Devil Water (86 page)

“And why for, Jenny?” he asked. “There’s naught there for you any more. Your folk are gone from Coquetdale, and Dilston is deserted. You must face this.”

“The heart,” she cried wildly. “He said he wanted it put with his brother -- at Dilston. I must take it.”

“No, dear,” he said. “Alec will carry the heart to Dilston. For you, all that is
finished.”
He took her hand, and gazed solemnly into her distraught, protesting face. “There is nothing more that you can do for your father, Jenny. You’ve
done
what was needed.”

“He’s dead,” she whispered. “They’re all dead, Evelyn -- Lady Betty--”

“I’m
not dead,” said Rob. “And --” He pulled down the bedclothes, put his hand softly on her belly. “What have you in here, Jenny?” he asked with a half smile. “What have you here, Wife?”

She stared down at the big brown calloused hand lying so softly on the white shift which covered her belly.

“It is our babe,” she said.

“Our son,” said Rob, with certainty. “It’ll be a son, nor maimed in any way as Robin was. I feel it. For you, Jenny, there is no more shadow of the Stuart doom. You’ve come out into the light. I was never a religious man -- and yet, I have heard answers from a higher place than I can reach. This is one o’ them. You’re out o’ the shadow. And I must tell you of something else I have thought on all the night while you lay sleeping.” He paused, his face darkened a little. He spoke again more hesitantly.

“I’ve been a stubborn, stiff-necked beggor -- over and over. I’ve made you suffer, I’ve been jealous o’ the very half o’ you which made it possible to buy my freedom, and the land. Aye, Jenny, I found that out here. ‘Twas your own money, and so shamed was I for a while that I near -- well, never mind.” He took a deep breath and went on.

“Yesterday I saw a brave man die. He died as a man should, wi’ a smile on his lips and a prayer in his heart. When our son is born, Jenny, I should like him to take the name o’ Radcliffe wi’ my own.

“This is for
you,
Jenny, and for a gallant man whom I have often wronged, in thought and deed. Our son needna take the first name o’ ‘Charles,’ that’ll be as you like, but he shall bear in the new world, in the place where we now belong, the name o’ Radcliffe Wilson.”

“You’d do
this?”
she whispered. “You’d let him take a name you’ve so detested!”

“I would. And when he’s old enough we’ll tell him of his grandfather. It cannot but help a lad to hear about courage, and of deathless loyalty to convictions whatever they may be. Now Jenny, will you rise, dear. We’ve much to do this day. Moreover,” he said with a faint twinkle, “I long to get you out from this wee stuffy garret room. ‘Tis no palace that I built for you at Snowdon, yet you must admit ‘tis considerably better than this!”

“Aye, Robbie,” she said quietly, and held out her arms to him.

Radcliffe, unhappy in his crimes of youth
Steady in what he still mistook for truth
Beheld his death so decently unmoved
The soft lamented, and the brave approved.

(Part of a verse frequently recited by Samuel Johnson, and possibly written by him.)

Charles Radcliffe was the last Englishman to be executed for the Stuart cause. He was the next-to-last human being to be decapitated in England. In 1747 Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, the old Scottish renegade, closed for ever the long chapter of executions on Tower Hill. It has startled me to find that Charles is not mentioned in the commemorative plaque near the site of the scaffold, only the Scottish lords executed after the '45 are listed. This seems to me a sad oversight.

At various periods, Charles Radcliffe's life is fairly well documented, though no two accounts -- particularly of his last days in the Tower -- quite agree. The contemporary accounts were all written by his enemies. The most illuminating of these is probably
The Official Diary of Lieutenant-General Adam Williamson of the Tower of London
(Camden Third Ser., 1912, Vol. V, p. xxii).

References in the newspapers and the
Gentleman's Magazine
I have carefully combed.

A Genuine and Impartial ACCOUNT of the Remarkable Life and vicissitudes of FORTUNE, of Charles Ratcliffe, ESQ.
by "Gerald Penrice" (London, 1717) is anything but "impartial" and actually contains little about Charles. It deals more with the two rebellions and with Charles's brother James.

There are three valuable Derwentwater biographies, which also emphasize James, though they treat of Charles too:
Dilston Hall
by William Sidney Gibson (London, 1850);
The Life of . . . James Radcliffe, Third Earl of Derwentwater . . . and . . . of his Brother, Charles Radcliffe, de jure Fifth Earl of Derwentwater,
by Major Francis John Angus Skeet (London, 1929) (this biography is written by a Roman Catholic Jacobite);
Northern Lights: The Story of Lord Derwentwater by Ralph Arnold
(London, 1959). This last title, the most modern, is also the most valuable. My warmest thanks to Ralph Arnold for his personal help and his gift to me of several documents he had used.

The farewell letters and speeches of James and Charles Radcliffe I have quoted verbatim in the text.

It may be interesting to note that I have followed Charles's trial exactly, including the identification of the scar by Abraham Bunting and Lieutenant-Governor Williamson's evidence.

The Earl of Chesterfield's role in securing the commutation of Charles's sentence is attested by a note among the Stuart Papers in the Windsor Castle Archives.

Nobody can write about the 1715 Rebellion without constant reference to the account given by the turncoat curate who participated in it.
The History of the Late Rebellion
by the Reverend Robert Patten (London, 1717) enabled me to disentangle the Battle of Preston.

Lady Betty Lee's life is extremely difficult to trace. I have done my best, and am particularly indebted for suggestions to Professor Henry Pettit of the University of Colorado, who is an authority on Edward Young, Lady Betty's second husband.

The Stuart syndactylism (webbed digits often associated with extra ones) is mentioned in three contemporary references, including the
Gentleman's Magazine
for November, 1745, and a Whig lampoon. I have consulted historians and biographers and members of the Radcliffe family, who have all "heard of it," but to my amazement I have not, so far, found mention of this anomaly in any Stuart biography. Dr. William J. Schull of the University of Michigan Medical School is an authority on genetics, and has kindly answered my questions about this fairly common defect.

It would be tedious to enumerate the dozens of other source books I have used in trying to present the historical characters accurately. For the constant checking of dates, I have long since had to buy the
Dictionary of National Biography,
and all the Peerages, especially the exhaustive fourteen-volume
The Complete Peerage,
also known as the
G.E.C.

I have naturally consulted pertinent biographies and histories. Perhaps I should mention
London in the Jacobite Times
by John Doran, F.S.A. (London, 1877) as particularly entertaining. A biography of the Duke of Wharton by Lewis Melville
(The Life and Writings of Philip, Duke of Wharton,
London, 1918), as well as various books on the Hell-Fire Clubs were obviously necessary to my story.

I also wish to thank Robert Halsband of New York for his advice and the use of his fine eighteenth-century library.

I have read all the Northumbrian histories and guides, including the invaluable David Dippie Dixon's books on Coquetdale. Of the general guides,
Northumberland
by Herbert L. Honeyman (London, 1949) seems particularly useful, and I am most indebted to
North Country Life in the Eighteenth Century
by Edward Hughes (London, 1952).

My affectionate thanks for their Northern hospitality throughout the years, and for their interest in my work, to Lord and Lady Tankerville in Northumberland, and to Lord and Lady Downe in Yorkshire.

Also my gratitude to all the Northumbrian clergymen who helped me search records, particularly to the Reverend and Mrs. Bernard Garman of Bellingham and the Reverend and Mrs. William Hinkley of Riding Mill.

The Northumbrian portions of this book were a true labor of love which began on the day when I first saw the tragic, beautiful ruins of Dilston Castle and developed my first interest in the Radcliffes -- especially Charles. And then, on a visit to my Snowdon cousins in Felton, Northumberland, I heard the outline of Jenny's story. My grandmother was a Snowdon, and "family tradition" has always provided hints and allusions to that Border branch of the family which had such an unexpected connection with the Radcliffes.

The documentation of Jenny's story, and Rob Wilson's, has been frustrating. Those who have just read
Devil Water
will see why her existence never became generally known.

I did a lot of research in Coquetdale, and wish to thank Dr. Annie Forster of Burradon (Thropton) for help with the Rothbury Parish Registers. There were hundreds of "Snawdons" living along the Coquet River in the early eighteenth century. I believe that I found the right family, and the death date of Jenny's grandmother, "Jane, ux. John Snawdon, Great Tosson, Jan. 14 1709." But since these Snowdons were a Nonconformist branch, most of their vital statistics are not in Rothbury -- or anywhere that I can find.

I did approximately locate the Snowdon peel, one of the many ruins in that district which is marked on the one-inch ordnance map for Alnwick.

My thanks to Mr. William Pigg, the gifted Northumbrian piper who gave me a rare history of that county, who explained to me the small-pipes, and played for me "Derwentwater's Farewell" and many other North Country tunes.

Jenny's life history, her rearing by her father's cousin, Lady Betty Lee, her love for Rob Wilson, her meeting with Evelyn Byrd at the Hackney School, her marriage in Virginia to a transported convict, her life in the Piedmont, her return in 1746 to try and aid her father, and the birth of a son in Virginia, all these are embodied in the family tradition. Scholarly proof has been hard to find. Great was my disappointment when I discovered that William Byrd's diary is missing for the very years 1726 and 1737 when I most needed it. And I spent many a long day guessing and speculating as to
where
in Virginia Rob and Jenny went. My pleasure was then considerable when I discovered "Snawdon" marked on the Fry-Jefferson maps of both 1751 and 1775. "Snowdon," now in Buckingham County, was bought by Peter Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson's father, and during the late eighteenth century belonged to the latter's almost unknown brother, Randolph. I visited the site, and am grateful to informants in nearby Scottsville.

I have not tried to trace the Radcliffe-Wilsons down the years, but I think the last name was dropped in the next generation, and I found Ratliffs (the spelling was always variable) in the North Carolina mountains who were quite sure that they were descended from English royalty -- "Granny" always said so. Nor did this ancestry particularly interest them. In the Revolution a James Rat
cliffe from North Carolina was fighting the British. I suspect that this was Jenny and Rob's son.

There remains the subject of William Byrd and Evelyn. And here first, I wish to emphasize my thanks for personal help to Louis B. Wright, Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library and co-editor with Marion Tinling of two of Byrd's diaries. Mrs. Tinling is the percipient lady who "broke" Byrd's secret cipher, or shorthand. They are currently editing Byrd's letters. Mrs. Tinling and I have worked closely on many facets of Byrd's life, and Evelyn's. I hope that Virginians will at last relinquish the persistent legend that Evelyn's forbidden suitor was the Third, or Fourth, Earl of Peterborough. When Evelyn left England for ever in 1726, the third Earl was sixty-eight and married to Anastasia Robinson. The subsequent fourth Earl was seventeen, and had not yet matriculated at Oxford. Moreover, the letter forbidding the marriage which Byrd wrote to Evelyn specifically refers to a "Baronet." The letter is given verbatim in my text in Chapter Eleven.