raising revenue. It was a matter of robbing Peter to pay Paul who was obliged to pay the Piper; only the Piper seemed to prosper, though his pockets, too, were in fact empty. One major consequence of this policy was to stunt what little prosperity and material progress managed to occur under the combined weights of royal, aristocratic, and government entitlements and preferments, the endless wars, disastrous financial schemes, and rife corruption.
It also encouraged crime and the corruption of both the taxers and the taxed; as much or more energy was diverted to evading the taxes as was invested in producing things that could be taxed. The evasion attracted men of moral character and the criminally inclined alike, who, knowing nothing throughout their lives but an irrecusable injustice, accepted it as the norm. The first group broke the law from necessity; the second broke itas opportunity. The system drew men who would surrender, meekly and guiltily, in the face of a revenue man’s rain-soaked pistol. It drew brutal, indiscriminate killers whose gangs controlled whole towns and whose suppression required the employment of the army. And it drew men, fewer, perhaps, who were neither meek nor brutal, but who were dedicated, in crime, to preserving something no one could yet name. It was to them that outlawry owed its romance. These few men seemed to be the most determined and the most menacing smugglers of all. They broke the law by fiery, clench-fisted choice.
The judicial system, though modern in method and the most advanced in Europe, was rooted in large part in the precepts of the medieval period. A man could be hanged for murder, and also for stealing a length of waste silk fabric from his employer or an armful of discarded wood chips from a shipyard. A woman could be hanged for picking a few shillings from another’s pocket, or for harboring a man who had stolen a sack of coal or vegetables. On one hand, life and property were revered and protected by an eclectic criteria that recognized no measurement of loss, theft or destruction. On the other, the government and the Crown treated them both as chattel.
* * *
The chamber in which Jack Frake awoke was a nook in one of several caves honeycombing a clot of low, barren hills near the market town of Marvel, some three miles north of the coast. The hills lay on the fringes of the estate of a country squire named Villers who had died in bankruptcy ten years before. The estate, which consisted of an unoccupied mansion and one hundred acres, had been the subject of contested ownership among three of the squire’s surviving brothers, two neighboring propertied gentlemen who, upon Villers’ death, produced deeds and receipts alleging ancient claims to portions of the estate, and the squire’s numerous creditors.
While the courts deliberated, the mansion fell into desuetude and decay, and the pastures, gardens and tillage reverted to wilderness. There was no one to notice the smoke that occasionally blew from one or two of the hills, no one to hear, when the wind was right, a faint neighing of a horse, a tantalizing strum of a lute, or a ghostly crescendo of laughter. Poachers and farmers suspected that the mansion was haunted by Villers’s ancestors, many of whom were slain or executed during the Civil War.Townsmen were certain that the estate was inhabited by the Skelly gang and by spirits who granted the gang sanctuary in their netherworld in exchange for homage to pagan idols.
Neither the late squire, nor his brothers, nor the poachers, nor the townsfolk of Marvel knew of the existence of the caves, for the hills were surrounded by thick, thorny brush, impassable except by fire or ax. The squire’s former tenant farmers, who now paid their rents to the court, had not thought it worth the effort to clear the brush to get to the hills, as there seemed to be nothing on them but rock and grass, of which they had a surfeit in their own pastures.
Before Skelly, the first
It also encouraged crime and the corruption of both the taxers and the taxed; as much or more energy was diverted to evading the taxes as was invested in producing things that could be taxed. The evasion attracted men of moral character and the criminally inclined alike, who, knowing nothing throughout their lives but an irrecusable injustice, accepted it as the norm. The first group broke the law from necessity; the second broke itas opportunity. The system drew men who would surrender, meekly and guiltily, in the face of a revenue man’s rain-soaked pistol. It drew brutal, indiscriminate killers whose gangs controlled whole towns and whose suppression required the employment of the army. And it drew men, fewer, perhaps, who were neither meek nor brutal, but who were dedicated, in crime, to preserving something no one could yet name. It was to them that outlawry owed its romance. These few men seemed to be the most determined and the most menacing smugglers of all. They broke the law by fiery, clench-fisted choice.
The judicial system, though modern in method and the most advanced in Europe, was rooted in large part in the precepts of the medieval period. A man could be hanged for murder, and also for stealing a length of waste silk fabric from his employer or an armful of discarded wood chips from a shipyard. A woman could be hanged for picking a few shillings from another’s pocket, or for harboring a man who had stolen a sack of coal or vegetables. On one hand, life and property were revered and protected by an eclectic criteria that recognized no measurement of loss, theft or destruction. On the other, the government and the Crown treated them both as chattel.
* * *
The chamber in which Jack Frake awoke was a nook in one of several caves honeycombing a clot of low, barren hills near the market town of Marvel, some three miles north of the coast. The hills lay on the fringes of the estate of a country squire named Villers who had died in bankruptcy ten years before. The estate, which consisted of an unoccupied mansion and one hundred acres, had been the subject of contested ownership among three of the squire’s surviving brothers, two neighboring propertied gentlemen who, upon Villers’ death, produced deeds and receipts alleging ancient claims to portions of the estate, and the squire’s numerous creditors.
While the courts deliberated, the mansion fell into desuetude and decay, and the pastures, gardens and tillage reverted to wilderness. There was no one to notice the smoke that occasionally blew from one or two of the hills, no one to hear, when the wind was right, a faint neighing of a horse, a tantalizing strum of a lute, or a ghostly crescendo of laughter. Poachers and farmers suspected that the mansion was haunted by Villers’s ancestors, many of whom were slain or executed during the Civil War.Townsmen were certain that the estate was inhabited by the Skelly gang and by spirits who granted the gang sanctuary in their netherworld in exchange for homage to pagan idols.
Neither the late squire, nor his brothers, nor the poachers, nor the townsfolk of Marvel knew of the existence of the caves, for the hills were surrounded by thick, thorny brush, impassable except by fire or ax. The squire’s former tenant farmers, who now paid their rents to the court, had not thought it worth the effort to clear the brush to get to the hills, as there seemed to be nothing on them but rock and grass, of which they had a surfeit in their own pastures.
Before Skelly, the first
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