Loyalty

Part 1

1774

Friday, April 1, 1774

On this day, my father was murdered because he said a prayer.

It happened in our town of Tullbury, a few miles west of Concord in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, the British colony in North America. A crowd of some fifteen angry men had gathered outside our door. Death to tyrants! they were chanting. Keep our freedom! Down with King George!

Not only did I smell wood burning, but smoke was drifting into our house. I didn’t know the reason for the fire but feared the worst, since I knew that houses were being burned and looted by such mobs. Father had told me that.

Despite the uproar outside, my father, Solomon Cope, the parish minister of Tullbury’s Grace Church, had gathered our family—my mother (Clemency Cope), my two sisters (Mercy and Faith), and me, Noah Paul—about the table for our regular pre-dinner prayer. We struggled to keep our attention on Father because, since it was spring weather, our two front windows had their shutters open and some of those outside men were leaning in to listen to what Father was reciting: a prayer from a book called Morning and Evening Prayers for Families, Wives, Children and Servants.

For as long as my memory reached over my thirteen years of life, Father had read that prayer to us each day. It was, he believed, his duty to do so. Being the absolute head of our family, even as he was the head of his church, he was a strict father, an ever-correcting teacher, sure of himself and unemotional in his ways. But at that moment, I was witnessing his fright, something I had never seen before. Let it be said: a frightened parent is—for a child—a terrible thing to behold.

In a shaky voice, he read: ‘Help me daily to increase in the knowledge and love of thee, my God, and of my savior, Jesus Christ. Show me the way in which I should walk while I am young and grant that I may never depart from it. Bless whatever good instructions have been given me, that I may be ever-growing in knowledge, in wisdom, and in goodness.’

Knowing what words came next, I nervously flipped the hair out of my face and tried to keep my eyes on Father, even as I stole glances at the men at the windows.

As if seeking strength, Father took a deep breath, gripped the book tightly in his small hands, and completed the prayer: ‘Bless, and defend, and save the king and all the royal family.’

No sooner did the men leaning in hear Father utter those words than the door burst open—we never had a lock—and some of the mob rushed into our front room. Two held muskets.

With a hand clamped over his mouth to prevent him from speaking, Father was dragged from the house.

Were these assailants strangers from another country or province? No. Every man was from our town of some fifty families. I knew them all. A few were parishioners in my father’s church. One of them, I was shocked to see, was Mr. Downs, father of my friend Micah, who often visited my home. Sons of Liberty, these men styled themselves, insisting that they—and they alone—were preserving our freedoms from the tyranny of England. A large portion—though not all—of the town supported them.

As Father was hauled outside, my sisters burst into cries of dread along with torrents of tears. My mother, a small woman with gray hair, shrieked, jumped up, and tried to hold Father back but was flung aside. I, too, used all my strength to keep Father in the house. But two large men—William Harwood and Ezekiel Trak—grabbed hold of my arms and marched me outdoors even as they kept me from Father.

Come see how we deal with Loyalists, boy, Mr. Harwood hissed into my ear.

You may be sure I fought to free myself, but against such large-made men, it was useless.

Was an entire troop required to subdue Father? Was he such a person of strength? Nothing like. Rather, he was a tall, skinny man of modest power with a smooth-shaven face that projected, beyond all else, self-confidence. The strongest thing about Father, his voice, expressed deep conviction. His sermons were always forceful while pleasing to the ear. Although the word was no longer fashionable, he liked to refer to himself as a Puritan.

And now, having spoken his beliefs, he was pulled from his home.

Once Father was outside, he was encircled by the crowd. Curse the king! they demanded. Renounce England! Defend our sacred freedoms!

All the while, Father was being pushed and shoved so that he bounced from one man to another like a shuttlecock in a game. It was appalling to observe.

To these demands and battering, Father, though he gasped for breath, stayed mute. He was trying—I knew him well enough—to maintain his self-respect as well as his religious oaths.

In contrast, the faces of the men who had seized him were flushed with anger and elation, each man encouraging others to greater brutality. Then, to my further horror, some of the men, Proctor Davenport, Thomas Radcliff, and George Gardner, began to strip Father of his clothing.

Father was dressed in his usual black clerical garb: coat, waistcoat, britches, stockings, and shoes. No wig. Not one bit of neck lace or fancy upon him, not so much as an iron buckle on his shoes.

Within moments, all his clothing—including shoes and linen—was taken from him and flung upon the ground. Father, milk pale, stood naked as Adam, shivering from fright and chill without so much as a fig leaf to cover his privates while he tried to hide his shame. But he was not standing in the Garden of Eden facing his Creator; rather, he stood in his own front yard before uncompromising rebels. And let it be noted that I was being held in such a fashion that I was forced to witness Father’s humiliation. Indeed, I was sure his dishonor was mine, too.

Tar him! shouted Ananias Neale, our local blacksmith.

The crowd parted, and Ebenezer Goodman and Samuel Skelton, both brawny men, came forward. They were holding the handles of a blackened iron pot from which I saw shimmering heat rise, which told me why they had made a fire. The next moment, Richard Poor and Ezekiel Trak stepped up with large horsehair brushes in their hands.

Father made desperate efforts to free himself. Once again, I tried to help. Neither he nor I was successful.

Denounce the king! someone shouted. Tell us who else in town supports him! called another.

At last, Father spoke. In a gasping voice clogged with sobs, he cried out, God save our king!

That further infuriated the crowd. Two of the men clutched Father’s arms and held them out as Mr. Goodman and Mr. Skelton set the iron pot down near him. Those with brushes dipped them into the boiling tar and began to splash and paint Father’s body, bringing forth ghastly cries of pain. It took but seconds for him to be covered in scalding pitch from his balding head to his small, narrow feet, some of it dripping down over his face like black tears.

Oh, you who read my words: may you never witness the torture of your father. I don’t pretend I suffered anything like his agony, but at that moment I felt like my soul was being ripped from my body.

Then George Deaver raised a plump bag and tumbled out a cloud of chicken feathers. These feathers were scooped up instantly and daubed on Father so that he looked like a grotesque bird of giant size.

Released, Father fell to the ground, writhing in agony.

Someone shouted, So be it to all enemies of our sacred liberties!

With more cries, such as Down with King George—God save Massachusetts! the crowd dispersed, laughing and shouting insults. Our nearest neighbors—who must have observed what happened—had remained in their homes throughout the clash.

I flung myself down by Father, who was moaning and writhing, but there was nothing I could do. My mother and sisters rushed out with a blanket and wrapped it around him. Then the four of us carried his convulsing body inside.

Once within the house, Mother tried to remove the still-warm pitch from his skin. The process was not just agonizing but failed. In three days, my father, never free of mortification or suffering, died.

I tell you truly, God save England were his last words on earth.

Monday, April 4, 1774

We laid Father’s body out in the front room. During the two days that his remains rested there, we stayed by his side. Not one person from our town came to pay respects or offer so much as a sip of sympathy. Tullbury, the town in which I had spent all my life, my home, treated us as outcasts.

Numb from the dreadfulness of it all, I didn’t know what would happen. Full of confusion and despair, I was unable to see how my family could exist without Father, for he had guided us in every way every day. The intense shock of the sudden loss brought on a kind of blindness: I could see only the past, not a future.

I must admit I felt one splinter of doubt: Why did my father have to be so unlike the other men in town, and preach against the things they believed? But no sooner did I have such a thought than I was ashamed and dared not give it voice. Indeed, I rebuked myself for failing Father in his hour of martyrdom.

The people I most wanted to see, wishing reassuring acceptance, were my best friends, Micah Downs and Nathaniel Farrington. That Micah’s father had been part of that assaulting mob made the attack even worse. To be sure, I had known Mr. Downs was a radical. It had mattered little to me before. Now it mattered greatly.

I trusted none of our neighbors and feared leaving our house lest I, too, be assaulted as another Loyalist. With Father’s tar and feathering, I hated the town of Tullbury and all the people who lived there. Moreover, I feared them.

Wednesday, April 6, 1774

When two days passed, our church sexton, eighty-year-old, white-haired Mr. Bellwright, brought a pinewood coffin that he had fashioned with his knobby hands. Continually bobbing bows and whispering words of woe, he bore Father away on a screaky cart.

Mother, my sisters, and I followed, walking upon the town’s one road until we reached the cemetery next to Father’s Grace Church. No one was on the street but us, though you may be sure I knew all who resided in the houses we passed. In a few homes were particular friends. That day, doors were shut, windows covered. But as we went along, an occasional curtain twitched, which told me we were being watched.

There was another church down the road, the Congregational one, where most of the community worshiped. But Grace Church was where my grandfather, Pastor Obadiah Cope, lay. My great-grandfather, Jeremiah Cope, a pastor too, was also buried there. That was where we took Father.

In the churchyard, Mr. Bellwright had dug a deep and narrow grave surrounded by multiple slate stones that bore images of death’s-heads with wings, weeping willow trees, and anguished angels. Using ropes, Mr. Bellwright and I lowered the coffin that held Father into the grave.

Since there was no minister—indeed, no one but us—Mother asked me to read the service. Pushing my hair back, I did so. Finding it hard to say the words, I haltingly read the funeral text over my murdered father. Then we covered him with earth. I can assure you that dirt falling upon a coffin lid is the deadest sound on earth.

My sisters held hands and cried. Mother wept. So did I. But by the end of the day, I was bereft of tears, a deep well gone dry.

Throughout, I kept thinking, Where are my friends?

Then into my head crept a further thought: How did the mob know my father always read aloud that prayer with those words about our king?

Someone had betrayed us.

I needed to know who.

The burial over, we four walked back home. Mother insisted I lead the way. Then came Mother. Finally, my sisters together. Eyes set straight ahead, we went in affrighted silence, walking slowly despite fears we might be attacked. Though I was sure we were being watched, no one came out to us, not even our neighbors. It was a great relief when we arrived home unharmed.

Our modest wooden house—on a stone foundation—had been built by my great-grandfather when he first came to Tullbury. That tells you how old it was, and how long the Copes had lived there. Indeed, my father grew up in our house.

Beyond the front door, there was a room to the right where we ate meals. In one corner stood a cupboard where the old family Bible always lay open. My great-great-grandfather, Jacob Cope, brought that Bible with him when he came from England in 1652. On the inside of the cover was a lengthy list (in many hands) of family names with dates of births, marriages, and deaths, our family history. Not a profound memoir, but a chronology of our lives. The earliest date was 1623, in England.

Our cupboard held some pewter dishes, cups, and candlesticks, everything old. Newness was not our nature. (My sister Mercy once complained to Father about that, only to be chided for her vanity.)

Also in that room was a table upon which Father wrote his sermons with his small hands, slender quills, and never-changing convictions.

Against the east wall was the hearth in which my mother cooked. Blackened pots hung from chimney hooks. From ceiling beams dangled herbs whose leaves were as dry as old butterfly wings.

To the left was the parlor, with its own hearth. Also, a spinning wheel, which my mother used. The room having straight chairs and a settle, my family gathered there most evenings. Many a night my sisters worked their samplers by candlelight. Mother guided them. All the while Father read aloud to us from some worthy book (such as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress or Edwards’s Freedom of Will). I was expected to answer questions Father put to me about the text, and since he was my teacher, he corrected me when I was wrong, which, by his lights, was most of the time.

We learned reading and writing at the town’s little grammar school. Father gave memory training by having me repeat Bible verses. His expectation was that when I turned fifteen, I would study at Harvard College and continue the Cope line of ministers. My sisters would marry pastors.

(I admit, sometimes I fancied I might go to sea before I became a minister. I imagined running away from my family to distant islands with friends and having adventures. You may be sure this was something I never shared with my father.)

At the rear of the house was a smaller room. My sisters and I were born there, Mother’s mother serving as midwife. There was also a pantry. Out back was a vegetable garden. And the privy.

Between the two front rooms were narrow steps that led up to the second floor. Under a low, slanting roof there were two modest spaces. One was where my parents slept. In the other, my sisters and I reposed. It was hot in the summer but made comfortable in cold winter by the brass bedwarmer, which another grandmother had brought across the sea from England years ago.

My father insisted we live a self-effacing, simple, and solemn life, saying we must set an example of humbleness. Displays of affection were frowned upon. Smiles rare. Sorrow silent. Laughter nonexistent. If my parents disagreed, I never knew it. Father’s most oft-repeated maxim was a quote from an ancient church divine who said, It was pride that turned angels into devils and humility that made men angels.

Once when Father said that, my sister Mercy replied, Then I am glad I’m not a man. That brought a sharp rebuke.

From then on, whenever Father quoted the remark—it was his favorite—my sister looked at me and shared a secret eye-smirk. I had to look away, fearful of Father’s disapproval.

In short, Father was forever telling me what was right and what was wrong. Now the one who had always instructed me on what to do was gone. I had been thrown into an unknown wilderness, and I was left to find my way.

I hardly knew how to take one step.

After the funeral, the family gathered around our table. Mother, pale and faint in voice, began with a recital of the same prayer Father had been reading when he was attacked. You may be sure this time the window shutters were closed.

Her voice unsteady, she read, ‘Help me daily to increase in the knowledge and love of thee, my God . . .’ She went on to read the whole prayer, but as she approached the end, she hesitated, afraid or unwilling to say those fateful words. After some moments of what seemed a struggle, she read the last sentence: ‘Bless, and defend, and save the king and all the royal family.’

How curious that those words, which I had heard so often for so many years with very little thought, were now fraught with frightful hazard. It was a lesson: what we never notice can become all we see.

I understood Mother to mean that we must go on being loyal to the same faith and convictions that Father practiced, that nothing in our lives should change. My advice to you all is, Mother said, her eyes on me, be true to yourself.

The only way I could understand her was that being true meant being like Father.

And yet—and yet—so much had already changed. I knew it more when my mother set out the family Bible as well as quill pen and ink and told me to write down the date of Father’s death next to his birth and marriage days: his entire life in stark numbers. When I finished writing them, I was sure I was meant to start a new chapter, but as far as I was concerned, our story was done. The end.

But Mother said, Your father left a will.

What’s a will? Faith, my younger sister, asked.

Being eight years of age—five years younger than me—Faith was the family baby and looked it. Though I was young at the time, I well remembered that when Faith was born, Mother had almost died, as many women did during childbirth. Those had been fearful days in our family, with great tension, dread, and constant prayers. Father named the baby Faith because he was sure it was our deep faith that saved mother and child. Those nerve-racking days were seared upon my heart.

Round-faced, somewhat small and delicate, Faith had dimpled hands, pink cheeks, and a way of blurting things out, asking questions Mercy—my elder sister—and I wanted to put forward but didn’t, in fear we would reveal, despite being older, our ignorance.

Mother replied, A will is a legal document that determines where Father’s property should go when he dies . . . which has happened.

Isn’t the property yours? was Faith’s next question. That was what I assumed.

When a husband dies, said Mother, the family property goes to his wife. For the moment, everything rests in my hands. But when Noah turns eighteen, Father’s will states it all goes to him.

Her words astonished me.

Mercy was equally surprised. All? she cried out.

Being three years older than me, Mercy thought herself a young woman and tried to act as such. Looking much like Mother, but already taller, she had dark eyes, a somewhat stub nose, a pouty mouth, and a sharp tongue. Though she and I were fond, Father, who insisted on restraint in all things, always cautioned us about expressions of affection within the family. Instead, Mercy and I were forever bickering, jockeying for authority, with her trying to tell me what I should do. Since Father was constantly preaching, Mother always deferential, and Faith so childish, Mercy, despite her sharpness, was the one with whom I felt closest. Only with me did she share her many complaints about Father’s firm rules, objections I listened to with guilty (if silent) agreement. Though I never said I sided with her, she must have sensed I did so secretly, because she took pleasure in telling me such things.

And, continued Mother, there is something else.

What? I asked.

As the eldest male, Noah, you are now the head of the family.

Me? I yelped. Being but thirteen, I considered myself far too young to take Father’s place.

I don’t expect you to make judgments at this time, Mother continued. But from now on, I’ll consult you on all matters of importance. So, strive to have wise thoughts and be brave. And both of you—she looked at my sisters—must acknowledge your brother with new respect.

Faith gazed at me with alarm or disbelief, perhaps both.

As for Mercy, the firm set of her mouth and the slight narrowing of her eyes suggested hurt resentment at my new position. There was a tiny upward tilt of her sharp chin that showed (I thought) rejection of my elevated status. I was sure she was telling me: I dare you to try to be superior to me.

Let it be clear: she said nothing, but I fear that I (from habit, not malice) may have answered her reaction with smuggery. Moreover, as I pushed the hair out of my face, I was unable to keep from sitting a little taller while Mercy and Faith considered me with their different gazes.

At the end of the day, I was left with sad thoughts. I noted how empty our home felt. And what folly it was to think I was head of the family. How I wished nothing had changed. Moreover, I was unable to free myself from the fear that we would be attacked. Since I was now the only male in the family, I was fearful that the Sons of Liberty might think I knew what they had asked Father about: who the town’s other Loyalists were.

Before I proceed with my narration, you must know some things to better understand all that happened.

To begin: Father—as I have related—traced his ancestry back to England, to the Dorset town of Weymouth. His forefathers immigrated to Massachusetts in the year 1652, so the Copes had lived there for 122 years. However, although my father lived his entire life in New England and had never visited old England, three thousand miles away, he, as did most Massachusetts inhabitants, considered himself a citizen of what he called our mother country. England, Great Britain, was for him home.

When Father was ordained—at Harvard College in Cambridge—he swore upon the Bible to uphold the Church of England. He held no promise more sacred than to defend that church and its leader, King George III, the anointed monarch of Great Britain’s American colonies. Father used to say, "The church is England, and England is the