The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,56
the criminal charges would more appropriately be heard later, before the King’s Bench. He had therefore decided not to refer the matter to the Lord Chief Justice, a decision which lay within his powers.
Nowhere contained in this carefully worded document was there any hint of Blundell’s private awareness that to trouble the Lord Chief Justice with such a request could seriously impede his own further career and might well put an end to his hopes of a title. In fact, it had not taken him long to make up his mind; the delay in communicating his decision had been merely to lend an impression of weight and deliberation. He knew the public interest this case had aroused and he knew Ashton by repute, knew him for a troublesome fellow who was set on disturbing the social order. But he had not had any direct dealings with him before, and the petition he had been sent, eloquently urging that the two cases should be tried together, had given him a glimpse of nightmare, a vision of the bottomless pit—this also, of course, not hinted at in his reply. In particular, the improper use of Holy Writ had troubled him. The words taken by Ashton from the Book of Job had gone on echoing in his mind. What then shall I do when God riseth up? And when He visiteth, what shall I answer Him? Did not He that made me in the womb make him?
His appetite had been affected for two days running. Instead of presiding over a case of insurance liability, he was being asked to request the senior judge of the land to transform this simple matter into a formal and explicit deliberation as to whether the negroes thrown overboard were to be regarded as something more than goods, an issue to be left to the judgment of a dunderheaded jury, unpredictable and given to crude sentiment. Who could tell what the outcome might be?
He had refreshed his memory by referring to the definition of piracy delivered in the case of Rex v. Dawson of 1696: “Piracy is only the sea term for robbery within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty … If the mariner of any ship shall violently dispossess the master and afterwards carry away the ship itself or any of the goods with a felonious intention in any place where the Lord Admiral hath jurisdiction, this is robbery and piracy …”
This was all very well, as far as it went. But the felonious intention in this present case was not altogether evident. He could not recall any case of piracy in which no attempt had been made to profit from the stolen goods. Why had these men run off to Florida without attempting to sell the slaves or the ship? There were cases on record of persons taken prisoner by pirates, but these were persons of rank, for whom a ransom might be asked. What ransom could be asked for a parcel of blacks, and who could conceivably ask it? It was this appalling tangle, and the thought of discharging it onto the Lord Chief Justice, on whom his advancement largely depended, that had so much affected his appetite. And he had felt released from an incubus after dispatching the note announcing his decision.
In spite of the blow to his hopes and his continuing depression at Evans’s disappearance, Ashton did what he could in the course of the next few hours to institute a search for the negro’s whereabouts. He sent for two men who had helped him on occasion in similar searches, and gave them Evans’s name and description. If they found him and brought word of where he was, they would have a guinea each. He did not tell them the address at which Evans had been staying, though one of them asked for this. They could not be trusted with such information. No reliance could be placed on the men themselves, only on their hope of a reward. Slave-takers and slave-finders belonged all within a single confraternity; had the paymaster been other, these two would have sought out any fugitive negro in London and returned him by force to those who claimed to be his owners. They knew the communities among which the fugitives took refuge, as they knew many of the houses where those recaptured were kept confined until a ship for the plantations was fitted out and made ready to sail.
Ashton had no clear idea of how many black people there were