The Great Negro Plot (15 page)

" SUCH A PARTICULAR PERSON FORGOTTEN?"

BECAUSE JOHNURY WAS WHITE, it would take more than a few bits of questionable accusation from the lips of William Kane and
Mary Burton to bring him down. An entire canvas had to be created to give the schoolteacher appropriately ominous credence.
It would mean not only incriminating just him, but also incriminating those around him. John Corry the dancing master? He
was there, Kane verbally complied; he saw him at Hughson's all the time. Holt, another dancing master, did he not do the same?
Yes, he did, Kane again agreed, despite the fact that the man, in his own deposition, denied
even knowing
John Ury. Edward Murphy? David Johnson? There were lots of whites mentioned by Kane. By design, it seemed, the larger the
picture, the more difficult to deny

For John Ury's part, he tried just that, giving a sworn, written statement to be entered into the court's record:

John Ury, school-master, denies being any wise concerned in the conspiracy for burning the town and killing the inhabitants,
says, that he never was any wise acquainted with John Hughson or his wife, or Margaret Kerry, nor did he ever see them in
his life, to his knowledge.

Signed,
John Ury

Ury presented his case for innocence hopeful that his word carried enough weight to squash all doubts. Whether it did in fact
do so became moot because only moments after Ury's proclamation William Kane took the stand to testify to the opposite.

"Jury was at John Hughson's with the dancing masters."

"Of this you are quite certain?" the chief judge prodded.

"Well, I must say, I never actually saw Jury with any of the slaves, but it was said to be so."

William Kane made a point to say that he had
never actually seen
John Ury with any of the slaves, as opposed to all those other whites he'd placed with the Africans. It was a minor nuance
to a court that had little time for subtleties, but it was a fairly major gap for one whose life was still hanging in abeyance.

If John Ury—who had the distinct benefit over all of the others who had previously been prosecuted by this court thus far,
given that he was both white and educated—had had only Mary Burton's and William Kane's accusations to contend with, he might
have actually had the advantage in the proceedings. Unfortunately for Ury, however, the court had induced another white voice
to join the chorus to his damning. Considering their success in the past in procuring testimonies from deponents whose very
life depended on complying with the court's wishes, there could be no better source than young and vulnerable Sarah Hughson.
The girl had already seen the court put to death both her mother and father, but young Sarah remained alive on a stay of execution.
Who had a better understanding of the comings and goings of John Hughson's pub but his own daughter? What other white person
left still breathing would be as eager to save herself?

Despite all this, all she had to lose, Sarah remained defiant of the court. Repeated requests were sent to her to join in
the condemnations of John Ury, and repeated refusals were returned. Sarah, lacking in years and racked by fear, still managed
to hold out, rejecting any offer to damn more people to a similar fate. However, the weight of Sarah's own mortality came
to a head on the date of the day of her impending execution. So finally, the last Hughson left in custody broke. The court
now had what it wanted, a new funnel for its imagination.

"I had often seen Ury, the priest, at my father's house," Sarah told the judges. "He used to come there in the evenings and
at night, and I have seen him in company with the Negroes." The testimony came strained, painfully, but once it started flowing
it came creatively as well, the girl actively imagining what his Papist evil could be. To Sarah's mind, it must be dark. It
must be arcane. It must be satanic, like the darkest whispered rituals.

"I have seen him several times make a round thing with chalk on the floor, and make all the Negroes then present stand round
it," Sarah described. "He used to stand in the middle of the ring, with a cross in his hand, and there swore all the Negroes
to be concerned in the plot, and that they should not discover him, nor any thing else of the plot, though they should die
for it."

It was as everyone thought: Ury had been baptizing the Negroes and forgiving their every sin as well, just as Popish priests
were known to. Without sin or fear of damnation, the beast that was the Negro was free to do anything. One could only shudder
with the propensity of such thoughts.

The most detailed account of John Ury's life would come from Joseph Web, a carpenter and house joiner, who had hired Ury to
tutor his children after overhearing him reading Latin (and noticing Ury looked a bit down on his luck). The picture Web constructed
of the man was more mundane than menacing.

According to Web, John Ury had told him that he was an outcast from the Church of England who'd been run out of London after
the publication of an unpopular pamphlet. That he'd come to New York looking for work after a brief stay in London. Ury could
be heard to read prayers at night in the Church of England style. The only ambiguous marks Web made on John Ury's person were
his testimony to the effect that Ury sometimes had a "dark, obscure, and mysterious manner," and that he'd once tried to buy
some confectionary that wasn't shaped like animals, possibly looking for wafers for a sacrament.

"I was once ordained by a bishop of the Church of England, and liked to preach, particular against drunkenness and debauchery
of life," Web alleged Ury bragged.

In addition, Web said John Ury was also insistent that all who attended his little Bible studies be true to their own denomination,
whether Presbyterian or Lutheran or Church of England. As for John Ury's relationship to Africans, Web relayed only one discussion.

"They have souls to be saved or lost as well as other people," the relatively progressive Joseph Web said he opined to the
pious schoolmaster.

"They are not objects of salvation," John Ury replied.

"What would you do with them then, would you damn them all?"

"No," claimed John Ury "Leave them to the Great Being that has made them, he knows best what to do with them. They are of
a slavish nature, it is the nature of them to be slaves. Give them learning, do all the good you can, and put them above the
condition of slaves, and in return they will cut your throats."

Despite evidence presented against John Ury's portrayal as the Great Black Leader, the court would hear none of it.

"Ury seemed to be well acquainted with the disposition of them," was Daniel Horsmanden's sole summation.

The trial of John Ury would take place on the twenty-ninth day of July, 1741. After the crier had cried, and the charge of
leading the conspiracy been brought, it was again Mary Burton called to the stand.

"Mary, give the court and jury an account of what you know concerning the conspiracy to burn down the town and murder and
destroy inhabitants, and what part you know the prisoner at the bar has acted in it," Mr. Chambers, the prosecutor, instructed
her, careful to make sure his star witness handled this special occasion with care. "Tell the whole story from beginning,
in your own method, but speak slow, not so hastily as you usually do, that the court and jury may the better understand you."

"Why, I have seen Ury very often at Hughson's about Christmas time and New Year, and then he stayed away about a fortnight
or three weeks, and returned again about the time that Hogg's goods came to our house," Mary told the room, going on to place
Ury at the tavern at all the important times. It was clear, according to Mary, Ury ministered to the whites while instructing
the slaves to burn the fort, the Fly, and the city beyond. "I heard Ury tell them they need not fear doing it, for that he
could forgive them their sins as well as God Almighty, and would forgive them."

Not to be outdone by Sarah Hughson, Mary brought in a new and creative ring to her story, one altogether menacing and supernatural.
"After I was called upstairs by the schoolmaster, then dismissed, he was angry and shut the door to the room again." Mary
squinted her eyes weirdly and peered around suspiciously before continuing. "I looked under it, and there was a black ring
upon the floor, and things in it that seemed to look like rats."

"Rats?" the prosecutor repeated incredulously.

"I don't know what they were, but, yes, demon rats! But that is not all. One night, some time about New Year, I was listening
at the door of the room upon the stairs, where there was Ury, Hughson, his wife and daughter Sarah, Vaarck's Caesar, Auboyneau's
Prince, Philipse's Cuff, and other Negroes, and I looked up through the door and saw upon the table a black thing like a child."

The room hushed, gasps of air being sucked into silence. Mary leaned forward, her voice growing louder as she expanded upon
this tale of horror.

"Ury had a book in his hand and was reading, but I did not understand the language. And having a spoon in my hand, I happened
to let it drop upon the floor, and Ury came out of the room, running after me downstairs, and he fell into a tub of water."

It took some moments of digestion, before the judges were able to discern what Mary had purportedly seen. The demon rats,
they decided, must have been
the Africans' toes,
obscured from her angle or perspective, she, after all, spying on them, peering under the door.

The judiciary made no attempt to seek an explanation for the second vision, this embryonic, black devil thing, "like a child,"
surely an incarnation of Beelzebub himself. More curious, neither did John Ury avail himself, he who now had chance to seek
certitude, stepping to the fore in order to question Mary immediately after the prosecution had finished up with her.

While cross-examining Mary Burton, John Ury paced the floor, ineffectually intent, although armed with opportunity, to expose
this trial for the sham that it was, be done with the insanity, and clear his good name.

"You say you have seen me several times at Hughson's; what clothes did I usually wear?" Ury began.

"I cannot tell what clothes you wore particularly," Mary deflected.

"That is strange, and you know me so well."

"I have seen you in several clothes, but you chiefly wore a riding coat, and often a brown coat trimmed with black," Mary
ventured.

"I have never worn any such coat!" John Ury turned to declare proudly to the court, a slight smile on his face that he'd caught
her. "And let me ask you further, what was it the Negroes said in response to my supposed offer to wipe away their sins?

"I'm sure I don't remember."

"You don't remember?" Ury declared. "That will be all," And that was it. There were no further questions.

John Ury might have been a very good Latin teacher. An excellent teacher, it is said, of Greek as well. But as a criminal
defense attorney, he was truly pathetic—even when arguing verily for his own existence.

William Kane was called next, offering a far less sensational testimony, but one that still agreed on the points that mattered.
John Ury had tried (and failed) to persuade Kane to become a Roman Catholic, and Kane had seen him baptize a child, Kane swore.
Also, Kane said, he knew Ury to have connections with Hughson, and said that there were slaves to be involved in the burning
of the city. John Ury's rebuttal to this was to follow the same line of questioning he had pursued so ineffectually with Mary
Burton.

"You say you have seen me very often, you saw me at Coffin's, you saw me several times at Hughson's; pray, what clothes did
you see me in?" Ury asked Kane.

"I have seen you in black, I have seen you in a yellowish greatcoat, and sometimes in a straight-bodied coat, of much the
same color."

To this Ury had no response. Did that mean he actually owned such clothes, the room wondered. Either way, did it matter? John
Ury was trying to discredit the accusers by saying they had never seen him before and couldn't even remember his dress, but
it wasn't physically impossible for people to change clothes (although, perhaps, financially impractical). If John Ury was
a man who could control legions of rats, invoke monster babies, and cause the docile African to rise in armed rebellion, why
wouldn't John Ury be able to scrounge up an extra coat?

"And you, what do you say as to the time that I was supposed to have frequented the public house of John Hughson's?"

"It was in the evening," William Kane responded. Again, it was a pointless line of questioning. When else was one likely to
go to a tavern?

The schoolmaster did show a bit of acumen when Sarah Hughson was called to witness against him, showing he clearly was prepared,
finally, in her regard.

"I except against her being sworn," Ury contested, "for she has been convicted, and received sentence of death for being concerned
in this conspiracy, and, therefore, cannot be a witness."

Unfortunately for Ury, the court thought otherwise.

"But, Mr. Ury," the attorney general volleyed back, "she has received His Majesty's most gracious pardon, which she has pleaded
in court this morning, and it has been allowed of, and, therefore, the law says, she is good evidence."

Yes, Sarah had been conveniently pardoned of her convicted crimes
that morning,
just in time to pass her death sentence on to another. And after that brief respite, Sarah did her testifying, basically repeating
her deposition of days before.

Predictably, John Ury's response to Sarah Hughson's allegations were as ineffectual as his previous cross-examinations. All
he managed was a rather tepid, quick exchange with Sarah concerning who he had supposedly baptized among the conspirators,
and not even bothering to challenge her replies.

Yet, things were about to get even worse for John Ury. Hundreds of miles south, in the debtor's colony that was Georgia, General
James Oglethorpe, the colony's original advocate and current leader, was in the middle of the War of Jenkins' Ear, as English
Georgia fought it out with Spanish Florida. Under siege and headed for defeat, the beleaguered general sent a frantic note
to the English colony of the north warning of impending doom.