The Great Cat Massacre - A History of Britain in 100 Mistakes. Gareth RubinЧитать онлайн книгу.

      The law is the point of friction between the individual and the state – a set of restrictions on personal freedom. That is because there are many freedoms that no one should have, such as the freedom to push someone off a bus on an afternoon whim. Laws also demand that you keep others safe when those people reasonably expect you to. If the law had stated that the RMS Titanic’s look-out had to present his binoculars to the captain before the ship set sail, things might have turned out differently for more than 1,000 passengers who found they didn’t need the return halves of their tickets.

      Often terrible outcomes have happened because keeping others safe would have cost time or money. But, in the first case we’re going to look at, the protagonist made his error because he believed he could mock the system, without taking into account the size of the beast he was taunting.

      CURIOSITY KILLED THE LAWYER – THE DEATH OF ROBERT TRESILIAN, 1388

      Government is traditionally split into three branches: legislative, executive and judicial. Those who enter the first two are frequently accused – often with very good reason – of only having done so to feather their own nests. Yet, for a long time, the third branch was every bit as riddled with corruption as the others. Corruption, however, breeds enemies: often the envious, rather than the outraged, and they will ensure any wrongdoing by an official on the take is brought to light, even if it is only so they can take his place.

      Robert Tresilian, for example, quite liked making cash. As a thoroughly corrupt Chief Justice to the King’s Bench who was always ready to hang an enemy of Richard II, he had many ways of doing so. His downfall, however, was a result of his attempt to play both sides in the struggle between the King and the Lords Appellant, a group of nobles demanding a say over the royal spending patterns.

      When these noblemen rose up against the King and ordered Tresilian’s arrest, Robert made himself scarce. It was rumoured that he had fled abroad – which would have been the sensible thing to do – and the heat died down. But Tresilian had not run away to the Continent, he had not even gone to Berkshire: he was still ensconced in London.

      The very least he should have done was to keep his head down and stay indoors in order to continue evading justice. Instead, he decided to play detective and keep his enemies under his personal surveillance. Donning a fake beard, he took rooms in a house opposite Westminster Hall, where the Lords Appellant were meeting. In order to get a better view, he climbed onto the roof of an apothecary’s house, shinned down the gutter and hid, watching to see who came and went. Quite what he would do with the information and why he wanted to get it personally instead of asking someone else to keep watch, is unknown.

      What is known is that the Lords in the hall were wishing they could get their hands on Tresilian and wondering where he was, when one of them pointed out that he was on the other side of the road. After a couple of seconds, it was decided that a party should be sent over to arrest the fugitive. They scoured the house outside of which he had been seen, but could not find where Tresilian had gone. After a few threats, the house owner informed them that he was hiding under the table.

      Surprised by this stroke of luck, they marched their man back to the Hall, where the Lords ordered that he be taken to the Tower of London, whence he would be dragged by a horse to the execution ground. But as he was pushed towards the gallows, Tresilian scoffed at the Lords’ plan. For, he announced, he could not die. Then he dramatically tore open his clothes to reveal that he was covered in magic amulets that would protect him from death. The Lords quickly proved him wrong.

      THE ACCIDENTAL ABOLITIONIST – LUKE COLLINGWOOD ENDS THE SLAVE TRADE, 1782

      In 1782 Luke Collingwood put in a false insurance claim and accidentally ended the slave trade. It was a bit of a mistake for Collingwood, who was captain of a slave ship.

      The trade was a truly international affair. West Africans would capture rival tribesmen, who would be sold to Arab slave dealers. These would take the slaves to the coast, where European ships would transport them to the West Indies and America to work on plantations.

      Slaves were a valuable commodity, but the weak link in the chain from African villages to Jamaican sugar plantations was the sea voyage. The slaves were crammed into a tiny space below decks, often not much more 60cm high. The stench of the human waste and disease festering in these conditions meant that a slave ship could be identified just by its smell. Often the enslaved would throw themselves overboard through fear or misery. Many more simply died due to the appalling conditions.

      Although the slave trade was lucrative – indeed, Bristol grew fat on it – slavery itself was not something most Britons would have been happy about. Britain itself had long been a free society, with legal rights enjoyed by all. Slavery itself was probably illegal in Britain itself and certainly rarely practised. The trade was tolerated because slavery either in its most brutal form or in the sense of indentured servitude was common throughout the world and because the Church of England didn’t seem to mind it – the Church itself owned slaves at a plantation in the West Indies that it possessed. But, most of all, Britons tolerated it because they simply didn’t hear about it all that much. Luke Collingwood, as captain of the slave ship Zong, was about to change all that.

      In 1782 Collingwood was on his way from Africa to the Jamaican colonies, carrying 400 slaves. But he was an inexperienced trafficker and had overloaded his ship. Down in the hold, the cargo were dying so he decided to throw the ill slaves overboard. Of course, each one had a substantial monetary value, but he would be OK because they were all insured for £30 each – a few thousand pounds in today’s values. He would tell the insurers that he had had no choice because the ship was running out of water. The insurers might grumble, but they would pay out; 133 slaves were therefore thrown to their deaths.

      When he reached port in England, after dropping off his surviving cargo in the Caribbean, his ship’s owners put in their insurance claim for the dead slaves. But things didn’t go entirely to plan. The insurers were suspicious and took the case to court. Of course, no one was really concerned about the fate of the slaves other than as commodities and, the court eventually found for the Zong’s owners against the insurers, who were ordered to pay up.

      Like any other civil case, there was minor interest from the newspapers of the day, but it would soon have been forgotten had not one Olaudah Equiano caught sight of a report. Equiano was a freed slave, originally from modern-day Nigeria, where he had been captured at the age of 11. In 1783, he was 40 and working in London as a house servant when he spotted the news story about the Zong and had an idea. He took the report to Granville Sharp, a self-taught lawyer whom he thought would be the man to start a fire.

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