(no subject)
In the days since Port Royal received a new acting governor, things have been changing.
It would be impossible to dismantle everything that Lord Cutler Beckett had done in a single stroke, but the declared moratorium on executions had marked the beginning of a new order in the colony. Martial law has been lifted, the suspended rights of trial by jury and other good sound English laws have been restored, and the acting governor has taken pains to make several good-faith gestures to show that things will be different under his administration.
It shows, for instance, in the way that he had ordered that those hanged under the draconian legal measures were to be disinterred from the unmarked and unconsecrated graves they had been thrown into after the soldiers had cut them down. Family and friends were allowed to come and claim the bodies for proper, private burial elsewhere, and the dead who went unclaimed were reburied with appropriately solemn ceremony and given graves in a nearby churchyard.
One change amongst many, true, but the changes are also starting to show in the way that the people of Port Royal go about their daily business.
At first, a few unpleasant incidents had disturbed the King's peace. Ordinary Company sailors being assaulted on shore, for one -- a petty sort of revenge, especially when the sailors attacked had had no part in Beckett's designs. Under the old order, their assailants would have been hunted down and sent to a swift and final end on the gallows. In the new regime, the assailants were indeed caught, but the punishments they received were equal to the punishments meted out to the Company sailors, who had not been without blame in the incident. And the message that the acting governor's response sent to the community as a whole was sufficient to ensure that no further scuffles have marred the still uneasy peace that has settled over Port Royal.
Merchants have opened their shops again. Trade is slowly picking up -- thanks to the acting governor's decision to reduce the tariffs and port fees by a few crucial pence in the pound -- and ships are entering and leaving the harbour with goods to buy and goods to sell.
If there happens to be a noticeable lack of pickpockets and prostitutes on the streets, in all likelihood it will only be a temporary one.