by Roger Knight
yeomanry cavalry: Tended to be rural volunteers, usually from the farming community, who formed mounted units for service in their own county.
THE BEGINNING
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ALLEN LANE
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First published 2013
Copyright © Roger Knight, 2013
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover: Cavalry Embarking at Blackwall, 24 April 1793, by William Anderson (photograph © Yale Centre for British Art, New Haren, USA). The substantial figure in the brown coat bottom right is probably John Perry, the owner of the dock.
All rights reserved
Typeset by Jouve (UK), Milton Keynes
ISBN: 978-0-141-97702-7
* Huskisson’s appointment arose out of meeting Pitt and Dundas at a dinner party, the introduction made by Lord Gower, who had been the last ambassador in Paris before the war (Melville, Huskisson Papers, pp. 1–4).
* Charles Derrick, a Navy Board clerk close to Middleton, wrote of the 1780s: ‘It was not forgotten, on the return of peace, what powerful fleets had on several occasions been opposed to ours … neither was it overlooked, that in order to combat with still greater success, in a future war, the same powerful enemies … great exertions must be made to put an adequate number of Ships into good condition’ (Derrick, Memoirs of the Rise and Progress of the Royal Navy, pp. 180–81).
* Until 1782 there had been two secretaries of state who shared domestic business, while foreign affairs was shared between them on a geographical basis, commonly called the ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’ departments. From 1782 the ‘foreign’ secretary managed foreign affairs, while the ‘home’ took over domestic and colonial business. Institutionally the Foreign Office took over the staff who had served in the former Northern Department, while the Home Office took those from the Southern Department (Sainty, Foreign Office, p. 1).
* In the National Archives are 130 volumes of weekly naval and military intelligence reports between the 1780s and 1814 to the secretary of state for war. D’Auvergne also corresponded with the Home Office over distribution of money to French émigrés (TNA, WO 1 and HO 69).
† Through the 1790s she was still being paid an annual pension of £159 by the Admiralty ‘for former services’ (12 Nov. 1798, 12 Nov. 1799, NMM, NEP/3).
* The French were also trying to discover how the British were reacting. At the end of Oct., Howe wrote to Hood at Portsmouth, warning him of two French agents who had reportedly landed on the Isle of Wight and who were expected to make their way to Portsmouth via Southampton (31 Oct.1787, NMM, Hood Papers, HOO/2/176).
* On 19 Aug. Pitt had attended a dinner party attended by Charles-Alexandre de Calonne, a former French minister, who had tried and failed to reform French government finances. He had fallen foul of the French parlement and was now seeking refuge in England. No better briefing on the weaknesses of French finances could have been had (Black, British Foreign Policy, p. 147).
* In 1783 Britain imported over 11,000 great masts from the Baltic, of which 8,000 came from Russia. By 1793 this had fallen to 2,496, of which only 1,400 came from Russia, but wartime requirements over the next three years quadrupled demand, until in 1796 over 21,419 great masts were imported, 17,739 from Russia. The dependence on Russia for hemp was even greater: in 1793 Britain imported 27,000 tons of hemp and 10,000 tons of flax (Kaplan, Russian Overseas Commerce, pp. 216, 226–7).
* The French were forced in 1780 to invest in building a canal linking their northern rivers and the Seine to the Loire so that Baltic masts could reach Brest by some other way than the Channel route (Syrett, European Waters, pp. 126–7).
* Witnessed by Henry Addington, Burke was reported to have replied, ‘Very likely, Sir, it is the day of no judgement that I am afraid of’ (Pellow, Sidmouth, Vol. I, p. 72; also quoted in Ehrman, Younger Pitt, Vol. II, p. 88; Mori, Pitt and the French Revolution, p. 101).
* Trotter introduced the bell tent to the army, replacing the inferior ridge pole tent, although the new design was lampooned: ‘But ’tis easier by far to compose and invent / By an English fireside than in Trotter’s bell-tent’ (Ward, Wellington’s Headquarters, p. 15, quoting Anon., An Accurate and Impartial Narrative of the War (1795)). John Trotter was considerably more honest than his brother Alexander, whose financial dealings, as we shall see, caused a major political storm early in the Napoleonic War.
* See Chapter 4, Chapter 11 and Appendix 1.
† See Appendix 2 for details of this and other parliamentary commissions.
* An example of a sinecure post: the ‘Collector Inwards for the Port of London, salary of £736.13s.4d., with additional fees of £1,094.16s.6d., Patent for Life, 21 April 1734’: this was paid to the first earl of Liverpool, for political services (‘Account of All Places for Life or Lives Whether Held by Patent or Otherwise’, Parliamentary Register, Third Series, Vol. XVI (1802), p. 529).
† This figure is made up of £39,964,000 for the navy, £19,511,000 for the army and £5,074,000 for the Ordnance, averaging per year £7,172,000 for all three services. The contrast with the first full year of peace after the Seven Years War is marked. In 1784, £13,852,000 was expended, nearly three times the amount of £4,663,000 spent in 1764 (Mitchell and Deane, British Historical Statistics, p. 580).
‡ The cost of the Nootka Sound operation was over £3 million. Bills were presented to parliament on 3 Dec. 1790: £2,465,521 for the navy, £224,017 for the army and £496,715 for the Ordnance Department (Pimlott, ‘Administration of the Army’, p. 335, quoting Parliamentary Reports, Vol. XXVII, pp. 38–43).
* The Thames was hardly large enough for all these activities. The young naval captain Sidney Smith wrote in his diary on 26 Nov. 1787: ‘Attracted to Rotherhithe by a ship launch … the Captain, 74 guns, from Limehouse and a large East India ship [the Triton] immediately after from the opposite side of the River near Cuckold’s Point – much confusion among the shipping occasioned by a strong easterly wind bringing up some hundreds of accumulated coasting trade, the channel fairly blocked from side to side and much damage done to hulls and rigging as the plot thickened with strong breeze and flood tide. The Captain, in going off, ran down a wherry of gaping spectators – a collier in the group nearly dismasted and a man chucked by the fall of a topmast, upon which he was, over several sail of vessels into the water’ (Pocock, Sir Sidney Smith, p. 11).
* The title of the post was changed to the secretary of the Navy Board in 1796.
† Middleton was an early and fierce opponent of slavery and at his most active in the 1780s. In 1786 he and his wife persuade
d Wilberforce to lead the attack on slavery. Middleton’s house, Barham Court in Teston in Kent, became an important centre for the abolitionist movement. James Ramsay became Middleton’s secretary, and in 1784 Ramsay published his first pamphlet attacking the slave trade. Other prominent members of the movement, including Thomas Clarkson, were brought together by the Middletons (Blake, Evangelicals in the Navy, pp. 63–7; Hague, Wilberforce, pp. 112–13).
* To junior officers Howe appeared mysterious and sphinx-like. In a letter of 28 Dec. 1794, Fanny Nelson wrote to her husband after she had met Howe, describing him as ‘the most silent man I ever knew’. In June the next year, Nelson wrote back, telling her that a letter he had received from Howe was ‘a jumble of nonsense’. Howe is still a mystery, for he destroyed all his personal papers at the end of his life (Knight, ‘Howe’, p. 280).
* It was lengthened further by 10 feet and was able to take the huge Commerce de Marseilles, which was captured at Toulon in 1793. The Naval Chronicle described it as ‘the largest dock in the Universe’ (Coad, ‘Plymouth Dockyard’, p. 195).
* Thomas Williams (1737–1802) was a man of ruthless determination who dominated the copper industry. There was a widespread feeling, probably correct, that Williams held an unfair monopoly up to 1792, causing very high prices: he was an MP between 1790 and 1802, and took care to have himself appointed in 1799 to a select committee on the copper trade, which did not probe too deeply into his activities. When he died he left at least half a million pounds (Harris, Copper King, pp. xv–xvi, 108–36; Thorne, House of Commons, Vol. V, pp. 585–6).
* Towry was lucky as well as capable. Not only had he married into a well-connected naval family, which included a former secretary of the Admiralty, John Clevland. He also won a lottery prize of £20,000 (Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 4 Dec. 1770). In 1789 Towry’s daughter Anne, a great beauty, married, after three refusals, the ugly but talented barrister Edward Law (1750–1818). In 1802 Law, as first Baron Ellenborough, was made lord chief justice and a member of the cabinet, 1806–7. Their eldest son, also Edward (1790–1871), became the first Earl Ellenborough and governor-general of India.
* The nineteenth century would see the end of these dual responsibilities. The Navy Board was abolished in 1832 and the Admiralty took over its role. The post of master-general was abolished in 1855 and the army took over his powers and those of the Ordnance.
* The number of guns supplied to the navy far outweighed those to the army. At Trafalgar the British ships of the line carried 2,148 cannon, while, at Waterloo, British artillery amounted to 204 guns, of a much smaller average calibre than those of the navy (Cole, Arming the Navy, p. 5).
† The Gentleman’s Magazine reported that on 27 June 1805, during a royal visit, ‘His Majesty noticed how little appropriate was the name to the place and suggested the propriety of changing it to that of Arsenal. The Master-General admitted the justice of the idea and instantly adopted it; henceforward, therefore, in compliment of His Majesty’s suggestion, the Warren is to be called the Royal Arsenal’ (quoted in Hogg, Royal Arsenal, Vol. I, pp. 522–3).
* Richmond was also unpopular because of the source of his wealth, originally a grant made by Charles II to his grandfather, one of the king’s many illegitimate children: a tax of a shilling on every cauldron of coal taken out of Newcastle. In 1800 Richmond commuted his coal duties to the government in return for an annuity during his lifetime of £19,000 (Olson, Radical Duke, p. 102).
* The establishment of powder for a first-rate ship was set at 522 barrels when commissioned for foreign service and 477 for Channel Service, each barrel containing 90 pounds of gunpowder (Cole, Arming the Navy, p. 80).
* In June 1786, Russia gained gunfounding expertise from Britain when the manager of the Carron Company, Charles Gascoigne, moved to St Petersburg, attracted by a Scottish admiral, Samuel Greig, who was in the service of Catherine the Great. Gascoigne reorganized the Russian ordnance industry, improving quality and quantity, staying until his death in 1806, accompanied by eleven Scottish workmen who remained with him until the end. He was much criticized by others in the industry, for there were laws prohibiting the export of skilled technologists that dated back to the reigns of George I and II (Cross, Banks of the Neva, pp. 241, 248, 257).
* Many other pieces of gunners’ equipment had to be checked for quality before use. In all, 424 articles of equipment were required to fire naval cannon and issued to the gunner of each ship, from nails to powder horns (Cole, Arming the Navy, pp. 5, 143).
* The ‘Trigonometrical Survey’, or ‘The Duke of Richmond’s Survey’, was not known as the Ordnance Survey until 1801, and that description did not appear in print until 1809.
* These arrangements worked well enough in peace, but in wartime, with a secretary of state for war additionally appointed to the cabinet, as well as a commander-in-chief, confusion was to ensue. The Commission of Military Enquiry, reporting in 1808, tried to find a solution, but could not even discover the constitutional basis of the secretary at war’s powers, and concluded that his authority ‘is not now to be traced to its origin, but must be considered as grounded, in most instances, on usage’. Working in general below cabinet level, the secretary at war received instructions from the Treasury Board, the secretary of state for war, ‘or applies personally to the King’s confidential Servants for their concurrence’ (Commission of Military Enquiry, Sixth Report, 25 June 1808, pp. 278–9).
* Lord George Gordon, an incoherent, unbalanced but dashing ex-naval lieutenant and MP, put forward anti-Catholic sentiments both in and out of the Commons. In June 1780 he presented a petition to parliament for the Protestant Association, formed to combat Catholic influence. The confused and violent situation rapidly got out of hand and London was in the hands of the mob for five days, with much property burnt. Order was only restored by the 12,000 troops that had been hurriedly concentrated in the capital. The number of those killed was 285, and 175 were wounded; 21 executions followed, although Gordon himself was found not guilty of treason. In 1788 he was imprisoned again for sedition and ended his days in Newgate, where he converted to Judaism (Randall, Riotous Assemblies, pp. 200–206; Langford, Polite and Commercial People, pp. 551–2; Steven Watson, Reign of George III, pp. 235–9; Namier and Brooke, House of Commons, Vol. I, p. 514).
* In that year over 10,000 were stationed in England, 9,500 in Ireland, 1,600 in Scotland, over 6,000 in the East Indies, 4,700 in the West Indies, 4,200 in Canada and 3,250 in Gibraltar (Pimlott, ‘Administration of Army’, Appendix 6, quoting TNA, HO 50/362, fols. 553–5, ‘Numerical State of the Army’, 6 May 1790).
† See Chapter 4 for the army hierarchy in wartime.
* This hasty arrangement was to lead to trouble a dozen years later, for De Lancey used Alexander Davison, friend and prize agent of Nelson, as his main contractor for barrack supplies. Instead of carefully drawn-up contracts, the business arrangements, involving vast sums of government money, were underpinned only by an exchange of letters between the two men over Christmas 1794. The Commission of Military Enquiry was to uncover financial irregularities. In 1808 Davison was imprisoned and De Lancey was lucky to escape the same fate (Downer, Nelson’s Purse, p. 338).
* To ‘crimp’ was to entrap a man into the army or navy. Victims were often decoyed by prostitutes, plied with drink and when insensible enlisted into the army, navy or East India Company; alternatively the ‘crimp’ would lend money to seamen at extortionate rates, leaving them no alternative but to volunteer to obtain the bounty money to pay back their debt. The term was also used to describe those who received a reward for turning in naval deserters, or one who, for financial reward, persuaded a seaman to leave one merchant ship to join another.
* At a time of rapid growth of trade, with merchant seamen fully employed at high rates of wages, the 1787 and 1791 mobilizations had provoked extreme resistance: 43 per cent of all press disturbances resulted in someone being killed or wounded, but by 1793 this occurred in only 11 per cent of distu
rbances (Rogers, Press Gang, p. 52).
* Grenville was prime minister when the Slave Trade Abolition Act was passed in 1807 and a driving force behind it. He was present in May 1787 when Pitt had encouraged William Wilberforce to take up the abolitionist cause. Wilberforce in his old age remembered: ‘after a conversation in the open air at the root of an old tree at Holwood just above the steep descent into the Vale of Keston, I resolved to give notice on a fit occasion in the House of Commons of my intention to bring the subject forward’ (Hague, Wilberforce, pp. 144, 330–56). The ‘Wilberforce oak’ still exists and is a local landmark.
† As testimony to the care with which he prepared himself on any issue, Grenville’s extensive map collection still survives in 131 beautifully tooled slip cases, with their original numbers, labelling and index (NMM, GREN, in the chart collection).
‡ See Chapter 1, p. 13.
* Richmond’s military advice to Pitt was correct, and the poor performance of the British Army in this war was due to lack of training, and also the subsequent decimation of experienced troops in the West Indies expeditions. It contrasted with the success of the British Army in the Napoleonic War, which was thoroughly trained before being committed to battle. Richmond left office as master-general in Feb. 1795. Lord Cornwallis, who succeeded him, reckoned that the newly arrived Portland Whigs had forced Pitt to sack the master-general: ‘Notwithstanding his voluntary return to his duty in the Cabinet and, as I understand, his promise to behave better in the future’ (Cornwallis to Colonel Ross, 26 Jan. 1795, Ross, Cornwallis, Vol. II, p. 281).