THE INDENTURED
EARL
See Also: CHARLES DICKENS Lincoln's Inn, The Old Hall; THE HOUSE OF LORDS; THE KING OF CORSICA; PRISONS, DISAPPEARED
Millbank Penitentiary, Deportation; SLAVERY White Slaves; THE UNRESURRECTED
MOLE
During
the late 16thC and through the 17thC the Annesley family
rose from being minor English gentry into being wealthy Anglo-Irish
aristocrats. The Irish peer the 4th
Baron Altham was the senior member of a cadet branch of the dynasty. He married an illegitimate daughter of the 1st
Duke of Buckingham. The match proved to
be an unhappy one. The couple had a son
James. Subsequently, the baron
engineered the collapse of the union and ejected his wife from their home while
retaining possession of their son.1
Altham
had built up large debts. He enjoyed the
prospect of inheriting the control of considerable wealth from his cousin the
English peer the 5th Earl of Anglesey. However, he would not own it directly since
the estates had been entailed upon his son.
He decided to sell reversionary leases on some of the Irish properties
that were owned by his kinsman. To do
this legally, he needed the consent of his own heir-apparent. James was far too young to be able to give
such. His lordship simplified the matter
by sending the child to a distant and obscure school and then announcing that
the boy had died. This left the baron
free to re-arrange his financial affairs.
He did so in association with his younger brother Richard, who was now
taken to be his heir-apparent. The sibs
had a fractious relationship. The scheme
did not unlock any riches and the peer continued to live in (relative) poverty.
James
did not return to Altham's household.
This was because the peer's mistress, who had financial means of her own
and therefore underwrote its operation, was firmly set against his doing so. The boy was left to live a semi-feral
existence upon the streets of Dublin.
However, the baron did make a number of statements that acknowledged
that the child was his legitimate heir.
Richard
Annesley had a paradoxical personality.
On the one hand he was noted to be given to daily religious devotions,
on the other he was not only a bigamist but a bigamist who committed adultery. In 1727 Altham died. At this point, both his property and his
title should have been inherited by the twelve-year-old James. The uncle decided to utilise his nephew s
supposed death to supersede the boy's due rights. To make good this co-option, it was necessary
that the child should be removed. It
would have been no great matter to have had him murdered, however, instead
Richard arranged that James should be kidnapped and then indentured as a
labourer upon a plantation in North America.
This was a de facto form of set-term slavery that had a very high
rate of mortality.
During
the 17thC it had been commonplace in port towns for merchants and
ship's captains to arrange for the abduction of children, vagrants, and paupers
so that they could be compelled to be indentured. This trade had declined as the one in
enslaved Africans had developed. By the
start of the 18thC it was no longer practised in England. However, it was continued in Ireland. People tended to be sent to Pennsylvania and
the other Middle Colonies. In the 1720s
the Hibernian kingdom experienced a series of bad harvests. Therefore, for some people, entering into a
term of set-term servitude was a rational response to the plight in which they
found themselves to be. That one more
person should be sent across the Atlantic was of little consequence.
The
senior branch of the Annesleys became extinct in 1737. The usurping 5th Baron Altham was
recognised as being the 6th Earl of Anglesey.
Across
the ocean, James had been bought by a farmer whose property was in
Delaware. The life that the youth had
led in the colony had been physically very harsh. He had tried to escape at least twice. After the first occasion, he had been sold on
to another farmer. This had led to his
period of indenture being extended, so that he had been bound by it for a total
of thirteen years. In 1740 he was
released. He then made his way to
Jamaica. There, he enlisted as a seaman
in Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon's fleet.
The young man's situation became known to his fellow sailors and it was
soon the talk of the force. Amongst
those who were serving in it were people who had either known him as a child or
who had had a connection to him. He was
recognised to be who he was. Vernon was
informed of the young man's situation.
The commander resolved that upon the fleet's return to England James
would be discharged. This came to pass
the following year.
In
London, former servants of the 4th baron were able to identify the
youth. James resolved to recover the
titles and the estates that were his due.
His cause was championed by one Daniel Mackercher with whom he was put
into contact by a former employee of the Annesleys. The Scottish-born merchant was a self-made
man whose desire to aid the claimant was the product of altruism. Mackercher had a meeting with the earl about
the matter. The encounter went
badly. The philanthropist concluded that
James would be safest if he left London.
The youth was spirited away to a country estate that was located close
to Staines.
Anglesey
gave serious consideration to recognising his nephew and going to live in
France. In return, he would have
required that financial provision should have been made for himself. However, one day in 1742, James went shooting
in the company of the gamekeeper of the Middlesex property upon which he had
been staying. The pair encountered a
couple of poachers who were netting fish in the River Staines. In the ensuing fracas, the claimant shot dead
one of the criminals.
When
Anglesey learnt of what had happened, he commissioned his solicitor to
orchestrate surreptitiously a prosecution of James. The White Horse Inn on Piccadilly was
the base from which the operation was organised. The earl was reported to have stated that he
would be willing to spend 10,000 to see the youth hanged. When Mackercher heard of the shooting he used
his own resources to defend James. The
latter was put on trial at the Old Bailey.
During the proceedings it became clear that the peer was responsible for
the action having been brought. However,
the court concluded that the fatal shot had been fired by accident. The young man was acquitted of the charge
that had been brought against him.
The
following year, James and Mackercher travelled to Ireland in order to initiate
a lawsuit there against Anglesey to recover the family's Irish lands and
titles. Again, the young man was
recognised by numerous people who had known him when he had been a child. He and his benefactor attended a horserace
meeting at the Curragh racecourse. The
earl was also at the event. Uncle and
nephew encountered one another. A riot
was sparked. James and his benefactor
felt compelled to make good their escape.
This proved to be a highly dramatic affair since the peer dispatched a
would-be assassin after them.
The
Irish Court of the Exchequer heard James's suit for the Annesley
inheritance. The trial was resolved in
the claimant's favour. However,
Anglesey lodged an appeal. This meant
that he retained possession of the properties and the titles until the due
process had been played out. Therefore,
he retained the financial wherewithal to be able to afford skilled
lawyers. They, in their turn, deployed
delaying tactics. Therefore, the matter
was dragged out. James did not have access
to such resources. Mackercher's fortune
had in large part been consumed in pursuit of the youth's cause. The matter became an asymmetrical struggle in
which the earl held all of the advantages bar right.
James
launched a second lawsuit in the British Court of Chancery. This held out the prospect of being both
expensive and very protracted.
Therefore, he made an attempt to strike at the heart of his uncle's case
by asserting that the only servant who had been prepared to appear for the
defence during the Irish Exchequer case had perjured herself. He sued her in the Irish Court of the King s
Bench. The case failed. This outcome cast doubt upon the previous
verdict. The claimant had overreached
himself.
The
physician and writer Tobias Smollett used his novel The Adventures of
Peregrine Pickle (1751) as an opportunity for settling a number of grudges
that he had been nursing. Among those
who experienced his barbs in the work was the actor David Garrick. In order to provide some light to contrast
with this darkness the author drew upon Mackercher's conduct in the Annesley
case.
James
sought to induce people to make donations to help finance his litigation. In 1756 he visited fashionable spa towns that
were frequented by the gentry and the aristocracy in order to try to raise
funds. Three years later, when he had to
swear an oath in Chancery that related to the earl's delaying manoeuvres, he
did so as a pauper. He died in 1760. The appeal in the Irish courts was still
on-going. Therefore, when his corpse was
buried at Lee in Kent, his gravestone bore the inscription James Annesley
Esq. . Three years later, the last of
his surviving sons died. With him, the
claim to the family's estates and titles expired.
Location:
Bury Street, SW1Y 6AB. The 6th
earl rented a property in Bury Street. (purple, yellow)
Millbank
Road, SW1P 4QP. James Annesley's home.
(orange, brown)
White
Horse Street, W1J 7LD. The site of The
White Horse Inn. (purple, brown)
1. In 1722 Lady Altham succumbed to a dead palsy , which was probably
some form of nervous system condition.
She became an invalid and moved to London, where she was to die in 1729.
David
Backhouse 2024