Through Harwich, now that Dover was closed, lay the only route to the Continent; and among the passengers frequenting this route were some to whom, for one reason or another, special attention was given. Baron Hompesch and Brigadier-General Cadogan are on their way to Holland. The packet is to be detained "till Thursday noon, at which time they think to reach Harwich." M. Rosenerantz, the Danish envoy, is returning to his own country. No passengers are to be admitted on board until he and his suite have been accommodated. A Queen's messenger is coming with "one Castello," who is in custody. This person is to be made over to the captain of the packet that sails next, and on arrival at the Brill is to be set on shore. Dirick Wolters is expected from Holland, if indeed he be not already arrived and secreted in Harwich. No pains are to be spared to discover and apprehend him, and to secure the sealed box he carries "directed to a person of note in London."
Goods, like passengers, were not allowed to be carried by the packets without the express permission of the Secretary of State; and this permission was seldom given except in the case of presents to royal personages and of articles for the use of persons of note residing abroad. Hence, such things as the following were being continually consigned to the care of the postmasters-general, with a request that they might be forwarded by the next boat:—
Fifteen couple of dogs for the King of the Romans.
Necessaries for Her Majesty the Queen-Dowager's service at Lisbon.
Three pounds of tea from Lady Arlington for the use of Her Majesty the Queen-Dowager of England.
Two cases of trimming for the King of Spain's liveries.
Two bales of stockings for the use of the Portuguese Ambassador.
Three suits of clothes for some nobleman's ladies at the Court of Portugal.
A box of medicines for the use of the Earl of Galway.
As the packets and everything on board of them were exempt from examination by the Customs authorities, there are no means of knowing how far a pass, where a pass had been obtained, was confined to its ostensible object. But it is impossible not to entertain suspicions on the subject. On one occasion the Portuguese envoy obtained permission to send by the packet six cases, which he certified to contain arms for the use of his Sovereign. The lightness of the packages when brought to the scale excited suspicion, and on examination they were found to contain not arms but dutiable goods. To a tradesman at Truro, in exception to rule, a pass had been granted which authorised him to send by the Lisbon packet ten tons of hats. Ten tons weight of hats, or what purported to be hats, had long been exported, and yet more and more hats were being regularly despatched by every packet.
But although without passes goods and passengers were prohibited on board the packets, it is certain that the prohibition was habitually infringed. The packet agents' instructions were to keep a record of the names and quality of all passengers, and to transmit a copy to London. Even if this were a complete and faithful record, the postmasters-general could not know that each passenger had produced his pass. The Secretaries of State, however, appear to have possessed some means of information unknown to the Post Office, and, in the matter of passengers, they were continually complaining of the regulations being broken. At one time it is Mr. Joseph Percival, a merchant of Lisbon, who comes over without a passport—which, from the tenor of Lord Sunderland's letter, the postmasters-general apprehend to be "an affair of moment." At another it is a Mr. Jackson who, also without a passport, crosses from Harwich to Holland. In this case Mr. Secretary Boyle affirms that the packet agent received a bribe of two guineas. To let passengers come by the Harwich packets without passports, he declares later on, has become a common practice.
In the matter of goods the evidence of irregularity is still stronger. Captain Culverden of the Queen packet boat brings into Falmouth thirty-six bags and seven baskets of salt, and there lands it clandestinely. Captain Rogers smuggles over twenty bags and one cask of the same material. Captain Urin from the West Indies makes Plymouth instead of Falmouth. Stress of weather is pleaded in excuse; but the postmasters-general feel sure that he might have made Falmouth, had he not "had private instructions otherwise." "We are uneasie," they say, "thus to find the West India boats for the most part driven to Plymouth, or to Liverpool or some port contrary to what is prescribed by our instructions."
But of all the captains there was none who in the audacity of his proceedings equalled Francis Clies. Clies had recently succeeded his father in the command of the Expedition packet boat. On his very first voyage home from Lisbon he was much behind time, having according to his own account been driven upon the coast of Ireland. On his second voyage he was later still. The time of his arrival at Falmouth had long passed, and serious apprehensions began to be entertained for his safety. At length a letter came from him dated at Kinsale, explaining that want of provisions had obliged him to put in there. "We have," wrote the postmasters-general, "very impatiently expected the arrival of the Expedition, which has been very long wanting, and are much concerned to find the second voyage even more tedious than the first; but are glad to find her at last safe arrived." "We would know," they added, "for how many days provisions had been put on board, and whether the Expedition sails not as well as formerly." Before a reply could be received to this pertinent inquiry, the Commissioners of Customs had lodged at the Post Office a formal complaint, in which Captain Clies was charged with bringing over from Ireland several bales of friezes and other woollen manufactures. The postmasters-general were deeply shocked. Not only was this a breach of the packet boat regulations, but to transport goods from what would now be one part of the United Kingdom to another was at that time prohibited by law under heavy penalties. If this charge be proved, they wrote to their packet agent at Falmouth, "we shall not be much to seek why the captain should be two succeeding voyages forced upon the coast of Ireland, when we have not had above one instance of that kind besides himself during this war." Narrow as was Clies's escape on this occasion, not four months elapsed before the postmasters-general were again condoling with him on another "very tedious voyage."
It may here be mentioned, as an instance of the inconsistency of human nature, that, although the packets were not provided with chaplains, there were two boats on board of which prayers were regularly said every morning and evening, and that of these two boats the Expedition was one.
Outwards as well as inwards the packet boats were, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, carrying goods in defiance of regulation and of law. Sir Paul Methuen, the author of the famous Commercial Treaty which bears his name, was at that time our ambassador to Portugal. His attention had been arrested by the large quantities of merchandise which the packet boats were continually bringing over from England, and in 1705 he made to the postmasters-general a formal representation on the subject. "In Lisbon," he stated, "there is a public market for English goods as often as the boats come in." Nor was the allegation denied by the persons implicated. They must, they said, live somehow. And this plea, generally the refuge of the idle and worthless, had in it in the present instance more force than might at first be supposed. The crews of the packets were paid only once in six months, and, as a check upon their conduct, six months' pay was always kept in arrear. Thus, before receiving any pay at all they had to work twelve months, and even at the expiration of twelve months there was not always money at hand with which to pay them.
At Harwich, there can be no doubt, the same malpractices were going on as at Falmouth; but, owing to the almost unequalled facilities which the east coast affords for clandestine traffic, detection less speedily followed. In the movements of the packet boats there was much that was mysterious. Their frequent disappearance for long periods together when the wind was blowing from the quarter most favourable to their return, and their occasional punctuality when the wind was contrary and they were least expected, involved a contradiction which the postmasters-general found it hard to reconcile. "In our whole experience," they wrote to the packet agent on the 3rd of October 1704, "the passage of the mails was never so unconstant as it has been this last year." "You must be very sensible what reproach we have been brought under" in consequence. The ink was hardly dry on their pen before information reached them that on the 2nd of the month two packet boats had returned to Harwich, of which one had been gone since the 10th and the other since the 19th of September. Meanwhile the winds had been fair, and had carried out the men-of-war and transports from Spithead. "We have writ you so often," wrote the postmasters-general to the laggard captains, "upon these neglects of yours," and you have paid so little regard to our admonitions, that "you may expect to find when too late that we are not to be trifled with." The effect of this caution, if effect it had, was of short duration. "We are," they wrote only a few months later, "under a perpetual uneasiness and distrust," on account of the irregularity of the Harwich boats. "Our reputation has very much suffered in consequence, and we are looked upon at Court as remiss in our duty." Hitherto we have ever been ready to "take any appearance of reason or probability to excuse the commanders, but do now, having had these frequent provocations so often repeated, resolve to do justice to ourselves, and to have no other regard than the merit of the service." "Pray make inquiries," they say on another occasion, when no less than three boats are unaccountably behind time. It is of no use writing to Mr. Vanderpoel, "for he always favours the captains' pretences." Mr. Vanderpoel was packet agent at the Brill. He had stood high in William's favour, and was still drawing an allowance of £100 a year which, as an act of grace, that King had bestowed upon him in addition to his salary. "When we last waited on the Lord High Treasurer and Secretary of State," wrote the postmasters-general again on the 14th of June 1705, "we found them in their former opinion that there must be some secret more than ordinary that the boats should so frequently when least expected make their passage, and when the winds have in all appearance been most favourable, the mails then most delayed." A secret no doubt there was; but, profoundly dissatisfied as the postmasters-general were, no suspicion appears to have crossed their minds that the packet boats were engaged in other and more exciting pursuits than the transport of mails.