William could feel his face going red. The blacksmith had played a trick on him and given him a counterfeit coin. No wonder he had been chuckling to himself as he handed it over!
The wonderful quill pen sat so temptingly on the shelf, and William had set his heart on using it that evening. In an instant, he knew just what to do. The blacksmith had given him two shillings, one to pay for the boots and one for himself. So why not swap the two coins? Who would know? Quickly, William took back the brass coin and reached into Mr. Nichols’s pouch to find the silver shilling.
Within a minute it was done. The brass shilling was back in the pouch, and William was holding the quill pen he’d wanted so badly. All the way back to the workshop, William went over his act. He would look Mr. Nichols right in the eye and smile as he gave him the money pouch. If Mr. Nichols noticed the brass shilling straightaway, William would run over to him and stare at it in wide-eyed amazement. Then he would begin stammering an apology for not noticing the counterfeit coin sooner and promise to look more carefully at every coin given to him in the future.
By the time William stepped through the door, he was sure everything would go just fine. Mr. Nichols was standing at his workbench with hammer in hand, tacking the leather sole onto a boot. He put the hammer down as William came through the door, letting in a blast of cold air behind him.
“The blacksmith and the rector both paid in full,” said William matter-of-factly as he handed the money pouch to his employer. He could feel his heart thumping hard, but he knew how to look calm on the outside. William turned to get the broom, as the floor was in need of sweeping.
Mr. Nichols reached into the pouch and pulled out the brass coin. “What’s this?” he asked gruffly. “Who gave you this shilling?”
“The blacksmith,” replied William looking up innocently. “Is there a problem with it?”
“A problem! Yes, there is a problem. The coin is a counterfeit,” Mr. Nichols said. Then he yelled, “John! John, come here. I have a job for you.”
John came hurrying in from out back where he had been unloading a bail of newly tanned hides.
“The blacksmith has given William a brass shilling. He probably thought the lad was too stupid to notice. It seems he was,” said Mr. Nichols to John while staring straight at William. “Take the coin back and demand a good one in its place.” He tossed the coin to John.
John pulled his coat tight around him and walked out into the cold. A chilling wind whipped in the door, but it was not as cold as the chill that wrapped itself around William’s heart.
William went back to sweeping the floor, but he could hardly concentrate on the simple task. Why hadn’t he thought that Mr. Nichols might go back to the blacksmith? What would happen if the truth came out? He hated to think about the answer. There was no doubt that stealing a shilling was a serious offense—very serious, in fact. The punishment for stealing a shilling or less was either imprisonment, a public whipping, or being shipped off to one of the king’s plantations in America or the West Indies to work for seven years. The only thing William could comfort himself with was the fact that it was only a shilling he had stolen. The punishment for stealing more than a shilling was death by public hanging, after which the thief’s corpse would often be left at the side of a well-traveled road as a warning to others not to steal. William had occasionally passed such corpses while making his deliveries. The message not to steal, however, hadn’t seemed to sink in.
William began to pray. “Oh, God, if You get me out of this, I will never lie again. I’ll go to church three times every Sunday, and I will never steal another thing. Just get me out of this. I don’t want to go to the West Indies.”
When the blacksmith himself came back with John a half hour later, it seemed to William Carey that God was not going to answer his desperate prayer. The whole story came tumbling out. The blacksmith explained to Mr. Nichols that he had given William the brass coin for his Christmas Box as a joke and he was surprised when William had not noticed right away that it was fake. William apologized and begged Mr. Nichols to forgive him. He promised to repay the shilling with the rest of his Christmas Box money. Finally, Mr. Nichols had compassion for him and agreed not to take him to the magistrate. It was a quiet Christmas for William, who was very grateful not to be on his way to the West Indies as a criminal!
As he worked, William was never without a book of some sort close by. As he tapped tacks into the sole of a shoe, he would glance up every few strokes of the hammer and read a line or two from the book he had propped open on his workbench. Mr. Nichols didn’t seem to mind his doing this, since William still managed to finish all his work.
Mr. Nichols liked books himself and had several in his home. One afternoon, William picked up one of Mr. Nichols’s books to read. As he opened it, he saw that it was filled with row upon row of beautiful squiggles and curly figures. This strange text fascinated him. He could not read a word of it and wasn’t even sure what language it was.
William was curious about the book and decided to investigate. He knew just the person to ask. It was rumored that Thomas Jones, an old weaver in the village of Paulerspury, had been to university—a rare thing in those days. William felt sure that Thomas Jones would know something about what language it was. On one of his few days off, William hurried back to his hometown to visit Mr. Jones. He was well rewarded. Mr. Jones took one look at the book and chuckled to himself. He explained to William that the book was written in Greek, and he began translating some of the words. William was fascinated by the language and asked so many questions that, in the end, Mr. Jones offered to teach him the language.
Mr. Jones later told William that he had expected him to give up after a lesson or two. After all, why would an apprentice cordwainer want to know Greek? But Mr. Jones didn’t know William! For two years, William studied Greek every spare moment he had, and by the end of that time, he could read and write the language well. By the time he was sixteen years old, William was one of the better educated men in the district. He had no idea that one day he would use this knowledge to help people half a world away.
Since William had not been shipped off to the West Indies for swapping the brass shilling, he kept his promise and began attending church three times each Sunday. He often talked about church with John Warr. Both men loved to argue about religion. William’s father was an Anglican church clerk, and John’s father was a leader in a nonconformist church. (Nonconformists were also called “dissenters” and belonged to Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian, and Quaker denominations.) Most of the discussions between William and John centered around the different ways their fathers’ churches worshiped. The two friends had extensive disagreements over everything from infant baptism to who should qualify as a minister. Often the discussions would turn into heated arguments.
William was very good at arguing and “won” nearly every religious argument he had with John. Sometimes he had the uncomfortable feeling that even when he had won an argument, he’d lost something a lot more important, but he could never admit that to John.
Secretly, William admired John for being a nonconformist. A person had to be willing to make sacrifices to be one. For example, the Test and Corporation Acts barred dissenters from being paid officers of the state and from holding rank in the army or navy. William was also aware that the children of dissenters were banned from going to the school in Paulerspury. To be a dissenter was definitely to be outside the mainstream of eighteenth-century English life.
Still, William would not let John get the better of him in an argument. In one argument, John maintained that the Church of England was not free to do as God wanted, since its main job was to serve and please the king, who was automatically the head of the church. In John’s opinion, this made the state church nothing more than a pawn. Little did either of them know that an event was unfolding across the Atlantic Ocean that would force William to come to the same conclusion.
The event was the American Revolution. William had followed events in America closely ever since his Uncle Peter had come back from fighting in Canada. Actually, it was the British winning the war against the French in Quebec that had helped bring on the American Revolution. Once Canada was firmly under British control, the American colonists were no longer afraid that France would invade them from the north. Without this threat of invasion, many of the English troops stationed in America were sent home. The colonists had been willing to pay high taxes to the king for protection against the French, but now that the soldiers were gone, the colonists began to ask each other why they still had to pay the same high taxes. What was the king doing for them that they could not do for themselves? Thus, in 1775, the colonists had rebelled at the Battle of Lexington and signed a declaration of independence from Britain the following year. Spain and France had declared that they would fight for America’s freedom, and so the American Revolution had raged on.
George Washington, whose grandparents were from Northhamptonshire, and the “rebel” colonists became the champions of a lot of people in Piddington and Paulerspury. Many people in the area said that King George III was mad and unable to make wise decisions and that they should all be praying for a new king rather than for the failure of George Washington and the rebels in America. William was also beginning to think this way. As he had read about the situation, he’d come to the conclusion that the cause of the American colonists was right and just.
For many months, John Warr had been inviting William to go with him to the meetinghouse at Shackleton, but William had always refused, that is, until King George III declared Wednesday, February 10, 1779, to be a national day of prayer and fasting. Things were going badly for Britain in many other parts of the world besides the American colonies. France and Spain had declared war on England, and their warships were in the English channel, waiting for the right moment to strike. In India, British troops were being attacked by well-organized bands of locals, and in the West Indies, France was fighting a sea battle with the English navy.
William wanted to take part in the day of prayer for his country—every Englishman did—but he could not bring himself to pray for the downfall of the revolutionary troops in America. Instead, he hoped they won! Feeling this way meant that he couldn’t go to the Anglican prayer service, where the king had ordered all worshipers to pray for the defeat of the American rebels. The dissenters, on the other hand, were praying for the revolutionaries to win. William thus made up his mind to accept John Warr’s invitation to the nonconformist prayer service.
William Carey had no idea what a different world he was about to enter. Nor could he have known the effect he would have on that world in years to come!
Chapter 4
Among the Dissenters
William didn’t quite know what to expect as he stepped through the low door of the meeting hall. He had heard that the dissenters had strange habits, and he promised himself he would keep his guard up. But as the meeting progressed, he felt strangely at home. Several men gave short messages, and others stood to read verses from the Bible. William had never been in a group of people who seemed to believe what they read with such certainty. One of the men in the group, Mr. Chater of Hackleton, read some verses from Hebrews chapter 13: “Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.”
William felt that the words spoke directly to him. He had spent his whole life going to the right church, saying the right things, being in the “fashionable” camp. Despite all this, he had not felt any power to change who he was. Now he began to think that maybe he belonged outside the camp—outside the state religion and among the dissenters. It was a startling thought to William, but he knew it was right. When the prayer meeting was over, he talked to John Warr about the decision he’d made. He wanted to become a dissenter!
