THE WHITBY TRADE

See Also: CHEMICALS; CLASS; COURTESANS Charles II's Mistresses, The Duchess of Portsmouth; FINANCIAL SCANDALS The Colebrooke Crash; PALACES Buckingham Palace; PUBS The Prospect of Whitby

Buckingham Palace derives its name from the 1^st Duke of Buckingham. The royal residence was erected upon the site of the townhouse (1705) that he had had built on the western fringe of Green Park.

The ducal income that paid for the construction of mansion came, in part, from alum.¹ In pre-modern society, the mineral salt had a variety of commercial applications. These included its use as a mordant for securing dye to the fibres of cloth, particularly wool, as well as its being employed by tanners to treat animal skins with in order to whiten them.² It took twenty tonnes of alum shale to produce one tonne of alum. The rock was placed in large bonfires that were kept burning for nine months. The residue from these was subjected to repeated washing to extract from it a solution of aluminium sulphate. An alkali was added to this in order to yield the final product - alum crystal. The alkali used was either potash, produced by burning seaweed, or ammonia derived from post-urethral solution. Two tonnes of the nephric discharge were needed to produce a tonne of alum.

During the late medieval era alum had been imported into Europe via Constantinople. In 1453 the city fell to the Ottomans. Subsequently, supplies of the sulphate from its historic eastern sources became problematic.

In 1457 Rodrigo Borgia was appointed to be the Vice-Chancellor of the Catholic Church. During his exercise of the office, the nature of The Vatican's income altered. Previously, it had come from the spiritual services that Rome had furnished to the Western Church as a whole. Under the official's guidance, it came to be derived principally from temporal possessions. A large mineable deposit of alum-bearing shale was discovered at Tolfa to the north-west of Rome. This proved to be a major boon to the fortunes of the future pope and his family. The Vatican kept to itself the knowledge of how to produce alum and so benefited financially from a monopoly of production.

Knowledge of the processing technique seeped out over time. It became known across Europe through Georgius Agricola's books De Natura Fossilium (1546) and De Re Metallica (1556). Sir Thomas Chaloner, through his participation in an unsuccessful alum processing venture, learnt how to identify soil that contained alum shale. He was able to point out to a group of Yorkshire gentry, who had estates near to the port of Whitby, that their properties had rich seams of the sedimentary rock. The landowners established an alum production business in the town.

The flavifluent of Whitby was said to be particularly effective because the port had a high proportion of teetotallers within its population. However, their production was insufficient for the needs of the industry and so barrels of the aureate fluid were sourced from urban centres along the East Coast of England, notably Newcastle Upon Tyne and London. The chrysorheate expelled by poor Londoners was preferred to that from the wealthy ones. This was because the former drank more beer and less wine than the latter which led to their output having a higher ammonia content.

The 1^st Earl of Mulgrave was the great-grandfather of Buckingham. He was a loyal henchman first of Queen Elizabeth I and then of King James I. In 1603 the latter appointed him to be the President of the Council of The North. However, in order to execute the office in an appropriate manner, the peer had to engage in major expenditure. His financial predicament was heightened by the fact that he had nine daughters to furnish dowries for. He made his plight known to the monarch and eventually was granted a share of the Yorkshire alum mines. This provided a large proportion of his income. However, the revenue that it produced fluctuated.

Mulgrave s relations with the Stuart dynasty soured slowly. When the Civil Wars commenced in 1642, he and his sons sided with Parliament. The earl died during the conflict. His successor was his grandson. The 2^nd earl supported the legislature also. His loyalty was reciprocated; the House of Lords cancelled an alum monopoly that had been granted to a Sir John Gibson, thereby restoring the economic value of the Sheffield family's alum interests. During the Commonwealth, the peer was a trusted official of the Cromwellian state.

The future Buckingham inherited the family earldom in 1658. Two years later the monarchy was restored. His youth and the general wish for political harmony, ensured that the 1^st and 2^nd earls conduct was no bar to their descendant's being able to resume the Sheffields position as a trusted supporter of the Stuart dynasty. Upon reaching adulthood the peer became one of King Charles II's courtiers. The young man's skill in using the English language enabled him to win the appreciation of the monarch. His loyalty proved to be steadfast.

In 1682 the king expelled the earl from court and stripped him of his offices. This was because the sovereign had heard a rumour that the peer had seduced Princess Anne, the younger daughter of his (Charles s) brother James Duke of York; Charles was a rake who fostered a court that echoed his own misbehaviour but even he had his limits as to what was acceptable conduct and what was not. Two years later, the monarch indicated that his anger had abated a degree by restoring Mulgrave's regiment to him. In 1685 York inherited the throne as King James II. The earl was restored to full royal favour. He was appointed to the senior office of Lord Chamberlain.

By the time that Anne acceded to the throne in 1702, she had outgrown her youthful crush. However, the Marquis of Normanby (as Mulgrave had become) does not seem to have been aware of this and viewed himself as being a great royal favourite. The queen humoured him. She conferred the dukedom of Buckingham upon him. She also granted him the westernmost portion of Green Park upon which to build Buckingham House. The politicians who acted as her ministers often found it to be problematic to deal with the peer s pretensions and his general inflated view of himself.

John Ward was a controversial City of London merchant, who had secured for himself a seat in the Commons. In 1705 Buckingham granted the man a nineteen-year-long lease of the alum farm. The commoner used his control of the asset to establish a scam that was to net him 70,000 of his grace's money.

The following year the duke married Catherine Annesley. While the peer possessed an elevated view of himself, this was overshadowed by the self-image that his wife had developed. Horace Walpole described the duchess as being more mad with pride than a mercer's wife in Bedlam . This was because she was the daughter of the Countess of Dorchester,³ who had been the principal mistress of James II and thus she took herself to be Anne's half-sister. The countess tried to curb her daughter s pride in her supposed royal descent by telling her that her true father was Colonel James Grahame and that the Countess of Berkshire, to whom she bore a strong resemblance, was her half-sister. It was this deluded duchess who was the first chatelaine of Buckingham House. Its splendours derived in large part from poor Londoners fondness for ale.⁴

The agreement between Ward and the Sheffields expired in 1724. The 1^st Duke's executors, acting on behalf of his son, launched a suit against the M.P. in the Court of Chancery . The matter was decided in the family s favour. Ward then made an appeal to the Lords. The Upper House rejected this and instructed the Attorney-General to prosecute him for fraud. The Parliamentarian was convicted of the charge. He then stood upon his privilege as a member of the Commons. This action prompted the Lower House to expel him from its ranks.

Ward was fined 500, bound over for nine years, and ordered to stand in the pillory in Palace Yard for one hour. A body of troops was stationed in front of the frame. This was done in order to prevent the mob from being able to assault him. However, numerous projectiles were thrown over the soldiers heads at him. At the end of the sixty minutes, he was unconscious and covered by his own blood. However, he was incorrigible. A few weeks later he tried to hire his former prosecutor to act on his behalf in another lawsuit. The young duke was only ever to receive 10,000 of the sum that the merchant owed him.⁵

Location: Buckingham Palace, SW1A 1AA (orange, white)

Old Palace Yard, SW1P 3JY (purple, red)

21 St James's Square, SW1Y 4JP (orange, purple)

The Prospect of Whitby, 57 Wapping Wall, E1 9SP (red, purple)

¹. KAl(SO₄)2.12H₂O.

². Alum other uses included its being added to flour in small quantities. The chemical acted both as a drying agent and as a means whitening the appearance of the powder.

³. In 1685, upon acceding to the throne, the Roman Catholic King James II ended his affair with the Countess of Dorchester as an example to the court. There were Anglican courtiers who wished the relationship to resume in order for there to be an additional source giving Protestant counsel to the king. The first attempt to reignite the liaison did not succeed. However, James did make her the Countess of Dorchester. This prompted the Queen Mary to signal her displeasure. Dorchester agreed to go to Ireland but soon returned. Her affair with the king recommenced. The appeal of the countess lay in her earthy sense of humour rather than her looks.

James was overthrown by the Revolution of 1688. Dorchester's father, the libertine Sir Charles Sedley 5^th Bt., participated in Revolution that led to James's son-in-law William and daughter Mary becoming joint sovereigns. He gave his reason for contributing to the change as, The King having made my daughter a Countess, it is fit I should make his daughter a Queen.

⁴. Developments in chemical technology caused the Whitby alum industry to collapse during the 1870s.

⁵. Subsequently, Ward was to be convicted of having embezzled 50,000 of South Sea Company funds.

David Backhouse 2024