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The Seventeenth Century
Samuel Pepys
Out of Print
This book was first published in 1973.
Young Denzil Swift is a Second Lieutenant in the Navy. He has just been paid off after a long voyage. He is riding to London to visit his parents when he comes across a coach being attacked by highwaymen. Denzil hastens to the rescue and the highwaymen (there are only two) are driven off. But not before the travellers in the coach have been robbed.
The travellers are a Dr Fane and his niece and ward Deborah - and Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Navy. Samuel Pepys has had a leather case stolen - a case containing the Medway charts and plans of the new Chatham defences, plans which would be invaluable to the enemies of England.
Any usual highwayman would just throw these plans away but Pepys suspects that the highway robbery was just a blind and that the theft of his plans is what the thieves were really after. He is proved right when he gets a very subtly worded backmail demand.
Denzil gets involved in all this intrigue - in helping Pepys recover his papers and in trying to win the favour of Deborah. There is a thrilling climax when he rescues Deborah after she has been kidnapped. They escape by water. Their boat is chased and fired on by the kidnappers but Denzil's waterman, Joe, knows how to get rid of them. He intends to "shoot the bridge." There has been a particularly high tide and now it is ebbing. With the flood of water fighting its way to the sea the passage between the archways of London Bridge is like a millstream. It is dangerous for even an experienced waterman but Joe has done it before and is prepared to try again.
This is a fascinating story. What I particularly liked about it is all the detail about certain little known facts of history. For example the district of London known as Alsatia, where the magistrates had no authority and which, as a consequence, became the refuge of every scoundrel and rogue. (Alsatia is also mentioned in "The Fortunes of Nigel" by Sir Walter Scott.) Then Deborah has a secret. She is a playwright and an admirer of another female playwright - Aphra Behn. We do not hear much about Aphra Behn in the usual textbooks which is a pity. She was a profilic writer. She was also a spy for Charles II.
Popingay in the title refers to the Popingay Stairs. This is a flight of stairs leading up from a landing stage on the Thames. They in turn take their name from a gaily painted inn sign of a parrot. But the Popingay Stairs are fictional although there was a Popingay Alley.
There is also a sound historical basis for the events of the story. Samuel Pepys was held up by highwaymen and he was falsely accused of selling naval secrets.
And the "shooting" of the arches under London Bridge was a dangerous venture attempted by only the bolder watermen.
An engrossing mystery and adventure story packed with interesting details from the byways of history.
10+