Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [520]
In June 1776, under the command of Brigadier General Fraser, the 62nd helped to hold off and then scatter two thousand of the rebels who had advanced upon the town of Sorel on the St Lawrence river. Two hundred rebel prisoners were taken. After this victory, known as the Battle of Three Rivers, part of the British force, under General Burgoyne, moved down to Fort St John.
It was a successful action. The 62nd had distinguished itself, and to his great delight, Adam Shockley at last found himself promoted to captain.
“We’ve driven the rebels out of Canada,” Burgoyne told his new captain. “Now we’ll crush them above New York.”
One other event had occurred meanwhile, that seemed to give the lie to this confident boast. For a month after Three Rivers, thirteen provinces in North America took the flag of the stars and stripes and made their Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration called forth one of Jonathan Shockley’s most characteristic letters from Sarum:
As to this Declaration of Independence, I confess myself utterly astonished. That all men are born free and equal is an assertion against the history and constitution of every civilised country.
There’s not a word of such a thing in Magna Carta to be sure.
Then the assertion that all men have the right to the pursuit of happiness; I cannot imagine why it should be thought so. Certainly there’s no word about happiness in the Bible, nor in any of the canons of the Christian religion. Indeed, I scarcely think our Puritans in England would have tolerated such a notion for a moment; for your Calvinist makes a virtue of being miserable upon every opportunity.
No, my dear Adam, these are the vapourings of enthusiasts and demagogues, and soon will pass.
Yet it was the very day after the successful battle of Three Rivers that Adam Shockley decided the English cause was lost.
He was a small fellow, barely sixteen years old, and he was sitting very quietly with the other prisoners. When he had been taken the day before it had amused the men that the musket they took from him was so much larger than he was.
He was not only small, he was narrow – there was no other word for it. It was not only his thin face, and close-set eyes, not only his thin, spidery hands; his whole body seemed not more than a foot across at the shoulder.
Yet – Shockley noticed it about nearly all the prisoners – the boy had a sort of inner calm about him, not at all like the boisterous good nature of his own men. His dark eyes stared at his captors without fear or anger; it was almost as if he pitied them.
His name was John Hillier.
Feeling sorry for the boy, Shockley strode over to him.
“You have a Wiltshire name, Mr Hillier,’ he said with a smile. “Plenty of Hilliers around Sarum where I come from.”
The boy nodded calmly.
“My grandfather left Wiltshire,” he replied, gazing at Adam without either respect or insolence.
“Oh. Why was that?”
“His wife’s family turned Quakers, captain. They were more welcome in Pennsylvania than England.” He spoke with the quiet assurance that it was England who had lost by their move. “Then my grandfather went to join them after.”
Shockley thought of the little community of Quakers he remembered at Wilton. They had been tolerated – just. He couldn’t say he blamed the Hilliers and their Quaker relations for leaving.
“But you and your family, you are not Quakers?”
“No,” he said simply. “Quakers don’t fight. I do.”
“And what do you hope to gain from this fighting, Mr Hillier?” he asked pleasantly.
The boy looked at him in surprise.
“Freedom,” he said simply.
Shockley would have liked to sit down beside him to talk, but thought that, as an officer, he should not; and so their conversation was conducted in this strange fashion, with the young captive sitting on the ground and the bluff British officer standing in front of him. Despite this, they spoke easily enough.
“Tell me then, Mr Hillier, what is the freedom you seek?”
“That no man should be taxed without