Chapter 2
Chapter 2
The Flitting
William. William. It’s time for the flitting,” a woman’s voice called across the open field.
“Coming, Mother,” called back six-year-old William Carey as he swung himself down from the oak tree he had been climbing, being very careful not to rip his pants like he had done the week before. Once safely on the ground, William ran eagerly across the field in the direction of the gray stone cottage, where he’d lived all his young life. Before entering the cottage, he brushed some twigs from his shoulder-length brown hair and straightened his collar. Even during a flitting, his mother expected him to look tidy. When he was satisfied that he would pass inspection, he stepped excitedly inside. He’d dreamed of this moment for weeks, and now it was finally about to happen.
Paulerspury, in the heart of the midlands of England, was not a particularly exciting place for a six-year-old boy, or anyone else for that matter, in 1767. About eight hundred people lived in the town. They were mostly humble folk, like William’s parents, Edmund and Elizabeth Carey, who ran a small business in their tiny cottage from which they barely made enough money to feed their growing family. William’s parents were both weavers and spent their days, and a good part of their nights, weaving a woolen cloth called “tammy,” which was then sold to middlemen who traded it in London. At least, that’s how things had been up until today. But today, things were going to change. Today was the day of the flitting. Everything in William’s life was about to change, and William knew it.
Flitting was the eighteenth-century name for moving house, and as he stepped inside the cottage, William found his father and the church rector carrying the family’s sturdy table and chairs outside into the bright summer sun. As they did so, William thought about all the changes his father’s being appointed the clerk of the Church of St. James the Great would bring. (The Church of St. James the Great was part of the Church of England, the only religion officially recognized by King George III.)
William was most excited about the opportunity he would have to go to school. Up until this point, it had been out of the question for him to think of attending a private school. There wasn’t enough money in the house to buy new shoes for everyone, let alone to pay for schooling. In England at that time, there were few free schools. As a result, most villagers did not know how to read or write, and most of them had little need to anyway. Thankfully, though, the town of Paulerspury was different from most towns. Two very rich men who had grown up there and then moved away to make their fortunes in London had sent back enough money for the church to set up a free school in the village for twelve children. Since Edmund Carey was to be the new church clerk, William was given one of the places in the school. Of course, while attending school, he would be seeing a lot of his father, since one of the clerk’s duties was to be the schoolmaster.
William’s father’s new job also meant a change in housing, hence the flitting. Up until then, William, his four-year-old sister Ann, and his parents had all been squeezed into the two tiny rooms that made up their weaver’s cottage. The loom had filled nearly all of the downstairs room. From a young age, William and Ann had learned how to play around the loom while avoiding their parents’ elbows and knees as they operated the weaving monstrosity. But now they would be moving out of the small, damp cottage at Pury End on the western end of the mile-long village to Church End, across the bubbling stream that divided the town in half. There they would move into the house that came with their father’s new job.
This house was a two-story thatched cottage with two fireplaces and four lattice windows in the front. Compared to what they had been living in, it was a palace. The move came just in time, too, because William’s mother was expecting another baby any day. While there was no room for another child, not even a tiny baby, in their weaver’s cottage, the new house was much bigger, so much so that William was going to have his own bedroom. He would be one of the few children in town who had a room all to himself.
Of course, William knew exactly how he was going to fill it. Even at six, he had collected more things than most adults do in a lifetime. Not things that cost money, but natural things from all around him. He would go on long walks in the Royal Whittlebury Forest that grew to the edge of the village. He loved to wander under the enormous oak trees looking for crickets, worms, bird’s eggs, and butterflies, which he could add to his collection. If he saw an unfamiliar insect, he would dive into the hawthorn undergrowth to capture it. Some of the things he found were dead, and some were alive. He brought them all back home and kept them in little wooden boxes and cages his father had made for him. As he carried the washboard and a leather bucket along the road to his new house, William planned out how he would arrange all his treasures in the new bedroom.
Before night fell, everything had been moved, including many of William’s favorite plants that he had dug up from the old house and replanted under his bedroom window. When he went to bed that first night in his new bedroom, the scent of his favorite rosebush was just outside his window to keep him company.
William quickly grew used to his new life, though there was one thing he didn’t like about it. During Sunday services at the Church of St. James the Great, William had to sit with his family in a special gallery behind the pulpit from which the Reverend Jones preached his long sermons. True, it was fun to be higher than everyone else, and William could see over everyone’s head, all the way to the bell ringers who stood at the back of the church. But although he could see all that was going on, at the same time, he felt he was on display. His mother constantly reminded him to mind his manners because everyone was watching. During services, many of his school friends would make faces at him from the pews. William had to try his hardest to ignore them. He knew he’d be punished if he dared return their looks. Unless he had to stay home and watch over his new baby sister, Polly (her real name was Mary, but no one ever called her that), William was in church every Sunday.
William’s father had several special duties to perform during Sunday services. He led the congregation in prayers and chants and announced the sermon. He was also responsible for making sure that the church was kept clean and that dogs did not run through it. As well, he entered births and deaths in the church register. While the church itself did not pay him much, he was allowed to keep the fee he charged for making entries in the register.
While the family still did not have much money to spare, there was one thing about his father’s new job that excited William—the books. There were few books printed in England in the 1760s. Producing a single book during this period was time-consuming and expensive. As a result, most books were owned by rich people and clergymen. But now that his father was both schoolmaster and the church clerk, William got to know many people who loaned him books. He was a quick learner, and it was not long before he was engrossed in the adventure stories of the day, such as Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels. And not just adventure stories. William read everything he could get his hands on, especially books about foreign lands. Such books fired his imagination. Often when he was alone, he would pretend to be Sir Francis Drake passing through the Straits of Magellan in the Golden Hind, or Christopher Columbus sailing off to discover new worlds in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella, the king and queen of Spain. In fact, some friends found William acting out Columbus discovering America one day and nicknamed him “Columbus,” a nickname that stuck with him into adulthood.
William’s love of foreign lands was also fueled when his long-lost Uncle Peter returned from Canada, where he had fought against the French, helping to capture the province of Quebec for the British Empire. No one had ever thought that Uncle Peter would come home again, but one fall day, he just showed up in Paulerspury with amazing tales to tell of where he had been and the things he’d seen. He had fought alongside General James Wolfe and traded with Algonquin Indians.
The now eight-year-old William was fascinated by his Uncle Peter and asked him to tell and retell his many stories. He especially liked to hear about the sea voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. Even though he had pretended to be Sir Francis Drake and Christopher Columbus, William had always had difficulty trying to imagine what the ocean really looked like. Uncle Peter told him to think of it as a million streams all running side by side and stretching as far as the eye could see. William tried to imagine, just like he tried to imagine a city as huge as London with six hundred thousand people living in it. But try as he may, it was not easy to imagine for a young boy who’d never been more than ten miles away from the country village where he had been born.
William spent many hours with Uncle Peter, who had no family of his own. Besides being a wonderful source of information about the world, Uncle Peter knew a lot about plants. In fact, soon after his return to Paulerspury, he was hired by the village squire to be a gardener. From then on, whenever William and his uncle got together, they would discuss their gardens and often swapped plant cuttings, bulbs, and gardening hints.
Life seemed to go well for William, who loved school, though his father was tougher on him than the other students. William also loved being outside in his garden, which soon became one of the best in the village. His little sister Polly followed him nearly everywhere he went, so William made her his “research assistant” and let her carry the bag that he filled with plant and animal specimens when they went walking together. Sometimes on these walks, William would carry along his new baby brother, Tom, but not for too long. Tom grew quickly and was soon too heavy to carry.
William was interested in all sorts of things, and although he lived in a tiny village ten miles south of Northampton, the newspaper gave him a glimpse of the world beyond Paulerspury. The Northampton Mercury was published every Monday, and three copies of the paper were delivered to Paulerspury by a postboy on horseback. One copy of the newspaper went to the church rector, one to the squire, and the third to the schoolmaster. William could hardly wait for the paper to arrive each week. There were so many amazing things happening in the world to read about. In 1764, James Hargreave invented a machine for spinning eight strands of thread at a time. He named the machine after his daughter, calling it the spinning jenny. Then in 1769, Richard Arkwright improved on this invention and developed a spinning machine that would make stronger yarn than the spinning jenny. Arkwright then built large mills to house his spinning machines and used steam engines, invented in 1765 by James Watt, to power the pumps to supply the water to turn the waterwheel that ran the spinning machines. In 1769, a Frenchman, Nicolas Cugnot, used Watt’s steam engine to power a motorized carriage. William read about all these things in the newspaper.
In 1771, the Northampton Mercury celebrated the return to England of Captain James Cook and the crew of the Endeavor. Cook had sailed to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus and explore the west coast of Australia, as well as to map the coast of New Zealand. William carefully saved the pages from the newspaper that contained excerpts from Cook’s diaries. He would read and reread the accounts of the various natives Cook had met along the way.
One day, when William had read all the other books in the house, he began looking through some books Uncle Peter had left there. One of the books was a huge volume that contained many sketches of plants. There was just one problem: Eleven-year-old William couldn’t read any of the words in the book. He realized they must be in a foreign language, though he had no idea what language. Uncle Peter had uttered a few words in French that he’d remembered from his time in Canada, but apart from that, William had no idea what any language other than English sounded like or what it might look like written down.
William thought his father might know more about the language. Sure enough, Edmund Carey knew it was Latin, the same Latin that was engraved on some of the oldest gravestones and tombs around the Church of St. James the Great. Mr. Carey didn’t know how to read Latin himself, but he had noticed an old copy of a Latin grammar book tucked up on a shelf in the schoolhouse. He dusted the book off and gave it to William.
Within a couple of months, William had memorized the entire book and spoke enough Latin to hold a conversation, though he had to talk to himself! Best of all, though, he could now read for himself the text that went along with the pictures of plants in Uncle Peter’s book.
The village school taught boys only up to the age of twelve. After twelve, the boys either had to go to the city to enroll in a more advanced school or had to hire a private tutor. Unfortunately, the Careys did not have the money to do either. So, like the other boys in the village, at twelve years of age, William had to find a job and help support the family.
Seventeen seventy-two, the year William finished school, was also the year that tensions between the American colonies and the British began to grow. Some people wondered how the colonists thought they could possibly win their independence without a king to lead them into battle. Others fretted that the French might get involved and help the colonists, to get even with the English for taking Quebec from them. All this made for some lively debates in the schoolroom, but William was no longer there to take part in them. Instead, he was working as a farm laborer.
Although William had enough education to get an indoor job, he loved to be outdoors so much that he had begged his father to find him a job outside. William went to work on a farm. Although he had a slight build and was small for his age, he proved to be a hard worker. He ploughed the fields in preparation for planting the crops, and he tended the Leicester sheep, which spent their days on the rolling green hills of the countryside.
Although William loved being out in the sun, the sun did not love him. He developed an allergy to it that the village herb doctor was unable to cure. Whenever it was sunny, William got a painful rash on his face and hands. But because he longed so much to work outside with animals and plants, he put up with the pain of the rash for two years. In the end, though, he had to admit to himself that it was too difficult to go on. William would have to find another job.
Although William didn’t know it at the time, the rash on his face would change the course of his life. Had it not been for the rash, William may well have lived his whole life and died in Paulerspury. The search for a new job, however, took him ten miles away from his home—the first ten miles on a journey that would rival any of the adventures he’d read about in Gulliver’s Travels or Robinson Crusoe.