Friday, March 23, 2012

Pirate Bunch's wife, Conscience Choyee, was King George I's servant

Part II, of Pirate Bunch history.
Pirate Bunch’s wife was Consience Cloyee--
"In January 1765, when the Colonial settlements were being tormented by the English government, King George I, with his usual short sightedness, sent to the puritanic village of Salem a ban of some two hundred odd soldiers for the purpose of spying on the inhabitants of that village. These soldiers made no small stir in the sober sided little village. [skipped their uniform and physical descriptions]
The little Quaker maidens had been so warned against them that they veritably believed the brilliant cavaliers were soldiers of the Evil One; nor would they any more dare to look at them and flirt with them than they would dare, on the solemn Sabbath day to laugh out loud, or go to an apple paring, or take one measure of the stately minuet.
One morning the house of Goodman Choyee was alarmed by the piteous moaning of its little Quaker mistress. She came into the dining room, her face whiter than the spotless kerchief around her neck, and handed her husband a note saying; “She’s been bewitched! She’s been bewitched! I saw old Beldame Martin looking at her with evil eye. Poor little Conscience! Poor little Conscience!” The placid Quaker mother wring her hands and wept bitterly. Meanwhile Goodman Cloyee read the note. It was from his daughter Conscience, (She whom her school mates called Tender Conscience because of her sensitively sweet and considerate character.) The few words told that she was married to one of the soldiers of the King: that the marriage was registered at the Custom House, and that when her parents read these words, she would be far away from them, traveling with her husband, where, she could not say. The note was so cold, so matter of fact, so unnatural, the parents concluded that beyond a doubt their child had been bewitched and was acting under some baleful spell. Goodman Cloyee arose wearily from the table and took his high steeple hat, and with a tottering gait, walked out on what then seemed to him the strangely changed, desolate streets of Salem. Faithe went into her daughter’s trim little room, folded each piece of finely woven linen and laid it onto a cedar chest, putting with it faint, sweet scented springs of old time lavender. Then kneeling down beside it, she prayed, prayed with a broken heart for the child she would rather far have had and lying before her calm and dead. The neighbors said that every morning, thro’ all the remaining years of their quiet, monotonous lives Goodman Cloyee and his wife Faithe, went first to the Custom House to see the registered marriage of his daughter, and to find it there was a letter from her; then repaired to her little room and prayed for her return.

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