For my current work in progress, I’ve been researching the history of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain.

Thomas Clarkson, one of the prominent voices in the fight to abolish slavery, wrote a two volume account of the long struggle: History of the Abolition of the Slave trade, published in 1808, the year following the landmark passage of the Slave Trade Act on the 25 of March, 1807, by Parliament, which abolished the slave trade throughout Great Britain. The final blow to slavery came 26 years later in the Slavery Abolition Act in August of 1833,

The long fight for the abolition of the slave trade, and slavery itself, began in the latter part of the 18th century and continued for twenty years. Due to the untiring efforts of many individuals, most British citizens opposed the practice of slavery. But for decades it did little good to get rid of a practice many considered immoral and the shame of the British empire. Almost yearly attempts to pass a bill in Parliament by William Wilberforce failed.

In his 1808 history, Thomas Clarkson painstakingly recorded the arguments for or against the slave trade, given by politicians in Parliament proceedings in 1806. Reading them shows the best and worst of human nature.

Here’s a few examples:

Mr. Huddlestone: He did not charge the enormous guilt resulting from it upon the nation at large; for the nation had washed its hands of it by the numerous petitions it had sent against it; and it had been a matter of astonishment to all Christendom, how the constitutional guardians of British freedom should have sanctioned elsewhere the greatest system of cruelty and oppression in the world.

General Tarleton: He stood against the abolition, on account of the effect which it would have on the trade and revenue of the country.

Lord Castlereagh: He thought it a proposition on which no one could entertain a doubt, that the slave-trade was a great evil in itself, and that it was the duty and policy of Parliament to extirpate it. But he did not think the means offered were adequate to the end proposed.

Sir William Yonge: He censured the harsh language of Sir Samuel Romilly, who had applied the terms rapine, robbery, and murder to those who were connected with the Slave-trade.

Lord Henry Petty: He said the arbitrary power which [the slave trade] conferred, afforded men of bad dispositions full scope for the exercise of their passions; and it rendered [good] men callous to the misery of others. It depraved the nature of all connected to it. [Parliament] had the clearest evidence that all the arguments then used against the abolition were fallacious–being founded not upon truth, but on assertions devoid of all truth and derived from ignorance and prejudice.

Mr. Canning: He did not like the present resolution, yet he would vote for it. He should have been better pleased with a bill which would strike at once at the root of this detestable commerce.

Mr. Windham: He said the slave trade and slavery were interconnected, both evils that should be done away.

Mr. Manning: He wished the question to be deferred to the next session.

Lord Grenville, Prime Minister: The slave trade was contrary to humanity, justice and sound policy. Humanity might be said to be sympathy for the distress of others. He said we had been so much accustomed to words, descriptive of the cruelty of this traffic, that we had almost forgotten its meaning. The continuance of it has rendered cruelty familiar to us; and the recital of its horrors had been so frequent that we could now hear them stated without being affected as we ought to be. It was a duty that Parliament owed to their Creator, if they hoped for mercy, to do away this monstrous oppression.

Lord Hawkesbury: It did not follow that because a great evil subsisted that therefore it should be removed, for it might be comparatively a less evil than that which would accompany the attempt to remove it. Slavery could be removed not by acts of [law] but by the progress of civilization which removed the evil in a gradual and rational manner.

And so the talking went on and on and around and around. The reasonings sounded so familiar to me. We hear them all now. Callous indifference. Self interest .Money and power above duty. Delay. Outright lies.

Thomas Clarkson summed up the final passage of the bill in 1807: “It has separated the moral statesman from the wicked politician. It has shown us who, in the legislative and executive offices of our country are fit to save, and who to destroy, a nation…. It has proved what a creature a man is! how devoted he is to his own interest!”

As Lord Grenville said: We become so accustomed to words that we almost forget their meaning. We are not affected as we ought to be.

History gives us endless lessons in human nature, how it tries to twist truth with meandering words and render us blind, not only to truths that cannot be altered but to the needs and rights of those around us. It shows us that nothing much has changed after all. What once was, is now still.

I didn’t discover L.M. Montgomery’s works until the 1985 miniseries by Kevin Sullivan came out, my response being: How could I have spent my whole childhood without her books?! I promptly got her books and devoured them. I also read her diaries. What a luminous, sensitive soul she was! You can see it in her expression. Her prose breathes with her love of life. She saw beyond what most people see. What a vivid imagination!

From Anne of Avonlea:

“I wonder what a soul…a person’s soul…would look like,’ said Priscilla dreamily.
‘Like that, I should think,’ answered Anne, pointing to a radiance of sifted sunlight streaming through a birch tree. ‘Only with shape and features of course. I like to fancy souls as being made of light. And some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers…and some have a soft glitter like moonlight on the sea…and some are pale and transparent like mist at dawn.”

In 1637, the same year that Anne Hutchinson was brought to trial in Boston by the authorities, The Desire left Salem loaded with Native Americans who had been captured during the Pequot war. They were to be sold as slaves on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, far from their homeland. Seven months later, John Winthrop recorded in his journal that the Desire had returned from the West Indies, laden with items to sell: cotton, tobacco and Negroes.

Native Americans. Africans. For sale.

Why would someone name a slave ship “The Desire?” What did they desire? Riches. Domination. Unheeding of the cost to others. It seems to me that all injustices come down to two things: Money and power.

In a June 7, 2020 op-ed for the Washington Post, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated: ” Our country has a birth defect: Africans and Europeans came to this country together–but one group was in chains.” How do people justify enslaving people in order to enrich themselves? How do they live with it day to day and not see the wrong of it? How did they justify evil? I’ve asked myself these questions over and over.

The only conclusion I can reach is one thing. Pride. When one person says to another in action and in word: I am better than you. You are lower than me. Humankind’s biggest lie.

That attitude must be how the people who came to America to seek freedom for themselves justified taking away the freedoms of others: slaughtering and enslaving Native Americans and bringing people from Africa as slaves.

We are all witnesses to the raw pain of the last ten days. Our country has a way yet to go to rid ourselves from this original stain. The whole world has joined in, grappling with their own history of racism. In the headlines today, the statue of a slave trader in Bristol, England was pulled down, rolled to the river and, amid deafening cheers, dumped in. His likeness stands no more. What does that act say? Rejection of the wrongs of the past?

In the research I did the other day for a new manuscript I’ve begun, I learned that Bristol was a major port in the slave trade. Many abolitionists in England worked tirelessly to end slavery, seeking to educate the public on its evils. Their efforts led to the abolishment of the slave trade throughout the British empire, with legislation in 1807 and ending with the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. Combined voices brought about change then, as it did when Abraham Lincoln’s efforts pushed Congress to pass the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery in the United States of America. Yet we still struggle. There is so much pain and injustice. Native Americans were forced onto barren lands, still many of them without adequate water, government turning a blind eye to need. Inequities in the justice system and opportunities for education for many. This is wrong!

over the past two weeks it feels like major change could be happening. We see images of people at the protests coming together in understanding and compassion. These scenes make us weep and offers hope for a better future. Yet much more is needed. More than protests. More than legislation. Our Declaration of Independence clearly states: “…all men are created equal….” Equal opportunity. Equal respect. When will we act in every way to prove that truth? What will it take?

Every individual must look into what is in their own heart. Condoleezza Rice said: “The road to healing must begin with respectful but honest and deep conversations, not judgments, about who we were, who we are and who we want to become….We all have a role to play in moving our country forward, in ensuring that our democracy delivers not just for those who have but also for those who seek and for those in need.”

Healing will happen when people no longer say out of their own mistaken pride: “I am better than you. You are less than me.” It will happen when we all speak and act from this belief instead: “You and I are equal.”

Writing to Find the Hero In Ourselves

by Carol Pratt Bradley

My family enjoys watching historical films and we loved the 2003 movie, Luther, about Martin Luther and the Reformation.

I had also read a book about William Tyndale, the man who translated the Bible into English. At the time, I was searching for an idea for my thesis novel for an MFA program, and this time period piqued my interest.

In my research I ran across the name Anne Askew, an English noblewoman, reportedly beautiful, literate, and devoted to the Bible. While in prison for heresy, she’d penned her own book, titled The Examinations of Anne Askew.

I located it in the library on campus. It was even available for sale on Amazon. Five hundred years after her death, this woman was not forgotten in history. When I read her story, I knew I wanted to write a book about her life.

What was it about people like her, and Luther and Tyndale that made them so memorable, even centuries after they died?

People look for heroes, male and female. We need them. Here was a woman I could write about, and in the process, explore what it is to be one.

Searching for My True Heroine

The biggest challenge that I faced in writing the novel was trying to find the real Anne.

I read her book and also two poems attributed to her, and studied the few known details of her life. Who was she? What was her temperament? In her book, she comes across as a fiery zealot with a biting wit, who did not hesitate to belittle her adversaries. But was that zealot the real woman? Or were her words altered by her editors for their own purposes?

The Protestant John Bale, who smuggled her written account out of England, published it in Europe, and distributed it throughout England a year later. Bale, nicknamed “Bilious Bale,” reportedly had a gloomy, quarrelsome disposition.

John Foxe also wrote an account of her in his book The Acts and Monuments, better known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Both men likely put their own editorial stamp on her words for their own religious and political purposes.

I finally concluded that I couldn’t know exactly what she was like. She may have been a real person, but I was writing a book of fiction. So I wrote her the way I felt her to be.

To me she would have been a compassionate, brave woman who did her best in her circumstances, trying to live according to the morals she found in her beloved Bible. Like all humans, she made mistakes, she was loved and hated, she was kind but sometimes impatient.

Above all, she was a person who felt deeply, who lived true to herself.

After the Research is Finished, Where Do You Start the Book?

After researching the time period, reading Anne’s account of her trials, finding out about her circumstances, I was uncertain where to start the book.

One morning I woke with a picture in my mind, in vivid detail: fifteen year old Anne on the night of her forced marriage to the stranger who had been betrothed to her sister, now dead of the fever. Her books were hidden beneath the bed: her Tyndale New Testament, a Bible in English, and her journal.

She’d woken in the night, alone, frightened and lost. While her new husband slept, she knelt on the floor and removed the books from their hiding place, holding them close to her chest, breathing in the familiar smell of them, a reminder of her childhood and freedom. She took out the journal, and in the darkness, spelled out her name, over and over: I am Anne. Anne Ayscough.

This scene capsulated the heart of the story for me: Anne’s fight to preserve her own identity and beliefs in a hostile atmosphere that demeaned her worth. I wrote that scene first. It became the prologue, and after many revisions is now imbedded within the novel.

But it remains the pivotal moment for me, when I felt that I connected with Anne.

What My Book Taught Me: There Are Truths Worth Living For

Writing Anne’s story disturbed me, saddened me, angered and confused me.

How could such injustices happen? What kind of twisted politics would seek to compel individuals to believe a proscribed way, threatening death if they dared to think differently? Not just death, but as horrible a one as they could concoct, like burning someone to death.

Why do people seek to dominate over others? In politics, in communities, in families?

The world’s history seems a complicated mess. But in every century, there are people who live true to their own conscience despite the opposition they face, despite the consequences. No matter their end, they triumphed.

I learned that there is something sovereign within men and women that resists coercion, fighting for the right to choose even if it is denied. I learned that there are truths worth living for, even dying for. No matter what period of time in earth’s history, it is the same.

Would I Be as Brave as My Heroine?

I think another reason it upset me is it made me look in the mirror.

How different would Anne’s life have been if she had lived in a different time period? I wondered. How different would my life be if I had lived in 16th century England?

I take for granted the freedom to believe as I choose. She did not have that. And yet she deliberately decided not to be silent, to speak out no matter the consequences.

What would I do in her circumstances?

I haven’t looked inside myself deep enough yet to know the answer to that.

Another thing that disturbed me: do we learn from the past? Or are we just repeating the mess over and over?

To Write with Power and Wisdom, I Must Search Deep Inside Myself

Is writing a spiritual practice for me? Yes.

There are many terms associated with the word spiritual: sacred, inner dimension, bliss, search for meaning, supernatural, the soul, sense of self, to name a few. For me, spirituality is searching for something larger and wiser and better than myself, to be able to comprehend with more than my own limited ability.

I want to combine the physical and spiritual to enable me to reach higher, dig deeper in my search for understanding.

To write with power and wisdom, I must search deep inside myself, reaching for a place not seen but only felt.

How My Research Put Me In Touch with the Past

The physical—what we can see, hear, smell, taste—seems intricately tied to the spiritual, the things we cannot touch or see, that are just as real.

I think this is why I like to write about the past, time already gone, disappeared around the circle of history.

I traveled to England to find Anne Askew. The Guildhall in London where she was put on trial is no longer standing, but the building in its place was built from some of the same stones. I touched a stone, my hand connecting physically with something from Anne’s time, and felt closer to her.

At Sudley Castle, I walked the gardens around the chapel where Anne’s friend Queen Catherine Parr was buried, and felt that somehow that I walked, not into, but alongside, the past. It was a reverent feeling.

The passing of time changes the physical: buildings crumble into decay, disappear, landscapes change. But somehow everything that happened before remains, hovering in the air around us, still beating and breathing. Nothing is gone.

We cannot see it with our eyes, but it is all still very real to us through the spiritual, or senses unseen.

Taking the Picture in My Imagination and Molding it Into a Story

I have several projects started, and my problem is which one to pursue to completion.

A story I wrote several years ago keeps coming alive in my mind. It’s a departure from my previous novels: a historical fantasy set in medieval times in a little town that I visited in England—Castle Combe—a town still the same after more than five hundred years. The charming attached houses built by the cloth weavers line the curved streets, the same marketplace, and the fourteenth-century church, the wood that edges the town. I close my eyes and I still see it, still feeling that as I walked its streets I stepped alongside the past.

I studied the history of the place, incorporating people into my story that had been associated with the town, like Sir John Falstaff, made famous in Shakespeare’s plays. I also used the ancient, crumbled castle that stood on top of the hill overlooking the town. The ancient legends about the haunted Wood fascinate me—the ghosts of the Saxons and Danes still locked in combat.

I also used some of the vivid poetic images from John’s Book of Revelations in the New Testament, like vials and open doors that never shut. After I’d written a draft of the story I read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 64. It deals with similar themes: time bringing decay upon the physical things of earth, and taking away those we love.

I hope I can mold this story to fit the picture in my imagination and be able to share it with my readers.

(Read more about Carol on her previous Writing and Wellness post.)

* * *

Carol Pratt Bradley is an historical novelist with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from Brigham Young University.

Fire of the Word was originally written as her master’s thesis. Her first published novel, Light of the Candle, was published by WiDo in January 2015. The sequel to Light of the Candle will be released soon.

Carol lives in Mapleton, Utah with her husband, Bryan, near their four grown children.

For more information on Carol and her writing, please see her website, or follow her on Pinterest or Twitter.

Fire of the Word: Young English noblewoman, Anne Ayscough, lived during the turbulent times of Henry VIII, when Protestant reformist ideas clashed violently against entrenched Catholicism.

Yet many, especially the wealthy, owned William Tyndale’s New Testament, including the household of Sir William Ayscough in Lincolnshire. In her family home, Anne grew in an atmosphere of openness, gleaning new ideas from her brothers who were educated at Cambridge, a hotbed of Protestant ideals.

At the age of fifteen, Anne’s life changed drastically. Her older sister Martha, betrothed to a son of a family staunch in the Catholic faith, contracted a fever and died. With the financial arrangements for the marriage already in place, Anne’s father ordered her to stand for her dead sister, forcing his daughter to enter a loveless marriage.

England’s religious war became Anne’s as she clung tight to her own ideals in her husband’s house. This eventually brought her into the center of the vicious political and religious battles where she was faced with a choice.

Anne could deny the truths she had embraced as a young woman and live, or hold fast to her beliefs and be put to death.

Available at WiDo Publishing.

I’m still reading Irving Stone’s Agony and the Ecstasy, about the life of Michelangelo. Oh, the vision of an artist.

As he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel Michelangelo sought to “visualize a God of such transcendence that everyone would cry out, ‘Yes! That is the Lord God! None other could be!’ . . . . He had always loved God. In his darkest hours he cried out, ‘God did not create us to abandon us.’ His faith in God sustained him; and now he must make manifest to the world who God was, what He looked and felt like, wherein lay His divine power and grace. . . .It was a delicate task, yet he did not doubt that he could achieve such a God. He had only to set down in drawings the image he had carried with him since childhood. God as the most beautiful, powerful, intelligent and loving force in the universe. Since He had created man in His own image, He had the face and body of a man. . . . God . . . had only to hold out His right arm to Adam, to reach one infinitesimal life-breath more, man and the world would begin.” 539-540

Stone wrote a moving scene of Pope Julius II climbing the ladder to view Michaelangelo’s God imparting life to Adam. “Do you truly believe that God is that benign?” the Pope asked. Michelangelo said: “Yes, Holy Father.” The Pope answered: “I most ardently hope so, since I am going to be standing before Him before long. If He is as you have painted Him, then I shall be forgiven my sins.” 541

God did not create us to abandon us. Well said, Michaelangelo.

Genre: Historical Fiction Print Price: $16.95 SPECIAL PRE-ORDER PRICE $13.50 Paperback Page count: 256 Dimensions: 6″x 9″ ISBN: 978-1-937178-78-9 Shipping :US FreeCanada & Mexico $5.25All Others $10.00 Coming to Bookstores December, 2016

Young English noblewoman, Anne Ayscough, lived during the turbulent times of Henry VIII, when Protestant reformist ideas clashed violently against entrenched Catholicism.

Yet many, especially the wealthy, owned William Tyndale’s New Testament, including the household of Sir William Ayscough in Lincolnshire. In her family home, Anne grew in an atmosphere of openness, gleaning new ideas from her brothers who were educated at Cambridge, a hotbed of Protestant ideals.

At the age of fifteen, Anne’s life changed drastically. Her older sister Martha, betrothed to a son of a family staunch in the Catholic faith, contracted a fever and died. With the financial arrangements for the marriage already in place, Anne’s father ordered her to stand for her dead sister, forcing his daughter to enter a loveless marriage.

England’s religious war became Anne’s as she clung tight to her own ideals in her husband’s house. This eventually brought her into the center of the vicious political and religious battles where she was faced with a choice.

Anne could deny the truths she had embraced as a young woman and live, or hold fast to her beliefs and be put to death.