The only Councillor who had returned, and who had therefore to carry the obloquy of all, was William Paterson. When the Caledonia reached Greenock on Tuesday, November 21, he was carried ashore weak and ill. It took him fourteen days to travel the sixty miles to Edinburgh, and he spent many of them in bed at an inn or the house of a friend. Appearing at last before the unsympathetic Directors, he asked leave to prepare a full report before questions were put to him. He finished it within two weeks, and it remains one of the saddest and most honest accounts of that wretched Colony.
There was no welcome for the men who came back with the Caledonia. There was only abuse and disgust. After all they had endured, the miracle of being alive when three times their number were dead, they were bewildered by the contempt of their friends and the shame of their families. Sir James Oswald refused to see his son. From the Widow Finlay's in Glasgow, a morning's ride from his home, the boy wrote to Thomas Aikman, sadly protesting that he was not alone in what his father called "treachery and cowardice", and bitterly agreeing that it might have been better for all had he died in Caledonia.
I am mightily sorry that I should have angered my father, but necessity has no laws. I wish he would forget my fault when I am gone, I know not whither but certainly it is to more misfortune, for I see plainly that my life is composed of a labyrinth of my own out of which I will never get an out-gate but by death's door. I design not to go back to Caledonia, but to somewhere else wherever my fate leads me, though it was one of my resolutions to go back and lay down my life cheerfully for my country's sake. Since it pleased God that I have preserved it still, and had not the good fortune (if I may term it so) to lose it in that place, and so have been happy by wanting the sight of so many miseries that have come upon myself and others of my relations which I have got notice of since I came to this town. I never intended, nor do intend, to trouble my father any more... Only I hope you will acquaint him that I wish him long life, wealth and happiness, and more comfort in the rest of his children than he has had in me.
The nation's humour had become a desperate hunger for revenge. When the mob could not find an Englishman to frighten, it bullied these miserable Caledonians, recognising them by their fever-yellow skins and their threadbare scarlet. The news from England caused riots and bonfires. The King—that "wise prince and steady to please his people" according to Seafield—had received the Address from the Council-General and had liked none of it. He coldly replied that he was sorry his northern kingdom had sustained such a sad loss, and that of course he would always protect and encourage its trade, but there should be no more talk of an immediate assembly of the Estates. "We will order that the Parliament shall meet when we judge the good of the nation does require it." The good of the nation, in William's opinion, would not require it before March 5. Though they were angered and humiliated by this contemptuous rejection of their Address, the Councillors made excellent use of it. They printed and circulated the King's reply, and they directed the fury it aroused into support for another Address, one which they hoped would be signed by thirty or forty of the most influential men in the nation. It would remind the King of the Company's rights and privileges, and advise him that the immediate calling of Parliament had never been more necessary.
William's patience with Scottish affairs, always short, now came to an ill-tempered end. On December 12 he wrote to his Privy Council in Edinburgh. He had never denied his subjects their just privileges, he had never discouraged their freedom to petition him in a dutiful manner, but to hear of a second Address in motion when he had said all there was to say in reply to the first was more than he was inclined to stomach. He particularly resented the fact that both Addresses were inspired by factious men who had never shown any affection for him or his Government. He ordered the Privy Council to make his displeasure known, and to take effectual steps within the law to stop the Address. The Company's friends were delighted to make that displeasure known, and they naturally emphasised the cavalier tone in which it was expressed. The effect was dramatic, and the reverse of what the King and his servants wished. There was another of those passionate manifestations of national unity which ennobled the Scots in the seventeenth century. All manner of men, as individuals and corporate bodies, demanded the right to sign the Address. As copies were sent to the shires and burghs it became a people's protest, a declaration of loyalty to Scotland's Company and Scotland's Parliament. The Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Marchmont, realised that he could not proceed against the subscribers without challenging a subject's right to petition the King, that William could not insist upon such interference without breaking the promises he had made when he accepted the Crown of Scotland. "We have a very tender point in hand," Marchmont told Seafield, "and if I should adventure upon prosecutions not sustainable by law, that would be to open a pack and sell no ware." He decided to do nothing.
In its burning pride and indignation the country also remembered the lost crew of the Dolphin, albeit somewhat late. It was perhaps a relief to recall that some of those first colonists were worthy of sympathy and respect. Since September, when Daniel Mackay brought news of the ship's capture, Mrs. Pincarton and other tearful relatives had been asking the Company for news, for help, for an appeal to the King. It was believed that the wretched seamen were still in the dungeons of Carthagena, but four of them were now in Spain—Pincarton, John Malloch, James Graham, and a boy David Wilson. They had been taken to Havana in September, and from thence to Cadiz with Benjamin Spense. Pincarton had been bitterly angered by the Spaniards' treatment of his men at Carthagena. "They were every day carried out with their slaves," he wrote later, "to work at their walls and clean their streets; and were likewise forced to cry and beg from everyone that passed by, for God's sake, for some charity to save their lives." When he heard that the first Colony was gone from Caledonia he asked Pimienta to release him and his crew. "He told me that the old Governor had wrote such things against me that he could not let me go, but of necessity I must be sent to Old Spain." When he left, seven of his men were already dead and the rest had been sent as slaves to the Barliavento Fleet.
Despite her agonised persistence, the Council-General did not consider Mrs. Pincarton's appeal until December, when it decided to petition the King for his intercession on behalf of the prisoners. Wasting no opportunity of catching the royal sleeve, it also reminded him of an earlier request for three naval frigates now lying idle at Burntisland. The man who took this cheerfully optimistic petition to London was Lord Basil Hamilton, the proud and contentious brother of the Duke. He went reluctantly, declaring that he would rather attend to his private affairs in Scotland, that there were others more capable than he. Certainly there could have been few less acceptable to the King, and William childishly refused to see him. Through Seafield he announced that he was displeased with the Company for sending a man who had never had the courtesy to attend his Court, and whose lack of affection for the Throne and Government was notorious. Though insulted by this rebuff, and angered when he was treated like a messenger, Hamilton doggedly remained in London. He bit on his pride and sent an apology to Seafield, asking the King's pardon for any past offence in his conduct, but William hated the Hamilton clan and would not forgive or receive this stiff-necked member of it. He said he would read the petition if it were brought to him by Seafield, and when he replied to it, on January 10, he ignored Hamilton and wrote directly to the Privy Council of Scotland. He would certainly ask the King of Spain to release the Dolphin's crew, but as for those three frigates ... they were there to guard the coast of Scotland and he could not dispose of them without the advice of Parliament.
A compassionate Englishman in Cadiz, Martin Westcombe the Consul, heard by chance that the prisoners were there and went to see them. He was horrified by their suffering, and persuaded the Governor to release them from irons. He appealed to the Court in Madrid, saying that the misery and innocence of these men surely justified their merciful release. When next he enquired about them he was told
that they had been sent to Seville, there to be tried as pirates and undoubtedly executed.
In Scotland at the beginning of February the Company chartered a sloop, the Margaret of Leith, and loaded her with provisions for the Colony. It occurred to the Directors that the second expedition, finding Caledonia deserted, might be in need of stronger encouragement than beef, codfish and flour. The young supercargo of the sloop, Patrick MacDowall, was given a letter addressed to all Land and Sea Officers. "We need not tell you," it said, "how far the honour and interest of the nation is engaged, there is no looking backward." The first colonists had behaved without religion or morality. Many of them had been impudent villains and treacherous knaves, and even those who had died at sea during the flight to New York had wantonly denied themselves the glory of perishing in Caledonia. Some of the young officers with the second expedition were related to the greatest families in the kingdom, and should therefore know that if they did not do their duty their dishonour would be all the more conspicuous. This should inspire them to exceed each other in virtue. The more illustrious a man's birth the more base his degeneration if he abandoned those qualities which distinguished his family from vulgar men. "It's a lasting disgrace to the memories of those officers who went on the first expedition that even the meanest planters were scandalised at the viciousness of their lives, many of them living very intemperately and viciously for many months at the public charge, whilst the sober and industrious among them were vigilant in doing their duty."
MacDowall also carried letters which his friend Paterson wrote to Alexander Shields and Thomas Drummond. Paterson had not yet recovered his health and was suffering, he said, from a cold and feverish humour that clouded his mind and made writing difficult. He saw the hand of God in everything, in the recent terrible fire that had destroyed much of the High Street, Cowgate and Parliament Close, in the loss of the Company's ships, in the desertion of the first Colony. But at least the Almighty had favoured him, his report had been accepted by the Directors. "In all my troubles," he told Drummond, "it's no small satisfaction to have lived to give the Company and the world unquestionable proof that I have not had any sinister nor selfish designs." He praised Drummond's industry and integrity, and that grenadier captain—if he ever received the letter—may have been astonished by such warmth and generosity, for he had never disguised his belief that Paterson was a fool and a meddler. Paterson also advised Shields to have tolerance, to bear with the infirmities of others, provided they were not rawheads, mushroom politicians, intriguing cabals and Tarpaulin Councillors. In a letter of farewell to MacDowall he urged the young man to behave prudently, to honour his father, and "to take care that these boisterous mariners shall no more domineer over us."
There was a feverish note of delirium in all the letters, from Paterson and the Directors.
It was March 5 before the Margaret sailed, the day on which the King had promised the Scots that their Parliament would be called. It was not called, and no word came from London. Toward the end of the month the National Address—which was now the Ark of the Covenant to an angry people—was carried to England by four members of the Council-General led by the Marquis of Tweeddale. They could not be ignored as Hamilton had been insulted, but when Seafield took them to Kensington Palace on the afternoon of Sunday, March 25, they saw how unwelcome they were and how little time the King was prepared to give them. A troop of Guards and a travelling-coach were waiting at the steps to take him to Hampton Court. He received them in his bed-chamber, and was alone except for the servants who were dressing him. He was cold and brief in his welcome as the four men bent to kiss his white hand, and although he took the Address he did not open it. He stared at them silently, as if that were all. Tweeddale mumbled something which Sea- field, inclining his head, could not hear, but it was clearly a request for the Address to be read aloud, for the King gave it back to him. Tweeddale handed it to Sir John Home of Blackader who read it clearly in a challenging voice. Another silence, and then Tweeddale humbly asked what answer they might take back to Scotland.
"My lord," said William icily, "I suppose you know that I have ordered the sitting of Parliament to be on the 15th of May, and that it cannot possibly meet sooner. Therefore, I think you might have spared this trouble."
The audience was over and he moved toward the door. Blackader, who stood in his way, stubbornly refused to step aside. With controlled anger he asked the King to understand that the Address was not only a petition for a Parliament, it was also evidence of his countrymen's deep concern for the security of their Company and the safety of their kinsmen in Caledonia. The truth of that, said the King adroitly, would surely be known when Parliament met.
They followed him out of the bed-chamber and down the great staircase to the golden mist of a spring evening. They stood among his grooms and his servants as his coach was driven away to Hampton Court.
The Scots Parliament did not meet on May 15. Having had no more than eight weeks' warning the King's Commissioner, the Duke of Queensberry, announced that his equipage—that magnificent train of carriages, footmen, outriders and guards which must carry him from Holyroodhouse to Parliament Hall—could not be ready before May 24. When the session did begin it was noisy and ineffectual, and the King's servants opened it with the cunning proposal that before all else Parliament should debate the grievous state of morality and religion in Scotland. Unable to deny theology its proper priority, the Company's party waited three days before moving
"That our Colony of Caledonia in Darien is a legal and rightful settlement in the terms of the Act, and that Parliament will maintain and support the same."
The motion was never put. On May 30 Queensberry complained of a sore throat, the result, no doubt, of that rank smell of charred wood in Parliament Close. He could scarcely speak, and he had no wish to risk his health by sitting too long in the Hall. Moreover, the motion raised issues upon which the King should be consulted. By his order Parliament was adjourned until June 20.
It would not meet again until the end of October, and long before then all would be lost.
"To the satisfaction of all sensible men, Scots or English" London, January and February 1700
Of all the paper and ink expended in the little pamphlet war over Caledonia, Walter Herries' book is the only one that excites the imagination—not because it is trustworthy but because it acknowledges that men are human and that much of their behaviour is motivated by interest and not by the nobility of the ideals they profess to serve. He called his ribald, entertaining mixture of truth and fiction A Defence of the Scots Abdicating Darien, and he could not have been surprised when the Lord Justice Clerk ordered it to be burned as a seditious libel by the hangman of Edinburgh. In the New Year it was answered, on the Company's behalf, by an anonymous Inquiry into the Causes of the Miscarriage of the Scots Colony. This naturally outraged the English, and the House of Lords sat late in debate upon it. They listened as Lord Peterborough read several scandalous paragraphs aloud, and because it reflected upon the honour of King and Parliament they ordered it to be burned in the Palace Yard. They agreed to address the King, reminding him of the Address of both Houses in 1695, and declaring that the mischievous Colony on Darien was prejudicial to the trade of the English plantations in America.
Herries had been living in England since his return from Caledonia, his pregnant wife snugly housed in Rochester while he scribbled in a Fleet Street tavern. If not already James Vernon's paid hack he was certainly the Secretary's spy, hoping his loyal service would eventually win him a pardon for that impulsive sword-thrust into the body of Captain Graydon. His book had also been answered by Fletcher of Saltoun in an essay of noble and inexact logic, but this offered no serious challenge in the gutter where the surgeon preferred to brawl, and where most people formed their opinions. Herries was incensed by the Inquiry, however, because it contained a lively attack upon him, written in a venomous style he might well have envied. He believed, with some truth, that the Company had authorised
its publication to encourage support for the National Address, and on January 7 he wrote to Vernon from Kent: "I design to answer the last scurrilous and rebellious pamphlet, I hope to the satisfaction of all sensible men, whether Scots or English. It contains nothing ad rem to confute what I have offered already; which I shall make appear, as likewise the malicious lies wherewith he basely asperses me."
Until he left for Rochester to attend his wife's lying-in, Herries had been convoying—as he put it—four Scots officers who had arrived in London at the beginning of January. They had left the Colony on the Saint Andrew and bought a passage from Jamaica to Bristol. One was Lachlan Maclean, the Highlander who had laid information against the Drummonds on the voyage to Madeira, and the others were Captains Forbes, Stewart and Stret- ton. Having heard how returned Caledonians were being received in Scotland, none of them was eager to return home. The King's Scottish Secretaries, Seafield and Lord Carmichael, were anxious to question them, and so was Lord Basil Hamilton, but they could not be found. With an impudent skill that a twentieth- century newspaperman would envy, Herries had hidden them in a tavern. He interrogated them closely, he told Vernon, and "took care that the material part of what they had said should be inserted in the public prints", that material part being damaging to the Company and favourable to the English. When he saw that Stewart and Stretton were loyal to the Company he released them to Hamilton, telling Vernon that they could do little harm since one was a madman and the other a fool. But Maclean and Forbes he brazenly took to Seafield and Carmichael, confident that the work he had begun for Vernon would now be continued by the Secretaries. He did not entirely abandon them, but left them in the care and under the watch of one of his own spies, a man with the remarkably apt name of Crouch.* Writing to Vernon from Rochester, he enclosed a fair copy of a report he had just received from this energetic subordinate.
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