On the eve of the voyage the prince invited his fellow syndicate members to dinner at his townhouse in Spring Gardens. These not only included grandees — the 2nd Duke of Albermarle, the ever-dependable Earl of Craven, and the Earl of Arlington — but also self-made men — John Portman and Sir Robert Vyner, bankers both, as well as John Fenn and Francis Millington, civil servants. They toasted the success of their joint venture and congratulated themselves on their bold involvement in a business with such potential: they were the original eighteen who had ‘at their own great cost and charge undertaken an Expedition for Hudson’s Bay in the Northwest part of America for the discovery of a new Passage into the South Sea and for the finding some Trade for Furs, Minerals and other considerable Commodities’.[661]
The next morning they excitedly boarded a barge, which rowed them to a point off Gravesend. From here they witnessed the company’s ships disappear over the horizon. The vessels’ captains took with them orders, signed by Prince Rupert, that confirmed the purposes of their mission, and a reminder to ‘use the said Mr Gooseberry and Mr Radisson with all manner of civility and courtesy and to take care that all your company do bear a particular respect unto them, they being the persons upon whose credit we have undertaken this expedition’.[662]
Radisson’s participation in the voyage was short-lived: the Eaglet was too flimsy for the Atlantic gales and lost its mast before limping back to Plymouth. The Frenchman used his unexpected free time to write a report of his former travels. Meanwhile, the Nonsuch, a hardy veteran of the navy, successfully handled the waves. After nearly four months at sea, she dropped anchor in James Bay. In recognition of the prince’s importance to the venture, the nearest freshwater source was immediately named Rupert River.
Trading was brisk and peaceful. The Indians of James Bay traded their furs for the Englishmen’s assorted cargo of weapons, tools, and baubles. Des Groseilliers also provided — at a cost — wampum, the shells used by Indians as currency. This oiled the wheels of commerce. As winter approached, the Nonsuch was beached, in order to stop it being crushed by the ice. The expedition’s artisans then constructed the first of five forts, which were to provide shelter from the snow and to deter other nations — essentially, France — from seeking to profit from the local trade. This first building, made of spruce trees, was initially called ‘Fort Charles’, but to later generations it was known as ‘Rupert’s House’.
Winter was long that year and the Nonsuch was only able to penetrate the thawing ice of Hudson Strait in mid August, 1669. The ship returned to London two months later with a consignment of furs worth £1,400. Although there was nothing by way of profit, the expedition had been a success, offering real hope that this was the start of a lucrative business. The king, sniffing a potential bonanza, acted decisively. He ordered the preparation of ‘The Charter of the Governor and Company of Adventurers’. It was formally signed in Whitehall on 2 May 1670 and Rupert was appointed governor. His ‘Adventurers’ — all British — were eleven aristocrats and six gentlemen. Of these, seven formed a board with the prince, overseeing the running of the corporation. Rupert’s committee was drawn entirely from the business-minded section of his colleagues as this was to be a professional outfit, not an aristocratic caper. To ensure openness and effectiveness, all eighteen Adventurers were answerable to an annual shareholders’ meeting, where elections for the coming year were held.
Charles’s ignorance of the potential scale of the operation led to the governor and company being granted an extraordinarily generous commission. ‘We do grant,’ he proclaimed, on the sheepskin parchment of the founding document, ‘unto the said Governor and Company and their successors the sole Trade and Commerce of all those Seas, Straits, Bays, Rivers, Lakes, Creeks, and Sounds that lie within the entrance of Hudson’s Straits — and make, create, and constitute [them] the true and absolute Lords and Proprietors of the same Territory.’[663]
Not only Hudson’s Bay, but also all the drainage area of its myriad tributaries, was entrusted to the entrepreneurs. A strict interpretation of the terms of the founding document meant that Rupert and his colleagues were ‘true and absolute Lords and Proprietors’ of a territory covering 1.5 million square miles: what was now known as ‘Rupert’s Land’ comprised roughly half of America north of the Rio Grande. (If the Northwest Passage had existed, Rupert would have been nominal governor of the largest empire known to man.) In return for his largesse, Charles accepted meagre payment: he was to receive two elks and two black beavers per year. Rupert, eager to keep his cousin sweet, occasionally added extra small gifts from the company: the king was reported to be delighted with a pair of beaver stockings.
From its true inception, the Hudson’s Bay Company promised success, which the shareholders backed with continuing investment. A three-masted, 75-ton frigate was built, her storage areas designed to transport beaver pelts with the maximum of care and efficiency. She was named the Prince Rupert. At the end of May 1670, less than a month since the king signed the company’s charter, the Prince Rupert and the Wivenhoe (loaned by the king) began a voyage to the bay with not just Radisson and des Groseilliers aboard, but also a jailbird called Charles Bayley.
Bayley’s most recent detention had been in the Tower of London, on charges of sedition, but he had also spent time in various European prisons. A Quaker with a long beard, Bayley certainly did not want for optimism: he had once tried to convert the Pope to Protestantism. Despite his eccentricity, Bayley was selected by Rupert and his colleagues to protect the corporation’s interests in North America. He proved to be an inspired choice.
Bayley remained at his post for nearly a decade, during which time the company progressed from promising much, to delivering plenty. He had a clear understanding of what was needed: he concentrated his efforts on the most important points in the forbidding landscape, erecting factories to process and receive the animal furs, and ensuring that nobody else controlled the waterways that drained into the bay. He had a hands-on style of leadership, physically helping to erect buildings and assisting in their thatching. Bayley also maintained good relations with the indigenous people. This peaceful co-existence — a result of his Quaker beliefs — meant his men were never short of game and fish to eat: either they shot or caught for the pot themselves or they bought fresh flesh from native hunters.
So successful was Bayley in his empire-building that he put Radisson’s and des Groseilliers’s noses out of joint. In 1674 they were lured back into the service of their motherland, their passage eased by the payment of lavish inducements and made easier by the encouragement of a Jesuit priest. However, the efforts of Prince Rupert in England, and Bayley in America, meant that the English had scooped the prize from under French noses.
The expansion was steady to start with. The Prince Rupert and the Wivenhoe returned from the bay in 1671 with enough furs to attract more, eager investors. The following January, 11,000lb of beaver furs were disposed of in twenty-seven lots, at a public auction in Garraway’s Coffee House, for nearly £4,000. (In its first dozen years, the company had no permanent offices: its business took place in taverns and coffee houses.) Slightly larger returns were recorded the following year, when three ships returned from the burgeoning outpost.
Prince Rupert’s efforts on behalf of commerce were publicly recognised when he was granted the honour of laying the cornerstone of the Royal Exchange. In August 1670 he was one of the first men appointed councillors for trade and plantations.
By 1676, the company was making a profit of £19,000 against costs of £650. However, during Rupert’s governorship, the Hudson’s Bay Company never paid its investors a dividend: this was to be a long-term investment and one that its founders were determined should have every chance of success. There were also disappointments: in 1678 the company’s ship the Shaftesbury was sunk on its return journey, with the loss of all of that year’s furs.
The prince remained fully involved with the promotion of the company. Minutes show his tireless energy an
d his appreciation of contemporary business practices: bribes — pieces of silver and hogsheads of claret — found their way to those able to progress the investors’ fortunes. Rupert’s Land was a significant territory by the time of the prince’s death. Out of its ashes rose an important part of modern Canada: without the company’s presence, it is probable that American settlers would have claimed the land for themselves. Furthermore, three of today’s provincial capitals — Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Victoria — started life as trading outposts for the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Chapter Twenty-Six - The Wrong Enemy
‘I saw the chirurgeon cut off ye leg of a wounded sailor, the stout and gallant man enduring it with incredible patience, without being bound to his chair as usual on such painful occasions. I had hardly courage enough to be present. Not being cut off high enough, the gangrene prevail’d, and the second operation cost the poor creature his life. Lord! What miseries are mortal men subjected to, and what confusion and mischief do the avarice, anger, and ambition of Princes cause in the world!’
John Evelyn’s Diary, 24 March 1672
The Second Anglo-Dutch War had been expensive for both of the main protagonists: it cost England £5 million, but the United Provinces had spent £11 million scrapping their way to a narrow overall victory. When fighting was concluded, in the summer of 1667, both the States-General and Parliament hoped for a long and prosperous peace. However, the Duke of York secretly planned to resume hostilities. He hoped that, with better preparation and more resources, a third war against the Dutch might secure sufficient bounty to free the Crown from the Commons’s financial control, forever. James waited for the right moment to strike again.
The stain of shame emanating from the Medway debacle gave useful cover to his aggressive intent. Sir Bernard de Gomme, brought over by Rupert from the Continent at the outbreak of the Civil War as his chief engineer, was commissioned to make English harbours safe. In 1668 he erected ‘A new fortification at the old Block House of Tilbury Fort’,[664] with a circumference of two-thirds of a mile. The following year de Gomme strengthened three gunnery platforms around Portsmouth and added a fourth, screening them all with mortar made from Isle of Wight stone. De Gomme later improved the sea protection of Gosport and Dublin.
Many in Parliament thought such new defences necessary — but not against the United Provinces. Louis XIV of France was constructing a huge and frightening military machine across the Channel, and it was feared that he intended to use this to export his absolutist, Roman Catholic brand of government overseas. The growing French menace persuaded England, the United Provinces, and Sweden to form the Triple Alliance, in 1668. With the sickly young Carlos II of Spain reportedly near to death, and with France a possible heir to his Spanish Empire, it seemed sensible to form a Protestant shield in case of future Catholic aggression.
Rupert’s sister Sophie had long viewed the enmity of England and the United Provinces as madness. While the Protestant trade rivals exhausted each other in combat, she saw that France was the real beneficiary, quietly stockpiling power on the sidelines. At the conclusion of the second war she wrote to the Earl of Craven: ‘Peace is at last made between England and Holland. I would wish for the honour of your country that it had been made after the death of poor Opdam because then it would have been more glorious, but better late than never, and I am sure that the King will find it preferable to live in peace with Holland than at war, because on sea they [the United Provinces] will always be invincible as long as they hold together; I wish with all my heart both that the arms of the king of France be opposed, and that the Empire might also perform better than it has done, so far.’[665]
The French failed to alarm Charles II. He knew Louis XIV well from his time in France after the Civil War and judged that there was nothing to fear, and much to gain, from the increasing power of his cousin. This set him at odds with the majority of his people. ‘The French indeed’, said John Doddington, an English diplomat, in 1670, ‘[are] generally hated to the devil by all the English except the King in the first place & the gentry or noblesse who had seen the world and travelled abroad.’[666]
Charles’s relaxed attitude towards France was reinforced by a clandestine annual pension from Louis of £225,000. This sum eased the shackles imposed by a Parliament that, it seemed, would only make extraordinary payments to the Crown in return for political concessions. In 1670, Charles signed the Treaty of Dover, whose secret provisions formalised the Anglo-French union against the United Provinces.
The Duke of York advised against the alliance. Although he remained eager for a profitable war against the Dutch, James appreciated the intensity of Parliament’s anti-Catholic bias better than his brother. He feared that a coalition with Louis would stop Parliament granting the navy the funds necessary for victory. Without them the problems of the previous war would recur: a lack of cash would pull the English fleet up short, when success was within its grasp. James put these concerns to the king and noted Charles’s reply: ‘His Majesty answered, that 50 of his own ships, and 30 from France, would serve for the war. So that there was no danger of running in debt. The charge might easily be supported by the Customs, estimated at £600,000, yet he could not look the Dutch in the face with 80 ships, such as proposed, and fire-ships proportionable; and keep convoys for trade and the preservation of plantations ...’[667] When James realised that his brother was going to proceed with the alliance, he made Charles insist that an English admiral be placed in command of the combined fleet. James had himself in mind for the position. Charles would then provide 6,000 soldiers, to serve under Louis’s marshals.
Charles was convinced that, with French support, the two kingdoms’ troops would quickly overwhelm the 25,000 soldiers of the United Provinces. Louis XIV’s rampant armies would attack from the east, while the English would land a second force on the North Sea coast. Once the republican Dutch were defeated, Charles’s 22-year-old nephew (and Rupert’s godson), Prince William of Orange, could be installed as a client ruler: William’s parents were both long dead and Charles had been left as the orphan’s guardian. The plan seemed feasible after a one-off Parliamentary grant of £1.3 million, in January 1672. This was enough to fund a short conflict — all that Charles thought would be required.
To help justify this third war, the king combined the sense of effrontery that had ignited the first conflict with the trade grievances that had led to the second. ‘The Hollanders therefore refusing to strike sail, do deny his Majesty’s Sovereignty in the Seas (one of the most precious Jewels of the Crown)’, complained William de Britaine, in 1672, ‘and the principal means of the Trade, Wealth and Safety of this Nation; and which all true English men, with the hazard of their lives and fortunes, are obliged to preserve and maintain.’[668] This was enough to spark a conflict that, unlike its predecessors, had little backing from England’s merchant classes: the Third Anglo-Dutch War was about royal greed and opportunism, not the national interest.
Rupert’s champion, Sir Robert Holmes, was first into action, attacking the 60-strong Dutch Smyrna convoy in the Channel on 13 March 1672. Four days later, on the pretext that Dutch ships had fired on Holmes, Charles declared war on the United Provinces. In late May, de Ruyter replied, surprising the Duke of York’s fleet in Southwold Bay. The battle mirrored the titanic clashes of the previous wars, with many casualties from all ranks: 2,500 men were killed on each side. James was extremely lucky to survive the sinking of two of his flagships. Less fortunately, the Earl of Sandwich, recalled from his diplomatic exile, was drowned. The result was a narrow English victory, but the damage inflicted on James’s ships was sufficient to rule out an invasion of Holland during the remainder of the year.
With their religious sensitivities heightened by war, Anglican politicians in London looked to create safeguards against Catholicism. They succeeded in passing the Test Act in the spring of 1673, which allowed only Protestants to hold public office. The next day, Easter Sunday, James declined to take Anglican Communion.
This was, according to Evelyn, a decision that caused ‘exceeding grief and scandal to the whole nation, that the heir to the throne and son of a martyr to the Protestant religion should apostasise’.[669] The duke was obliged to relinquish his naval command in June. Charles decided that the fleet was now to be run by a commission, which he would chair. A substantial figure was required to lead the forces at sea.
With Sandwich drowned, and Albermarle having died between the wars, the king announced that the senior commissioner would be Prince Rupert. He was promoted from the rank of Vice-admiral of England, to General at Sea and Land: ‘And with this his Majesty’s purpose,’ a contemporary wrote, ‘there immediately ensued a marvellous concurrence of the people’s affection in city and country, all over the kingdom, as well in regard of the Royal stock from whence his Highness sprang, as of his high courage, conduct, and long experience in affairs military by sea and land, in this, and many other nations; but yet more in respect of his tried constancy to, and zeal for, the Reformed Protestant profession of religion, and all the interests thereof, for the sake whereof he and his Royal family had long suffered the utmost extremity.’[670]
It was a shrewd appointment. At a time of insecurity, many found Rupert’s religious and military pedigree deeply reassuring: he would be in charge not only of the English fleet, but also of the auxiliary French squadron. The king and duke used their cousin’s respectability to bolster their own public relations with Charles’s increasingly jittery subjects. At the Lord Mayor’s Day Show in London at the end of 1672, six months into the third war, the royal brothers took pains to appear at the Guildhall accompanied by ‘the duke of Monmouth, Prince Rupert, the Archbishop of Canterbury, [and] all the bishops present in London’.[671]
Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier Page 43