Captain Forbes had been with me to-night. He says they did their message to the Secretaries to expectation, and are still at heart as yourself. Seafield asked whether the Proclamations hindered the settlement? They answered negatively. Whether they had vessels with victuals or not? Answer affirmatively, but no goods to buy withal, nor no credit. The Secretary was glad, for he had been reflected on by his country. He told them Herries had written a book some called scurrilous, he would have them read it and give their opinion. Captain Maclean replied that he had met with it at an inn, and had read it, and swore that there was never a lie in it. Fie! saith the Secretary, you must not say so, for you’ll be thought as ill of as I am. By....! says Maclean, I won't deny the truth to please any man.
Referring so lightly to his own unpopularity, Seafield was clearly delighted to have such explosive ammunition to use against the Company, but Carmichael was uneasy, and he may have suspected that both men had been bought by Herries with money supplied by Vernon. During the next two or three days Crouch dined with the officers, and questioned them thoroughly. They told him that James Campbell, the Company's agent, had taken them to the Three Lions tavern in Bedford Court, the lodgings of Paul Domonique, Paterson's Huguenot friend. There they
*Possibly Nathaniel Crouch, a stationer and hack journalist.
also met Lord Basil Hamilton who reminded them of the honour of their country and told them to do or say nothing that would bring discredit upon it. Maclean's Highland temper was aroused by the suggestion that a Lowlander could teach him anything about honour. "Never a lord in Christendom," he swore, "shall make me conceal the truth!" He refused to meet Hamilton again, but Forbes went once more to the Three Lions where he was told that James Vernon would probably send for them both and question them on the Colony. They should not go. On a point of good manners, said Forbes in guile or simplicity, must they not accept such an invitation? Hamilton gave them up as lost, and returned to Scotland with Stewart and Stretton.
The authorship of the Inquiry into the Miscarriage of the Scots Colony has never been clearly established. It is sometimes attributed to Saltoun, but it has none of his architectural style, and he could not have committed some of its solecisms even in an attempt to hide his identity. Conversely bizarre is a suggestion that the author of the Inquiry also wrote a defence of the Darien settlement for which Fletcher was responsible. To the Government of England in 1700 the question of authorship was political not academic, and in January the King signed a proclamation offering rewards of £500 and £200 for the apprehension of the author and printer of "a false, scandalous and traitorous libel, intituled An Inquiry etc., the design of which was to create a misunderstanding between our subjects of England and Scotland, and to stir up sedition." Before the month was out Andrew Bell had been arrested for printing it in England, and Patrick Campbell for publishing it in Ireland. Three more men were taken up for circulating it in London. Perhaps they kept their mouths shut under questioning, but more probably they did not. On February 3 Simon Chapman, Messenger to the Press, was given a warrant for the arrest of James Hodges. That afternoon, professing great astonishment and outraged innocence, Hodges was taken from his lodgings at the Pheasant and Crown in Drury Lane and thrown into the Gate House Prison.
He was a pleasantly enigmatic figure, and the records of this affair do little to show him in the round. He was possibly Scots, an able pamphleteer with an active pen that would dance through a lexicon to the music of a purse of guineas. Though he had been arrested by the Government, his first act upon reaching the Gate House suggests that he was until recently its paid scribbler. He wrote to William Lowndes, Secretary to the Treasury, declaring that he had been wrongly accused. Sparing no cliché, he said that he was as innocent as the day he was born. "I, who am so great a lover of the King and a friend to the Government, cannot be guilty of owning opinions contrary to the interest of both." He asked Lowndes to vindicate him, expressed gratitude for past kindnesses, and promised that when they next met he would show the Secretary something "that I have been preparing for your view, of another nature than the book whereof I am unjustly challenged to be the author."
The depositions of witnesses, when they were sent to James Vernon by the Attorney-General, scarcely supported this declaration of innocence. Anne Dunbar, a serving-girl at the Pheasant and Crown, said that she often went into Mr. Hodges room when he was writing. She asked him what the book was about, and "he said it was the Darien Company, and that it should make Scotland rejoice and England mourn, for Parliament had not done well by them, and if they had assisted the Company Scotland would have been richer than ever England was." He chattered frankly to her, though he would not let her touch the manuscript. When she saw it was gone from his room, he told her that the Duke of Hamilton had taken it to Scotland.
Elizabeth Clark said that she had known Hodges for many years in Scotland, and that when she came to London she had taken lodgings at the Pheasant and Crown upon his recommendation. "Last summer she observed he was writing a book, and he told her it was about the Scotch African Company, which he said he was obliged to send down to Scotland the night before Duke Hamilton went to Scotland, which she thinks was toward the end of the year." At Hodges request, she carried it to the Duke's lodgings in St. James's Street, and thought no more about it until some Scots in London told her that it was to be burnt by the hangman. "And being fearful of the same, she begged her landlady to desire Mr. Hodges to remove his lodgings." He told them both that he knew all about the burning and was not afraid.
There was also the strange evidence given by James Cuff, a watchmaker at the Ship Tavern in Fleet Street. He and Hodges had fought together in the Duke of Monmouth's abortive rebellion of 1685, but they had not met again until recently. "We did go together into some house near the chocolate-house in Charles Street near Covent Garden, where I saw several papers written, which I did read some part, he not seeming to make a secret thereof but said it should soon be in print." Cuff offered to find a printer, but Hodges said he already had one. "What I read to the best of my memory was the very same book, viz. the book shown me by Mr. Secretary, and what I can plainly remember was expressed An Answer to a libel entitiled A Defence of the Scots Abdicating Darien." He thought little of the matter until he saw the King"s Proclamation against the author and printer, and then he was shocked to receive four anonymous and threatening letters. Copies of them were pinned to his deposition.
The first began, If you discover that business in relation to the
Scots papers which you saw it shall be a dear £500 for you. It
warned Cuff that if he injured the writer he would regret it and his father would grieve. The second, a day or so later, I understand you have been prating concerning those papers you saw at Charles Street, notwithstanding I earnestly entreated you not to disclose anything. Cuff was invited to meet the writer that evening at the Three Tuns by Holborn Bridge. When he did not go he received a third letter which accused Cuff of informing upon the writer, I understand you was this morning where you will repent when it is too late. A trap must then have been set to catch the writer, and failed, for the next morning Cuff received the fourth and final letter. Your snare last night was not so well laid... I design not to trouble you any farther with lines after this, but I shall leave you to your own destruction.
This evidence, though circumstantial, was enough at that time to have convicted Hodges. Much less had sent other men to the pillory or the gallows. But when the Attorney-General, Sir Thomas Trevor, sent the papers to James Vernon he said that he could see nothing in them upon which to base a charge. Vernon agreed, and Hodges was released from the Gate House. Some months later he was petitioning Seafield and William Carstares for their help in securing a pension from the King of £300 a year. "I will do the best I can to merit it, and to bestow it in his service. As my brother did serve him with his sword, I will endeavour to supply his room with my studies and pen."
Walter Herries also discovered that a hack with a reve
rsible coat need never despair of the gratitude of great men. On July 8, James Vernon sent a brief note to the Admiralty. "His Majesty orders that the prosecution of Walter Herries (on account of the quarrel that formerly happened between him and his commander) shall be stopped."
"Wilful Willy, wilt thou be wilful still... ?"
Edinburgh, June 1700
Robert Pincarton and his four companions were brought from their cells below the great walls of the Alcazar in Seville. They had not seen the sunlight for weeks. Now it flooded over them, glowing on the exquisite arabesques and columns of the room in which they faced their Judges. They were ragged and emaciated, scarred by the irons that had hung on their wrists and ankles, and they believed that they had been abandoned by their country. Pincarton acknowledged none of the accusations made against him, if he could not save his life he could at least die with dignity. He was not a pirate, he said, he was by trade a sea- captain. He had no stock in the Company of Scotland, nothing but his bare wage of ten pounds a month. He had never wished to suppress the Indians or injure the subjects of Spain. He did not believe that the country of Darien had belonged to any European prince before the Scots came. There had been no wish to compete with Spanish traders in their own territories. "The cargo we had was most for the use of our own people, and was suitable for the English islands, for it consisted of linen cloth, white and blue, periwigs, Scots shoes for men and women, slippers, which is very seldom worn amongst Spaniards in that country."
He was found guilty, and so were John Malloch, James Graham and Benjamin Spense. All were sentenced to death. The boy David Wilson was freed upon his promise never to return to Darien. The Judges declared that the Council-General and the Directors of the Company of Scotland were equally guilty of piracy. An account of the expenses of the Spanish Crown in all its actions against the Colony should be presented to the King of England and Scotland, and payment demanded. The Governor of Carthagena was also reprimanded, and was told that he should have punished the crew of the Dolphin in a summary and exemplary fashion, and not troubled the King by sending their leaders to Spain.
The four men were taken back to the darkness below the walls, there to wait until the manner and date of their execution had been decided.
Two days later in Scotland, on May 30, the Duke of Queensberry's sore throat brought the brief session of Parliament to an end. By curious chance a pamphlet published that same day passionately voiced the people's anger with the King's servants, and their desperate desire to have their grievances remedied by Parliament. Culled from an earlier and duller pamphlet, it was called People of Scotlands Groans and Lamentable Complaints Pour'd out before the High Court of Parliament. For a hundred years, it said, the political leaders of Scotland had been the servants of England and had frequently treated the Scots as enemies, never more so than now. By all that was sacred, the noble representatives in Parliament were implored to save their ancient and gallant country. "We beg you to consider how our Sovereignty and Freedom is violated, and Laws trampled upon, our Trade interrupted: how our brethren have been starved and made slaves, our Colony deserted, our ships burnt and lost abroad; whilst our Petitions have been rejected, our Company baffled."
The most immediate response to this wordy jeremiad came from the King's servants whom it obliquely attacked. Hugh Paterson, a surgeon-apothecary, and James Watson, a printer, were arrested and sent to the Tolbooth for writing and publishing the libellous pamphlet. But this merely plucked a leaf and left the thistle to flourish. Angry members of Parliament, outraged by Queensberrys' high-handed action, drew up another Address to the King. Signed by peers, knights and burgesses, it expressed their "unspeakable grief and disappointment" and begged William to recall Parliament with liberty to sit as long as might be necessary to redress the grievances of the nation. When this reached Kensington Palace in mid-June even Seafield heard the warning echo of angry trumpets, sounding down four centuries of conflict with the English. Supporting a frightened dispatch from Queensberry, he and the Earl of Argyll advised the King to give his assent to an Act that would declare Scotland's right to Caledonia. William refused. "Could we have done it at all," he told Queensberry, "we would have done it at first, but the longer we think upon it we are the more convinced that we cannot do it." Privately he thought the Scots were fools about their Colony on Darien, and so he wrote to a Dutch friend. They caused him great annoyance and they delayed his departure to Holland, "for which I long more than ever".
There were many such fools in Scotland who now thought that the King could oblige his twin kingdoms by retiring to his homeland for ever. On June 10, the birthday of the exiled Stuart's son, the Jacobites openly celebrated with bonfires and drawn pistols. They published a crude lampoon in which William appeared as the stork which Jupiter gave to the frogs who had asked for a king. Colonel Ferguson, whose regiment garrisoned the Castle, told Carstares that "Treason is become so common that nobody takes any notice of it. They talk publicly that unless the King will grant them the legal settlement of Caledonia they will address him again with forty thousand hands at it." In the coffee-houses there was cryptic, smiling talk of a flame that burnt unseen in the heart of the city, awaiting the rising of a terrible wind.
That wind, or at least a small gust of it, arose on June 20. Captain Thomas Hamilton had died at sea, but the dispatches he carried arrived safely that day with news of a glorious victory at Toubacanti. The Directors ordered its immediate publication, and by nightfall Edinburgh was a playground for the mob. The pensioners of the Town Guard, who should have prevented this, understandably locked themselves in their guard-house by the Tron Church.
The riot began discreetly. In the forenoon the Duke of Hamilton, the people's hero and the Jacobites' darling, visited Peter Steel's tavern where he drank a toast to Toubacanti and demanded another National Address. He was cheered away in triumph, having maintained his popularity and secured his house from damage that night. Past noon, at the Cross Keys inn, a meeting of gentlemen who called themselves "True Caledonians" also drank several toasts, to Toubacanti, to the Company, and to the damnation of its enemies. They proposed and agreed that all the windows of the city should be illuminated with candles of joy, and they called upon the gathering crowd outside to enforce that resolution. By dusk huge fires were burning in the High Street and Canongate, the shadow of their ruddy flames crawling up the stone-faced lands and broken gables. Before dark the mob was shouting at windows still unlit, and throwing stones through those that did not respond. Over the shouting and screaming, the splintering of glass and explosion of fireworks, the bells of St. Giles insanely rang their way through a Jacobite rant. Wilful Willy, wilt thou be wilful still...?
Three times the mob in Canongate attempted to break down the door of Lord Carmichael's house, then shattered its windows and tumbled the candles which his frightened servants had lit. Another crowd burst in upon the Lord Advocate, Sir James Stewart, and ordered the old man to sign a warrant for the release of the author and printer of Groans and Complaints. Further along the street, Seafield's wife crouched in terror among the fallen glass of her husband's fine windows, listening to a many-tongued voice that cried damnation to him and his royal master. In Holyroodhouse, however, the Duke of Queensberry slept soundly, undisturbed, he told his secretary the next morning, by the noise of any tumult. Had there indeed been a riot?
The mob at the lower end of the Royal Mile moved to join that in the High Street, encouraged by loyal gentlemen who leant from their glowing windows with cries of approval. The Earl Marischal, who may have seen the imminent return of King James behind the bonfires and the broken glass, sent out his servants with wine, and toasted Caledonia from his doorway. The crowd drank his lordship's wine, wished success to all his hopes, and then broke the windows of a house belonging to the Reverend Mr. David Blair, for no other reason, it seemed, than that it was his duty to read daily prayers when Parliament was in session. He was also called a rogue and a villain.
When the two mobs met at
the Netherbow Port they took away the keys of the gate so that they might not be locked within the high city. Without waiting for the warrants which the Lord Advocate may or may not have signed under duress, they stormed the Tolbooth. They were lighting a fire at the base of its oak and iron door when the redcoat pensioners sallied out of the guard-house under Baillie Johnstone and some other magistrates. The unhappy veterans were driven off without much difficulty, "by a great many in gentlemen's habits," it was later reported, "who came up briskly with drawn swords." The door of the Tolbooth gave way, and the first man inside carried a bayonet, the second a sabre. Keeper Atchison prudently surrendered his keys, and Paterson and Watson were released and carried away in triumph. Other prisoners were also liberated, including some wild Highlanders who were there for cattle-lifting, but Atchison was allowed to keep two or three who had been charged with "bouggary and theft". In the noise and the scuffling, the red flame of torches, a turnkey was wounded by a bayonet thrust, and Gaoler Drummond was robbed of his hat, periwig, cloak, ring, and all the goods in his sutlery.
The mob then advanced on Parliament Hall. Some may have got inside, for the Underkeeper of the Wardrobe later reported that the gold fringe had been stolen from the Chair of State. At no time that night did the garrison of the Castle attempt a sortie against the rioters. The Portcullis Gate was closed, the guns of the Half Moon Battery were manned, and the Governor was convinced that he would shortly be under siege. He was profoundly dismayed by this thought. His provisions would not last two days, his men were unnerved, his batteries in a state of neglect. He watched the shudder of flames beyond the Land- market, listened to the mob, and did nothing.
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