Accidents of Providence

Rachel Lockyer is under investigation for murder.

It is 1649. King Charles has been beheaded for treason. Amid civil war, Cromwell's army is running the country. The Levellers, a small faction of political agitators, are calling for rights to the people. And a new law targeting unwed mothers and “lewd women” presumes anyone who conceals the death of her illegitimate child is guilty of murder.

Rachel Lockyer, unmarried glove maker, and William Walwyn, Leveller hero, are locked in a secret affair. But while William is imprisoned in the Tower, a child is found buried in the woods and Rachel is arrested.

So comes an investigation, public trial, and a cast of extraordinary characters made up of ordinary Londoners: gouty investigator Thomas Bartwain, fiery Elizabeth Lilburne and her revolution-chasing husband, Huguenot glover Mary Du Gard, a lawyer for the prosecution hell-bent on making an example of Rachel, and others. Spinning within are Rachel and William, their remarkable love story, and the miracles that come to even the commonest lives.


I found this book extremely difficult to rate. I liked it, it is right up my alley, but there was something about it that was a bit off, and I can't totally put my finger on it. So it got a 4/5 on GoodReads rather than a 5/5.

The topic in this book, about prosecuting women that hide the deaths of their newborn bastards, really reminded me of the witch hunts that happened in the Europe and the United States around the same time. It wasn't so much about the act itself as it was just trials trying to condemn women. Extremely sad, extremely unfair, and almost always resulting in a conviction that ended in the execution of the woman. 

I think the most important plot device in this novel is that the trials are never concerned with motive, only proving the death of the child, the maternity of the child, and that the death came unnaturally. So by following the trial, we don't really find out what happened to the baby until very late in the book... and then I cried... and CrIed, and CRIED. It was awful and sad and not at all what I expected. The impression I got from everyone that testified at her trial was that they were honest, but just that there was some fact that everyone was missing, and that the child's death was not, somehow, malicious. But I still could not have predicted what actually happened. 

Perhaps not the greatest topic for a book to be read by someone that is pregnant and particularly emotional right now. I should have seen that one coming. 

I didn't do much fact checking in this one, mostly because it didn't seem like there was a lot to check that stood out as inaccurate as far as my knowledge was concerned, I don't know much about the English Civil War period law or anything, but if anyone reads this one and finds something wrong with it, please let me know.