Samuel Pepys and the World He Lived In

by Henry B. Wheatley

Lord Sandwich was instructed to take possession of Tangier, and then convey the Infanta and her portion to England. Although the Queen Regent sent a governor whom she had chosen as one devoted to her interest, and sure to obey her commands, yet Clarendon affirms that he went to his government with a contrary resolution.[100] This resolution, however, was frustrated by the action of the Moors. A few days only before Lord Sandwich arrived, the Governor marched out of the town with all the horse and half the foot of the garrison, and fell into an ambush. The whole party were cut off, and the Governor and many of his chief men were killed. The town was so weak that, when Lord Sandwich arrived at this conjuncture, he was hailed as a deliverer from the Moors. He conveyed the remainder of the garrison into Portugal, and Henry, second Earl of Peterborough, with the English garrison, entered the town on the 30th of January, 1662, as the first Governor from England.

Now began a system of mismanagement worthy of the disorganized condition of public affairs. A commission was appointed for the purpose of carrying on the government of Tangier in London, and constant meetings were held. None of the commissioners knew anything of the place, and they were quite at the mercy of the governors and deputy-governors who were sent out. Pepys was placed upon the commission by the influence of Lord Sandwich, and John Creed was appointed secretary.[101] Thomas Povey, the treasurer, got his accounts into so great a muddle, that he thought it wise to surrender his office to Pepys, on condition of receiving half the profits, which he did on March 20, 1664–65. This treasurership and the contract for victualling the garrison of Tangier were sources of considerable profit to our Diarist. At one of the earliest meetings of the committee, the project of forming a mole or breakwater was entertained. A contract for the work to be done at 13s. the cubical yard was accepted, although, as Pepys writes, none of the committee knew whether they gave too much or too little (February 16, 1662–63); and he signed the contract with very ill will on that score (March 30, 1663). When the accounts were looked into on April 3, 1663, it was found that the charge for one year’s work would be as much as £13,000. Two years after this, the committee agreed to pay 4s. a yard more, and the whole amount spent upon the mole was found to be £36,000 (March 30, 1665). The wind and sea exerted a very destructive influence over this structure, although it was very strongly built, and Colonel Norwood reported in 1668 that a breach had been made in the mole which would cost a considerable sum to repair. As Norwood was an enemy of a friend of his, Pepys at once jumps to the conclusion that he must be a bad man (February 22, 1668–69). The second Earl of Carnarvon said that wood was an excrescence of the earth, provided by God for the payment of debts, and Sir W. Coventry, in a conversation with Pepys, applied this saying to Tangier and its governors. It is not always safe to take for granted all that our Diarist says against the persons he writes about, but there must have been some truth in the indictment he drew up against all those who undertook the government of Tangier. When Lord Peterborough received the place from the Portuguese, a book was given to him which contained a secret account of all the conduit-heads and heads of watercourses in and about the town. This book was always given from one governor to another, but was not to be looked at by anyone else. When Lord Peterborough left, he took the book away with him, and on being asked for it always answered that he had mislaid it and could not recover it. Colonel Kirke told Pepys in 1683 that the supply of water was greatly reduced by the want of this information.[102] In 1666 Pepys had applied the adjective “ignoble” to Lord Peterborough’s name, on account of his lordship’s conduct in regard to money matters. On December 15, 1662, Andrew Lord Rutherford and Earl of Teviot, Governor of Dunkirk until its surrender to the French, was appointed Governor of Tangier in succession to Lord Peterborough, who was recalled. He was a brave but rash man, and made a practice of going out of the town into the country without taking proper precautions. In May, 1664, he was surveying his lines after an attack by the Moors, when he and nineteen officers were killed by a party of the enemy in ambush. Pepys called him a cunning man, and said that had he lived he would have undone the place; but in 1683, Dr. Lawrence told Pepys that his death was a great misfortune, for he took every opportunity of making the place great, but without neglecting himself.[103] John Lord Bellassis was the next governor, and he was said to be corrupt in his command.

The deputy-governors were no better than their superiors. Of Colonel Fitzgerald, Pepys writes, on October 20th, 1664, he is “a man of no honour nor presence, nor little honesty, and endeavours to raise the Irish and suppress the English interest there, and offend every body.” Certainly, when he sees him on August 7th, 1668, he is pleased with him and his discourse. Pepys’s opinion of Colonel Norwood we have already seen; but none of the governors rose to the height of villany exhibited by Colonel Kirke, whose name is condemned to everlasting infamy in the pages of Macaulay.

The further history of Tangier, previous to its final destruction, can be put into a few words. In January, 1668–69, Lord Sandwich proposed that a paymaster should be appointed at Tangier, and suggested Sir Charles Harbord for the post; but the Duke of York said that nothing could be done without Pepys’s consent, in case the arrangement should injure him in his office of treasurer. Our Diarist was much pleased at this instance of the kindness of the Duke, and of the whole committee towards him.[104]

Henry Sheres, who accompanied Lord Sandwich to Spain, and afterwards became a great friend of Pepys, was paid £100, on January 18th, 1668–69, for drawing a plate of the Tangier fortifications. In the same year (1669), the great engraver, Hollar, was sent to Tangier by the King to take views of the town and fortifications. Some of these he afterwards engraved, and the original drawings are in the British Museum.

In 1673 a new commission was appointed, and Pepys and Povey were among the commissioners.[105] Two years afterwards the vessel in which Henry Teonge was chaplain anchored in Tangier Bay; and in the “Diary” which he left behind him he gives a description of the town as it appeared to him. The mole was not then finished, and he found the old high walls much decayed in places. He mentions “a pitiful palizado, not so good as an old park pale (for you may anywhere almost thrust it down with your foot);” but in this palisade were twelve forts, well supplied with good guns.

In 1680, Tangier was besieged by the Emperor of Morocco, and Charles II. applied to Parliament for money, so that the place might be properly defended. The House of Commons expressed their dislike of the management of the garrison, which they suspected to be a nursery for a Popish army. Sir William Jones said: “Tangier may be of great importance to trade, but I am afraid hath not been so managed as to be any security to the Protestant religion;” and William Harbord, M.P. for Thetford, added: “When we are assured we shall have a good Protestant governor and garrison in Tangier, I shall heartily give my vote for money for it.”[106]

A most unworthy action was at this time perpetrated by the Government. Not having the support of Parliament, they were unable to defend the place with an adequate force; and they chose the one man in England whose brilliant career rivals those of the grand worthies of Elizabeth’s reign to fight a losing game.

The Earl of Ossory, son of the Duke of Ormond, was appointed Governor and General of the Forces; but, before he could embark, he fell ill from brooding over the treatment he had received, and soon after died. Lord Sunderland said in council that “Tangier must necessarily be lost; but that it was fit Lord Ossory should be sent, that they might give some account of it to the world.”

The Earl left his wife at their daughter’s house, and came up to London. Here he made a confidant of John Evelyn, who records in his “Diary” his opinion of the transaction. It was not only “an hazardous adventure, but, in most men’s opinion, an impossibility, seeing there was not to be above 3 or 400 horse, and 4000 foot for the garrison and all, both to defend the town, form a camp, repulse the enemy, and fortify what ground they should get in. This touch’d my Lord deeply that he should be so little consider’d as to put him on a business in which he should probably not only lose his reputation, but be charged with all the miscarriages and ill success.”[107] It was on this man that Ormond pronounced the beautiful eulogy, “I would not exchange my dead son for any living son in Christendom!”