IPSWICH HAD BEEN A CLOTH port forever, but that trade had fallen on hard times because of the fatal combination of cheap stuff from India and Dutch shipping that could bring it to Europe. It was the prototype of the ridiculously ancient English town, situated at the place where the River Orwell broadened into an estuary, the obvious spot where anyone from a cave-man to a Cavalier would drive a stake into the muck and settle. Daniel judged that the gaol had been the first structure to go up, some five or six thousand years ago perhaps, and that the rats had moved in a week or two later. Ipswich was the county seat, and so when Charles II had whimsically decided to enforce the Penal Laws, all of Suffolk's most outstanding Quakers, Barkers, Ranters, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and the odd Jew had been rounded up and been deposited here. They might just as well have been released a month ago, but it was important to the King that Daniel, his chosen representative, come out and handle the matter in person.