English Men of Action
RODNEY
[Illustration: colophon]
[Illustration: RODNEY]
RODNEY
BY
DAVID HANNAY
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
and New York
1891
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
FAMILY AND EARLY CAREER 1
CHAPTER II
SERVICE AS CAPTAIN TILL 1752 19
CHAPTER III
MARRIAGE, THE PRESS-GANG, AND THE FLAG 35
CHAPTER IV
FLAG RANK AND PARLIAMENT 52
CHAPTER V
SIXTEEN YEARS OF PEACE 70
CHAPTER VI
THE RELIEF OF GIBRALTAR 86
CHAPTER VII
THE WEST INDIES 106
CHAPTER VIII
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1780 122
CHAPTER IX
ST. EUSTATIUS 143
CHAPTER X
RODNEY’S STAY IN ENGLAND 164
CHAPTER XI
TO APRIL 12TH 174
CHAPTER XII
THE BREAKING OF THE LINE 188
CHAPTER XIII
THE END 214
CHAPTER I
FAMILY AND EARLY CAREER
George Brydges Rodney, the most famous of the great generation of
English admirals who raised the navy to the level at which Nelson found
it, was by descent a Somersetshire man. The family was one of
considerable antiquity--of more antiquity indeed than fame. From the
reign of Henry the Third until far into the seventeenth century they
were established as owners of land in and about Stoke Rodney, at the
foot of the Mendips, in the valley of the Axe between Draycott and
Wells. The history of the house was summed up by Sir Edward Rodeney, the
last of them who held the family estate, in words which I do not presume
to think I can better, and shall therefore quote.
Their faults whatsoever are not written in great letters, or become
the subject of common fame, or the courts of justice; but as they
lived without scandal, so they died without shame, going out of the
world by the ordinary gate of sickness, and never by the hand of
violence, some few excepted of ancient times, that died in the
wars, and the late unfortunate gentleman, Sir George Rodeney, who
fell by his own sword; and although civil dissentions, in the
Barons Wars, did engage men in one side or the other, yet they for
any I can find lived in a calm amidst these tempests, and were not
entangled in the quarrels of the times. The reason of it may be
that having a firm estate of their own, and able to subsist of
themselves, they kept independent, living within their own orb, and
mastering those affections of envy and ambition which commonly do
but raise men for a greater fall. They had been always, from the
time we first discover them, of the middle rank of subjects which
is the most safe place--“_Cives medii salvi sunt maxime_,” few or
none of better estate, under the degree of Lords until the great
flood of Church lands (whereof they possessed not one foot)
improved many men’s fortunes to a great height; nay, which is
strange, from Sir Richard Rodeney, who was borne under Henry the
Third, to Sir George Rodeney in 42 of Elizabeth, the space of above
four hundred years, they stood like _Mare Mortuum_ and neither
ebbed nor flowed in their fortunes; they were so provident not to
lessen; but neither by marriages, which is the ordinary step of
augmentation, nor by any other means did they make any addition,
insomuch that at this day I give the coat single which my ancestors
gave without quartering any other.
Here, adorned with the brocaded elegance proper to the time of the
writer, is a summing up of the history of a solid English country
family. Stoke Rodney lay out of the track of the great storms of English
history, and its position helped the family to stand like _Mare Mortuum_
for four hundred years. Still, a house which could live through all that
happened in England between Henry the Third and Elizabeth without loss
or gain, must have been of an equable temperament, free from great
vices, follies, or qualities. The last stage was less peaceful, for Sir
Edward Rodeney has to record money troubles and family disputes. He was
himself a more stirring man than his ancestors had been. In his youth he
fled abroad with Sir Edward Seymour, the husband of Arabella Stuart,
afterwards Marquis of Hertford. His exile, however, was short. He
returned, was married, not, as he complacently records, without
splendour of ceremonial, to Mistress Frances Southwell, “a lady of Queen
Anna’s private chamber,” in 1614, and spent the remainder of his life as
a country gentleman in the west. In 1626 he was a deputy-lieutenant, and
felt himself called upon to explain in his place in Parliament the
excesses of the pressed men who were drawn into the west by Buckingham’s
unlucky expeditions, and were treated as to pay and provend with that
little care which Captain Dugald Dalgetty told the Marquis of Montrose
might, according to custom, be bestowed on the common soldier. Sir
Edward was a strong Royalist, and lived long enough to suffer for his
royalism. Although he was otherwise a man much of the same kidney, he
did not share the Baron of Bradwardine’s opinions as to the duty of
keeping a family estate in the male line. His only son died before him,
and he allowed Stoke Rodney to pass to his daughters. One of these
ladies married into the family of Brydges of Kainsham, and thereby
supplied a cousin of hers with a useful connection.
Sir Edward could have found male heirs had he so chosen, for he had
three brothers: Henry, who was drowned on the coast of Africa; William,
who does not concern us; and George. From this George came Anthony (the
first of the family who spelt his name Rodney), Lieutenant-Colonel of
Leigh’s regiment of horse, who served under Peterborough in Spain, and
Henry. This Henry was the father of the Admiral. Having begun as a
cornet of horse, he left the army and then was appointed, by the
interest of his connection the Duke of Chandos, the representative of
the Brydges of Kainsham, to a post in the Royal Yacht of George the
First. Henry Rodney had a family of five children by his wife, Mary,
daughter of Sir Henry Newton, “Envoy-Extraordinary to the Grand Duke of
Tuscany, and afterwards Judge of the Admiralty, etc. etc.” He naturally
profited by his position for the good of his family. The King stood
godfather to the second son, together with the Duke of Chandos, and the
boy was christened George Brydges. It was for this reason, according to
Major-General Mundy, the Admiral’s son-in-law and the editor of his
correspondence, that the Christian name of George, which had been common
in the Rodney family, was given to the boy who was to live to break the
French line on August 12th, 1782.
This is the family account of the Admiral’s descent, and there is no
reason to doubt its substantial accuracy. Sir Egerton Brydges, than whom
no one was better entitled to insist on the delusions to which men are
subject when their pedigrees are in question, does indeed utter a word
of warning in his edition of Collins’ Peerage. He remarks with perfect
truth that “the slender notice taken of such branches [as this younger
branch of the Rodneys to wit] in the Heralds’ Visitations, the long
disuse of those visitations, together with the general confusion in
which this kingdom was involved by the Civil War between King Charles
and the Parliament, and the great destruction of family deeds and
evidences which it occasioned, must render it extremely difficult, if
not altogether impossible, for not only his lordship, but also most of
the descendants from younger sons of the best families of the kingdom to
join themselves to their old family stock.” These are words of wisdom,
and it is just possible that the Admiral did not really descend from the
Rodneys of Rodney Stoke. Still there is good evidence to show that the
claim was well founded. It was recognised by the Duke of Chandos when
the Admiral had become famous, which is something; and, what is much
more, it was allowed in his youth by George Brydges of Avington and
Kainsham--a representative of the house into which Sir Edward Rodeney’s
daughter had married. Sir Egerton Brydges has himself recorded that
young Rodney “was brought up and spent part of his early youth under the
patronage of George Brydges of Avington and Kainsham, which confirms the
presumption of his descent.” We may therefore take it as reasonably well
proved that the Count de Grasse, who by the way dated from the tenth
century, was defeated and taken off Dominica by a gentleman of descent
not greatly inferior to his own. It is just possible that the Admiral’s
Christian names were given in compliment to the kinsman who patronised
his early youth. Henry Rodney was at least fortunate in that he was able
to so name his son as to give him a species of claim on his King, on one
whom his King delighted to honour, and on a relation whose interest was
well worth having. The boy started in life in the position of a
gentleman with excellent connections.
Rodney was in all probability one of the many famous men who belong by
birth to London. He was baptized on February 13th, 1718, at St.
George’s-in-the-Fields, and it may be considered as certain that he was
born in the January of the same year. His schooling, which cannot have
been prolonged, was received at Harrow--then a grammar school of no
especial fame. At the age of twelve he went to sea as a King’s-letter
boy, being the last of those who entered the navy in that way.
The term King’s-letter boy requires some little explanation. Nothing
distinguished our ancestors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
from their descendants of to-day more completely than their indifference
to formal regularity in the organisation of the public services, and
their tolerance of anomalies. As for organisation, they were satisfied
with as little of it as would serve the turn, and they endured anomalies
with serene indifference as long as they were not intolerable in their
practical results. They were not much addicted to giving their idea of
an organisation, and when they did were inspired by the faith that if
only the right men were got to fill places the good work would follow.
The getting of good men, they held, was only possible by the strenuous
application of patriotism, zeal for the King’s service, and intelligence
on the part of those who had to select. Therefore they were content to
allow a great freedom of choice to those in authority. The navy itself,
though its efficiency was a matter of life and death to the nation, was
contentedly left in a condition which on all modern principles should
have had disastrous results. There was a central corps of commissioned
officers--lieutenants, captains, and admirals. These men formed the
permanent staff of the navy. Whether on active service or not, they were
on the list, and drew pay. All others who were employed, warrant
officers, petty officers, and men, were shipped as in the merchant
service for the voyage. Their connection with the navy was limited to
the ship on which they served, and terminated with the commission. Until
some years after Rodney entered the navy the loss of a ship by wreck was
held to terminate the engagement of all the crew. Their pay ceased, and
with the pay their obligation to obey orders. It was not until it was
found impossible to punish the men who so cruelly deserted Captain
Cheape after the wreck of the _Wager_ on Anson’s voyage that the modern
practice was introduced of holding that the commission of the ship lasts
till she has been formally paid off, and with it the liability of all
hands to punishment by court-martial. Hence the apparent absurdity by
which a captain may be dismissed from a vessel which has been at the
bottom of the sea for months. If she were not regularly paid off,
captain, officers, and men would continue to belong to her, and to draw
their full pay so long as they lived. At all times, no doubt, there were
warrant officers and seamen who served for life, and the dockyards had a
permanent staff. None the less it was wholly the theory, and very much
the practice, that when a ship was paid off, all who had been on board
her except her captain and lieutenants ceased to be officially connected
with the navy. So long as squadrons had to be fitted out it was
convenient for the Admiralty to have warrant officers and seamen under
its hand. So those who chose to engage again were commonly taken on; but
there was no obligation to take them, nor were they bound to serve,
unless they were pressed again.
From out of this body were chosen the lieutenants, and here the
indifference of our ancestors to finish of organisation was very
strongly shown. There were a number of regulations as to what qualified
a man for a commission, but in practice the rule was that any one who
had served a term of years at sea, of which some were in a king’s ship,
who could hand, reef, and steer, could navigate a little and keep a log,
who could find a friend to put in a word for him in the right quarter,
was competent to receive a commission. If the friend could not be found
then he might go on in the navy for life without ever, in Nelson’s
phrase, getting his foot on the ladder. He might remain a midshipman,
who was, and is, a warrant officer, till his death. Moreover, if he
could not get a ship when his last had been paid off, the Admiralty did
not recognise him. Men could be made lieutenants from before the mast,
and there are cases of such promotions. A captain, as all readers of
Marryat’s _King’s Own_ will remember, could put boys on the
quarter-deck. If at a later period he had the interest, he could obtain
a commission for his client. There is a romantic story told about that
Admiral Campbell who was Hawke’s flag-captain at Quiberon, which, as it
illustrates the navy of Rodney’s time, may be told here. Campbell was
the son of a Scotch minister, and was apprenticed to the skipper of a
small trading craft in the west of Scotland. The vessel was overhauled
by a king’s ship with a press warrant. The navy captain selected those
of her crew who seemed best worth pressing. Among them was a
newly-married man, who, overcome at the prospect of indefinite
separation from his young wife, began to cry. Campbell knew that as an
apprentice he was exempt from the press, but he knew also that the
King’s service went over everything. If he chose to volunteer he could
thereby break his indentures. Being a boy of a tender heart and a high
spirit he resolved to save the husband if he could. He therefore went up
to the naval officer and offered a bargain. He presented himself as a
substitute for the sailor. The officer very sensibly took the offer,
saying that he thought a spirited lad a good exchange for a blubbering
man. Campbell made up his kit, and went to serve King George as powder
monkey. But his spirit had pleased the naval captain, and after a time
this gentleman put him on the quarter-deck, introduced him to good
friends, who helped him to share in Anson’s famous voyage, and so to win
his commission as lieutenant. Once on the ladder, Campbell rose by force
of native faculty, and his power of making people believe in him. He
lived to be at Hawke’s right hand at Quiberon, to become the friend of
Keppel, and he died an admiral. Even if this story has been somewhat
embellished, it shows what was thought possible in Rodney’s time, and
illustrates what may fairly be called the elasticity of our old naval
practice. No man could be a lieutenant who had not served the King; but
he who had, whether it was as foremast-hand, master’s mate, midshipman,
or captain’s servant (for young gentlemen were put on the quarter-deck
under that title), and could be said to be competent, could in the old
naval phrase “be made,” if he could induce an admiral in command of a
squadron who had a vacancy, or the Admiralty at home, to make him.
This laxity, as it would be called now, had its bad side, no doubt. Mean
men in mean times took advantage of it, and permitted themselves a good
deal of favouritism and jobbery. But it had its good side too. A captain
might pay his tailor’s bill by putting his tailor’s son on the
quarter-deck; but he was much more likely to put his own son or nephew,
or the son of an old comrade, there. In any case his own honour was
concerned in the fitness of the lad whom he thus marked out as candidate
for a lieutenant’s commission. An admiral might give his own incompetent
offspring a commission or a ship. Marryat has preserved a wild legend
about an admiral who did so, and then, when the youth made a fool of
himself, inflicted paternal chastisement on him in the after cabin of
the flag-ship--perhaps with a piece of inch-and-a-half with a Turk’s
head on it. As a matter of sober fact, an admiral who knew how much his
own honour and even safety depended on the fitness of his officers had
every motive to select them well--when he had a chance to select them at
all. At any rate the system, or no system, which allowed the rapid rise
of Anson and Hawke, Saunders and Pocock, Rodney, the Hoods, Howe,
Collingwood, and Nelson, can dare to be judged by its fruits. Could the
most uniform organisation, the most careful avoidance of favouritism and
jobbery, have done better for us?
Our fathers were at ease in their minds on the subject, for about 1730
they--and here we come back to the King’s-letter boy--saw the abolition
of the only approach to an organisation by which a regular corps of
candidates for a lieutenant’s commission had till then been provided;
and they saw it with indifference. During the Restoration, and in the
early part of the eighteenth century, it had been the custom to send a
certain number of boys on board ship with a King’s “Letter of Service.”
These lads were considered to have a better right to be made lieutenants
than others. They answered, in fact, to the modern cadet. It does not
seem that they were held to be entitled to a commission, but they were
more likely to get it than another. As a Letter of Service would not be
given except to those who had some interest, they probably did get their
commissions as a rule. In this way some regular provision was made for
the supply of a corps of officers. About 1730, however, the elder Byng,
he who won the battle off Cape Passaro, being then a commissioner at the
Admiralty, decided to abolish the King’s Letter, and to establish a
naval school at Portsmouth in which boys might be trained for the sea
service. This sounds very modern, but Byng carried out his reform in the
genuine spirit of the eighteenth century. He did not declare that only
those should become lieutenants who had passed through the naval school,
and he did leave the expense of supporting the boys who went to study
there wholly to their families. It was therefore not the interest of a
parent who could get his boy sent straight on board ship to send him to
the naval school. So, though the place went on it was much neglected,
and many of the most famous naval officers who entered the service after
it had been established had never belonged to it. Rodney was, it has
been said already, the last of those who entered the navy in the old
way.
When he first went to sea we were in the middle of the long peace
maintained by Walpole. A considerable naval force was kept up, for
though Sir Robert would not use the fleet, he never allowed foreigners
to forget it was there to be used in case of need. Little notice was
taken of midshipmen in those days--so little, in fact, that it is often
impossible to tell when an officer first went to sea. The actual date
of the entry into the service of so famous a man as Lord Hawke was long
unknown. According to General Mundy, Rodney’s first captain was Medley,
afterwards an admiral, and he passed most of his early years of service
on the Newfoundland station. He became an officer when he was “made” by
Haddock in the Mediterranean on February 15th, 1739. It would seem,
therefore, that Rodney’s interest was not strong enough to get him a
commission till after an apprenticeship of nine years, or nearly thrice
the period required by the rules of the service. In this respect he was
far less lucky than his contemporary Howe, who was in command of a ship
before he was twenty.
In 1739 the long peace was at an end, and England had entered on the
three-quarters of a century of fighting, relieved by uneasy truces,
which were to leave her the uncontested mistress of the seas. The war
which began about Jenkins’ Ear and developed into the Austrian
Succession had just broken out. A fleet was sent into the Mediterranean
under Nicholas Haddock, member of an Essex family which had been
distinguished in the navy from the Commonwealth time. Haddock’s duty was
to look after any Spanish squadron which might put to sea, to support
our garrison at Minorca, to take prizes, and to ravage the coast. The
work was well done, but it afforded few opportunities of distinction.
Spain was too weak to meet us openly, and the English fleet was mostly
engaged in blockading Don José Navarro at Cadiz, and in endeavouring to
keep the Straits of Gibraltar free from privateers. Towards the close of
1741 the Spaniards succeeded in slipping to sea while Haddock was at
Gibraltar, and in covering the despatch of Spanish troops from Barcelona
to Northern Italy, where they were to operate against the Austrians for
the purpose of putting the Milanese into the possession of the Infante
Don Felipe. The escape of Don José and the passage of the Spaniards was
a famous incident of the times, and the cause of much clamour; but it
has no connection with the life of Rodney, and may be left alone here.
It was almost a matter of course that the retreat of Haddock should be
put down to the profound cunning which, to the unending joy of all
Englishmen of humour, is attributed to us by the sagacious foreigner. We
went away to gain our private ends. The true explanation was simpler.
Ships grew rapidly foul in the time before the value of copper-sheeting
had been discovered. Haddock’s vessels wanted scraping, and, moreover,
had been knocked about by the autumn storms; so he retired to Gibraltar
to refit. While he was there Navarro slipped out and ran through the
Gut. As soon as the squadron was ready for sea Haddock followed. When he
came up with the Spaniards he found them in company with a French
squadron under M. de Court. The French Admiral informed him that the
Italian enterprise was undertaken in alliance with his master, and that
no attack on the Spaniards could be permitted. England and France were
still nominally at peace, though they were actively opposed to one
another in the character of allies to Austria or Prussia. The position
was an extraordinary one, and Haddock very pardonably shrank from the
responsibility of attacking the allies. He retired to Minorca and waited
for orders.
For a period of more than a year after this the English, French, and
Spaniards remained in a state of war which was no war, and peace which
was not peace. The allies lay at Toulon quarrelling and fighting duels.
The English watched them from Minorca or Hyères Bay. The French would
not allow us to attack the Spanish squadron, but they left us at full
liberty to obtain water and provisions in their territory. They even
went so far as to tolerate the destruction of five Spanish galleys by
our fire-ships in St. Tropez Bay, but they were notoriously preparing to
fight us a little later on. Altogether, the diplomatic and military
situation was one to which it would be hard to find a parallel. In this,
as in the previous stage of the naval war, few opportunities for real
service were afforded, and, such as they were, none of them came in
Rodney’s way.
Early in 1742 Haddock’s health broke down and he returned to England.
After a brief period, during which Rear-Admiral Lestock held the
command, Admiral Mathews arrived from England with reinforcements to
take it over. The change did no harm to Rodney, who was appointed by the
new commander to the _Plymouth_, sixty-four, on a vacancy made by the
transfer of Captain Watson to the _Dragon_. Immediately afterwards he
was sent home with a convoy, and so escaped having to bear a part in the
most inglorious passage in the history of the English navy--the battle
of February 11th, 1744, off Toulon, and the long series of scandalous
court-martials which arose out of it. We have happily no concern with
the miserable Mathews and Lestock quarrel except to note that as the
Admiral was afterwards dismissed the service for bearing down on the
enemy out of his line of battle, it served to harden that hide-bound
system of tactics which made naval engagements so utterly indecisive
till Rodney himself broke through it thirty-eight years later in the
West Indies. The acting rank as post-captain conferred by the command of
the _Plymouth_ was confirmed on his arrival in England, and he was now
firmly established on the ladder. A man rose from lieutenant to captain
by selection, from captain to admiral by seniority, and if post-rank did
not come too late, was tolerably sure of reaching flag-rank. Whether he
would ever actually hoist his flag at sea would still depend on luck and
merit. Rodney had passed from the great class below lieutenant which had
no rights, and from the rank of lieutenant which was the highest reached
by many men, not so rapidly as some of his contemporaries, but still
speedily. At five-and-twenty years of age, and with twelve years of
service, he stood on his own quarter-deck with the best of prospects
that he might one day command a fleet.
Although these years of apprenticeship contain no incident of interest
in Rodney’s career, they--and particularly the last three of them--must
have been of vital importance to him. They had taught him his business
as a matter of course, and had hardened him to the sea life. How hard it
was we know from _Roderick Random_. There is a certain amount of
deliberate exaggeration for purposes of literary effect in Smollett’s
great book, but its essential truth is beyond dispute. A ship is never
for those who have to work her, or fight her, a luxurious
dwelling-place, but in the early eighteenth century the interval between
what would be counted decent comfort on shore and the utmost attainable
comfort at sea was indeed great. Ships were small, and crowded with men
and guns. The between-decks were low, ill ventilated, and abounding in
stenches. Officers of all ranks slept in hammocks, and captains who were
anxious for the efficiency of their ships would not tolerate standing
cabins. It may be asserted with confidence that the officers of His
Majesty’s ships were worse lodged, about 1740, than the crew of a
sailing merchant-vessel of to-day. A man had to be made of tough stuff
to stand it all. When Rodney was captain of the _Eagle_ he took his
brother to sea with him. One cruise was enough for James Rodney, and he
went ashore for good on his return to port. Even those who were made of
sterner fibre could not endure the hardships of the life. They broke
down with gout, rheumatism, and diseases of the nature of scurvy,
brought on by exposure, bad air, and bad food. Habitual indulgence in
fiery liquors had something to do with the prevalence of gout and stone
among naval men, but the fiery liquors were not only the fashion of the
time, they were also the natural refuge of men whose nerves were
affected by stinks and whose palates were exasperated by salt food. In
the matter of liquor, Rodney probably went with the multitude around him
to do evil, taking his share of whatever bumbo or hypsy (dreadful
compounds of rum or brandy and wine, all young and all fiery, disguised
in spices) was going on board or ashore. At least he never shrank from
more fashionable dissipations in later times, and probably did not care
to be singular in earlier days. When he was famous there were old men
who boasted that they had shared in the carouses of his youth. Then,
too, he had tell-tale sufferings in later years from the gout, the
prevailing disease of that hard-drinking generation.
All this, however, was the life of his time and his service which he
shared with other men. To him, who was born to be a great commander, the
spectacle afforded by the fleet during his three years’ service must
indeed have been especially instructive. It must have taught him what a
squadron ought not to be, and how it ought not to be managed. The navy
of that time was the navy of Hawser Trunnion, Esquire. Now one may have
a real affection for Hawser Trunnion personally, and yet be compelled to
acknowledge that the generation of officers of which he is the type
fought less well than English naval men have done before or since. It
was not that they were not brave, for they often were; nor yet that they
were not seamen, for that also they were; but there was far too often
something which they preferred to the discharge of their duty. It was
often party politics, for they were very Whig and very Tory. Too many of
them were members of Parliament, and owed their commands to their seats.
In that case they carried on the party battle with one another in
presence of the enemy. Perhaps they did not actually betray one another,
but they believed one another to be capable of treason. The Tory officer
saw the Whig in a mess with a certain complacency, and the Whig was
pleased when baffling winds gave him an excuse for not coming to the
help of the Tory. As an inevitable consequence their fighting was apt to
be slack, and their recriminations furious. Personal quarrels were
carried to a pitch of rancour not to be rivalled out of a cloister.
Mathews was brutally insolent to Lestock, and Lestock hated Mathews with
the concentrated fury of Mr. Browning’s Spanish Monk. When one turns
over the pamphlets they wrote against one another, the picture of
Commodore Trunnion as he listened to the report that Admiral Bower was
to be made a British peer, rises at once. The mug, we remember, fell
from his hand, and shivered into a thousand fragments; his eye glistened
like that of a rattlesnake. Even so may Lestock have behaved when he
heard that his enemy Mathews was coming to command him. His pamphlets
were certainly written with the venom of a rattlesnake. Many years
later, when Rodney was himself a peer, and at the head of the
profession, he deliberately recorded on the margin of a copy of Clerk’s
_Tactics_ his belief that Lestock had betrayed his superior officer. The
judgment was too harsh, but it shows what an impression the factions in
the fleet had made on Rodney’s mind. When he was afterwards in command
he showed a distinct readiness to believe that some of his subordinates
were capable of the same conduct, and he resented their conduct
fiercely. It is premature to discuss his justice on this occasion, but,
no doubt, the memory of what he had seen in the Mediterranean was very
present with him in those days, exasperating his suspicions and
animating him to stamp the bad spirit out.