But, to make sure, he reminded the Hamburg Senators of the warning he had given in October, and he was childishly pleased, three days later, when they sent one of their syndics to assure him that they would permit no treaties or agreements with the Scots without the consent of the King of England.
In fact, however, the Hansa merchants were willing to listen to Paterson, giving profit its proper priority, and his hopes rose. He and Erskine had told Rycaut that they would not open their subscription book before some of their ships were launched, and now, despite the worst Baltic winter within memory, the Lübeck shipwrights finished two of them on time. They were launched in the second week of March, when there was still snow on the roofs and ice on the shores of Lübeck Bight. Saint Andrew's cross and the rising sun of the Company snapped in the wind above the yard, evergreen boughs hung from the golden galleries of the ships, casks of Canary were broached, and hired trumpeters splintered the frosty air with bright calls of joy. The vessels were called Caledonia and Instauration. Fine names, said Rycaut sarcastically, by which the Scots hoped to seduce the Hamburg merchants into parting with their money.
The Resident was depressed for some days after this small Scots triumph, and then was cheered by news from Amsterdam. One of the Scots Company called Smith, wrote his correspondent there, had been arrested for embezzlement, and Paterson was rumoured to have been his confederate. "Though there were nothing more to it than a report," Rycaut told Blathwayt, "yet it is sufficient to break the whole credit of the Company in these parts." By which he no doubt meant that he would make it his business to give the rumour the widest circulation.
And then he was depressed again, alarmed to hear that Paterson was holding "several conferences with the most rich and monied merchants of this city, at which several articles were agreed which as yet are not made public." He was writing this to Trumbull when his secretary informed him that the Scots were at his door again. There were three of them this time, a Mr. Haldane (whose name Rycaut could never spell) having just arrived from Amsterdam. There was a fourth, too, Mr. Smith, but he was wearied from his journey and begged leave to call on the Resident some other day. Rycaut swallowed his curiosity, and did not trouble to explain to Trumbull how a man who was said to be in an Amsterdam gaol one day could the next be asking for an audience with him in Hamburg. He was much more upset by what these troublesome, straight-faced Scots had to tell him. They had finished the articles for the Company's subscription book, and intended to publish them in Bremen, Hamburg, Leipsic, Dresden and Frankfort, as well as other great cities, and that they would employ men there to take up subscriptions. Moreover, they were confident of the support of such eminent men as the Dukes of Cell, Brunswick and Wolfenbüttel.
Rycaut did not believe a word of that. He was assured by Mr. Cresset, English Envoy to the Court of Lüneburg, that it was all lies and quite contrary to ducal humour, but he decided that this might be the moment for another warning blast from an English trumpet. He told his secretary, Mr. Orth, to write, print and distribute a pamphlet in High Dutch, warning the Germans that investments in the Scots Company would be a hazardous venture, with little or no hope of profit. And when Mr. Orth had done that, he was told to do it again, this time in French. For a day or so Paterson thought of writing an answer, but rejected the idea as a waste of time. Instead, the Scots announced that they would open their Subscription Book on Thursday, April 8, in a room above the Hamburg Exchange, and they asked the Senate for permission to place a bold sign above its door: This is the House of the Scots Company. Rycaut was indignant. "I applied myself to the chief Burgomaster, giving him to understand that such a concession would be a downright owning of this Company, against which I have by the order of the King my master given them so many cautions." For once the Senate, tired of his arrogant bullying, refused to say whether the Scots would or would not be allowed to put up their sign.
On the evening of April 5 Paterson called on Rycaut, apparently expecting dinner, and that without invitation. The Resident received him civilly, or said he did—"as I do all other strangers who come to me"—doubtless thinking that though this way of obtaining information was an irritating embarrassment, it was perhaps cheaper and more reliable than his spies. It is probable that Paterson was making a sincere, albeit naive attempt to enlist the Resident's sympathy, and to assure him that the Scots had no wish to prejudice the interests of the English trading companies in the Baltic. Rycaut reported only the information which Paterson honestly gave him. Erskine, Smith and Haldane (whom Rycaut was now calling Walden of Coneguy) were gone to secure support for the Company's book in Lübeck, Gluckstadt and Tormingen. Whatever was laid on the table, the dinner cannot have improved the Resident's digestion.
On April 7 he decided that it was time to finish with the Scots. He and Cresset summoned deputies from the Hamburg Senate and bluntly ordered them "not only not to bestow on this new Company any privileges in this city, but not so much as to grant them licence to write over the door any motto for the house." The meeting was followed that afternoon by a memorial to the Senate, written in French and signed by the Resident and the Envoy. It said that the presence of the Scots in Hamburg, the encouragement given to their Company, was an affront to the King of England which he could not fail to resent. The Senate was asked to remedy this unhappy state of affairs before it disturbed the good relations which should exist between the City of Hamburg and the Kingdom of England.
The arrogant threat was successful. Paterson opened the book but nobody came. A few bolder merchants did subscribe later, but for small sums, and without a wide and generous response their names were a mockery. The Scots remained in Hamburg for another fortnight, watched the launching of two more ships at Lübeck, published a sadly ineffectual reply to Rycaut's pamphlet, and then accepted defeat. Erskine, Smith and Haldane left for Holland on Friday, April 23, followed the next day by Paterson. "I am glad we are quit of 'em," said Rycaut. He heard that they intended to lodge a complaint before the King, against the obedient Mr. Orth, "For writing the German paper... of which they cannot prove him to be the author, yet if they could, he and I are too well satisfied in having done this duty that we are both without fear of having gained His Majesty's displeasure thereby."
In Amsterdam there was no need now to keep up the degrading pretence that Smith was a trusted member of the Commission. How the others had prevented him from escaping is a mystery, unless he had chosen to be a willing prisoner, hoping to earn some remission. Haldane had him committed to a Dutch gaol, for greater security, and against the day when he could be carried to another prison in London or Scotland. Smith broke down, writing tearful letters to Haldane in which he threatened to kill himself if it were not believed that he had had no intention of cheating the Company. He offered to repay £5,000 over eighteen months, offering his shares in the Hampstead Waterworks as part security, and saying that the rest might be got by fitting out a merchantman for a running adventure in the Caribbean or the eastern seas. But if it were known in London that he was in prison now, he would have no hope of raising a penny. "If you do upon these terms release me, and it should afterwards be disapproved of by those concerned with you, or the Company, I do solemnly promise you to deliver myself up as your prisoner where you shall require, until they are satisfied." Haldane's generous heart relented, and he let the man go to London, to raise what money he could.
Paterson went home to Scotland with a heavy heart. All things that he had touched, the London Company, Amsterdam and Hamburg, had turned to sour failure. A new ballad, welcoming him from the walls of Edinburgh's coffee-houses, was a bitter irony.
Amongst the many visiting everywhere, Judicious Paterson, with many more, Fraught with experience, back again do come, Striving to propagate their skill at home.
He waited throughout summer and autumn for an opportunity to clear himself from the suspicion of fraud. He was rejected and ostracised, and street-rumours soon stopped the flattering tongues of the ballad-writers. Though Haldane had recove
red some of the money by a sale of Smith's property, the greater balance of the default was still outstanding. Had all of it been returned it would not have cleared Paterson. In November the Company finally appointed a committee to examine him. It consisted of two Directors only, Robert Blackwood and William Dunlop, the Principal of Glasgow College. Both were reasonable and compassionate men, anxious to help him without dishonouring their obligations. They asked him if he could repay the money, and he said he had no funds at all. He was almost destitute. By leaving his business affairs in London he had lost more than was now owing to the Company. If the Court would release him from service he would endeavour to raise the money in some commercial venture. If he could not be released, then perhaps the Company would take what was owing from the profits of his work. Though he had not himself cheated the Company, he took responsibility for the thief whom he had so highly recommended.
In their report, Blackwood and Dunlop exonerated him of anything more than stupidity, and they reminded the Council- General of the time when "Mr. Paterson did merit very well at the Company's hands." They generously urged the Company to keep him in its employ, to allow him to go to the colony when it was founded and there work off the debt he had taken upon himself. His knowledge and reputation, his skill and arts should not be foolishly thrown away.
The Council-General wanted no more of him. He was expelled from the Court of Directors. Though his papers and journals were not returned to him, his share in the Company's stock was withdrawn, and the committee's recommendation that he should be allowed to go to the colony was rejected. He became a shadowy figure on the periphery of great events, and had he turned his back on Scotland few men would have blamed him and many might have been relieved. But he stayed.
"Scotch hats, a great quantity; English bibles, 1500 ..."
Edinburgh and London, July 1697 to July 1698
Summer came, sunless, once more a blighted harvest and bitter hunger. It was the second of seven terrible years. What was now harsh privation would soon be bitter famine. Each year snow would come early and linger late, summer rains would rot the feet of sheep and cattle, blacken the hopeless fields of young grain. Men would sell some of their children to the plantations so that they might buy bread for those who remained. Before the century was out it would be impossible to count those who had died of starvation. Already the diseased and dying, begging in the streets, filled more fortunate men with anger, not against misfortune but against the English from whom they must buy meal to keep alive. In the streets, too, along the highways, were other reminders of a payment made to England and a debt owed in return. The King's war was ended, his Scots regiments disbanded, and home had come the survivors of Strathnaver's Foot, of Leven's, Mackay s and Argyll's. In coffee-houses and taverns, junior officers quarrelled over points of honour and bragged of their conduct in worthless battles. Their men became beggars and thieves, or clung to their coat-tails asking for bread and employment. Fletcher of Saltoun would remind his countrymen of a great imbalance, of the contribution their sons had made to King William's long war: ten or eleven thousand seamen in the English and Dutch navies, twenty battalions of Foot, and six squadrons of Dragoons. Every fifth man in the King's armies at home or abroad had been a Scot or Scots-Irish. And yet, he said, the English "vilify us as an inconsiderable people, and set a mean value on the share we have borne."*
* For one hundred and fifty years England fought her wars with armies that were increasingly recruited in Scotland and Ireland. By 1840, according to Sir William Butler (A Plea for the Peasant, 1878), nearly 60 per cent of the infantry rank and file were Scots and Irish. As late as the Crimean War it was still 44 per cent. There was probably no fair balance until the introduction of conscription in World War I.
As they filled the courtyard of Milne Square, offering their idle swords, the returned soldiers gave a renewed impetus to the Company. In the face of famine, destitution, unemployment and an emptying purse, the Noble Undertaking now seems like a sick man's delirium. To the people then it was hope, it represented their fevered longing for freedom and prosperity, and it symbolised their defiance of England. Roderick Mackenzie fed this feeling with his own hatred of the English, secretly publishing a copy of Rycaut's memorial to the Hamburg Senate, that Scots might know how inexorable was England's determination to destroy their one hope of bread, trade and glory. The King's aging Chancellor, Lord Marchmont, was so incensed by this impudence that he had the printer laid by the heels, and would have sent young Mackenzie to the Tolbooth too, had he dared.
All the King's principal servants in Scotland were alarmed by the growing anger against their master, fearing the loss of his favour as much as they expected riot and burning. It was a time for great men in great office to choose between King and country, and they hastily made that choice known to William Carstares, the fat, smiling Presbyterian minister who was the King's secretary and adviser on Scots affairs. Since he was always at William's side, in camp or court, a letter to him was the same as nudging the King's attention, and his unpriced sympathy was more valuable than the services of a bought man.
From Holyroodhouse the young Duke of Queensberry wrote anxiously to Carstares. A genteel, black-haired Douglas, he held the office of Commissioner vacated by Tweeddale, and although he usually preferred to face trouble by tinning his back on it, he now found it all about him. The Councillors of the Company, he said, intended to address the King in protest against the Hamburg Memorial. "I wish that something may be done to quieten the people who make a great noise about it and other prejudices they think are imposed on them by England." He admitted that he was deeply involved in the Company, but would do only what was pleasing to the King, if someone would be good enough to tell him what that might be. The Lord Advocate, Sir James Stewart, an affable old man who was never certain of the King's trust, was badly frightened by a rumour that he had given a licence for the printing of the Memorial. He wordily denied it. It was a malicious Be started by the printer's boy. And being more of a lawyer than a moralist he saw no sin in proving his loyalty by acknowledging his countrymen's hatred. "My relief is to be attacked where all see my innocence, for I have no dealing with our African Company, and many of them reckon me an unfriend." Sir James Ogilvy, whose services to the Throne as Secretary of State would soon be rewarded with the viscountcy of Seafield, also told Carstares that he had put no money into the Company, neither had any member of his family. His fellow Secretary was Lord Tullibardine, a young man of choking passion who had deserted his family and King James at the Revolution, had been given an earldom taken from his Jacobite father, and who was never sure that he was doing the right thing. He had subscribed £500 to the Company, but explained to Carstares that this was a trick whereby "I shall have the more influence to hinder any designs that may prove uneasy to His Majesty." When the Company appealed to the Privy Council for support in their Address to William, both Ogilvy and Tullibardine argued against it, carrying the Council with them by a narrow majority of four.
The Company sent its protest to the King. Now that the matter was of no real consequence, William replied (in his own time) that he would order his Resident at Hamburg not to use his name or authority for obstructing the Company in the prosecution of its trade with the inhabitants of that city.
The Directors kept up the façade of secrecy, deluding themselves with the belief that England did not know where they intended to settle their colony. And the English Government, which knew very well that it was to be Darien, pretended that it did not. The slow dance of ignorance and counter-ignorance was performed with comic gravity. When the Lords Justices of England wished to ask Ogilvy's advice on the Directors' plans, William Blathwayt persuaded them against it, and the Secretary —loyally declaring his non-involvement with Milne Square— would not have been pleased to know why. "It might be expected," said Blathwayt cynically, "he would own no knowledge of what the Company intended, and underhand intimate to them to forward their expedition so much the more, since notice of it was
begun to be taken here."
Blathwayt's information about Darien had come from Rycaut and Orth in Hamburg, whose spies had got it from the loose- tongued sailors whom the Company had sent to bring their ships to Leith. "I was informed," reported Orth, "that the two Scotch East India Company's ships now lying in this river were designed for the south coast of America, at the Isthmus of Darien." He had been to see the ships, and reported that each carried 56 guns, 12-pounders and 8-pounders on their lower and upper decks, and he had heard that they would be loaded with fine linen, lace and other goods for the Spanish and Indian trade. Hamburg merchants were also admitting that Paterson and Erskine had talked frankly of the intended colony on Darien. "It is in my opinion," said Orth, "not to be doubted but that this is their real design."
He wrote so much that his imagination took over his pen. He said that the Scots were recruiting pirates from John Avery's ship, lately returned to Ireland. Some person had told him, and this person had also said that the Scots would be willing to try a little piracy themselves if they saw a profit in it. A handful of Avery's men were accordingly dragged out of ale-houses in Dublin and Cork, imprisoned and interrogated, and since some of them were later pardoned they may have had the wit to he in support of Orth's person, once they realised the purpose of their examination.
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