Isaac Fielding knows exactly where he stands: Things were not looking good. Upon that, at least, everybody could agree. The other thing that everybody seemed to agree about was that when, eventually, I had my day in court it was likely to be a short, bittersweet experience and that the main topic of discussion would be the manner of my subsequent execution.

A year has passed since the Empire Day outrages of July 1976. Up until now, the colonial administration and the government in the Old Country have controlled "the narrative" and, by and large, kept the truth well and truly buried.

Unfortunately, police and judicial bungling in New England is threatening to undo Government House in Philadelphia’s good work. As always, in the affairs of New England, nothing is quite what it seems to be. A year might have passed, but the seismic after-shocks still reverberate through the disunited colonies of the East Coast.

Isaac Fielding and his sons have yet to have their day in court. The governor of New England has been put through the mill by the parliament, and horror of horrors, copies of Two Hundred Lost Years, the 30-year-old seditious epistle banned in the First Thirteen, are flooding into North America, courtesy of the free press back in the British Isles - notwithstanding the authorities might have arrested and already condemned the wrong men for the Empire Day atrocities.