An Instance of the Fingerpost

Oxford in 1663 is still divided by the Civil War, religious suspicion and the restoration of Charles II. When Robert Grove, a fellow of New College, dies and the servant Sarah Blundy is accused of poisoning him, four men record sharply conflicting accounts of the case: the Venetian physician Marco da Cola, the Royalist son Jack Prestcott, the mathematician and cryptographer John Wallis, and the Oxford antiquary Anthony Wood. Their narratives move through medical experiments, secret intelligence, disputed loyalties and the precarious position of a woman with few defenders.

Each testimony revises what appeared certain in the one before it, exposing the ambitions and prejudices through which evidence is interpreted. Pears places the murder mystery among real Restoration scholars and scientists, including John Locke, Robert Boyle and Richard Lower, while showing how experimental knowledge, political surveillance and religious belief could all be used to establish authority. The result is both an intricate investigation and a study of who is permitted to define the truth.