Meeting the Medmenham Monks

This month’s research topics took me to this page at the History of Parliament site about the fabled “Monks of Medmenham Abbey.”

John Wilkes played a big part in this story, as in many other British events of the 1760s and 1770s. Regardless of what one might think of his politics, Wilkes appears to have spread chaos almost everywhere he went. And on 15 June 1762 he was writing to one of his allies, Charles Churchill, “next Monday we meet at Medmenham.”

That article explains that Medmenham Abbey was “the headquarters of the co-called ‘Order of St Francis of Medmenham’, also known (erroneously) as the Hellfire Club.” (Another club name was the “Knights of St. Francis of Wycombe.”)

The first Duke of Wharton had founded what he called the Hellfire Club back in 1718, and in the nineteenth century an author with a penchant for the lurid applied the same label to the Medmenham group and others. But those gentlemen never used the term “Hellfire Club” for themselves.

The blog reports:

Quite what went on at Medmenham has long been the subject of occasionally lurid speculation and as one historian has suggested, it is a topic that ‘attracts cranks and repels scholars’ [N.A.M. Rodger, The Insatiable Earl, p.80]. At its most extreme some have suggested, almost certainly without foundation, that devil worship took place there, while at the other end it has been proposed that it was a somewhat eccentric antiquarian-cum-erotic meeting place of senior politicians, who assembled to indulge in boating parties, cavort with sex workers brought in from London for the purpose, share their interest in classical authors and plot. . . .

The founder of the fraternity was Sir Francis Dashwood [shown above], chancellor of the exchequer during the premiership of the earl of Bute, and later a member of the Lords as Baron le Despencer. Dashwood had leased Medmenham, close to his own seat at West Wycombe, in 1751, and proceeded to renovate the dilapidated abbey buildings, turning the site into a summer pleasure ground, where he could invite friends for parties on the Thames and picnicking among the ruins.

It was an important juncture. That year the heir to the throne, and focal point of the main opposition alliance, Frederick Prince of Wales, had died unexpectedly, leaving the opposition without an obvious rallying point.

The Medmenham gathering appears to have flourished in the 1750s. But then it foundered on its members’ own success after George II died. Frederick’s son, George III, came to the throne and installed a favorite, the Earl of Bute, as prime minister.

Bute made Dashwood his chancellor of the exchequer and found appointments for other men in the Medmenham circle, or just outside it. But he didn’t find a job for Wilkes.

This essay suggests that disappointment was enough for Wilkes to go into opposition in the worst way. However, Wilkes was already a champion of William Pitt, which would have made him a bad fit for Bute’s policies.

Wilkes and Churchill founded The North-Briton weekly in 1762 as a vehicle for attacking Bute. He also started to tell stories about the Medmenham club’s salacious activity. Other members objected, called Wilkes a liar or a cad.

One might think the fact that Wilkes was one of the group’s most licentious members would have undercut his own credibility. However, as the History of Parliament blog has said about Wilkes’s later career, lots of people already knew about his habits. Being a libertine was baked into his public image, so further revelations didn’t change his standing. If anything, Wilkes’s stories seemed more reputable because he was known for being disreputable.

Whatever the impetus for his break with the established political structure, Wilkes’s legal and political struggles over the next decade and a half created important forums for Britons to debate such issues as free speech, fair elections, government use of lethal force, and more. The Boston Whigs reached out to him for mutual support even though they would have detested his personal habits.

As for the Medmenham gatherings, Dashwood seems to have calmed down after becoming Baron le Despencer in 1763 and later postmaster general. In that decade he also became a close friend of Benjamin Franklin. Some authors link Franklin to the Medmenham monks, but by the time he was close to Despencer the club had really fallen apart.

“The great curiosity of seeing the King’s new coach”

The rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence makes George III out as America’s great villain and antagonist of the Revolution.

But of course the king was just the visible embodiment of the British government. The ministry acted in his name, but he didn’t make all decisions. Though George III exercised influence, especially in the choice of ministers, but he wasn’t a tyrant dictating policy from his gilded carriage.

To be sure, he had a gilded carriage.

George III’s state coach survives at Buckingham Palace, as shown in this photo from Rachel Knowles’s blog.

This vehicle was commissioned soon after the young man came to the throne in 1760, designed by Sir William Chambers with decorative allegorical panels painted by Giovanni Battista Cipriani, an artist from Florence.

The coach cost more than £7,661, with £2,504 going to the carver, £1,673 to the coachmaker and wheelwright, £933 to the gilder, and £737 to the “lace-man.”

The coach made it public debut on at the opening of Parliament in October 1762. Richard Rigby reported to the Duke of Bedford:

The great curiosity of seeing the King’s new coach yesterday had filled the park and streets, by all accounts, fuller than they were at the coronation. I was above three hours upon the road from the end of Pall Mall to the middle of Parliament Street, where I was obliged at last to get into a chair and be carried a back way to the House of Commons.

In this crowd Lord Bute [the prime minister] was very much insulted, hissed in every gross manner, and a little pelted. It is said, but it is denied also, that the King was insulted.

Both Houses were up about four; the crowd of coaches and mob on foot not the least abated; it was so great that the King’s coach, with his Majesty in it, upon his return from the House was a full hour in Palace Yard. Lord Bute to avoid the like treatment he had met in going, returned in a hackney chair, but the mob discovered him, followed him, broke the glasses of the chair, and, in short, by threats and menaces, put him very reasonably in great fear; if they had once overturned the chair, he might very soon have been demolished.

Bute was out as prime minister in April 1763. (Though you wouldn’t know that from all the Whig cartoons and effigies that continued to blame him for royal policies over the next decade.)

The royal coach continued to roll out on ceremonial occasions. In October 1795 George III rode to another opening of Parliament. This time the crowd attacked the coach, breaking a window. People were reportedly calling, “Down with Pitt,” “No War,” “Give Us Bread,” and even “No George.” The satirical artist James Gillray portrayed the gold coach under attack from “republicans.”

The Influence of a Stamp Act Cartoon

The more I thought about the British cartoon “The Deplorable State of America or S——ch Government,” shown above, the more I wondered about its influence on American politics.

Scholars believe that this print, from an unknown artist, went on sale soon after Parliament passed the Stamp Act on 22 Mar 1765. Copies were shipped across the Atlantic to Boston, where John Singleton Copley evidently took one as inspiration for his own cartoon, discussed yesterday.

Did the same picture inspire Bostonians to protest the Stamp Act in other ways?

The cartoon shows a boot, representing the Earl of Bute, supposedly the politician behind the Stamp Act. (He had retired many months before.) The background of the cartoon includes a gallows, labeled “Fit Entertainment for St—p M—n.”

The anti-Stamp Act protest in Boston on 14 August featured effigies of a boot and stamp agent Andrew Oliver hanged from the great elm in the South End.

To be sure, Pope Night processions had given Bostonians annual practice hanging political enemies in effigy. But would they have extended that particular courtesy to figures connected to the Stamp Act without this cartoon?

Wherever the idea came from, hanging effigies of the stamp agents became an element of anti-Stamp Act protests all over North America, from Nova Scotia to the Caribbean.

Likewise, the cartoon labels a tree being buffeted by winds with the words “To Liberty.” On 11 September, the Boston Sons of Liberty decorated that big elm with “a Copper-Plate with these Words Stamped thereon, in Golden Letters, THE TREE OF LIBERTY, August 14. 1765.” After that, the elm was always known as Liberty Tree.

In his cartoon Copley clearly depicted Boston’s Liberty Tree, with a thick trunk and a sign reading “THE TREE OF LIBERTY / Aug. 14 1765.” But had the idea of dedicating the tree that happened to hold those effigies “To Liberty” come from the British picture?

Both Alfred Young in Liberty Tree and David Hackett Fischer in Liberty and Freedom discuss Liberty Tree as an American invention, dating to 14 Aug 1765. I can’t find any American newspaper reference to the “Tree of Liberty” or “Liberty Tree” before the following months.

Although both Young and Fischer discuss the political symbolism of trees in earlier times, going back to Britain, neither unearthed references to “the Tree of Liberty” before 1765. Thanks to the added power of Google Books, I’ve found three:

• “Some iniquitous Ministers, who had formed Designs on the Liberties of their fellow Subjects, had found it necessary to restrain and discountenance the Trade of those they intended to strip of their Freedom; for as Poverty certainly follows an Interdiction of Industry, these Sons of Ruin find their Account in laying the Political Axe to the Root of Affluence, as the ready Means for cutting away the darling Tree of Liberty, which seldom thrives in a Land of Poverty and Want.” —Seasonable Observations on the Present Fatal Declension of the General Commerce of England, in Which the Genuine Cause of the Decay of Our Woollen Manufactures Is Particularly Considered, published in London in 1737.
• The index of a 1739 edition of A Dissertation Upon Parties by Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke, originally published in 1735. Bolingbroke didn’t actually use the key phrase, however, instead writing: “If liberty be that delicious and wholesome fruit, on which the British nation hath fed for so many ages, and to which we owe our riches, our strength, and all the advantages we boast of, the British constitution is the tree that bears this fruit.”
• Of all places, the second volume of Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela, published in 1742: “Just as Pedlars catch Monkeys in the Baboon Kingdoms, provoking the attentive Fools, by their own Example, to put on Shoes and Stockens, till the Apes of Imitation, trying to do the like, intangle their Feet, and so cannot escape upon the Boughs of the Tree of Liberty, on which before they were wont to hop and skip about, and play a thousand puggish Tricks.”

Three uses over fifty years is hardly a lot. The rarity of the “Tree of Liberty” metaphor in British political writing, and the lack of consistency in its use, suggests that the phrase hadn’t taken root there.

Which might make this picture with a tree labeled “To Liberty” all the more influential in the last third of the eighteenth century and beyond, as the “Tree of Liberty” became an international symbol.

TOMORROW: Unless we’re getting it all backwards.

Copley’s One and Only Political Cartoon

As long as I’m writing about political cartoons and about John Singleton Copley, I should note the only cartoon that Copley ever published.

It survives in a single copy at the Library Company of Philadelphia collected by the Swiss artist Pierre Eugène du Simitière, who came through Boston on his way south in 1767. Du Simitière penciled Copley’s name on his copy and also saved a Pennsylvania knock-off that he deemed “a wretched copy.”

This picture was announced by an item in the 7 Nov 1765 Boston News-Letter:

On the fatal First of November, 1765, was published, a caricatura Print, representing the deplorable State of America, and under what Influence her Ruin is attempted.----

At the Top is a Figure representing France, holding in one Hand a Purse of Money to a Comet, marked with a Jack-Boot, and out of her Mouth a Label, by which we find she actuates the Star to shed its baneful Influence on Britannia; who presents a Box to America, telling her it is the St--p A--t: but on it is wrote Pandora’s Box (which, according to the Poets, was fill’d with all Kinds of Calamities[)].

America, who is in deep Distress, calls out to Minerva to secure her, for she abhors it as Death! Minerva (i. e. Wisdom) forbids her taking it, and points to Liberty, who is expiring at the Feet of America with a Label proper to his Extremity.

Close by is a fair Tree, inscribed to Liberty; at whose Root grows a Thistle, from under it creeps a Vine, and infixes its Stings in the Side of Liberty.--

Mercury (who signifies Commerce) reluctantly leaves America, as is expressed by the Label.—

Boreas, near the Comet, blows a violent Gust full upon the Tree of Liberty; against which Loyalty leans, and expresses her Fear of losing her Support.—

Behind, a Number of Shops haul’d up and to be sold; a Croud of Sailors dismiss’d, with Labels proper to them.

On the other Side a Gallows, with this Inscription, Fit Entertainment for St---p M--n: A Number of these Gentlemen, with Labels expressing various Sentiments on the Occasion. At the Bottom is a Coat of Arms, proper for the St—p M—n.

The above is to be Sold by Nathaniel Hurd, near the Town House.

Scholars agree that Copley took inspiration for this picture from a British cartoon published in March 1765 under the title “The Deplorable State of America or Sc——h Government,” shown here.

Both the British original and Copley’s picture blame the Stamp Act on the Earl of Bute, a former prime minister supposedly influenced by France. They both forecast wounded liberty and damaged trade, and they shows gallows for stamp agents.

However, though Copley drew on the same classical and political symbolism as the London artist, he greatly reinvented the picture. He traced nothing, instead:

• posing the figures differently
• replacing the French king with an abstract flying woman
• replacing the British king losing his crown with the female figure of Loyalty
• changing Liberty from female to male
• shifting the background scenes
• adding a urinating dog

Artistically, Copley’s composition was more unified, but as propaganda his image is harder to read. The grouping of the figures and the heavy hatching mean nobody stands out. The word balloons (“Labels”) are smaller and not framed by white space for easy reading. Copley would almost certainly have improved if he’d kept making political cartoons, but we’ll never know.

Copley left no writing about this cartoon, so we don’t know why he made it. Was he expressing his own political belief at the time? Did Nathaniel Hurd, an established engraver and goldsmith, commission the picture from him? Neither man was politically active, though Copley found himself dragged into the tea crisis. Did they make this print in late 1765 because at that time they were in agreement with the great majority of anti-Stamp Act Bostonians, or because they saw an eager market for it? Again, we don’t know.

TOMORROW: What else did that British cartoon inspire?

A Wilkes Cufflink from Brunswick Town

Just a few hours after I posted about the archeological discovery of a tavern in Brunswick Town, North Carolina, a tweet from Warren Bingham alerted me to a new announcement from that team.

One artifact when cleaned up turned out to be a cufflink ornamented with a pea-sized blue glass bead. And etched on that bead are the words “Wilkes and Liberty 45.”

John Wilkes was the London radical who used his magazine The North-Briton to attack the Earl of Bute, a Scotsman, and his supposed corruption of the royal family. Bute stepped down as chief minister in April 1763 and never returned to politics, but Whigs in Britain and America kept him in the public mind as a scapegoat and focus of conspiracy theories.

In issue number 45 of The North-Briton, published late in April 1763, Wilkes came very close to attacking George III as well as Bute. That would be sedition, and the government brought Wilkes and his printers up on charges. He fled to France for several years, returning in 1768 to be both reelected to Parliament and arrested for obscenity.

American Whigs adopted Wilkes’s cause, making his name and the number 45 emblems for political reform across the British Empire. The Boston Whigs corresponded with Wilkes in the late 1760s, trying to make common cause. His domestic popularity lasted until the Gordon Riots of 1780. Later generations looked askance at Wilkes’s sexual activity and writing, letting them overshadow his political significance.

There are lots of physical manifestations of Wilkes’s popularity in America: prints, china, and ornaments like this one. In 2013 a member of the TreasureNet bulletin board with the handle sscindercoop reported finding a seal with the same slogan and similar design at a “colonial fort site,” possibly in central New York. A London mudlark called Chill Bill found a glass “Wilkes and Liberty 45” cufflink in the Thames, as he shows on this 2017 video.

British Political Cartoons of Boston Under Attack

Above is a political cartoon from the Boston Public Library’s online collection.

It’s titled “Virtual Representation,” and I haven’t seen it reproduced like other Revolutionary political art. One factor is that it’s been colored, making it harder for printers to copy. The British Museum has an uncolored print that might be easier to read.

In her 1935 Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum, M. Dorothy George wrote:

This contrast is an attack on the Quebec Act and on the punitive measures taken against Massachusetts for the Boston tea-party. The attack on the Quebec Act as the establishment of Roman Catholicism in Canada is further stressed by the figures of the monk and of France…

The words of Bute and the action of the Speaker indicate that America was being taxed for the benefit of England, while the title derides the theory that the colonists, like Englishmen without the franchise, were “virtually represented” in the House of Commons.

George guessed that the same artist produced the cartoon called “The Scotch Butchery.” I think that artwork shows more professional training in the posing of the human figures, the rendering of the sky, and the like.

Nevertheless, the two cartoons share a number of features. The principal villain of both is the Earl of Bute, prime minister in the early 1760s and tutor of the future King George III before that. Bute had been out of power and retired from politics for over a decade when these cartoons were published. Nonetheless, he was still a convenient villain for British Whigs because he was a Scotsman, easily depicted in a tartan and kilt.

Another common element is the destruction of Boston. In “Virtual Representation” the town is in flames while Catholic Québec enjoys royal protection. In “The Scotch Butchery,” Bute and others preside as “The English Fleet with Scotch Commanders” bombards the town.

“Virtual Representation” was published in early April 1775, before the war began and well before anyone in London heard about the fighting. The exact date of “The Scotch Butchery” is less clear, but neither cartoon appears to have been inspired by specific actual events. Instead, these incendiary images were created to rile up America’s supporters in Britain, showing the worst that could happen as if it already had.

“George, be King”

John Nicholls (1744-1832) was a Member of Parliament from 1783 to 1787, and again from 1796 to 1802.

Politically, Nicholls leaned to the left, opposing Edmund Burke and then the younger William Pitt and eventually his early ally Charles James Fox. He saw good in the early French Revolution, opposed British war measures, and championed electoral reforms.

Nicholls’s father had been physician to George II, so he was privy to court gossip from an early age. But of course his political views colored how he interpreted gossip about that monarch and his grandson and successor. In his Recollections and Reflections Personal and Political as Connected with Public Affairs during the Reign of George III, published in 1820, Nicholls profiled the new king this way:

The young King (for he was at that time little more than twenty-two years of age) was of a good person, sober, temperate, of domestic habits, addicted to no vice, swayed by no passion—what had not the nation to expect from such a character? . . .

I recollect the expression used to my father by Mr. [Charles] Pratt, at that time Attorney General, afterwards better known by the name of Lord Camden, within four months after the King’s accession: “I see already, that this will be a weak and an inglorious reign.”

I recollect also the relation which a friend of my father’s gave to him of a conversation which he had had with Charles Townshend: “I said to Charles Townshend, I don’t want to know any state secrets, but do tell me what is the character of this young man?” After a pause, Charles Townshend replied, “He is very obstinate.”

It was also observed that the Princess Dowager of Wales had kept the young Prince from having any confidential intimacy with any person except herself and the Earl of Bute: the pretence for this was the preservation of his morals. In truth, they had blockaded all approach to him. A notion has prevailed, that the Earl of Bute had suggested political opinions to the Princess Dowager; but this was certainly a mistake. In understanding, the Princess Dowager was far superior to the Earl of Bute; in whatever degree of favour he stood with her, he did not suggest, but he received, her opinions and her directions. The late Marquis of Bute told me, that at the King’s accession, his father, the Earl of Bute, had no connexion beyond the pale of Leicester House [the late Prince of Wales’s residence]. He added, “I never lived with my father, nor did any of his children.” Could such a man be fit to be a minister?

The Princess Dowager of Wales was a woman of a very sound understanding, and was considered as such by all who had occasion to converse with her. But she had been educated in the Court of her father, the Duke of Saxe Gotha. . . . When the Princess of Wales came to the Court of St. James, she found the British Sovereign a very different character from that which she had seen at Saxe Gotha. She found him controlled by his Ministers, indulged in petty gratifications, but compelled to submit to their opinions on all important subjects. We cannot be surprised that she was disgusted at this; and it is well known that she ever impressed upon the King from his early years this lesson, “George, be King.”

In his History of the Life and Reign of George IV (1831), William Wallace cited Nicholls and repeated his analysis, but turned that quotation from the Princess Dowager into “George, be a king.”

George III indeed tried to influence the ministries that governed under him. But he also sincerely believed in the British constitutional notion of Parliament’s sovereignty. After Gen. Cornwallis’s defeat at Yorktown, he accepted the defeat of Lord North’s ministry—a major step away from monarchical supremacy.

“And what I say, you may depend is Fact.”

On 21 Nov 1765, the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter ran this item from Nova Scotia in a roundup of reports on protests against the Stamp Act:

At the late Exhibition of a Stamp man’s Effigies at Halifax, were the following Labels: On the Stamp-man’s Breast, was affixed his Confession, viz.

Behold me hanging on this cursed Tree,
Example to those who would Stamp men be.
It was for the Sake of Gain I took this Place;
The more the Shame, O pity my sad Case.
B—e was the Auther of this cursed Act,
And what I say, you may depend is Fact.
But alas! the Devil is too sly;
Instead of Gain has left me here to die.

Whosoever carries this away is an Enemy to his Country.

What greater Glory can this Country see
Than a Stamp-master hanging on a Tree.

On one Pocket the following. B—e’s Speech:

O mourn with me my poor and wretched State
I now repent; but alas! too late.
America I sought to overthrow,
By stamping them to Death, you all must know,
But Pitt o’erthrew my Schemes, did me confound,
And brought my favourite Stamp-Act to the Ground.

On the Stamp-man’s Right Arm, A.H.
On a Board Lord B——e with Satan dictating him.

The hanging effigies strung with poetic labels, the blame for the Earl of Bute and praise for William Pitt, the invocation of the devil—those were all elements of the standard anti-Stamp iconography established in Boston on 14 August.

The most distinctive detail about the Halifax effigy was the label with initials “A.H.” That pointed to Nova Scotia’s stamp agent, Archibald Hinshelwood.

Another deviation from the norm was that the Halifax protesters never got around to burning their effigy. It went up on 12 October, hung overnight, and, despite its warning label, was carried away by two gentlemen for disposal in the morning.

To assess Isaiah Thomas’s account of this demonstration, the most important detail is the date. Halifax’s protest took place two weeks before the Stamp Act was to take effect and eight weeks before Thomas issued his first issue of the Halifax Gazette with mourning bands. His actions as a young printer therefore could not have prompted the action.

TOMORROW: More games printers play.

“Happy Years to the Sons of LIBERTY”

Since there’s no better time to quote carrier verses about the Stamp Act than now, the sestercentennial of the period when that law remained a hot topic in North American politics, here’s another example.

This one comes from New York and is credited to a well known newspaper seller there—Lawrence Sweeny, not a young apprentice but a grown man from Ireland.

New Year’s
ODE
For the YEAR 1766,
Being actually dictated,
BY
LAWRENCE SWINNEY,
Carrier of News, Enemy to Stamps, a Friend to the Constitution, and an Englishman every Inch.

I AM against the Stamp Act;
If it takes Place, I’m ruined for ever.
C———’s Coach and J———’s House!
Lord Colvil, General Murray!
I’m in Debt to the Doctors,
And never a Farthing to pay.
The Weather is severely cold.
I have the Rheumatism in my Leg,
And but little Hay for my little Horse,
And if Famine should stamp him to Death,
More than half my Fortune in gone!
What shall I say for the Boys of New-York?
Happy Years to the Sons of LIBERTY.

Ding Dong.
Ding Dong.
Long live the KING,
The KING live long.
But the DEVIL may Shoot,
Wicked G————l and B——.

Well, that certainly has the sound of something someone might dictate, especially late at night in a tavern. But what’s it all about?

At the bottom “G————l and B———” are clearly George Grenville and Lord Bute, the prime minister who proposed the Stamp Act and his predecessor who didn’t but still got blamed for it all over North America.

“C———’s Coach” refers to Lt. Gov. Cadwallader Colden’s coach, fed to a bonfire during New York’s anti-Stamp Act protest on 1 Nov 1765. “J———’s House” refers to the house rented by Maj. Thomas James and torn apart by rioters that night.

“Lord Colvil” must be Adm. Lord Colville, the man in charge of the Royal Navy in North America at that time. He was based in Halifax, not New York, but as the new year began he was threatening to have the navy seize any ship trying to leave harbor without the correct papers.

“General Murray” was Gen. James Murray, governor of Quebec. He doesn’t seem to have had anything to do with the Stamp Act in New York. But his accommodation of the French Canadians—the vast majority of the people he governed—was making him unpopular with the English settlers up in Canada.

The names of Colville and Murray would have been especially resonant for Sweeny since they were both commanders during the recent Seven Years’ War. According to an article in the Magazine of American History in 1877, the news carrier became known as “Bloody News” Sweeny for his habit of shouting out that phrase to sell newspapers during the war.

Finally, Sweeny is studied today as an early example of Irish-American humor and pride. For example, the American Antiquarian Society has featured the New Year’s verse he distributed in 1769, which is proudly and loudly Irish. That makes the 1766 handbill’s phrase “an Englishman every Inch” somewhat problematic. I take that as Sweeny’s claim to all the rights of Englishmen, including not having a Stamp Tax foisted upon you (even though by that year Englishmen had been paying a Stamp Tax for decades).

TOMORROW: Sweeny against the Stamp Act.

Portsmouth’s Anti-Stamp Protest

As I related yesterday, the Stamp Act administrator for New Hampshire, George Meserve, resigned his post immediately after he arrived in Boston on 10 Sept 1765 and realized how unpopular it would make him. But it took time for that news to reach Portsmouth.

Therefore, exactly 250 years ago on 12 September the people of that town hanged and burned Merserve in effigy. That was just what one did with stamp agents that fall.

I’ve previously quoted from Charles W. Brewster’s description of that event in Rambles About Portsmouth (1859), but a look at the New-Hampshire Gazette for 13 Sept 1765 shows me that account isn’t complete or accurate. (Likewise, the image above dates from the nineteenth century, alas.)

So here’s the first report of what happened, datelined “PORTSMOUTH, Sept. 13”:

YESTERDAY Morning by Day-Light, was exhibited to public View, at the Haymarket of this Town, the EFFIGIES of a S—p M—r, the D—l, and a Boot between them—previous to which,——

On Wednesday [11 September], immediately after the Post came to Town and brought the News of the arrival of Capt. Daverson from London at Boston, a special Court for the Trial of a Person in an unpopular Office, was held here—

The Prisoner made his Appearance at the Bar by his virtual Representative---After being charg’d with the unnatural Crime of accepting a Promise of Reward from his Grandmother, for using his Endeavour to impoverish and starve his Mother and her Daughter, of whom she had conceiv’d a Jealousy of her Growth and suppos’d Riches---to which he plead, Not Guilty, and put himself on his Country for Trial; several Arguments were used in behalf of the Respondent, but the Evidence being so full, the Jury brought him in Guilty, without going off the Stand---

The Judges then sentenced the Prisoner to be carried from hence to the Place of Execution, and there to hang by the Neck till Dead; then his Remains to be taken down and burnt to Ashes, which was attended by the Grand Deceiver, who held this Label——

GEORGE my Son, you’re young in Station,
But yet may serve me in this Nation;
Seven Hundred Sterling may be lost;
Take this, ’twill amply pay your Cost—

Offering him an empty Purse.

On one Arm of the S—p M—r in Capitals were placed G. M. on the other S— M— Before him was his Answer;

My Heart misgives, ’tis not the Thing,
High in a Halter, thus to Swing—

Another Label from the D---l to B--e was,

Go on, bold B--te, compleat their Fall,
And hurl Destruction on them all.

His Answer,

I would, Great Sir, but ’tis a Notion,
To be thus hamper’d in Promotion.

On B--te was placed the St—p A--t, and over the A--t——

B–te and the Deel, believe it fact,
First bred, then hatch’d this cursed A--t.

On the Post which supported the whole, was wrote in large CAPITALS,

HERE ARE ACTUALLY AND VIRTUALLY REPRESENTED THE FIRST FOUNDERS AND FIRST INTENDED EXECUTOR OF THE EXECRABLE S—p A—T. Let no one on his Peril endeavour to remove them from this justly deserved, Exalted STATION.

N.B. It was remark’d, that about Nine o’Clock Yesterday Morning, the Devil attempted to quit the Place assign’d him, and had like to have made his Escape, but was by the Dexterity of his Enemies made secure again.

Last Evening the above Effigies were consumed in the Presence of some Thousands of Spectators, on a Hill near the Town, amidst the loud Acclamations of all present; a large Bonfire having been prepared for that Purpose. The whole was conducted with the greatest Order that could be expected on such an Occasion.

What was all that about a “Grandmother”? My best guess is that that’s connected with the many references to the Earl of Bute, George III’s first Prime Minister, who was Scottish. Was Scotland (the grandmother) seeking to impoverish Britain (the mother) and America (the daughter) through the Stamp Act? Bute had actually been out of power for years when the law passed, but Americans continued to blame him as a secret corruptor of the king right up until the war.

TOMORROW: Meanwhile, in New York.

Stamp Act Approved by King, Leading to a Change of Government

On 22 Mar 1765, the Stamp Act for North America received the royal sign-off necessary before becoming law. However, George III never approved the bill. He approved of it, it’s clear, but in March 1765 when the bill reached that stage he was ill and confined to his room. Therefore, a special royal commission approved the Stamp Act for the king.

That process led to the fall of George Grenville’s ministry—but not because the Stamp Act kicked up so much opposition in America, much as we might like to believe that. Grenville was replaced before those protests became widespread.

Instead, this is how Edward Baines described the situation in his History of the Reign of George III (1820):

This event impressed upon his majesty’s mind the propriety of appointing some individual, who might, in case of the royal demise, exercise the functions of royalty during the minority of the Prince of Wales. The troubles in which the country had been involved by regencies obnoxious to the parliament and the nation, induced the king to desire parliamentary sanction to his appointment; and for the attainment of this object he went to the house of peers on his recovery, and recommended the two houses to pass a bill, enabling him to vest the regency in the hands of some one personage, from any number which parliament might nominate, with a council composed of individuals, whose relationship, offices, or rank might render them fit advisers to the regent.

The house of peers accordingly passed a bill, empowering his majesty to appoint as regent, the queen, or any member of the royal family, by which was meant only the descendants of George II. usually residing in Great Britain, till the Prince of Wales attained the age of eighteen years. The council whom they appointed was composed of the Dukes of York and Gloucester, his majesty’s brothers; the Duke of Cumberland, his uncle; Princes Henry Frederick and Frederick William, his youngest brothers; and the chief officers of state tor the time being.

By these provisions, the Princess of Wales, his majesty’s mother, was excluded from the number of those who might be appointed regent, as well as from the council.

In some quarters, whispers held that the king’s mother [shown above] was already guiding him, on her own and through his former tutor and first choice for chief minister, the Earl of Bute. Some folks even suggested that the Princess of Wales and Bute had been having an affair.

After the 1763 Treaty of Paris, Bute’s opponents had complained that he was too lenient on France and Spain. Bute had resigned, to the king’s dismay, and his deputy Grenville took over. Bute and Grenville had basically the same policies, but the king never liked his new prime minister personally.

Back to Baines on the regency bill and the Princess of Wales:

In the house of commons,…Lord Bute’s influence was sufficient to procure her nomination as one of the personages eligible for the regency; but this compliment was paid with so indifferent a grace, that it was not proposed to add her name to the list of the council, and the bill, with its amendment, being returned to the lords, was agreed to and passed.

The conduct of ministers on this occasion was considered by the Princess of Wales as a studied insult towards herself; and the downfall of the administration, which had been long anticipated, became now no longer doubtful.

Here’s the text of the final bill. One lesson from this episode seems to be that if you’re worried about the king’s mother having too much power, you’d better make sure you can cut her off, or else she’ll take you down.

In July, George III offered the prime minister’s job to the Marquess of Rockingham, heretofore the leader of the opposition in the House of Lords. I guess the king figured if he wasn’t going to get along with the chief minister, it might as well be about politics instead of personalities.

That led to five years of Whig reformers sharing power in London. North Americans expected the London government to be a lot more friendly to them, and Rockingham did repeal the Stamp Act. But he and his successors saw the same needs as Grenville to maintain Parliament’s sovereignty and raise money from the colonies.

The Original “Wicked Statesman”

A week ago I shared this picture, engraved by Paul Revere for Isaiah Thomas’s 1774 almanac. It shows a “Wicked Statesman” being tormented by Death and a Devil. Under his left arm is a £1,500 salary—what Gov. Thomas Hutchinson was accepting from the tea tax. That engraving is part of the American Antiquarian Society’s online catalogue of all its engravings connected with Revere.

In a comment E. J. Witek wrote that Revere based this picture on a British original titled “The Minister in Surprize.” Indeed, Revere was an excellent silversmith but not a talented draftsman, and he based almost all his engravings on someone else’s work. In some cases, he collaborated with a local artist like Christian Remick. In others, he copied without permission, as in his scene of the Boston Massacre cribbed from Henry Pelham. Often Revere based his engravings on British originals.

In this case, I think the original isn’t “The Minister in Surprize” but the likely source of both: “The wicked Statesman, or The Traitor to his Country, at the hour of Death.” That’s the same title as Revere’s picture, and it has the figures of Death and the Devil while the “Minister in Surprize” has only the Devil.

The original “Wicked Statesman” appeared in the Oxford Magazine in August 1772. It’s an attack on the “Earl of ———” for “Selling England to the French.” At his feet the earl has books labeled Art of Bribery and Machiavel.

This might have been aimed at the Earl of Bute, though by that year he’d been out of politics for nearly a decade; his enemies did accuse him of bribery, affairs with the king’s mother, and scheming to debase Britain under some Catholic power. However, they also disliked the fact that he was a Scotsman and usually showed him in a kilt or other ethnic clothing, which is not seen here.

“The Minister in Surprize” simplified that picture, removing Death and, alas, the crocodile-demon at lower right. It also turned the cartoon into a comment on American policy. The sign held up by that image’s Devil reads “The American Resolves are a Devil of a Dose.” The minister’s papers say ”New Members” and “Civil List in Arrears” while the books below are American Constitution and List of Pensioners. Overall, I think that’s meant to suggest the surprised minister has been trampling American rights to bring in more money to pay off pensioners, civil servants, and Members of Parliament.

Both the “Minister in Surprize” and Revere’s “Wicked Statesman” are reversed left to right from the original “Wicked Statesman.” That’s because prints are mirror images of their engravings, and if you had a print it was easiest to copy it directly onto a sheet of copper and then produce prints that flipped the original around. (It’s also possible that “The Minister in Surprize” came first, a second British artist added figures and details while reversing the scene to create the first “Wicked Statesman,” and Revere copied that derivative to create his own “Wicked Statesman,” reversing it again.)

“A speaking Egg they substitute”

As I quoted yesterday, a parodic item in the Freeman’s Journal of Portsmouth on 28 Jan 1777 stated that the following lines were discovered on a marble rock by a highly symbolic hermit. They were an answer to the “prophetic Egg” found in Plymouth around that time, warning that Gen. William Howe would conquer America.

——Britannia– sinks beneath her Crimes,
She dies——she——dies——Let Empire rise,
And Freedom cheer the Western Skies.

When every art and menace fails,
And Tory lies and Tory tales,
Are universally abhor’d,
They now pretend to fear the Lord.
Instead of virtue, a long face;
Instead of piety, grimace;
Pretend strange revelation giv’n,
And intimation sent from Heav’n.

To carry on the schemes of Bute,
A speaking Egg they substitute,
A strange Phænomenon indeed,
The stratagem must sure succeed;
And every mortal die with fear,
When they the sad prediction hear.

The Egg was laid without the Tent
Ergo it was from Heav’n sent;
The Egg was found within a barn,
Ergo from it we surely learn,
When Eggs can speak what Fools indite,
And Hens can talk as well as write,
When Crocodiles shed honest tears,
And truth with Hypocrites appears;
When every man becomes a knave,
And feels the spirit of the Slave;
And when veracity again,
Shall in a Tory's bosom reign;
When vice is virtue, darkness light,
And Freemen are afraid to fight;
When they forget to play the men,
And with the spirit of a hen,
Desert the just, the sacred cause,
And op’ning Heaven smiles applause;
On such a bloody barbarous foe,
Then I’ll be conquered by a Howe.

AMERICA.

“Bute” means the third Earl of Bute, tutor to George III and prime minister for less than a year in the early 1760s. American Patriots continued to invoke him as a villain because he was Scottish, because he was a Tory in British politics, and because his name was easy to rhyme.

Frank Moore reprinted this poem (without citing a source) in his Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution in 1855. More people probably saw it in that book than in the original newspaper.

TOMORROW: How to inscribe a message on an egg.

Lord Bute, Meserve, and the Devil

Thursday I quoted from the Rev. Jeremy Belknap’s account of the Stamp Act protests in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Here’s a more lively account from Charles Warren Brewster’s Rambles About Portsmouth, published in 1859.

The London government appointed George Meserve, who was in England at the time, as stamp agent for New Hampshire. But he didn’t last long in office.

on arriving at Boston on the 6th of September, (about seven weeks before the law was to take effect), the excited state of the public feeling induced him to resign his office of stamp master.

His resignation was not known here [in Portsmouth]; so the indignant populace, on the night of the 11th of September, placed on the hill in front of the jail a triple effigy, representing Lord Bute, who was father of the bill, Meserve and the Devil. A board was extended from the mouth of the Devil to Meserve’s ear, on which was written:

George, my son, you are rich in station,
But I would have you serve this nation.

The effigies stood through the day, and in the evening they were carried about the town with much clamor, and then burnt.

Making effigies of two men and the Devil and throwing them in a bonfire at the end of the day was how Portsmouth, and other New England seaports, traditionally celebrated the 5th of November, Pope Night. I don’t know why folks almost always hung two effigies, but they did.

John Stuart, the third Earl of Bute, had been the tutor of George III, and served as First Minister in 1762-63. He brought the Seven Years’ War to a close, but lost favor with the British people and the king. Bute’s Tory politics made him an enemy to the Whigs, and his Scottish background made him an easy target. John Wilkes lambasted him with The North Briton, and John Horne accused him of having an affair with the king’s mother. American politicians blamed Bute for the Stamp Act of 1765 even though he had been out of office and favor for years when it passed.

Back to Portsmouth. As described yesterday, Meserve publicly repeated his resignation when he arrived home in the fall of 1765. But the controversy wasn’t over. With the new year, Meserve received his formal commission as stamp agent again. A committee of locals called on him. Brewster related the story this way:

He takes from his desk the commission he has just received, gives it up to them, and submits to the administration of an oath by Wiseman Claggett, that he would not directly or indirectly attempt to execute the office. The commission is taken—on the point of a sword it is elevated, and the procession moves down Vaughan and up King street, bearing the trophy, hailed by the shouts of the “sons of liberty.”

Carrying the commission around on a sword conveyed the symbolic message that the document was too foul to touch. Other processions of the time bore stamped paper at the end of long poles.

Lorenzo Sabine’s reference to American Loyalists added:

After the repeal of the [Stamp] Act, and on the arrival of Secretary [Henry Seymour] Conway’s circular in 1766, enclosing a resolution of Parliament to the effect that the Colonies should make recompence to such persons as had suffered injury or damage in consequence of their assisting to execute the Act, Meserve applied to the Assembly of New Hampshire for compensation, which application was referred to a committee, who made a report adverse to his claim, and it was dismissed.

Meserve ended up going with the British military to Halifax in 1776.