I have said that the tribulations with which he was visited as a result of his errand of mercy to Oglethorpe’s Farm contained — although as yet he did not perceive it, perhaps — two sources of thankfulness:  one that he was tried at all; the other that his trial took place on the 19th of September.  Until the 18th, the sentences passed by the court of the Lords Commissioners had been carried out literally and expeditiously.  But on the morning of the 19th there arrived at Taunton a courier from Lord Sunderland, the Secretary of State, with a letter for Lord Jeffreys wherein he was informed that His Majesty had been graciously pleased to command that eleven hundred rebels should be furnished for transportation to some of His Majesty’s southern plantations, Jamaica, Barbados, or any of the Leeward Islands.

You are not to suppose that this command was dictated by any sense of mercy.  Lord Churchill was no more than just when he spoke of the King’s heart as being as insensible as marble.  It had been realized that in these wholesale hangings there was taking place a reckless waste of valuable material.  Slaves were urgently required in the plantations, and a healthy, vigorous man could be reckoned worth at least from ten to fifteen pounds.  Then, there were at court many gentlemen who had some claim or other upon His Majesty’s bounty.  Here was a cheap and ready way to discharge these claims.  From amongst the convicted rebels a certain number might be set aside to be bestowed upon those gentlemen, so that they might dispose of them to their own profit.

My Lord Sunderland’s letter gives precise details of the royal munificence in human flesh.  A thousand prisoners were to be distributed among some eight courtiers and others, whilst a postscriptum to his lordship’s letter asked for a further hundred to be held at the disposal of the Queen.  These prisoners were to be transported at once to His Majesty’s southern plantations, and to be kept there for the space of ten years before being restored to liberty, the parties to whom they were assigned entering into security to see that transportation was immediately effected.

We know from Lord Jeffreys’s secretary how the Chief Justice inveighed that night in drunken frenzy against this misplaced clemency to which His Majesty had been persuaded.  We know how he attempted by letter to induce the King to reconsider his decision.  But James adhered to it.  It was — apart from the indirect profit he derived from it — a clemency full worthy of him.  He knew that to spare lives in this fashion was to convert them into living deaths.  Many must succumb in torment to the horrors of West Indian slavery, and so be the envy of their surviving companions.

Thus it happened that Peter Blood, and with him Jeremy Pitt and Andrew Baynes, instead of being hanged, drawn, and quartered as their sentences directed, were conveyed to Bristol and there shipped with some fifty others aboard the Jamaica Merchant.  From close confinement under hatches, ill-nourishment and foul water, a sickness broke out amongst them, of which eleven died.  Amongst these was the unfortunate yeoman from Oglethorpe’s Farm, brutally torn from his quiet homestead amid the fragrant cider orchards for no other sin but that he had practised mercy.