Working Folk
James Bell of Mereford
Of the Bridegate Insurrection
A Mereford carrier who held the Bridegate crossing for a winter against the city's own toll farmers, and was hanged at the steps when it was over. The watermen of Bridegate still say his name when the toll goes up.
The Bridegate Insurrection of 4473 and 4474 is a name and two dates in the older notes; the volumes do not describe it. What the notes add is that it began on the crossings and that two men led it, James Bell of Mereford and Robert Ketter. The rest of this telling is new, and is set out as the lower river tells it.
Bell was a carrier, out of the drove country, who brought loads to the Bridegate wharves twenty years running and knew every toll on the way to the river. In the winter of 4473 the city farmed the Bridegate tolls to a syndicate, and the syndicate doubled the charge on the carriers' carts in a week. Bell and the carriers barred the crossing with their own wagons and kept it barred, letting through bread, coal and the dead and nothing else. The watermen fed them. They held it until the spring, when the farm was revoked and a militia came for the leaders.
Ketter got away down the river. Bell was hanged at the head of the Lower Steps, under the statue of the general who had made the crossing safe four centuries before, and the lower river has never stopped finding that fitting. Bridegate carriers still pay a farthing into a box at the steps on the day, which is not entered anywhere.
“Bread, coal and the dead go through. Everything else can wait for the farmer to come and argue with me.”
In person
About forty, thickset and weather-burned, with a broad stubbled face and his own brown hair tied back under a battered cocked hat. A long brown carrier's coat with deep cuffs over a red waistcoat, a whip coiled at his belt and leather gaiters; he stands on a barricade of wagons across a river crossing in winter, carters with staves and lanterns behind him.
- Affiliation
- The Bridegate rising
- Born
- 4433 A.C.
- Age
- long dead by 4621 Years After Cataclysm. The present day is 4621.
- Active
- Active 4473–4474
- Fate
- Long dead; the year of death is not recorded
- Where
- London
- Calling
- Civic leader
Sung of in · Sounds of the Realm
- The Bridegate ManJem Furlongof General Roderic Hale, James Bell of Mereford3:22
Lyrics
When London lay in ruin and the ash was on the tide,
And the old quarters held such things as no man named inside,
They raised a redoubt at Bridegate where the crossing met the stone,
And they gave the keeping of it to General Hale alone.Name it, walk it, then fire it — that was the Bridegate way;
Never burn a quarter till you've walked it in the day;
So here's to Roderic Hale, boys, who held the crossing then,
And when you call a man a Bridegate man, you call him the best of men!In the Ash Scouring, forty-one, when they fired the broken town,
He'd not let a street be lit until he'd walked it up and down;
He went in first where the dead lay thick and the wrong things kept their hold,
And he named every lane by its rightful name before the fire was told.Name it, walk it, then fire it — that was the Bridegate way;
Never burn a quarter till you've walked it in the day;
So here's to Roderic Hale, boys, who held the crossing then,
And when you call a man a Bridegate man, you call him the best of men!Now his statue stands at the Lower Steps with its back to the London street,
Looking down upon the river where the barges and watermen meet;
And they say he's the only general in London who looks at the right thing —
So raise your pots to the river, boys, and let the old man sing!And when they hanged James Bell beneath him for holding the crossing too,
The watermen say the old stone wept — and I say that's likely true.Name it, walk it, then fire it — that was the Bridegate way;
Never burn a quarter till you've walked it in the day;
So here's to Roderic Hale, boys, who held the crossing then,
And when you call a man a Bridegate man, you call him the best of men!
