The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh

by Colley, Linda.

  For their sterling and inspired work in getting my ideas translated into print, I thank my literary agents in London and New York, Gill Coleridge and Michael Carlisle, and also Emma Parry. My editor Arabella Pike at HarperCollins, along with Helen Ellis, Robert Lacey, Alice Massey and Caroline Noonan, and Dan Frank, Fran Bigman and Katharine Freeman of Pantheon Books, have proved unfailingly enthusiastic, committed and professional.

  David Cannadine though, and as always, deserves a category to himself.

  LJC

  Princeton, 2007

  ORIGINS

  The making of the Crisp family fortune. Some of the fifteen varieties of beads known to have been manufactured on Nicholas Crisp’s Hammersmith estate before 1640 for his trade in gold and slaves in West Africa.

  ‘A New Map of the Island of Jamaica’, by John Senex, 1719. The place of residence, but not perhaps the place of birth, of Elizabeth Bouchier, Elizabeth Marsh’s mother.

  ‘View of Port Royal’, by Richard Paton, c.1758, Milbourne Marsh’s first landfall in Jamaica in 1732, and where Elizabeth Marsh was probably conceived.

  Kingston harbour. A major slaving and sugar port, from which Milbourne Marsh and his pregnant wife set sail for Portsmouth in 1735.

  THE SEA, THE SEA

  ‘Ship’s Carpenter’, etching by Thomas Rowlandson, 1799. The occupation of Elizabeth Marsh’s father and paternal grandfather. The tools and instruments reflect the trade’s mix of manual and highly specialized labour.

  George Marsh, a painting by Benjamin Wilson. Elizabeth Marsh’s powerful uncle, and the chronicler of the family’s fortunes across continents.

  ‘The Navy Office in Broad Street’, engraving by Benjamin Cole,c. 1756. The Royal Navy’s administrative headquarters in London, and where George Marsh intrigued to get his brother Milbourne Marsh appointed Naval Officer in Menorca.

  Saffron Island, Menorca, showing some of the naval installations designed by Milbourne Marsh.

  ‘Chatham Dockyard’, by Joseph Farington, c.1788-94. A painting which conveys something of the scale and intricacy of the Royal Navy’s dockyards. It was in the victualling yard here that Elizabeth Marsh wrote The Female Captive in 1769.

  PATRONS

  An illuminated letter from Sidi Muhammad, the Moroccan ruler who was responsible for Elizabeth Marsh’s capture and release in 1756, and indirectly for her marriage. In keeping with his interest in transcontinental and cross-cultural exchanges, the Sultan sought in this message to George III in 1766 to recruit engineers from Britain.

  John Perceval, later 2nd Earl of Egmont, by Francis Hayman. As First Lord of the Admiralty, Egmont sponsored two voyages of circumnavigation. He also supplied James Crisp and Elizabeth Marsh with the prospect of 20, 000 acres of land in East Florida.

  Sir William Musgrave, by Lemuel Francis Abbott. The bibliophile and Commissioner of the Customs who discussed The Female Captive with Elizabeth Marsh, and whose annotated copy still survives.

  The future General Sir Eyre Coote, attributed to Henry Morland, c.1763. A boyhood friend of James Crisp who assisted his flight to the Indian subcontinent in 1769 and initial progress there.

  Admiral Sir Edward Hughes, watercolour in Madras style, c.1783. An Indian artist’s caricature of the Commander-in-Chief of the East Indian squadron, whom Elizabeth Marsh encountered during her Asiatic progress in 1775, and possibly had recourse to for her voyage back to Britain in 1777–78.

  REACHING OUT AND OVER-REACHING

  Top Engraving of Hamburg by Johann Georg, c.1750.

  Bottom ‘A view of a section of the Port of Barcelona including Moorish and European merchants and their ships’. Eighteenth-century engraving by Moulinier.

  Two nodes of James Crisp’s far-reaching commercial web: note the presence of Muslim traders in the view of Barcelona.

  The land that was theirs:

  Above The Lower Crisp in Florida as it now is.

  Below The Upper Crisp, which encompasses today’s Creighton Island and the northern part of Fleming Island.

  ‘Examination of a bankrupt before his creditors in the Court of King’s Bench, Guildhall’, by Augustus Charles Pugin and Thomas Rowlandson. An early-nineteenth-century rendition of the ordeal through which James Crisp passed in 1767.

  Money lenders in Calcutta. The degree to which incoming Europeans easily became dependent on indigenous sources of capital and credit in the subcontinent accounts for some of the bitter racism evident in this print.

  MULTIPLE CROSSINGS

  ‘In India on the March’, by Samuel Davis.

  A scene that would have been familiar to Elizabeth Marsh on her progress: a halted palanquin, and a critical supply of Indian guides, servants and armed retainers.

  ‘Procession at the Great Temple of Jagannath, Puri’, British school, c.1818-20. One of the major Hindu pilgrimage sites and festivals which Elizabeth Marsh tried to observe in 1776.

  Lockleys: the Hertfordshire mansion acquired by Elizabeth Marsh’s daughter and Sir George Shee.

  Captain John Henry Crisp, Elizabeth Marsh’s half-Indian grandson, represented as indistinguishable from three British colleagues during part of his scientific expedition to Sumatra.

  Preparing for the expedition at the Madras observatory.