by Edward Cline
Hugh could only grin and chuckle to himself. He thought, I had a hand in that, it went out into the world, and now the world is about to be set afire again.
* * *
As Hugh Kenrick had only an inkling of the growing ferocity of that fire, Jack Frake and his wife, Etáin, could only suspect the turmoil that was occurring in the northern colonies. They sat together over their own dinner that afternoon, in the supper room of Morland Hall, reading colonial newspapers of last month that had arrived yesterday by post-rider and merchantman. They did not yet know that in Boston, the appointed stamp distributor’s house had been sacked, and that only a few days ago, the house of the lieutenant-governor and chief justice of Massachusetts had been similarly sacked and all but destroyed, including the official’s fine library, by mobs that threatened retribution for anyone who sympathized with, submitted to, or attempted to enforce the Stamp Act. They had not yet received a copy of the Pennsylvania Gazette, in which were printed the names of all the appointed stamp distributors in all twenty-three British colonies in North America and the Caribbean, although they and everyone else in Virginia by now knew the name of the appointed distributor for the colony: George Mercer, the son of an old, respected Virginia family.
One of the newspapers reported what Hugh Kenrick’s father had written to his son about, that a French Indiaman had successfully tested a sweet-water machine. Etáin noted it and read the item for her husband, knowing his near-obsession with the best way to water his crops.
Jack Frake thought alike enough with his friend and neighbor that he, too, was intrigued by the question of how sixty barrels of sweet water could be produced without burning enough wood to fill one of the enormous Indiaman’s profitable holds. His only reply to his wife was accompanied by a pensive frown: “It can’t have been better than brackish,” he said, then added, almost dreamily, “the brackish language of remonstrances and memorials.” He smiled at Etáin cross the table. “But, the language of the Resolves — that is the language of men.”
Etáin was neither confused by her husband’s state of mind, nor of a mind to reproach him for it. She knew what was demanding his attention of late, and had demanded it ever since last May: how to prevent the introduction of stamps in Queen Anne County.
Jack had set aside the newspapers, and another periodical sat before him, Number Forty-five of The North Briton, which he had recently borrowed from Hugh. He had read and heard so much lately about the Constitution and the rights of Englishmen, that he was curious to know what difference existed, if any, between what caused the reported clamors in England and the closer disturbances in the colonies. He was certain that a difference existed and could be identified, and his intellectual appetite would not be satisfied until he knew it.
Reading the text of John Wilkes’s alleged insult to the king was what had moved him to make his “brackish” comment to Etáin. It was that very criticism that had angered the king, led to Wilkes’s expulsion from Parliament, and moved the courts to declare him an outlaw. “A well-read and literate rogue,” was how Hugh had characterized the renegade.
Jack read the article with a qualified admiration. It was reminiscent of the style of expression of his dear friend Redmagne from his Cornwall smuggling days, when that late hero set his sights on politics and wrote with a fiery, biting pen. But something was lacking in the piece, an animate spirit of some kind; and at the same time, something was there that nullified the power of the criticism.
He had narrowed it down to a solitary thing, and that thing explained the absence. It resided in Wilkes’s closing remark: “I hope the fine words of Dryden will be engraven in our hearts, Freedom is the English subject’s prerogative.”
The culprit was the term subject.
Jack’s only answer to that term was: I am no one’s ‘subject.’ I am a free man. More than that, he could not now say. But he felt that he was closer now to finding the words that Augustus Skelly had said long ago he would find.
His eyes narrowed, and then he read the sentence to Etáin, and asked her, “There is something wrong about that notion. What do you think it is?”
Etáin sipped some tea while she considered an answer. Her eyes never left Jack. Then she put down her cup, and smiled. “Freedom and subjection are not possible in the same nation, at the same time.” She paused to study her husband for a moment. Her eyes were lit up with a new discovery. “It is curious,” she said, “but until now, I never thought of you as an English subject.”
Jack grinned. “Do you now?”
Etáin shook her head and said quietly, “No. The notion is preposterous.” After a moment, she added, “Nearly offensive.”
Jack looked as if a question had been answered. He smiled at his wife, reached over to take one of her hands, and raised it to his lips in thanks.
There was a commotion outside the supper room. The doors opened and William Hurry came in. He was returning from a trip to Williamsburg to purchase supplies. The man removed his hat and shook the raindrops from it, then held out something to his employer.
Jack had never seen the man so agitated. He took the thing from Hurry’s hand. It was a copy of the Virginia Gazette. He frowned and glanced up at Hurry.
“On the first page, sir!” said the steward. “Another proclamation! He changed his mind!”
Jack opened the damp, folded paper and read the boxed block of print on the first page, in the first column:
“A concern for the happiness of this colony, together with considered apprehensions about recent events, had caused this office to take the extraordinary measure of suspending publication of this Gazette. Said suspension, which has distressed and inconvenienced the people, has now been rescinded, beginning with this number of the Gazette, as this office has judged that the tranquility of His Majesty’s colony has been preserved. Given under my hand, and the seal of the colony, Francis Fauquier.”
* * *
Chapter 6: The Taverns
In June 1765, a month before a bitter George Grenville would surrender the seals of the First Lord of the Treasury and go into opposition as merely a member for Buckingham Borough, the man responsible for his imminent departure wrote to his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland: “They are men who have principles and therefore cannot see the Crown being dictated to by low men.”
George the Third very likely was referring to Grenville as one of those “low men.” That commoner had attempted to usurp His Majesty’s privilege of choosing who should serve as regent in the event His Majesty was incapacitated and unable to perform his royal duties. That commoner had also demonstrated an unforgivable and annoying lack of gratitude, manners, and deference by complaining repeatedly that his own favorites and friends were passed over for places and sinecures, which were instead awarded to His Majesty’s favorites and friends. That commoner was subsequently made to feel unwelcome, and soon would be gone.
George the Third was now warming to his uncle’s suggestion that Charles Watson-Wentworth, the second Marquis of Rockingham, would with his allies perhaps form a ministry more amenable to the Court. To so high-minded a Court as George the Third wished to create, manipulate, and reward during his reign, a friendly, unobstructive, and grateful ministry, agreeable to the means and ends of a patriot king, implied a wealth of principles and virtues among its office-holders.
George Grenville and his fellow architects of the Stamp Act, however, had unwittingly set the stage for “low men” of another caliber not only to dictate to the Crown, but to compel it to repeal that Act, or else lose their trade, revenue, friendship, and possibly even sovereignty over them. It was not coincidence that all but one of the newly appointed stamp distributors were American colonials.
This was thought a cunning stroke of practical statecraft by Grenville and his party, for the premise was that while the colonials might detest the stamps that were to be affixed to virtually every printed document required in trade, law, and even amusement and edification, the pain of paying for those stamps would be somewh
at ameliorated if the payment were made to fellow colonials. After all, the majority of resident customs men and their superiors in the colonies were Americans; stamp distributors and their assistants could become, in time and from necessity, just as much a fixture in the courts, customs houses, and seaports. And, anyway, the architects presumed, that money was never to cross the Atlantic to fill royal or Treasury coffers, but would remain in the colonies to defray the costs of their military and civil administration.
Few in London that summer had yet fully grasped that the colonials’ repugnance for the extortionate stamps was a measurable expression of the odium they felt as well for being militarily and civilly administered by a callously ignorant power three thousand miles across an ocean.
Two of those few sat at a table in the Ram’s Head Tavern on the Strand in London. It was early September. Before them were tankards of port and a plate of sweetmeats. One of them was saying, “You must have observed, on our tour, milord, the difference between English and French clocks. An analogy may be credibly drawn here on our styles of timepieces and our styles of polity. The French are enamored of a fantastic mechanism of government, while the English mechanism boasts the supreme virtue of utility. The French deem utility of lesser importance than appearance; the English judge appearance subordinate to utility.”
“You have endured the depredations of the Commons, sir, and suffered a multitude of defeats in your natural realm of the courtroom, yet you speak more and more like a child.” The speaker paused. “Please, sir, accept that as a compliment.”
“I do, milord, and thank you. I have read somewhere — in Thomas Traherne’s work, I believe — that a child is the best idealist, or visionary. Well, if I am to emerge from this career hale and hearty, then I must adopt the mien of informed innocence, and the hide of a rhinoceros.”
Baron Garnet Kenrick laughed. Sir Dogmael Jones busied himself with lighting a pipe. The Baron took a sip from his tankard, then remarked, “But it seems we are adopting the vices of the French now, Mr. Jones. This scheme of the American Stamp Office is quite fantastic, gilded with a hundred heads and hands. It will oversee nine colonial stamp districts, headed by nine inspectors, who will in turn oversee twenty-three stamp distributors. Supporting them all must be a vast army of supernumeraries, including secretaries and clerks and warehousemen and such. And their recompense in fixed salaries and percentages of collected revenues and the pittance paid to watchmen and packers and printers and the like.… Why, did not Mr. Grenville imagine the great pump works necessary to implement his plan? Was this subject never debated or discussed in the Commons?”
Jones shook his head. “Details, milord! Mere details! He left the working out of that malevolent mathematics to Mr. Whateley. Mr. Grenville had grander matters on his mind. Why would you expect him to bother himself with the utility or justice of a thing? ’Tis beneath him!” Jones exhaled a burst of smoke with a scoffing sound. “Pshaw! By the time all the human sieves, pipes, channels, and gutters have been paid in that great pump works, milord, a soldier in the colonies will be fortunate to see a shilling of his promised wage with any regularity. Complaints will subsequently be made, and unrest detected, and a new act proposed to amend that oversight. A new act for the laying of new taxes.”
The Baron had come up to London from Danvers on business, and at Jones’s suggestion had accompanied the member for Swansditch on a week’s tour of the commercial districts of the metropolis. Jones’s purpose was to poll the owners of various enterprises on their willingness to sign a petition to the Commons concerning real or projected harm to those enterprises as a consequence of a reduction of trade caused by the Stamp Act. A partial non-importation movement in the colonies over the Sugar Act was already contributing to that reduction. Worry was also expressed about rumors of a greater non-importation movement if and when the Stamp Act was enforced. They had canvassed the printmakers and booksellers of Pall Mall, the wine merchants of Wapping, the carpenters, carriage makers, and furniture factors of Swallow Lane and Southwark, the shoemakers, hat factors and glovers on Maiden Lane, and the clockmakers and watchmakers on Fleet Street.
The fear of damage to trade in exports and raw material imports had already been voiced by Benjamin Worley, the Kenricks’ business agent at Lion Key in the Pool of London. Jones had persuaded his patron that it would be worthwhile to determine whether other merchants shared this fear. They had encountered a mixture of positions: agreement that trade would be affected, indifference, resignation, and, in some instances, hostility towards the colonies for opposing a tax that was already paid in Britain. It had been an arduous, disappointing venture, their tour; only a handful of merchants were willing to sign a petition of remonstrance to the Commons, or to appear as witnesses to testify in possible hearings that the Commons was sure to schedule in its business if resistance to the Stamp Act could not be purchased with moderation.
They had just returned from a day’s rounds to a number of clockmakers and watchmakers on Fleet Street, where many of the artisans were either French Huguenots or German religious refugees who did not understand British politics, or did not wish to arouse enmity against themselves by protesting a law they did not completely comprehend.
On their way up the Strand in a hackney, Jones had espied the Ram’s Head, and mentioned to his patron that it was once the Fruit Wench, where his patron’s son had regularly met with the persecuted Society of the Pippin. “I do not imagine the new proprietor has much changed the place, milord,” he said. “Mrs. Petty confided in me that she sold it all to a fellow who was returned from India with a chest of gold and silver. Shall we stop in before returning to Windridge Court?”
The Baron expressed an eagerness to see the place where his son Hugh had cut so many of his intellectual teeth. Jones had long ago told him the true story of why Sir James Parrot, King’s Counsel during the Pippin trial, had been unwilling to submit to the court descriptions of the three missing Pippins he claimed to have, and which Mabel Petty, the proprietress of the Fruit Wench, claimed to Jones before the trial she had given the prosecutor. Some time after the sale of her establishment and her removal to Bristol, she wrote Jones and informed him that while she could do nothing for the five Pippins already in custody, she refused to give descriptions to Parrot of the other three. She managed to back her refusal with the threat of informing Parrot’s wife that she had observed her husband, whose identity she did not know until she was subpoenaed to give evidence, often frequent the Fruit Wench in the company of a succession of ladies of various ages and stations, and on almost every occasion reserve a private room on the third floor of the establishment. Her daughter, Agnes, and her ward, Tim Doody, could also attest to this business.
Her threatened blackmail, unfortunately, while it allowed her to defy the Crown and protect some of her favorite clients, did not protect her from zealous municipal authorities, who revoked her publican’s license and imposed a fine. Parrot, she wrote, had secretly paid that fine in a gesture of mutual good riddance, but could not save her license without enmeshing himself in further costly bribery and risky subterfuge, which he refused to do. Widow Petty acquiesced to this, feeling at the time fortunate not to have been summarily sentenced to Bridewell or the Clink.
Through Jones, the Baron had anonymously bestowed on Mabel Petty a purchased annuity as a reward for her loyalty.
Jones had just finished commenting on the likely fate of the Stamp Act when a group of men came through the smoky haze of the front parlor and sat at a table across the room. “What propinquity!” the barrister exclaimed.
Garnet Kenrick glanced inquiringly at his friend.
Jones nodded to the group. “Of course, you are acquainted with Sir Henoch, and know Mr. Whateley by sight. The other gentlemen, sitting opposite Mr. Whateley, is Mr. Edward Montagu, a lawyer at the Middle Temple, and agent for your son’s General Assembly — the Council, I believe. A diligent but ineffectual fellow. Next to him is Mr. George Mercer, a colonel in the Virginia militia and a
veteran of the late war. He is here on Ohio Company business, but in truth he has been treading water here and in Ireland for nigh on two years, waiting to be rewarded for his war services with lucrative employment with the Crown in the colonies. He is about to take ship home with his distributor’s commission. I have met him. He is a modest, unpompous chap, and I could not decide from my brief encounter with him whether he wished to celebrate his appointment, or commiserate with the other two Americans who happened to be here to receive their own commissions in person.” Jones paused to sip his port. “Three hundred pounds a year in salary, in addition to eight percent of his colony’s stamp revenues, are to be his remuneration. From that, however, he must hire and pay twenty or so under-distributors and other factotums. The other distributors are appointed on more or less the same terms.” Jones chuckled. “Mr. Mercer was not particularly pleased with the appointment — I believe he was pining for something more prestigious and less larcenous — for he knows his fellow Virginians well enough to suspect that he will have fewer friends among them when he assumes his office. But he believes they will resign themselves to the inevitable.”
“Who were the other Americans?”
“They have already departed for America, and the greetings that await them there are a matter of speculation. There was Mr. Jared Ingersoll, former agent for Connecticut, and a close personal friend of Mr. Whateley there, the master of details. Mr. Ingersoll doubted the practicality of the stamps, but supplied Mr. Whateley with invaluable advice on those details. His reservations over the Act’s goodness notwithstanding, he accepted a distributor’s commission, believing that he has done his countrymen a great service by recommending that the shackles refined by Mr. Whateley be lined with fur, so that they are pleasanter to wear. And Mr. George Meserve, of New Hampshire. I have also met him. A plain, timid fellow, a friend of John Thomlinson, agent for that colony and a bashaw from Antigua. Thomlinson’s son, John, is a victualling contractor and a member for Steyning.”