Sydney M. Williams
Burrowing into Books
“The Judge Hunter” by
Christopher Buckley
August 15, 2019
“Balty wobbled
down the gangplank onto the New World. He would have dropped
to his knees and
kissed the ground beneath his feet, except that it was a mire of muck.”
The
Judge Hunters
Christopher
B uckley
The English Civil War, fought between
Parliament and King Charles 1, began in 1642 and resulted in the King being
tried, convicted and executed in 1649. In 1660, following the death of Oliver
Cromwell in 1658, the monarchy was restored, with Charles II, son of Charles I,
ascending the throne. Parliamentarians who had signed the death warrant and
were directly responsible for his father’s death were not pardoned and were, in
fact, sought. Two of the regicides (“judges,” as they came to be known)
escaped immediately to America – Edward Whalley and his son-in-law William
Goffe. A third, John Dixwell did not arrive in the New World until 1665, after spending
five years in Prussia, so plays no part in Buckley’s book. This story begins in
1664 in London and moves quickly to the New World, where it ends later the same
year.
The author relies on historical
figures, places and events. He makes extensive use of Samuel Pepys’ diary, though
most of the entries in this novel are of his own creation. The real diary was
begun in 1659 and continued for ten years. At the time the story begins, Pepys
was the Clerk of the Acts of the Royal Navy. In December 1655, he had married
fourteen-year-old Elizabeth de St, Michel. Nine years later, when the story begins, we meet Samuel Pepys’ fictional
and wastrel brother-in-law, Balthasar “Balty” St. Michel. Early in the story
Buckley writes about Pepys: “His rise within the Navy Office had barely kept
pace with the proliferation of impoverished relations.” Prominent among the
latter was the twenty-four-year-old Balty. So, when the opportunity arises,
Pepys nominates him as a candidate to go to the New World to hunt regicides,
qualifications be damned.
As most of the story takes place in
the New World, which had been colonized by the Dutch and Britain, it is
important to know that 1664, was the year before the Second Anglo-Dutch War
broke out. Tensions between the two imperialist powers were high, as readers
will come to learn. In the New World, everything south and west of what is now
Greenwich was Dutch. New Haven was a separate Puritan Colony. Buckley has Mrs.
Pell speak of the Puritan-run city: “But I’ll say, with God listening, if
the earth opened and swallowed New Haven and all its saints, I wouldn’t cheer,
but neither would I weep.” Balty was more sardonic: “What joy, Sundays
in New Haven.”
Buckley’s two main characters, Balty
and Colonel Hiram Huncks, who Balty meets on his arrival in Boston, have
striking similarities to P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, with the
capable Huncks, a Harvard dropout, as Jeeves and the oh-so-pleasant but
dimwitted Balty as Bertie. (George MacDonald Fraser’s “Flashman,” however, must
be smiling down upon the two, in recognition of their antics.)
We meet real historical characters
like John Winthrop the Younger., founder of Connecticut Colony in Hartford;
John Davenport, founder of New Haven Colony; Dr. Thomas Pell of Fairfield and
Peter Stuyvesant, Dutch governor of New Amsterdam. We read of Metacomet (also
known as King Philip), whose English name became synonymous with American
Indians’ effort to drive out English settlers in 1675-1678, and we hear the
story of Anne Hutchinson, a Puritan who was excommunicated from the Church of
Boston and then massacred in Pelham by Algonquins in 1643. She had been
mistaken for being Dutch.
In Boston, Balty and Huncks begin the
expedition that takes them to New Amsterdam and then back to New Haven. The
regicides were said to be in New Haven Colony, a Puritan settlement not then
part of Connecticut; though it became so one year later, in 1665. On the way, they
cross the “Great River” (the Connecticut) and visit Hartford. When the “judges”
are not found in New Haven, they travel to Fairfield, sail across the Sound to
Long Island and New Netherland, and thence to Breuckelen and Manhattoes – New
Amsterdam. Along the way, the reader meets several characters, real and
imagined, like the fictional Quaker Thankful, and we get to visit Judges Cave,
which is now in West Rock Ridge State Park in New Haven.
In time, Balty realizes the mission
with Colonel Huncks is not solely – or even primarily – to capture the
regicides. The British would like the colonies for themselves, not to share
with the Dutch, and the colonists, despite their dislike for the monarchy and
the British Church knew they were tied to England in matters of defense and
trade. Assessing Dutch strength in New Amsterdam was the real mission.
Christopher Buckley provides a
delightful romp through one year of our early colonial history. He makes life
come alive in these colonies of three hundred and fifty years ago. We see how
conditions change but people do not. None of the regicides were ever brought
back to England. Whalley and Goffe left New Haven for Hadley, Massachusetts.
While they officially continued to be hunted, a diminished interest in the
Civil War and a general reluctance to do the bidding of Charles II allowed them
to avoid detection. Edward Whalley died in 1675 and William Goffe died around
1679. The latter, because of his anonymous but critical role in the defense of
Hadley during King Phillip’s War in September 1675, became known as the “Angel
of Hadley.” (John Dixwell, who plays no role in Buckley’s book, had
changed his name to John Davids. He died, undetected, in New Haven in 1689. The
names of all three are memorialized in New Haven, through Whalley and Dixwell
Avenues and Goffe Street, all of which commence just west of the Yale bookstore.)
This is a fun and informative read.
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