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 reversible 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 i
t 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.
Before daybreak the rioters were exhausted or drunk, their only movement a sudden, purposeless whirl of malice, often directed against their own sympathisers. Hugh Brown, staggering home by the Netherbow, was stopped and told to drink a toast to Darien. He protested that he had drunk too much and could take no more, but the mob insisted that he swallow another cup. "Come, gentlemen," he said, "I'll do what none of you will do, that is, I'll spew a pint to the health of Caledonia." He did so, and was cheered for a loyal fellow. Thus ended the noble Toubacanti Riot. Early in the forenoon there was the crunch of steady feet on broken glass. Colonel Archibald Row's Fusiliers were marching into the city with bayonets fixed and muskets primed.
They arrived in answer to an order from the Privy Council, a few frightened members of which had gathered at Holyrood- house as soon as it was safe to do so. Queensberry came from his bedchamber to greet them, angry and apologetic. He bullied his secretary, and told the wretched man to write to London, taking all the blame for his master's undisturbed night. Now that the Fusiliers were in control of Edinburgh, the Council acted with firmness and decision. Two loaded guns were posted at the Netherbow, flying picquets from Row's regiment and the Town Guard imposed a nightly curfew, and an angry proclamation forbade "all illuminations or bonfires used for expression of public joy to be made in any burgh within this realm on any pretence whatsoever." Some of the rioters were taken up, including the cook who had burst into the Tolbooth bayonet in hand, and his sabre-swinging companion. But no gentleman was arrested, and a proposal in Council that the Earl Marischal, at least, should be sent to the Castle was regretfully rejected. It was believed that the rioters—who had destroyed window-glass worth more than £5,000 Sterling—had been inspired and directed by the Jacobites, and the Privy Council had no wish to provoke them to something worse by imprisoning their leaders.
A week later the joy and the fear were forgotten. At four o'clock in the afternoon of Friday, June 28, a special meeting of the Council-General and the Court of Directors was held at Milne Square. A terrible rumour had been current in the city since yester-evening. Now it was confirmed, and they listened in stunned silence as Roderick Mackenzie read a letter from Samuel Vetch in New York. Campbell of Fonab, it said, had arrived there on May 5. The Caledonians had surrendered to the Spaniards and entirely abandoned the settlement.
6 God's Wonderful Mercy
"Indeed, most of us had the sentence of death in ourselves" Caledonia, March 1700
&nbs
p; By night two Spanish schooners came in close to the harbour- mouth and sent their boats to make soundings. In the darkness, from the palisades, the Scots could hear the plash of oars and the murmur of voices. Three nights they came, and then were heard no more. Their masters reported to Pimienta that they had found twelve fathoms at the mouth, but heavy breakers and the guns of the fort would make an entry and a landing in the bay both difficult and hazardous. The Governor had never seriously considered so bold an attack.
At the end of February another schooner had found a small inlet four miles to the east of the peninsula, and her master told Pimienta that artillery might be landed there with little difficulty. Though another reported that the landing of field-pieces would not be as easy as the first believed, Pimienta decided to make the attempt. From Captain Prandie, an Indian who had once been the Caledonians' friend, he had heard of Cordones's defeat at Toubacanti, but he was sure that this was a small reverse only, and that he would soon be joined by a large force from Santa Maria. Deserters from the Colony, three starved and feverish men found on the sand at Caret Bay, told him that although there were five hundred armed men on the peninsula they were all weak from the want of food and medicine. On March 1, Campmaster Don Melchor de Guevara was put ashore at the inlet with three companies of foot, two hundred men. He was told to establish a beach-head to move inland as soon as he could. He marched the next day, and his advance was slow. There were no natural paths through the trees and thickets, and his soldiers slashed and hacked their way forward with their swords. Several times they crossed the same winding river, holding their muskets and pouches above their heads as the water rose to their waists. Their eyes were blinded by tormenting insects, their clothes torn by thorns. They climbed the high ground toward the neck of the peninsula, and on the eastern slope of one hill they surprised an outlying picquet of four Scots who slipped away without resistance. On the summit of the hill a captured Indian told de Guevara that a large force of Caledonians was advancing against the Spaniards. Don Melchor was no infantryman, offence had been no part of his training as an engineer. He ordered his men to clear a field of fire on their front, and to build a rampart of the branches.
THE DARIEN DISASTER Page 34
