Sydney M. Williams

www.burrowingintobooks.blogspot.com

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.