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