About this story
You play the newly arrived director of Fentown's schools, and before you have toured them, two clergymen warn you against Bartholomew Toyner, a reformed drinker whose money funds the schools and whose garden parties, they say, teach freedom before it demands allegiance. You go to the garden anyway, and find Bartholomew and his wife Ann more curious about being understood than about being defended. The afternoon leaves you no closer to a verdict, aware that admirers and critics have both simplified a history you have not yet heard.
How it opens
You arrived to direct Fentown's new schools and left the council meeting among two clergymen.
Both praised Bartholomew Toyner's generosity before explaining why a principled person should distrust him.
Young ClergymanHe funds knowledge without submitting it to the Church that gives knowledge proportion.
If his vote shapes my school, I need facts about his conduct rather than labels for his belief.
Young ClergymanFacts include the company he permits, the cards he plays, and the doctrines he refuses.
Choose
Has he interfered with teachers or lessons?
Do his evening rooms keep young men from worse places?