| “ | Fool, what need for me to wait another hour, when all that woman's immortal soul yearns to lose itself in mine a thousand times more than it yearns for Heaven? This is the moment she was born for, and nor you nor Edric Davies, nor any multitude of devils like you will keep Tamsin Willoughby from her destiny. | „ |
| ~ Judge Jeffreys vowing to consume Tamsin's soul. |
Judge Jeffreys is the main antagonist of the 1999 novel Tamsin by Peter S. Beagle. He is a monstrous judge from the 17th century who terrorized Dorset, England, during his Bloody Assizes and who seeks to claim the eponymous Tamsin for himself at any cost.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
- In 1685, Judge Jeffreys punished the people of Dorset for the Monmouth Rebellion by having hundreds of people, innocent or guilty, hanged, drawn, and quartered, their bodies boiled and tarred, and their limbs and heads stuck on poles spread throughout the land.
- During one interrogation, he berated an eight-year-old girl so brutally that she collapsed and died of stress right there in the courtroom.
- He had hundreds more people whipped and sold into slavery in the West Indies.
- He grew obsessed with Tamsin Willoughby and threatened horror to her entire family if she didn't become his wife.
- He groped her which traumatized her so badly she could still feel his hands on her body 300 years later.
- Though Jeffreys was already married, he purposefully allowed his wife to kill herself with consumption, surmising she wouldn't last the year.
- He killed the boy Tamsin was in love with, Edric Davies.
- Tamsin had agreed to meet Edric at a cow byre to elope with him, but when he didn't appear, she eventually passed out waiting for him in the rain and cold. This caused her to contract pneumonia.
- On Tamsin's death bed, Jeffreys lied that Edric had abandoned her. Heart-broken, the dying and delirious Tamsin cursed Edric with her final words, and Jeffreys used this curse to condemn Edric's soul to an eternity of being tormented and chased by the Wild Hunt.
- On the day after Tamsin's funeral, Jeffreys drowned her cat.
- Re-emerging as a ghost 300 years later, Jeffreys planned to absorb Tamsin's soul, destroying her identity and reducing her to a part of Jeffrey's spirit for all eternity.
- When Tamsin lifted her curse on Edric, Jeffreys attempted to sic the Wild Hunt on Jenny Gluckstein, who was only 13 years old.
Trivia[]
- Judge Jeffreys is the only Pure Evil written by Peter S. Beagle.