The haves and have-nots of yore

Reading about the harsh punishments meted out by the Puritan governors of the northern English town in “Havoc, in Its Third Year,” Ronan Bennett’s historical novel of the 17th century, one might be reminded of the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan or of other religious extremists, Islamic, Christian, Jewish or Hindu. Indeed, when it comes to being ruthless, single-minded and doctrinaire, religion is hardly a prerequisite: vide Stalin’s gulag, the killing fields of Pol Pot, China’s Cultural Revolution and the actions of the “incorruptible” hero of the French Revolution, Robespierre.

But the modern-day parallel Bennett had in mind, according to an interview, was something considerably less horrific: the “zero-tolerance” policy toward urban crime adopted in Britain by the last two British governments, first Conservative and now Labor.

But whatever the novelist’s original impetus may have been, the story that unfolds in his novel takes on not only a life of its own but also a wide range of potential meanings. The 1630s, as Bennett reminds us in his author’s note, were a frightening time for many Englishmen:

“Massing at the gate were the fanatical, brainwashed followers of the pope and the Catholic armies of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire determined to extinguish their liberties, religion, heritage and institutions -- what today we would call their very way of life.”

Fearful of war from abroad and fifth columnists from within, alarmed by what they saw as a rising tide of disorder, vagrancy, crime and “ungodliness,” sincere Puritans were determined to reform their communities, whatever the cost.

The novel’s hero, John Brigge, is a decent, honorable man who has been given a role in the reform government of his local community. Brigge serves as the community’s coroner, and it is in this capacity that he finds himself investigating a disturbing case involving an itinerant Irishwoman accused of killing her newborn infant. Although his fellow governors are ready to condemn her, something about the case simply doesn’t add up for him.

Despite his commitment to pursuing the truth, Brigge, as Bennett portrays him, is not a modern-day crime scene investigator. He is a 17th century man, still in the grip of magical or superstitious thinking: “Like all men facing uncertainty, he desperately wanted to know the future.... What was God’s plan for him? He looked ceaselessly for signs and struggled with their meanings -- a robin’s return to a branch, the bud of a wildflower where none had grown before, the appearance of a strange dog with a walled blue eye.” Yet Brigge is also a compassionate and fair-minded man, and it is his essential humanity and decency that make him the only official to care about either justice or truth.

Unlike some of his fellow governors, Brigge has little interest in public life and almost no appetite for power. He is, as we are wont to say now, a “private” person whose deepest feelings are for his family, his farm, his sheep, his crops. His mind is much occupied with anxieties about his beloved wife, Elizabeth, who is facing a difficult childbirth. One of his fellow governors, a skeptical doctor named Antrobus, has offered his help, but Brigge dislikes “meddling.” It is this attitude that allows him to be blindsided by the schemes and stratagems swirling around him.

An impressive feature of this novel is its sustained evocation of the hardships of daily life and the lives of the poor in particular. The falsely accused Irishwoman, Katherine Shay, speaking on their (and her own) behalf, gives eloquent voice to the harshness -- and the injustice -- of their sufferings.

As the ongoing land-grab known as “enclosure” privatized common lands, forcing peasants off land they had used for generations, laws were enacted to penalize these hapless people for leaving their native heaths to seek work elsewhere. Brigge’s investigation of the case against Shay brings him into contact with members of this so-called vagrant class, most of whom, as he discovers, turn out to be honest men and women doing their best to survive under well-nigh impossible circumstances.

“Havoc, in Its Third Year” is very much a novel of atmosphere. Plunging us into a somber world of uncertainty, fears and portents, Bennett succeeds in making the vanished past vivid -- and in making us wonder if there are not perhaps some parallels between that time and our own.