Prelude to the Stamp Act, 1765

A Dramatic Vignette, inspired by William Shakespeare

“What’s done is done.” A young lieutenant sat upon the august quarterdeck of the first-rate frigate Edward; a book lay open in his chilled hands, yet his weary eyes were fixed beyond the taffrail upon the harbor. His purser, an elderly accountant wrapped in a thick sable frock certainly tailored before the Great Fire of London, rejoined with his cockney drawl, “though should it have been done?” “Should it have or should it not have is of no consequence.” The ancient purser phlegmatically cackled and replied, “indeed there will be consequences, I promise you sir.” The youth sat silent a moment, then replied, “Whatever they will be, they’re not for us to reckon with,” “I worry the whole world might one day reckon with them.”

The Edward sat lying at anchor a longbow’s shot from the Verrazano Narrows. It was a dark and claustrophobic spot to lay at anchor, where massive forms of shadowy land brooded on every side, Long Island from the east, Staten Island to the west, and far north over a turbulent gray harbor twinkled the dim lights of York City. A gibbous moon was hanging high in the ether and illuminated the hoary tips of waves as they dashed upon the rocks of Brooklyn far afield. It was quite the spot for intrigue, and though the location did little to ease the lieutenant’s anxious mind, nevertheless, he thanked Divine Providence that at the very least he wasn’t docked to some York City wharf, exposed to the dangers of a riotous people, for surely they would riot, and only God knew at what cost to life. Yet for all his thanks, he felt the stifling darkness tightly hem them in and he struggled against a temptation to fitfully pace the quarterdeck. Beyond the golden light streaming from the aft cabin window the harbor was black and bleak, though the reassuring din of waves and water lapping on the wooden hull eased the nocturnal tension.

They had left England full of hope on a sultry midsummer night. Their ship was quite advanced in years, aye holystones so often raked her ancient deck that they planed the wood thin and supple, which in the May sunshine glittered like a roman candle, and at night, the waxy surface reflected the celestial menagerie of milky-way and moonlight. Adrift the cloistered Atlantic you’re cut off from the sinews of the world and hear nothing of news, indeed, had the Island of Britain sounded in a maelstrom, nay even then one wouldn’t hear it. Isolation such as this produces such sweet melancholy that the naturally meditative soul feasts upon every wanton thought as the tepid breeze blows about the waves stirring hidden passions and refiring long-dormant synapses. Such a mixture of summertime aesthetics with the rhythmic machinery of tackle, sail, and rigging, coupled with the profound philosophical solitude, ‘tis no wonder that when the Edward left its port, the ship joyously drove through the wine-dark sea under full sail with a fresh westerly breeze, stuns’ls and all royals trim and taut, the crew singing happy hymns to Springtime, thanking God for their good fortune and for the comely weather. Such rapture inspired in the young lieutenant a poetic spirit antithetical to his landed sensibilities, for in his journal dated July 1765 he hastily jotted the following pentameter lines:

O hallow tulip, flower of the spring,

I cannot wait until the sun may bring

From out the earth your amethystine grace,

Your smell, your pinkish shade, your tender face.

  Yet before long, their jaundiced hope sauntered off to leeward, as if on some restorative pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, and as they soon came to know, it was sick from the start, for the very ballast in the bowels of that ship had rotted it from within, aye they carried in their hull, not a cargo of imported spices, tawny port, or manufactured accoutrements, but rather they hid within the Edward’s boney ribs pallet upon pallet of the King’s hated tax stamps.

The lieutenant again spoke:

“Kit Marlowe.”

“What’s that sir?”

“Kit Marlowe.”

“Sir?”

“Do you think, Peter, that a book can be haunted? That it be tainted by the demonic and bewitch he who reads it?”

“I wouldn’t know sir.”

“For I swear I see will-o’-the-whisps threatening in the harbor. Look yonder, see them glide above the black water.”

“Sir, I see a boat coming, that light's but a lanthorn hanging off the bowsprit.”

“Yet I see Charon sitting at the oar, his eyes are like hollow furnaces on fire, flaming wheels of judgement...”

“Tis no demon, sir, it's Harry come to share his intelligence with us, of the Sons of Liberty and their plans.”

At that name, the lieutenant tightened his hands around his book so very tightly that his knuckles whitened.  

"I thought perhaps I had conjured him, indeed for a second I truly thought I had, for speaking such necromancy- for a brief moment, Peter, I fancied these words had power- beshrew the day my tutor taught me semper audi et pronuntia! Would I recall such hellish vocabulary from my lips..."

He looked down upon his open quarto, whereupon the page was the following:

  Enter FAUSTUS to conjure.

     FAUSTUS. Now that the gloomy shadow of the earth,

     Longing to view Orion's drizzling look,

     Leaps from th' antartic world unto the sky,

     And dims the welkin with her pitchy breath,

     Faustus, begin thine incantations,

     And try if devils will obey thy hest,

     Seeing thou hast pray'd and sacrific'd to them.

     Within this circle is Jehovah's name,

     Forward and backward anagrammatiz'd,

     Th' abbreviated names of holy saints,

     Figures of every adjunct to the heavens,

     And characters of signs and erring stars,

     By which the spirits are enforc'd to rise:

     Then fear not, Faustus, but be resolute,

     And try the uttermost magic can perform.—

     Sint mihi dei Acherontis propitii!  Valeat numen triplex Jehovoe!

     Ignei, aerii, aquatani spiritus, salvete!  Orientis princeps

     Belzebub, inferni ardentis monarcha, et Demogorgon, propitiamus

     vos, ut appareat et surgat Mephistopheles, quid tu moraris?

     per Jehovam, Gehennam, et consecratam aquam quam nunc spargo,

     signumque crucis quod nunc facio, et per vota nostra, ipse nunc

     surgat nobis dicatus Mephistopheles![1]

          Enter MEPHISTOPHELES.

The lieutenant looked up and cast his grim stare upon the approaching oarsman, and said, "still this text can teach. Haven’t I conjured the demon Mephistopheles? Now his chaotic form having raised his blackened head, fit with velvety horns of a hart, feet ashen with cloven hoof, and wavering tail like a feral tabby cat - now that Mephistopheles hath appeared, what I once supposed I could control now taunts me ‘I came hither on my own accord. I am a servant to great Lucifer’ and none commands him but he. Peter, we have lost control. It is out of our hands. Yet can I ever wash them of my guilt, taking part in such tragedy?" Ignoring the young lieutenant’s pontification, the purser merely said, "Harry comes now, sir." Pointing to the glow of distant York City, the lieutenant whispered, "Alas, that demon is already there, walking and spreading mischief."

"Welcome, Henry. The lieutenant sits here," A man wrapped in a tattered coat of oilcloth came aboard and said, “Sir, I come with my affidavit of the minutes of the latest meeting of Sears and the Sons of Liberty at the King’s Arms.” The young lieutenant whispered, ‘tis much ado about nothing. The man handed a paper to the lieutenant, and asked, “Sir?” “Nothing, ‘tis nothing, good Harry, ah here it is, they plan to riot. Whither go they? To the fort. Harry, good fellow, I’m afraid they’ll be blown to smithereens.” “Aye, the cannon now face the city; they know it and will not steer away their course.” “They’re quite determined.” The informant nodded, “They are.” The lieutenant looked at the purser and noted that his grey-glazed eyes fearfully peered beyond his old Nuremburg spectacles at York City. He too looked upon the town which glowed an infernal red hauntingly hazed with the effluvia of sundry brick chimneys and thought: “this house is but a butchery: abhor it, fear it, do not enter it." Looking back upon the informant, he sighed, and said, handing the affidavit to the purser, “Go you both below. Peter, see that our friend Harry is given his coin and some food ere he leaves; mark this paper for the King,” and they both went below, leaving the lieutenant alone upon the quarterdeck.

The lieutenant then spoke to himself: “I came aground yesterday and saw the scholars of the King's College amble through the common near the church on a crystalline Sabbath afternoon, their shoulders unburdened of book satchels, their forms unrestrained by black flowing robes, yet their eyes were overheavy with care at what they knew was coming, for they had long read in the city gazette of New England tidings and the speeches of Patrick Henry and of the resolves of the Virginia legislature. They seemed weary of the constant stream of ill tidings, and I have a heavy heart to think that the arrival of my person, a character as unoffensive to their sensibilities and well-wishing of their happiness, nevertheless carried with it a burden of woe, and a final arrival of that political storm that they had solicitously awaited. Recall and cherish in your hearts, ye hunted city of Manhattoes, the former affection betwixt ye and your brethren of kindred blood, in this moment when the mother seems set to unfairly chastise her sweet son. You are not wayward, nay you are not the prodigal of Luke’s history, for as constantly as streams tend to the ocean, have you been pouring the fruits of all your unceasing labors into your mother’s lap. Good heaven above! and shall a total oblivion of former tenderness and blessings be affected here, shall this citizenry be blazed and incited to a frenzy of passionate insurrection, by the designs of pernicious politics? Where hath your maternal affection gone, dame Britain? Let us not totally sunder at the transient whim of politics, such old alliances and good feelings, such love and dear friendship as we British have.

“Ah, nostalgia, it is the sweetest curse, diverting every thought from the present and the future, hoping for solace amid the empty promises of yesterday. Yesterday we were one in thought and sentiment, yet now, yet what of tomorrow? What may posterity speak of my duty, of the stamps I brought here? Yet, thanks be to God I have done my job. I have ferried this cursed ballast hence, and now, governor, people of this province, the ball is in your court. Act as you think…”

A far-off ship’s bell interrupted his soliloquy, and he looked past the prow upon the open ocean beyond the Narrows. A lithe brig was sneaking into port, and as it passed beneath an overhanging cliff the brig entered a large pool of shadow. The very sails looked black and ominous, the ship looked skeletal, and the ship-lanterns hanging about the rigging seemed like peevish ghosts dancing on the deck. The young lieutenant shivered and pushed his back to the taffrail, hoping to flee the sight, for he immediately remembered the commonplace rumor of the ghost-ship Flying Dutchman seen to haunt upon a harbor at midnight, bringing doom and death upon her advent. He reasoned with himself, that it couldn’t be, nay it couldn’t, for an old midshipman spoke the tale once, and said the Dutchman’s ancestral haunt was the Cape of Good Hope; that it was formerly an Amsterdam Indiaman come to the Cape hoping to secure itself against a hurricane, yet having no pilot at harbor to see her safely in, she was lost at sea, and that ever since that time, when bad weather threatened, the Dutchman was seen ashore and by mariners sailing in the stormy vicinity. Therefore, it couldn’t be her, such a phantom in New York Harbor? Nay it wasn’t, for the brig peaked beyond the darkness and reentered the moonshine and flying from her stern was the flag of the East India Company. The lieutenant relaxed as he saw human movement aboard the ship, and trained his weary eye back upon the city, and finished, “Act as you may, New York, and I pray God that it ends well, though I fear naught will come from this but tragedy.”

A half penny tax stamp on an English newspaper pre-1765, similar to what is being described in the story.

[1] “May the unholy god of the Acheron favor me! Be strong the triple named Jehova! Greetings to ye spirits of fire, air, and water! Let the Demogorgon and Belzebub, monarch of the burning deep, prince of the east, have favor, and appear and rise Mephistopheles, for why dost thou delay? By almighty Jehova, Hell, the unholy consecrated water which I now sprinkle upon ye, and the sign of the cross which I now make, through these our unholy offerings, may the aforesaid Mephistopheles himself arise for us!”