Free Damn His Blood by Peter Moore

his money till he won’t call any longer, and then he sends it; finds fault with the sermon every Sunday, says the organist ought to be ashamed of himself, offers to back himself for any amount to sing the psalms better than all the children put together, male and female, and, in short, conducts himself in the most turbulent and uproarious manner.
    Captain Evans brought much of this same unruly dominance to Oddingley with him when he arrived at Church Farm in 1798. He demonstrated a flair for organising men, assembling support for a cause, aggressively pursuing a line of argument as well as a willingness to engage to his advantage with awkward situations. In May 1806 Oddingley was visited by the local militia, and eligible villagers who had been drawn by lots to serve were required to present themselves for inspection. George Banks was one of these and was only saved from service by the Captain, who ordered a parishioner named Clement Churchill to stand in his place. It was a clever switch, as Evans knew full well that Churchill would be rejected due to his height (the militia required men at least five feet four inches tall). All the while, Churchill recalled, the real George Banks was at plough in Oddingley.
    This little vignette reveals how the Captain was ready and willing to exploit situations for his own benefit or to help out those close to him. It also demonstrates his ability to carry off a bare-faced lie with composure. Perhaps he knew the recruiting sergeants conducting the muster; he certainly knew how the process worked and how best to play it. His status as a magistrate, charged with upholding the law, seems not to have had the slightest bearing on his actions.
    A less immediate but equally powerful echo of the Captain’s military days comes in the nature and tone of the farmer’s language towards Parker throughout the quarrel. The most commonly recorded of their curses was ‘damn’, a verb which has subsequently lost much of its power but at the time remained potent, bordering on the taboo. In Christian societies damning a person meant wishing them away to hell and the Devil, to a life of eternal punishment, pain and misery. For the outwardly respectable classes it was a profanity best hidden away in private, but it was used openly by the lower orders, especially soldiers and seamen, for whom it was the sharpest insult, reserved for personal enemies, dangerous social deviants and figures of hate.
    To be damned publicly was ominous. Shortly before his home was razed to the ground and his effigy burnt by a baying mob in Birmingham on Bastille Day 1791 Joseph Priestley, the notorious dissenting chemist, had to endure the sight of every blank wall in the town centre being chalked with the slogan ‘Damn Priestley’ 10 by loyalist mobs. In the very same year a definition of the verb was left, inadvertently, in James Boswell’s biography of Dr Johnson. Boswell included the following exchange between Johnson and a friend:
    Johnson: I am afraid that I may be one of those who shall be damned (looking dismally).
    Dr Adams: What do you mean by damned?
    Johnson: (passionately and loudly) Sent to Hell, Sir, and punished everlastingly.
    Many publishers censored the word from pamphlets, fearful that they might be aiding its spread. Its use provoked an uneasy feeling in the minds of right-minded Christians, who week after week were reminded of the horrors of hell from the pulpit. Some writers used its power to enliven their work. Byron intensified the shock of his poem Don Juan by embroidering one verse with the curse ‘Damn his eyes’, which he referred to as ‘that once all-famous oath’. More striking still was Jonathan Swift’s haunting poem The Place of the Damned , which drew its power from repetition of the word, leaving a bitter sense of anger and hopelessness: ‘Damned lawyers and judges, 11 damned lords and damned squires; Damned spies and informers, damned friends and damned liars.’
    Swift’s was a