear or favour, affection or ill-will – customary legal term of the time, encouraging an official to do his proper duty. Incorporated into judicial oaths, it can be traced to a statute enacted under Edward III in 1346.

Wrongtook – misunderstood, Kentish

Wut - stop, word of command to a cart-horse, Kentish

Yard – penis

Zennen – sins, Kentish

Zostern – sisters, Kentish.

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

Background Information

The Black Act 1723, officially “An Act for the more effectual punishing wicked and evil disposed Persons going armed in Disguise and doing Injuries and Violence to the Persons and Properties of His Majesty's Subject, and for the more speedy bringing the Offenders to Justice,” was passed in response to increased crime and social unrest in the United Kingdom after the collapse of the South Sea Bubble in 1720. When the act went into effect on May 27, 1723, it listed over 200 crimes that carried the death penalty. The death penalty in those days applied to any theft, including shoplifting, that valued at 12 pence or more (£5.90 in 2019). For this reason, the criminal code of that era in England are often called The Bloody Codes. One of the most notorious judges enforcing the act was Sir Francis Page. His coarseness and cruelty earned him a reputation as ‘the hanging judge’, and the singular distinction of being satirized by Pope, Fielding, Hogarth, Dr Johnson and the poet Richard Savage.

Richard Savage, was tried for murder before Justice Page. Page, was not impressed by the defense, and in a speech filled with sarcastic comments made it clear to the jury what verdict he was expected to see delivered. They complied, finding him guilty of murder and Page sentenced him to death. Savage's friends petitioned for a Royal pardon and obtained the support of the Countess of Hertford, who appealed to Queen Caroline. She in turn convinced the king.

In revenge to the Judge, Savage penned a biting poem:
Of heart impure and impotent of head,
In history, rhetoric, ethics, law unread;
How far unlike such worthies, once a drudge –
From floundering in law causes – rose a judge;
Formed to make pleaders laugh, his nonsense thunders,
And on low juries breathes contagious blunders;
His brothers blush, because no blush he knows,
Nor e’er one uncorrupted finger shows.

It should be understood that prostitution, per se, was not illegal in 18th century London. Beginning in 1757, Samuel Derrick, an Irish hack reporter worked with Jack Harris, the self-proclaimed Pimp-General of all England, to produce annual books called “Harris’s Lists of Covent Garden Ladies,” in which the names and addresses of top whores were listed along with intimate descriptions of their skills. For example:

Miss. L-v-b-n No, 32 George Street, Queen Anne Street, East
If we are not misinformed, this lady is one of the daughters of fortune, having a pretty goo income left her by an old flagellant, whom she literally flogged out of the world.
Miss R-b-s-n of the Jelly Shops.
This Lady is Jew, but has no objection to a bit of Christian flesh; but not in Shylock’s way, she chooses her lover and less than a pound will satisfy her.

It is estimated that one in five women in London in 1750 were involved in the sex trade.


Note to maps

In Roman times Holborn continuing to Tiborn (or Tyburn - the English were not slaves to consistency in spelling) - was part of a major road, the Via Trinobantina, running from Essex to Hampshire though Londinium. In the middle ages, the section from St. Giles west was named Tyburn (now the location of Marble Arch) for the Village of Tyburn. This, in turn, was named for Tyburn (meaning boundary stream) Brook.

Throughout the Middle Ages, there was a permanent Gallows erected between where is now Marble Arch and Speaker's Corner, called Tyburn Tree. Condemned prisoners were processed on a wagon from Newgate Prison along the route Rebecca took to St. Giles in the Fields and then on Tiborn street to Tyburn Tree. Public executions were moved to the front of Newgate prison in 1783 and as Tyburn gentrified, the street was renamed Oxford Street.

How many know that Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England was hanged from Tyburn tree in 1661? Yes, he had already been dead three years, but the Cavalier Parliament ordered his body disinterred and hung in revenge for his part in the beheaded of Charles I.

All of this sets an ominous tone for our poor Rebecca, who, if she runs afoul of the Bloody Codes, could also dance on air from Tyburn Tree.


Bagnio - A whore house, from Italian, Bagno, bath house. Originally used in English of a Turkish prison holding Christian prisoners, located beside a bath house. Extended to brothels by association with Turkish forcing of women prisoners into non-consensual sex. (See the excellent Story, "Barbary Coast" by @windar & @Barbaria1.)


The Turks and Turkish women especially were a topic of much interest in upper-class London at this time. This was driven by the publication, a few years earlier of "Turkish Embassy Letters", by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), wife of the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, about her travels and observations about Ottoman life.
If you don’t know of this remarkable woman, you should look her up.
Her writings address and challenge the restrictive contemporary social attitudes towards women and their intellectual and social growth. Her gender and class status provided her with access to female spaces that were closed off to males. Her personal interactions with Ottoman women enabled her to provide, in her view, a more accurate account of Turkish women, their dress, habits, traditions, limitations and liberties, at times irrefutably more a critique of the Occident than a praise of the Orient.
Montagu also carefully constructs Ottoman female spaces, and her own engagement with Ottoman women, as full of homoerotic desire, which is consistent with the gender and sexual fluidity that characterized much of her life and writings.
She was among the society of George I and the Prince of Wales, and counted amongst her friends Molly Skerritt, Lady Walpole, John, Lord Hervey, Mary Astell, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, Alexander Pope, John Gay, and Abbé Antonio Schinella Conti.
It was rumored that by Lady Mary and her daughter, Mary, Countess of Bute, (whose husband, John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, was the first Prime Minister from Scotland following the Acts of Union in 1707 and the first Tory to have held the post), both had affairs with Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton.
We met Lord Hervey at Sir Elliott’s dinner and will meet Wharton ere long.

Ramsey Prison House location in Liberty of the Duchy of Lancaster:
English law and governance is very conservative and retains ancient forms and practices that have long since ceased to have relevance and lead to very strange situations. One of these is the establishment of “Liberties”
In the mists of early Norman rule and even back to Anglo-Saxon times, the Monarch, depending on the good will of his noble vessels, granted special privileges. A Liberty granted sovereignty over an area to the great baron, exclusive of Royal control. Courts and taxes and all the powers of the King were transferred to the Baron. These were called Liberties because the noble was liberated (freed) from Royal control in that limited zone (the people living there had no special freedom, of course). A patchwork of such Liberties existed in London at the time of our history. The Inns of Court (lawyers offices and schools) were Liberties.
Some of the largest Liberties were part of the Duchy of Lancaster. This great Duchy was founded by John of Gaunt (1340 –1399) who inherited much as third (surviving to adulthood) son of King Edward III and gained more by sagacious marriages. On his death, the income of the Duchy exceeded that of the Royal Estates. His eldest son and heir, Henry Bolingbroke, had been exiled as a prophylactic measure, by King Richard II, with the consent of his father, to calm a dispute with another noble.
Taking advantage of Henry’s exile and coveting the rich patrimony of the Duchy, Richard confiscated Henry’s inheritance on the death of Gaunt. This led to Henry leading a revolt, usurping the throne from Richard as Henry IV and murdering him, sowing the seeds for the War of the Roses. When his son, who had been made Duke of Lancaster by his father, ascended to be King Henry V in 1413, the Duchy was merged with the Monarchy and has remained there ever since. A vestige of the separate Duchy is in the custom, even today, at formal dinners in the historic county boundaries of Lancashire and in Lancastrian regiments of the armed forces for the Loyal Toast to the crown to be announced as "The Queen, Duke of Lancaster."
This merger, combined with the historic Liberties of the Duchy, has led to the nonsensical situation that, within the Liberty, the sovereign's power as Monarch is not recognized, while her power as Duke is. I said the English are strange!
At the time of our story, the Duchy of Lancaster was under the rule of an administrator appointed by the King with the title “Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster”.


Auctioning a Virgin

A modern reader might be unappreciative of the fuss made in this story about Rebecca being a virgin and that adding significantly to her value at auction. Nevertheless, it is a documented fact that many promiscuous men in the eighteenth century made an impassioned pursuit of deflowering virgins. There were several reasons for this.
One was the feudal concept (a concept that most historians believe is a myth) of the droit du seigneur (the lord’s right), or jus primae noctis ('right of the first night'), a supposed legal right in medieval Europe, allowing feudal lords to have sexual relations with subordinate women, in particular, on their wedding nights. The rich and powerful men would see the conquest of a virgin as validating their power and virility. "Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” An overgeneralization often attributed to Oscar Wilde but not traceable to him or any original author.
Another, related motive was the competitive instinct among rich and powerful men to possess more than others. Samuel Pepys writes in his diary (November 18, 1664) - one Lord Craven compares monopoly to the irreversible nature of virginity: “if I occupy a wench first, you may occupy her again your heart out you can never have her maidenhead after I have once had it.”

Lines from Sappho (c. 600 BCE):
Bride: Maidenhood, maidenhood, where have you gone and left me?
Maidenhood: No more will I come back to you, no more will I come back.

In Fanny Hill (1748), a character is “a slightly dissipated young man of fertile imagination for whom female chastity is the Holy Grail of sexual fetishes...” His fantasy is judged by Fanny to be entirely solipsistic. His adoration of innocence has less to do with women than with his own need to be the conquering hero, the all-powerful ravisher of virgins and other defenseless creatures.

A third, and most unsavory impulse was the “virgin cure myth,” a folklore belief that having sex with a virgin would cure a man of venereal disease (more and more common among the promiscuous in the eighteenth century) by transferring it to the innocent party. Though, of course, there was no factual basis for this and the cure must have almost always failed. But, “hope springs eternal.” So many a man suffering from the degenerative effects of syphilis or gonorrhea would think, "why not get another virgin and try again?" Who cares if it means transmitting the disease to the poor unfortunate girl?


Currency Value in 1723

The guinea was officially worth 22 shillings while the pound was 20. However, the pound was valued in silver and the guinea in gold. With the variance in bullion value, a guinea in 1723 was worth about 25 shillings or one-quarter more than a pound.

In 1723, 1500 gold guineas would buy 300 good horses or 400 good milking cows, or pay the wages of a skilled tradesman for thirty-five years. The bullion value in November 2019 of 1,500 gold guineas would be about $600,000 or £450,000.


Value of a Virgin

Perhaps some readers will put down the Princely (ouch) auction bid to the writer’s imagination or a device to enhance the story. However, there is good evidence for the possibility for such a bid in a wealthy audience.

In Aphra Behn’s, The Unfortunate Happy Lady: A True History (1698), Gracelove confesses to Philadelphia, ‘the intended Victim’: “Don’t you know then, that you are in a naughty House, and that old Beldam is a rank Procuress, to whom I am to give Two hundred Guineas for your Maidenhead?”
Per Goodreads: Aphra Behn, nee Johnston (1640-1689) was a Restoration poet, novelist, playwright, feminist and spy, considered by many to be the first English professional female writer. Unappreciated for years, she is now rightly regarded as a highly talented, innovative and prolific author. Her most famous work is a novel, Oroonoko (1688) which tells the tragic love story of its eponymous hero, an African forced into slavery.
In author Virginia Woolf's reckoning, Behn's total career is more important than any particular work it produced. Woolf wrote, "All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds."
Vita Sackville-West called Behn “an inhabitant of Grub Street with the best of them, ... a phenomenon never seen and ... furiously resented.”
The Unfortunate Happy Lady is available in e-book, http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/102/17.pdf.


The Duke of Wharton
Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton, was heir to a substantial fortune and highly educated. However, when his father died in 1715, Philip, age 16, began to embrace a wild and dangerous lifestyle, squandering his inheritance on gambling and dissolute living. When he was 19 years old he was created Duke of Wharton by George I in the King's effort to solidify his support (one of the few people in English history, and the first since the 15th century, to have been raised to a Dukedom whilst still a minor and not closely related to the monarch.) He drifted to the Jacobite cause (supporters of the deposed Stuart line against the Hanoverian Georges). In 1718 (or 19), he and a few friends founded the first Hellfire Club, mostly as an irreverent joke. The members met for debauchery and performing parodies of religious rites. It was so scandalous, that a law was passed against it and it was disbanded in 1721.
As an illustration of his prolificacy, in 1720, Wharton became a major investor in the South Sea Company. When the bubble burst, he lost £120,000 ($39 Million in 2019).
After our story, he became deeply involved in opposition to the King and mired in debt. Eventually he left England and enrolled in the Jacobite army to be labeled a traitor. He died penniless and in deep dept in 1731 at the age of 32.


Lord Hervey
John, Lord Hervey, who will appear again shortly, was a fascinating character of the time. He described (through a literary satire) his time at Cambridge: "He went vigorously through a Course of Academical Learning, drank with his Tutor, lay with his Laundress, broke the Chapel Windows, and then took a Degree of Master of Arts".
Hervey early acquired in Paris, the habit of wearing white make-up to give his features a fashionable pallor. For a time, he wore a silk eye patch for chronic watering of the eye, and his health steadily worsened until his frailty became proverbial. His generally high-strung nature and frequent fainting spells made his "effeminacy" a subject for cruel satire.
Hervey could often be seen in the London circle of aristocrats where, observed Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, "writing verse was as common as taking snuff". Another of Lady Mary's morceaux choisi has branded Hervey as the archetype of the so-called "Third Sex": "The world", she observed, "consists of men, women, and Herveys"
Hervey's ill health and effeminacy did not hinder his amorous pursuits. In 1720, at the age of 23, he secretly courted and then married Mary Lepell, a Maid of Honour to the Princess of Wales, a maid whom Alexander Pope is believed also to have fancied. In due course Mary gave birth to the first of the eight children she was to bear Hervey during their lifetime marriage – sufficient proof of the compatibility of effeminacy and virility.
It is well-documented that Hervey had many males lovers. For instance, in 1726, he met and began wooing a 21 year old country squire named Henry Fox. After Henry returned to his estate in Redlinch, Somerset, he and Hervey regularly courted one another through a fond epistolary intercourse. But when they met again in London the following year, Henry brought along his brother Stephen, aged 23, and Hervey, aged 31, promptly redirected his affection toward the older brother.

Part II Follows

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

Background (continued)

Open Courthouse – when the Old Bailey court was rebuilt in 1673, after the previous building was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, a wall had been left out in order to increase the supply of fresh air to reduce the risk that prisoners suffering from gaol fever (typhus) would infect others in court.

As you’ve probably comprehended, Kentish accent then exchanged v and w at the beginning of words and often substituted d for th. Opening “t” was sounded like “ch”. Thus, the words for dune and Tuesday sound like June and choose day, respectively. You was ya (sing.) and yan (plu.) and your was yar.

The practice of Medicine in England in the early 18th century was unregulated and often incompetent. Various barbers, surgeons and apothecaries claimed to be doctors. The best physicians were from Scotland, training at the university medical schools there. Dr. Charles Maitland was one of these, a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. This school was founded in 1681 by Sir Robert Sibbald who was appointed as the first Professor of Medicine at Edinburgh. Dr. Maitland studied under Sir Robert. There was a commitment among Scottish teachers of the early 18th century to present medicine as a practical art based on general principles that brought the subject together in all its aspects, notably uniting internal medicine and surgery.
Dr. Maitland had been assigned as Embassy Surgeon in in Constantinople when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was there. She had visited the women in their segregated zenanas, making friends and learning about Turkish customs. There she witnessed the practice of inoculation against smallpox, variolation.
Lady Mary's brother had died of smallpox in 1713, and she had a bout with the disease in 1715. She was eager to spare her children, thus, in March 1718 she had her nearly five-year-old son, Edward, inoculated with the help of Embassy surgeon Maitland. An testimony to her independence was that Montague did not tell her husband until a week after when it proved to be successful.
On her return to London in April 1721, Montagu requested that her daughter Mary, who was four, be inoculated. Maitland reluctantly agreed if there were other witnesses present, so three physicians from the Royal College of Physicians were there for the procedure, the first professional inoculation in England. One of the witnesses, James Keith, was so pleased by the success that he had Maitland inoculate his six-year-old son; Keith's other children had all died of smallpox. The Montague family promoted inoculation in England, calling it a "useful invention"
But opposition was strong to the strange new procedure which was dismissed as a “Turkish Folk Remedy.”
Lady Mary persuaded her friend, Caroline of Ansbach, the Princess of Wales, to test the treatment. In August 1721, seven prisoners at Newgate Prison awaiting execution were offered the chance to undergo variolation instead of execution: it was performed by Dr. Maitland and they all survived and were released. Caroline, Princess of Wales, was convinced of its value. The Princess's two daughters Amelia and Caroline were successfully inoculated in April 1722.

When the second son of George, Prince of Wales, was born in 1717, a long-simmering rivalry with his father, King George I boiled over. The infant's parents wanted to call the baby Louis, and suggested the Queen of Prussia and the Duke of York as sponsors. The King chose the names George William, and appointed the Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Newcastle, as one of the baptismal sponsors of the child. The Prince, who hated Newcastle, had an open verbal fight with him at the baptism.
Subsequently, The King banished George and his wife Caroline from St. James’s Palace, the royal residence, yet retained their children there, separated from their parents. During the separation, infant George fell ill. His mother was only allowed back to see him shortly before he died. She never forgave her father-in-law. The feud was still hot during out story in 1723. The King’s first minister, Sir Robert Walpole, was working hard to achieve a reconciliation.
The Prince and Caroline moved to Leicester House on Leicester Square, one of the largest houses in London (Long before it was noted to be a long way from Tipperary). In 1719, Caroline and George bought Richmond Lodge in royal Richmond Park as a country house. They split their time between these two residences until George became King in 1727. His father died while on a visit to Hanover. The ill feelings were still strong enough, that the new monarch refused to travel to Hanover for his father’s funeral.
By the way, though the monarchs of Great Britain have made their homes elsewhere for centuries, St. James’s Palace remains the official residence (not, for instance either Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle). Therefore, foreign representatives, such as the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom, are formally referred to as The Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s.

John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester and Baron of Adderbury in England, Viscount Athlone in Ireland (died 1680) was the cynosure of the libertine wits of Restoration England. He was anathematized as evil incarnate and simultaneously adored for his seraphic presence, beauty, and wit. Andrew Marvell stated: "The Earle of Rochester was the only man in England that had the true veine of Satyre." Voltaire wrote in his Lettres philosophiques (1734), "Tout le monde connoit de réputation le Comte de Rochester," and then added that the gossip writers have pictured Rochester as a man of pleasure, but he would like to make known the genius, the great poet.
Wilmot was inducted, posthumously into the Hellfire Club in 1719.

Princess Caroline was another remarkable, yet little known today, woman (Professor Moore, I hope you’re listening and preparing a course in “Underappreciated British Women of the Early 18th Century”) of the early Georgian Period. This flowering (in more ways than one) of intelligent women could be partially traced to the two Restoration reigns of women, Mary and Anne, both very well-liked.
Wilhelmina Charlotte Caroline’s father, Margrave John Frederick of Brandenburg-Ansbach, belonged to a branch of the House of Hohenzollern and was the ruler of a small German state, the Principality of Ansbach. Her father died when she was three and her mother twice remarried. He second step-father was abusive and tried to poison Caroline and her mother for the family’s inheritance. When her mother died, she and her brother were fortunate to be taken in by Frederick I of Prussia (her godfather), and his wife Sophia Charlotte (sister of George I). It was a loving household and Caroline treasured her relationship with Sophia Charlotte the rest of her life.
Caroline spent her teenage years at the Prussian court in Berlin, renowned for its patronage of artists and architects and its lively intellectual life. Caroline was surrounded by a circle of writers and intellectuals, and shared with them a taste for the visual arts. Her intelligence and keen interest in science and art was recognised in her own lifetime. The French philosopher, Voltaire, said of her, that she was 'born to encourage the arts and the well-being of mankind.'
As a young woman, Caroline was much sought-after as a bride. All assumed that she would accept the suit of the nominal King of Spain, Archduke Charles of Austria, future Holy Roman Emperor. However, to marry an Austrian Habsburg, Caroline would have to convert to her husband’s Catholicism. She had been raised an ardent Protestant and therefore, to the astonishment of most of the royalty of Europe, refuse his suit. This, in term made her a kind of heroine to the Protestants of Germany, Holland and England.
George I had been forced into a loveless marriage (based on his bride’s substantial income) which had been most unhappy, leading to a bitter divorce. Young George Augustus never saw his mother again after the age of eleven. George wanted his son to avoid the mistake he had made, so allowed the boy to choose his own bride. The first prospect proved not to his liking, so, in June 1705, aged 21, under the false name "Monsieur de Busch", George visited the Ansbach court at its summer residence in Triesdorf to investigate incognito a marriage prospect: Caroline, also 21, the former ward of his aunt Queen Sophia Charlotte of Prussia. The English envoy to Hanover, Edmund Poley, reported that George was so taken by "the good character he had of her that he would not think of anybody else."
While the diplomat referred to “good character,” it may be noted that Caroline was a renowned beauty with white-blonde hair, very fair skin and a “generous” (enough to be remarked upon) bosom.
The marriage was by all accounts very happy and he loved her devotedly. In July 1707, shortly after the birth of their first son, Caroline fell seriously ill with smallpox, and George caught the infection after staying by her side devotedly during her illness. They both recovered.
Caroline patronized the arts through her marriage and reign. One of her building projects in the garden at Richmond in the early 1730s displayed five busts of leading English scientists and philosophers, demonstrating her sustained interest in these areas of scholarship. One of the greatest treasures in the Royal Collection is the collection of Holbein drawings. Caroline had rediscovered these and had them taken out of their bound volume and framed so that she could display them.
George always deferred to Caroline. For example, when he became King, he intended to dismiss Robert Walpole, his father’s first minister. However, Caroline had become friends with Walpole and, at her insistence, George retained him.
Caroline died in 1737. He was deeply affected by her death, and to the surprise of many displayed "a tenderness of which the world thought him before utterly incapable". On her deathbed, she told her sobbing husband to remarry, to which he replied, "Non, j'aurai des maîtresses!" ("No, I shall have mistresses!") which made her laugh. It was common knowledge that George had already had mistresses during his marriage, and he had kept Caroline well informed about them.

Grammatical Aside
As we move inexorably forward to the tearful termination at Tyburn, it is useful to explore the strange English associated with this form of capital punishment. The standard English past tense of hang is hung. However, when you are talking about intentionally killing by dangling people from a rope, it is hanged. This is the grammatical usage, but why are there two forms?
It comes from Old Norse hengja 'suspend' and hanga 'be suspended.' Separating the transitive and intransitive use of the verb. In Old Frisian there was hua 'suspend or hang,'
This separation resulted in two verbs in Old English from around 1000 CE: hon 'suspend' (transitive verb, past tense heng) and hangian, hongian 'be suspended' (intransitive verb, past tense hangode). In Middle English the words fused into the single hangen 'hang' (circa 1130 CE). However, in the sole use of execution by rope, the intransitive form prevailed with “hanged.”
It also lives on in the somewhat archaic idiom, “I’ll be hanged!”

Clerkenwell had been, until Henry VIII, the Priory of St John of Jerusalem, held by the group known as the Knights Hospitallers, who followed the Augustinian Order. A group of townhouses on a piece of open ground were built in 1719/20. The new street was then, and for the next couple of hundred years, called Red Lion Street, after a tavern at the top of the road, on Clerkenwell Green. The developer was a lawyer called Simon Michell, MP for Boston, and the Red Lion Street homes were reckoned to be “the best class of houses erected in his time in Clerkenwell.”

Bowl Inn in St Giles was well known as the last stop for the condemned riding on a wagon to Tyburn. Patrons at the bar would offer to buy a drink for them, known as a "St Giles Bowl". Some accepted and climbed down (or fell off) to receive the proffered drink. Others declined and stayed on the wagon. From this came the dual expressions, “On the Wagon” and “Fall off the Wagon” for abstinence and indulgence of alcohol.
Apropos to our story, there is reported to have been a like custom obtained anciently at York. There it gave rise to the saying, “The saddler of Bawtry was hanged for leaving his liquor.” The story there held that the condemned did not stop, as was usual with other criminals, to drink his bowl of ale. Had he done so, his reprieve, which was on its way, would have arrived in time enough to have saved his life. Timing can be everything.
Information from Bygone Punishments, by William Andrews (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29117/29117-h/29117-h.htm). A massive tome detailed the barbaric punishments of Old England.


For much of its history, public executions took place at Tyburn, with prisoners processed from Newgate Prison in the City, via St Giles in the Fields and Oxford Street.
The first recorded execution took place at a site next to the stream (the place took its name from the Tyburn Brook, a tributary of the River Westbourne. The name Tyburn, from Teo Bourne meaning 'boundary stream') in 1196. William Fitz Osbert, populist leader who played a major role in an 1196 popular revolt in London, was cornered in the church of St Mary le Bow. He was dragged naked behind a horse to Tyburn, where he was hanged.
The "Tree" or "Triple Tree" was a novel form of gallows, consisting of a horizontal wooden triangle supported by three legs (an arrangement known as a "three-legged mare" or "three-legged stool"). Several felons could thus be hanged at once, and so the gallows were used for mass executions, such as on 23 June 1649 when 24 prisoners—23 men and one woman—were hanged simultaneously, having been conveyed there in eight carts.
Convicts would be transported to the site in an open ox-cart from Newgate Prison. They were expected to put on a good show, wearing their finest clothes and going to their deaths with insouciance. The crowd would cheer a "good dying", but would jeer any displays of weakness on the part of the condemned.

Timeline (all 1723)

May 17 Rebecca’s 18th Birthday
May 30 Rebecca Leaves Dartford
May 31 Rebecca Arrives in London, goes to Seven Dials
June 1 Rebecca Steals and is Arrested
June 2 Rebecca's Trial, Execution set for June 17, Committed to Ramsey
June 3 Rebecca Attends Ridotto and Lose her Maidenhead
June 4 Recovery Day
June 5 Owners make Offer of Pardon
June 15 Review of Ten Days since Offer
June 16 No Pardon, Re-affirmed sentence, Whipping and Branding
June 17 Whipped at Cart's Tail and Hanging

 

[thehangingtree]

WARNING!
DO NOT OPEN THE ATTACHED UNTIL AFTER READING THIS

Here is the other ending, where Rebecca is not saved. Please don't open unless you understand this. You may skip this with no problem. But once you've read it, it might be hard to unread.​

excellent second ending. I am surprised you wrote it!

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

excellent second ending. I am surprised you wrote it!

Because I knew you were reading!

 

[thehangingtree]

Because I knew you were reading!

I will not go into comments here. I don't want to ruin it for those who have yet to read it. Still, a (pleasant???) surprise from you...