So many fields in England have been stained with blood. So many battles have been fought on this earth that you can scarce walk a mile without stepping over bones.
There are some places that have seemed strange to me as if their umbilical cord to a past lineage has been somehow cut. Some places mystify me as if their presence is encoded wrongly, as if there is some anomaly. One such place I visited by chance some years ago was Newton near Geddington. A strange place that seemed half-formed whose church had been taken over for a field centre; where once I sat one afternoon looking at ugly wriggling water creatures from the nearby Ise brook. Creatures fit only for nightmares and horror films. And I was glad it took a microscope to see them. But there was something odd about the village as if credit had been withheld, and so it had not thrived. And I felt uneasy there, but didn’t know why.
Today someone told me the story of this village. Of how a thousand peasants, men women and children once gathered there to rebel against the enclosure laws that denied them the common land. Of a man who led others into battle against the landowners servants saying he had a magical pouch to keep his followers safe, and earned the nickname, Captain Pouch.
Of near fifty people who were then butchered for protesting their rights. Of how the river ran red with blood on that day the 8th June, 1607.
Of how Captain Pouch, John Reynolds, was captured and his magical pouch was found to contain only mouldy cheese.
Of how the ringleaders were then hanged and quartered and their body parts displayed throughout the land as a warning to others.
So the landowners won the day, and their greed for land was not checked.
Nearby is a great house where once I met a man in a wheelchair. I chatted to him feeling somewhat sorry for his condition and later discovered that he was the Duke of Buccleugh, at that time the richest man in England. He was a Montagu descendent. One who had inherited great wealth as a direct result of this greed and murder.
How the Montagu family must have laughed to have heard that there was only mouldy cheese in John Reynold’s pouch for they had the whole kingdom in their pockets.
And how sad that they felt no compassion for John Reynold’s condition. How they felt no qualms whatsoever for him only having mouldy cheese to eat. How sad that they were unconcerned that so many had died, or for those who were now forced to forage in the forest. How disgraceful that the surviving peasants had to sign an apology by leaving their mark.
How cruel has been the rule of law in this land.
I can only hope that the Montagus sniffed John Reynold’s piece of cheese for then they would have sniffed their own stench of corruption, a stench that I hope lingers around them still.
I can see no difference between them and those microscopic water creatures I found in the Ise brook, excepting that I now realise that those water creatures were much prettier.
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