Author gives life to story of failed coup against British crown
At first, it might seem like there aren’t many similarities between the Ku Klux Klan in Texas in the early 20th century and the reign of King George I in 18th century Britain, but for author Patricia Bernstein, the two mirror images of each other.
Her debut novel, “A Noble Cunning,” tackles a daring rescue during the oppression of Catholic Scots under Protestant British rule. As she researched, it reminded her clearly of the same attitudes that dominated the Invisible Empire in her nonfiction book “Ten Dollars to Hate: The Man Who Fought the Klan.”
“I was sort of surprised to find out how cruel British policy was to Catholics in this period,” she says. “It sort of relates to the Klan book because the most ever-present hate of the Klan was anti-Catholicism. That was their strongest animus. It stems all the way back to this.”
“A Noble Cunning” takes place after the fall of the House of Stuart and the rise in antiCatholicism in Britain. Practice of the religion was outlawed, and George ascended the throne in 1714 after an act of parliament made 50 other Catholic Stuart relatives ineligible.
Into this oppressive environment comes Lady Bethan Glentaggart and her husband, Gavin. The two want only to live a quiet life in their castle, raising their children and worshipping as they please. However, virulent anti-Catholic preachers and their flocks invade the couple’s home and assault Bethan in the process. This helps inspire Gavin to lead a failed coup against the crown, an act that lands him in the Tower of London. Desperate to save her husband, Bethan travels to the capital to save him.
The novel is based on the real-life figure Winifred Maxwell, who really did pull off a bloodless heist to save her rebel leader husband, the 5th Earl of Nithsdale, from execution. Bernstein heard her remarkable story when she and her husband visited Traquair House in Scotland in 2014. The similarities between angry Protestants accusing Catholics of insidious plots reminded her of the bigotry she chronicled in “Ten Dollars to Hate.”
“Britain was lined up against two very aggressive Catholic nations, France and Spain,” she says. “They found Catholicism distasteful, but they were also afraid of being taken over. The laws got more and more intense, and though they never did expel Catholics like they did the Jews in 1290, but they made it illegal to practice. Everybody was obligated to go to Church of England services or pay a fine. You can really understand why our Founding Fathers, bless their hearts, wanted to make sure we never had a state religion. A lot of those angry Scottish Protestants later moved to America and settled in the Appalachians, where they carried on their hatred. It stems all the way back to this period.”
Despite the bloody subject matter, Bernstein’s book is a love letter to anti-violence. From the assault on her heroine to the almost laughably ineffectual rebellion, armed conflict is portrayed as crude and nearly worthless, except sometimes in overt self-defense. Instead, Bethan uses a “cast” of brilliant women supporters and a brilliant subterfuge to thwart the edicts of George. At one point, as she is procuring drugs from an apothecary for the heist, she even states that she has no desire to be a Lady Macbeth and kill people.
“If she had been completely on her own, without help, she never would have been able to do it,” says Bernstein. “That’s another reason I fell I love with the story. She accomplished it with no violence and was helped by friends. The karma of good deeds comes back to her. She and her husband have helped people, and even strangers reach out their hands to her.”
While this does sometimes rob the book of tension (Bethan doesn’t even reach London until the halfway mark), it does make for a cozy little adventure. The ending is almost a foregone conclusion, thanks to the historical record, but the tale is no less enjoyable for being slightly predictable. Instead, it’s a textbook example of someone thinking outside the box to triumph in needlessly cruel times. A story like that was exactly what Bernstein wanted after spending so much energy writing about bigoted violence in Texas.
“After I wrote the Klan book, people asked me how I could write about the beatings and hangings,” she says. “It was like looking into the abyss. It seems like we’re almost going through another period like that right now. I always wonder why people want their religion to be on display all the time, and they always want it to be their own.”