Since he had ceased to be Lord Egmont’s secretary at the Admiralty, George Marsh’s administrative career had continued ever upwards. In 1772 he had become a Commissioner of the Navy Board, the agency with overall responsibility for building, supplying and repairing the Royal Navy’s ships and stores and for administering its naval dockyards at home and overseas. A year later, George was made Clerk of the Acts, the second most important officer on the Navy Board, with a basic annual salary of over £830. His new post required him to be present whenever the Board met, which after 1775 was six days a week, from at least 10 a.m. until the early evening:
The special duty of the Clerk of the Acts is to receive, arrange, register, and keep safe all orders and letters from the Admiralty, Treasury, and from the various correspondents of the Navy Board, to prepare answers thereto … to keep a register of all the proceedings of the Board … to forward directions pursuant to orders from the Admiralty or Navy Board … for the equipment, victualling and storing of the ships and fleets … to frame, from the Board’s minutes of agreement, all contracts for ships stores, and charter parties; to enter them, and forward copies thereof … to keep a register of all bills drawn upon the Board … to examine the vouchers for, and make out bounty bills to, widows and orphans of those men slain in fight … to keep an entry of the certificates of such gentlemen as pass for lieutenants of the Navy; to grant certificates to the captains of ships of war, lieutenants and masters, to enable them to receive their wages; to receive, arrange, and deposit the journals and log books delivered in by the several officers; to examine and check the accounts of purveyors employed to survey timber.52
Since, at the height of the war, the Royal Navy possessed 310 ships, including over a hundred ships of the line, and employed 106,000 seamen, on top of the more than eight thousand men at work in its naval dockyards, with yet more employees in its bases overseas, the volume of George Marsh’s business, even with several clerks to help him, was immense.53 He was working harder than ever before in his life.
Overseeing the provisioning, the matériel, the accounting, the compensation for human damage, and the archiving involved in a transoceanic conflict was only part of his changing experience. In February 1776 he was suddenly ordered to Hamburg, ‘the most disagreeable and dangerous a journey as I could possibly have had’. He and a fellow member of the Navy Board, Jonas Hanway, remained there until late May, ‘surmounting many difficulties and an infinite deal of trouble’. Marsh’s subsequent entering (and misspelling) in his Family Book of the forty German, Belgian and French towns he passed through on his return journey, which read like the tolling of some ponderous bell, bear witness to how reluctant, indeed resentful, he was at being forced for once into travel: ‘Zarendorff, Osnaberg, Rosamond, Burcan, Wickendorf … Halle, Zell, Munster’, and so on, through Hanover, Louvain, Brussels, Lille and St Omer, and finally to Calais and the ship home.54 As far as the British government was concerned, this mission was a success. By this stage it was busy concluding treaties with Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Hesse-Cassel, Ansbach-Bayreuth and other principalities to provide for the hire of additional, German, troops for the war. The business of sending men, weapons and supplies to so many diverse overseas destinations was already occupying 138,000 tons of British shipping. In Hamburg, George Marsh and his associates succeeded in negotiating the hire of an additional thirty-four thousand tons of shipping so as to transport seventeen thousand German soldiers to North America, ‘who all arrived there in perfect health’.55 Other than as a tribute to his professionalism, George, however, found little comfort in this logistical coup, for his sympathies lay with the Americans.
On this point, his private papers are unambiguous. The war with the former colonies, he wrote, was ‘a very unhappy business’. As a career civil servant, he was not permitted to pronounce on policy. Nor, lacking inherited wealth, was he prepared to risk his livelihood by doing so: ‘I had nothing to do with that.’ In his official capacity, he continued prosecuting the war on paper at a high, relentless level. But ‘as an individual’, he recorded, ‘I was sorry for it, or that the government judged it necessary’.56 It was not simply the incestuous nature of the conflict that appalled him, or its growing human and monetary costs, which his position obliged him to document every working day. His temperament and prejudices also inclined him towards sympathy with the American enemy. Devotedly Anglican in terms of religion, George Marsh was decidedly puritanical in personal style. Self-made, he was still easily stung by allusions to ‘how low bred and of what poor parents’ he was, and his concealed support for the Americans may have been assisted by their rejection of the hereditary principle. Although he presented himself at court on his appointment as Clerk of the Acts, and acted as an escort to George III and Queen Charlotte when they visited Portsmouth for a naval review in 1773, and again in 1778, George never committed to paper at this stage an effusive comment about the institution of monarchy. Nor did he accept subsequent invitations to the royal court: ‘I was not of the type of mind to make the most of it.’ Indeed, he felt inclined to blame the King for insisting that he accept the post of Clerk of the Acts, ‘a little empty honour’ that brought him even more drudge-like labour, with no higher salary than his previous position.57
A wartime portrait (one of three he commissioned during his lifetime) captures George Marsh’s mixed perception of himself as a public servant who was also at this time privately detached. The artist he selected was a Benjamin Wilson, who had painted Benjamin Franklin during the visit he made to London in the 1760s to argue the American colonists’ cause. Like Franklin, Wilson was an avid amateur scientist, who performed his own experiments with electricity: and this interest in experimental and scientific matters may have been part of his appeal to George Marsh. Wilson was also, like Marsh, both a British placeman (he was painter to the Board of Ordnance) and, seemingly, possessed of opposition sympathies. Certainly, Wilson painted leading figures associated with British opposition to the war and support for the Americans, such as the Marquess of Rockingham.58 In his portrait of George Marsh, the Clerk of the Acts is shown standing, wearing sombre, well-cut clothes, and still reasonably slender in his fifties, though a pronounced double chin suggests why Elizabeth Marsh’s uncle was always careful to monitor his weight and diet. He looks, as he was, intelligent, shrewd, powerful, and intensely watchful. One leather glove is already removed, and he is just taking off the other. To his right are papers, ledgers and quill pens. George Marsh is preparing once again to set about the pressing naval business of His Majesty George III, but there are no emblems of that monarch in evidence on the canvas.
Her uncle’s willingness to continue administering at a senior, well-paid level a war of which he thoroughly disapproved was vital for Elizabeth Marsh’s interests and prospects. It ensured that for the rest of her life she and her daughter received occasional, essential gifts of money; and it meant that she retained, even after her father’s death, a relation who was able to organize cheap berths for her aboard Royal Navy ships. This was just what George Marsh did in November 1779, securing places for her and Elizabeth Maria on the York storeship, a 664-ton, Caribbean-built vessel that was bound for Madras. They were not the only women aboard. Two of Elizabeth Marsh’s Indian slaves, ‘Phillis’ and ‘Mary’, had accompanied her to England, and they now sailed back with her. They watched as she disembarked briefly in Madeira to deliver by hand some of her uncle’s official correspondence to a navy official, part of the price for her free passage. They helped to unpack the wrought metal she was carrying to the subcontinent on behalf of a Crisp in-law in the jewellery trade. They stared at the York’s fourteen guns and twelve swivels, which were essential armament now that the French and Spanish war fleets were engaged on the Americans’ side (Captain Bechinoe, the York’s commander, caught sight of a Spanish frigate in late December).59
Picking a course so as to avoid such perils, and waiting at intervals for convoys, meant that the York’s voyage lasted over seven months, but there w
as little reason for Phillis, Mary, Elizabeth Maria or Elizabeth Marsh to feel in much hurry. Because of the Somerset decision in London in 1772, it was now illegal for any slave to be forcibly removed from England, and it was becoming widely believed that slavery could not and should not exist on its soil. As a result, the East India Company tended to refer to any slaves who arrived from the subcontinent along with their employers after this date as ‘servants’ for the duration of their stay in Britain.60 Briefly liberated (at least in name) by their residence on another shore, returning to the Indian subcontinent, as far as Phillis and Mary were concerned, meant a reversion in title to slaves. They were sailing back to bondage. The voyage out also involved Elizabeth Marsh’s own, far more privileged, status in flux. The East India Company directors’ written licence allowing her to embark once again for the subcontinent ‘permitted [her] to proceed to her friends in Bengal and to take her daughter … and two black servants … with her’. The significant phrase, as far as Elizabeth was concerned, was ‘to her friends’. As on her Asiatic progress, she showed herself willing on this journey to carry out some Crisp commercial business, but the York was bound for Madras, close to where Captain George Smith was stationed. The ship was not proceeding directly to Bengal; and, while she chose to put herself (and others) at risk by embarking on a further transoceanic voyage at a time of war and growing maritime danger, this was not out of conjugal duty. As the wording of the Company’s licence makes clear, Elizabeth Marsh was not proceeding to James Crisp.61
For what was there for her to go back to? By now, the widening range and repercussions of warfare had devastated the commercial dealings that were her husband’s sole means of support. As a private merchant exporting textiles from Dhaka to the Persian Gulf region, James Crisp must have been damaged by the Persian siege and invasion of Basra in 1775–76. A Livorno of the Indian Ocean, a transit area for East–West trade, with Arab, Armenian, Jewish, Indian, Portuguese, Dutch, Greek, Venetian, French and British merchants all buying and selling within its mud walls, and in the shelter of its 131 watchtowers, Basra had traditionally been an important entrepôt for the export of northern Indian textiles into Ottoman territory. Twice a year, one of the best-organized caravans in Asia would transport textiles and other goods from Basra to Aleppo, the largest city in the Fertile Crescent, and the third largest in the Ottoman Empire after Istanbul and Cairo. Some 3000–3500 bales of north Indian cotton goods are estimated to have entered Basra annually in the early 1770s, mainly coming from Bengal, and mainly carried in British vessels. This trade was almost entirely halted by Persia’s invasion and subsequent occupation of Basra that lasted until 1779.62
Like many other European and Asian merchants in Bengal, James Crisp was affected even more severely by the increasingly transcontinental nature of the American war. This struck at the finances of the East India Company itself, which were already under pressure before 1776, and consequently at the availability of cash and credit in northern India. Much of the tea, textiles, spices, ceramics and luxury furniture carried to Britain on Company ships was habitually re-exported to other parts of the world, especially to Continental Europe and to the Caribbean and the Thirteen Colonies. After 1775, and for the duration of the war, the inhabitants of the one-time mainland American colonies were rarely in a position to buy these luxury re-exports. Moreover, in the Southern colonies, the war severely cut back on plantation owners’ purchase of Africans from British slave ships. This further damaged the East India Company, since British slave-traders were accustomed to taking large quantities of Asian textiles to serve as barter for captive human beings in West Africa. As the war expanded, and as American privateers grew more daring and lethal, the Caribbean market for the Company’s goods also suffered. The entry of France, then Spain, and ultimately the Dutch into the war was even more serious. The antagonism of these powers severely restricted the Company’s access to Western European markets; and the ensuing fighting between European and European-backed forces in southern India and in the Indian Ocean necessarily deflected the Company’s resources from commerce into war.63 Even in 1776, there had been complaints among British traders in Bengal of a ‘scarcity of specie’, and of silver bullion draining away to China. By the following year, credit was becoming far more difficult to obtain, and Calcutta’s trade was worth little more in value than it had been forty years earlier. By 1779, both the volume and the value of textile exports from Bengal were plummeting.64
James Crisp’s initial response to these successive blows was typically aggressive. He ‘extended his trade so much as to ruin himself and others who were concerned with him’, recorded George Marsh, with all the censorious satisfaction of a man whose warnings have proved fully justified by events.65 His bias apart, it is clear that Crisp worked furiously hard in this emergency to put together a syndicate of creditors and associates and a package of loans that might enable him to stay afloat. His partner Henry Lodge was now in a position of some influence, as a member of Dhaka’s Provincial Council. Some of Crisp’s other known business allies were also selected because they were potentially well placed to assist him. William Cator, for instance, was fluent in Persian, as Crisp was not, worked as assistant to the Collector of Customs at Dhaka, and had family links with one of Calcutta’s Agency Houses that lent out money to traders. Crisp is also known to have sought out loans from private individuals. He borrowed over eighteen thousand rupees on bond from Johanna Ross, and refused to return this money after her death. It would have been astonishing had he not also borrowed substantial sums from indigenous merchants and bankers.66
But by the end of 1778, Crisp’s affairs were becoming desperate. So much so that he began pestering the East India Company for expenses that he claimed were still owing from his time as a salt agent. ‘It appears to us very extraordinary,’ Warren Hastings wrote icily in response to one such request, ‘that Mr. Crisp should have so long neglected to make his demand for the article, if he had a right to it.’67 This act of self-humiliation, appealing to the Company that had dismissed him in a fashion that could have little chance of success, bore witness to the level of pressure Crisp was under as his debts mounted, and as one commercial initiative after another foundered. By mid-1779, bitterness, terror and the multiple cases of port wine and Madeira that he kept in the half-empty Dhaka house had ‘destroyed his health and spirits’.68 His wife was not only absent, but actively plotting to ensure that her husband did not receive any money from Milbourne Marsh’s will. Even after her father’s death, Elizabeth Marsh exhibited no eagerness to return to Dhaka, but lingered for months in the smart house that George Marsh now leased at Blackheath, south of the Thames. So, as her husband sickened and failed, it was their son who was summoned to see to his affairs.
Early in 1778, when not yet sixteen, Burrish Crisp had obtained a Writership in the East India Company, ranking third out of a new intake of twenty-one candidates.69 His precocity and hard work soon drew him to the attention of Warren Hastings, who was already aware of his linguistic skills, and in June 1779 Burrish was summoned to Fort William in Calcutta. A stable of bright young men were at work there, translating Hindu and Persian legal and administrative texts into English for the sake of the East India Company’s future rule, and it seems probable that Hastings intended to recruit Burrish Crisp for this enterprise. As it was, he had to sacrifice this career opportunity, and in August seek permission to leave Calcutta for a post in Dhaka so as to be nearer to his father.70 It was Burrish who paid the native servants who were the only people available to look after James Crisp ‘during his sickness’. And it was Burrish who helped Henry Lodge dispose of what was left after Crisp’s death. This probably occurred late in October, or perhaps in the following month, since Lodge was granted the letter of administration for Crisp’s estate on 23 December 1779.71
The exact date is unknown because all that remained of James Crisp was systematically dispersed and obliterated, including his memory. Since he died intestate, his entire belongings were put
up for auction early in March 1780.72 The house at Dhaka and its furniture were sold. So were its culturally eclectic consumer goods, jelly glasses and bread-and-butter plates on the one hand, and the Crisps’ four peacock fans on the other, the latter purchased by an Asian bidder, as were nineteen other lots. James Crisp’s silk suits, ruffled shirts and cotton underwear were also knocked down. So were his gold watch and chain, and even his shaving box, complete with razors, hone, soap box and ‘some pigtail’, which together fetched just seven rupees. As with some of the other articles put up for auction – Burrish’s baby clothes, for example, or Elizabeth Marsh’s old riding dress and petticoat – the overwhelming impression is of a family eager to make whatever money it could, and also anxious to cast off reminders of the past. The need for money was acute. Paying off the arrears owed to James Crisp’s servants in Dhaka, and returning over eighteen thousand rupees in two instalments to Johanna Ross’s estate, soaked up all of the proceeds of the auction and more. A final search of the Dhaka house turned up another 720 rupees, which seems to have been all the liquid capital that Crisp possessed at his death. With this, and by dint of leaving his male creditors unpaid, the family was able on paper to balance his final account.73
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh Page 29