Revolution (4 page)

When he heard his foyer door close, Jones rose and went to his window, which faced Chancery Lane. He saw the man emerge from the apartments and step into a waiting sedan chair. Jones grabbed his cane and hat and rushed from his rooms and down the stairs to the street. Another sedan chair and two lounging porters were across the way. He handed the lead porter half a crown and instructed the pair to follow the chair that had just left. The porters lifted the conveyance before he could close its door and were off in a trot that jolted him against the backrest.

When he recovered, he observed from the window that the messenger’s chair was headed for Fleet Street, when its porters should have gone north on Chancery to Holborn, which led to the Duke’s residence. On Fleet, the
porters turned right onto the Strand, and jogged straight up the darkening thoroughfare towards Charing Cross and Whitehall. Jones’s own porters pursued at a discreet distance.

Some twenty minutes later, the messenger’s chair came to a halt at the gate of Windridge Court, the walled residence of the Earl of Danvers. When his chair had been set down, the messenger stepped out, paid the lead porter, and strode through the open gate into the courtyard. He saw the man remove his hat and wig and stuff the wig into a coat pocket. Jones’s porters had slowed to a walk. Before they could come abreast of the first sedan chair, the barrister leaned out the window and ordered them to return him to Chancery Lane.

As the porters toted him back down the noisy Strand, the member for Swansditch thought it odd that he should be invited into the enemy’s camp — and falsely invited, no less. His presence at the levee would have been as flagrantly incongruous as would John Wilkes’s. During the degrading squabble over who was to follow Grenville, the Duke of Bedford and his family let it be known what kind of policy they would follow in office, one that moved beyond the status quo to become actively hostile to liberty both in England and in the colonies. Jones was certain that Bedford knew his positions on the Stamp Act, on Wilkes, on general warrants, and a host of other issues. The Earl of Danvers was in the Duke’s camp, as were his men in the Commons, Sir Henoch Pannell and Crispin Hillier. Grenville himself would likely be at the affair, and even some men who had been asked to join Rockingham’s ministry, such as Charles Yorke.

Jones tapped his chin with the cane handle in thought. He wondered what had been the purpose of the false invitation. What had the Earl in mind for him? Compromise, or humiliation? Had it become known by his allies in the Commons that he, Sir Dogmael Jones, had attended the Duke’s levee, he would have been compromised, for it would be assumed that some sort of voting arrangement would have been sought by him between him and the Duke’s party, with a promised reward of some kind. Further, he would surely have been humiliated, for the Duke would have had him escorted to the door, and perhaps none too gently tossed from that regal portal of preference.

The ruse had failed for a single reason, thought Jones, at least to the messenger’s mind: He had referred to his putative employer as
his lordship
, rather than
his grace
. Jones suspected that the man would keep that
faux pas
to himself. It had been a clever, carefully plotted prank, enacted for
some devilishly important end. Its failure would greatly upset the Earl; he would be outraged if he ever learned that it had failed because his servant had had a slip of mind.

Jones shrugged as the sedan chair dipped and swayed from the porters’ exertions. He would have declined the invitation even had the Duke sent his carriage around for him. What a quaint adventure! He was so pleased with this bit of detective work that he had the porters stop outside the Lovely Ducks Tavern while he dashed inside and bought them each a flask of rum, and rewarded them at the end of their labors with another half crown.

Jones pondered the paradox of Charles Yorke. There was a man, he thought, whose commitment to liberty was skewed by ambition. He had exchanged some letters with the former and perhaps future Attorney-General since the recess on the legality of general warrants and other constitutional matters. The spare, academic, but cordial exchange convinced him that Yorke, whom he conceded possessed a fine mind and an enviable stock of legal knowledge, harbored an ambivalence on constitutional questions rooted in an ambition dependent on precedent, not principle, on the status quo in law and government, a status quo in which he had risen steadily for thirty years and which he was obsessed with preserving. Yorke, he concluded, wished to be a part of that status quo. Yorke so detested Wilkes that he had been willing to endorse the alleged legality of general warrants, when Jones knew that Yorke did not much credit his own arguments for them.

Absent a rigorous system of the principles of liberty, Jones reflected — and he for one believed that the colonials were on the trail of one — Yorke was like so many other men in the Commons and the courts, engorged with rancorous fear when Parliamentary or Crown authority was questioned or challenged. And in Yorke’s character Jones had observed, in both the man’s letters and his speeches in the House, that the fear had spawned a curious, habitual style of malice, one that assaulted its object in the vagaries of legal circumspection. His official opinion on Wilkes’s alleged libel two years ago was that it was not treasonable, but rather a “misdemeanor of the highest nature.” Last March, in the Commons, he had defended the legality of general warrants in Wilkes’s case on the premise that the issue of libel was a matter of abstract law, not one of political or judicial weight.

Jones sighed in tired disgust. And now, he reflected, that constitutional chimera was being courted to hold again the great seal of Attorney-General.

Dusk had already slipped to darkness by the time Jones paid the porters and ascended to his rooms. In his study, he lit two pump lamps —
gifts from his elector, Garnet Kenrick — and completed a task interrupted by the messengers. It was a letter to Sir Charles Pratt, chief justice of the Common Pleas, congratulating him on his recent elevation to the peerage. Pratt was now Baron Camden of Camden Place in Kent; Jones had heard the news a day after his return from Danvers. The news disturbed him, for Pratt was one of the few sitting justices he admired. As tactfully as he could, he expressed hope that his elevation to Lords would not dilute Pratt’s devotion to the principles of liberty. “Forgive me the presumption,” he ended the letter, “but I am certain that the honor conferred upon you by His Majesty will not for an instant cause your lordship to doubt the wisdom, efficacy, and necessity of upholding the Constitution.” In other words, thought Jones with a wry twist of his mouth, I hope you have not been bought. He dipped a quill into an inkpot, signed the letter with a flourish, and set it aside to be copied and sealed later. If his new lordship took offense at the hypothetical imputation of corruption, so be it.

During the Parliamentary recess, and in between appearances at the King’s Bench, Jones immersed himself in as many forays for freedom and liberty as he could manage. He offered
pro bono
counseling to John Bingly, who had continued to publish John Wilkes’s
North Briton
at great risk to his freedom and solvency. Bingly’s partner, John Williams, had been pilloried in the Palace Yard; Jones had contributed to the fund established by Williams’s supporters to defray his legal expenses. Jones had represented John Entick, whose
Monitor
publications were being censured by the courts and who was suing the Secretaries of State over general warrants. He had followed closely in the newspapers the course of victories and setbacks of Pascal Paoli and the Corsicans in their fight for freedom from Genoese domination, and wrote letters to the papers inquiring why the government did not lend assistance to the rebels, “if only for practical reasons of strategy,” he pointed out in one published letter, “for if Paoli is crushed, and the Genoese sell their rights to the island to France, British ease of sail in the Mediterranean may in future be had for an extraordinary
toll
, or perhaps denied altogether.”

At the King’s Bench he had accepted the briefs of two important cases. Richard Hogue, a notorious producer of “interludes” in a variety of unlicensed theater-taverns in London, had in the spring staged a play that incorporated the libretti of sections of Handel’s
Dettingen Te Deum,
an oratorio that celebrated George the Second’s victory during the War of the Austrian Succession. Hogue regarded the piece, which he himself wrote, as
an “interlude,” even though it used speaking actors and actresses to advance a vaguely lewd story. He consequently had not bothered to submit the work to the Lord Chamberlain’s office for approval and a license to stage it, as the Dramatic Licensing Act of 1737, enacted to protect political figures from devastating caricature, required of all plays. At its first staging, someone in the audience took exception to the dialogue and lyrics, filed informations with the Lord Chamberlain, and Hogue’s play was closed by bailiffs and Hogue himself arrested and imprisoned.

After he had agreed to represent Hogue, Jones visited Philip Dormer Stanhope, the Earl of Chesterfield, at his residence in Greenwich, to solicit his advice on how to argue this particular case. The Earl had spoken against the Act in debate in Lords, asserting without qualification the right of theatrical satire to immunity from government regulation and suppression. Ridicule, he had argued, was an elemental aspect of the theater, and the bill then before the House represented an infringement not only on liberty but on property, “wit being the property of those who have it.” Jones was inspired to seek the notorious Francophile’s advice because in his private library was a pamphlet containing the Earl’s speech, which he found years before in a St. Paul’s Churchyard bookstall. It had been printed in Dublin, Ireland, and professed to be something found in the closet of a “deceased gentleman” — a standard ruse contrived by pamphleteers to avoid prosecution for having reported a Parliamentary speech.

“Dear me!” the aged statesman had exclaimed after Jones explained the purpose of his call. “I did not think any young person had even heard of that episode!”

Jones smiled and replied, “I am a barrister, your lordship, and laws and their fulminatory origins are my natural interest and obsession.”

Chesterfield had laughed. “Have you seen this circumventing ‘interlude,’ sir, or read the playbook? What is its title?”

Jones looked ironic. “It is called ‘The Beaux’s Pestle,’ your lordship. I have not seen a staging of it, but read the book. It is quite a slender concoction, even though it filches generously from Farquhar and Marlowe, albeit my client admits only to a judicious adaptation of Mr. Handel.”

Chesterfield laughed again. “The advancement of liberty so often is mandated by the freedom of scoundrels!” He studied his caller for a moment. “You do not come to me as a stranger, Sir Dogmael,” he said. “I have read your letters in the
Post
and
Evening Signal
, and could not more agree with your points if I had made them myself.” He paused. “I have
heard of you, as well. Were you not defending counsel at the trial of those freethinkers some years ago? The ‘Pippins,’ I recollect they were called.”

Jones nodded. “Yes, your lordship. I was their counselor.”

“And you lost that matter.”

“Yes.” Jones’s features darkened with bitter memories. “They were found guilty of seditious libel, but, in truth, they were neither guilty nor scoundrels.” He paused. “Lord Wooten presided.”

“Oh? Grainger the Groundless? Yes, that is correct. I have met him. Rather a cow’s bladder of a man. Well, then I am not surprised that you lost, if
he
presided. The Crown made an excellent choice in that matter.” Chesterfield glanced for a moment out the study window to his garden. “Then, be prepared to lose again, my good man. I possess no arcane insight into the nature of the Dramatic Licensing Act, which is plainly clear in its wording and allows no leave for interpretation. I cannot imagine any justice who would risk contradicting it, except for Pratt. I agree with you that the Act deserves repeal, for it is contrary to the Constitution, and because it condemns genius to the sponger before it has even set pen to paper. Your Mr. Hogue, apparently, is no genius, but he has been denied his right and opportunity to prove it. And if there are any new Shakespeares among us, I bristle at the thought that they must wait on mediocrity for permission and approval before they might make their presence known to us.” The Earl sighed. “Until the Act is repealed, we must all remain captives of Drury Lane and Covent Garden. I am sorry, but I have no special advice to offer you.” He smiled then. “Sir, your visit is timely. In another day or so, I am to Bath to bathe my physical complaints. However, would you stay to supper? What are your views on this Stamp Act we have so carelessly thrust upon the colonies?” He picked up an ear trumpet and brandished it. “I have not attended Lords in years, sir, for I can no longer hear what is being said in the chamber.” Then he grunted in contempt. “There, I am missed for my wit, though not for my wisdom.”

Jones lost the case, as Chesterfield had predicted. “Words were spoken, not sung,” read the decision of the three judges at the King’s Bench, “in between tasteless renditions of dollops of Mr. Handel’s works, and these words, having been spoken in conjunction with actions by the players, communicated a story, one only occasionally interposed by singing accompanied by musicians, though not so frequently or of any duration that the work could be called an
opera
. Therefore, the work in question is a
play
, for the exhibition of which to the public for fees or other recompense its
author and manager has neglected to apply to the Lord Chamberlain’s office for a reading and license.” The court recommended to the jury that it find Hogue in violation of the Licensing Act, fine him five hundred pounds, and commit him to the King’s Bench Prison for one year. The jury complied.

Jones also lost a second case, that of a young law student from another Inn who had managed to report, verbatim, many of the important speeches made in the Commons the last session. The student secretly sold them to other law students as study aids in contemporary rhetoric. He, too, was served with a general warrant for having violated the ban on public reporting of Parliamentary business. He was found guilty as well of violating Parliamentary privilege, fined one hundred pounds, required to apologize in person to the House when it next sat, and prohibited from pursuing a career in law.