A Sea of Contumely: A Dr Webster Story

By Steve Ragnall

Dr John Webster (1610-1682), was a defrocked cleric, Schoolmaster, alchemist, astrologer, surgeon and writer. He is at once arrogant, worldly and with a wry sense of humour. Written mainly in the first person, this historical fiction is based on his life.

While living and working in Lancashire during the early days of the English Civil War, Webster finds a fraud, perpetrated by one of the governors, in the accounts of the Grammar School at which he is the Master. The fraudster, now knighted by King Charles, becomes a sworn enemy.

Webster’s household is chased from the town after the satanic murder of his black servant and, with his enemy serving with the Royalists, he is co-opted into the Parliamentary forces as a surgeon.

With larger than life characters, murder, intrigue & betrayal, Webster, accompanied by his housekeeper’s son and a Sergeant-at-Arms takes us into the little-known battles of Lancashire and the Fylde, the story reaching its climax at the Battle of Read Bridge in April 1643, a pivotal though little known action in the Civil War in Lancashire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Nov 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781800467002

Steve Ragnall

Steve Ragnall is an historian from Clitheroe, Lancashire who lectures around the world on nautical matters. He has worked in local radio. Is a musician, writer and presenter, a Member of the Society for Nautical Research and a Certified RYA Yachtmaster.

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Contents

List of Maps and Illustrations

Cast of Characters

1.Sam

2.Kendall

3.Me – the Doctor

4.Kildwick

5.Clitheroe

6.Friends and Foe

7.September 1641

8.Grindletonians

9.Dr Hunyades

10.Amos

11.London

12.Endowments

13.Downham

14.A Locked Chest

15.The Scottish Problem

16.The Seal

17.A Trip

18.An Unnecessary Headache

19.A Summons

20.Waddow

21.The Dule upon Dun

22.Nate

23.Pardon for Nate

24.The Potman’s Daughter

25.Intimidation and Worse

26.Fire and Theft

27.The Castle

28.A Warrant

29.Fodder for Waddow

30.Amos Picks Another Lock

31.October 1741 – The Assize

32.An Offer

33.A Rare Move

34.A New Year

35.Edgehill

36.Organising the Militias

37.Hoghton

38.Blackburn

39.Another Treachery

40.1643 – Preston

41.Venn’s Men

42.An Explosion

43.A Thaw

44.Amounderness

45.Major Sparrow

46.Rossall

47.The Ship

48.One in the Eye for the Royalists

49.Leaving Preston

50.The Cavalryman

51.Flight

52.Whalley

53.Preparations

54.The Battle

55.The Abbey

Author’s Comments and Historical Notes

John Webster

Webster’s Writings

Acknowledgments

List of Maps and Illustrations

Dr Webster’s Study

Webster’s Clitheroe

Accounts for the Grammar School 163

Webster’s Ribble Valley

The Seargeantson Deed and Map

Preston Town Centre

Amounderness and the Ship

Webster’s escape from Rossall

Preston

The road to Read Bridge

The Battle

Cast of Characters

Dr John Webster: Master of Clitheroe Royal Grammar School.

The Widow Slater: Webster’s housekeeper.

Nate Slater: The housekeeper’s son.

Sam: Webster’s black servant.

Amos Brierley: School usher.

Sir Ralph Assheton of Downham: MP and school governor. Parliamentarian.

Sir Ralph Assheton of Whalley: Son of Sir Ralph of Downham. Parliamentarian.

Sir Richard Shuttleworth of Gawthorpe: MP, school governor. Parliamentarian.

Sir Christopher Kendall: School governor. Nouveau riche, his gains made by theft, intimidation and murder. Royalist.

John Aspinall of Standen Hall: School governor and magistrate. Royalist.

Roger Nowell of Read Hall: School governor and magistrate. Royalist.

Will Cummins: Servant of Sir Ralph of Downham, appointed master-at-arms of the Downham militia, becomes Webster’s assistant.

The Brothers Tench: Kendall’s brutal henchmen.

One

Sam

I don’t often bring this day to mind intentionally. I’ve had a number of bad ones but this capped all. It was strange that I had risen so early, as I tend to work or study late, often into the small hours. It isn’t unusual for me to be proceeding to bed when the rest are rising from their first sleep and I only rising when the day is part spent. This day, when I was forced to rise with the dawn, would be the beginning of the end of my time as schoolmaster.

Slater shook me from a deep, comforting, roborative sleep. ‘Good God, woman, what are you about’ I cried, before even seeing her ashen face.

‘He is come, he is come. ’Tis the day of judgement. He is come.’

‘Get out whilst I rise, woman! Who is here?’

Her voice sank to a whisper. ‘HE is come. The Devil himself. In marketplace.’

‘Then give him a cup of ale and bid him wait whilst I dress.’

‘Don’t pass joke in our last hours, Doctor dear,’ she pleaded, crossing herself. ‘We must to the church. I must repent before…’ Her voice tailed off as she ran from the room. I shook my head. She can be most vexing at times.

As I entered the lane and looked down towards the marketplace and town cross, I could see a ragged-arsed crowd had gathered some fifty feet beyond. Before the crowd were four Puritans, two black-garbed with their tall hats, holding their tracts and pointing towards the cross. There’s no love lost between me and Puritans, with their absolutes and unyielding righteous gabble, but I hurried down to find out what was up.

As I turned the corner, now just a few feet from the cross, the sun came from behind a cloud, hit me straight in the face and made me stumble and fall in the mud and shit, the detritus from the previous day’s fair.

I wonder, how loud is a sharp intake of breath? That’s what I recall first – a loud cumulative intake of breath from the assembly. And then the shouting, the angry maddened yelling from those same poxy Puritans: ‘See him fall at the feet of Satan – Devil worshipper – cursed demon.’ And I nearly cursed back at them until I saw what had been done to my lovely God-fearing Sam.

Sam is – sorry, was – my servant, one of the two valuable things gifted me by my friend and mentor Dr Hunyades in my London days. He was a black – Sam that is, not the doctor – brought as slave from Africa when very young, found to have some of the native arts of healing and later gifted to the good doctor. I know of Africa from my books. The Romans went there and found many wonders and strange animals, one of which is the lion, such as I saw in the last king’s menagerie. They call it the King of Beasts, but it looked mangy and dull to me when I saw it at the Tower.

I’m digressing. Or rather I’m delaying the telling of this part because the anger rises in my chest almost to stop my breath and I feel like crying even now, so long after the event. Wait, let me steel myself.

As I rose from the mud, I admit that I did think I was looking at the Devil. I swear my heart pounded fit to burst and the blood rushed from my brain. Bound to the stone cross was such a horrendous thing that I pray I never see the like again, or my brain would explode into a million parts and my heart shrivel within me. This Devil had blood still seeping from wounds carved in the shape of an upturned cross on his bare torso. He had no fingers at the ends of his outstretched arms. He had horns erupting from his head, two bloody holes where there should have been eyes and a large black hole for a mouth. And it was Sam.

He was still breathing, though barely, and I started to tear at the cords binding him to the rough stone of the cross. I shouted to the crowd to help but no one stirred, not a single one. Not John Tailor, whose wife I’d delivered of a healthy son when the midwife and cunning man had deserted her; not Mark Williamson, whose arm I set and saved last year; not Will Weaver’s wife, who near died of fever ’till I dosed her, and that only a month before. I recall them well, cringing back and trying to disappear into the crowd. No more will I help them in their need.

Sam fell into my arms and again dragged me to the ground. It was fortunate that Tom, my groom, came down, saw us, and ran for the ass and a hurdle, or I’d have been there still.

We couldn’t get him into the house and I had to attend him in the stables. Both the boys just looked on, the brats, but Goodwife Slater, despite her tendency to panic over the smallest thing, set to and helped. She stayed dry-eyed whilst the tears ran down me like some silly girl. We removed the horns, which had been stuck to his head with tar, as gently as we could; washed and bandaged him, trying to avoid looking into his wide maw, from which his tongue had been roughly cut, but it wasn’t long before his slight heartbeat faded and a last gentle breath passed his lips.

He was a gentle, gentle soul, who never said or did a bad thing. I’d baptized him and yet the bastards, thieves, shitters and pisspots of this town weren’t for letting us give him a Christian burial, but I cursed them all as I gave the service over him, and he now lies in the far corner of the churchyard where the lightning-struck elm stands.

Though I’d never prove it, I – we – all knew who’d done this to dear Sam, and so I cursed myself for bringing it down on him, though how I could have anticipated such an evil deed I don’t know. When I was in London years ago, I saw a play about a Roman general. His daughter had her hands cut off and tongue removed to ensure she could not tell what had befallen her. I thought this just a tale, but even worse had been done to Sam. His tongue, hands, his actual humanity removed in the most disgusting, ruthless and debasing fashion. How one man could do such a thing to another being is beyond me.

The result was that the town took against me. Or rather ’twas the last straw for them. Many hadn’t taken to Sam because he was black and therefore other, not Christian, and probably a familiar of some kind. So his appearance as a devil, which those damned Puritans confirmed, meant that I was also tainted, cursed as a devil. As I was once in Holy Orders, I determined to speak in church the following Sunday, to denounce all the people who’d shunned Sam in his hour of need, to admonish all those who I’d helped during my residency in the town, and really to remind them that, despite what they might think, I was still really a man of God.

The curate tried to stop me as I made for the pulpit, and there was muttering from the crowd, but I brushed him aside and climbed the stair. I reminded them that Jesus had welcomed all unto him and that if they welcomed the Good Lord into their hearts as Sam had done, then they would be welcomed into Heaven just as Sam surely had been. And here I used a phrase from my book of Shakspeare’s plays: …the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones… and that whoever did the vile things to Sam was bound for Hell, with no chance of redemption. Many got up and left, but maybe my message got through to a few.

I wasn’t just doing that for myself, you understand, but my whole household and what friends I had left.

I tried to return to some semblance of normality but it was no good. ‘But they do not accept it, sir, they do not!’ said Amos fiercely. ‘It has ruined you in the town. Those rumours of necromancy that were so easy to disregard are back tenfold, and now they have proof. You harboured a demon and were seen to worship it.’

‘Sam was no demon,’ I muttered, but I was now fighting a lost cause. I cursed the town.

Most of all, though, I cursed the man who truly was kin to the Devil. That utter, utter bastard, Kendall.

Two

Kendall

Let me just lead you into this story. This may or may not be what happened but it’s my best guess, fits with what others have told me and with what I’ve seen of Kendall’s character.

It starts with a party, a small select party. Three important personages gather together in a grand house. Or, rather, two self-important persons and one trying to become important. They’re there to celebrate the anniversary of King Charles’s accession to the throne. Let’s give it a date: say, 1635 or 6. I think that’s when it started.

So, three of them. Clothed in velvet and lace, one large and fat, one tall and thin, and the third seems at first sight like a lapdog to his two companions. But appearances can be deceptive:

Wood-panelled walls sport two faded tapestries of a previous age (that much is correct as I’ve seen the very place), lit by a bright fire that’s blazing in the inglenook but that fails to penetrate the corners of the room. At the other end of the room from the fire, two musicians play viol and flute in desultory fashion, for they expect that they won’t be paid (that’s just embroidery but I put it in because I know what Kendall’s like).

The long oak table is full of half-eaten dishes – pig’s head, cock, goose and venison – and several bottles of a Dutch wine past its best and turning sour. Three young serving girls each stand behind the chairs that hold their masters… but not their betters. (Sorry, I’ll try to keep my asides to a minimum).

The large gentleman, already somewhat inebriated, slumps back in his chair and belches. ‘This wine is foul!’ he laughs, his companions dissolving into giggles. ‘But,’ he continues, ‘I have some better spirits —’

‘Perhaps we should keep our spirits to ourselves,’ interrupts his tall friend. ‘We must keep our powder dry and our parts firm for the coming entertainment!’

‘Yes, I think we are ready for our desserts, sirs,’ says the third fellow, a wide grin across his face. ‘If you will permit me…’ He claps his hands, points at the musicians and shouts, ‘Out!’ and as the door opens, two large, thickset servants enter, dressed alike in short brown jackets, linen shirts and full breeches, gathered at the knee. With the same lank, dark hair and identical build, the only thing to tell them apart is the pattern of pockmarks on their faces. Bundling the musicians out, they now shut and lock the door.

Later. A glass shatters. The fire has burnt low and there’s little light to reveal anything of the room except in its immediate vicinity, where a whimpering girl is being held face down by one servant whilst his brother bites her buttocks. Greedily watching as he pleasures himself, the tall gentleman sits against the wall. Somewhere in the darkness lies a second girl, bruised and battered but now sleeping as another gentleman pulls up his breeches and drags his torn shirt around him.

In the half-light between these two scenes, a hand is clutched tight around the neck of a third girl, the fingernails allowing a trickle of blood to run down to her breasts as they cut into her soft skin. She too is naked but shielded from view by a fat, sweating figure dressed only in a shirt. With her long hair plastered over her face, hiding her bulging eyes, she tries in vain to breathe. The fat man’s other hand is between her legs, dirty fingers tearing the skin of her most precious part as he tries to push deeper, deeper inside.

When the girl finally gains release with the stopping of her heart, the fat man doesn’t even realise, pressing harder and harder in his frenzy.

Before light, the two servants, each with an unconscious girl over a shoulder, stand before their master. ‘Get these two away. Make sure they are properly dressed and cleaned up. Pay them six shillings each and make it clear that if they speak one word of what happened here this night, not only will you cut their throats but also those of their families.’ There’s no feeling in his voice, no expression on his face or in his eyes.

‘Yes, sir,’ say the twins in one voice.

‘When that is done, come back and get rid of that,’ he says, pointing to the dead girl, ‘and then, one of you go to her house and enquire why she has not been at work since yesterday.’ A further thought crosses his mind. ‘Hire another servant for Aspinall.’

Kendall – for it is he – turns to the fat man, now sitting in the inglenook. The fire in the grate is out, as is the fire that was inside him, now replaced by panic. The fat man holds his head in his hands and it looks as if he has been crying. ‘The matter is being sorted, Aspinall. Within the next few hours, it will be as if it had never taken place.’ His voice sounds emotionless but in his head he is laughing. ‘A nice hold I have over you now, you festering turd,’ he mutters to himself.

The tall, thin gentleman has stood quietly, leaning against a tapestry, his head pounding. He feels nauseous, and is happy to see the matter taken care of without his further involvement. ‘It is over, Nowell,’ says Christopher Kendall. ‘Get you home and to bed. You look as bad as that girl.’

So, why do I think this is what happened? Well, Kendall (it would be a few years before he’d buy his knighthood) somehow managed to rise from being merely the son of a butcher who, though a burgage holder in the town, was by all accounts in near penury, into a person with two of the local gentry in tow, a substantial landholding and then his knighthood into the bargain. And all this without any visible means or reasons to account for it, excepting a supreme ruthlessness.

For a number of years there had been reports of young women going missing – here one day (usually in the employ of Kendall) and then disappearing the next. And the girls’ parents, whilst being visibly broken-hearted, neither making a fuss nor trying to find their offspring. Kendall is the cause of their disappearance; you may rely on it. You may say that this is all just jealousy on my part, but adding two and two together has always made four to me, and if he used girls to tie Aspinall and Nowell to him, it all fits, for they’re both lechers of the first degree.

And as I tell you more of the foul Kendall, I think you’ll accept what I say, even if I can’t fully prove it.

Three

Me – the Doctor

You ask me to describe myself. An invidious task when I want to be the hero of my own story and yet fully conscious of my failings. Mind you, most of the time I’m not concerned about my failings, which I’m sure are minor indeed when you consider Kendall’s.

However, the last time I looked in a mirror was just after Kendall had set my study on fire – be patient, you’ll hear why later – and I must say it shocked me (how I appeared in the mirror, I mean, though of course the fire had somewhat bothered me).

My study wasn’t actually my study; that’s just what everyone called it. Standing apart from the house and built into the garden wall was a two-storey building, just two 8-foot square rooms, one on top of the other. In the lower room was the furnace that I used for my experiments – I’m writing a treatise on metals – and above was a room with windows on three sides, where I often wrote up my notes, which is why people called it Dr Webster’s Study. My actual study was in fact my library and was in the house – I’d never keep books in a room on top of a furnace, for goodness’ sake. Anyway, one window of the room that wasn’t my study looked out over the schoolhouse of the grammar school at which I was master. The school sat within the churchyard and the church was set just beyond the school. A second window looked across the valley of the River Ribble and out to Grindleton, with whose non-conformists I find I have some sympathies. The third window looked towards Pendle Hill, a wild and dangerous moor.

So, the only thing of value that I ever kept in my study that’s not a study was the second of the two valuable things gifted to me from Dr Hunyades (the other being the dear Sam, as I mentioned earlier). This was a tri-fold object containing Venetian glass, and beautifully worked. If you want an example of God’s gifts to man, just look at this and praise the hand that guided the hand that made it. Within a delicately worked case, inlaid with gold, two sides folded out on ingenious hinges, revealing on one side a concave mirror that I could use to focus the sun’s rays or intensify candlelight; the centre of the three parts was a plain mirror; the third, an increasing glass that made things placed under it seem ten times true size. This tri-fold glass was an absolute wonder and I cannot count for how it could be made, for the glass was without fault or blemish. I have read that Venice is a republic of islands and have seen an image of its city built on water, for which I also can’t account. Glass is made on a different island, I believe, but if they can make things such as my tri-fold glass then I could believe that their city floats even in the clouds.

Miraculously, my beloved glass was not damaged in the fire and, as I opened it to check that it was still whole, I caught sight of myself in the clear glass. It was a shock. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a vain man, but the image I saw depressed me for a time. That was late in 1641 and I’ve not looked in a mirror since.

Beneath a shock of black hair and below a beetling brow, my dark-rimmed eyes seemed to smoulder. If I was vain, I’d say they looked as if they could pierce one’s very soul; uncover your innermost secrets; leave you standing naked before your heavenly judge. But in reality they just looked worried, distressed, tormented, which indeed I was. There wasn’t even a sign of great intellect, which bothered me most. I’m sure I’m a softer man than they showed. I know that at times I’ve little time for my fellow man, but I do have feelings of compassion, humanity and gentleness on occasion. I can even delight in the company of children – no, I think that’s going too far – I can’t really stand them. I delight most in the reading of books or the examination of metals.

I must accept that people are not generally drawn to me and that I am no Greek god. I’m not, as one would say, old. Six and thirty isn’t old, for had not Methuselah lived to the 969th year of his span? So the Good Book says, though it might be an error of translation. But perhaps he had an easier life than John Webster. I do have an argumentative constitution, froward as the Widow Slater says, and this hasn’t given me a quiet life, as my time as the incumbent of the parish of Kildwick, over in the Riding of Yorkshire, proves. But then, when you know something’s wrong, how can you ignore it?

Yes, I’ll tell you about Kildwick shortly, but you asked about my beliefs. I believe in God, certainly, but also that all the doctrines of religion pressed upon us should be open to question. There, short and succinct. It was this, and my support for the radical ideas of a breakaway sect, or rather my support for their right to hold what some considered a heretical idea, which was the straw that broke the back of the Bishop of Durham. I suppose it is just a further fault, a sign of my dogmatic personality, that I couldn’t bow to the will of the very person who had ordained me and granted my curacy. But then the Bishop was a decided ass and, if I were to be less charitable, I might say that he deserved to have his back broken.

So I lost my living. Ah well, Kildwick was a lickspittle place anyway. But luck was with me. An eminent acquaintance, nay, friend, Doctor Hunyades, of whom more later, knew Sir Ralph Assheton, a governor of the grammar school in Clitheroe, who in turn obtained for me the post of master. It was not much of a position, overseeing the schooling of a half-dozen boarders and a further six sons of freeholders of the town in a modest building that had all the attraction of a draughty barn, no more. The post did, however, allow me the freedom to indulge in my interests and experiments. And anyway, I had the usher to do most of the work of the school.

Though I had been (in title at least) a man of the cloth, some in this district believed me akin to a necromancer, a wizard maybe, that I was not wholly on the side of good, even before the devilling or defiling of Sam, because of the experiments I carry out on metals and ores, often late into the night. It isn’t often I make an explosion, but different metals and substances do make such lovely colours and sparks when heated.

Four

Kildwick

Kildwick is a nothing of a place. It sits on the side of a flat, marshy valley, and everyone seems glum. The church is as cold as the grave, shorn of all decoration so you’d think the Puritans had been at it, excepting it still has an altar rail. And holes in the roof, or it did when I was there, in year thirty-seven and thirty-eight of this age.

In the main, the folk came unwillingly to the church, ’cepting the few who were nearer to the grave than the rest, but it was of course the law to attend. I could give them anything for a sermon. I think if I just said the same thing each Sunday, they wouldn’t have noticed. Part of me didn’t mind. I had a growing library of books, ideas for writing a philosophical account of metals – their discovery, history, production and usage. Along with wood, they are the most useful material man has yet found, and I believe there are still more to be found that will have properties to astound us. And so I suppose I was relatively content with my lot – I had a small income, a small house, a small housekeeper, a small amount of food and small beer. Yes, small sums it up, I think.

Anyway, this was a showery spring day. Most of the parishioners were in and grunting their good-days to each other, and I was dressing in the vestry when I heard the start of it. I