George III – Not a Mistress in Sight, But a Prolific Parent

by Mike Rendell

The grandson of George II was twenty-two when he came to the throne. It is ironic that his reign coincided with an explosion in the trade of satirical prints. They mocked his avarice, they mocked his miserliness, they mocked his simple tastes, and his interest in agriculture, but the one thing they could not do was mock his family values and constancy to the woman who became his queen.

Not that this stopped a curious story emerging in 1770. This was to the effect that, as Prince of Wales, he had secretly married ‘a fair Quakeress’ by the name of Hannah Lightfoot on 17 April 1759, at Curzon Street Chapel, and that they had two children together.

In 1788 S.W. Fores published a caricature entitled The Fair Quaker of Cheltenham showing the young monarch addressing his ardour to a young lady under the shade of an overhanging tree. In the background, by way of being a complete anachronism, Queen Charlotte is spying on the couple. Not a shred of evidence supported this wild allegation, but ‘the story had legs’ to the extent that in the course of the next century various spurious claims were put forward. Futile applications were made through the courts, seeking to declare the children of Queen Charlotte illegitimate, on the basis that the King had married her bigamously. It shows the willingness of people to publish (and read) scandalous stories about the Royals. The idea that ‘truth should never get in the way of a good story’ is nothing new….

The legend of George Ill's attachment to the 'fair Quakeress' can be traced back to a paragraph in a newspaper from 1776, and it was not finally discredited until 1866. One rather suspects that the rumours started after King George had returned to Cheltenham at a time when he was suffering mentally, and perhaps he was overheard gabbling on about some imagined episode of his earlier life.

What appears to be the case is that George was faithful to Charlotte (and probably didn’t have the energy to be anything else, given that he gave her fifteen children). He had never met Charlotte until the occasion of their marriage on 8 September 1761. Mind you, she was not the first woman propelled in his direction. He had previously thought of marrying Lady Sarah Lennox, sister of the Duke of Richmond but Lord Bute managed to talk him out of the alliance, and she went off and married Sir William Bunbury. Her “disappointment” at failing to make it to the dizzy heights of Queen was lessened by the fact that, as she said, "Luckily for me, I did not love him, and only liked him." She was invited by the King to be one of his ten bridesmaids, which must have been a small consolation!

Whether he stayed faithful throughout his marriage to Charlotte I do not know, but certainly if there had been any whiff of scandal, the Press and in particular the caricaturists, would have surely alluded to it. After all, the King’s siblings were constantly in the news for their infidelities and peccadilloes, and no-one felt under any restraint in publicising the facts in great detail!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The story of George III and of the bedspring-busting antics of his entire family, is featured in Mike Rendell's book In Bed with the Georgians, Sex Scandal and Satire in the Eighteenth Century, published by Pen & Sword Books.

Amazon

Woodes Rogers - The Man Who Cleaned up the Piracy in the Caribbean

by Mike Rendell

I would like to look at a man who helped herald the end of what has been called the Golden Age of Piracy. A man of courage, a man of dedication, he had been born in Poole, on England’s South coast in 1679 before moving to Bristol in his teens.

The blue plaque outside his house

at 50 Queen Square Bristol

In every good cowboy film there have to be a number of bad guys in black hats – the desperadoes intent on destruction and mayhem – and there has to be at least one good guy wearing a white hat. He is the hero who lays down his life in pursuit of some noble dream or fine idea, or to save a damsel in distress. Well, in the history of piracy Woodes Rogers was the guy in the white hat, and the pirate hordes, holed up in their stronghold of the damned on the Bahamian island of New Providence, were very definitely the bad guys wearing black. Of course, as it was not Hollywood it was not as clear-cut as that, but the fact remains that Woodes Rogers devoted the best years of his life to eradicating a scourge which he saw as undermining the whole basis on which Britain had become great, that is to say, trade. He got precious little thanks for his efforts, ending up bankrupt and in prison, but had the satisfaction of knowing that he left the world, and in particular the Caribbean, a better place than when he found it.

William Hogarth's painting of Governor Woodes Rogers being presented
with a map of Nassau Harbour by his son

In 1718 it is estimated that there were at most 2000 pirates in the Caribbean. This increased to perhaps 2500 by 1722 but as piracy started to come under control, and as the pirates dispersed in the face of prolonged naval attrition, numbers dropped to perhaps 500 by 1724. By 1726 there were fewer than 200 pirates left.

Woodes Rogers must take much of the credit for implementing the anti-piracy movement in the area. He arrived in the Bahamas in 1718 as Governor, with an aura of success: he had already circumnavigated the world, becoming only the third Briton to do so. Not only that but he returned with both his ships intact and with many of his original crew. He had achieved wealth following his capture of the Spanish treasure ship Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación y Desengaño, and fame due to his association with the rescue of Alexander Selkirk (the inspiration for Defoe’s story of Robinson Crusoe) and the subsequent publication of the story of his voyage as A Cruising Voyage Round the World.

He was a sailor’s sailor, a man to be respected by the pirates based in the Bahamas. This was no pen-pusher, no stuffed shirt bureaucrat. Yet, when he first appeared off the harbour of New Providence island there was little sign of respect from the pirate Charles Vane. He had arrived in harbour shortly ahead of Rogers' small trans-Atlantic fleet, after having captured a French brigantine loaded with brandy, claret, sugar and indigo. Vane cheekily sent a message to Rogers saying that if Rogers allowed him to loot and keep the cargo from the captured prize, he would then accept the King’s pardon and retire from piracy. Rogers declined to respond but had to suffer the humiliation of being unable to enter the harbour and stop the looting. The tides and the shallows in the harbour favoured Vane, and having looted the captured brigantine, he set it adrift, in flames, in the direction of the support vessel Rose. The captain of the Rose was forced to cut his cables and head out to sea to avoid the flames, but not before Vane had raked the rigging with cannon shot. Rogers was not going to have an easy job in bringing law and order to the pirate’s den.

Rogers entered the harbour the following day (27 July 1718) disembarked his independent company of infantrymen, numbering one hundred, along with a hundred and thirty intrepid colonists. These were Protestants drawn from the Rhineland area of south-west Germany.

Rogers had the sense not to try and take on the whole world at the same time: he picked his time, and he picked his enemies off one by one.

First of all he took possession of the island’s dilapidated fort and appointed various key officials from the men he had brought with him: a Chief Justice, Judge of the Admiralty, Customs Collector, and so on. To these six newcomers he added another six from the existing inhabitants to constitute a representative council of twelve people.

Apart from the pirates he was confronted with multiple problems – the threat of invasion, economic stagnation, disease, and under-manning. New settlers had been avoiding the Bahamas because of the lawlessness, and the residents who were there were indolent, elderly or infirm. When the front of the fort collapsed, there were insufficient labourers to rebuild it. And when a mysterious disease struck the island, believed to be linked to the pile of rotting hides on the harbour foreshore, it led to widespread sickness among almost all of the newcomers, civilian and infantrymen alike. Many died.

Problems were compounded when Rogers was alerted to the fact that the newly appointed Governor of Cuba had been charged with the task of eradicating every single one of the Bahamian settlements. An invasion was imminent. The French were also rumoured to have cast a proprietorial eye on the Bahamas.

A paper-cut made by my ancestor Richard Hall in 1780

These belligerent threats were one of the reasons why the King’s Pardon had been proclaimed the previous year – Britain desperately needed experienced sailors to man its ships. King George had therefore issued a proclamation giving an amnesty to any pirate willing to surrender to the authorities and abandon piracy. These pirates were nothing if not experienced sailors – and of course chasing pirates tied up Royal Navy personnel and equipment playing ‘cat and mouse games’ when they could be better used safeguarding the colonists by defending them from attack. One of those who accepted the pardon was Benjamin Hornigold, and he was immediately employed by Rogers to go off and hunt down Vane, and any other pirates he came across and to bring them to face justice. Hornigold did not return for some time, and Rogers must have feared the worst i.e. that Hornigold had reneged on the terms of his pardon, or alternatively had been captured by Vane. When he did return, Hornigold brought not Vane but another pirate, Nicholas Woodall. He was clapped in irons ready to be sent back on the next ship for England to face trial.

When Hornigold returned having captured another ten pirates, Rogers felt that his position was strong enough to be able to hold their trial there and then, on the island. He convened the twelve-strong Court of Admiralty. One man was acquitted but the remaining nine were found guilty and sentenced to die on 12 December 1718. The hangings were to be carried out with a maximum show of strength, with all the militia called out to ensure that no attempt was made to free the convicted criminals. The scaffolding had been erected high up on the ramparts, facing the sea. The prisoners were all to be dispatched together, in a mass hanging which was expected to be watched by hundreds of the islanders, many of them pirates or former pirates.

Some of the accused were penitent and seemed resigned to their fate. Others saw it as an occasion to swagger and display coloured ribbons from their stockings. Some used the opportunity to address their former colleagues, and one of the condemned, Thomas Morris, commented as he climbed the gallows: ‘We have a good Governor, but a harsh one.’

It was widely anticipated that Rogers would pardon the pirates at the last moment, but this was not to be. One lad called George Rounsival was pardoned, but the rest were all executed in a very clear display of the Governor’s authority and determination.

Tough on one hand, Rogers could also be merciful: he extended the period in which pirates were allowed to surrender. The islanders responded to the threat of imminent invasion from Spain by labouring furiously to rebuild the island fortifications, and before long fifty guns could be brought to bear on any attackers. Upwards of 250 men could be called on to defend the island. In February 1720 a somewhat half-hearted attempt was made by Spanish forces from Cuba to land troops on New Providence, but the threat was repelled. By now Rogers was exhausted, mentally and also financially, for it became clear that he had been financing the defence works out of his own pocket. In the summer of 1721 he returned to England to face his creditors. He was adjudged bankrupt and thrown into prison, a shameful reward for a man who had devoted his energies so selflessly in the interest of the Crown.

Eventually his creditors took pity on Rogers and absolved him from his debts. This was no doubt helped by the fact that once again he was enjoying the status of national hero, by virtue of the praise heaped on him in the recently published A General History of the Pyrates. The King awarded him a pension, backdated to 1721, and George II went further and appointed him as Governor for a second term. In 1728 Rogers returned to the islands and quickly realized that the defences again needed re-building. However, his proposal to levy a local tax to pay for the work was vetoed by the Assembly, and Rogers responded by suspending the Assembly. This precipitated a constitutional crisis which quickly left Rogers worn out and dispirited. His zeal for change and improvement had gone, and before long he headed for Charles Town to recover his health. Eventually he returned to Nassau and died on 15 July 1732. By then the world had moved on: the face of New Providence had changed, with new settlers and new industries. War with Spain had ended, the threat of invasion had disappeared – and the pirates had largely faded away, been pardoned, or had died of natural causes.

Today, there is a monument to Woodes Rogers outside the Hilton British Colonial Hotel in Nassau, but there are precious few other memorials to a rather remarkable man.

[This is an archive Editor's Choice post, first published on EHFA 1 November 2017]
~~~~~~~~~~

Mike Rendell's book, "In bed with the Georgians - Sex, Scandal & Satire" is published by Pen & Sword Books. He has also written "Trailblazing Women of the 18th Century" and and his "Trailblazing Georgians: The Unsung Men Who Helped Shape the Modern World" was published by Pen & Sword in January 2020.

Editors Weekly Round-up, April 8, 2018

by the EHFA Editors

Every week, contributors to English Historical Fiction Authors post on various aspects of British history. Enjoy this week's round-up!

Sutton Who? Who is buried at Sutton Hoo?

by Matthew Harffy

Robert Hood of Wakefield 

by Chris Thorndycroft

The delectable Fanny Murray – 

a courtesan who became the Toast of the Town

by Mike Rendell

The delectable Fanny Murray – a courtesan who became the Toast of the Town

by Mike Rendell

It will come as no surprise that I loved doing the research for my book 'In Bed with the Georgians - Sex, Scandal & Satire' - never more so than when I was putting together biographies of some of the leading courtesans of the 18th Century. They were the stars who lit up the demi-monde, achieving a fame which is impossible to imagine today. Think reality TV stars, think Footballers Wives - think of all the Hollywood leading ladies all merged into one. That was the unassailable popularity and fame enjoyed by the whores at the top of the tree - and one of the first to make it to the top was Fanny Murray. Fanny Murray had an unpromising start in life – she was born in Bath around 1729 to the wife of an itinerant musician called Rudman. Both parents were dead by the time she was twelve and she eked a living as a flower-seller on the streets of Bath near the Abbey and outside the Assembly Rooms.

She was an attractive young girl and unfortunately she caught the eye of a philanderer called Jack Spencer. He was the grandson of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough - and no doubt he saw the seduction of a twelve-year-old orphan as a bit of fun. He had his wicked way with her, and promptly left. His place was taken by a Captain in the army, but he too deserted her, leaving her at the mercy of all the unscrupulous rakes and pimps about town.

Enter a rather strange hero – none other than the ageing roué Beau Nash, the Master of Ceremonies at the Assembly Rooms. No matter that at sixty-six he was over fifty years her senior – he invited her to become his mistress and for a couple of years she was his devoted help-mate. He gave her polish and a taste for the good life – and I suspect that she gave him …… a big smile on his face.

She then moved up to London, securing a place in Harris’s List (a fascinating directory of whores operating in the area around Covent Garden). This described her as ”a new face… Perfectly sound in wind and limb. A fine Brown girl, rising nineteen next season. A good side-box piece, she will show well in the Flesh Market”.

She rocketed to fame and by the end of her teens was widely acknowledged as the ‘Toast of the Town’- so much so that she is widely credited as being the inspiration for Fanny Hill, the central character in John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure published in 1749.

Fanny-mania took hold – she was always in the news. Mezzotint prints of her portrait were bought by the thousands and became the first ‘pin-ups’ – literally, because they were pinned up on walls of countless homes.They represented the first time fashion prints had been produced. The courtesans were, after all, the height of fashion, and what Fanny wore one day – a special hat, a gown, a different hair style – would quickly be copied by all the fashionable ladies. Men would cut out her likeness and insert it between the outer and inner layers of their pocket watch so that they too could ‘have a piece’ of a woman who was utterly unattainable to all except the very, very rich.

Fanny became the mistress of John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich and he introduced her to other members of the Hellfire Club, which met at Medmenham Abbey. Here Fanny would take part in orgies in her capacity as a ‘nun’, which was the term given to females attending the club.

Aged 27 she had run up immense debts and was in dire straits. Her youthful good looks were fading, her creditors were pushing for payment, and her gallants deserted her in her hour of need. She was carted off to the sponging house (a temporary holding place for debtors) and her inevitable downward spiral into poverty and degradation must have been staring her in the face.

But fortune favours the brave, and she decided to pen a letter to the son of the man who had first debauched her. The young Mr Spencer was exceedingly honourable and generous, settling an annuity of £200 on Fanny. He also did her the great favour of introducing her to a friend of his, an actor called David Ross. The two fell in love, and to the amazement of everyone, got married. Fanny really had turned over a new leaf. She led a blameless married life for twenty years before dying at the age of 49.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mike Rendell has authored several books, including In Bed with the Georgians, on Amazon, and Trailblazing Women of the Georgian Era: The Eighteenth-Century Struggle for Female Success in a Man's World, also on Amazon. Both books are also available from Pen & Sword Books.

Website: http://mikerendell.com
Blog: http://mikerendell.com/blog
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GeorgianGent

Editors Weekly Round-up, November 5, 2017

by the EHFA Editors

Enjoy this week's round up of posts from the blog.

The Reformation: Henry & Luther

by Samantha Wilcoxson

Woodes Rogers - the man who cleaned up the piracy in the Caribbean

by Mike Rendell

History Revealed: The Welsh Highland Railway

by Annie Whitehead

Editors' Weekly Round-Up, May 7, 2017

by the EHFA Editors

This week, EHFA featured a trio of excellent articles.

MayDay, MayDay, Mayday!

by Mike Rendell

(from the archives)

The Infamous Countess of Carlisle

by Cryssa Bazos

Who was Robert Catesby? 
A look at the real Man Behind the Mask
by Linda Root
(from the archives)

Editors' Weekly Round-up August 14th

by the EHFA Editors

Enjoy this week's wrap up of posts on the blog:

When the Duke wasn't a Duke

by Lindsay Downs

The Queen's Ass ... or how the donkey earned its stripes!

by Mike Rendell

Castles, Fortified Houses and Family Homes ~
a Distinction Without a Difference

by Linda Root

Games of Courtship

by Maria Grace

Adeliza of Louvain, Lady of the English:
A Forgotten Queen

by Elizabeth Chadwick

The Wolf and the Lamb -Wulfhere of Mercia and Ermenilda of Kent
by Jayne Castel

This week we are also offering a giveaway - Jeanna Ellsworth is offering two e-book copies of her novel Hope for Fitzwilliam. This giveaway closes midnight Sunday Pacific Daylight Time:

Hope for Fitzwilliam
by Jeanna Ellsworth

The EHFA Editorial Team are: Cryssa Bazos, Anna Belfrage, Debra Brown, Charlene Newcomb,  Annie Whitehead.

The Maypole and The Elephant - Mistresses of George I

by Mike Rendell

I find the stories of the mistresses of the Hanoverian Kings fascinating. The love-life of George I was a case in point, and I would like to share a few facts about the King, his Queen, and two of his mistresses known to the British public as The Elephant and The Maypole.

George 1st, c.1714 
painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller

When George had married his cousin Sophia Dorothea of Celle in 1682 he was twenty-two and she was sixteen. It was not exactly a love-match – she referred to him as “pig-snout” and begged not to be forced to go through with the marriage. She fainted when she was first introduced to him. For his part, George was equally horrified, largely because he felt insulted by the fact that his bride was of illegitimate birth (although her parents did eventually marry each other). For some strange reason George’s taste in women did not extend to this vivacious, good-looking young girl with a stunning figure. It was rumoured that his preference was for a somewhat short and portly paramour - another Sophia (Sophia Charlotte von Kielmannsegg). She was the married daughter of his father’s mistress, the Countess Platten. The Countess was renowned for being particularly generous with her favours and there is no certainty as to which of her many lovers fathered Sophia, but the public were convinced that Sophia and George shared the same father. The relationship, if true, meant that George was having an incestuous relationship with his half-sibling.…

George's wife
Sophia Dorothea of Celle

George’s marriage was arranged by the two prospective mothers-in-law purely for financial and dynastic reasons – George’s mother was the Duchess Sophia of Hanover, and she was keen to get her hands on the very substantial dowry on offer, payable in annual instalments. As the duchess wrote to her niece:

One hundred thousand thalers a year is a goodly sum to pocket, without speaking of a pretty wife, who will find a match in my son George Louis, the most pig-headed, stubborn boy who ever lived, who has round his brains such a thick crust that I defy any man or woman ever to discover what is in them. He does not care much for the match itself, but one hundred thousand thalers a year have tempted him as they would have tempted anybody else.

The marriage was doomed. George treated his new bride with contempt, humiliated her in public, and was constantly arguing. But despite his ‘extra-curricular activities’ he managed to sire a son and a daughter by Sophia: George Augustus, born 1683, who went on to become King George II of Great Britain; and Sophia Dorothea, born 1686, later to become wife of King Frederick William I of Prussia, and mother of Frederick the Great. However, Sophia was more and more abandoned by George – she had done her duty by producing a male heir, and he fell back on his other amorous pursuits.

Faced with such a loveless environment, Sophia developed a friendship with a Swedish Count by the name of Philip Christoph von Königsmarck. The Count had a penchant for writing somewhat indiscreet letters to Sophia, and soon they became lovers. A huge number of particularly torrid letters fell into the wrong hands (in other words they were intercepted or stolen) and ended up with Sophia’s father-in-law, and by 1694 the affair had become extremely public knowledge. George was incandescent with rage and physically attacked his wife, attempting to strangle her before he was pulled off by male attendants. His parting shot was that he never wished to see her again – and he never did.

Sophia and the Swedish Count decided to elope, but their plans were intercepted. Having enjoyed one last tryst with his inamorata, the Count was ambushed and killed by members of the palace guard. Sophia was placed under house arrest and a ‘kangaroo court’ was held. It found her guilty of malicious desertion – a finding which had the dual advantage of ensuring that the dowry payments from her parents would be maintained, while avoiding those awkward questions about the paternity of her children which might have arisen if she had been publicly declared to have been an adulterer.

In December 1694 the marriage was dissolved. Her children were then aged eleven and eight. They were taken away from her, and she was banished to the Castle of Ahlden, never to see her offspring again. She remained, incarcerated at Ahlden, for thirty-three years until her death in 1726. When she lay dying with kidney failure she sent a letter to George, in which she predicted that he too would be dead within the year. Delivered posthumously, it cursed him from the grave, and a popular story has it that within a week of opening the letter, George was indeed dead.

The Maypole (although in this portrait
she doesn't look particularly scrawny!).

All that was in the future when George ascended the British throne in 1714, but it explains why, when he first set foot on English soil on 18 September 1714 George brought with him two women who quickly became known by the nick-names of ‘the Maypole’ and ‘the Elephant’. The ‘Maypole’ was his somewhat scrawny and wafer-thin maîtresse-en-titre – his official mistress, by whom he had three illegitimate children. They had met when she became a maid of honour to Sophia, the Electress of Hanover, in 1691.The ‘Elephant’ was his illegitimate half-sister Sophia von Kielmansegg, mentioned earlier. The royal family denied vehemently that George slept with Sophia, but as far as the British public were concerned both the Maypole and the Elephant were royal mistresses, and stories were rife about the goings-on in the Royal household.

The Elephant

As to the Elephant, Horace Walpole recalled "being terrified at her enormous figure… Two fierce black eyes, large and rolling beneath two lofty arched eyebrows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck that overflowed and was not distinguished from the lower part of her body, and no part restrained by stays; no wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress, and that the mob of London were highly diverted at the importation of so uncommon a seraglio! … indeed nothing could be grosser than the ribaldry that was vomited out in lampoons, libels, and every channel of abuse, against the sovereign and the new court, and chaunted even in their hearing about the public streets." Sophia was the complete opposite of the willowy Maypole, who Horace Walpole termed ‘long and emaciated.’

George was known to have a propensity for large women, or, as Lord Chesterfield put it: "No woman was amiss if she was but very willing, very fat and had great breasts"! That still leaves the question: whatever did George see in the Maypole?

The Maypole, more correctly styled Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenburg, was loathed by the English court. She was hated for being dull and stupid, for having appalling dress-sense, for being avaricious, and for condoning incest (i.e. because it was believed that she shared the King’s bed with his half-sister). She must have had something going for her though, since the King kept her as his mistress for almost forty years, and during that time she became an invaluable intermediary between the King and his Ministers. She grew rich on the sale of appointments, and incurred the wrath of Grub Street hacks who resented her meddling in British politics. As Robert Walpole remarked, she was "as much Queen of England as any ever was, … he [George I] did everything by her." Above all though, she and The Elephant were closely linked with the scandal of the stock market crash in 1720 known as The South Sea Bubble.

Both women appeared to have shared a common link – neither of them had enough money.

In the case of Melusine she had her ‘three nieces’ to bring up and educate – they were in fact her illegitimate children by George, but he never acknowledged them nor contributed significantly to the cost of their upbringing. In 1719 she had been given the title of Duchess of Kendal, and she needed to maintain appearances appropriate to her status.

Meanwhile Sophia was a widow bringing up five children – in a country where the cost of living was far higher than in her native Hanover, and where keeping up a lavish lifestyle, appropriate to what she saw as her entitlement, was extremely expensive.

Both women were happy to be the recipient of bribes in the form of South Sea Company stock to the value of fifteen thousand pounds. In addition, two of Melusine’s ‘nieces’ each received shares to the value of five thousand pounds.

The South Sea Company entered into a guarantee with Melusine and Sophia that £120 would be paid for every point the stock price rose above £154. In 1719 the South Sea company had sought permission to convert some thirty million pounds of the British National Debt. Up until that time government bonds were not readily trade-able because there were problems redeeming the bonds, which were often for very large amounts which could not be sub-divided. The South Sea Company hit upon a clever wheeze whereby they would convert these un-wieldy, untrade-able bonds into low-interest, readily trade-able bonds, and they set about bribing half the cabinet, including both Lord Stanhope and Lord Sunderland, to gain support for the scheme.

The Elephant and the Maypole were enthusiastic supporters of the proposal – small wonder since they had a vested interest in the success of the venture. Stock, which had stood at £128 in January 1720, was being valued at £550 when Parliament accepted the scheme in May. The price had climbed to £1000 by August, before the crash caused the stock to plummet to £150 by the end of September. Many wealthy families became impoverished overnight. It was rumoured that the King had received payments from the Company, having been made a Governor of it in 1718. In the aftermath of the crash it became apparent that vast bribes had been paid to prominent people at Court, and both Sophia and Melusine were named in the House of Lords during a debate on the subject of bribery and corruption. Indeed the pair of them were most fortunate that Robert Walpole, entrusted with responsibility for clearing up the mess, shielded both the King and his royal appurtenances from the risk of prosecution.

The South Sea Scheme by William Hogarth

Caricatures appeared, suggesting that the Duchess of Kendal had helped Robert Knight, the Treasurer of the South Sea Company, to escape abroad. More ridicule followed with the publication of packs of ‘Bubble’ playing cards, while a young William Hogarth produced his first satirical engraving ‘The South Sea Scheme’ in 1721.

The Elephant a.k.a. Sophia was created the Countess of Leinster in 1721, becoming the Countess of Darlington and Baroness Brentford a year later. She died in 1725 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Melusine, who went by the nick-name of ‘the Scarecrow’ in Germany and ‘the Goose’ in Scotland, died in 1743.

King George, then aged 65, had moved on to a new mistress – his first English one – a woman by the name of Anna Brett. Horace Walpole refers to her as being "very handsome, but dark enough by her eyes, complexion, and hair, for a Spanish beauty." The aristocracy was horrified to hear the rumour that she was to be elevated to the rank of Countess, since Mistress Brett (as she was derogatively called) was the daughter of a mere colonel with an infamous mother. No sooner had she started throwing her weight about at the Palace, making alterations and rubbing up the Maypole the wrong way, than news of the death of the King came through. She never did get her hands on a ducal coronet, and she disappeared from court and into obscurity.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The story of King George and his mistresses is mentioned in Mike's latest book, 100 Facts about the Georgians, available here. It will also feature as part of a series about royal shenanigans in his upcoming book In bed with the Georgians, Sex Scandal and Satire in the Eighteenth Century due to be published by Pen and Sword in 2016.

And what would Jane Austen's hero have packed for the weekend? Travel in the second half of the Eighteenth Century.

by Mike Rendell

Apparently Jane Austen wrote her first novel Love and Freindship (sic) in 1789 when she was 14. It is classed as part of her "Juvenilia" - one of 29 stories bound up into three manuscript books. So, if she had her hero pay a visit for the weekend, what would he have packed in his bags? Well, I can say what Richard Hall would pack for a weekend away, because he noted it in his diary in May 1784. (He was my great, great, great, great-grandfather.)



Some of the entries are hard to decipher but it appears to start off with shirts; first a couple of night shirts, then what appears to be two "neck shirts" including a "new fine plain" one. He packed two Ruffles plus "One fine Holland Ditto" as well as three pairs of silk stockings. One piece of gauze, three pairs worsted (stockings, presumably) went into the case along with a couple of night caps made of "linnen".

"W. shoes" may have referred to walking shoes but I cannot be sure and I have been unable to decipher the following line apart from seeing that it involved "one Blue Ditto and One Silk"

He needed a cloth coat and waistcoat (he called it "cloath") as well as a silk waistcoat and a white dining waistcoat. Silk breeches and five stocks were packed as well as "muffatees". Sadly I have no record showing what these were made from - they were fingerless gloves or wrist bands, often knitted but sometimes made of elasticated strips of leather, or even fancy ones made of peacock feathers. They remained popular for many years - even Beatrice Potter has Old Mrs. Rabbit earning her living by knitting rabbit-wool mittens and muffatees (~ The Tale of Benjamin Bunny).

One knitting site called Dancing with Wolves, states: "in the days before central heating, keeping warm in winter was a major challenge. We think we know about dressing in layers, but most of us don’t have to resort to wearing coats and hats and gloves indoors. But heavy layering was necessary. Working with your hands in mittens is clumsy at best. The solution? Wear muffatees.

"Muffatees are tube-like, fingerless mitts that cover wrist and hand up to the middle of the fingers, usually with an opening along the side for the thumb. The simplest, and possibly earliest form was comprised of the cuff or leg of a worn-out stocking, minus the foot. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, many pairs were sewn from warm cloth, or simply knitted of wool in plain or fancy patterns."

Several sites give patterns - and incidentally Richard often called them wrist bands (pronounced "risbans" according to the one of the entries in his diary, at the same time as remembering that "waistcoat" was pronounced "wescote").



They were thought to work on the basis of keeping the blood warm at the point where the pulse is felt at the wrist, but leaving the fingers completely unfettered.



For longer journeys Richard would then record how many items of luggage were needed. For a trip lasting a fortnight (travelling the 264 miles from Bourton on the Water to Weymouth and Lulworth Castle and back) he needed seven items, all of them charged separately by the coachman. And then as an afterthought Richard showed an eighth item - his steam kettle! This would have gone on board along with the Great Trunk, the blue box. the wainscot (i.e. wood-panelled) box, his green bag, his great coat, his shoes and his wig box.

The actual cost of travel was considerable. Richard shows a coach journey from Bourton to Evesham of 41 miles costing over one pound eleven shillings.



This would have been the equivalent of perhaps a hundred pounds (around 150 dollars) today. This included his dinner at four shillings and ten pence (equivalent to a buying power of perhaps $22 today); the waiter at sixpence (a couple of dollars); the horsler i.e. ostler a shilling (four dollars); and turnpikes one shilling and sixpence (six dollars). The actual coach fare came to a guinea (getting on for a hundred dollars nowadays), and these figures have to be seen in the light of farm labourers having to get by on ten shillings a week!



Why the turnpikes? Their frequency increased as a direct result of the Duke of Cumberland's campaign against the Jacobites in 1745/6 . Moving troops north to meet the rebels was handicapped by the dreadful state of the roads, and in the wake of the Duke's criticism, Parliament encouraged local communities to form Turnpike Trusts. In return for filling in potholes, and re-surfacing and maintaining the roads, each Trust was entitled to levy a toll. Within a couple of decades roads had improved dramatically - to the extent that some coach operators were able to run throughout the night. Think Georgian carriage lamps and think of a coach-and-four thundering through the darkness! The result was a dramatic decrease in journey times. The cost of travel in turn came down, as the operators reduced their overheads by cutting out the need to stay overnight, for instance on the journey between London and Bristol.



Mind you, there was still the risk of being ordered to "stand and deliver" by highwaymen. This picture shows the moment when a coach is hijacked.



But justice was as swift as it was lethal, and here we see the miscreant swinging from the gallows. I love the nonchalant behaviour of the horse-riders as they gossip nearby!

Incidentally all these cut-outs were made by my ancestor Richard Hall. He was born in 1729 and died in 1801 and I suspect that most of the cut-outs were made in the last twenty years of his life, possibly to entertain his young family. I am fortunate enough to have all his journals and papers, from diaries to accounts, and from shopping lists to inventories. These have enabled me to write a social history of England as seen through the eyes of my ancestor.

             

You can buy Mike's book The Journal of a Georgian Gentleman HERE.

Mike also blogs on aspects of Eighteenth Century life (on a more-or-less daily basis) at his blog, Georgian Gentleman.

The Lord Mayor's Show

by Mike Rendell

Tuesday 9th November, 1779 - My four-times-great grandfather Richard Hall noted "Saw the Lord Mayor's show by water. Wet in morn'g. Was fine at the time of the show, afternoon fair, not cold."

Perhaps I should start by explaining to anyone unfamiliar with London politics, but we have two lord mayors in town. First we have the office of Lord Mayor, dating back to 1189. He is elected each year by the Aldermen of the City, representatives of the old Livery Companies (successors to the Medieval Guilds which controlled apprenticeships in the Middle Ages). Then there is the Mayor of London, head of the Greater London Authority, a mayoralty which was only created in 2000 and is an altogether more political animal. Indeed there have only been two such mayors, and one would assume from this that to be the mayor you need to be either to the left of Hugo Chavez (as in Red Ken) or somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan (as in Bonkers Boris). Anything in between has proved to be unelectable. Contrast this with the Lord Mayor, who is often a quiet unassuming man who is recognized by his peers for the hard work he has put in to promoting his profession and his city; he chairs a lot of the meeting, opens schools, makes an inordinate number of speeches, but has little or no real power. And once a year he has his day int he spotlight - the Lord Mayor's Show. (The mayor of Greater London has no such pageantry or noble tradition - he is just a politician/showman jumping on bandwagons, and generally falling off again soon afterwards, in the name of running our great capital city).

Our story is with the Lord Mayor and 12th November 2011 is significant because it is the day of his Show - the day he travels from the City of London to Westminster, to present himself to the Lord Chief Justice. The background is fascinating.

London had a mayor way back in the reign of King John, although there wasn't a 'Lord Mayor' until the fifteenth century. The first mayors were appointed by in recognition of the support given by the good burghers of the City, the monarch granted them the privilege of electing their mayor - but on one condition: once a year the mayor had to present himself at Westminster to pledge allegiance to the Crown. And so it was that the new mayor, with his retinue of supporters from the various Livery Companies, made his way upriver from the City to Westminster. And for nearly 800 years each mayor has done the same.

Nowadays the Lord Mayor is met by the Lord Chief Justice at the Royal Courts of Justice rather than by the monarch in person, but for centuries it has been a pageant, with much finery on display, with tableaux and floats (indeed the name 'float' originated from the elaborate displays which were brought up-river on decorated barges). All the main Livery Companies are represented, and the last Show included some you may not have heard of - the Worshipful Company of Lorimers (makers of spurs, bridles, stirrups and metalwork for the harness of a horse) the Woolmen (around since 1180) and the Glovers (makers of gloves since well before 1349). Then there is the Worshipful Company of Fletchers (they make arrows, and suppor archery at all levels) and the Brodereres (celebrating their 450th anniversary as the ancient guild of embroiderers). Different livery companies are featured each year, and last year particular attention was due to the Worshipful Company of Paviors (makers of roads) since their leader, Michael Bear, was elected Lord Mayor in a Silent Ceremony at London's Guildhall in the autumn. By profession he is a civil engineer, and his year in office provided him with a platform to act as an ambassador for all UK-based financial and professional services. The appointment entails something like 700 speeches in the year addresssing some ten thousand people a month and travelling overseas for roughly three months out of twelve. Try doing that and maintaining your waistline!

Some time in the fifteenth century the Lord Mayor, then a draper called Joh Norman, decided to make at least part of the journey by boat, and the livery companies vied with each other for grand barges to accompany the procession. It became the 'done thing' to view proceedings from the water - hence Richard's reference to it in his diary. It would have been a grand spectacle, with music, singing and great displays. Then, as now, there would have been fireworks. No wonder Canaletto, who visited London on several occasions, painted no fewer than five views of the pageant. Seen from the water, here are two showing the activity on the River Thames on the day of the Show:

Just twenty or so years before Richard's diary entry a decision was made to use a formal carriage to enable the Lord Mayor to make the part of the journey which was not water-borne in style. An earlier mayor had fallen from his horse and broken a leg when being barracked by a woman variously described as a flower seller and a fishwife. Maybe she was both, but it was a serious case of lèse-majesté and a coach was accordingly hired each year to carry the Lord Mayor, led by four horses. Hogarth records the scene in his 1754 engraving entitled 'Industry and Idleness' Plate 12; The Industrious 'Prentice Lord-Mayor of London.

In time it was felt that a more flamboyant, purpose-built, carriage was called for. It was commissioned from Joseph Berry of Holborn, and cost £1065 in 1757. Each of the aldermen had to cough up some sixty pounds (nearly £5000 in today's money). It is a wonderful sight with its gilded and elaborately decorated equipage. The side panels were decorated by the Italian painter Cipriani, and the vehicle is drawn by six horses. When it is not in use it is displayed in the Museum of London.

The Lord Mayor's coach is older even than the Coronation coach and is a real masterpiece. My ancestor Richard Hall did a delightful paper cut-out of just such a 'Cinderella' coach.

In Richard's day all the apprentices would have been given the day off to follow the procession and to see the tableaux and wonder at the sheer glitter of it all. London was indeed a city of huge wealth, just as much as it was a place of grinding poverty. This was their chance to express their pride in the City. There would have been much carousing on the streets, alcohol would have been imbibed in immoderate quantities, the pickpockets would have had a field day, and the whores of London would have been totally exhausted by the end of the evening.

Historically the show was always held on 29 October each year. When the Gregorian Calendar was introduced in 1752 the effect was that we 'lost' 11 days and the Show was held eleven days later i.e. on 9 November. It stayed there until 1959 when it was moved to the second Saturday in November, which is how it came to be held on 12 November 2011.

For my ancestor Richard Hall, the Lord Mayor’s Show was a ‘must-see’ every November. But what comes across in his diaries, and I hope I have demonstrated this in the Journal of a Georgian Gentleman, is how much of everyday leisure time in the Eighteenth Century was spent seeing the sights. He would go and see the wax works, or the Tower of London, or the British Museum, or visit an art gallery or a play at Covent Garden, and faithfully set down both the event and the price of admission (and whether or not he bought macaroons!). The book shows what everyday life consisted of – free time as well as work – and it isn’t that much different from modern lives! Details of the book are at my website and I sometimes do extracts from it on my blogsite.

The Canaletto paintings were take from Canaletto: The Complete Works.

Currency in the Second Half of the 18th Century

by Mike Rendell

It is one of the most basic of everyday occurrences: you need to pay for something, using cash. But what coins would have been in the purse of your average hero or heroine in the second half of the 18th Century? If you want to be authentic it may help to look at what was, and was not, in circulation.

First, it is interesting to look at inflation during the period 1750 to 1800 to see what buying power money would have had. A useful instant conversion giving the ‘value’ of say, one hundred pounds, in different years is shown at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/results.asp#mid

£100 in 1750 would have the buying power of £8500 (as at 2005 values)

By 1780 this had been whittled down to £6285

By 1790 it had dropped to £5603

In 1800 (with the effect of the war with France firing up inflation) it was £3217.

This demonstrates that ‘the pound in your pocket’ had slumped in value by well over fifty per cent in half a century. Where were the coins made? At the Tower of London. It may seem odd to us but the public were actually allowed in to the Tower to see the Royal Mint in operation. This was the only place in use as an official Mint, all the earlier provincial mints having been abandoned. Hence my ancestor records “April 25 1771, went with General Whitmore, Mr and Mrs Snooke, Mr Gifford and my Wife to see the Mint at the Tower”.

Put to one side the question of bank notes: although they had been introduced by the Bank of England a century earlier before they were only used in high denominations. For instance, from 1725 onwards there were notes of 20, 25, 30 and upwards in multiples of ten pounds to a hundred pounds, and then in multiples of a hundred to five hundred pounds. Above that there was a note having a value of a thousand pounds. These were huge sums, and whereas the really wealthy might have access to these notes they were never in general use. Indeed the public wanted to ‘feel the value’ and expected their currency to equate to the inherent value of the metal their money was made from. For centuries there had been no problem: gold was worth twenty times its equivalent weight in silver and silver was worth 12 times that of humble copper. These relative values were reflected in the age-old division of the pound into twenty shillings, and the shilling into a dozen pennies. But these divisions came under huge strain with the inflationary pressures – particularly affecting the price of silver. A shortage of the precious metal marked the second half the century. The silver mines in the South West of England had become exhausted, the Seven Years War had cut off supplies from the continent, and the price of silver rocketed. The Royal Mint knew they could not reduce the size of the silver coins as they were already tiny – a silver penny weighed just half a gram and was only a few millimetres across. The public had never liked the idea of a debased coinage, so the Mint took the easy option: they didn’t make any silver coins, year after year after year!

During the period 1760 to 1800 it would therefore be quite wrong to refer to a ‘newly minted’ crown (5/-) or half-crown (2/6d) because they weren’t made at all. My ancestor specifically refers to holding on to ‘a Carolus’ (Latin for Charles) meaning a crown coin from the reign of Charles II. I still have the coin, and it is so worn that the portrait is barely discernible. And so it was with all the coins – those in circulation got older and more indistinct, making it easy for forgers to issue silvery metal blanks as counterfeits. No shillings were issued (other than a special batch designed for Ireland) apart from 1787 when coins to a face value of £50,000 were issued in shillings and sixpences. For the rest of the time – virtually no silver at all. Gold was coined fairly regularly, mostly ‘spade guineas’
having a face value of 21 shillings. These were frequently counterfeited, using brass gaming tokens of the identical size and similar design.

The spade guinea (above); and the worthless gaming token (below) with a completely impossible date of 1701 (George did not become king until 1760) and which might easily confuse the public - particularly if offered in change after dark or by candle-light in the gloom of a counting house at the back of the shop.

In the first half of George III’s reign there were no pound coins (twenty shillings) but a quarter guinea appeared for a year in 1762 and a third of a guinea coin (seven shillings) appeared in 1797. By then the Bank of England had introduced one- and two-pound notes, but it is worth remembering that a pound was still a lot of money. My ancestor records paying his barber Edward Slatter ‘for shaving this whole year two guineas’ (plus a shilling paid to the barber’s son as his Christmas Box). Shaving was of course a whole-of-head task (i.e. not just the face) to enable a wig to be worn comfortably. In 1797 one pound also represented six months school fees paid for educating both of his children, or the amount spent on soap in an entire year. It would cover his wine bill for six weeks or alternatively
a fortnight’s worth of meat from the butcher. Coal cost him about a pound a month (at between ten and fifteen shillings a ton delivered to his house). A pound was also what he paid by way of taxes for nearly six months (all that was to change in 1800 with the introduction of the hated Income Tax, when he was suddenly faced with a bill for £36 p.a.).

War with France resulted in the issue of paper notes, and these gradually became acceptable to the public, meaning that the Royal Mint were able to stop making gold guineas between 1797 and 1813. The smaller items of currency were however still left in desperately short supply.

To get round the silver shortage various alternatives were tried including over-stamping Spanish 8- reales coins with King George III’s head in the centre, using the goldsmiths’ hallmark. In monetary terms they were given the curious value of 4/9d. The Bank of England (as opposed to the Royal Mint) then issued dollars of five shillings between 1804 and 1811 along with a token currency of three
shillings, and its half (eighteen pence). None of these were particularly common.

The 8 reales silver coin of the king of Spain over-stamped in the centre with the head of George III. These coins were not much liked, giving rise to the comment ‘they may have the heads of two kings but they are not even worth a crown’.

Bank of England 5/- dollar

Copper coins were also far from plentiful in the early years of the reign of George III. Pennies and halfpennies were minted in the first half of the decade in the 1770s – and then nothing until 1797 with the introduction of the ‘Cartwheel’ coinage. These giants, containing respectively a penny and two-pence worth of copper, were unique in having the inscription impressed on to the surface as
opposed to being raised up. They demonstrate the power of the newly introduced steam-powered presses. Using pure copper, which is soft and easily worn, meant that whereas vast numbers of these coins were minted, comparatively few remain in really good condition. They cannot have been too popular with the public – they weigh one ounce and two ounces respectively, so carrying a stack of them would ruin the stitching in anyone’s purse!

This picture shows the two-pence piece. All of the cartwheel coins are dated 1797, regardless of the year of issue.

Instead, the public got used to using smaller tokens often issued by traders in a particular town or area, satisfying the local need for pennies, halfpennies and farthings. (As an aside, my ancestor diligently wrote down a reminder that it was proper to pronounce the word farthing as ‘fardun’). The problem with these tokens is that they were technically illegal (breaching the monopoly
granted to the Royal Mint by the Crown) and could often only be exchanged in the town of issue.

This is a rather fine example of a halfpenny token issued in Coventry

By way of an aside my ancestor’s diaries show that on Valentine’s Day every year he gave each child in the local school one penny (’98 Boys and Girls one penny each i.e. Eight shillings and two pence, plus a penny for the post boy’).

Things did not get back to a sensible footing until the whole coinage was overhauled in 1816. This coincided with the move of the Royal Mint from its old headquarters in the Tower of London to new and more spacious premises nearby, where mechanisation was more practicable. This involved the new steam presses supplied by Boulton and Watt. It was decided to allow silver and copper to be representative i.e. without equivalent intrinsic value, and from then on the coinage was based solely on the gold standard. Out went the 21 shilling guinea and in came the twenty shilling pound (using 22 carat gold) with its multiples in two and five pounds. Also in 1816 back came the silver crown and half crown. Back came the shilling and the sixpence, along with the smaller silver denominations (4d i.e. groat, 3d, 2d and 1d).

In conclusion: the issue of coins other than for higher values was a complete mess in the period 1760 to 1816. Partly this was caused by inflationary constraints, partly by the limited space available within the Tower of London to bring in new machinery. The result was chronic shortages, poor quality coins in circulation, and an increase in forgeries - even though counterfeiting carried the death penalty. The problems existed because we were wedded to a dual (i.e. both gold and silver)
standard and the problems went away ‘overnight’ in 1816 when the coinage was completely re-vamped. Prior to that date the public had to endure fifty years of confusion and inconvenience, as well as the financial loss caused whenever anyone unscrupulous or dishonest palmed off inferior foreign coins, forgeries, or blanks. It must have been a rotten time to be in business, and my ancestor’s diaries reflect this damaging uncertainty.

The purse of Richard Hall, who died in 1801, showing the comparative size of a silver penny and a copper two pence piece.



Mike Rendell is author of a book The Journal of a Georgian Gentleman, available on Amazon, based on the array of diaries, journals, accounts – even shopping lists – left by his 4xgreat grandfather Richard Hall. It tells the story of everyday life in the Eighteenth Century, seen through the eyes of his ancestor who had a haberdashery shop at Number One London Bridge. Details of the book appear on his website.

He also does a blog, three or four times a week, on all matters linked to the Georgian era.