Pigs In Court
This fictional story features a real person, Margaret Brent, the first female lawyer in America and the first suffragist.
Spruce beer. It is what we had in Maryland, where I had come with my sister Mary and two brothers last year in 1638 to try our fortunes. Mary and I were drinking some in the shade of our woodshed in the late afternoon. The sun shone more harshly here than in England. The hands had finished most of their work for the day and were coming in from the fields. The pigs had returned from foraging in the woods and the chickens and ducks were rooting around in the dirt for grain. During the voyage here our chickens had been drowned in a storm, but we had acquired several more pairs and domesticated some ducks from these shores to join them.
Our head laborer Stephen, covered with sweat, approached Mary and me. It was unlike him to come at this time. We met in the mornings to discuss the day’s business.
Stephen twisted his cap in his hands. “There is a problem with the swine, madam.”
We had managed to get a pair of swine and some heifers despite the challenges of importing them. This season they had started to breed.
“What is the matter?”
“Tullis swore some of our piglets had three notches in their ears instead of two. I thought he was wrong or the piglets had got themselves mixed up, but now I see the sow and her family have had their ears altered. Someone has been adding notches to their ears.”
My jaw tightened. The pigs spent most of their time foraging in the woods. Everybody notched their pigs’ ears and registered the marks with the Council, to show whose free ranging pigs were whose.
Mary put down her beaker. “But that means—”
Pig theft. For a moment no one spoke but the chickens and ducks in the yard and the geese overhead.
“Send a couple men to round up all of our stock,” I said.
Stephen nodded. “I have already done so.” I waved my hand in dismissal, but he remained. “There is something else, ma’am.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t like to say it, but I think Farmer Barens or his men may be–,” he stopped, not willing to accuse his better.
Mary put a hand to her mouth.
Farmer Barens. Who all knew to be a disreputable fellow, in debt up to his ears. A yeoman in England, he had a small army of laborers here whom he drove hard. His land was down the river from ours and our pigs usually went that direction.
“Get the stock in and we’ll discuss it then,” I ordered.
Mary shook her head when he was out of hearing. “I was afraid of something like this,” she said. “It is wilderness here. Some will take advantage of anyone weaker, including our sex.”
I threw my metal beaker at a tree stump. “I’ll bet that blackguard Barens knows Fulke and Giles are away.” Our brothers, whose farms neighbored ours, were examining a farm on the Patuxent for several weeks. They had been granted a thousand acres each while Mary and I together got only 120 acres. Fulke, the oldest, was already heir to an estate in England but Mary and I had nothing there. We had staked our last shillings to cross the ocean to grow tobacco—green gold—and return with wealth to England. Our rough wood cabin was a far cry from our father’s stone manor house in the Cotswolds, but it and our livestock were all we had. We couldn’t afford to keep animals in sheds and grow food for them.
Within three days our farm hands had rounded up all the stock. Our breeding sow and her piglets now had three notches on their ears instead of two. Stephen and Tullis, our husbandman, knew our animals. They remembered the pattern of the sow’s skin. Ear slits had a distinctive look depending on the tool used to cut them, and the third notch was wider, made with a different blade and edged with more recent scar tissue.
I reviewed the paper with our registered notch mark. Our cattle and other pig still had that pattern. I needed to compare it to the three notch animals.
“Hold that pig,” I said. Tullis and two others struggled to keep the big sow still. I held my breath against the piggish smell and grabbed the squirming animal’s ear. It had three notches, two just like the two on the two notch animals—same distance apart, same depth, with the third cut close by the second notch. The same was true of the piglet ears.
Someone was stealing our livestock. But how could I be sure it was Farmer Barens? It was true that his farm was in a place where our stock was likely to wander by, but I knew our hands disliked him because he treated his servants harshly. Perhaps Stephen found him easy to blame.
“If this is Barens’ work, he knows we won’t drag him into court,” Mary said.
“We might,” I growled.
We did not have to wait to determine the culprit. The day after I checked the ear marks, Barens approached with two muscular servants in tow.
Mary and I came to greet him. He smiled, wickedly I thought, almost a leer. He was over six feet tall.
“Mister Barens, what a lovely surprise,” I said, not backing up an inch. Mary called for beakers of beer.
“Oh no, ladies, I crave your pardon, but I am here on business. Where is your husbandman?”
Our husbandman Tullis was a former valet and a weakling compared to this trio. I asked our housemaid to fetch Tullis, Stephen, and another man. Best to have three of ours to his three. I whispered to Deborah to make sure the third man was a strong one.
Farmer Barens suggested he might be allowed to spare me the trouble of dealing with business by talking to our men without me. I did not answer. When my men arrived, Barens tried to take them aside, but I bade him discuss his business forthwith.
“Some of my pigs are missing,” he said. “I wonder if they might have got mixed up with yours.”
“Odd. We were wondering along the same lines. Stephen, bring the sow here, and bring several more men.”
Stephen did as ordered. That gave us more men than Barens had, but ours were needed to handle the irritated sow. She thrashed around when Barens tried to examine her ear and almost bit him, good pig, but he said he could see three ear notches.
“Mister Barens,” I said, “someone has been altering our animals’ ear marks.”
“What? That is a serious allegation.” His men assumed shocked looks.
“Do you claim this pig?” I pointed to the sow.
“It’s mine,” he said, and smirked as the sow broke from her handlers and ran off. “When your brothers return you can tell them I retrieved her.”
“We will go before the Council and argue the matter,” I said. “We both have registered marks, and I will ask the Council to compare them. Until then I will keep this pig. She is our breeding sow, and we need her.”
Barens stood still for a moment with his lips parted. Then he swallowed and said, “Mistress Brent, this is my pig, and its ear has three notches. You are not familiar with these matters. If I lose the use of my livestock until the next Council meeting, I will sue for damages.”
“As you wish,” I said. “Stephen, take the animal back to the sheds and set the men back to their work.” Stephen nodded to the others, and they went after the pig, but he himself stayed near.
“Mister Barens, are you sure you will not take some beer with us?” Mary asked, holding a beaker out to him.
He turned and left, followed by his burly underlings. Stephen waited until they were gone before leaving us.
Mary sank down on our bench. I took a gulp of beer. She moved close to me and asked, “Since Fulke and Giles are away, do you wish to get some other gentleman to put forth a claim for us?”
I rapped on the bench. “No. I shall file a claim against him. Maryland law says I can.”
“But no woman has ever pressed her own case.”
“As a young girl, I stood on the law that said women could not be married against their will even though many are. I mean to use Maryland law now.”
I drew up a Complaint. I asked Edward Parker, the Sheriff of Maryland, to serve it on Farmer Barens at Three Notch Farm, and he did. The case would go before the Council at its next meeting.
“Margaret, my dear,” Mary put down her ubiquitous sewing to reason with me. “Are you sure you want to press this case? No doubt Barens is a blackguard, but even if you win, you may reap trouble.”
When I stood up to our father, quoting canon law as he tried to marry me to a landowning gentleman who wanted me to bear lots of children, the result had been that I remained stuck in his house with no establishment. The suitor died, and I would have been the owner of his land had I given in to the marriage.
But I shook my head. “No. If Barens walks over us, other landholders will try it too.”
“The gentlemen here have been so polite to us. Barens is an exception.”
We had been treated with great courtesy in Maryland, women being so scarce here, but I could not afford to lose that pig. Not without a fight.
“Perhaps that courtesy will extend to listening to my arguments,” I said.
I had heard stories of how cases were presented. I had seen men here present their claims to land and livestock notch patterns but not trying a disputed case.
But no learned judges awaited my arguments. Here the governor’s council sat as the court for civil matters, and only one trained lawyer was on the council. Even if they were learned, could I not convince them with the justice of my arguments and my knowledge of registration marks? Stephen and Tullis would be my witnesses, and my other evidence was the registered marks and the animals themselves.
I rehearsed my arguments before Mary. I discussed with my maid Frances what I should wear to present my case. My fancy red velvet gown to overawe Farmer Barens with the Brent family wealth and status? It was suited for visiting ladies in English parlors and might look ridiculous in a court case concerning pigs. We chose a dress of broadcloth, a dyed wool cloak fastened with a broach, and leather shoes. On the day of the hearing, I rode with my witnesses to the governor’s manor, St. Gabriel’s, where the Council would hear our case. With two other servants driving the pigs behind us, we were quite a procession.
When we reached St. Gabriel’s, a stone’s throw from the waterfront, we waited with the other litigants, all men. The summer sun was strong and the hot; heavy air warmed me through my clothing. I began to perspire. Had broadcloth been the right choice?
Between the waterfront and St. Gabriel’s, the marketplace hummed, as it did whenever a ship docked. Two ladies who were passengers on the ship strolled by, stretching their legs before returning to their vessel.
The ship’s agent caught sight of me from the marketplace. “Mistress, will you look at the bolts of cloth brought in on Sea Venture? Or buy some sugar it picked up at Barbados? What do you seek?”
“I seek justice in the court.”
“Have you given your Power of Attorney to one of these gentlemen?” He glanced at the men in line.
“On the contrary, sir. I press my own case.”
The man turned away from me and as he did one of the strolling ladies nearby said to her companion, “Did you ever hear the like?”
A Maryland man who had seen me doing business at the waterfront in the past shrugged his shoulders at her comment and tipped his hat to me.
Barens showed up. He was chewing tobacco and spit the spent wad out near my feet. I ignored him.
At length we were called into the great hall where the Assembly met. Today it held only the Governor and two of his Councilors at a table. Governor Calvert was seated on a raised chair with the Councilors on either side. Barens was ten feet away from me with a servant. I was with my witnesses while the other servants and pigs waited outside.
I remembered how taken aback Governor Calvert had been when I said I wanted land in my own name. Now he simply asked, “This case is about a pig, Mistress Brent?”
“A sow and piglets, sir.”
The Governor looked at the councilor holding a pen, who began scratching the quill against his paper, and said, “Mistress Brent, as you are the plaintiff, you may present your case.”
I forgot about my attire, presented Stephen as my first witness and led him through a description of our two-notch mark. Then I had him describe the color patterns on the skin of our animals, the discovery that some of them had notches added to their ears, and the evidence that a different tool had been used for that third notch. I laid the registration papers for our marks on the table. I requested that two pigs be brought in for examination of their ears.
“Hold that, Mistress Brent,” Governor Calvert said. “Let us hear from Farmer Barens before we bring pigs in.”
Farmer Barens came forward. “Mistress Brent is confused.” He brandished the drawing of his mark, not allowing anyone a close look. “I am a yeoman and know far more about livestock than she. The pigs are mine. They have three notches in their ears.”
That was all he said! No witnesses. He might be more used to dealing with livestock than I but was less at home in a debate. I instructed my servants to bring in the pigs. As they obeyed, I crossed the room, took the drawing of the Barens mark from his hand and held it up to the Council. His registered mark was three evenly spaced narrow notches. Then I showed the drawing of my registered mark, two notches set slightly further apart than his.
The pigs entered the chamber, snorting. Stephen held one still and Tullis held up its ear.
“This pig is correctly notched with the Brent mark,” I said and beckoned to the Councilors to see for themselves.
For a moment they did not move, but Governor Calvert gestured to them to look while he remained seated. One at a time they examined the pig’s ear.
“Yes, this is your mark, Mistress Brent, but what of it? Does Mr. Barens claim this pig?”
“No. But look at this other pig’s ear.” I pointed to the disputed pig and my lads dragged it forward, squealing as only an unwilling pig can.
On comparison, the Councilors could see that pig’s ear had the two notches of the Brent mark with another notch added, made with a wider blade. The pattern, though three notches, did not match the Barens mark. The spacing was different.
The Councilors hurried back to their chairs, one holding his hand over his nose. My men dragged the pigs away. The governor signaled us to leave too, and Barens walked out the door so swiftly that I trailed behind him, and he slammed the door in my face. Tullis opened it for me, but as he did, the sow escaped his hold and ran toward the dock.
Barens turned to me. “Look at the trouble you have caused. If I lose that sow–” He followed the servants in, rushing after the animal as the gentlemen and farmers waiting to present their cases watched.
The pig got to the top of the ramp to the dock before stopping, disconcerted by the steep slope and the sound of waves. As the men hauled her back, I wondered what would happen if the Council decided against me. It would mean they would not even consider the evidence I brought. Anyone could take advantage of me then.
“How did your case go, Mistress Brent?” asked one landholder waiting for his case. “I understand it was about a pig. Mine concerns a cow. The seller and I recollect our agreement differently. I would be pleased to know how the Councilors view livestock cases.”
He and I spoke for several minutes. Other waiting litigants listened and asked about Governor Calvert’s mood. None seemed in the least unsettled that I had brought a case. Several of them looked askance at Farmer Barens, who sat on a tree stump at the other end of St. Gabriel’s.
In a few minutes the councilors called us back. We stood before Governor Calvert and he announced, “The three notch pattern of the pig in question is not that of Farmer Barens, for the three notches are not evenly spaced as in his registered mark. The ear notches do not exactly match those in Mistress Brent’s registered mark as there are three notches instead of two, but in consideration of her husbandman’s testimony concerning physical characteristics of the swine and the evidence that the third notch was made by a different tool, we award that animal and its offspring to Mistress Brent. Good day.” He jerked his head toward the door.
I had won! I bowed to the Councilors and to Farmer Barens. He bowed to the Councilors, turned away from me, and again walked out the door first. I walked home with Stephen, Tullis, and the pigs. Women were respected here. Maybe even if I made my fortune I would remain here in my wood house for good.
