A Spectacle of Corruption Read Online Free PDF Page A

they were. I had felt such things and, indeed, used them most villainously in my greener years when I had plied my trade outside the law: a lockpick and a file.
    Events of the past few days had happened so quickly and so strangely, I felt I understood almost nothing, but I now knew two things with absolute certainty. I knew that someone desperately wanted to see me convicted and sentenced to hang, to which end the law had been cruelly abused.
    And, just as surely, someone wanted me free.

CHAPTER 2
    H OW HAD I FOUND myself in so dire a condition? I could not even begin to fathom this upheaval, but I knew that my difficulties were in some way linked to the services I had engaged to render to Mr. Christopher Ufford, a priest of the Church of England, serving at St. John the Baptist Church in Wapping.
    In the melancholy that had settled upon me since Miriam wedded herself to a Christian gentleman, I had left my business in a state of neglect. I hardly worked at all for some months, preferring to pass my time in drink and debauchery—or else sullen contemplation—and sometimes a combination of all. So when I received notice from this cleric the same day I received three urgent notes from my creditors, I thought it best to do as I had been promising myself I would do for some months—that is to say, shake off my stupor and resume my business. I therefore dressed myself neatly in a dark suit with a clean shirt. I splashed the sleep off my face, bound up my hair, which I wore in the style of a tie periwig, and traveled by hackney coach to York Street, at which address Mr. Ufford desired me to call upon him.
    I set off that morning little thinking that I would, more than thirty-five years later, commit my actions to paper, but had I been so aware, I might have taken some additional notice of the disorderly men who surrounded me as soon as I exited my hackney in Westminster. Here were four fellows, made, unknown to them, to perform the literary act of foreshadowing. They took their positions at my four corners and sneered. I thought them nothing more than the countless thieves who haunted the streets since the South Sea Company had collapsed, taking the nation’s wealth with it. But these were a different sort of criminal.
    “Which be ye, Whig or Tory?” one of them, the largest—and very likely the drunkest—of them snarled at me.
    I knew that the six-week-long election season was nearly upon us, and candidates would often canvass in advance by hosting riotous parties at taverns in which lowly men such as these, men who surely did not possess the vote, might drink their fill. The reason for the politicians’ generosity was quite plain: They hoped their uncouth guests might go forth and behave just as these fellows now behaved, coarse advocates of their cause.
    As it was quite early in the morning, I could only presume that these men had not yet taken their sleep. I stared at them, with their unshaved faces and ragged clothes, and attempted to measure their capacity to do me harm.
    “Which be ye?” I asked in return.
    The leader barked a laugh. “Why should I tell you?”
    I took from my pocket one of the brace of pistols I always carried about me and pointed the firearm in this man’s face. “Because you began the conversation, and I wish only to understand the level of your interest.”
    “Begging your pardon, sire,” he said, grossly overestimating my position. He removed his hat and, placing it against his chest, began to bow like a Turk.
    I’d have none of this groveling. “Which party are you?” I asked again.
    “Whigs, if it please you, sir,” another of the men said. “What should we be but Whigs, for we’re only laboring men, you see, and not great lords, like your honor, to be Tories. We was at a tavern with drink paid for by Mr. Hertcomb, the Whig for Westminster. So we’re Whigs now, and in his service. We meant you no harm.”
    I cared nothing, and knew less, for Whigs and Tories, though I