by Roger Knight
*The principal memory of this modest man is Canning’s celebrated jibe:
Pitt is to Addington
As London is to Paddington
* Dundas wrote to Addington just after the treaty was signed: ‘[French] views with respect to India are impregnated with a deep-rooted, systematick hostility to our interests in India and the symptoms of that hostility must break out almost before the ink is dry … I say nothing of the Cape of Good Hope. You know a little of my sentiments on that subject as it relates to the security of our political and commercial interests in India.’ A note by Addington on the back of the letter reads: ‘Sentiments much changed on reflection.’ That was a little too late, though the Cape was retaken in 1806 (19 Apr. 1802, DHC, Addington Papers, 152M/c1802/OP25).
† During the Peace of Amiens 2,598 people travelled across the Channel to France and 3,055 from France to England, although servants were not accounted for in the official records (Morieux, ‘Travelling across the Channel’, p. 222).
* With good reason. The activities of the French colonel Sébastiani were reported by Captain Ross Donelly from Alexandria to Rear-Admiral Bickerton: Sébastiani, ‘there is not a doubt, is come as a spy upon our actions, and a fomenter of disturbances. In a conversation which he had with the Pacha of Alexandria, and where General Stuart continued to have his interpreter, he with great pomp assured the Pacha that the Chief Consul had sent him to inform the Turk that he would take care to have him “reinstated in his dominions in Egypt”’ (18 Oct. 1802, Admiralty in-letters, TNA, ADM 1/406).
* See Chapter 5, p. 127. It was Alexander Marsden who negotiated the bribes for Irish MPs between 1798 and 1801 to secure their votes for Union with the rest of Great Britain, using £30,000 of secret service money. The price of each Unionist was well known to Marsden. William Wickham, chief secretary at the time of Emmet’s uprising, wrote to Lord Cornwallis, the lord lieutenant and commander-in-chief, of these MPs: ‘With your Excellency and with me they have an air of uncomfortable greatness, but with him they quite shrink away’ (Wilkinson, ‘Union’, p. 251, quoting Lecky, Ireland, Vol. V, p. 306n).
* Immediately before he was taken out to be hanged, Robert Emmet wrote a magnanimous letter to Wickham, absolving the Dublin government of guilt for executing the leaders of the rebellion. It has been claimed that the letter prompted Wickham’s resignation as Irish chief secretary, though it is more likely that Wickham, in ill-health, had determined on leaving office before the rebellion (Durey, Wickham, pp. 184–6).
* The account of this otherwise unreported debate, including the astonishing language of Fox and his supporters, survives in the Simcoe Papers. Smith continued: ‘What becomes of the Ministers’ pretended wish for Peace! … strict justice [had been done] between the wretched system of the wretched Ministers, & the Great Man of the People of France, the Liberator of Europe’ (Ravenhill, ‘Clifford’, p. 168, quoting 13 Nov., Letters 1802, Simcoe Papers, Archives of Ontario).
* As an indication of how much bad feeling St Vincent had stirred up in the navy, one naval officer wrote to Nelson six months later: ‘The old Jesuit and his colleague Troubridge have been making a grand tour of the island … never was people so Cordially disliked by all kinds of people, their names are execrated by all parties’ (Thomas Bowen to Nelson, 24 Sept. 1804, NMM, CRK/2/105).
* Between the general elections of 1802 and 1806, 36 naval officers held seats in parliament. MPs who had held regular army commissions numbered 125, but of those 71 were on half-pay or retired (Thorne, History of Parliament, Vol. I, pp. 310, 314).
† The first consul was crowned emperor on 2 Dec. 1804, though the British government never recognized this transition, and continued to call him Bonaparte or Buonaparte. In this book, however, he will henceforth be referred to as Napoleon or the emperor.
* For the complex world of specie and its transport across the Atlantic see Chapter 13.
† Charles Bragge Bathurst, treasurer of the navy 1801–3, was examined during the impeachment of Melville on 8 May 1806: according to his evidence, he gave orders ‘during the course of the summer of 1802’ to stop the practice of keeping small sums in Coutts or in any other private bank (Anon., The Trial by Impeachment of Henry, Lord Viscount Melville … (1806), p. 149).
* Dundas’s slack superintendence of the staff of the Navy Pay Office was demonstrated by Adam Jellicoe, Trotter’s deputy, who had also used naval money for a private investment. Dundas had spotted the discrepancy in the accounts, but had done nothing about it and Jellicoe continued in office. Jellicoe later committed suicide (Ehrman, Younger Pitt, Vol. III, 755n).
* Scaffolding and furnishings were provided by the unreformed Office of Works. The total cost was £8,188, of which the Office of Works spent £6,695. One spectator, Lord Campbell, commented: ‘I never knew what earthly magnificence was till yesterday when I was present at Lord Melville’s trial. Ye Gods! the Peeresses’ box! A glory seemed to play round their countenances, and to shoot in vivid flashes to the extremities of the Hall’ (Crook and Port, King’s Works, p. 501).
* Alexander Davison wrote to Nelson on 7 Jan. 1805: ‘Nepean arrived yesterday from Ireland to the great joy of Lord Melville and will instantly take his Seat at the Admiralty Board. He will relieve the First Lord of much Anxiety and Trouble, as he will take the Labouring Oar: the principal business will now all be done by him’ (NMM, CRK/3/159). By this time Stephens was eighty-two, and seen by some as past his best.
* It was at this point that Lord Mornington returned to England after his expansion of British power in India. His brother Arthur Wellesley warned him in a letter of 21 Dec. 1805 that no one was likely to take any notice of him: ‘the public mind cannot be brought to attend to an Indian subject’ (Davies, Wellington’s Wars, p. 77, quoting Wellington’s Supplementary Despatches, Vol. IV, pp. 533–41).
* Grenville had hesitated about accepting the role of prime minister and the post of first lord of the Treasury as he would be unable, because of conflict of interest, to draw his income from his long-held sinecure of auditor of the Exchequer. In the event Fox introduced a bill that put the income of the auditorship in trust as long as Grenville was prime minister (Jupp, Grenville, pp. 346–7; Harvey, ‘Ministry of All the Talents’, p. 623).
* Grey became Lord Howick in Apr. 1806, when his father was promoted to an earldom.
† Marsden, however, was already beginning to feel the bureaucratic strain. The news of the victory came in the middle of the night. ‘I had a terrible day of it – Was knocked up at three o’clock in the morning, when I had got about an hour-and-a-half’s sleep, called up Mr Grey at four, having by that time arranged and docketed my papers, and drawn out a bulletin. I then worked till seven, and lay down in hopes of getting a little sleep, – but it would not do; so I returned to the office, and worked there till Mr Grey’s dinner was ready.’ Marsden tried again to resign when Grenville succeeded Howick, but Grenville would not let him go, as Marsden recalled, ‘on grounds very flattering to me personally’, but his health ‘continu[ed] to suffer from the close confinement of office’ (Marsden, Brief Memoir, pp. 126fn., 128–9; Rodger, Command of the Ocean, p. 483).
* Lord Melville admitted in Popham’s court martial that there had been some discussion about a South American expedition. When asked whether Popham had been appointed to any command authorizing him to attack South America, Melville replied, ‘Certainly not’ (Lowry, ‘Popham’, pp. 57–8).
* Not without reason, for there are many examples of lack of discipline. For instance, in Brixham in Devon in 1801, the officers of the local volunteers organized disorder over high food prices (see Chapter 6). When war resumed, a press gang in Chester seized a member of the Royal Chester Volunteers for the navy: his fellow soldiers went after them to rescue him (Emsley, ‘Volunteers’, p. 44).
* Betsy Fremantle recorded similar working hours for her husband, Captain Thomas Fremantle, whom Grenville appointed to the Admiralty Board in Oct. 1806. The Fremantles moved into their Admiralty quarters, fu
rnished with Fremantle’s shipboard furniture, but had to move out after only three months when the Talents’ ministry fell, to her great regret (Fremantle, Wynne Diaries, pp. 478–81).
* Mulgrave sent for the second secretary, John Barrow, to tell him of Wellesley-Pole’s appointment over him. Barrow was pleased rather than disappointed: ‘[Wellesley-Pole] is an agreeable acquaintance, of great talent for business, and of an active turn of mind, and I am rejoiced in the prospect of having such a coadjutor’ (Barrow, Autobiography, p. 299). Pole was a good administrator, but, as his subsequent career was to show, no leader.
* The provision of the very large quantities of fresh water required by warships was particularly difficult. Depot ships (so described for the first time) containing only water were anchored along the Thames Estuary by 1807, supplied by tenders that brought casks filled from the upper reaches of the Thames, beyond the reach of the salt water brought up by the tide (see Chapter 6, p. 171; Knight and Wilcox, Sustaining the Fleet, pp. 59–62, 197–202).
* Mrs Clarke was paid £10,000 and given an annuity of £400 in return for the surrender of the duke of York’s letters and the destruction of her prepared memoirs. During a court case in July it emerged that Wardle had sought out Mrs Clarke, and taken her to view some Martello Towers, in company with the military secretary of the duke of Kent, ostensibly in order to prepare a case against the military usefulness of the towers, but in reality to pump her about her relationship with the duke of York. This means of gaining his information ruined Wardle’s three-month-old popularity and destroyed his career: he retired from parliament and took up farming (Thorne, House of Commons, Vol. V, pp. 486–8). The presence of the military secretary of the duke of Kent perhaps reflects the bad blood between the royal brothers.
* In Jan. 1810 Tom Grenville wrote to his 56-year-old brother, the marquis of Buckingham: ‘You should not retire … mind and talents are fresh and vigorous tho’ neither you nor I could stand the fatigues of such a session as the last in the House of Commons. There is too much serviceable stuff in you to lie down upon your pillow, & there is too little hope of quiet or prosperity in the country to justify either you or me in going to sleep when we ought to be upon duty at our posts’ (16 Jan. 1810, HL, STG 38 (29)).
* It is possible that Grenville’s own precarious finances affected his capacity to grapple with these great debts at a national level.
* The list runs, in order: ‘Reserve of troops in each District; General officers report on their Districts; Battalions and Light Infantry to be exercised; General Orders to be issued: Reserve Train of Artillery to be held at Woolwich; General Depots of Arms to be formed in each county; Plan for driving the country; Police powers; General Measures for Civil Order; Companies of Volunteers; Plans for the security of the Capital; Ordnance Magazines; Camp Equipage; Prisoners of War; Fortified Places; Naval Measures (in concert with the military, mouth of the Thames, Defence of the Coast of Essex, the floating batteries, Gunboats, Sea Fencibles); Proper cover arrangements if C-in-C leaves London; Retired and Half Pay Officers to report to County towns; Divisions of transports to be mustered to move troops; Troops from Ireland, Jersey & Guernsey to England’.
* Addington ensured that Brook Watson was awarded a baronetcy in Dec. 1803 for his efforts and his long career in the public service.
* The well-born Cornwallis did not think highly of the eccentric Dundas, grumbling privately: ‘The staff in Kent seems to be calculated solely for the purposes of placing the defence of the country in the hands of Sir David. However he may succeed with other people, I think he cannot persuade Mr Pitt and Lord Melville that he is a clever fellow; and surely they must have too much sense to believe that it is possible that a man without talents, and who can neither write nor talk intelligibly, can be a good General’ (to Ross, 6 Aug. 1804, Ross, Cornwallis, p. 514).
* Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice (published in 1813) made Lydia’s admirer, Mr Wickham, the member of a militia regiment. The flighty Lydia’s head was turned by a visit to Brighton, where ‘she saw all the glories of the camp; its tents stretched forth in beauteous uniformity of lines, crowded with the young and the gay, and dazzling with scarlet’ (Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 41).
* It cost about £12,500 in pay a year to keep the 676-strong Sussex Militia. The daily pay of militia officers was slightly less than that of the officers of the regular army infantry: e.g., lieutenant-colonel regular army 17s., lieutenant-colonel militia 15s.6d.; for lieutenants 6s.6d. and 5s.6d.; for surgeons 14s.1d. and 11s.4d. (Sussex Militia Pay Lists, Sept.–Dec. 1807, TNA, WO 13/2123; see also Burnham and McGuigan, British Army against Napoleon, p. 144).
* Resistance to any French landing near Bexhill in Sussex would have been very fierce, for it was here that the King’s German Legion was based. Formed of thousands of Hanoverians who had fled their country after Napoleon invaded in 1803, this regiment played an important role in many operations, including a central part at Waterloo. These fine soldiers integrated well into the community. By 1814, when the regiment left Bexhill, there had been 108 marriages between Hanoverian soldiers and local women (Heizen, ‘Napoleonic Wars in British and Hanoverian Memory’, p. 1,410).
* Private Robert Innard of the Durham Militia, returning home by coastal transport on a sick furlough from Portsmouth in Nov. 1808, was captured when the ship in which he was travelling was taken by a French privateer. He did not escape until Jan. 1814 (Rumsby, ‘Militiaman’, p. 251).
* An anonymous poem written about Egremont’s troop took a cynical tone:
Why does the baker on the saddle rise
Who’d better stay at home and make mince pies?
Is it to war with gnats and butterflies?
Why does the grocer draw the ruthless sword?
In hope to gain the custom of my lord.
Why is the ploughshare to the cutlass bent?
To bribe the steward to curtail the rent.
(Hudson, ‘Volunteers in Sussex’, p. 176)
* The North and South Pevensey legions were the largest in Sussex: between them eighty-five officers were listed in the 1804 War Office List of the … Yeomanry and Volunteer Infantry (pp. 665–6).
* Phillip reported that over 16,000 seamen had been recruited in the thirteen months prior to Feb. 1805: 5,128 had been pressed, 5,978 had volunteered, together with 3,211 landsmen and 1,285 boys, and the magistrates had sent 559 vagrants and criminals (Frost, Phillip, p. 244, quoting TNA, ADM 1/581, fols. 86–9). Pressed men and volunteers from Shetland constituted higher than average per head of population, which was about 22,000 in 1801 and 1811. A modern estimate is that 5,000 Shetlanders served in the navy between 1793 and 1815 (Robertson, Press Gang, pp. 12, 26).
* ‘A Close Blue Vest with White Buttons with the three Anchors: Blue Gaiters, Trowsers, Buttoned down the Leg; Plain Round Hats turned up on the left side with Loops and White Buttons as above: Black Cross Belts for side Arms and Pouch; Barred White on the Sleeve as other Regiments; Sashes Regulation’ (1 Sept. 1803, NMM, ADM BP/23b).
* In Dorset, in May 1804, during an invasion scare, two companies of the Dorset Volunteers infantry, those from Evershot and Sydling, refused to march past Dorchester, and their commanders reported: ‘The remainder of the third battalion is so exasperated against these companies, that I could not propose their return to any quarters without risking the tranquillity of the place or without subjecting those companies to the probability of insult wherever they went.’ The two companies were disbanded and their arms transferred to a new company, which sprang up immediately. It was an episode that illustrated the strengths but exposed the limitations of the volunteers (Clammer, ‘Dorset Volunteers’, pp. 23–4, quoting Internal Defence Papers, TNA, HO 50/102).
* Pitt commanded the Cinque Port Volunteers from Walmer Castle, in which he lived as Warden of the Cinque Ports. The War Office commissioned a hundred-guinea telescope from William Herschel, the astronomer and telescope-maker, to be mounted on the walls of Walmer Castle to give early warning of
invasion and particularly of aerial invasion by troops carried by Montgolfier balloons (Holmes, Age of Wonder, p. 200).
* Napoleon dictated in St Helena, ‘After my talks with Alexander … Britain was to be forced to peace either by force of arms or reason. She was lost, despised throughout the continent: her action at Copenhagen had revolted all minds, and as for me, I sparkled with all the opposite advantages’ (Hicks, ‘Napoleon, Tilsit’, p.126, quoting 14 June 1816, le comte de las Cases, Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, édition intégrale et critique, Marcel Dunan (ed.) (Paris, 1951)).
* The Ordnance Survey had gathered a great deal of data but only one complete map of Kent had been published before the end of the eighteenth century (Hewitt, Map of a Nation, p. 152).