Instead of returning to his comfortable rooms on the top floor of the prison, he was locked in a damp, subterranean room. A visiting Member of Parliament who was inspecting prison conditions wrote, ‘I found Lord Cochrane confined in a strong room fourteen feet square, without windows, fireplace, table or bed. I do not think it can be necessary for the purpose of security to confine him in this manner. According to my own feelings it is a place unfit for the noble Lord, or for any other person whatsoever.’7 William Cobbett called on his friend on several occasions and later recorded his memories of the cell in his Weekly Political Register. He described the smell as worse than a soap boilers’ premises, or those places where butchers deposited the garbage of the slaughter houses or barracks emptied the contents of their privies. ‘I dined there by candle light at two o’clock in the day,’ he wrote; ‘the walls were so damp that, in putting my hand against them, I felt a chill run through my whole body.’8
Cochrane still had two months of his sentence to serve but after three weeks in the cell his health had deteriorated to such an extent that his brother called in a doctor to examine him. Dr Buchan reported that Cochrane had severe chest pains, a low pulse, cold hands and many of the symptoms of a person about to succumb to typhus or putrid fever. He blamed the stagnant air in the cell for his condition. Cochrane was moved to another room. Before he could be released from the prison on 20 June he had to pay the £1,000 fine which had been imposed on him when he was sentenced. As a matter of principle he refused to pay, but eventually his family and friends persuaded him that he must do so. Reluctantly, he wrote a bank note for the required amount, adding a defiant endorsement: ‘My health having suffered by long and close confinement, and my oppressors being resolved to deprive me of property or life, I submit to robbery to protect myself from murder, in the hope that I shall live to bring the delinquents to justice.’9
Cochrane emerged from prison on 3 July 1815. The long war with France was over. Napoleon had escaped from Elba and resumed command of the French army but on 18 June he had been defeated at the Battle of Waterloo by a combination of forces led by the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal Blücher. He was now at Rochefort and was planning to escape to America in one of the French frigates anchored in Aix Roads. In Vienna the representatives of the major powers of Europe, led by Lord Castlereagh and Count Metternich, had gathered to draw up a peace settlement and redraw the map of Europe.
Cochrane returned to Holly Hill and for a while he took a rest from politics. When he learnt that James Guthrie’s ship had returned to port he invited him to ‘take up your quarters here, where you will find plenty of good milk, fresh eggs, and all other country fare; besides you shall see a system of farming which Cobbett and I are pursuing to the astonishment and horror of all the surrounding farms’.10 He continued to work on his designs for gas street lights and in his next letter to Guthrie he asked him whether there had been any attempt to introduce gas lamps in Edinburgh. He also revealed that he was about to launch an attack on his enemies: ‘The campaign will soon open now, and I hope to expose the real actors in the mischief… All this is ruinous work but it must be gone through, let the consequences be what they may…By God I would rather eat dry bread than submit to injustice.’11
On 5 March 1815 he introduced a motion in the House of Commons for the impeachment of Lord Ellenborough on thirteen charges of ‘partiality, misrepresentation, injustice, and oppression’. Sir Francis Burdett loyally supported him but when the motion was put to the vote not a single Member of Parliament was prepared to back them. Cochrane was undismayed and promised that as long as he had a seat in the House he would continue to bring forward the charges year after year until the truth had been established. In July he caused a major disruption at a public meeting of the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor which was held at the London Tavern. The meeting was an august gathering of members of the royal family and leading churchmen and politicians. It was chaired by the Duke of York and joining him on the platform were the Duke of Kent, the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Rutland, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and William Wilberforce. The aims of the meeting were admirable and a motion proposed by the Duke of Kent neatly summarised some of the problems facing the country: ‘That the transition from a state of extensive warfare to a system of peace has occasioned a stagnation of employment and a revulsion of trade, deeply affecting the situation of many parts of the community, and producing many instances of great local hardship.’12
The coming of peace after more than twenty years of war had led to a recession, widespread unemployment and an increasing tide of unrest among the labouring poor in town and country. The imposition of the controversial Corn Laws in March 1815 had raised the price of bread and provoked widespread protests – notably in Westminster where soldiers fired into a crowd of rioters and killed several people. In the north of England newly installed machinery was smashed by Luddites who feared the loss of their jobs, and in the southern counties starving farm workers set fire to haystacks as a form of protest. The meeting at the London Tavern was intended to raise money for the benefit of those in need. Cochrane was the first to speak from the floor but when he rose to his feet he was unable to make himself heard, ‘his voice being lost in the huzzas and hisses which his presence called forth’. When the noise died down he said that most of the money raised by the government was taken up by interest on the national debt or went into the pockets of placemen. He challenged the Duke of Rutland to surrender his sinecure of £9,000 a year and said that, if he and others who enjoyed similar incomes did not sacrifice them, ‘their pretended charity is little better than a fraud’. This caused an uproar but the distinguished members of the committee persevered and proposed raising a subscription for the benefit of their fellow subjects. Cochrane denounced the subscription as wholly inadequate and blamed the Chancellor of Exchequer and His Majesty’s ministers for the state of the country. This provoked an even more violent uproar. Further motions were proposed and were shouted down. The Duke of York withdrew and the meeting broke up in confusion.
In August 1816 Cochrane was summoned to the Surrey Assizes at Guildford on the belated charge of having escaped from the King’s Bench Prison. Burdett and other friends accompanied him and on arrival they found the court crowded with spectators. Cochrane conducted his own defence and made use of the opportunity to launch a spirited attack on the Marshal of the King’s Bench for brutality and taking bribes from prisoners. The jury decided that Cochrane was guilty of escaping from prison, but recommended mercy on the grounds that he had been adequately punished already. The judge was not prepared to let him off entirely and imposed a fine of £100 which Cochrane refused to pay. Judgement was delayed until November when he was sent back to the King’s Bench Prison. ‘You will see by the papers that I am again in my old quarters in defiance of the verdict of the jury at Guildford,’ he told Guthrie on 28 November. ‘I am glad of this – most sincerely glad for I will now be able to get my Westminster friends to look into the cruel injustice that has been done to me. I have now no doubt of beating all my enemies most completely, and of exposing such a scene of villainy as scarcely ever before was carried on.’13 He told Guthrie that Kate and Tom were pretty well and living at Holly Hill where he hoped to join them soon. In fact the Westminster electors organised a subscription and raised the money to pay his fine, enabling him to leave the confines of the prison and return home.
In spite of setbacks in and out of Parliament, and encouraged by the support of his friends and constituents, Cochrane continued to play a prominent role in the movement for parliamentary reform which was seen by the leading radicals as the key to ridding the country of an oppressive government and addressing some of the nation’s most deep-seated problems. As neighbours in Hampshire, Cochrane and Cobbett met frequently to discuss how they could best advance the cause of reform. During the course of their conversations in the summer of 1816 Cochrane pers
uaded Cobbett that he must write an essay with popular appeal which would set out the case for reform while discouraging violence and machine-breaking. They decided that the high price of the Weekly Political Register (it sold for just over one shilling) was preventing it from reaching a wider readership. ‘Hence came the observation from one of us,’ wrote Cobbett, ‘that if, for this one time, for this particular purpose, the price could be by some means or other, reduced to twopence, then the desired effect could be produced.’14 The result was what came to be called the ‘Tuppeny Trash’. The first issue contained a stirring piece by Cobbett called ‘Address to the Journeymen and Labourers’. It was published as a single sheet alongside the Weekly Political Register on 3 November. By the end of the month the twopenny sheet had sold 40,000 copies, and by the end of 1817 more than 200,000 copies were in circulation. Samuel Bamford, the Lancashire weaver and political activist, reckoned that Cobbett’s writings were read in nearly every cottage hearth in the manufacturing counties in the Midlands and in the Scottish manufacturing towns. ‘Their influence was speedily visible; he directed his readers to the true cause of their sufferings – misgovernment; and to its proper corrective – Parliamentary Reform.’15
The next step was to gather petitions from across the country and present them to Parliament when the next session opened on 28 January 1817. By this time Cochrane had moved his London residence from the rented house in Green Street to 7 Palace Yard, Westminster.16 Samuel Bamford, who was among the delegates who came to London to present the petitions, later wrote an account of the day’s proceedings which includes a vivid picture of the part played by Cochrane and his wife. He described how the delegates met Hunt at Charing Cross and moved in a noisy procession to Cochrane’s residence:
On arriving at his house in Palace Yard, we were shown into a room below stairs, whilst Lord Cochrane and Hunt conversed above; a slight and elegant young lady, dressed in white, and very interesting, served us with wine. She is, if I am not misinformed, now Lady Dundonald. At length his Lordship came to see us. He was a tall young man, cordial and unaffected in his manner. He stooped a little, and had somewhat of a sailor’s gait in walking; his face was rather oval; fair naturally, but now tanned and sunfreckled. His hair was sandy, his whiskers rather small, and of a deeper colour, and the expression of his countenance was calm and self-possessed.17
Bamford described how Cochrane took charge of the petition, which included signatures from Bristol and the north of England, and was hoisted in a chair and carried on the shoulders of the crowd to the doors of Westminster, accompanied by enthusiastic cheering. Later in the day Bamford and some of the other delegates visited Sir Francis Burdett’s house where they were disappointed by their cool reception. Burdett was one of the idols of the radical movement.
Still I could not help my thoughts from reverting to the simple and homely welcome we received at Lord Cochrane’s, and contrasting it with the kind of dreary stateliness of this great mansion and its rich owner. At the former place we had a brief reflection, bestowed with a grace which captivated our respect; and no health was ever drunk with more sincere good will than Lord Cochrane’s: the little, dark haired and bright eyed lady seemed to know it, and to be delighted that it was so. But here, scarcely a servant appeared, and nothing in the shape of refreshment was seen.18
One of the demonstrators had thrown a stone at the Prince Regent as he was driven in a carriage to the opening of Parliament. The Prince was unhurt but the Cabinet immediately went into emergency session and several Members of Parliament demanded that draconian measures be taken against further public uprisings. The general mood of unrest now prompted the government to rush a bill through Parliament which suspended the Habeas Corpus Act, prevented the holding of seditious meetings, and forbade the publication of literature ‘of an irreligious, immoral or seditious tendency’. Cobbett, who had already endured two years in Newgate Prison, was aware that his latest writings would provide an excuse for his enemies to throw him back into prison. He called his family up to London from Hampshire and told them that he must go to America. On 24 March 1817 he arrived at Liverpool with his two eldest sons and they embarked on a ship for New York. They did not return until November 1818.
Cobbett had been a good friend and a staunch supporter of Cochrane over the past ten years and his departure must have saddened and discouraged him. It was followed by another setback when a few weeks later he was informed that a court order had been issued for the seizure of Holly Hill on the grounds that he owed creditors £1,200 for unpaid expenses incurred during the Honiton election in 1806. Cochrane surrounded the house with bags of charcoal and let it be known that they contained explosives. For several weeks these discouraged the Sheriff of Hampshire and his constables from entering the house but in the end they did so and Cochrane paid the bill. He subsequently made arrangements to sell the property. He had no regular income and he had incurred heavy legal bills during the course of the Stock Exchange trial and its aftermath.19
In April 1817 an envoy from Chile arrived in Britain. His name was Antonio Alvarez and he was seeking support for the liberation movement in his country which was fighting for independence from the colonial rule of Spain. Alvarez had come with $100,000 and orders to recruit naval officers and seamen for the Chilean navy. The end of the wars in Europe and America had made thousands of British seamen redundant and put hundreds of officers on half-pay so that Alvarez had no difficulty in signing up experienced sailors and purchasing a brig-of-war and two armed East Indiamen. It is not known exactly when he first approached Cochrane but his visit came at an opportune time in Cochrane’s life. He was forty-one years old. He needed an income to support himself and his family, and his parliamentary career was going nowhere. He might be popular with the Westminster electors and the delegates of working men from the provinces but he and his radical friends were regarded with increasing hostility by the majority of Members of Parliament and large sections of the community outside. This was clearly demonstrated by the behaviour of the audience at a meeting in Winchester. Shortly before leaving for America, Cobbett had accompanied Cochrane and Hunt to a meeting in the Hampshire town. A loyal address to the Prince Regent was proposed by a gathering of local grandees and clergymen. When Cochrane suggested that reference should be made to the fact that the constitution was established by Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and Habeas Corpus ‘for which our forefathers fought and bled’, one of the parsons present stood up on his chair and spat on Cochrane’s head. Cochrane turned round and said:
‘By God, sir, if you do that again I’ll knock you down.’
Parson Baines replied, ‘You be damned. I’ll spit where I like.’
When Cochrane struck at him, the parson jumped down and, putting his hands to his mouth, began hallooing like a huntsman. Another parson kicked Cobbett’s heel while he was speaking and when Cobbett urged him to stop, he shouted:
‘You be damned, you be damned, Jacobin.’
Cobbett dug his elbow into the man’s ribs which temporarily silenced him but the meeting dissolved into uproar with the audience shouting, whistling, stamping and thumping the floor with their canes and umbrellas. Cobbett later wrote, ‘As Lord Cochrane and I were going back to London, he said that, so many years as he had been in the navy, he never had seen a band of such complete blackguards.’20
Burdett and Cochrane had a less hostile but equally depressing experience when Burdett introduced a bill for parliamentary reform on 20 May. They were the only two members present to speak in favour of the bill and they were the only two to vote for it when the house divided. It is little wonder that when Alvarez offered Cochrane the role of commander-in-chief of the naval forces of Chile, he decided to take up the offer. On 12 January 1818 Alvarez wrote to Josée Zenteno, the Minister of Marine in Chile, and announced the news:
I have extreme satisfaction in informing you that Lord Cochrane, one of the most famous and perhaps the most valiant seaman in Great Britain, has determined to travel to Chile i
n order to direct our navy and co-operate decisively in the consolidation of liberty and independence. He is a person highly commendable, not only for the liberal principles with which he has upheld the cause of the English people in Parliament, but because he possesses a character superior to any ambition…21
Kate was now pregnant with their second child and, having sold Holly Hill, Cochrane agreed that she should go and stay with Mr and Mrs Simpson in Tunbridge Wells. Mrs Simpson was Kate’s first cousin. Cochrane kept on the rooms in Palace Yard which were convenient for his parliamentary duties and commuted back and forth. On learning about the proposed move to Chile, the Simpsons strongly urged Kate to have a ‘proper legal English marriage’ before she went abroad. She later recalled that ‘they were old-fashioned excellent people, and they did not understand Scotch marriages, and they wished to have this marriage made in England’. When this was put to Cochrane he assured her that the Scotch marriage was binding but he was very happy to go through with another ceremony. Indeed, he said, he would marry her in a hundred churches. So they were married by the Rev. Thomas Knox at Speldhurst, a small village close to Tunbridge Wells. On 8 March 1818 Kate gave birth to a baby son who was christened William Horatio Bernardo Cochrane. The name Horatio was obviously a tribute to Nelson; the name Bernardo was an act of faith in the new life which they were about to embark on – the leading figure in Chile’s most recent struggle for independence and now Supreme Director of Chile was General Bernardo O’Higgins.
Like his father, Cochrane was often a step ahead of advances in technology and he was convinced that steam power was going to revolutionise naval warfare. He therefore determined that he must bring to Chile an armed steamship and he persuaded Alvarez that such a vessel would play a decisive role in any conflict with the Spanish fleet. He had located a ship in Brent’s Yard at Rotherhithe which was being built to a revolutionary design. Named the Rising Star she had the outward appearance of a traditional 3-masted sailing ship of 22 guns with the addition of two tall, slim funnels amidships. She had an internal, retractable paddle wheel driven by two steam engines, so that she ‘combined the endurance of a full sailing rig with the tactical power of steam and an effective, unencumbered battery.’22 Cochrane was not, it seems, entirely out of funds because he invested £3,000 of his own money in the venture. It was evident that the vessel would not be ready for sea for many months and so he put his brother William in charge of fitting her out and, in due course, sailing her out to South America.
Cochrane the Dauntless Page 28
