Accidents of Providence (32 page)

I drew some of my descriptions, characters, and events directly from historical artifacts and sources. Others are composites based on historical artifacts and sources but reinvented or recrafted for this story. I also invented descriptions for characters, places, and situations about which the historical record remains silent or unclear or where the story itself seemed to prompt it. For example, while we know that after the Great Fire of 1666, there was a windmill on top of Newgate Prison to provide ventilation, I could find no verifiable record of the windmill’s existence in the decades prior, so I simply chose to imagine it being there as early as the 1640s. To take another example, the collapsing of the scaffold at the Sessions House at the beginning of Rachel’s trial is an imaginary event with a verifiable historical precedent: before the start of John Lilburne’s treason trial at Guildhall, the scaffolding inside the courthouse collapsed, delaying the proceedings.

Historians have written a great deal about the English Levelers, and there are wide-ranging opinions about their influence, their ideas, their organization, their views on women, their activities, their household practices, their religious beliefs, and their members. Revisionist scholarship questions their existence as a coherent or unified group, claiming that accounts of the Levelers and their influence are exaggerated. At the other end of the spectrum are those traditionalists who see the Levelers as the principal forerunners of the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence. I have permitted myself to sidestep these scholarly disagreements in favor of imagining the Levelers’ inner circle as it might have looked in the final months of 1649, the waning days of their influence.

Some of the characters in this book are based on real people who lived in London during the seventeenth century. I have combined verifiable information about their life histories with my own ideas about their personalities and with my own story line. John Lilburne was a writer, lieutenant colonel in the Parliamentary army, and well-known leader of the English Levelers. Although it is debated how organized the Leveler movement was after 1649, we know that Elizabeth Lilburne, John’s wife, led a march or two on her husband’s behalf in an attempt to obtain his release from prison. Elizabeth also seems to have been involved with several “petitions of women” that sought the Levelers’ release. We know that Elizabeth gave birth to one of her children in Newgate and seems to have named one of her sons Tower in honor of the prison her husband frequented. She fell ill with smallpox in 1649, and though she survived, she lost her two boys to the disease. John was released from the Tower in time to say goodbye to them. He returned soon after.

Katherine Chidley was a haberdasher and Independent preacher who published several theological treatises and was known for despising Presbyterian conformity. She founded a church with her son. William Kiffin was a prosperous merchant and Particular Baptist minister. At one point he enjoyed a close collaboration with the Levelers, as did many of the independent churches, but in a period of shifting political and religious alliances, this bond did not last. Kiffin was rumored to be behind some of the personal attacks on William Walwyn’s character in the late 1640s. Gilbert Mabbott was a newsman and writer who edited the
Moderate
for a time before being removed by opponents who accused him of sympathizing with the Levelers.

William Walwyn, husband of Anne and father of “almost 20 children,” as he later phrased it, was a leading intellectual force behind the Leveler program in the 1640s, though he dropped out of active participation after 1649. There is no historical evidence that he was involved in any kind of clandestine relationship, although his enemies in the Baptist and Congregational churches liked to accuse him of sexual improprieties. Walwyn was known in the seventeenth century as a “Seeker”—someone who eschews one particular theology or doctrine in favor of thinking broadly about the nature of faith, posing Socratic questions about the meaning of belief, duty, love, and the divine nature. Walwyn, Lilburne, Overton, and Prince resided together in the Tower of London for nine months in 1649 under suspicion of treason against the new Commonwealth government, although only John was brought to trial. Bonfires burned in the streets of London after John’s acquittal. Walwyn was imprisoned again briefly in 1652, but scholars are uncertain about the reason why or how he obtained his release.

Robert Lockyer was a private in the New Model Army (the remodeled Parliamentary army under radical and disciplined Puritan oversight) and was court-martialed and executed at the age of twenty-three for his involvement in a mutiny within Captain Savage’s company. The cause of the standoff was the refusal of Lockyer’s commanding officers to pay past-due wages to their soldiers. Little is known about Robert’s family, though some reports indicate that his mother and sisters walked beside the coffin at his funeral. In
The Army’s Martyr
, a Leveler martyrology published in 1649, the author—probably John Lilburne—described Robert’s funeral as a spectacular procession that swept through the city of London, with recorders estimating that four thousand mourners attended. Many donned the sea green color of the Levelers. Women brought up the rear of the processional, wearing scarves of the same color.

Mary du Gard is a fictional character. The idea for Mary came to me when I read a reference in a work of English social history to a twenty-seven-year-old “singlewoman” who paid a fee to earn the freedom (a merchant’s license) to be a glover—a rare accomplishment in those days. Women in early modern England could work and participate in business, but their involvement usually came about through the name or oversight of a husband, brother, or father. It was rare for a woman to become a business owner or proprietor on her own.

Rachel Lockyer is also a fictional character. The idea for her came to me when I read several 1651 pamphlets detailing the execution, trial, and “miraculous” recovery of a young unmarried woman from Steeple-Barton who was hanged after being convicted of killing her infant. This young woman, Anne Green, claimed she had not known she was pregnant before delivering the infant stillborn in the privy. The jury did not believe her. She survived her hanging, most likely because the noose was not sufficiently tight. The final report by Thomas Bartwain—also a fictional character—is modeled after the 1651 accounts of Anne Green’s remarkable story. Green was alternately revered and reviled in print after her recovery. Several sentences and turns of phrase in Bartwain’s treatise are taken directly from a 1651 report of Green’s hanging and its aftermath.

When Thomas Bartwain warned William Walwyn about an anticipated act against adultery, he was making an accurate prediction—though he misunderstood whom the act would target. Adultery briefly became a capital offense in England in 1650, but the statute proved difficult if not impossible to enforce. The statute made the adultery of a married woman punishable by death, but not the adultery of a married man. That is, while both a man and a woman could be put to death under the 1650 act against adultery, the punishment was only applicable in cases where a married woman had strayed. Historian Keith Thomas has suggested that this double standard reflected the Puritan assumption that a woman’s sexuality was not hers to govern as she chose.

In the 1650s, William Walwyn left the world of Leveler politics and became a lay physician, dispensing medicines from his apothecary in Moorfields. He outlived most of his companions, dying in his eighties.

John Lilburne continued to pursue his calling as a voice for the oppressed, undergoing several more trials for seditious writings and being banished from England for a brief time. He finally renounced political life altogether and became a Quaker. His wife, Elizabeth, remained the most enterprising and resourceful of the group. She had more children with John after they lost their two sons. During his period of banishment, John left her under the protection of a powerful clergyman, since he was unable to ensure her welfare in person. That clergyman was William Kiffin. Elizabeth outlived her husband.

I am grateful to Brooks Holifield, David Pacini, and Bobby Paul for challenging me to become a better reader and so a better writer; to Kat Carrico, Carol Flowers, Elizabeth Gallu, Claire Meyer, Claire Sterk, Donna Troka, Aubre Wells, Jennifer Wheelock, and Melissa Wiginton for their support and encouragement; to S. Alex Alexander for the outstanding research assistance; to my editor, Jenna Johnson, and my copy editor, Tracy Roe, for their incisive and helpful comments; to Mary Campbell, Beth Burleigh Fuller, John Scott Randall, Yishai Seidman, and Johnathan Wilber for their contributions at various stages of the publication process. I am grateful to my parents, Gordon and Marion Brown; to my sister, Candace; and to my many aunts and uncles for cheering me on from afar. Thanks also go to the members of my indefatigable book group: Shawn, Cathy, Matt, Gerhard, Anna, and David. Finally, I’d like to express my gratitude to Henry Dunow, perspicuous reader and generous spirit, who discerned in my writing the prospect of a book.