To Begin the World Over Again

by Matthew Lockwood

  On a sweltering July morning in 1781, almost a year exactly after the Gordon Riots had engulfed London, 80,000 British men, women, and children gathered in yet another collective exorcism of fear. The war with the American colonies was going from bad to worse. In the preceding years they had seen British radicals riot in the streets of London, shivered as a home-grown terrorist menaced Britain’s shipyards, quaked at the very real prospect of a new armada, and watched in horror as London burnt before their eyes. Now, less than a year after the worst riots in English history, Britons received a new and chilling confirmation that the runaway paranoia of 1780 had not been entirely unwarranted. French agents could well be hiding around the next corner, listening and reporting, perhaps even preparing the way for that most awful prospect, invasion. With the specter of the French menace plaguing their dreams, tens of thousands of people streamed out of the city that summer day to see the execution of the man who had come to symbolize their terror.

  As the teeming assembly looked on, a lone man tied fast in a cart was dragged through the streets of London from the court at the Old Bailey to the ancient place of execution at Tyburn. After braving the cheers and jeers of the London mob, lining the route on foot and in purpose-made stands, the man was drawn to the gallows, the notorious triple tree of Tyburn, and a noose placed around his neck. An opportunity was given for the condemned to fulfill his didactic role, to give his confession, make his peace with God and so die a good death; then with speeches finished, the cart was pulled away and the poor wretch left swinging by his neck. In ordinary executions this would have been the end of the matter, but this was no ordinary execution, and before the man succumbed, he was cut down. While still alive, the bowels of the man were cut from his body and burnt in front of his half-conscious eyes. It was a terrible end, but one thought fitting for a man who had come to symbolize the fears of a nation. This potent symbol of British paranoia and French duplicity was François Henri de la Motte, a French spy. As the prosecution had argued, “a more vigilant, a more industrious, or a more able spy, was never placed in any country. The intelligence he procured will astonish you.”52

  In the early months of 1780, in the port town of Folkstone on the Kent coast, Stephen Ratcliffe was approached by a man named Isaac Roger, who proposed a business arrangement between the Kentish captain and his own unnamed master. Ratcliffe owned and operated a cutter, one of many small sailing vessels that plied the waters of the English Channel and the coastal trade within Britain. Roger asked the captain if he would take regular shipments of papers from Kent to the French city of Boulogne, just across the Channel from Kent. Carrying packets and letters across the Channel or along the coast was common practice for ship-owners such as Ratcliffe, an easy way to add a little profit to the usual shipments of wine and brandy; besides, Roger was offering the large sum of £20 for every parcel he transported with bonuses for speedy deliveries. Ratcliffe agreed to the arrangement and began to take regular packets of papers to the commissary of marines in Boulogne.53

  Although he had initially jumped at the offer, posing few if any questions about the nature of the papers he was carrying, Ratcliffe’s suspicions were eventually aroused in June 1780. Reflecting on Roger’s repeated calls for secrecy about the shipments, Ratcliffe unburdened himself to his friend Joseph Stewart, a merchant from nearby Sandwich. Stewart immediately saw the possible danger inherent in secretly transporting unknown documents from a shadowy figure in England to a naval official in France. On Stewart’s advice, the two men resolved to deliver the next packet to Lord Hillsborough, one of the secretaries of state. When Stewart eventually brought the papers to Hillsborough’s office, the seriousness of the matter became quickly apparent, for the packet contained a letter addressed to Monsieur Antoine de Sartine, Comte d’Alby, Secretary of State for the Navy, outlining the state of affairs in India and providing minute details of “the India ships preparing to sail; and of the troops that are going there, and of the ships expected home, and a great deal of information respecting the India possessions” as well as the locations, ships and manpower of the British fleets under Admiral Rodney and Admiral Geary.54

  This was shocking enough, but there was more to come. The packet contained a second letter that provided a detailed list of all known ships in the British navy. As the author wrote, “I have the honour to send you herewith a very exact state of the naval forces, armed and to be armed this year . . . A list of the naval forces, armed or to be armed; their stations, destination, and crews.” The level of detail provided was astounding. Ships were listed according to their naval station, with information regarding each ship’s number of men and guns, commander, whether it was in port or out, its destination and its last reported location in longitude and latitude. For instance, a naval detachment under Admiral Geary was described as being:

  on the 26th of July, off the bay of Ushant; longitude, E, of London, 11 deg. 12 min. lat. 49 deg. Wind, E.N.E., changeable . . . Total 26 ships of the line, nine frigates, five cutters, and three fire-ships . . . the utmost endeavours are used to reinforce the fleet under the command of Admiral Geary; that they had dispatched the Valiant of 74 guns, and the Biensaisant of 64 guns. The Fortitude of 64 guns, the Prince William 64, the Monarque 70, the Princess 70, and the Gibraltar 80; these five ships are setting out, one by one, and will be sent out, as they are in order, to join Admiral Geary.55

  It must have quickly dawned upon those gathered in Lord Hillsborough’s office that a major French intelligence network had just been unearthed. They also must have realized with a creeping sense of dread that this cache of intercepted intelligence stunk of treason, for among the lists of ships and the number of troops to be sent to India and New York, the packet contained a verbatim copy of a letter from Admiral Geary to the authorities in England detailing the status of his fleet. Put together, the number and specificity of the details on the British war effort, combined with the copy of the admiral’s letter, suggested that the information could not possibly have been gleaned by one man nor without the help of well-placed British citizens.

  Although the British authorities now had evidence of a traitorous plot in their midst, they had no idea who had written the letters or supplied the information. So as not to spook the potential conspirators, the intercepted letters were copied and returned to Ratcliffe with instructions to keep delivering the packets as had been originally agreed. Each subsequent parcel of papers was thereafter brought to the post office, where the contents were copied by government officials before the originals were delivered back to Ratcliffe. After copying several further letters, it was determined that the time had come to spring a trap. Ratcliffe was instructed to invent an argument with Roger over his payment, and in his manufactured anger demand to see the go-between’s employer. The ploy worked, and the unsuspecting servant led Ratcliffe to his master, François Henri de la Motte. On January 4, 1781 the trap was finally sprung and de la Motte was arrested at his home in Bond Street.

  While de la Motte was clapped in irons in London, off the coast of Africa, his daring espionage was bearing fruit. When the Dutch entered the war in 1780, and their colonies became fair game, Britain began to turn its greedy gaze toward the Dutch Republic’s prize possession on the southern tip of Africa. By the eighteenth century, the Cape Colony, established by the Dutch in 1652, had become a key stopping place and resupply station for European ships sailing for India, China, and Southeast Asia. As its importance grew, so too did its strategic value, attracting the attention of the British. With the Cape now a legitimate target, in March 1781, an expedition was sent under Commodore George Johnstone to seize the colony. Johnstone, however, had no idea that as his fleet of forty-six ships sailed from Spithead that spring, the French were preparing a fleet of their own to intercept the expedition. Among the mountains of paperwork de la Motte had passed to the French were details of Johnstone’s mission to the Cape.

  In April 1781, Johnstone’s fleet, still unaware of the danger, paused at Porto Praya in the Cape V
erde Islands to take on fresh water. On April 16, the French, under Admiral de Suffren, overtook the unprepared British fleet and battle was joined. In his ignorance, Johnstone had left much of the fleet exposed, but just managed to drive off the French. De Suffren had failed to destroy the expedition, but the damage he had caused to Johnstone’s ships ensured that the French forces were not pursued. Johnstone was still convinced that the French were clueless about the expedition’s target, and assumed de Suffren would head to Brazil or the West Indies to make his repairs. However, when Johnstone’s fleet at last arrived at the Cape, he found de Suffren, alerted by de la Motte’s information, already in place. With the Cape Colony reinforced, Johnstone had no choice but to abandon the mission and return to England in defeat.

  At trial, further sordid details of the traitorous conspiracy were revealed. Among the papers found in the raid on the house of Henri de la Motte were letters from a Mr. Lutterloh, a resident of Wickham near Portsmouth, one of the chief ports and naval bases of the British Empire. Lutterloh was quickly arrested, and under questioning by Lord Hillsborough he acknowledged that most of the information de la Motte had sent to France had been first supplied by him. Lutterloh had been in French employ since 1778, the year war was first declared between the two nations. Although his motivations were unclear, Lutterloh had been paid the princely sum of £50 per month to pass information regarding the British military to the French. Lutterloh himself had gained privileged access to such information by using the funds paid to him to corrupt a clerk in a government office in Portsmouth. David Tyrie, the duplicitous clerk, thus found himself the subject of a special session of the Winchester Assize where the full nature of his crimes was laid out for all to see.

  The case had been a sensational one, followed closely by readers in London and around the country. The uncovering of a grand French conspiracy in their very midst must have confirmed the long-held fears of many in such inauspicious times, and so it is no surprise that the execution of Henri de la Motte was well attended. Criminal executions had long taken on the aspect of carnival, with hundreds or even thousands jostling together at Tyburn on the outskirts of London to watch the macabre theater of vengeance and justice. The execution of de la Motte was, however, unique. Whereas most hangings were of groups, de la Motte was executed alone. Seven men had swung from Tyburn’s triple tree on the previous day, but the Frenchman was fated to swing alone. And while Tyburn crowds, especially in celebrity cases, often contained a strong contingent sympathetic to the condemned—glamorous highwaymen such as Jack Sheppard and Dick Turpin could expect to be cheered, toasted, and offered drinks on their parade to the gallows—there were few if any among the crowd on July 27 who had any sympathy for the French spy.56

  The execution of de la Motte’s British co-conspirator was similarly spectacular. Thirteen months later on the Southsea Common at Portsmouth it was David Tyrie’s turn to face the angry crowds, justice, and the noose. As many as 100,000 people gathered on the common to watch the spectacle of a traitor’s death, and if they hoped to see a potent mixture of equanimity and gore they would not have been disappointed. In the parlance of the times, David Tyrie’s was a good, if gruesome, death, and the young naval clerk faced his fate with admirable sangfroid. As one witness later related:

  He conducted himself from the prison here to the place of execution, and during the whole of the preparation for his miserable dissolution, with the most singular composure and magnanimity . . . When arrived at the place of execution, no halter was provided, upon which he smiled, and expressed astonishment at the inattention and neglect of his executioners; and indeed the business would have been retarded for some time, had not a rope and pulley been procured out of a lugger that lay under shore, during which time he read several passages in a bible he carried in his hand . . . After hanging exactly twenty-two minutes, he was lowered upon the sledge, and the sentence literally put in execution. His head was severed from his body, his heart taken out and burnt, his privities cut off, and his body quartered. He was then put into a coffin, and buried among the pebbles by the sea-side; but no sooner had the officers retired, but the sailors dug up the coffin, took out the body, and cut it in a thousand pieces, every one carrying away a piece of his body to shew their messmates on board. A more dreadful, affecting execution was perhaps never seen.57

  It was the last time such a shocking and brutal punishment would ever be seen in England. For several years after his execution, curious visitors in Portsmouth could see exhibited at Gosport Prison the head of David Tyrie. In the scrum that followed the burial, the master of Gosport Prison had secured the greatest prize of all, the traitor’s head, which he preserved in spirits to show curious tourists of the macabre. The punishment meted out to David Tyrie and François Henri de la Motte, and the extended physical presence of their mutilated remains was very much an intentional message to Britons and their enemies alike. The whole world was at war. Treason would not be tolerated.58

  Britain had thrown off kings before when they trampled too heavily on their rights and privileges, but despite significant sympathy for the American cause, an influential cadre of committed reformers, and deep disillusionment with the ruling regime, Britons never seriously contemplated joining their transatlantic cousins in revolt. Fear of the disorder and violence represented by the mob convinced most Britons that radicalism and revolt would bring with them only chaos and anarchy, and in Britain the American Revolution created and amplified disorder like no event before it. For while American colonists picked up their guns and began a revolution, Britons confronted crime, invasion, terrorism, treason, and popular violence on an unprecedented scale, creating an environment so fraught with fear that the idea of revolution, even of reform, was largely abandoned for the safety and security of a more authoritarian government.

  The eighteenth century was already an era of growing concern about crime and disorder before the American crisis intervened. Urbanization, geographic mobility, and commercial growth all conspired to loosen traditional social bonds to a worrying degree. The fears caused by the constant moving and mixing of the age were only exacerbated by the explosion of newspapers across the country, bringing sensationally maudlin tales of crime and criminals into the public view as never before. Once a local concern, crime now became a national issue, at the forefront of public debate. During times of crisis, when war or famine or depression threatened further destabilization, concern became particularly acute, sometimes even verging on moral panic. In the midst of economic disruption and fears of demobilized soldiers and sailors, such moments could also lead to calls for new laws and regulations to alleviate the dread of crime run rampant.

  A time of almost unprecedented disorder—a time when smuggling was rampant, when theft was common, when potential traitors and terrorists lurked behind every corner, and much of London reduced to a smoldering ruin—the intensity of the American crisis provoked an intense moral panic in the early 1780s. Across the country newspapers brimmed with accounts of “cruel murders and robberies,” of pitched battles between smugglers and customs officials on Britain’s beaches, and of former soldiers and sailors turned “desperadoes” haunting the streets and highways. Such stories fed into popular fears and reinforced the feeling of a nation under siege. In his speech to Parliament in December 1782, the king joined the panicked chorus, urging “a strict and severe execution of the laws” to combat “the great excess, to which the crimes of theft and robbery have arisen, in many instances accompanied with personal violence.” In an increasingly national news market, such stories and speeches, even if they did not accurately reflect local conditions, induced fear throughout the country.59

  On the surface, there was nothing unusual about this moral panic, as times of national emergency often brought heightened fears of crime. However, the nature of the American crisis meant that the panic that followed had consequences altogether more significant than had been the case for more than a century. Because the crisis caused by the American War combined
traditional fears of rampant criminality with concerns over radical political ideology, the panic of the 1780s helped to transform attitudes toward criminality and fundamentally alter conceptions of justice. Rather than considering crime to be a function of poverty or immorality, many came to believe that crime was the result of unseemly ambition and insubordination among the common people. Just as they shivered at recent displays of popular political action—such as Wilkes and Liberty, the Gordon Riots, and, as we will see, the Irish Volunteer movement and the Association movement—they now saw theft, robbery, and murder as part of the same degradation of a common people infected with dangerous new ideas that told them that both political and economic power was theirs for the taking. The Newcastle Journal made the connection between revolution and crime explicit:

  Riots and mutinies rather increase than subside! The reflux of the war seems to be more dangerous than the war itself. The soldiers and sailors, seeing or hearing of their superiors quarrelling, follow their example, and the State malady becomes contagious! Those Members of the State, who, in order to thrust themselves into power, strongly inculcated on the people the doctrine of self-government, now feel its effects, and see the evil of stirring up the multitude to affect a greater degree of power . . . May the great hand of Divine Providence interpose to save us from our numerous enemies, and our own vices and folly! Or we are undone.60