Trinity College, Dublin
“You shall judge, my lord.”
“That is the purpose for which I sit here.”
“And so shall you, gentlemen.” Blood looked from judge to jury. The latter shifted uncomfortably under the confident flash of his blue eyes. Lord Jeffreys’s bullying charge had whipped the spirit out of them. Had they, themselves, been prisoners accused of treason, he could not have arraigned them more ferociously.
Peter Blood stood boldly forward, erect, self-possessed, and saturnine. He was freshly shaven, and his periwig, if out of curl, was at least carefully combed and dressed.
“Captain Hobart has testified to what he knows - that he found me at Oglethorpe’s Farm on the Monday morning after the battle at Weston. But he has not told you what I did there.”
Again the Judge broke in. “Why, what should you have been doing there in the company of rebels, two of whom - Lord Gildoy and your fellow there - have already admitted their guilt?”
“That is what I beg leave to tell your lordship.”
“I pray you do, and in God’s name be brief, man. For if I am to be troubled with the say of all you traitor dogs, I may sit here until the Spring Assizes.”
“I was there, my lord, in my quality as a physician, to dress Lord Gildoy’s wounds.”
“What’s this? Do you tell us that you are a physician?”
“A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin.”
“Good God!” cried Lord Jeffreys, his voice suddenly swelling, his eyes upon the jury. “What an impudent rogue is this! You heard the witness say that he had known him in Tangiers some years ago, and that he was then an officer in the French service. You heard the prisoner admit that the witness had spoken the truth?”
“Why, so he had. Yet what I am telling you is also true, so it is. For some years I was a soldier; but before that I was a physician, and I have been one again since January last, established in Bridgewater, as I can bring a hundred witnesses to prove.”
“There’s not the need to waste our time with that. I will convict you out of your own rascally mouth. I will ask you only this: How came you, who represent yourself as a physician peacefully following your calling in the town of Bridgewater, to be with the army of the Duke of Monmouth?”
“I was never with that army. No witness has sworn to that, and I dare swear that no witness will. I never was attracted to the late rebellion. I regarded the adventure as a wicked madness. I take leave to ask your lordship” (his brogue became more marked than ever) “what should I, who was born and bred a papist, be doing in the army of the Protestant Champion?”
“A papist thou?” The judge gloomed on him a moment. “Art more like a snivelling, canting Jack Presbyter. I tell you, man, I can smell a Presbyterian forty miles.”
“Then I’ll take leave to marvel that with so keen a nose your lordship can’t smell a papist at four paces.”