Mary Bryant (2005–2007)

Romola Garai: Mary Bryant

Quotes 

• Will : I don't know that I can get us across.

  Mary Bryant : Of course you don't, it's a risk, but you've gone from Cornwall across to Spain - the same distance, you said it yourself, and you'll be the one to get us to Timor.

  Will : I didn't exactly do that - sail across to Spain, I didn't exactly do that. I can read a chart better than a book, I can hug a coastline, feel a boat around rocks, but I've never taken a boat outside of land in my life, and I don't intend to now. Listen to it, it's our last stroke of luck and its telling us to stay here.

  Mary Bryant : Then why did you say...?

  Will : Don't you know me by now?

• Mary Bryant : Courage killed the one man I loved, and then it took my children. And now it will finish us off.

• Will : Still thinking of your lieutenant?

  Mary Bryant : There is, and always has been, only one man for me.

• Will : I could never leave that boy behind, no more than I can sleep with Ralph Clarke, but we've got this far because you could. They all know it, but none of them can say it.

  Mary Bryant : We got this far because you sailed us here.

• Mary Bryant : Well, look at you, Mr. John Parker - I went and married the perfect gentlemen.

  Will : And I went and married a real pistol!

• Mary Bryant : God, I can't get used to it, not seen myself in a mirror for four years.

  Will : You've been through a lot, it's taken its toll.

• Will : You'd be better off here. Marry a Dutchman, God knows you've got enough of them lying around at you're feet. No witnesses, no paper... we were blessed by a fool on a beach, wasn't legal outside the colony... you're free.

  Mary Bryant : I've never thought of myself as being anything other than free, ever.

• Mary Bryant : I am no hero, and I have no ambition to be made into one. There are some in this court today who have tried to make me something that I am not. I am guilty as charged, as are the two men standing beside me. Not many of us transported can claim to be innocent - some are wicked, and deserve to be feared, but most are not. Most are men and women who risked their lives to feed themselves and their families. Guilty we may be, but worthless we are not. There are many like us in this country, and to transport us away is another country's gain, and this country's loss. Those that survive the harshness of the colonies are the true heroes. I tried to build a life amongst them, and would have been content to be their companion, but I stole away for the sake of my children, I could not see them starve. I have lost everything I hold dear to me, my husband, my children. So you can take my life, but these men- the courage they have should not be choked out of them.

• Mary Bryant : You'll run under blue skies along a proud cliff top with the waves crashing below. You will walk with strong, proud people, and no matter what happens to you, you will never give up. Its in your blood.