Hall, and lasted five days. As a girl she had been married in a frolic
at night in a ruined church; but the Spiritual Court had decreed that
this was no proper marriage.
Regarding herself as free, she had married the Duke of Kingston,
who died and bequeathed his large fortune to her. At once those who
had expected to obtain the inheritance began to stir, and had the
unfortunate Duchess tried for bigamy. John Dunning was counsel against
her. She belonged to an ancient Devonshire family, but that did not
concern him; she was an unfortunate widow beset by foes--that mattered
not to him, he attacked her in the grossest manner. As the judges
refused to accept the sentence of the Spiritual Court, a conviction of
course followed, and she fled from England secretly, to escape being
branded in the hand and imprisoned. The hawking and spitting of John
Dunning were not due to any complaint, but were tricks he had acquired
and had not laboured to master. The herald to an approaching speech
from Dunning was a series of laboured and noisy efforts to clear
his throat. When speaking his head waggled as if he were afflicted
with palsy, and he had the trick of raising his arms to his breast,
extending his hands in front of him and flapping them, or paddling
with outspread palms, moving them with a rapidity corresponding to
the wagging of his tongue. “We have heard it said by those who have
seen him while thus employed, that his whole appearance reminded them
of some particular species of flat-fish which may occasionally be
seen hanging alive outside the fishmongers’ shops, the body wholly
motionless, but certain short fins in front vibrating up and down
incessantly. To others the exhibition suggested the idea of a kangaroo
seated on its hind legs, and agitating its forepaws in the manner
that animal is wont to do. All, however, add, that it is only at the
first glance they are susceptible of anything about him approaching
to the ridiculous. After listening to him for a very few minutes,
the attention became wholly engrossed by what he said, and all
consciousness of his awkward gesticulations was entirely absorbed in
the interest aroused by his discourse.”[37]
Sir William Jones says of his oratory: “His language was always pure,
always elegant; and the best words dropped easily from his lips into
the best places with a fluency at all times astonishing, and when
he was in perfect health, really melodious. His style of speaking
consisted of all the turns, appositions, and figures which the old
rhetoricians taught, and which Cicero frequently preached, but which
the austere and solemn spirit of Demosthenes refused to adopt from his
first master, and seldom admitted into his orations.”[38]
In the House of Commons, Dunning pursued an enlightened policy. He
advocated the Roman Catholic Relief Bill, he was opposed to the policy
of the Government in prosecuting the war with America. He bitterly and
savagely opposed sinecure offices, yet no sooner was he raised to the
peerage than he accepted one for himself, that of Chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster, with the enormous pension of £4,000 per annum. He
had as Solicitor-General acquired the then unprecedented sum of £10,000
per annum. As money-lender he had obtained estates that brought him in
large sums; but he ravened for more.
It is not my purpose to follow his political career, but to confine
myself to his private life. The days of sevenpenny dinners in the
Chancery Lane eating-house were left behind. He unbent after labours
of the day in the Literary Club founded by Johnson in 1764, where he
met Goldsmith and Sir William Jones, Reynolds, his fellow Devonian,
who twice painted his portrait, Gibbon, and Burke. That Johnson and he
entertained a mutual admiration is evinced by a conversation recorded
by Boswell. “I told him,” says the biographer, “that I had talked of
him to Mr. Dunning a few days before, and had said that in his company
we did not so much as interchange conversation as listen to him; and
that Dunning observed upon this, ‘One is always willing to listen to
Dr. Johnson.’ To which I answered, ‘That is a great deal for you, Sir.’
‘Yes, Sir,’ (said Johnson), ‘a great deal indeed. Here is a man willing
to listen, to whom the world is listening all the rest of the year.’”
Dunning now purchased for £4700 the residue of a lease of ninety-nine
years of the manors of Spitchwick and Widdecombe. In a letter to his
sister he says that the length to which his lease would run would be
sixty-three years. It was actually eighty-eight; and he made a very
good bargain by the purchase. He built the ugly house at Spitchwick
where had formerly stood a chapel of S. Laurence, and did much
planting. He had an old servant, John Hext, brought up to London by
him from Ashburton. One day the man was late in attendance. “What has
delayed thee, John?” asked Dunning. “I was listening to a man playing
on the crowd.” “Crowd! crowd! John, that word is dead and buried; say
a violin.” On another occasion John Hext, remembering his orders, was
remonstrated with by his master for waiting about at the Temple Gate.
“I was only waiting,” said John, “till the violin of the people had
gone by.”
Dunning was very proud of being lord of the manors of Pridhamsleigh,
Spitchwick, and Widdecombe, and he was boasting of his possession to
some friends in London when “Jack Lee,” afterwards Solicitor-General,
said: “Aye, Dunning, you may have _manors_ in Devonshire. It is a pity
you did not bring your _manners_ up to Town and to Westminster.”
Whilst holding office as Solicitor-General, during a recess, he and
Colonel Isaac Barré, his friend and colleague in the representation
of Calne, visited Berlin. “As distinguished members of the British
Legislature the two friends received marked attention at the Court
of Frederick the Great. When presented by their proper titles, the
military chiefs surrounding the throne of the Soldier-King naturally
concluded that a Solicitor-General of England must occupy a high
position in the British Army. The latter part of the title they could
understand, while the prefix ‘solicitor’ was doubtless some foreign
equivalent to that of major or lieutenant. Clearly the proper way to
entertain the English officers was to invite them to a grand review
of the Prussian Army. The invitation was issued with a courteous
intimation that suitable means of conveyance to the field would be
duly provided. At the appointed hour the two guests of royalty were
ready--Col. Barré in full military costume, and Dunning fully arrayed
in court suit, bag-wig, dress-sword, and silk hose, with brilliant
buckles at knee and instep. On descending to the door of the hotel the
latter shrank back with dismay at finding, instead of the expected
chariot, two orderly dragoons holding the bridles of a couple of
prancing chargers duly caparisoned for the field. Col. Barré was
soon in the saddle; but it was not without some hesitation and the
undignified help of the soldiers that the great lawyer succeeded in
attaining a like elevation. Once wedged in the hollow of the demi-pique
saddle, with its holsters in front and its raised cantle behind, he
felt tolerably secure. But your horse has a quick perception of the
capacity of his rider, and the proud steed on which Dunning rode chose
to exercise his own discretion with regard to his movements. To their
unconcealed amusement, the great Frederick and his staff were treated
to an equestrian spectacle not set down in the programme of the day.
Finding at last that these antics were getting somewhat too lively
for him to cope with, poor Dunning was fain to beg for assistance
in escaping from the back of his wilful quadruped, and the Prussian
monarch and his suite became aware that their English allies had
generals in Westminster Hall whose charges bore no affinity to charges
in the field of war.”
In London John Dunning was visited by his mother and father. The former
did not by any means approve of the luxury of his table, and scolded
him for extravagant housekeeping. But the father was puffed up with
elation at seeing that his son had become so great a man. Neither lived
to see him raised to the peerage.
Dunning was nearly fifty years old before he married, and then he took
to him Elizabeth the daughter of John Baring, of Exeter, who was half
his age. They were married at St. Leonard’s by Exeter on 31 March,
1780, as at that time John Baring and his family resided at Larkbeare
in that parish.
Lord North’s Ministry fell, and a new administration was undertaken by
the Marquess of Rockingham. Lord Shelburne became Secretary of State,
and at his recommendation Dunning was given a coronet. His patent of
nobility bore the date 8 April, 1782, and the title he assumed was that
of Baron Ashburton. There were hot jealousies in the party, and the
Marquess of Rockingham was highly incensed at the coronet being granted
to Dunning without his having been consulted. The Rockinghamites
insisted on peer for peer, and accordingly Sir Fletcher Norton was
raised to the peerage in a very great hurry to keep them quiet.
Lord Ashburton’s health began to fail almost as soon as he married.
At the age of fifty-one his constitution was completely broken, and
Lady Ashburton could look for a happy release from a very disagreeable
husband in a very short time. Dunning expired at Exmouth on 18 August,
1783, after repeated attacks of paralysis, leaving one son, Richard
Barré, then fifteen months old, to be second Lord Ashburton, and last
of the first creation.
In spite of a coarseness, almost brutality of manner, and his
unpleasant tricks of hawking and spitting, Dunning managed to make
friends, and perhaps even inspire affection. Sir William Jones felt or
pretended to feel deep emotion at his death. He wrote: “For some months
before his death the nursery had been his chief delight, and gave him
more pleasure than the Cabinet could have afforded. But his parental
affection, which had been the source of so much felicity, was probably
the cause of his fatal illness. He had lost one son, and expected to
lose the other, when the author of this painful tribute to his memory
parted from him with tears in his eyes, little hoping to see him again
in a perishable state.
“As he perceives without affectation that his tears now steal from
him, and begin to moisten the paper on which he writes, he reluctantly
leaves a subject which he could not soon have exhausted; and when he
also shall resign his life to the great Giver of it, he desires no
other decoration of his humble gravestone than this honourable truth:--
With none to flatter, none to recommend,
Dunning approved and marked him as a friend.”
After the death of Dunning, his widow, Lady Ashburton, resided at
Spitchwick, and on her decease it was occupied by Miss Baring.
If Dunning hoped to found a family and transmit his manors and lands
and houses and wealth to a long line of descendants, his hope was
frustrated. His son, Richard Barré, second Baron Ashburton, married
in 1805 Anne Selby, daughter of William Cunninghame, of Lainshaw, co.
Ayr, and he died in 1823 without issue, and bequeathed his estates to
his wife for life, then to his wife’s nephews for life, and then to his
wife’s nieces, Margaret, Elizabeth, Anna Maria Isabella Macleod, in
succession for life, the survivor having the estates in fee simple. The
nephew, James Edward, Baron Cranstoun, who died in 1869, and Charles
his brother, who succeeded to the title and died soon after, had but a
life interest in the estates. These now passed to Margaret, Baroness
de Virte, daughter of Robert Macleod, of Cadboll, co. Cromarty, who
had married Isabella Cunninghame, sister of Lady Ashburton. Baroness
de Virte died in 1904. Her youngest sister, Anna Maria Isabella,[39]
who had married John Wilson, of Seacroft, Yorkshire, had died the year
before the Baroness, and left two sons; the eldest had died before her;
and of those that survive, the senior inherited the Yorkshire estates,
and the younger, Arthur Henry Wilson, Esq., now owns those obtained by
John Dunning, and Sandridge Park by Totnes as well. John Dunning, first
Lord Ashburton, was buried in Ashburton Church, where is his monument,
now obscured by the organ which is planted before it.
Richard Barré, second Lord Ashburton, in bequeathing his estates to his
wife’s relations, excepted Guatham, the ancestral farm and acres. These
he left to any Dunning who could claim relationship, though he added
that he did not know that any such existed. However, one did appear and
established his connexion and obtained Guatham, and it has been sold to
the Lopes family at Maristowe. The arms granted to John Dunning, first
Lord Ashburton, were: Bendy, sinister of eight, or and vert, a lion
rampant sable--certainly a very ugly coat and bad heraldry. The crest,
an antelope’s head, couped proper, attired proper.
For much of the information contained in this article I am indebted to
an admirable “Memoir of John Dunning, First Lord Ashburton,” by the
late Robert Dymond, in the _Transactions_ of the Devonshire Association
for 1876. Also to a “Life of John Dunning” in the _Penny Cyclopædia_
for 1837.
GOVERNOR SHORTLAND AND THE PRINCETOWN MASSACRE
On the 18th June, 1812, the United States of America declared war with
Great Britain. Since Napoleon’s Edict of Berlin, 21 November, 1806,
which had closed all the ports of Europe that he could control against
English merchandise, there had been considerable tension, breaking out
into ill-will, between the States and Britain. By Orders of Council,
our vessels were empowered to stop and search American ships for
deserters from our navy, and for contraband of war, although the Orders
were relaxed as far as America was concerned for the ports of Germany
and of the Baltic, yet our interference hampered her growing trade with
France, and this was forbidden by the above Orders. The States cast a
covetous eye on Canada, and hoped to cripple our trade with the West
Indian Islands. Indeed, the declaration of war was kept secret for some
days so as to afford opportunity for the armed vessels of the States to
intercept the sugar fleet before it and its convoy had received news
that war was declared.
Prisoners began to arrive at Plymouth, mainly seamen captured from
merchant vessels, and were sent to the _Hector_ and _Le Brave_, two
line-of-battle ships unfit for service at sea and now anchored in the
Hamoaze. The officers were entitled to reside on parole in Ashburton,
and were allowed by the British Government eighteenpence a day each
man for their lodging and board and washing. They were suffered every
day to walk a mile along the Exeter or the Totnes road, but were
required every evening to return to their respective lodgings and
there remain till the next morning. But such officers as broke parole
were sent to the common sea-mess on board one or other of the ships
above-mentioned.
The French officers had shown conspicuous indifference about keeping
their parole. Between 1809 and 1812 five hundred officers violated
their paroles and effected their escapes. A good many American officers
were equally unscrupulous.
We have the journal of an American prisoner, Charles Andrews, who was
one of the first taken and who remained in durance till the end of the
war. His statement was countersigned as a genuine record of facts by
fourteen captains, two lieutenants, one doctor, and forty-five others
who had shared the long captivity with him.
There were other American prisoners at Chatham and at Portsmouth, but
with them we have no concern.
Every prisoner sent to one of the two ships for their accommodation in
the Hamoaze was given a coarse hammock with a mattress, the latter with
from 3 to 4 lb. of chopped rags and flock in it, “one coarse and sleazy
blanket,” and these were to last for the twelvemonth. To each man was
allowed 1-1/2 lb. of poor coarse bread, 1/2 lb. beef including bone,
1/3 oz. of salt, and one or two turnips per man. These rations were
for five days in the week: the other two were fish days, 1 lb. salt
haddock, 1 lb. potatoes and bread as before, then constituted the fare.
From the summer of 1812 to April, 1813, there were seven hundred
prisoners on board these vessels at Plymouth. They suffered from want
of many conveniences and comforts. They had no change of clothes and
linen, some had their garments completely worn out; they were not
provided with combs and brushes, tea, coffee, boots and shoes. The
American Government had appointed a Mr. Ruben G. Beasley as its agent
in England to see to the comfort of the prisoners, and he was furnished
with money by that Government for the supply of all that was needful
to make the captivity endurable by those who had to endure it. But
he pocketed the money and only doled out some to Jews who undertook
to supply certain articles to the prisoners, few and bad, short in
quantity and bad in quality. The American prisoners wrote repeatedly
in complaint to Mr. Beasley, pointing out that they were half-starved,
in bad health, shoeless, nearly naked. But he did not even trouble to
answer the letters and made no inquiry as to the real condition of the
complainants. Added to their discomforts was the fact that they were
devoured by vermin, and had no means of keeping themselves clean.
On 2 April, 1813, an order was issued for the American prisoners to
be transferred to Princetown, with their hammocks, baggage, etc., and
on that day 250 men were so dispatched. “Orders were given to march
at 10.30 in the morning, with a positive injunction that no prisoners
should step out of or leave the ranks, on pain of instant death. Thus
we marched, surrounded by a strong guard, through a heavy rain, over a
bad road, with only our usual and scanty allowance of bread and fish.
We were allowed to stop only once during the march of seventeen miles.
“We arrived at Dartmoor late in the afterpart of the day, and found the
ground covered with snow.
“The prison of Dartmoor is situated on the east side of one of the
highest and most barren mountains in England, and is surrounded on all
sides as far as the eye can see by the gloomy features of a black moor,
uncultivated and uninhabited, except by one or two miserable cottages,
just discernible in an eastern view, the tenants of which live by
cutting turf on the moor and selling it at the prison. The place is
deprived of everything that is pleasant or agreeable, and is productive
of nothing but human woe and misery. Even riches, pleasant friends, and
liberty could not make it agreeable. It is situated seven miles from
the little village of Tavistock.
“On entering this depôt of living death, we first passed through the
gates and found ourselves surrounded by two huge circular walls, the
outer one of which is two miles in circumference and 16 ft. high. The
inner wall is distant from the outer 30 ft., around which is a chain of
bells suspended by a wire, so that the least touch sets every bell in
motion and alarms the garrison. On the top of the inner wall is placed
a guard at the distance of every 20 ft. Between the two walls and over
the intermediate space are also stationed guards.
“Thus much for the courtyard of this seminary of misery. We shall next
proceed to give a description of the gloomy mansion itself. On entering
we find seven prisons enclosed in the following manner, and situated
quite within all the walls before-mentioned. Prisons 1, 2, and 3 are
built of hard, rough, unhewn stone three storeys high, 180 ft. long
and 40 ft. broad; each of these prisons on an average can contain 1500
prisoners. There is also attached to the yard a house of correction,
called a cachot; this is built of large stone, arched above and floored
with the same. Into this cold, dark, and damp cell, the unhappy
prisoner is cast if he offend against the rules of the prison, either
willingly or inadvertently, and often on the most frivolous pretext.
There he must remain for many days, and often weeks, on two-thirds
the usual allowance of food, without a hammock or a bed, and nothing
but a stone pavement for his chair and bed. These three prisons are
situated on the north side of the enclosure, as is also the cachot, and
separated from the other prisons by a wall. Next to these is another,
No. 4, equally as large as any of the others, this is separated from
all the rest by a wall on each side, and stands in the centre of the
circular walls.
“Adjoining this are situated prisons Nos. 5, 6, and 7, along the south
side of the circular wall.”
The prisons had been erected at a cost of £130,000 in 1809, and
consisted of five radiating blocks of buildings, like spokes of a
wheel, and two other blocks nearer the entrance. These two constituted,
one the hospital, the other the residence of the petty officers. A
segment cut off from the inner circle contained the governor’s house
and the other buildings necessary for the civil establishment; and
into this part of the ground the country people were admitted and
a daily market was held, where vegetables and such other things as
the prisoners might care to purchase were provided, in part by the
neighbouring farmers, but mainly by Jew pedlars. The barracks for the
troops was a detached building at a little distance.
“We entered the prisons,” continues Mr. Andrews, “but here the heart
of every American was appalled. Amazement struck the unhappy victim,
for as he cast his hopeless eyes around, he saw the water constantly
dripping from the cold stone walls on every side, which kept the floor,
made of stone, constantly wet and cold as ice. During the month of
April there was scarce a day but more or less rain fell.”
When the Americans arrived they found the prison already packed with
8000 French captives. These were of various classes and characters.
Among these latter “the Seigneurs” were such as received remittances
from their friends, or had money of their own, and were able to draw
cheques on Plymouth bankers, and these bought such luxuries as they
would in the market of the outer court. Those who worked at trades were
known as labourers, and they were employed in building the chaplain’s
house, etc. The inn, “The Plume of Feathers,” the sole building in
Princetown which is not an architectural monstrosity, was erected
by these French “labourers.” They also erected the cottage at Okery
Bridge, which was an extremely picturesque edifice till its balconies
and galleries were removed. But there were others, the prisoners
who would do no work, who gambled for whatever they possessed, and
quarrelled, fought, and were intolerable nuisances. These would gamble
the very clothes off their backs, and were reduced to blankets with a
hole cut in the middle, through which they thrust their heads. As they
were denied knives, when they wanted to fight they attached one blade
of a pair of scissors to a stick, and with these formidable weapons,
each armed with one portion of the scissors, they were able to deal
each other serious wounds.
To the great annoyance of the American prisoners they were thrust into
No. 4 ward, into which had been relegated the good-for-naught class of
the French. But here they did not live as brothers, for they drew a
sharp line of demarcation between themselves, who were of white blood,
and their negro brethren, fellow seamen captured with them under the
same banner.
At the end of May the Americans appealed respectfully, but urgently,
to the U.S. agent, Mr. R. G. Beasley, complaining that the allowance
made them was scanty, that the whole day’s pittance was scarcely enough
for one meal, that for the greater part the American prisoners were
in a state of nakedness, and that a good many of them to escape from
a condition that was intolerable had volunteered to join the King’s
service.
“To these petitions, complaints, and remonstrances, Mr. Beasley
returned no answer, nor took any notice of them whatever.”
On 28 May, 250 more American prisoners arrived, raising the total to
500. Again they appealed to the agent of the U.S.A., informing him
that they were defrauded of half their rations by the contractor, that
small-pox was raging among them, and that they were swarming with
vermin.