one North Briton. George Johnstone; see last note on this page.
Mr. Laurens. Henry Laurens (1724-1792), of South Carolina; President of Congress, 1777-78. The quoted phrases that follow are from Johnstone’s letter to Laurens, 10 June 1778, soliciting a private interview. This letter, with Laurens’ answer, was promptly made public by Congress.
Ethan Allen. Ethan Allen (1738-1789), famous for his partisan exploits as leader of the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont; surprised and took Fort Ticonderoga, May 1775; a captive in England, Canada, and New York, September 1775-May 1778; author of a deistic treatise, Reason the Only Oracle of Man, Bennington, Vermont, 1784.
Dr. Adam Ferguson. Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), LL.D.; Professor of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh; secretary to the British commissioners to treat with America, 1778.
Sir John Dalrymple. Sir John Dalrymple (1726-1810), fourth Baronet; author of the Tory Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland. From the Dissolution of the Last Parliament of Charles II until the Sea-Battle off La Hogue, 1771, the design of which (according to Horace Walpole) was “to degrade & blacken the brightest names in English Story, & more particularly the Protomartyrs of the Revolution, Lord Russel & Algernon Sydney” (Satirical Poems Published Anonymously by William Mason with Notes by Horace Walpole, ed. Paget Toynbee, Oxford, 1926, p. 115).
the great Sidney. Algernon Sidney (1622-1683), son of the second Earl of Leicester; tried before Jeffreys and executed, December 1683, for complicity in the Rye House Plot to murder Charles II and the Duke of York.
Governor Johnson. George Johnstone (1730-1787), M.P. for Appleby; formerly Governor of West Florida; one of North’s commissioners to treat with America; see Introduction, p. 9. His conduct as commissioner was quarrelsome, clumsy, and ineffectual; Carl Van Doren, Secret History of the American Revolution, New York, 1941, pp. 96-104. Of his speech on the opening day of the session Walpole reported:
Governor Johnston made a strange, unintelligible speech (it was impossible for him to make a clear one without condemning himself); he endeavoured to wipe off some of his attempt to bribe some of the Congress, yet owned at much as he denied, condemned and approved the march to Philadelphia, and rather insinuated blame on Keppel than on anybody else. He was soon after called upon in several newspapers to say, whether he did not still retain his pay of Commissioner, though he had so long quitted the office. He made no answer—consequently was by that sinecure retained by the Court (Last Journals, II, 209).
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Mons. D’Estaign. Jean-Baptiste-Charles-Henri-Hector, Comte d’Estaing (1729-1794), French admiral in command in American waters, 1778-80.