of the window, and that the three excited friends fancied the rest;
but they first saw him in the air outside of the window of their
room.[25] Nothing is explained, in this case, by Dr. Carpenter's
explanation. Dr. Carpenter (1871) discredited the experiments made on
Home by Sir William Crookes and attested by Sir William Huggins,
because the latter was only 'an amateur in a branch of research which
tasks the keenest powers of observation,' not of experiment; while, in
the chemical experiments of Sir William Crookes, 'the ability he
displayed was purely _technical_.' Neither gentleman could dream 'that
there are _moral_ sources of error.'[26]
[Footnote 25: Cf. _Making of Religion_, p. 362, 1898.]
[Footnote 26: _Quarterly Review_, 1871, pp. 342, 343.]
Alas, Dr. Carpenter, when he boldly published (in 1876) the thing that
was not, proved that a 'scientist' may be misled by 'moral sources of
error'!
In 1890, in _Proceedings of the S.P.R._, Sir William Crookes published
full contemporary accounts, noted by himself, of his experiments on
Home in 1871, with elaborate mechanical tests as to alteration of
weights; and recorded Home's feats in handling red-hot coals, and
communicating the power of doing so to others, and to a fine cambric
handkerchief on which a piece of red-hot charcoal lay some time.
Beyond a hole of half an inch in diameter, to which Home drew
attention, the cambric was unharmed. Sir William tested it: it had
undergone no chemical preparation.
Into the details of the mechanical tests as to alterations of weights
I cannot go. Mr. Angelo Lewis (Professor Hoffman), an expert in
conjuring, says that, accepting Sir William's veracity, and that he
was not hallucinated, the phenomena 'seem to me distinctly to be
outside the range of trick, and therefore to be good evidence, so far
as we can trust personal evidence at all, of Home's power of producing
motion, without contact, in inanimate bodies.' Sir William himself
writes (1890): 'I have discovered no flaw in the experiments, or in
the reasoning I based upon them.'[27] The notes of the performances
were written while they were actually in course of proceeding. Thus
'the table rose completely off the ground several times, whilst the
gentlemen present took a candle, and, kneeling down, deliberately
examined the position of Mr. Home's knees and feet, and saw the three
feet of the table quite off the ground.' Every observer in turn
satisfied himself of the facts; they could not all be hallucinated.
[Footnote 27: _Proceedings S.P.R._ vi. 98.]
I have not entered on the 'spiritual' part of the puzzle, the
communications from 'spirits' of matters not _consciously_ known to
persons present, but found to be correct. That is too large a
subject. Nor have I entered into the case of Mrs. Lyon's gift to Home,
for the evidence only proved, as the judge held, that the gift was
prompted, at least to some extent, by what Home declared to be
spiritual rappings. But the only actual witness to the fact, Mrs. Lyon
herself, was the reverse of a trustworthy witness, being a foolish
capricious underbred woman. Hume's [Transcriber's Note: so in
original] mystery, as far as the best of the drawing-room miracles are
concerned, is solved by no theory or combination of theories, neither
by the hypothesis of conjuring, nor of collective hallucination, nor
of a blend of both. The cases of Sir David Brewster and of Dr.
Carpenter prove how far some 'scientists' will go, rather than appear
in an attitude of agnosticism, of not having a sound explanation.[28]
[Footnote 28: Mr. Merrifield has reiterated his opinion that the
conditions of light were adequate for his view of the object described
on p. 184, _supra_. _Journal S.P.R._ October 1904.]
NOTE.--Since this paper was written, I have been obliged by
several interesting communications from a person very
intimate with Home. Nothing in these threw fresh light on
the mystery of his career, still less tended to confirm any
theory of dishonesty on his part. His legal adviser, a man
of honour, saw no harm in his accepting Mrs. Lyon's
proffered gift, though he tried, in vain, to prevent her
from increasing her original present.
IX
_THE CASE OF CAPTAIN GREEN_
'Play on Captain Green's wuddie,'[29] said the caddy on Leith Links;
and his employer struck his ball in the direction of the Captain's
gibbet on the sands. Mr. Duncan Forbes of Culloden sighed, and, taking
off his hat, bowed in the direction of the unhappy mariner's monument.
One can imagine this little scene repeating itself many a time, long
after Captain Thomas Green, his mate, John Madder or Mather, and
another of his crew were taken to the sands at Leith on the second
Wednesday in April 1705, being April 11, and there hanged within the
floodmark upon a gibbet till they were dead. Mr. Forbes of Culloden,
later President of the Court of Session, and, far more than the
butcher Cumberland, the victor over the rising of 1745, believed in
the innocence of Captain Green, wore mourning for him, attended the
funeral at the risk of his own life, and, when the Porteous Riot was
discussed in Parliament, rose in his place and attested his conviction
that the captain was wrongfully done to death.
[Footnote 29: Gibbet.]
Green, like his namesake in the Popish Plot, was condemned for a crime
of which he was probably innocent. Nay more, he died for a crime which
was not proved to have been committed, though it really may have been
committed by persons with whom Green had no connection, while Green
may have been guilty of other misdeeds as bad as that for which he was
hanged. Like the other Green, executed for the murder of Sir Edmund
Berry Godfrey during the Popish Plot, the captain was the victim of a
fit of madness in a nation, that nation being the Scottish. The cause
of their fury was not religion--the fever of the Covenant had passed
away--but commerce.
'Twere long to tell and sad to trace the origin of the Caledonian
frenzy. In 1695 the Scottish Parliament had passed, with the royal
assent, an Act granting a patent to a Scottish company dealing with
Africa, the Indies, and, incidentally, with the globe at large. The
Act committed the occupant of the Scottish throne, William of Orange,
to backing the company if attacked by alien power. But it was unlucky
that England was then an alien power, and that the Scots Act infringed
the patent of the much older English East India Company. Englishmen
dared not take shares, finally, in the venture of the Scots; and when
the English Board of Trade found out, in 1697, the real purpose of the
Scottish company--namely, to set up a factory in Darien and anticipate
the advantages dreamed of by France in the case of M. de Lesseps's
Panama Canal--'a strange thing happened.' The celebrated philosopher,
Mr. John Locke, and the other members of a committee of the English
Board of Trade, advised the English Government to plagiarise the
Scottish project, and seize the section of the Isthmus of Panama on
which the Scots meant to settle. This was not done; but the Dutch
Usurper, far from backing the Scots company, bade his colonies hold no
sort of intercourse with them. The Scots were starved out of their
settlement. The few who remained fled to New York and Jamaica, and
there, perishing of hunger, were refused supplies by the English
colonial governors. A second Scottish colony succumbed to a Spanish
fleet and army, and the company, with a nominal capital of 400,000_l._
and with 220,000_l._ paid up, was bankrupt. Macaulay calculates the
loss at about the same as a loss of forty millions would have been to
the Scotland of his own day; let us say twenty-two millions.
We remember the excitement in France over the Panama failure.
Scotland, in 1700, was even more furious, and that led to the hanging
of Captain Green and his men. There were riots; the rioters were
imprisoned in the Heart of Midlothian--the Tolbooth--the crowd
released them; some of the crowd were feebly sentenced to the pillory,
the public pelted them--with white roses; and had the Chevalier de St.
George not been a child of twelve, he would have had a fair chance of
recovering his throne. The trouble was tided over; William III. died
in 1702. Queen Anne came to the Crown. But the bankrupt company was
not dead. Its charter was still legal, and, with borrowed money, it
sent out vessels to trade with the Indies. The company had a vessel,
the 'Annandale,' which was seized in the Thames, at the instance of
the East India Company, and condemned for a breach of that company's
privileges.
This capture awakened the sleeping fury among my fiery countrymen
(1704). An English ship, connected with either the English East India
Company or the rival Million Company, put into Leith Road to repair.
Here was a chance; for the charter of the Scots company authorised
them 'to make reprisals and to seek and take reparation of damage done
by sea and land.' On the strength of this clause, which was never
meant to apply to Englishmen in Scottish waters, but to foreigners of
all kinds on the Spanish Main, the Scottish Admiralty took no steps.
But the company had a Celtic secretary, Mr. Roderick Mackenzie, and
the English Parliament, in 1695, had summoned Mr. Mackenzie before
them, and asked him many questions of an impertinent and disagreeable
nature. This outrageous proceeding he resented, for he was no more an
English than he was a Japanese subject. The situation of the
'Worcester' in Scottish waters gave Roderick his chance. His chief
difficulty, as he informed his directors, was 'to get together a
sufficient number of such genteel, pretty fellows as would, of their
own free accord, on a sudden advertisement, be willing to accompany me
on this adventure' (namely, the capture of the 'Worcester'), 'and
whose dress and behaviour would not render them suspected of any
uncommon design in going aboard.' A scheme more sudden and daring than
the seizure, by a few gentlemen, of a well-armed English vessel had
not been executed since the bold Buccleuch forced Carlisle Castle and
carried away Kinmont Willie. The day was Saturday, and Mr. Mackenzie
sauntered to the Cross in the High Street, and invited genteel and
pretty fellows to dine with him in the country. They were given an
inkling of what was going forward, and some dropped off, like the less
resolute guests in Mr. Stevenson's adventure of the hansom cabs. When
they reached Leith, Roderick found himself at the head of eleven
persons, of whom 'most be as good gentlemen, and (I must own) much
prettier fellows than I pretend to be.' They were of the same sort as
Roy, Middleton, Haliburton, and Dunbar, who, fourteen years earlier,
being prisoners on the Bass Rock, seized the castle, and, through
three long years, held it for King James against the English navy.
The eleven chose Mr. Mackenzie as chief, and, having swords, pistols,
'and some with bayonets, too,' set out. Mackenzie, his servant, and
three friends took a boat at Leith, with provision of wine, brandy,
sugar, and lime juice; four more came, as a separate party, from
Newhaven; the rest first visited an English man-of-war in the Firth,
and then, in a convivial manner, boarded the 'Worcester.' The
punch-bowls were produced, liquor was given to the sailors, while the
officers of the 'Worcester' drank with the visitors in the cabin.
Mackenzie was supposed to be a lord. All was festivity, 'a most
compleat scene of a comedy, acted to the life,' when, as a Scottish
song was being sung, each officer of the 'Worcester' found a pistol at
his ear. The carpenter and some of the crew rushed at the loaded
blunderbusses that hung in the cabin; but there were shining swords
between them and the blunderbusses. By nine at night, on August 12,
Mackenzie's followers were masters of the English ship, and the
hatches, gunroom, chests, and cabinets were sealed with the official
seal of the Scottish African and East India Company. In a day or two
the vessel lay without rudder or sails, in Bruntisland Harbour, 'as
secure as a thief in a mill.' Mackenzie landed eight of the ship's
guns and placed them in an old fort commanding the harbour entry,
manned them with gunners, and all this while an English man-of-war lay
in the Firth!
For a peaceful secretary of a commercial company, with a scratch
eleven picked up in the street on a Saturday afternoon, to capture a
vessel with a crew of twenty-four, well accustomed to desperate deeds,
was 'a sufficient camisado or onfall.' For three or four days and
nights Mr. Mackenzie had scarcely an hour's sleep. By the end of
August he had commenced an action in the High Court of Admiralty for
condemning the 'Worcester' and her cargo, to compensate for the
damages sustained by his company through the English seizure of their
ship, the 'Annandale.' When Mackenzie sent in his report on September
4, he added that, from 'very odd expressions dropt now and then from
some of the ship's crew,' he suspected that Captain Green, of the
'Worcester,' was 'guilty of some very unwarrantable practices.'
The Scottish Privy Council were now formally apprised of the affair,
which they cautiously handed over to the Admiralty. The Scottish
company had for about three years bewailed the absence of a ship of
their own, the 'Speedy Return,' which had never returned at all. Her
skipper was a Captain Drummond, who had been very active in the Darien
expedition; her surgeon was Mr. Andrew Wilkie, brother of James
Wilkie, tailor and burgess of Edinburgh. The pair were most probably
descendants of the Wilkie, tailor in the Canongate, who was mixed up
in the odd business of Mr. Robert Oliphant, in the Gowrie conspiracy
of 1600. Friends of Captain Drummond, Surgeon Wilkie, and others who
had disappeared in the 'Speedy Return,' began to wonder whether the
crew of the 'Worcester,' in their wanderings, had ever come across
news of the missing vessel. One George Haines, of the 'Worcester,'
hearing of a Captain Gordon, who was the terror of French privateers,
said: 'Our sloop was more terrible upon the coast of Malabar than
ever Captain Gordon will be to the French.' Mackenzie asking Haines if
he had ever heard of the 'Speedy Return,' the missing ship, Haines
replied: 'You need not trouble your head about her, for I believe you
won't see her in haste.' He thought that Captain Drummond had turned
pirate.
Haines now fell in love with a girl at Bruntisland, aged nineteen,
named Anne Seaton, and told her a number of things, which she promised
to repeat to Mackenzie, but disappointed him, though she had blabbed
to others. It came to be reported that Captain Green had pirated the
'Speedy Return,' and murdered Captain Drummond and his crew. The Privy
Council, in January 1705, took the matter up. A seal, or forged copy
of the seal, of the Scottish African and East India Company was found
on board the 'Worcester,' and her captain and crew were judicially
interrogated, after the manner of the French _Juge d'Instruction_.
On March 5, 1705, the Scottish Court of Admiralty began the trial of
Green and his men. Charles May, surgeon of the 'Worcester,' and two
negroes, Antonio Ferdinando, cook's mate, and Antonio Francisco,
captain's man, were ready to give evidence against their comrades.
They were accused of attacking, between February and May, 1703, off
the coast of Malabar a vessel bearing a red flag, and having English
or Scots aboard. They pursued her in their sloop, seized and killed
the crew, and stole the goods.
Everyone in Scotland, except resolute Whigs, believed the vessel
attacked to have been Captain Drummond's 'Speedy Return.' But there
was nothing definite to prove the fact; there was no _corpus delicti_.
In fact the case was parallel to that of the Campden mystery, in which
three people were hanged for killing old Mr. Harrison, who later
turned up in perfect health. In Green's, as in the Campden case, some
of the accused confessed their guilt, and yet evidence later obtained
tends to prove that Captain Drummond and his ship and crew were all
quite safe at the date of the alleged piracy by Captain Green. None
the less, it does appear that Captain Green had been pirating
somebody, and perhaps he was 'none the waur o' a hanging,' though, as
he had an English commission to act against pirates, it was argued
that, if he had been fighting at all, it was against pirates that he
had been making war. Now Haines's remark that Captain Drummond, as he
heard, had turned pirate, looks very like a 'hedge' to be used in case
the 'Worcester' was proved to have attacked the 'Speedy Return.'
There was a great deal of preliminary sparring between the advocates
as to the propriety of the indictment. The jury of fifteen contained
five local skippers. Most of the others were traders. One of them,
William Blackwood, was of a family that had been very active in the
Darien affair. Captain Green had no better chance with these men than
James Stewart of the Glens in face of a jury of Campbells. The first
witness, Ferdinando, the black sea cook, deponed that he saw Green's
sloop take a ship under English colours, and that Green, his mate,
Madder, and others, killed the crew of the captured vessel with
hatchets. Ferdinando's coat was part of the spoil, and was said to be
of Scottish cloth. Charles May, surgeon of the 'Worcester,' being on
shore, heard firing at sea, and, later, dressed a wound, a gunshot he
believed, on the arm of the black cook; dressed wounds, also, of two
sailors, of the 'Worcester,' Mackay and Cuming--Scots obviously, by
their names. He found the deck of the 'Worcester,' when he came on
board, lumbered with goods and chests. He remarked on this, and
Madder, the mate, cursed him, and bade him 'mind his plaister box.' He
added that the 'Worcester,' before his eyes, while he stood on shore,
was towing another vessel, which, he heard, was sold to a native
dealer--Coge Commodo--who told the witness that the 'Worcester' 'had
been fighting.' The 'Worcester' sprang a leak, and sailed for five
weeks to a place where she was repaired, as if she were anxious to
avoid inquiries.
Antonio Francisco, Captain Green's black servant, swore that, being
chained and nailed to her forecastle, he heard the 'Worcester' fire
six shots. Two days later a quantity of goods was brought on board
(captured, it would seem, by the terrible sloop of the 'Worcester'),
and Ferdinando then told this witness about the killing of the
captured crew, and showed his own wounded arm. Francisco himself lay
in chains for two months, and, of course, had a grudge against Captain
Green. It was proved that the 'Worcester' had a cipher wherein to
communicate with her owners, who used great secrecy; that her cargo
consisted of arms, and was of such slight value as not to justify her
voyage, unless her real business was piracy. The ship was of 200 tons,
twenty guns, thirty-six men, and the value of the cargo was but
1,000_l._ Really, things do not look very well for the enterprise of
Captain Green! There was also found a suspicious letter to one of the
crew, Reynolds, from his sister-in-law, advising him to confess, and
referring to a letter of his own in which he said that some of the
crew 'had basely confessed.' The lady's letter and a copy of
Reynolds's, admitted by him to be correct, were before the Court.
Again, James Wilkie, tailor, had tried at Bruntisland to 'pump' Haines
about Captain Drummond; Haines swore profane, but later said that he
heard Drummond had turned pirate, and that off the coast of Malabar
they had manned their sloop, lest Drummond, whom they believed to be
on that coast, should attack them. Other witnesses corroborated
Wilkie, and had heard Haines say that it was a wonder the ground did
not open and swallow them for the wickedness 'that had been committed
during the last voyage on board of that old [I omit a nautical term of
endearment] _Bess_.' Some one telling Haines that the mate's uncle
had been 'burned in oil' for trying to burn Dutch ships at Amsterdam,
'the said George Haines did tell the deponent that if what Captain
Madder [the mate] had done during his last voyage were known, he
deserved as much as his uncle had met with.' Anne Seaton, the girl of
Haines's heart, admitted that Haines had told her 'that he knew more
of Captain Drummond than he would express at that time,' and she had
heard his expressions of remorse. He had blabbed to many witnesses of
a precious something hidden aboard the 'Worcester;' to Anne he said
that he had now thrown it overboard. We shall see later what this
object was. Anne was a reluctant witness. Glen, a goldsmith, had seen
a seal of the Scots East India Company in the hands of Madder, the
inference being that it was taken from the 'Speedy Return.'
Sir David Dalrymple, for the prosecution, made the most he could of
the evidence. The black cook's coat, taken from the captured vessel,
'in my judgment appears to be Scots rugg.' He also thought it a point
in favour of the cook's veracity that he was very ill, and forced to
lie down in court; in fact, the cook died suddenly on the day when
Captain Green was condemned, and the Scots had a high opinion of dying
confessions. The white cook, who joined the 'Worcester' after the
sea-fight, said that the black cook told him the whole story at that
time. Why did the 'Worcester' sail for thirty-five days to repair her
leak, which she might have done at Goa or Surat, instead of sailing
some 700 leagues for the purpose? The jury found that there was 'one
clear witness to robbery, piracy, and murder,' and accumulative
corroboration.
The judges ordered fourteen hangings, to begin with those of Green,
Madder, and three others on April 4. On March 16, at Edinburgh, Thomas
Linsteed made an affidavit that the 'Worcester' left him on shore, on
business, about January 1703; that fishing crews reported the fight of
the sloop against a vessel unknown; they left before the fight ended;
that the Dutch and Portuguese told him how the 'Worcester's' men had
sold a prize, and thought but little of it, 'because it is what is
ordinary on that coast,' and that the 'Worcester's' people told him to
ask them no questions. On March 27 George Haines made a full
confession of the murder of a captured crew, he being accessory
thereto, at Sacrifice Rock, between Tellicherry and Calicut; and that
he himself, after being seized by Mackenzie, threw his journal of the
exciting events overboard. Now, in his previous blabbings before the
trial, as we have seen, Haines had spoken several times about
something on board the 'Worcester' which the Scots would be very glad
to lay hands on, thereby indicating this journal of his; and he told
Anne Seaton, as she deponed at the trial, that he had thrown the
precious something overboard. In his confession of March 27 he
explained what the mysterious something was. He also declared (March
28) that the victims of the piracy 'spoke the Scots language.' A
sailor named Bruckley also made full confession. These men were
reprieved, and doubtless expected to be; but Haines, all the while
remorseful, I think, told the truth. The 'Worcester' had been guilty
of piracy.
But had she pirated the Scottish ship, the 'Speedy Return,' Captain
Drummond? As to that point, on April 5, in England, two of the crew of
the 'Worcester,' who must somehow have escaped from Mackenzie's raid,
made affidavit that the 'Worcester' fought no ship during her whole
voyage. This would be more satisfactory if we knew more of the
witnesses. On March 21, at Portsmouth, two other English mariners made
affidavit that they had been of the crew of the 'Speedy Return;' that
she was captured by pirates, while Captain Drummond and Surgeon Wilkie
were on shore, at Maritan in Madagascar; and that these two witnesses
'went on board a Moca ship called the "Defiance,"' escaped from her at
the Mauritius, and returned to England in the 'Raper' galley. Of the
fate of Drummond and Wilkie, left ashore in Madagascar, they naturally
knew nothing. If they spoke truth, Captain Green certainly did not
seize the 'Speedy Return,' whatever dark and bloody deeds he may have
done off the coast of Malabar.
In England, as Secretary Johnstone, son of the caitiff Covenanter,
Waristoun, wrote to Baillie of Jerviswoode, the Whigs made party
capital out of the proceedings against Green: they said it was a
Jacobite plot. I conceive that few Scottish Whigs, to be sure, marched
under Roderick Mackenzie.