The Launching of Roger Brook (6 page)

Those were the days!’ muttered old Sir Harry reminiscently. ‘’Twas in the same year that General Wolfe’s victory at Quebec secured Canada to us, and but two years earlier that Lord Clive had bested the French at Plassey. By ‘sixty-one both the Mogul Empire and the Americas were ours, and we had naught to fear from any man.’

‘The cause of our late disaster, Sir, is not far to seek,’ put in Mr. Gibbon. ‘Had not the King’s rebellious subjects in what they are now pleased to term the United States forced a war upon us and engaged our forces overseas, the French and their allies would not have dared once more to challenge our supremacy for another decade at least.’

‘Oh, come, Sir,’ cried Mr. Robbins. ‘The American war was a thing apart, and the Colonists had right on their side in their contention that they should not be subject to taxation without representation in our Parliament.’

‘That contention, Sir, was both illegal and impractical,’ boomed back Mr. Gibbon. ‘The time and distance separating the two continents would have made representation in our legislature of little value. Moreover, it is ancient practice that the distant Provinces of an Empire should in part bear the financial burden of their own defences. We had but recently preserved the New Englanders from falling under the tyranny of the French who, at that time, were dominant in Canada and a constant menace to them, so I count their refusal to accept that just liability as base ingratitude; an opinion which is shared by no less erudite and thoughtful men than Dr. Samuel Johnson and Mr. John Wesley.’

‘Yet, Lord Chatham, Mr. Burke, Mr. Fox and Mr. Walpole were all against you, Sir,’ said Sam Oviatt, ‘and the City of London so opposed to this taking up of arms against our kin that they refused to vote funds for the war.’

‘As for Mr. Wesley, Sir,’ said the Vicar truculently, ‘you can scarce expect those of us who are loyal to the Church
Established to attach much weight to the opinions of such a firebrand.’

‘On the contrary, Sir,’ hit back Mr. Gibbon acidly. ‘You and your brethren would do well to adapt yourselves to many of the precepts of that great preacher’s teaching unless you wish to lose what little credit is still left to you. In the past forty years his Methodism has gained such a legion of converts that unless you bestir yourselves the movement bids fair to deprive you all of your congregations.’

Seeing that tempers were rising Captain Brook intervened. ‘There is much to be said on both sides. The real tragedy lay in our Government’s failure to compose the quarrel in its early stages, as could so easily have been done.’

‘Aye,’ agreed Harry Darby, ‘and the blame for that lies with the King, whose wish to rule us as an autocratic monarch caused him to ignore all sager counsels and entrust the Government to a weakling like my Lord North, solely because he knew that he could make a catspaw of him.’

‘True enough!’ chimed in Captain Burrard. ‘The King’s crazy pig-headedness has been the root of all our troubles.’

Mr. Gibbon frowned. ‘Crazy pig-headedness, Sir, is a strange term to apply to one who has the courage of his convictions, when those convictions have the support of law, the undeniable rights of sovereignty and also form the opinion of the great majority of a people. The Colonists’ defiance of Parliament shocked the nation and by the election of ‘seventy-four it clearly confirmed the King in his policy.’

‘The King has a long purse and there are always a plenitude of pocket Boroughs for sale,’ laughed Captain Burrard.

‘Say what you will, Sir,’ retorted Mr. Gibbon. ‘Unlike the first two Georges, the King is by birth, education and inclination, an Englishman. Affairs of state are no longer subject to the corrupt and venal influence exercised by German harlots and from the inception of his reign King George III has ever placed what he considers to be the true interests of England before all else.’

‘Aye, the King’s well enough,’ nodded Captain Brook, ‘and ‘twas Lord North’s mismanagement that so embittered the Colonists. They would have been content with their early successes and glad enough to patch up the quarrel had
he not offered the negro slaves their freedom if they enlisted with us, and despatched Hessian troops to fight against our own flesh and blood.’

Sir Harry Burrard banged the table with his fist. ‘You’ve hit upon it, Chris! That was the crowning blunder of them all, and well do I remember the Great Commoner’s attack upon the Government at the time, when he thundered “You have ransacked every corner of Lower Saxony, but forty thousand German boors never can conquer ten times that number of British freemen.” And he was right.’

‘Yet, ‘twas Lord Chatham himself who two years later opposed the Duke of Richmond’s motion to withdraw all forces by sea and land from the revolted provinces,’ countered Mr. Gibbon.

‘I grant you that, Sir, and I well remember that occasion, too, since ‘twas my Lord Chatham’s dying speech and he collapsed but a half hour later. I was again in the Lords gallery at the time, and although it is all of five years ago I recall his words as well as if he’d spoke them yesterday. “Shall we,” he asked, “tarnish the lustre of this nation by an ignominious surrender of its rights and fairest possessions? Shall a people that fifteen years ago was the terror of the world now stoop so low as to tell its ancient, inveterate enemy—take all we have, only give us peace.” But remember, Sir, he spoke them in a very different case. The French were about to intervene on behalf of General Washington and the thought of a European conflict being added to our woes had caused something near to panic. Lord Chatham would have supported my Lord North in making any terms with the Americans, short of giving them their independence, since to do so at that juncture would only have laid us open to other so-called “positively last demands” by the French. How could he, to whose leadership we owed our splendid victories over them in the Seven Years’ War, refrain from rising, even from a bed of death, to protest against such ignominious folly?’

‘Yet his Grace of Richmond had wisdom on his side,’ argued Mr. Eddie. ‘The extension of the war in ‘seventy-eight compelled us to evacuate Philadelphia in order to protect New York and defend the Indies from the French; and our case became even worse when the Spaniards, too, came in against us in ‘seventy-nine.’

‘ ’Twas worse still in ‘eighty,’ added General Cleveland,
‘when our blockade had maddened the Russians, Swedes, Prussians, Danes and Austrians into a common policy of armed neutrality against us, and the Dutch added themselves to our active enemies.’

‘Nay, General,’ Captain Brook took him up quickly, ‘I pray you say nothing against the blockade. ’Tis England’s greatest weapon. With it we’ve many times brought the Continent to reason and under Providence will do so many times again.’

The old General grunted. ‘Let us pray then that should such a case arise we’ll have no major conflict raging overseas. Since, saving your presence, Captain, ‘twas bad naval strategy and naught else that lost us our fairest possessions in America.’

‘That I contest, Sir, and, saving yours, I count the Army more to blame. On no less than four occasions our Generals bungled badly. At the very outset of the war General Gage locked himself up in Boston for eleven months instead of engaging the Colonists before they could become organised. Then in ‘seventy-six, had they been active, Generals Howe and Cornwallis could have crushed Washington between them but they frittered away their opportunity. In both ‘seventy-seven and ‘eighty-one, had two large British forces not dallied but made their junction on the Hudson, as was intended, they could have cut off the North from the South and so still preserved the Southern Colonies to the Crown. Yet, as we know, their dilatoriness resulted, in the first case, in General Burgoyne being trapped and compelled to surrender at Saratoga and, in the second, in General Cornwallis laying down his arms at Yorktown, and with them our last hope of victory. Had we had a Commander of General Washington’s quality on our side I am convinced that the conflict would have ended very differently.’

‘I admit that there was some misdirection in the early stages,’ the General agreed, ‘but Cornwallis out-generalled and defeated Washington on numerous occasions; and you have ill-served your case by referring to the surrender that was forced upon him. He deployed his Army in the York-town peninsula for the sound purpose of being able readily to reinforce New York. Had the British Fleet not dallied in the Indies, no French battle squadron could have occupied Chesapeake Bay, and enabled Washington’s Army to
achieve a junction with General Lafayette by landing on the neck of the peninsula.’

The Fleet cannot be everywhere at once, Sir,’ protested the Captain.

‘No, Sir,’ the General rapped back, ‘but it should be at the right place at the right time; and its first duty in war is to protect the lines of communication of the Army.’

‘Would you have had us then let the French have the Indies for the taking and leave the shores of Britain unprotected? We had to contend with the fleets of no less than four enemy powers, remember, and in that year we both hammered the Dutch off the Dogger Bank and relieved General Elliot at Gibraltar.’

‘God forbid that I should impugn the Navy’s gallantry, Captain. I contend only that its strategy was ill-designed. Our Admirals followed a policy of dealing with local attacks as and when they occurred instead of seeking out the enemy fleets to destroy them, and the dispersion of our sea forces proved our undoing.’

‘I am with General Cleveland in that,’ declared Mr. Gibbon. ‘Our Army made no great showing, yet it would not have been reduced to asking for terms had not the Navy failed it at a critical time. Nevertheless our host’s excuse is valid, in that our preoccupation in Europe and particularly with Gibraltar, were given first place by the Government. It has been very truly said that “to save a rock we lost a continent”, but no blame for that can be laid to either service.’

Mr. Gibbon’s diplomatic summary saved the faces of both protagonists. The tension eased and the Captain laughed. ‘I am well content to leave it at that; and at least we can all agree that Lord Rodney’s victory at the Saints, by restoring our supremacy at sea, enabled us to make none too bad a peace.’

‘Indeed, without it, we would have been hard put to it to obtain terms at all,’ said Sam Oviatt. ‘As it is we have come off monstrous well. The loss of the Colonies is a thing apart, but giving up St. Lucia, Tobago and Goree to France, and Minorca and Florida to Spain, is little enough to pay for the consolidation of our position in Canada and India and all our other gains.’

‘For that a good share of thanks are due to Lord Shelburne’s fine diplomacy,’ remarked Sir Harry.

Captain Brook turned quickly to him. ‘Yet he was forced from office after only a few months, and when I was in London I heard it said that the Coalition is far from secure.’

‘Its fall at any time would not surprise me,’ Sir Harry answered. ‘The King is still determined to rule the roost. After twelve years of virtual dictatorship, through Lord North, he can hardly be resigned to allowing power to slip from his grasp; and, since the country demanded North’s dismissal the fleeting Ministries of the past seventeen months have been little more than experiments. The Marquess of Rockingham’s death last summer alone made way for Shelburne, whom the King neither liked or trusted, and he likes the Coalition even less. He shares the national disgust at his old minister having entered into this unnatural partnership with the man who has been his bitterest critic for so many years and will, I am convinced, have them both out of office as soon as a suitable pretext presents itself. His real problem is to find a man malleable to his own interest who will yet prove of sufficient stature to dominate the House. ’Tis reported that with this in mind he even offered young Billy Pitt the Treasury before reconciling himself to accepting Mr. Fox. That Pitt refused the offer is to his credit. At least he had the sense to see that the House would give short shrift to anyone so lacking in experience.’

‘I consider it more likely that it was not lack of self-confidence but astuteness that caused Pitt to reject office for a time,’ remarked Mr. Gibbon. ‘From all I have seen of him he shows exceptional promise. His grasp of business is at times uncanny for one of his years, his repartee is scathing and his oratory is superb.’

Sir Harry nodded. ‘He speaks monstrous well, I grant you, and in that he is my Lord Chatham’s son without a doubt. I recall his maiden speech when he first took his seat in the House at the age of twenty-one. One of our oldest members said of it “There was not a word or a gesture that one would have sought to correct” and Mr. Burke, seated nearby me remarked, “He is not a chip of the old block, but the old block itself.”’

Then, should we be forced to take up arms against the French, may he play as glorious a part as did his great father,’ said Captain Brook. ‘But come, gentlemen, ’tis time we joined the ladies.’

They had been sitting over their wine for the best part of
an hour and a half, so it was now close on half-past eight and dusk was falling. Squire Robbins and Harry Darby, who were a little unsteady on their pins, excused themselves, but the others trooped into Lady Marie’s cool green and white drawing-room, where the conversation took a lighter tone and local gossip was mingled with talk of charities and entertainments.

Soon after nine, Mrs. Sutherland declared for home, and her leaving was the signal for the breaking up of the party. The Sutherlands walked back across the meadow to their house up in the High Street, and the Vicar went with them, while old Ben, now flushed from his exertions as host these past two hours to a dozen visiting servants in the kitchen, summoned the carriages and horses of their masters. Invitations were poured upon the Brooks from all sides, then with a cheerful shouting of good-byes, their guests drove or rode away.

By a quarter to ten, father, mother and son were at last alone and reassembled in Lady Marie’s drawing-room.

‘It’s been a great homecoming, Chris,’ she smiled, ‘and you can see now how your friends have missed you.’

The Captain swayed slightly on his feet. He was not drunk but his long years at sea had left him out of training for such heavy drinking, and he had had a little more than he could carry comfortably. He was smiling broadly, and declared with a laugh: