Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland

 

Henry Fox was a prominent English politician during the late 18^th century, although he never became Prime Minister (or First Lord of the Treasury, to give the function its proper title at the time).

Born in 1705, he was educated at Eton and Oxford. He followed a typical course for wealthy young men of that age, gambling heavily, taking the grand tour to Europe, and entering Parliament in 1735. He was a supporter of the Whig administration led by Sir Robert Walpole and was rewarded with the appointment of Surveyor-General, followed by that of a Lord of the Treasury in 1743. He was appointed Secretary of War by Henry Pelham in 1746, although the role did not really match his abilities.

On the personal side, in 1744 he married Lady Catherine Lennox after an elopement. The marriage was something of a scandal at the time, but it brought Henry Fox considerable happiness, aided by the considerable fortune that he had inherited. Their son, Charles James, would eventually become an even more celebrated politician than his father.

After the death of Henry Pelham in 1754, Fox sided temporarily with his rival and opposite, William Pitt. Pelham’s brother, the Duke of Newcastle, became Prime Minister in his place, but needed a strong counterpart in the House of Commons. This role was offered to Henry Fox, who also became Secretary of State in 1755, but foreign policy was not to his taste and he resigned the post only a year later.

When Pitt took over the leadership role in the Commons in 1757, Fox was happy to become Paymaster, especially as this office was one from which it was possible for a minister to enrich himself in no uncertain manner. Fox held this post for eight years, which increased his fortune at the expense of his personal reputation, and he became widely detested for his cynical conduct.

He did manage one notable achievement in Parliament, which was to ease the passage of the 1763 Peace of Paris that ended the Seven Years War, after which he was elevated to the peerage as Lord Holland. He held no more political offices after 1765, although he did exercise some influence over the political conduct of King George III, who had inherited the throne in 1760 at the age of 22.

Henry Fox was a man of real ability but limited ambition. An interesting footnote to his life was the fact that shortly before his death in 1774 he was forced to settle his son’s gambling debts, which amounted to the almost unbelievable sum of £140,000.

© John Welford

Mary Seacole: the forgotten "Florence Nightingale"

Mary Seacole is now being given proper recognition for her contribution to nursing and the welfare of soldiers during the Crimean War. Everyone has heard of Florence Nightingale, the "lady with the lamp", but nothing like as much fame has fallen on the shoulders of Mary Seacole, although this oversight is at last being corrected.

Mary Seacole – her early life

Mary was born in 1805 as Mary Jane Grant, in Kingston, Jamaica. Her father was a Scottish soldier, and her mixed-race mother ran a boarding house for British army officers. This lady had a smattering of nursing knowledge, as well as being well versed in the use of herbal medicines, skills which she passed on to her daughter.

Little is known of Mary's early life, although she visited London in the 1820s, and in 1836 she was married to Edwin Horatio Seacole, one of her mother's house-guests, but he died within a few years.

Mary ran the boarding house with her sister for some time, and also practised as a nurse, both in Jamaica and Panama, where she went to help her brother in running his hotel there.

The Crimean War

In 1854 the Crimean War broke out, with Britain and France in conflict with Russia, most of the hostilities being carried out near the shores of the Black Sea. The miseries suffered by the troops were partly the result of incompetence on the part of the generals and politicians, and partly due to the remoteness from Britain of the theatre of war. This was the first time that the British army had been called upon to fight so far from home or friendly territory.

Mary Seacole sailed to Britain with the intention of volunteering for Florence Nightingale's nursing corps. Whether it was the colour of her skin or her lowly social status that was the issue is a matter for debate, but the fact remains that her office of service was turned down.

Undaunted, she set sail for the Crimea at her own expense, arriving at Balaclava in February 1855. With a business partner, she did exactly what she had done back in Jamaica, and opened a boarding house that acquired the name "The British Hotel". From this base she offered a range of comforts for the troops, both officers and serving men.

Being independent, and not constrained by the authority of Florence Nightingale's official nursing corps, she was free to roam almost as widely as she wanted, and she became a familiar sight as she moved among the fighting men with her mules, taking them food, wine and medical supplies. She clearly did this work at considerable physical risk to herself, as she tended the wounded and dying while the fighting was still in progress.

On 9^th September she obtained permission to accompany the army as it took control of Sebastopol, and was the first woman to enter the city.

After the War

In 1856 the war ended, leaving Mary Seacole with no customers at the British Hotel, but plenty of unsold stock and unpaid bills. She therefore returned to Britain in financial difficulties, especially as her venture to open an establishment at Aldershot, where much of the British army was based, came to nothing.

The Crimean War produced several remarkable people, one of them being William Howard Russell of The Times, who could claim to be the world's first modern war reporter (it was his account of the Charge of the Light Brigade that brought the true horror home to the British public). Russell was fully aware of Mary Seacole's activities in the Crimea, and his reports helped to win support for her financially. Queen Victoria came to know of her deeds, and gave her blessing to a "Seacole Fund" that recognised Mary's achievements and gave her some financial stability in her later years.

She was prompted to tell her own story, which she did in an autobiography entitled "The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands", which became something of a bestseller.

She died in 1881, in London, at the age of 76. However, after her death she faded from public memory and it is only in relatively recent times that her contributions to nursing and field care have been given their proper due.

In 2004, she was voted in an online poll as the greatest ever black Briton.

Following a 12-year fundraising campaign, in June 2016 a statue of Mary Seacole by Martin Jennings was unveiled in the grounds of St Thomas’s Hospital in London, looking over the Thames towards the Houses of Parliament. This is the first statue ever erected in the UK in honour of a black woman.

© John Welford

Who was Ned Ludd?

General Ned Ludd never existed, but his followers wreaked havoc in the factories of early 19^th-century Britain and provoked strong reprisals from the government of the day. The Luddites played a role in the development of the working-class movement that led eventually to the formation of legal trade unions.

The origin of the Luddites

The name probably originates with Lud, a mythical king of early Britain who was said to have built the first walls of London and after whom Ludgate Hill is named. The Luddites saw themselves as invoking the spirit of free-born British people from a past age. By claiming to be based in Sherwood Forest they also saw themselves as latter-day followers of Robin Hood, striking a blow for the ordinary working man against the forces of power and capitalism.

Their actions began in 1811 with the sending of letters to mill owners in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire who had recently installed steam-engine powered machines (known as frames) that increased production in the hosiery and knitwear industries but needed fewer people to do the work. The factory system was also making it uneconomic for people to work on hand-powered frames in their own homes, as had been the traditional pattern in these areas.

War with France had given the mill owners more incentive to install powered knitting frames, given that Napoleon Bonaparte’s “Continental System” had effectively sealed the continent of Europe against exports from Britain. In order to cut their costs, and thus make it feasible for exports to be sent to other markets, the industrialists of Britain had no option but to produce more by using fewer workers, on lower wages, and that meant installing large, steam-driven machines.

A series of poor harvests during the period from 1808 to 1812 had caused food prices to rise, so there was genuine hardship in the general population. Many people felt that they had to do something to fight against the forces that were oppressing them, and they saw the machines in the factories as the root cause of their distress.

The spread of Luddite discontent

The above-mentioned letters, signed by “Enoch”, were threats to the mill owners to remove the machines, or see them destroyed, and the actions that followed served to carry out those threats. Bands of men broke into the factories at night and smashed the machines with sledge-hammers. The “General’s Army” sometimes consisted of hundreds or even thousands of men marching in disciplined order through the streets on their way to the factories. Even if there was no actual “Ned Ludd”, somebody was hard at work organising these events.

The Luddites soon spread their activities northwards to the mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire, where the woollen and cotton garment industries were based.  Government troops had to be brought in to protect the factories and arrest the demonstrators, one estimate being that 12,000 soldiers had to be diverted from the war effor

Needless to say, some Luddite activities did spill over into more general mayhem, with food riots riding on the back of the organised machine-breaking. There was, for example, a riot in Manchester in April 1812 in which desperate women raided the stocks of potatoes held by dealers who were charging extortionate prices for them.

Force met with force

The government’s response was to meet force with force, and a Frame-Breaking Bill was passed by Parliament in 1812. This made the destruction of machinery punishable by hanging. One opponent of the bill was Lord Byron, whose speech in the House of Lords included the words:

“Nothing but absolute want could have driven a large and once honest and industrious body of people into the commission of excesses so hazardous to themselves, their family and their community.”

This statement made the case that it is wrong to regard the Luddite movement as that of an undisciplined mob, despite its excesses. On the one hand, it could be said that, by destroying the new machines, they were depriving the operators of those machines of their living, but it was also true that the goods produced in the factories were often of much lower quality than those of the handloom weavers, who were craftsmen with a real pride in their work.

Ultimately, the actions of the Luddites were futile, because economic necessity was driving the movement of industrialisation, and the machine-smashing could only delay the changes, not prevent them for ever.

The Luddite cause was not helped by the assassination of the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, on 11^th May 1812. Although it soon became clear that his assassin, John Bellingham, was motivated by purely private motives, many people felt that anything that threatened violence against the establishment had to be resisted strongly, whatever the provocation. Memories of the French Revolution were vivid in many peoples’ minds, and the connection between mob violence and the murder of political leaders was an easy one to make.

The suppression of the Luddites was carried out by means of the punishment of a number of their leaders, including hangings and transportation to Australia, although none of those leaders answered to the name of Ned Ludd.

The legacy of the Luddites

The textile workers of the time had no recourse to a trade union to represent their grievances to factory owners, so there was no safety valve when problems arose. The “Combination Acts” of 1799 and 1800 made trade unions illegal, so any such activity was driven underground. Although these laws were repealed in 1824-5 the process of collective bargaining was illegal until 1860. The Luddite movement was seen by some as a good reason for suppressing trade unions, but ultimately it showed that working people needed to be able to deal with their problems in a constructive way, around a negotiating table, without being forced to take extreme measures.

The word “Luddite” is used today to describe someone who sets their face against progress and stubbornly refuses to accept change. In terms of the original Luddites this charge has some force, in that change was inevitable and breaking the machines was never going to work as a means of reversing the trend towards mechanisation in the garment industry. However, there are occasions when the Luddite mentality has its place, in that craftsmanship should be protected and preserved when under threat. Once certain skills are lost they will be lost for ever, and actions that remind people of that fact should not always be rejected on the grounds that they are anti-progressive.

© John Welford

Frances Howard, a 17th-century murderer

Frances Howard was a 17^th century murderer who was lucky to escape the ultimate penalty for her crime but who caused other people to lose their lives on her behalf.

Desire

Frances Howard was born on 31^st May 1590, the daughter of Lord Thomas Howard and therefore a member of a highly-respected aristocratic family. Famous Howards included Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham, who had commanded the fleet that defeated the Spanish Armada, and Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of King Henry VIII.

Frances was married at the age of 14, her husband being Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who was then aged 13. However, due to their youth they were not allowed to live together as husband and wife. Robert was sent off to complete his education, followed by various missions abroad.

Frances was therefore left alone in her aristocratic world to ensnare whoever she wanted as a potential replacement for the role of bedmate. Her eye fell on Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester, who had been part of the Scottish coterie of aristocrats who had accompanied King James when he added the throne of England to that of Scotland in 1603.

Intrigue

Rochester was not averse to forming a liaison, but he was wary of offending King James, who had Robert Devereux’s best interests at heart, and he was also not a skilled letter writer. He therefore asked his friend Thomas Overbury to act as his secretary in writing love letters to Frances.

All went well until Devereux returned from Europe with every expectation of enjoying married life with Frances, who was then aged 18. However, she was far more interested in Lord Rochester and refused to yield to her husband’s nightly entreaties.

Frances now had two objectives, namely to depress her husband’s desire for her while at the same time increasing that of Lord Rochester. She therefore employed the services of Mrs Anne Turner, who was known to be able to provide various potions and powders and who worked alongside a somewhat sinister gentleman named Dr Simon Forman.

Mrs Turner duly supplied Frances with what she needed, but the “anti-lust” potion for Robert Devereux did not seem to have much effect. Frances then decided on a different tactic – she wanted to be a widow rather than a wife. However, although the wish was strong, the poisons were never strong enough.

Meanwhile, Frances was worried about Rochester, who was clearly the darling of the Court and surrounded by beautiful women. Rochester made a very good show of not showing affection for Frances, a married woman, because to do so might jeopardise his position. Frances underwent various black magic ceremonies, orchestrated by Dr Forman, to force Rochester to be more forthcoming.

Frances must have believed that the magic was working , because Rochester became infatuated with her. The couple had to keep their affair secret and met at Mrs Turner’s lodgings and a house that Frances bought specially for this purpose. Their secret was known to only one other person, namely Thomas Overbury.

Overbury was unhappy with the relationship, as he believed that it would ultimately destroy his friend, and he told him so. He also started to drop hints at Court that Frances Howard was an adulteress. When Frances got wind of this she realised that Overbury presented a real danger to her and had to be silenced.

Murder

Her opportunity came when Overbury was ordered by King James to become his Ambassador to the Low Countries. Overbury refused – being anxious not to allow Frances a free hand with Rochester – and this was interpreted as a matter of “high contempt” by the King. Overbury was duly sent to the Tower of London.

This could not have worked out better for Frances. She now employed a man named Robert Weston who got himself a position in the Tower as Overbury’s personal assistant and the man who handed him his food. Slipping him doses of poison was therefore going to be easy.

Or it would have been if Weston had not been caught in the act by Sir Gervase Elwes, the Lieutenant of the Tower. Sir Gervase now had a problem, because he knew that Weston was trying to smuggle poisoned food through to his prisoner but did not know on whose orders. For all he knew, the attempt to kill Overbury might have been initiated by King James himself. Elwes therefore stayed silent, but did not allow any more poison to reach Thomas Overbury.

Frances came to realise that her plan was not working, so she removed Weston from the scene and tried a different tactic. This was to contact William Reeve, who was an assistant to the Tower’s physician. She paid him to steal a quantity of mercury sublimate from the prison’s dispensary and administer it to Overbury as a medicine. It did not take long for him to die.

For Frances, everything now seemed perfect. Overbury was dead and she was able to obtain a divorce from Robert Devereux and marry Lord Rochester, who had no idea that his wife had murdered his former best friend.

Denouement

But married bliss did not last long. Frances’s problem was that too many people knew about her activities, mainly because they had been bit-players in her schemes and were therefore able to call upon her to buy their silence. Frances gained little pleasure from the marriage she had schemed so hard to bring about, having instead a constant fear of being found out.

The first crack in the wall came courtesy of William Reeve, whose hands had actually killed Thomas Overbury. Two years after Frances had married Rochester, Reeve fell dangerously ill and decided to tell what he knew in the hope of saving his soul from perdition. Before long King James was told and the house of cards tumbled around Frances’s ears.

Both Frances and Rochester were sentenced to death, as was nearly everybody who had played a part in the Overbury murder. Those sentences were carried out as far as Anne Turner, Robert Weston and Sir Gervase Elwes were concerned, but Frances and Rochester were able to escape the hangman’s noose by virtue of royal pardons. In Frances’s case, this was in recognition of the high service that her family and ancestors had given to the Crown.

They were also able to escape incarceration in the Tower of London, because the King allowed them to stay at the Oxfordshire home of Lord Wallingford, who was Frances’s brother-in-law. The sentence was therefore commuted to house arrest for life. Rochester now had nothing but utter loathing for his wife, who had caused his downfall despite him being completely innocent of any wrongdoing concerning the murder.

Frances died in August 1632, aged 42, from what was described as a “terrible wasting disease”. One just wonders if this was not another way of saying that her husband was eventually able to do to her what she had done to Thomas Overbury, namely cause her death by ingesting poison. It would have been a fitting end to the story.

© John Welford

Sampson Gideon, 18th-century financier

Sampson Gideon was a Jewish financier who gave valuable service to the British Government during the 18^th century and helped to break through the anti-Jewish glass ceiling prevailing at the time.

He was born in London in February 1699, a descendant on his father’s side of Portuguese immigrants. Jews had been prevented from living in England for 300 years before they were allowed back by Oliver Cromwell in 1656 but by the mid-18^th century there were still only around 8,000 Jews in the country.

Sampson made his early fortune through wise investment and lucky speculation; for example, he was one of the relatively small number of people who profited from owning shares in the South Sea Company. He then directed his attention towards foreign funds and marine insurance and came to the notice of Horace Walpole and Henry Pelham (respectively Britain’s first and third Prime Ministers).

His main service to the Government was given during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48) and the Seven Years’ War (1756-63). This was in the form of raising loans from his fellow wealthy Jewish financiers. In this he was extremely successful – it is estimated that during a single year (1759) he raised as much as £350,000, which was a staggeringly large amount at that time. Given that the latter war laid the foundations of Britain’s overseas empire, the money was well spent, and Sampson Gideon’s contribution should therefore not be overlooked.

Gideon could have expected the highest rewards that his country had to offer, but this was not to be. The problem was his Jewishness at a time when Jews were not entitled to British citizenship.

He had been active in the campaign for a law entitling Jews to apply for citizenship, which led to the passing of a Jewish Naturalization Act in 1753. However, public pressure forced the Government to repeal the Act the following year and Jewish emancipation would have to wait for another 100 years to come and go.

Sampson Gideon could only obtain preferment by becoming a Christian, and this is what he did. He bought a large mansion in Kent, had estates in several counties, and was granted a coat of arms. He was, however, refused a peerage because he was still seen as a Jew by most people. He died on 17^th October 1762 at the age of 63.

Sampson Gideon married a Christian and had a son who was also called Sampson. The younger Sampson was educated in a thoroughly “establishment” way at Eton and Oxford and was an evangelical Christian. He found it much easier than his father to get ahead in Society and was granted the baronetcy that his father had been refused. It is from the younger Sampson Gideon that the Gideons International Bible Society takes its name, this being the organization that leaves Bibles in hotel bedrooms.

© John Welford

Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington

Spencer Compton, 1^st Earl of Wilmington, was the second person to be recognised as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the first being Sir Robert Walpole. However, Wilmington’s time in office was much shorter and less distinguished than that of his predecessor.

He was the sixth son of James Compton, 3^rd Earl of Northampton.  Strangely enough for a member of the aristocracy, his date of birth is unknown and could have been in either 1673 or 1674.

He was educated at St Paul’s School, London, began a legal career by enrolling at the Middle Temple in 1687 and entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1690.

He became a member of the House of Commons after winning a by-election at Eye, Suffolk, in 1695. Although he came from a Tory family he joined the Whig faction in the Commons, mainly due to a violent disagreement with his elder brother George. He failed to impress as a debater or speechmaker but found a talent for mastering the details of Parliamentary procedure. He also became friendly with Robert Walpole.

In 1707 Spencer Compton was given the extra-Parliamentary job of treasurer to Prince George, the husband of Queen Anne. This was a good move, because he had fallen out with the patron of his Commons seat and was not allowed to continue as MP for Eye after 1710. He had also been appointed Paymaster of Pensions while in the House of Commons and was allowed to keep this job until 1713, possibly because no-one else wanted it.

He re-entered Parliament in 1713 as a member for East Grinstead, Sussex. In 1715 he became treasurer to the Prince of Wales (who later became King George II) and Speaker of the House of Commons, a position that he held for the next 12 years.

The job of Speaker was one that suited him perfectly, given his talent for mastering detail and his general lack of flair and dynamism.

Politics during the early 18^th century depended greatly on personal favouritism and dislike, not only between politicians but between the latter and the monarch. The largest fish in the political pond was Robert Walpole, to whom Compton originally offered complete loyalty but this did not last. The problem was caused by the Prince of Wales, who made it perfectly clear to Walpole that he would not be his choice of chief minister when he became king. Spencer Compton would be the man to have this honour, given that Prince George knew all about Compton’s efficiency as a financial manager.

Walpole therefore did all he could he keep Compton out of front-line politics. He made sure that Compton retained his position as Speaker and also that he became Paymaster General, which was a post from which a greedy man like Spencer Compton could make a great deal of money. During his time as Paymaster General – from 1722 to 1730 – it is estimated that he enriched himself to the tune of £100,000.

When King George I died in May 1727 and Prince George became King George II, the latter promptly acted on his promise to dismiss Walpole and appoint Compton in his place as First Lord of the Treasury (the official name of the office of Prime Minister that had evolved under Walpole’s leadership).

However, it soon became clear that Compton was not up to the job and could not do anything without calling on Walpole for assistance. He was forced to admit this to the King, with Walpole present at the meeting, and he thereafter regarded Walpole as having humiliated him by declining to come to his defence.

Walpole therefore resumed his role as Prime Minister, but Compton was still in the King’s favour and was therefore allowed to retain the post of Paymaster General.

Walpole had ceased to be popular with many Whigs and Tories, and Compton was widely believed to be behind much of the anti-Walpole feeling. Walpole came to see Compton as his chief rival and did everything he could to remove the threat. Thus, when Compton was appointed Lord Privy Seal in 1730 – probably due to the King’s influence – Walpole immediately had him removed from the House of Commons by conferring on him the title of Earl of Wilmington, which meant that he would henceforth have to sit in the House of Lords.

Wilmington’s performance in the Lords was no more distinguished than it had been in the Commons. He subsided into the background as he performed his duties without exciting any attention although the suspicion of constant plotting against Walpole was always there.

In 1741 he became more vocal in his opposition and even suggested that there should not be a Prime Minister at all. He was of the view that the King should be allowed to rule without too much interference from Parliamentary factions, of which that led by Walpole was the most objectionable. This opinion was clearly favoured by King George, who in February 1742 removed Walpole from office and appointed Wilmington in his place.

Wilmington was by this time in his late 60s and not in the best of health. As Prime Minister he did not show much in the way of enthusiasm or energy, although he wanted to appoint ministers with a broad range of political views, including Tories as well as Whigs. However, some ministers were chosen with royal approval but without consultation with himself. Chief among these was Lord Carteret as Secretary of State – he was the real controlling force in the government of which Wilmington was little more than a figurehead.

Wilmington’s term of office was ended with his death on 2^nd July 1743. He was buried at Compton Wynyates in Warwickshire, thus joining many of his ancestors. He never married, so his estate was inherited by his nephew James Compton.

It had already been understood that Wilmington would hand over the reins of office later that year, so the political succession – to Henry Pelham – was merely brought forward by a few months.

Wilmington must therefore be regarded as one of the footnotes of history. He was not a man of any great talent; he achieved little but was not responsible for any great harm either.

© John Welford

John Wilkes, 18th century politician

John Wilkes was an 18^th-century radical British journalist and politician whose activities paved the way for reform of the political system. He also played a small part in the events that led to American independence.

He was born in London on 17^th October 1725, the second son of a distiller. He soon showed academic promise and was sent to the University of Leiden (in the Netherlands) in 1744. However, he was called back in 1747 to undertake an arranged marriage with a woman who was ten years older but came with a substantial dowry, namely the manor of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.

The marriage was not a success, due to John Wilkes having picked up some bad habits in Leiden that were at odds with the strait-laced character of his wife, but it did produce a daughter, Polly, who was born in 1750 and to whom Wilkes was devoted throughout his life. However, when the marriage eventually broke up, in 1757, Wilkes was allowed to retain his estate and property in Buckinghamshire.

John Wilkes was clearly a man who enjoyed life to the full, despite being a local magistrate, and one product of this period was an obscene parody of Alexander Pope’s poem “An Essay on Man” entitled “An Essay on Woman”. This was either written by Wilkes or his friend Thomas Potter, or both, but it was to play an important role in Wilkes’s later life.

Being addicted to women and wine as he was, Wilkes needed little encouragement to behave badly, but Potter appears to have provided plenty. He also suggested that the two of them should stand for the parliamentary seats of Aylesbury at the 1754 general election, but Potter cheated Wilkes out of his seat and the latter had to wait until 1757 for his chance to enter the House of Commons.

When he did so, Wilkes made little impression as a speaker and failed to gain any advancement with a government post. Indeed, at the next election, in 1761, he only retained his seat by offering large bribes to a majority of the Aylesbury voters.

However, what he lacked as an orator he more than made up for as a writer. In May 1762 King George III appointed his former tutor, the Earl of Bute, as Prime Minister and promulgated policies that were far from Wilkes’s liking. Soon after the appointment, Wilkes founded a weekly newspaper, the “North Briton” as a vehicle to attack and satirise Lord Bute and his government. The title was itself satirical, Bute being the first Scot since the Act of Union of 1707 to lead the British government.

The government could find no way to stop Wilkes publishing his newspaper, and he continued to do so until Bute resigned in April 1763, to be replaced by George Grenville. Wilkes briefly suspended the North Briton until Grenville revealed his hand as supporting policies (concerning Britain’s relationship with France) that were little different from those of Lord Bute. Wilkes then published issue 45 that strongly condemned Grenville’s stance, and a charge of seditious libel was then made against him.

The government made a mistake by issuing an arrest warrant that was phrased in general terms against the “authors, printers and publishers” of the North Briton without specifying anyone by name. Wilkes was in any case able to avoid arrest by claiming parliamentary privilege, and when he walked free from Westminster Hall the crowd outside chanted “Wilkes and Liberty”, a cry that was to become familiar on London’s street in the years to follow.

However, Wilkes had also made a mistake by printing a few copies of his earlier “Essay on Woman”, one of which was read out in the House of Lords on 15^th November. This turned many parliamentarians against him and did not help his cause on the matter of the seditious libel charge. The House of Commons ruled that the North Briton issue 45 was indeed a seditious libel, and moreover that parliamentary privilege did not apply in such cases.

To make matters worse for Wilkes, a member of parliament, Samuel Martin, challenged him to a duel in Hyde Park which resulted in Wilkes receiving a serious bullet wound. However, this did at least give him a good excuse for not attending court, and he was later able to slip out of the country and away from British jurisdiction. He lived in France for the next four years.

Meanwhile, back in London, Wilkes was “tried” in his absence by the House of Commons and expelled. He was also declared an outlaw by the Court of King’s Bench. However, he did win one significant victory in that the use of general warrants for searching buildings or arresting individuals was ruled to be illegal.

John Wilkes had quite a pleasant time in France and Italy until his money ran out and he sought a means of returning to England. His applications for a pardon got him nowhere, but he returned anyway in February 1768 and lived quietly for a time under an assumed name although no efforts were made to arrest him.

He now planned to return to Parliament. He stood for a Middlesex seat in March 1768 and won convincingly. He had strong backing from the “Wilkites”, these being ordinary Londoners who followed him everywhere and cheered his every move, including freeing him from prison when he tried to give himself up as part of the process of clearing his name. He then had to enter the prison in disguise, in a somewhat farcical episode.

Although his outlawry was set aside, in June 1768 John Wilkes was sentenced to two years in prison on the original charges, although he was not expelled from Parliament until 3^rd February 1769. Despite this, and while still in prison, he was returned unopposed at a by-election on 16^th February but again declared to be incapable of election. The process was repeated at two further by-elections, even when the government put up a rival candidate whom Wilkes defeated with ease but who was declared as having won.

On his release from prison in April 1770, Wilkes sought a new power base in the City of London, where he and his supporters became aldermen and he eventually became Lord Mayor (in 1774).

Wilkes fought a campaign to overturn the ban on parliamentary proceedings being reported by the press. To do this he made use of the ancient privilege of the City of London that meant that only city officials could make arrests within the City boundaries. When printers were accused of breaking the no-reporting rule they were encouraged to seek sanctuary within the City, and this policy eventually led to the government having to back down. The reporting of parliamentary debates has ever since been regarded as a fundamental freedom and an important democratic safeguard.

Soon after becoming Lord Mayor, Wilkes also returned to Parliament, this time with no bar to him taking his seat. His parliamentary performances were much stronger than his previous efforts had been, as he now knew that his speeches would be reported by an unfettered press. He therefore spoke in favour of radical reforms that would eventually come to pass, such as abolition of the rotten boroughs. His greatest triumph was to overturn the motion that had barred him from election in 1769, thus establishing the right of voters to elect whom they wish.

Wilkes is often regarded as having been a strong advocate of American independence, but this view is not entirely accurate. Although he supported the colonists over many of their grievances, and condemned the use of force to suppress them, he did not, at first, want them to leave the Empire. His hope was that, if their complaints were dealt with in a sensible way, the Americans would not seek independence because they would realise that staying loyal was in their best interests.

However, as the crisis escalated Wilkes changed his mind and appreciated that independence was the only feasible outcome. He was essentially pragmatic in his attitude and knew that governments cannot keep people loyal at the point of a bayonet.

As he grew older, John Wilkes became less radical in his behaviour, and the constant cries of “Wilkes and Liberty” became tiresome to him. He became much less active as a politician and eventually lost his House of Commons seat at the 1790 general election. He died on 26^th December 1797, aged 72.

John Wilkes remains a fascinating character from 18^th century politics, being such a contrast to the aristocracy that ran things at the time. Further radical voices would be heard in later years, and fundamental changes would follow, but John Wilkes laid the foundations for what was to come.

© John Welford

Sir Joseph Bazalgette

London owes a huge debt to Joseph Bazalgette for solving the problem of how to dispose of the sewage produced by a rapidly growing population during the 19th century. The infrastructure designed by him still serves the capital to the present day.

Joseph William Bazalgette was born on 28th March 1819 at Enfield. His parents were a naval officer and his wife. His grandfather was a Frenchman who had emigrated to Great Britain in 1775.

Joseph was articled to a civil engineer in 1836 and set up his own practice in Westminster in 1842. He married in 1845 and eventually became the father of ten children.

His career in public health engineering began in 1849 when he was appointed to the post of assistant surveyor to the metropolitan commission that was looking at ways of solving London’s appalling sewerage problem. At the time, most of London’s human waste was discharged straight into the River Thames, which therefore became a massive stinking sewer. It was a problem that had the full attention of the country’s legislators because the Houses of Parliament were directly affected, being alongside the river.

The solution was to build interceptor sewers that would divert the sewage from the Thames and take it to remote outfalls on the east side of the city. The chief engineer of the project was Frank Forster, but when he died in 1852 Joseph Bazalgette was appointed to take over. The commission was replaced by the Metropolitan Board of Works, of which Bazalgette remained the chief engineer until 1889.

Bazalgette’s first task was to complete the plan that Forster that instituted, which was in effect two separate systems, one for each side of the Thames. Parliament passed the required Enabling Act in 1858 and work started soon afterwards. The South London system was relatively straightforward, and the work was completed in 1865. The northern system was more complicated, partly due to the presence of the Metropolitan District Railway, and this work did not finish until 1868.

The project comprised the building of 1300 miles of sewers, 82 miles of the main intercepting sewers running alongside the river, and four huge pumping stations. Bazalgette also “tidied” the river by building the Victoria, Albert and Chelsea Embankments, which extended for a total of 3.5 miles and included the reclamation of 52 acres of land. The Victoria Embabnkment is particularly impressive in that it that incorporates part of what is now the District Line of the Lonodon Underground, including four stations.

In 1877 the Metropolitan Board of Works was empowered to buy the twelve bridges that crossed the Thames in London, which meant that they ceased to be owned privately and could no longer charge tolls. Bazalgette had to survey all the bridges and, as a result, considerable maintenance work was undertaken. He decided that three of the bridges needed to be replaced in their entirety, so he designed and built the bridges that can now be seen at Battersea, Putney, and Hammersmith.

At the time there was no river crossing down-river of London Bridge, and Bazalgette became involved in planning for three schemes to solve this problem, namely Tower Bridge, Blackwall Tunnel, and the ferry crossing at Woolwich. However, his designs for Tower Bridge and Blackwall Tunnel were not the ones that were eventually adopted.

He was credited with improving traffic flow in London by designing and building several new thoroughfares, notably Northumberland Avenue, Shaftesbury Avenue, Queen Victoria Street and Charing Cross Road.

Joseph Bazalgette advised authorities in many towns and cities outside London as to the best way to solve their own drainage and sewerage systems. These included Oxford, Northampton and Margate, and several cities in continental Europe.

He was knighted in 1874 and elected president of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1884. He retired from public service in 1889 and died on 15th March 1891 at the age of 71. He can be said to have pioneered the profession of civil engineering insofar as it served the health and convenience of the inhabitants of large cities.

© John Welford

Dick Turpin: truth and myth

Legend meets reality

Dick Turpin is one of those “everybody knows” characters of English folklore. Everybody knows that he was a “gentleman highwayman” who treated his victims with respect and performed a magnificent feat of horsemanship by riding his mare “Black Bess” from London to York in double-quick time in order to escape justice. He ranks alongside Robin Hood and King Arthur as romantic folk heroes.

However, truth and reality are poles apart here. It is true that Dick Turpin did exist, and it is also true that a highwayman did once cover 200 miles on horseback within a day, but they were not the same person. The mistake was made by the novelist William Harrison Ainsworth in a novel published in 1824, but the story became so popular that it entered public consciousness as the truth, and for most people it has stayed that way ever since.

Dick Turpin

Richard Turpin was the son of an Essex innkeeper. He was born in 1705 and became involved in stealing deer in Epping Forest as part of a gang. He was lucky to escape being caught, which is what happened to the other gang members, but decided that a life of crime suited him. He therefore turned to highway robbery as a means of earning a living.

He was clearly a nasty piece of work. He was not above committing murder if it suited him, and it was to escape the consequences of such a deed that he fled to Yorkshire in 1738, although not during the course of a single day.

Once in Yorkshire he changed his name but not his criminal activities, although he turned his attention to stealing horses rather than holding up stagecoaches. He was eventually caught and convicted, being hanged in York on 7^th April 1739.

He attracted public attention because he decided to go out in style. He “held court” in his prison cell by inviting people to visit him and hear of his exploits, then hired five mourners to accompany him to the gallows where he became the master of ceremonies at his own execution by waving to the crowds before leaping to his death.

       

Dick Turpin therefore made a name for himself, and this is probably what confused William Harrison Ainsworth when he came to write his novel “Rookwood”. Even so, there is no evidence that Turpin had achieved folk hero status in the years following his death. A criminal had paid the price for his crimes and, despite making a show of things in his final days, was largely forgotten until Rookwood was published.

The other “Dick Turpin”

However, during the century before Turpin lived there was another criminal who had attracted public attention and of whom much more complimentary things had been said. This was John Nevison, who was born in 1639 and died on the gallows in 1684.

It was said of Nevison that he only robbed rich people, although there would have been little point in robbing people without any money, and that he was always polite to his victims. These are characteristics that would later be associated with Dick Turpin. However, Nevison was said to be tall, handsome and aristocratic in his bearing, which was certainly not true of Turpin.

The clincher in terms of Ainsworth’s error is that Nevison was reputed to have committed a robbery in Kent early one morning then crossed the Thames and ridden all the way to York where he greeted the Mayor at sunset. As nobody believed that a man could be in Kent in the morning and York in the evening, he had a cast-iron alibi. The story came to the ears of King Charles II, who promptly gave him the nickname of “Swift Nick” – despite his name being John.

The legend of Swift Nick was recorded by Daniel Defoe in his 1724 work “A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain”. It is possible that this is where William Harrison Ainsworth got some of his information from, but he should have checked his sources more carefully before putting pen to paper.

As it was, the publication of Rookwood sparked the Dick Turpin myth and it was not only Ainsworth who was able to cash in on it. In the years that followed many prints were sold showing images of Turpin’s ride, and many landlords of inns along his supposed route were happy to allow customers, for a fee, to drink a pint out of the very tankard that Turpin used when he paused for refreshment!

© John Welford

Captain Henry Morgan's roast pig disaster

Captain Henry Morgan was a notorious privateer and pirate during the 17th century. He suffered an unfortunate setback when a celebratory pig roast cost him a lot more than he had bargained for.

Captain Henry Morgan was a real “Pirate of the Caribbean” during the 17th century. He was a Welshman (born around 1635) who emigrated to the West Indies and became a sea captain. At the time, England and Spain maintained a running undeclared war for domination of trade at sea, and English ships were given free rein to raid Spanish ships and possessions. Morgan was to make a handsome living by taking part in such activities.

The distinction between “pirate” and “privateer” was one that could become somewhat foggy, in that privateers were supposed to be acting on behalf of the English government, with at least some of the proceeds of any raid going back to England, but piracy involved no such consideration. It was therefore perfectly possible for an unscrupulous man like Henry Morgan to pay lip-service to his official duties but acquire a vast fortune for himself in the process.


The sacking of Porto Bello

In 1668 Henry Morgan attacked the Spanish town of Porto Bello on the coast of Panama. Under cover of darkness he and his men slipped into the harbour in canoes and took by surprise the defenders of two of the three forts that guarded the port.

However, the third fort was less easy to subdue, and Morgan used the subterfuge of capturing a number of priests and nuns and using them as human shields as his men advanced on the fort. The Spaniards surrendered and handed over a huge fortune in slaves and gold as Morgan’s price for not slaughtering the entire population of the town.


Easy come, easy go

The following year, Captain Morgan captured two French ships near Haiti (the French were just as likely to be attacked as the Spanish). This was clearly something for Morgan to celebrate, so he dropped anchor near the island of Ile à Vache (which was his base of operations) and proceeded to do precisely that. With his ship’s hold bursting with treasure, including the bulk of the pieces of eight that comprised the ransom handed over at Porto Bello, the crew proceeded to roast a pig on the deck of his ship.

However, lighting an open fire on board a wooden ship that also contains a goodly amount of gunpowder (which was being used to fire cannon rounds in celebration) is probably an unwise thing to dot, and that proved to be so in this case.

There was a huge explosion that sank not only Morgan’s ship but also the two captured French ships. Morgan himself had the relatively good fortune to be blown clean through the windows of his cabin and into the sea; he therefore survived, but more than 200 of his men did not.

As for the treasure, that went down with the ship, leaving Henry Morgan with the task of starting all over again to rebuild his fortune. Several years later he attempted to recover the gold but was prevented from doing so by a storm at sea that wrecked the ship he was commanding at the time (another wreck from which he survived). As far as Morgan was concerned the treasure was lost forever.


Where is the treasure now?

Despite the fact that the ship went down in relatively shallow waters (no more than twelve feet) nobody has ever found the treasure. In 2004 a team of divers found the wreck and recovered artefacts such as cannons and musket balls, but not a single piece of eight.

The question that arises, therefore, is what has happened to the treasure? There can be little doubt that the ship was carrying the gold when it blew up, because why else would Henry Morgan have tried to recover it?

It seems unlikely that, more than 300 years later, Captain Morgan’s treasure is still where he left it. The 2004 dive found nothing, despite the search being a relatively straightforward one, which therefore suggests that someone else has already found it at some stage since its original loss.

It might even be the case that the treasure was found during the interval of time before Morgan’s own abortive attempt to find it. Despite the huge loss of life when the ship exploded, it is unlikely that Morgan was the sole survivor, so there would have been other people who knew all about the treasure and where it was. Might they have helped themselves at some stage, after Morgan himself had sailed away from Ile à Vache? That sounds like a possible scenario to me!

As for Henry Morgan, he eventually retired from piracy and the sea and also managed to stay out of prison. He was even knighted by King Charles II and became a Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica. He died in 1688 and was buried in Port Royal, Jamaica, in a cemetery that later slid into the sea during an earthquake in 1692. Perhaps it was appropriate that both the captain and his treasure disappeared beneath the waves.

© John Welford

Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor

The woman who is best known as Wallis Simpson, and then the Duchess of Windsor, was born as Bessie Wallis Warfield on 19^th June 1896 at Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania. She was the only child of a businessman, Teackle Wallis Warfield, and his wife Alice Montague. However, her father had not made a success of his business and both her parents were the poor relations of their respective families. Her father died when Wallis was only five months old, so she had no memories of him.

Wallis’s early life was therefore one of poverty and deprivation, and Wallis had no prospects in life unless she could make a good marriage. Her first attempt was a disaster. She fell in love, at the age of 19, with Lieutenant Earl Winfield Spencer, a naval aviator, and married him on 8^th November 1916. However, he drank too much and Wallis came to despise him. A two-year separation was followed by three unhappy years of troubled reunion and they eventually divorced in 1927.

Wallis had already been seeing Ernest Aldrich Simpson, who had a British father and American mother and who was managing the London office of the family’s shipping firm. They married on 2^nd July 1928 and Wallis became introduced to London’s “colony” of American socialites. These included Thelma, Viscountess Furness, who, although married, was having an affair with Edward, Prince of Wales. It was at Lady Furness’s house in Leicestershire that Wallis Simpson met the Prince in January 1931. Three years later, Wallis had taken over from Thelma Furness as the woman in the Prince of Wales’s life.

In their personal relationships, both Wallis and the Prince had, up to this point in their lives, never taken them seriously enough to make a lifetime commitment. Both of them had been happy to move in and out of relationships as the fancy took them. In Wallis’s case, being married was no impediment to having full-blown affairs with other men. The Prince had been notorious for his short-lived “flings” that had appeared serious at the time but eventually blew over.

However, Prince Edward became completely infatuated with Wallis Simpson and was determined that nothing would get in the way of his marrying her. This driving motivation continued after he succeeded to the throne, as King Edward VIII, on 20^th January 1936.

The scandal of the King being involved with a married woman, who could only become his wife after undergoing a second divorce, was one that could not be ignored. For one thing, the King was head of the Church of England, and the Church at the time (and indeed until quite recently) did not allow the re-marriage of divorced people while the former partner was still living. In Wallis’s case she would soon have two living ex-husbands.

Wallis Simpson was seen by many people in Britain as a fortune-hunter who had ensnared the Prince’s affections with only one end in view, namely becoming the Queen. Being American did not help either. Clearly, this was something that could not be tolerated.

However, Wallis herself demonstrated little desire for this outcome as such. She was happy to live with the Prince, and to divorce Ernest Simpson to make this possible, but that would appear to have been the limit of her ambition. When push came to shove, and she realised the consequences of her affair, she was happy to offer to withdraw from the proposed marriage if that was what it took for Edward to stay as King. However, when Edward was faced with the stark choice between giving Wallis up or abdicating in favour of his younger brother, he was in no doubt that he could not do the former and must do the latter.

Edward abdicated on 10^th December 1936, having been King for less than a year. Wallis Simpson’s divorce only became absolute on 3^rd May 1937, and the couple stayed apart until they married in France on 3^rd June 1937. They were thereafter granted the titles of Duke and Duchess of Windsor and lived in exile in Austria and France until the outbreak of war in 1939.

There has been much speculation about the attitude of the Windsors to Hitler and the Nazis, especially concerning whether they were closet Nazis themselves. These thoughts were engendered by a visit that they made to Germany in 1937, during which they were pictured laughing and joking with Hitler and the Duke made the Nazi salute. There is certainly evidence that the Nazis saw Edward as being sympathetic to them, and it is possible that, had they succeeded in conquering Britain, they would have wanted to install him as a puppet monarch. On the other hand, Edward never endorsed Nazism and regarded Hitler with suspicion as well as a degree of admiration.

Wallis never expressed any strong political views one way or the other, and appears to have been content to support her husband, whichever way the wind blew. There had been suspicions, before the war, that Wallis had had an affair with Joachim von Ribbbentrop, the German ambassador to London, and had passed state secrets to the Nazis via this liaison, but these allegations have never been substantiated.

The Windsors were in France when the Germans invaded in 1939 and had to escape to Spain and then Portugal. Winston Churchill was concerned that they could be used by the Nazis for propaganda purposes and suggested that the Duke be given the post of Governor of the Bahamas for the duration of the War. They both hated this time stuck on an archipelago in the Atlantic, but Wallis did her duty ably enough and was able to relieve the monotony by undertaking shopping trips to the United States from time to time. However, reports of this extravagance did nothing to rescue her reputation when they were heard in war-deprived Britain.

After the war the Windsors returned to France and lived a privileged aristocratic life doing the rounds of the places where the rich and famous tend to congregate. Wallis established a reputation as one of the best-dressed women of her generation, and for entertaining lavishly. Although such a life might appear barren and unproductive to many people, it suited Wallis and her husband.

Wallis had never been happy with the antagonism that her marriage to Edward had excited within the British royal family and nation, but she had enough common sense to appreciate that she would never change their minds and her best course was to accept things as they were. Given her background, they could of course have been a lot worse. She wrote her memoirs in 1956, under the title “The Heart has its Reasons”, and there is no bitterness in her words and only a modicum of regret.

After Edward died in 1972 Wallis was invited to Buckingham Palace in a gesture of reconciliation, but it was really too late as she was now in her mid-seventies. She lived for another 14 years, gradually losing her faculties. For the last five years of her life she was a virtual recluse who rarely left her home in Paris. She died on 24^th April 1986 at the age of 89 and was buried next to Edward in the royal burial ground at Frogmore, near Windsor.

Wallis Simpson is blamed by some as the “scarlet woman” who stole the heart of a future king and forced him to give up his throne. Others view the affair as a romantic story of love overcoming all, and therefore as something beautiful and wholesome. The truth is surely more complicated than either of these scenarios.

For one thing, Edward’s abdication forced his brother the Duke of York to take the throne in his place (as King George VI), a task for which he was unprepared and, to a degree, unsuited. Edward did not consider his brother’s feelings in this matter, and Wallis was therefore seen as the instrument through which Edward’s selfishness was expressed. Queen Elizabeth (the present Queen’s mother) certainly took this line and was implacable in her dislike of Wallis Simpson for this reason.

Wallis was clearly a highly-sexed woman who would not have fitted in well with the British royal family. Her long series of affairs was evidence of her unsuitability as a Queen, although there is a whiff of hypocrisy in this argument as royal men have long been notorious for their extra-marital dalliances.

There is also the question of Wallis’s own selfishness. She had no children with any of her husbands or partners, which suggests that parental responsibilities played no part in her thinking. However, there are all sorts of rumours on this score, including stories of a botched abortion, a stolen child and a rare abnormality that made her barren. The jury is still out on this issue.

On the other side of the case is the evidence that Wallis was willing to withdraw from a potential marriage to Edward to save his throne, which suggests either that she saw where her duty lay, or that the passion in the liaison was more on his side than hers.

The story of Wallis Simpson will doubtless give rise to many more debates in future as to her motives and whether her life was a fulfilled or unfulfilled one.

© John Welford