A squire in medieval England was the bearer or keeper of the Knights Swords. The Knight was both the physical guardian and political strong man of the Lord of the land and community. The Squire, more often than not, eventually became a Knight himself.
He was generally a respected figure in the community, usually with substantial means and influence and quite often determined the well-being and happiness of the village folk. However in some counties in medieval England, the Squire was cruel and evil and exploited the town folk and made a misery of their lives.
Oddingly, a conservative little village in the county of Worcestershire in the midlands of England still has a Squire ; as do several small towns and villages throughout England. The present Squire of Oddingly however, could trace his family lineage back some five hundred years in that same village and two hundred years in the same house.
Although his title of Squire was inherited ; passed down from father to son through generations, he no longer had any significant power or authority in the community, but like his father, his grandfather and great grandfather before him, he still commanded respect from many of the village folk. They too had long family lineages within the county.
The people still looked up to him for their communal and social well-being, for he was a charitable, kind man, who, like his forefathers had sustained the family wealth through fair and wise judgement in whatever they did, with always strong consideration for the community.
2.
I met him in the most unusual of circumstances fifty years ago, deep in the Amazon rain forest, in what was then still one of the most undeveloped and remote parts of the world, where one would least expect to meet an English country gentleman, least of all a country squire, the Squire of Oddingly.
He was a dark haired tall tanned stately man, with a crop of hair befitting the style of the day, and remarkably well-dressed even under the prevailing environmental conditions as they were at the time.
He had a natural manner of authority without intimidating, for his self-introduction to me, under my somewhat dubious circumstance, was both welcoming and friendly and for me a great relief.
I had appeared from around a bend in the narrows of a rapidly flowing river that was overhung with dense and colorful flora and tropical plants bearing fruits of Papaya and Granadilla that occur naturally in the dense Amazon rain forests.
Suddenly….. as I was carried from the rapids into a wider section of the river, not a hundred meter’s away on the far bank, were five open walled structures. A small native village on the banks of this Amazonian back water.
They saw me first, the village inhabitants, as I rounded the river bend in a long narrow unstable dugout river craft. I had purchased it two weeks before in a riverside settlement at the confluence of the Amazon River and the Rio Madeira. An old man who I had befriended there was happy to give it to me for five American Dollars.
I was caught in a rush of flowing water through the narrow river bend, fighting desperately to keep the long ungainly craft head to the flow and not across it. Had I lost the fight, the rushing water would have swamped and capsized my craft and swept me into the back eddies beyond the current into the ravenous jaws of the little fish that lurk in the still waters of the Amazon basin, for the palms of my hands were severed and bleeding and the scent of my blood would have been instant.
It was several minutes before I recovered from my ordeal, before I saw the villagers on the far bank, waving at me, prompting and directing me to a slight cove on the river side. One of them must have seen me as I rounded the river bend and alerted the others. As I came into the shore, I was helped by several young indigenous men to disembark from my long unstable craft. They directed me to lie down on a mattress of straw where I instantly lost consciousness. I noticed, as I stepped off the dugout, that one of the adults was clearly not native to the area.
When I awoke, several minutes later, a tall man, the one I saw when I first stepped onto the river bank, was standing over me. He smiled and welcomed me and calmly suggested, after I had sufficiently recovered, that we sit together under the cool shade of a tree to shelter from the midday heat, to talk about why I had come to such an obscure place in the middle of the Amazon jungle. It occurred to me that I should ask him the same question!!!
He gave me a long narrative of why he was in this hot steamy remote corner of the world. In this riverside village of a few open structures with roofs covered with layers of Banana tree leaves, a small village some distance south of the town of Manicore on the banks of a back water of the Rio Madiera, on the arterial river network of the Amazon basin .
3.
In the mid 18th Century, said the Squire, two men were murdered in the village of Oddingly but the murders were never solved, although the village folk suspected that the crime had been committed by transient thugs or Highwaymen from some far away village or town. Distances in those days were long and far and common folk seldom wondered much further than the outskirts of their village.
Whoever was guilty of the crime could have come from somewhere quite close to the village. In the eyes of the midland counties however, the blame rested on the village folk and over a period of time, throughout the midlands of England, the village became known as ‘Evil Oddingly’ with the shame of the crime resting on the shoulders of the local folk, most of all on the Squire, even though there was no evidence.
The two men, at the time of their demise, had worked in the home of the Squire and his family. Being Lord and caretaker of the county, he had a close association with the two men for he relied on them for much of the work that had to be done on the vast estate owned by the Squire. He also felt responsible for them and their social wellbeing. To this day, many decades later, the family had always felt committed to discover the origins of the two men, because it was known by some that their blood flowed in the family of the Squire. It was also known they were from a far away place and not of local heritage. No one, said the Squire had taken on the task before he himself had decided to pursue the mystery.
4.
The men had settled in Oddingly after much difficulty in finding a place of refuge in 18th Century England, for they were not Englishmen, nor were they from anywhere in Europe and clearly they were not African, deemed to be escaped slaves. Even though in retrospect they had been slaves in another world. People with foreign, unfamiliar features were seldom accepted at any level of English society during that immerging colonial era. These two men, were short and dark skinned with features and statures that vividly stood out amongst common English folk. They were no exception to that discriminative rule.
The people of Oddingly were generally charitable folk and allowed them to stay in their village without harassment for an initial period, but as they became established and proved their worth, they were encouraged not to leave. Over the course of several years they proved to be hard working contributors to the whole community and everyone looked upon them as part of their own ……..until sadly one day they met their demise.
Listening to the Squire that day, to his intriguing story ; said the two men had been survivors of a fire that broke out in the dead of night on a ship that was tied up in Bristol Docks at the mouth of the river Avon on the west coast of England. The ship, a 4 masted barque carried a cargo of natural rubber from Belem and Manaus in the state of Amazonas in Brazil.
Their story had been passed down over the years by the folk of Oddingly and well documented in the family annals, in which it was said the two men were more closely connected to the big family of the Squire of that era, than was generally known within the community.
5.
Rubber, after discovery of its commercial applications, became a lucrative industry in the mid 1800 and the European rubber barons that controlled its production became fabulously wealthy but often….. very ruthless men. This was at great expense to the indigenous tribes that lived throughout the Amazon Basin, thousands of whom were press ganged into enslavement to work in vast plantations that became established in the region.
Very few common folk in Europe knew anything of this part of the world, of the indigenous peoples that lived there, even less of the new rubber industry whose beginnings were in the Amazon rain forest.
The two men dove overboard that night away from the burning ship and swam out into the river. It was their only route of escape from the ships forecastle were they were accommodated and asleep at the time, awakened by smoke and the encroaching heat that was beginning to engulf the forward end of the ship. In the water and looking back at the burning vessel, they quickly realized it was an opportunity to escape the subservient life they lived, enslaved on that ship. It was likely no one would ever miss them or even know of their existence as subservient crew, because they were confined to the ships forecastle when not at labor, and were never permitted to go ashore.
They were lucky to escape with their lives that dark dismal night because the ship was totally destroyed by fire, fueled with intense heat by the remains of a volatile natural Latex rubber cargo, all of which would have been unloaded the following day. The ship burnt to its skeleton of structural timbers with little evidence of anything remaining and finally went to the bottom at its mooring in the Bristol dock.
The only other man on board that night was the mate. He survived the fire but only by the grace of two dock men that saw him clinging to the ships inn-board gunwales completely incapacitated by drink and choking with toxic smoke. They braved the heat and smoke of the rapidly burning wooden ship and dragged him down the gangway to safety. Several days later when he was questioned, he made no mention of the two men, so it was never known that the ship had two crew that were part of the total compliment. Eight former crew members of the ship were paid off the day after it arrived in Bristol and likely never knew that the ship had been totally destroyed, least of all to testify to the existence of the two men. Seamen, during that era and even for decades later, worked from ship to ship, seldom remaining for more than one round trip.
They were in the water for some time that night kept afloat by crude cork floatation devices and had it not been for the warmer currents in the Bristol channel at that time of the year, they might not have survived. They were fortunate to be heard by a passing fisherman in a gaff rigged open sailing vessel destined to get to fishing grounds at the outer reaches of the Bristol channel… early in the morning, before daybreak. He was close enough to hear their screams and to come to their rescue. He hauled them aboard his boat but left them to themselves to recover from their ordeal, as he was intent to get to his destination before the break of day, to set his nets for the Salmon runs that were beginning to appear at that time of the year.
That fortunate fisherman was well rewarded for his charity. The two men after their long time in the water willingly helped in setting the nets. They displayed fishing techniques that he had never seen before. They were exemplary fishermen in their own right and throughout that day, salmon catches were huge, far greater than he could have ever anticipated. They would make a fortune for him in the fish markets of Chepstow. Two days later they arrived back at the home port, after a long arduous trip from the fishing grounds, beating into wind, weather and tide in a boat laden to its gunwhales with fish.
After they helped the fisherman dispatch the catch…. to show his gratitude he gave them an old rowing skiff and pointed them in the direction of the narrowing channel that becomes the mouth of the River Severn.
6.
For days they rowed slowly up the river, preferring the safety of their boat, to the exposure of walking on public pathways of adjoining villages, towns and cities, for they were abundant with thugs, robbers and highwaymen looking for opportunities to prey on travelers who used them.
They stopped at riverside villages along the way to find snippets of work in any capacity, but few local folk would employ them because of their unusual appearance. However they did survive for several weeks… slowly making their way up the river, destination unknown. Local folk did show empathy and charity towards them and gave them food and sometimes lodgings, if only on the straw of a farmers barn.
It was the day they rowed their boat into the town of Worcester in the month of December1864. A group of people walking along a pathway on the river bank saw the two men and noticed their unusual features. One called to them and was surprised to get a response in accented broken English. The men responded as they did to anyone who attempted to befriend them because it might lead to some opportunity; It was what they desperately needed. It was a young novice priest that called out to them who subsequently offered to help them. He was originally from the town of Oddingly near Worcester and knew most of the local villager’s there, including the old established family of the Squire.
It was the Squires family that first employed them and where they worked for several years. They became widely known within the community of Oddingly, partly due to the Squire himself who talked highly of their integrity and skills. He strongly encouraged the village folk to contribute to their social wellbeing. They soon became independent and integrated into the community, becoming friends with most of the villagers, with few exceptions. They were particularly skilled at wood carving and metal engraving, especially silver which had been traded amongst the tribes of the Amazon that inhabited the arterial water regions for thousands of years. Both men wore small silver pendants on a thin leather belt that was tied around their groin, unseen by whoever was responsible for robbing them of their possessions and ultimately murdering them in 1872.
When their remains were found in a depression along the side of a pathway near the village, the constabulary drew a quick conclusion to their violent end, one that was completely unsubstantiated. Because of their foreign appearance, they were often alienated by outsiders, including the police that had come some distance from Worcester to investigate the crime. Foreign people of color living in Europe during those times were usually deemed to be savages. So it was with the constabulary and most likely why they came to their speedy conclusion, one that ultimately reflected on the village folk of Oddingly.
It was through my curiosity and interest, said the Squire, in researching origins of tribal markings and hieroglyphics that were engraved on the pendants worn by the two men. These had been safeguarded in the annals of my family home in Oddingly, he said, untouched for 120 years until I began to investigate them.
Originally the two men came from the hot steamy tropical jungle right here were we talk today, said the Squire, for they were indigenous people of this area, press ganged by the colonial rubber barons who enslaved thousands of them in the Amazon basin, to harvest the natural rubber in the tropical forests and plantations.
No one knows how the two men were conscripted to crew the square rigged clipper ships that plied the Atlantic Ocean, but many indigenous men were. Most never returned to their roots….. their native homes.
I am here he said to discover these people and to try to provide some retribution to them because their blood also runs in my veins.
MAD