What Remains of Heaven

Author’s Note

While the church of St. Margaret’s and the village of Tanfield Hill are fictional, the crypt of St. Margaret’s was inspired in both its design and the details of its rediscovery by the very real crypt of St. Wystan’s in Repton, England.

For nineteenth-century burial customs and the condition of burials in crypts, see the fascinating material published both in print and on the Internet on the archaeological excavations of Christ Church, Spitalfields, London; of St. Pancras Church, Euston Road; and the recently rediscovered crypt of the former Dominican church in Vác, Hungary.

As surprising as it may seem, the incredibly long delay in the funeral of Bishop Prescott was quite common at the time, with the average being ten to twelve days; English gentlewomen did not attend funerals until Victorian times.

The fire that forms the climax of this tale is inspired by a real event: A fire in the crypt of St. Clements in London burned for days at the end of the nineteenth century, fueled solely by its jam-packed coffins and their contents.

The person of Bishop Francis Prescott is based, loosely, on the very real Bishop Beilby Porteus, who was for many years Bishop of London. An ardent reformer and abolitionist, Porteus was one of the leading supporters of the Slave Trade Act that passed Parliament in 1807. While a vocal opponent of both the French Revolution and the republican doctrines of Thomas Paine, he also penned the antiwar, antiempire poem quoted, in part, by Lord Jarvis. He died (peacefully) at the Bishop of London’s summer residence of Fulham Palace in 1809. John Moore was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1783 to 1805, when he was succeeded by the rather colorless Charles Manners-Sutton. My thanks to Ms. Janet Laws, personal secretary and assistant to the current Bishop of London, for answering some of my research queries on the bishops’ former London residence.

Numerous sites and buildings referred to in this series, such as the first church of St. Pancras and the Temple, have been renovated or rebuilt in the past two hundred years and therefore appear differently now than they would have in 1812. I have described them as Sebastian would have seen them.

The life of William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin, was much as I have portrayed it, although he actually sailed from New York in September of 1782, rather than at the beginning of June, as I have it here. Most of the comments my characters make about the American Revolution and the young United States are taken from actual letters, journals, and speeches made at the time. While they might strike some as having a modern, slightly satirical ring, they are actually very true to the period, with most gentlemen of the Regency era viewing the new American state and its radical new form of government as a serious threat to civilization.