Part 3 (2/2)

III.

THE LAND OF CAKES.

TO A FRIEND BOUND FOR LONDON from Virginia in August 1765, John Hook, a Scottish merchant in Virginia, wished a swift arrival ”safe in the Land of Cakes...quite free from the noise and Impertinance of the Dd planters.” London was the greatest metropolis in Europe. Visitors from the Continent marveled at it almost as much as did provincials from the colonies. Struck by the city's ”immense Scale,” a Ma.s.sachusetts man wrote: ”whatever I have seen in my own Country, is all Miniature, yankee, puppet-shew.” Spreading out from both banks of a broad bend in the River Thames, London embraced new arrivals, making all but the most confident feel small. s.h.i.+pping rode in the river, moored so thickly by the quays near the Tower and elsewhere that a forest of masts seemed to surround the sprawling old fortress. Near the west base of the Tower, customs officers waited in the long hall of their colonnaded customhouse. Farther upriver, beyond London Bridge, recently repaired, a new bridge was under construction. from Virginia in August 1765, John Hook, a Scottish merchant in Virginia, wished a swift arrival ”safe in the Land of Cakes...quite free from the noise and Impertinance of the Dd planters.” London was the greatest metropolis in Europe. Visitors from the Continent marveled at it almost as much as did provincials from the colonies. Struck by the city's ”immense Scale,” a Ma.s.sachusetts man wrote: ”whatever I have seen in my own Country, is all Miniature, yankee, puppet-shew.” Spreading out from both banks of a broad bend in the River Thames, London embraced new arrivals, making all but the most confident feel small. s.h.i.+pping rode in the river, moored so thickly by the quays near the Tower and elsewhere that a forest of masts seemed to surround the sprawling old fortress. Near the west base of the Tower, customs officers waited in the long hall of their colonnaded customhouse. Farther upriver, beyond London Bridge, recently repaired, a new bridge was under construction.

For decades London had stunned newcomers, even longtime residents, with its damp, smoky darkness. The city knew windy, clear days and snowy winter days. But every place had some of those. London had stagnant fog and constant smoke rising from countless chimneys, wrapping buildings and streets in dense clouds and black grime. The city was busy and noisy. In broad thoroughfares lined with old churches and new public buildings in the Italian style, as in crooked streets and narrow lanes, coaches and wagons and carts moved quickly, threatening to run down the unwary. A Royal Navy officer walking along Thames Street behind the quays ”narrowly escaped being killed by a Dray-horse.” Newly laid sidewalks were crowded with busy pedestrians who jostled anyone in their hurry. The people not in a rush were maimed beggars, vagrants, peddlers, hawkers crying strange wares-old clothes, old books, old iron-”ragged and saucy Jacks and Jills.” Mountebanks played hurdy-gurdies and sold quack cures. Shop windows offered a profusion of gleaming goods to buy, or tempting food to eat. A pickpocket darted away from his victim. A prost.i.tute standing not far from St. Paul's Cathedral said to a pa.s.sing gentleman from the colonies: ”my Dear do you want any?” Much of London looked new. The Lord Mayor's Mansion House was only twenty years old. The rotunda of the Bank of England had just been finished. Vacant lots vanished under rows of symmetrical, connected, brick houses. Old houses were pulled down to make way for grand additions to already grand buildings. A German visitor wrote: ”Everything in the streets through which we pa.s.sed seemed dark even to blackness, but nevertheless magnificent.”

Several years before Samuel Gist reached London, his partner in the Dismal Swamp Company, Anthony Bacon, had established an office and a residence at Number 12, Copthall Court, on the west side of a narrow lane opening into Throgmorton Street, a short walk from the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange. Bacon and his wife, Elizabeth, wors.h.i.+pped at the Church of St. Bartholomew, which looked across Threadneedle Street at the back of the Exchange. To the church's side, across Bartholomew Lane, stood the Bank. The Bacons' only child, Anthony Richard Bacon, turned seven in 1765. His parents felt ”the tenderest affection” for him, and the boy seemed to be on the path to a rich inheritance.

Bacon had secured the interest of Sir Samuel Fludyer, member of Parliament and former lord mayor, a man said to be worth almost 1,000,000. The Duke of Newcastle thought Sir Samuel ”the most considerable trader in the City of London.” Bacon apparently owed his contract for s.h.i.+pping money for soldiers' wages in the West Indies to Sir Samuel's influence. Sir Samuel and his a.s.sociate, Adam Drummond, brought Bacon into their pet.i.tion to lease coal mines on Cape Breton Island. In 1764, Bacon also won other contracts: to s.h.i.+p provisions to the troops in the islands ceded by France; to lease s.h.i.+ps to the government for use there; to lease to the government slaves to work for British surveying parties. Bacon often traveled along Fleet Street and the Strand, pa.s.sing back and forth between Copthall Court and the offices of the Treasury in Whitehall.

Coming out of Copthall Court and turning left into Throgmorton Street, rather than toward the Bank, Bacon saw Drapers' Hall, the ornate expression of the power and prosperity of one of the wors.h.i.+pful companies whose leaders dominated the City. Elegant, wainscotted rooms behind columns joined by arches opened inward onto gravel walks and gardens.

Bacon, of course, more often turned right, toward the Bank and the Exchange. The Bank, built of stone ornamented funereally, enclosed a courtyard, the great hall, and offices. The building was safe and dark but not quiet. At midday the rotunda behind the vestibule filled with bulls and bears-noisy, rude brokers trading government securities. In the afternoon, men of business spent a few hours in the Exchange or, as they said, walked on 'Change. Behind the clock-tower and an imposing facade, a large quadrangle of upper rooms looked down on a courtyard lined with columns and oak benches. In the arcades, surrounded by advertising bills posted everywhere, men cl.u.s.tered with others trading to the same part of the world. Merchants concerned with Virginia walked in from Cornhill, turned left, and congregated in the southwest corner of 'Change. There they heard the latest news of sailings, prices, disasters, and opportunities. The regulars knew one another, estimated one another's credit, and closed agreements quickly. A Virginian setting out as a London merchant said: ”it is inconceivable what great strokes may be made here.” By walking on 'Change, retired s.h.i.+p captains still shared the excitement of voyages about to get under way to distant ports and of laden vessels just returned to moorings along the quays. News was the blood of the Exchange. Before entering, many men stopped at an always crowded shop. For a penny or a halfpenny one could quickly scan current newspapers. The Exchange, impressive in its proportions, presented outer walls black with grime, showing signs of decay. It needed cleaning and repair. Parliament in 1767 agreed to pay for the work.

A View of London and Westminster. Courtesy of the Henry E. Huntington Library Anthony Bacon's neighbors in Copthall Court, in Throgmorton Street, and in other courts nearby were merchants, insurance brokers and underwriters, directors of the Bank of England, and owners of stock in the East India Company. A visitor in search of a merchant in Copthall Court, not finding him in his office, of course waited for him on 'Change. The visitor might accompany the merchant, a proprietor, into the grand courtroom of East India House, not far east of the Exchange. There, surrounded by Corinthian columns, looking up at an allegorical bas-relief of Britannia seated on a globe receiving tribute from attendant female figures representing India, Asia, and Africa, the visitor observed the gathering of the proprietors-”the most riotous a.s.sembly I ever saw.”

South of the Exchange, across Cornhill, stood a group of low buildings, facing one another across irregular lanes. These structures had almost as much fame as the great edifices with fronts of Portland stone. They were the coffeehouses of 'Change Alley, especially Jonathan's and Garroway's. Their crowded, dark, paneled rooms with long tables and rows of booths were the London stock exchange, as well as places to eat, drink, smoke, read the papers, and trade news. Though the food might be overpriced and bad, as it was in the Exchange Coffeehouse, no man of business could ignore these establishments, lest he go bankrupt and ”waddle out of the Ally, a lame duck.” Since the days of the South Sea Bubble the words ”'Change Alley” had stood for high risk, sharp practice, and quick wealth or sudden ruin. A political economist wrote: ”The trade of the Alley consists too much in conspiring to pick the pockets of every body not in the temporary secret.” The secret might even be fiction, ”a mere 'Change Alley job.” But the volatile world of stockjobbers, usurers, and bill-kiters in the coffeehouses could not be divorced from the business under way in the long halls and colonnades nearby.

The London Docks. Courtesy of the Henry E. Huntington Library In the same year Bacon signed new contracts with the government he began to spend part of his time away from London's smoke, noise, and rush. He bought a manor, Higham Hill, about seven miles from the City. He built a country house from which he could look southwestward to London's spires or northward or eastward over broad stretches of forest or southeastward to a broad bend in the Thames. For an architect Bacon turned to William Newton, a hard-working young man who had studied in Italy and had received commissions from several gentlemen. He knew how to create a ”Room for State and Entertainment in Country House for a Gent. Gay Pleasing Rich Elegant Rural.”

The year after he bought Higham Hill, Bacon also built a house in Wales, across the River Taff from the village of Merthyr Tydfil, 26 miles north of Cardiff. The upper valley of the Taff lay among steep, rocky hills. But the broad vale in which Merthyr Tydfil stood was less rugged than the parish to the west, Ystradyfodwg. Across their northern horizon stretched a range of mountains. Before starting to build, Bacon had visited the valley, not for romantic landscapes but for coal and iron.

Iron had been smelted the modern way in the valley for more than ten years. The parish of Merthyr Tydfil, however, held ninety-three farms and only two or three blast furnaces. Residents of the village were mostly hedgers, ditchers, and farm laborers. Sheep wandered on the hillsides. In the summer, people met on market days at Twyn-y-waun, high above the valley. Anthony Bacon saw an opportunity to offer employment to those he called ”our industrious poor.”

In his enterprises Bacon almost always acted with one or more partners. For his mineral leases by the Taff he joined with a man from Whitehaven, the city of his youth, Dr. William Brownrigg, a physician and scientist who studied poisonous gases in coal mines. Brownrigg's brother, George, was the celebrated advocate of North Carolina peanut oil. His brother-in-law, Charles Wood, builder of furnaces and forges, moved to Merthyr Tydfil to serve as agent.

From Earl Talbot of Hensol and from Michael Richards, resident of Cardiff, Bacon and Brownrigg took leases of mineral rights in a tract about eight miles long and five miles wide in the parish of Merthyr Tydfil for ninety-nine years at an annual rent of 100, free of royalties. This gave them the right to extract coal and ironstone from the land occupied by the earl's tenants. The partners also leased lots at Cyfarthfa, just outside Merthyr Tydfil on the west bank of the Taff. There Wood built a blast furnace 60 feet high, and Bacon built his house nearby. He wished to see regular bursts of flame from the furnace and watch red-hot pigs of iron brought forth.

Bacon began to buy farmers' leases. Men paying the earl 3 or 4 per year for their farms received 100 from Bacon if they surrendered their land. The Cyfarthfa works quickly swallowed twenty leaseholds. Bacon offered employment at the furnace or in extracting coal carried to the furnace on horses and mules. Ironstone and coal lay near the surface and was dug by hand or scoured out by water. Where Charles Wood met resistance, he tore down a farmer's fence and pressed on with horses and carts. The arrival of Wood, as well as his master builder, his brickmaker, and others, led a Welshman to say of Merthyr Tydfil: ”that place is swarm by Englishmen since the Iron work came there.” Encountering rivalry from the recently established furnaces of the Plymouth Iron Works, Bacon bought out the owners and added those to his holdings. They acquired the name ”Bacon's Mineral Kingdom.”

He still spent most of his time in London. After George Grenville fell from power in July 1765, Bacon smoothly adapted to the new administration. During the summer he joined merchants meeting with Lord Dartmouth, new president of the Board of Trade. A long paper by Joseph Manesty, explaining the disturbances in America and a.n.a.lyzing colonial trade, was written for Dartmouth in Copthall Court. When Grenville heard that merchants had begun organizing to get Parliament to repeal the stamp tax, he expected Bacon to resist such ”Reflections upon the late ministry” and remain loyal to his original patron. But Bacon already had abandoned him.

Bacon retained his contracts to supply cash for the army payroll and to lease slaves to the government. He still had friends on the Board of Trade. Charles O'Hara, governor of Senegambia, learned this when he stopped Bacon's agent from delivering 250 slaves to a French vessel. Le Negrillon Le Negrillon was anch.o.r.ed in Senegal Roads to take slaves on board in violation of British law. After was anch.o.r.ed in Senegal Roads to take slaves on board in violation of British law. After Le Negrillon Le Negrillon sailed without these slaves, Bacon protested to the Board of Trade, declaring that British traders long had done as his agent was doing until O'Hara interfered. He said that he was losing money on his contract for the army. The board called on the governor to explain his conduct. O'Hara cited the law and estimated the loss to Britain by this trade at 200,000 per year. The board ignored his answer. sailed without these slaves, Bacon protested to the Board of Trade, declaring that British traders long had done as his agent was doing until O'Hara interfered. He said that he was losing money on his contract for the army. The board called on the governor to explain his conduct. O'Hara cited the law and estimated the loss to Britain by this trade at 200,000 per year. The board ignored his answer.

As Bacon's interests in the West Indies expanded, he thought that Anthony Bacon & Company should be represented there by one of the partners. At the beginning of August 1766 he sent Gilbert Francklyn to Antigua. From that island Francklyn could visit other islands, ”superintend” the leased slaves, and represent Bacon in dealings with army officers. Francklyn stayed in the West Indies for many years. He always defended slavery. He contended that slaves were treated comparatively well in the West Indies. ”No severities, there exercised,” he wrote, ”are equal to the cruelty of enticing poor people, by a small addition of wages, to work in lead, quick-silver, or other metals, or deleterious manufactories.”

Preparing to leave Virginia, Samuel Gist made sure that his interest in the Dismal Swamp Company received attention in his absence. He gave one-fourth of his share to David Jameson, a merchant in York Town. Acting with Gist's power of attorney, Jameson would share the profits. While Gist sailed for London, Jameson paid George Was.h.i.+ngton 25, the latest a.s.sessment on each share. The following spring he paid 50 to purchase a slave for the company.

Gist provided for his stepsons by making Joseph Smith guardian of his younger brother, John. By Gist's account, Joseph owed him almost 300. Nevertheless, Gist left him with inherited property, a mill Gist had sold him, a crop of tobacco already housed, and about 363 on John Smith's account. Gist was not abandoning his interests in Virginia. He still ordered purchases of land and transfer of slaves among his plantations, and he did not mean to leave his new store in Hanover idle.

Sarah Gist stayed in Hanover for a few months after her husband's departure. In the summer of 1766 she died. Mary and Elizabeth, teen-aged ”young Ladies,” sailed for London to live with their father.

Gist established his home and office on the east side, Number 25, in Savage Gardens, a short street opening at its southern end onto public grounds at the base of the Tower. A few doors south of him stood the offices of the diamond merchants Joseph, Samuel, and Solomon Gompertz, of Gompertz & Heyman. A short walk took Gist to the Customhouse or the quays. He lived less than a mile from the Exchange.

On Tower Hill, he was surrounded by people who made their livings from the coming and going of vessels and goods. Lightermen, watermen, coopers, tacklehouse porters, ticket porters-these men lived near their work. Carmen hauled three hogsheads of tobacco, a ton and a half of freight, in horse carts from the wharf up to a warehouse. Many brokers and merchants also found it convenient to live on Tower Hill. John Norton had returned to London in 1764 after twenty-one years in York Town representing Flowerdewe & Norton. He ran the firm, renaming it John Norton & Son, in Gould Square, which opened into Crutched Friars near Savage Gardens. Closer to the Thames, in Black Raven Court, off Seething Lane on the other side of the Navy Office from Savage Gardens, lived John Stewart, the great Virginia and West Indies merchant. He was best known for his contract with the government to transport felons to the colonies as indentured servants. A walk along Tower Street toward the Tower, a turn left and a walk in Mark Lane, or in Seething Lane, and a turn right to walk along Crutched Friars took one past dozens of merchants' offices and warehouses.

Arriving in Savage Gardens, Gist's daughters found their father living on the edge of ”a very mean neighbourhood.” Immediately behind Number 25 stood fourteen almshouses in which the Drapers' Company supported aged poor men and their wives. A few yards farther east, along the course of the old city wall fronting on the Minories, were shacks, carpenters' yards, vacant lots, and dunghills. Among them moved ”wh.o.r.es and thieves,” making the almost impa.s.sable area ”a terror to the neighbouring inhabitants.” Anyone walking on Tower Hill met many beggars. One seaman called them ”the lame, lazy and maimed.” Across the Minories, in Church Street, stood a charity home for ”decayed masters or pilots of s.h.i.+ps, their wives or widows.” A little farther east, in Prescot Street, a plain building devoted for the past seven years to charity had taken the name Magdalen House for the seclusion and reformation of underage ”penitent prost.i.tutes.” The garrets of the Minories, like those of Grub Street, held writers trying to live by their wits.

Samuel Gist and his daughters watched their neighborhood change. The open s.p.a.ces on Tower Hill still held beggars, coaches and chaises of the rich, a street preacher, and a ”foreign quack doctor” offering to heal ”the blind and the lame.” Nearby streets and buildings were soon remade. The Corporation of London gave orders to raze hovels, tear down more of the old wall, and widen the Minories. It commissioned its architect to design symmetrical four-story brick rows in imitation of the latest triumph at Bath. Gist approved. Even the penitent prost.i.tutes were going to move to a ”very elegant edifice” on the south bank of the Thames.

Within a year of arriving in London, Gist bought his first s.h.i.+p, a new vessel of 120 tons, with a crew of fourteen. He named her the Mary and Elizabeth Mary and Elizabeth. She sailed for the Chesapeake, bearing the kind of merchandise Gist long had sold in Hanover. Eight months later she sailed from York Town, laden with tobacco, iron, barrel staves, and hemp. Dr. Walker consigned to Gist casks of ginseng-the rare, sovereign specific for health and vigor. Gist thought it ”of indifferent Quality,” bringing a lower price. He admonished Walker, who roamed where the wild root grew: ”pick out the Large Spungy Roots.” Gist grew angry when told that some Virginians-”vile ingratefull people,” he called them-were accusing him of s.h.i.+pping inferior goods while also getting low prices for their tobacco. He saw malice at work: ”such Stories are propogated by my enemies.” He was willing to be magnanimous. He wrote, before buying another, bigger s.h.i.+p: ”that shall not make me less ready to serve them whenever I can, as I will be so much of a Christian on this Occasion as to do them good for evil.”

Sitting in his counting room next to the almshouse, Gist thought about debtors, people in Virginia who had not paid him. His attorney in Hanover, Peter Lyons, pursued in court debts as small as 1 12s. 1d. But hardly any remittances on old accounts came in, and too many current correspondents wanted too much credit. Gist grew more irritated: ”a man might as well have an Estate in the moon as money in Peoples hands who will not pay it.” He was already thinking about better ways to make profits. Of Virginians he said: ”I can do without them.”

Maintaining his consignment trade to Virginia, Gist added other interests. His trim little figure appeared not only in the Virginia Walk on 'Change but also on the other side of Exchange Alley in Lombard Street, in the crowded, smoky rooms of Lloyd's Coffee House. Another Tower Hill merchant trading to America, William Stead, was an underwriter of marine insurance there. As in all such establishments, stooped waiters served food and drink. More than others, Lloyd's filled in the afternoon with men calculating the fate of vessels at sea. The latest news of s.h.i.+ps all over the world was posted there. Open bags awaited letters for every port. Auctions of vessels were frequent, hectic, and brief, lasting only as long as the burning of an inch of candle. Anthony Bacon had bought the Two Sisters Two Sisters for a run to Africa and Maryland in that way, paying too much, some thought. And scores of men took their usual seats in Lloyd's, offering to sign their names to policies of insurance on vessels about to sail or already at sea. Samuel Gist joined them. for a run to Africa and Maryland in that way, paying too much, some thought. And scores of men took their usual seats in Lloyd's, offering to sign their names to policies of insurance on vessels about to sail or already at sea. Samuel Gist joined them.

Becoming an underwriter was easy. One signed the book at Lloyd's and paid a fee of two guineas per year. A man of modest means might prosper as an underwriter. When Gist reached London, John Julius Angerstein, at the age of thirty-one, had worked as a broker and underwriter for ten years and had begun a fortune. He later explained: ”I am as careful as I possibly can be.” Care was necessary because a man's promise to pay the portion of a policy he had subscribed, usually 100 or 200, in case of loss or damage was only as good as his own credit. To make much money, he had to sign dozens or scores of policies. A run of disasters at sea could bankrupt him. Premiums of 2 percent or 2 percent of the insured value of vessel and cargo for a single voyage tempted some men to write their names on too many policies, hoping against the odds for calm seas and prosperous voyages in every quarter. Angerstein spoke of them as ”men that I should not like to take.”

Owners of vessels and cargoes could insure most securely with one of the two chartered companies, London a.s.surance and Royal Exchange a.s.surance, which had a corporate liability to pay their losses. But they charged higher premiums; they demanded security for a policyholder's or a broker's ability to pay his premium; and they asked many more questions about vessels and voyages than did private underwriters. Most of the work of circulating among underwriters at Lloyd's, quickly negotiating premiums, and securing signatures on policies fell to brokers. They knew and were known by the men in the room. Extending credit to owners of vessels and cargoes, brokers enabled them to take out more and larger policies, increasing the volume of insurance transactions.

Many underwriters were also merchants, at once insurers and insured. Samuel Gist had come to agree with one of these merchant underwriters, James Bourdieu, who later wrote: ”a Man in business here, can make greater advantage of his Money than lending it at Interest in America.” That was what Gist's Virginia trade seemed to have become, he said. He began to appear at Lloyd's regularly. There the first rule of success was: ”an Underwriter ought always to attend and be in the way”-that is, in the way of getting policies and news. The more a man knew about vessels in the trade, captains commanding them, merchants and their business affairs, distant ports, and foreseeable risks, the better he could gauge where to insure, what to avoid, and how much to charge. He needed more information than he found in the annual Lloyd's Register Lloyd's Register and the semiweekly and the semiweekly Lloyd's List Lloyd's List. A cautious underwriter might stick to ”regular risks”-voyages from Britain to America and back or from Britain to a Continental port and back. The more venturous subscribed to ”cross risks,” insuring voyages among foreign ports and voyages to several ports. Even regular risks called on an underwriter for a command of myriad discrete details, a fast calculation when offered a policy, and an ability to spot ”Sea Gulls,” the men who came in only when they found themselves in ”stormy weather,” hoping to get unusually high risks insured. Success, a veteran said, came from ”long continued attention as an Underwriter.” Those who made fortunes in Lloyd's Coffee House did so by collecting more and more premiums, subscribing more and more policies. It was a good place for the self-made man: ”I should think that an Individual, who has nothing but his own head and his own ability and talent to forward his interest, would adhere as much to it as possible, his whole mind and time is given up to it.”

Among the crowd in the Coffee House each afternoon, George Hayley was known as ”a merchant of eminence, and one of the veteran 'dreadnought' Underwriters, always ready to engage in any risk at a very small premium.” Like Gist, he had started as a clerk and had made a fortunate marriage-in Hayley's case to John Wilkes's sister, Mary. The widow of a City merchant, she brought Hayley a fortune of 15,000. He rose to the head of the firm trading to America in which he had begun as a clerk. By the time Gist crossed his path, Hayley was rumored to have a capital of 100,000.

Among Gist's neighbors in Savage Gardens was Henry Chapman, son-in-law of George Hayley's ”intimate & close” friend, William Neate. Another regular at Lloyd's, Neate was best known in the linen and cloth trade. He exported chiefly to Pennsylvania, New York, and Canada. ”No one man in this City,” he wrote, ”understands the Trade better than myself or excells in so many articles.” From Neate, Gist could learn that even the most able merchant might suffer for lack of remittances from customers in the colonies.

After becoming an underwriter, Gist followed the examples of Hayley, Angerstein, and James Bourdieu. Bourdieu succeeded as an underwriter, and he kept an eye out for other investments, such as East India Company stock, sugar prices in Amsterdam, and arms for the French slave trade. He bought a country estate at the age of forty-six. Gist was just starting his career at Lloyd's in his early forties.

As Gist grew acquainted with his fellow underwriters, he could survey the room and review any number of stories telling how diverse men had come to Lloyd's: Samuel Chollet, once Bourdieu's clerk, now his partner; Robert Bogle, Sr., in the Virginia trade; Joshua Mendes da Costa, who subscribed policies in the Portuguese trade and others; William Devaynes, newly returned from the Gold Coast and soon to be a director of the East India Company; John Nutt, heavily involved in the Georgia and South Carolina trade; John Shoolbred, not yet thirty, like Angerstein a rapidly rising young man, cutting an ever bigger figure in the Canada trade and the African slave trade; a merchant in Mark Lane with Shoolbred, the policy broker Thomas Bell, not to be mistaken for Captain Thomas Bell, a merchant and insurance broker in Aldermanbury near St. Paul's, who ”had the Good Luck to be call'd Honest Thom Bell, in Distinction to another who frequented Loyds Coffee House.” Gist had brought himself within reach of the summit. He was a player in the most important marine insurance market in Europe, a market in which a man stood as high as his reputation for skill and for capital. The Coffee House invited the shrewd and the daring, not the fastidious. Decades later, a genteel young man arrived in London with thoughts of becoming an underwriter. He met James Bourdieu, whom some people found ”rather positive and peremptory,” as well as many of the men at Lloyd's who had come into prominence in Bourdieu's day. To the young man they seemed rough: ”the old ones here are high in mercantile Reputation, but neither their Persons or manners would strike you with much Respect.”

As Gist arrived in London, many merchant underwriters at Lloyd's, with merchants elsewhere in London and in other British ports, were talking about the stamp tax and colonists' reaction to it. George Grenville's experiment, they said, had come out a disaster. It had made the depression worse. Orders from the colonies had dropped steeply and remittances had dried up. Manufacturers had discharged workers. The transatlantic trade faced ”utter Ruin.” George Hayley, William Neate, Robert Bogle, John Nutt-in fact, almost everyone in the American trade-wished Parliament to repeal the tax. The ministry which had replaced Grenville's also disliked it and deplored its effects. The ministry sent ”Agents” to confer with merchants, who then concluded that they ought to press Parliament with pet.i.tions for repeal. The partners of the House of Hanbury ”spared no endeavrs” to make themselves ”instrumental” in this cause. Merchants were summoned to the bar of the House of Commons to testify about the law's consequences. Capel Hanbury and others darkly warned that Virginians might grow less tobacco and more hemp, turning their labor to manufacture of cordage in compet.i.tion with Britain. Grenville and his supporters called the colonists ”insolent Rebells.” Nevertheless, repeal pa.s.sed by a large majority on February 21, 1766. Anthony Bacon not only voted for repeal but also spoke in its favor during debate.

In the afternoon of Wednesday, April 23, Throgmorton Street was crowded with the carriages of merchants headed for Drapers' Hall. At its entrance the men stepped down, entered the courtyard, turned right, and climbed the grand staircase to enter the long, wainscotted common hall. It was set for dinner. Under full-length portraits of William III, George I, and George II, they celebrated repeal of the Stamp Act, applauding their leader, Barlow Trecothick. In Virginia, George Was.h.i.+ngton wrote to the Hanburys, thanking them for their part in winning repeal of an ”Act of Oppression.” William Nelson spent much of Friday, July 25, writing to various merchants in the City, congratulating them on their success in Parliament. Though Virginians and colonists throughout North America spoke of ”that unconst.i.tutional oppressive Stamp act,” the men dining in Drapers' Hall had not contended that the tax was unconst.i.tutional, only that it was inexpedient, the wrong policy. Parliament, in a Declaratory Act, stated its authority over the colonies. But after repeal of the stamp tax, George Grenville believed Parliament's authority ”is now manifestly destroy'd” and ”must be a.s.serted & establish'd.” Told that colonists would demonstrate universal joy and grat.i.tude, he replied that if the merchants and the colonists' other friends would ”do the same by Buckinghams.h.i.+re, and double tax themselves to take off our taxes, I will engage for my countrymen here that they shall express as universal joy and more grat.i.tude for the future.”

George Was.h.i.+ngton and Fielding Lewis visited the Dismal Swamp in April before attending a meeting of their company in Williamsburg. They saw more of the perimeter than they had seen for several years by riding toward Edenton and crossing into North Carolina to call on Marmaduke Norfleet, a planter in Perquimans County. Was.h.i.+ngton and Lewis bought some of his land lying along the road seven or eight miles south of the dividing line. The tract held a good house, kitchen, and barn surrounded by a little more than 1,000 acres. Part was well timbered. Part was ”exceeding rich and open meadow.” All, Was.h.i.+ngton believed, was ”capable of great improvement.” He and Lewis offered more than 1 per acre, which Norfleet accepted.

Returning to Virginia, Was.h.i.+ngton stopped in Norfolk, where s.h.i.+pwrights were building a schooner for him. He spent time with Robert Tucker. If the busy merchant looked more fretful than usual, he had good reason. His many debtors would not respond to his repeated requests for payments. In vain he traveled to court days to meet them. The more cargoes he s.h.i.+pped in vessels of London firms, the more he risked, and he had many creditors. For the past ten weeks Tucker had drawn bills of exchange on a London house, Hasenclever, Seton & Crofts, totaling more than 1,560 sterling. He apparently did not know that this firm was not an ordinary mercantile enterprise. Founded in 1763, it provided money and credit for Peter Hasenclever's wildly ambitious projects in New Jersey and New York. Spending far more than his partners' capital, Hasenclever promised to make a fortune for them with pig iron, potash, and hemp.

Was.h.i.+ngton reached Williamsburg on Friday, May 2. The Dismal Swamp Company met on Sat.u.r.day. John Was.h.i.+ngton had come up from Dismal Pla

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