The Baroque Cycle - The System Of The World Part 76

"Then we wait until those stripes are healed. Then we do it-"

"Boys, you do not understand. There will always always be something. The Overseer be something. The Overseer knows knows how to keep men downtrodden. Especially black men. I didn't understand that, when I came here. It's different, the way he treats me. Look at my back, and tell me it isn't so." how to keep men downtrodden. Especially black men. I didn't understand that, when I came here. It's different, the way he treats me. Look at my back, and tell me it isn't so."

Lines of fire run in parallel courses across the walls of the shack where the sun glares between unc.h.i.n.ked wall-planks. A pig roots outside, undermining the corner of their dwelling, but they can't shoo it away or eat it because it is the Overseer's pride and joy. They can hear him now, bellowing in the distance. "Jimmy? Danny! Jimmy? Danny! Where the h.e.l.l have you got to?"

"Lookin' after our mate you just beat half to death, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d," mutters Jimmy.

"I want to see red necks on the lot of you," says Tomba, repeating the Overseer's favorite aphorism. "Tomorrow, red necks all around, save for this Blackamoor-there's only one way to give him him a red neck and that's with the lash." Tomba gets his hands underneath him, and pushes himself up on to all fours, then hangs his head low and lets his dreadlocks sweep the floor, he's so woozy. a red neck and that's with the lash." Tomba gets his hands underneath him, and pushes himself up on to all fours, then hangs his head low and lets his dreadlocks sweep the floor, he's so woozy.

"Jimmy? Danny! Jimmy? Danny! Are you feedin' your pet Blackamoor?" By process of elimination, the Overseer has figured out where they are, and is drawing nigh.

"You're right," says Tomba, "he means to kill me today. It is time to unpack unpack."

"Then unpack unpack we shall," says Danny. we shall," says Danny.

He bends down and seizes the hay-bag that served him for a bed, and rips it open from one end to the other. Out tumbles an elongated bundle. Jimmy s.n.a.t.c.hes it and tears away several rope ties. The two Shaftoes work together to unroll the bundle, Danny holding his arms out like a pair of shelf-brackets while Jimmy unwinds the bolt of canvas. Tomba paws one hand up the shack's wall until he finds a hand-hold on one of the hewn logs that make up its frame, and pulls himself to his feet. "They're not in here, Master!" he calls, "no one in here but poor Tomba!"

"You're a d.a.m.ned liar!" bellows the Overseer, and hammers the door open with the b.u.t.t of his whip-handle. He stops, framed in the entrance, unable to see into the darkness of the shed. He can hear, though, the unexpected sounds of two gently curved blades-a longer one and a shorter one-being whisked from their scabbards. Perhaps he even glimpses the unaccustomed sight of Carolina sunlight gleaming from watered steel.

"Don't tell us," says Danny, "you want to see some red necks around this place. Is that what you were about to say?"

"What-get back to work, you lazy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Or I'll give you more of what Tomba got!" The Overseer steps into the shed, and raises his whip; but before he can bring it down, steel skirls past his ear, and the amputated lash drops to the dirt floor at his feet. Tomba staggers outside and closes the shed door behind himself. He squints about at several acres of mud, which he knows to be red in color, though it looks gray to him because his vision has gone black and white. A big white house stands at one end. Indentured servants toil with mattocks and shovels. Behind him, the Overseer has become uncharacteristically silent. Perhaps his eyes have adjusted to the point where he can see he's locked in a confined s.p.a.ce with a pair of enraged Samurai.

"There's more'n one way to make a red neck," Danny points out, "and here's how they do it in Nagasaki!" There follows a rapid sequence of noises that Tomba has not heard in quite a while, though he recognizes them well enough. Blood rushes out from under the shed wall and puddles in the wallow rooted out by the Overseer's pig. Drawn by its fragrance, the pig waddles over, snuffles, then begins to lap it up.

Jimmy and Danny burst out of the shed. Danny wipes his blade on his pant-leg and re-sheathes it. Jimmy hollers to the other indentured servants: "You all can take the rest of the day off! And when Mr. Ickham comes back from Charleston, and wants to know what happened, why, you just tell him that it was done by the Red-Neck Ronin, and that we went that-away!" And he thrusts his wakizas.h.i.+ wakizas.h.i.+ into the un-tamed West. Then he sheathes it and turns to his companions. into the un-tamed West. Then he sheathes it and turns to his companions.

"Let's head for the hills, boys."

Cornwall WILL C COMSTOCK, the Earl of Lostwithiel, has been worrying that they'll become trapped in one of the sudden mists that wander about the moors like ghosts through a haunted house, and lose their way. And indeed such mists wash up round them on two occasions. He insists, then, that they stop right where they are, and bide their time until the air clears. Daniel frets that the Earl of Lostwithiel, has been worrying that they'll become trapped in one of the sudden mists that wander about the moors like ghosts through a haunted house, and lose their way. And indeed such mists wash up round them on two occasions. He insists, then, that they stop right where they are, and bide their time until the air clears. Daniel frets that Minerva Minerva shall lose patience, and sail without him. But around midday the mists blow off on a stiff north wind that presses and pursues them down-valley toward the sea, now visible far off, pea-green, and pied with cloud-shadows and sun-shafts. shall lose patience, and sail without him. But around midday the mists blow off on a stiff north wind that presses and pursues them down-valley toward the sea, now visible far off, pea-green, and pied with cloud-shadows and sun-shafts.

The land is chopped by stone walls into parcels so irregular it's almost as if this country had to be pieced together from shreds of other worlds. In the high open country that tumbles down from the moors, the walls are lacy and irregular. Later, as the company of travelers traverse down into the valley, they pa.s.s through forests of stunted oaks, no taller than Daniel's head, that cling to the slopes like wool to a sheep's back and refuse to give up their leaves even at this time of year. There the walls run straight and solid, drenched with moss and saturated with life.

From such a wood, the company emerges into a smoky bottom-land, where s.h.a.ggy anthracite-colored cattle engage in desultory shoving-matches. They fall in along the course of a rus.h.i.+ng river that has vaulted down off the moor. Not far below them, it slows, flattens, and broadens to an estuary. There is the longboat waiting to take Daniel out to Minerva Minerva, which is anch.o.r.ed somewhere hereabouts, making ready for the run to Oporto and thence, eventually, to Boston.

But the travelers from London have not followed the Earl of Lostwithiel and Thomas Newcomen all this way to look at cows or boats. As they come out from under the dripping eaves of the last little oak-coppice, Daniel Waterhouse, Norman Orney, and Peter Hoxton begin to note certain oddments and novelties round the foot of the valley. Above the high tide mark, the ground runs gently up-hill for no more than a bow-shot before leaping up to make a rocky bluff that looms over the estuary. It's obvious enough, even to visitors who are not aficionadoes of the Technologickal Arts, that men have been digging coal out of the roots of that bluff for many generations. The flat ground along the sh.o.r.e is strewn with dunnage and gouged with marks where they have trundled and dragged the coal down to meet the boats. To that point, it is typical of a certain type of small mine that might prosper until the miners delved to the waterline, and then be abandoned.

There is a flattish out-cropping not far above the foot of the bluff. On it stands a thing that might have been cobbled together from pieces of drawbridges and siege engines. Two free-standing stone walls are held apart by an unroofed void perhaps four yards in breadth. That void has been congested with a dark web of timbers that reminds Daniel of a gallows. This supports some arrangement of platforms, stairs, ladders, and Machinery that is quite difficult to sort out, even as they draw closer to it. From its complexities emerges a sucking and hissing and booming, like the beating of a giant's heart, one might think, in the last moments before it dies. This does not die, however, but keeps going in a steady cadence. With each beat comes a sudden rus.h.i.+ng noise, which their ears can follow as it meanders down a crooked wooden aqueduct and finally leaps out and spatters on the tidal flat below, where it has carved a little water-course-a man-made streambed-down into the surf.

"Ground-water, pumped from the depths of the mine, by Mr. Newcomen's Engine," announces Lostwithiel. This is unnecessary, since the three visitors have come all the way out from London expressly to see it. And yet it's important for Lostwithiel to come out and say it, as when the pastor at a wedding intones, I now p.r.o.nounce you man and wife I now p.r.o.nounce you man and wife.

Orney and Saturn are keen to clamber down into the bowels of the Engine and know the particulars. Daniel goes with them as far as a plank platform from which he can get a good prospect of the valley. There he stops for a look round. It is the closest thing to solitude he'll have until he reaches Ma.s.sachusetts. He can now see Minerva Minerva anch.o.r.ed beyond the bar, some miles down where the estuary joins the sea. The crew of the longboat have already marked him through their prospective-gla.s.ses and are rowing directly for him, building speed to ground their keel in the soft sand where the Engine spits out the mine-water. anch.o.r.ed beyond the bar, some miles down where the estuary joins the sea. The crew of the longboat have already marked him through their prospective-gla.s.ses and are rowing directly for him, building speed to ground their keel in the soft sand where the Engine spits out the mine-water.

Slowly shaking its fist above Daniel's head is an arm made of giant, knot-ridden timbers joined by iron hasps that must have been sledge-hammered out in a forge somewhere nearby. Depending from its end is a gargantuan chain, its links about the size of a grown man's femur, joined together by hand-forged cotter pins as big as bears' claws. In Newcomen's mind, Daniel knows, these links are meant to be of uniform size. In practice each is a little different, the differences averaging out as the chain disappears over the horizon of the curving arch-head that terminates the great arm. From it depends the piston, which fills a vertical cylinder the size of a mine-shaft. Packed round the piston's edge to form a seal is a matted O of old rope yarn, called junk, clamped down by a junk ring, secured with rustic nuts. Plenty of steam leaks out around it, but most stays where it belongs. The opposite end of the arm is linked to a pump rod consisting of several tree-trunks squared off and bound together with iron bands, plunging into the earth and pulling on giant sucking and splurging equipment too deep down for Daniel to see. Compared to all of this, the brains of the thing are tiny, and easy to miss: a man, on a platform a storey or two below where Daniel is standing, surrounded by pushrods, bell-cranks, and levers and supplying information to the machine when needed, which is not very frequently. At the moment, he is supplying information to Orney and Saturn, who have joined him down there.

This platform is dripping wet, and yet it's warm, for the used steam exhaled by the Engine drifts round it and condenses on the planks. Daniel lets the Engine breathe down his neck while he surveys the other works of the Proprietors of the Engine for Raising Water by Fire. He means to dash off a note to Eliza, letting her know just what has been done here with the capital that she and the other investors have entrusted to Lostwithiel and Newcomen. Mr. Orney will then take the letter back to London and see that she receives it. Orney will have a lot more to say, of course. Being a man of commerce, he'll mark things to which Daniel would be blind, and he'll know, without having to think about it, just which details Eliza shall and shan't find interesting. For Orney himself has put a bit of money in this thing now, and if he likes what he sees here, he'll go back to London and talk it up among his brethren.

So there's no need for Daniel to make some foolish pretense of seeing this venture through the shrewd eyes of a businessman. He tries, rather, to see it as what he is: a Natural Philosopher. As such it is the experimental aspects of it-its failures-that draw his notice. The level ground below the Engine is pocked, all around, with wreckage of Newcomen's boilers. The natural and correct form for such a thing is a sphere. Knowing as much, Newcomen has been learning how to fabricate large spherical sh.e.l.ls out of iron. And just as a schoolboy's waste-book is littered, page after page, with smeared and scratched-out failures, so the deep soil of the river-bottom is strewn with ineradicable records of every idea that Newcomen has ever had on the subject, and striking visual proof of why and how certain of those ideas were bad. He can't possibly beat out a single billet of iron into a vast seamless bubble and so he has to piece the things together of many smaller curved plates, lapped and riveted.

Fifty years ago Hooke had caught sparks struck off of a steel, and put them under the microscope, and shown Daniel what they really were: pocked spheres of s.h.i.+ny metal, like iron planets. Daniel had supposed they were solid, until he saw some that had been blown open by internal pressure. For the sparks weren't globules, but hollow bubbles, of molten steel that flailed, then froze, when they burst, leaving wild out-flung extremities that looked a little bit like clawing hands and a little bit like ancient tree-roots cast up on a beach. Some of Mr. Newcomen's failed boilers look like those exploded sparks. Others have failed in ways not so obvious, and lie half-embedded in the earth, like meteors fallen out of the sky.

Some miners come up out of the ground talking in a language he's never heard before: half a dozen Cornish men in black, sodden clothes. Daniel can see just from their stumbling gait that their feet are half frozen, and from the way they carry themselves that they've been working hard for a long time. They fetch hampers and gather round the one boiler in the vale that actually works: the one below Daniel, which is driving the Engine. This rests in a ma.s.sive collar of masonry with holes in the bottom to admit air and coal. The miners pull off their boots and their dripping socks and stretch their feet out in the fire-glow and take great loaf-sized pasties out of the hamper and begin to tear out mouthfuls. Their faces are all black from coal, much blacker than Dappa's. Their eyes are white as stars. A pair of eyes leaps up and marks Daniel on the platform, and then all the others follow suit. There's a moment, then, when Daniel's looking down at them and they are all looking up trying to decide what to make of this strange visitor. How must he seem to them? He's in a long woolen coat and his head is swaddled in a knit sailor's cap. He's growing a beard. He looms above them wreathed in whorls of exhausted steam. He wonders if these Cornish men have the faintest idea that they are sitting around an explosive device. He concludes that they are probably as intelligent as anyone else, and know it perfectly well, but have made peace with the idea, and have decided that they can accommodate it in their day-to-day lives in exchange for what pa.s.ses, around here, for prosperity. It's no different from what a sailor does when he takes s.h.i.+p knowing that he might drown. Daniel supposes that the wizards of the Technologickal Arts will be proffering many more such choices to people in years to come.

This journey began with a wizard walking into his door. Now it ends with a new kind of wizard standing on an Engine. Gazing down on this boiler from above, the wizard has the sense of being an angel or demon regarding Earth from Polaris. For, chastened by his failures, Mr. Newcomen has become most regular in his practices, and in this, his master-work, the seams and rivet-lines joining one curved plate to the next radiate from top center just like meridians of Longitude spreading from the North Pole. Below is a raging fire, and within is steam at a pressure that would blow Daniel to Kingdom Come ( just like Drake) if a rivet were to give way. But that does not come to pa.s.s. The steam is piped off to raise water, and the wasted heat of the fire affords a measure of comfort to the miners, and for the time being it all works as it is supposed to. At some point the whole System will fail, because of the flaws that have been wrought into it in spite of the best efforts of Caroline and Daniel. Perhaps new sorts of Wizards will be required then. But-and perhaps this is only because of his age, and that there's a longboat waiting to take him away-he has to admit that having some kind of a System, even a flawed and doomed one, is better than to live forever in the poisonous storm-tide of quicksilver that gave birth to all of this.

He has done his job.

"I'm going home now," he says.

HERE ENDS The BAROQUE CYCLE The BAROQUE CYCLE This I have now published; not for the public good (which I do not think my poor abilities can promote), but to gratify my brother the Stationer. The benefits of that trade do chiefly consist in the printing of copies; and the vanity of this age is more taken with matters of curiosity, than those of solid benefit. Such a pamphlet as this, may be salable, when a more substantial and useful discourse is neglected. This I have now published; not for the public good (which I do not think my poor abilities can promote), but to gratify my brother the Stationer. The benefits of that trade do chiefly consist in the printing of copies; and the vanity of this age is more taken with matters of curiosity, than those of solid benefit. Such a pamphlet as this, may be salable, when a more substantial and useful discourse is neglected.-John Wilkins

Acknowledgments.

THE B BAROQUE C CYCLE would have been unthinkable-in the most literal sense of that word-had it not been for the efforts of scholars, scientists, explorers, poets, preachers, pamphleteers, raconteurs, artists, translators, and cartographers dating back to the era of Wilkins and Comenius, and extending into the present day. A few of them are listed below. Some lived three hundred years ago, but others are still alive. I am a little hesitant to publish the names of the latter because it is much easier than it used to be to look people up, and so I am afraid that it will lead to these people being pestered. Nearly all of the people who bother to read three-thousand-page novels would have been unthinkable-in the most literal sense of that word-had it not been for the efforts of scholars, scientists, explorers, poets, preachers, pamphleteers, raconteurs, artists, translators, and cartographers dating back to the era of Wilkins and Comenius, and extending into the present day. A few of them are listed below. Some lived three hundred years ago, but others are still alive. I am a little hesitant to publish the names of the latter because it is much easier than it used to be to look people up, and so I am afraid that it will lead to these people being pestered. Nearly all of the people who bother to read three-thousand-page novels and their acknowledgments pages and their acknowledgments pages wouldn't dream of disturbing the privacy of the acknowledged, but there are always a few exceptions; if you are one of those, please leave these people alone! wouldn't dream of disturbing the privacy of the acknowledged, but there are always a few exceptions; if you are one of those, please leave these people alone!

The project would not have happened at all had it not been for serendipitous conversations seven years ago with George Dyson and Steven Horst. A crucial midcourse correction, equally unlooked-for, was supplied by Piers Bursill-Hall after he sat through an infamously long lecture delivered by yours truly in Cambridge in 2002.

The following scholars (in alphabetical order) have done work that was essential to the completion of this project. While eager to give them due credit, I am aware that those who are still among us, and who actually bother to read my work, may be chagrined by my tendency to whip out my artistic license and make stuff up whenever it's convenient: Frank Dawson Adams, E. J. Aiton, Maurice Ashley, Julian Barbour, J. M. Beattie, Olivier Bernier, Peter L. Bernstein, Bryan Bevan, Roger Lee Brown, Florian Cajori, Gale E. Christianson, Sir Archibald Geikie, David M. Gitlitz, A. Rupert Hall, John E. N. Hea.r.s.ey, David Kahn, Henry Kamen, John Maynard Keynes, Mark Kishlansky, Meir Kohn, Maria Kroll, Andrew Lossky, Robert K. Ma.s.sie, Nicholas Mayhew, John Read, H. Stanley Redgrove, Bertrand Russell, Hans Georg Schulte-Albert, Barbara J. Shapiro, J. G. Simms, Lee Smolin, William Spencer, Hugh Thomas, David Underdown, Henri and Barbara van der Zee, Maureen Waller, Richard Westfall, D. T. Whiteside. Though her biography of Hooke came out too late to influence this project, Lisa Jardine should also be mentioned, simply out of the hope that readers who would like to learn more about this period will read her work. Likewise Carl Zimmer and his recent biography of Thomas Willis, and Vladimir I. Arnol'd for Huygens and Barrow, Newton and Hooke. Huygens and Barrow, Newton and Hooke.

In general there is not room to mention specific t.i.tles here, but I'll make exceptions for Fernand Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism series; Sir Winston Spencer Churchill's six-volume biography of Marlborough; Giovanni Franceso Gemelli Careri's incredible Voyage Round the World; Voyage Round the World; and every ribald, scabrous, mordant, teeming libel Ned Ward ever wrote. I am thankful Ned was around to describe Baroque England, and even more thankful that he died before he could get around to describing me. and every ribald, scabrous, mordant, teeming libel Ned Ward ever wrote. I am thankful Ned was around to describe Baroque England, and even more thankful that he died before he could get around to describing me.

Period writers were indispensable: John Bunyan, Richard F. Burton (who was not really of this period but who wrote much that was useful), Daniel Defoe, John Evelyn, George Farquhar, Henry Fielding, (the Right Villainous) John Hall, Liselotte, John Milton, Samuel Pepys, the Duc de Saint-Simon, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Jean de Thevenot, Joseph de la Vega, John Wilkins, Lt.-Gen. Adam Williamson of the Tower of London, and the translators of the Geneva Bible. And of course, Hooke, Newton, and Leibniz. But an author of my limitations would be unable to make heads or tails of Leibniz's body of work without the help of scholars, translators, and editors such as Robert Merrihew Adams, H. G. Alexander, Roger Ariew, Richard Francks, Daniel Garber, and R. S. Woolhouse. Likewise Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar for his Newton's Principia for the Common Reader. Newton's Principia for the Common Reader.

A certain kind of debt, which might make sense only to novelists, ought to be acknowledged to the late Dorothy Dunnett and to Alexandre Dumas.

People who fund and staff museums-especially wee, peculiar museums-ought to be acknowledged. I don't have any of those people's names, but here are some interesting museums: Newton's Room at Babson College in Wellesley, Ma.s.sachusetts; Newton's house at Woolsthorpe; Musee Carnavalet in Paris; the Bank of England Museum; the Hague Historical Museum; the Upper Harz Mining Museum and the Bergapothek in Clausthal-Zellerfeld; and the Berg-baumuseum Rohrigschacht in Wettelrode.

Thanks to Bela and Gabriella Bollobas; Doug Carlston and Tomi Pierce; and Barry Kemp of Connell Cars for providing me with access to places I could not have seen (Bollobas), worked in (Carlston/ Pierce), or found (Kemp) otherwise. George Jewsbury and Catherine and Hugo Durandin provided timely a.s.sistance. Charles McAleese had a thing or two to say about Irish history. Likewise the balance of the HBC on all other topics under the sun. Greg Bear lent me two books and did not object when the loan stretched out to a length that a lesser man might have denominated theft (the books have now been returned in front of many witnesses).

Many others have, knowingly or not, contributed to a milieu in which it was possible for me to consider writing something like this without seeming completely mad. And here I am tempted to list the names of a lot of mathematicians and physicists. But out of a concern for their privacy and a desire not to seem like I'm clinging to their ankles, I'll draw a veil over those conversations. Suffice it to say that the Royal Society crowd written about in these books has many descendants and heirs today, who are capable of talking learnedly about monads, cellular automata, the calculus dispute, absolute time and s.p.a.ce, &c. at the drop of a hat, and that it's been my privilege to know a few of them. They seem pleasantly surprised to learn that someone actually wants to write a novel about such topics, and I in turn have been pleasantly surprised to find that they are actually willing to spend time talking to me, and out of this, quite a few good conversations have arisen over the years.

Helping in many ways to make this possible on the publis.h.i.+ng end, and exhibiting superhuman patience over its seven-year span, were Jennifer Hershey, Liz Darhansoff, Jennifer Brehl, and Ravi Mirchandani.

Jeremy Bornstein, Alvy Ray Smith, and Lisa Gold read the penultimate drafts and supplied useful commentary. The latter two, along with the cartographer Nick Springer, partic.i.p.ated in creation of maps, diagrams, and family trees.

The dialect spoken by Lord Gy in the third volume is a good faith effort by the author to approach eighteenth-century Scottish with all due respect and to get it as right as possible. If I've botched it; and if you know enough Scottish to know that I have; and if you're thinking of giving me a piece of your mind, know that I am one-quarter MacPhail. The uncanny vibrations you have been feeling in the soles of your feet the last couple of years are seismic disturbances created by my ancestors turning over in their graves at Preston Pans and other locations. Worse, the clan's last chieftain-no admirer of the Hanovers, apparently-was transported to Virginia in 1715 but died en route. He probably haunts the sea-lanes even now, and, for all I know, may have a bone to pick with me. Which is a roundabout way of saying that even before the ink has dried on the ma.n.u.script page, novelists' families-nuclear and extended-have had to put up with a lot from us. The greatest share of my grat.i.tude, always, goes to them.

Neal Stephenson May 2004

About the Author.

NEAL STEPHENSON is the author of the novels is the author of the novels Quicksilver, The Confusion, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Quicksilver, The Confusion, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and and Zodiac. Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Was.h.i.+ngton. He lives in Seattle, Was.h.i.+ngton.

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Also by Neal Stephenson The Confusion Quicksilver Cryptonomicon The Diamond Age Snow Crash Zodiac

Credits Jacket design by Richard L. Aquan Jacket ill.u.s.tration of world map by Frederick de Wit from De Zee Atlas De Zee Atlas Amsterdam, 1662, Birmingham Library, UK Amsterdam, 1662, Birmingham Library, UK

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE SYSTEM OF THE WORLD. Copyright 2004 by Neal Stephenson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound.

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*Females who are found guilty of High Treason are punished thus, rather than being subjected to the indecency of what is about to happen to Jack.

*George Augustus of Hanover, later George II.

*A.k.a. James Stuart, "The Pretender," son of the late former King James II, and would-be James III.

*One of the English t.i.tles of that same George Augustus of Hanover.

*Roger Comstock, Marquis of Ravenscar.

The Kit-Cat Clubb.

An allusion to the lightning-bolts forged by Vulcan; alternately, perhaps, golden guineas turned out by the Mint, which was no longer under Roger's direction since Oxford and Bolingbroke had overthrown the Whig Juncto, but still run by men a.s.sociated with Roger, such as Newton.

Jupiter, to whom Vulcan supplied lightning-bolts; but possibly a cheeky allusion to George Louis of Hanover, for whom, it was hoped, the Mint would soon be turning out guineas.

**Bolingbroke.

Queen Anne.

An allusion to a myth in which an angry Vulcan fas.h.i.+oned a trick throne containing hidden restraints, and gave it to his mother, Juno; when she sat on it, she was trapped, and only Vulcan could release her.

*Partry.

*In honor of Lady Anne Sunderland, the daughter of the Duke of Marlborough.