Persuasion and Propaganda: Monuments and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire 9780773576643

Citation preview

per sua sion and propaganda

This page intentionally left blank

persuasion and propaganda Monuments and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire

Joan Coutu

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston London | Ithaca

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2006 isbn-3: 978-0-7735-330-7 isbn-0: 0-7735-330-0 Legal deposit third quarter 2006 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Funding has also been received from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canadian Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Coutu, Joan Michèle, 964– Persuasion and propaganda : monuments and the eighteenthcentury British Empire / Joan Coutu. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-3: 978-0-7735-330-7 isbn-0: 0-7735-330-0 . Monuments – Great Britain – Colonies – History – 8th century. i. Title. da6.c75 2006 94.07 c2006-90238-5

Set in /5 Minion Pro with itc Founders Caslon Book design & typesetting by zijn digital

To my parents, Marie Louise and Wilfrid Campbell Coutu, who, when I was very young, instilled in me an interest in art, history, and travel

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Author’s Notes xi Abbreviations xi List of Figures xiii  Introduction 3

pa rt o n e : fa m i ly e m p i r e s 2 Display and Dynasty 25 3 The Colonial Trade in Monuments

80

pa rt t w o : o f f i c i a l e m p i r e 4 Heroic Imagery? The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey 5 Precedents and Parallels: The Grenville Commissions 47

03

pa rt t h r e e : e m p i r e s e c u r e d ? 6 Magnanimity? The Bust of George III in Montreal 8 7 Reassurances of Liberty: Public Monuments in the American Colonies

pa rt f o u r : e m p i r e r e n e w e d 8 Reassurances of Loyalty: Public Commissions in the West Indies 9 India: Empire Building as a Moral Imperative 270 0 Conclusion

322

237

95

Appendix : Excerpt from the Agreement between Joseph Wilton and William Young for the Ottley Monument, St John’s Church, Antigua, 2 August 767 329 Appendix 2: Advice Concerning a Monument to Major General Wolfe

330

Appendix 3: Correspondence of Charles Garth, Joseph Wilton, and the Committee of Correspondence of the Commons House of Assembly of South Carolina Concerning the Monument of William Pitt for Charleston, 766–70 334 Appendix 4: Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth-Century Monuments in North America and the British West Indies 344 Notes 365 Bibliography Index 435

viii

407

contents

Acknowledgments

t

his book has been many years in the making and has been the subject of many conversations with people engaged in a wide variety of pursuits. Consequently, it would be impossible for me to acknowledge everyone who has offered advice, insight, or other assistance. My sincere apologies to those whose names I have unwittingly omitted. This book evolved from my P hD dissertation, which I completed at University College, London, in 993. I am grateful for the scholarship and support of my supervisor, Professor David Bindman, who has yet to forgive me for sending him, in the middle of a very damp English winter, a postcard of sunny West Indian beaches. I would also like to thank Malcolm Baker and John Newman, who were the examiners of my dissertation. Aspects of this project have been the subject of numerous conference papers and a few articles over the years. I would like to thank the various people who gave me an opportunity to speak and write on this material; the ensuing discussions were thought-provoking and extremely useful. In terms of financial and research support, I would like to acknowledge the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, the Central Research Fund of the University of London, and the University of Waterloo. I am also grateful to His Grace the Duke of Devonshire for granting me permission to consult the 4th Duke of Devonshire’s correspondence. Grants from the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, from McGill University, from Queen’s University, Kingston, from the University of Waterloo, and from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art have given me the opportunity to publish this book with

so many illustrations, something that was crucial to the project since so many of the monuments are not well known and have not been widely reproduced in photographic form. I would also like to thank the staff at McGill-Queen’s University Press, particularly Kyla Madden, Joan McGilvray, and Robert Lewis, for their support in bringing this project to publication. I would like to thank the publishers of the following for allowing me to use again some research material in a much more expanded form and in the wider context of the study of the British Empire: “Philanthropy and Propaganda: Wilton’s Bust of George III in Montreal,” RACAR 9 (992, published 994): 59–67; “Stowe, A Whig Training Ground,” The New Arcadian Journal 43 and 44 (997): 66–78; “Carving Histories: British Sculpture in the West Indies,” Journal of the Church Monuments Society 2 (997): 77–85; and “The Rodney Monument in Jamaica and an Empire Coming of Age,” The Sculpture Journal 2 (998): 46–57. Part of chapter 4 is reprinted in an expanded version by permission of the publishers from “Legitimating the British Empire: The Monument to General Wolfe in Westminster Abbey,” in Conflicting Visions: War and Visual Culture in Britain and France, c. 700–830, ed. John Bonehill and Geoff Quilley (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 6–83. I would like to thank the Royal Academy Library for allowing me to reproduce the material in Appendix  and the South Carolina Historical Society for allowing me to reproduce the material in Appendix 3. The people to whom I am most grateful reside or resided in what was the vast extent of the eighteenth-century British Empire: Brian Allen, Frances Andrews, Robyn Asleson, Malcolm Baker, Mrs Nicole Barker-Shepherd, Robert Barker, Bruce Beresford, Raphael Bernstein, Mr and Mrs Douglas and Sophie Blain, Annie Bowman, Raymond Brandon, Fran and Paul Brown, Jane Buyers, Betty Carillo Shannon, Leslie Carlyle, Cathy Carter, George and Jo-anne Carter, Mr George Clarke, Matthew Craske, Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey, Geoffrey and Patricia de Sola Pinto, Mary Evans, Ywone Edwards, Patrick Eyres, Valerie Facey, Christine Findlay, Geoffrey Fisher, Mario Gasparotto, Carol Gibson-Wood, Stephen Gleissner, Conrad Graham, Barbara Groseclose, Melissa Hall, Catherine Harding, Jennifer Harrison, Rev. G.A. Hatch, Mr Henry E. Harwood, John Ingamells, Nancy Jachec, Kasha Jenkinson, Robert W. Keeler, Michael Kitson, Rev. V.W. Lake, Terri Lindsay, Taina and Susan Lowe, Rev. Geoffrey Mayers, Michael McCarthy, Tessa Murdoch, Evelyn Newby, Mary Peever, Elizabeth Powis, the Rt. Rev. Alfred C. Reid, Kitz Rickert, Joan Robinson, Angela Rosenthal, Emma Scarse, Margot and Wigand Siebel-Achenbach, Kim Sloan, Douglas Smith, Lucy Tibbs, Marjorie Trusted, Jennifer Ullman, Philip Ward-Jackson, Mr Peter Winkworth, Rev. V.E. Wint, Fred Winter, and Pagent Wynter. I would also x

acknow l edgm ents

like to thank the faculty and staff at Queen’s University, the University of Victoria, and the University of Waterloo, especially Jean Stevenson and Michelle Laing; the staff of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery; and the Georgian Society of Jamaica. Elizabeth (Mardall) Thom deserves a special note of gratitude for putting up with a lodger who had an obsession with monuments; at least I did not bring them home with me! I would also like to thank the many members of my family, who simply in their numbers are building an empire of their own. Sebastian Siebel-Achenbach, my husband, and Ellen and Michèle, our wee little girls, came into my life in the latter stages of work on this book. To them I am forever grateful for enriching my life in ways that I never thought possible.

au t h o r’ s n o t e s Eighteenth-century spellings have been retained in quotations. Eighteenth-century place names have been retained. Spanish Town, Jamaica, is also known as St Jago de la Vega. I have used the former throughout the text. St Catherine’s parish church in Spanish Town, Jamaica, St Michael’s parish church in Bridgetown, Barbados, St John’s parish church in St John’s, Antigua, and St Thomas’s parish church in Bombay (Mumbai), India, were all elevated to cathedral status in the nineteenth century. For the purposes of this book, I have retained the designation “parish church.”

a b b r e v i at i o n s BL Add. MS (S ) DCB DNB Geo. II Geo. III

British Library, Additional Manuscript(s) Dictionary of Canadian Biography Dictionary of National Biography Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third acknow l edgm ents

xi

HEH JAJ OIOC PRO Walpole’s Corr.

xii

Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections Public Record Office, London Horace Walpole, Horace Walpole’s Correspondence

acknow l edgm ents

List of Figures

. Copy after Francis Bird, statue of Queen Anne, 72, marble. St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Original now at Holmshurst, near Hastings. Photo: Joan Coutu. 9 .2 Grinling Gibbons, monument to Admiral Sir Cloudsley Shovell, d. 707, marble. Westminster Abbey, London. Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster. 0 2. St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, Jamaica, 700. Tower, battlements, and lantern added in 706. Photo: Joan Coutu. 26 2.2 Interior, St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, Jamaica, 700. Photo: Joan Coutu. 27 2.3 St John’s Church, Antigua, consecrated 848 (replaced a brick church, c. 720, that was severely damaged in the 843 earthquake). Photo: Joan Coutu. 28 2.4 Monument to Robert Hooper, d. 700, marble. St Michael’s Parish Church, Bridgetown, Barbados. Photo: Joan Coutu. 29 2.5 Michael Rysbrack, statue of William III , erected 736, bronze. Bristol. Photo: Joan Coutu. 33

2.6 Monument to William Selwyn, d. 702, marble. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 42 2.7 Monument to Alexander Forbes, d. 729, marble. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 43 2.8 Monument to Thomas Rose, d. 724, marble. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 43 2.9 John Cheere, monument to James Lawes, d. 733, marble. St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 44 2.0 John Cheere, detail of the monument to James Lawes, d. 733, marble. St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 44 2. John Cheere, monument to Deborah Gibbons, d. 7, marble. St Peter’s Parish Church, Vere, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 45 2.2 St Nicholas Abbey, built between 656 and 66. St Peter, Barbados. Photo: Joan Coutu. 48 2.3 Triumphal column with panels representing four continents, c. 760s. Originally erected at The Decoy, the Jamaican estate of Sir Charles Price, moved to a park in Port Maria, Jamaica, in 933. Photo: Raymond A. Brandon. 52 2.4 William Lancashire of Bath (attr.), monument to Dames Christian and Jane Abel Alleyne and John Gay Newton Alleyne, 790s, marble. St James’s Parish Church, Holetown, Barbados. Photo: Joan Coutu. 54 2.5 William Lancashire of Bath (attr.), detail of the monument to Dames Christian and Jane Abel Alleyne and John Gay Newton Alleyne, 790s, marble. St James’s Parish Church, Holetown, Barbados. Photo: Joan Coutu. 55 2.6 John Bacon the Elder, monument to Rosa Palmer, d. 790, dated 794, marble. St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 58

xiv

list of figur es

2.7 John Bacon the Elder, detail of the monument to Rosa Palmer, d. 790, dated 794, marble. St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 58 2.8 Louis-François Roubiliac, monument to Lieutenant-Colonel William Stapleton, d. 754, marble. St Peter’s Church, Port Royal, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 60 2.9 Louis-François Roubiliac, detail of the monument to Lieutenant-Colonel William Stapleton, d. 754, marble. St Peter’s Church, Port Royal, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 6 2.20 Detail of monument to James Renton, d. 748, marble. St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 62 2.2 W. Cope, monument to Anna Maria Aldred, d. 76, marble. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu.

64

2.22 John Bacon the Younger, detail of the monument to Duncan Anderson, presumed dead 796, dated 800, marble. St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 64 2.23 William Lancashire of Bath (attr.), detail of the monument to Dames Christian and Jane Abel Alleyne and John Gay Newton Alleyne, 790s, marble. St James’s Parish Church, Holetown, Barbados. Photo: Joan Coutu. 65 2.24 Michael Crake, monument to Eliza Musgrave, d. 85, dated 85, marble. St John’s Parish Church, St John’s, Antigua. Photo: Joan Coutu. 66 2.25 Michael Crake, detail of the monument to Eliza Musgrave, d. 85, dated 85, marble. St John’s Parish Church, St John’s, Antigua. Photo: Joan Coutu. 67 2.26 John Flaxman, monument to Sir Simon Clarke, 799, marble. Hanover Parish Church, Lucea, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 7

list of figur es

xv

2.27 John Bacon the Elder, detail of the monument to George MacFarquhar, d. 786, marble. St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 7 2.28 Peter Scheemakers, monument to Frances Shirley, d. 746, marble. King’s Chapel, Boston, Massachusetts. Photo: Joan Coutu. 74 2.29 Henry Cheere, monument to Charles Apthorp, d. 758, marble. King’s Chapel, Boston, Massachusetts. Photo: Joan Coutu. 74 2.30 Peter Harrison, King’s Chapel, Boston, 749–54, portico added 785–87. Photo: Joan Coutu. 75 2.3 Robert Taylor (attr.), monument to Edward Manning, d. 756, marble. Kingston Parish Church, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 77 2.32 William Tyler, monument to Samuel Vassall, marble, 766. King’s Chapel, Boston, Massachusetts. Photo: Joan Coutu. 77 3. Monument to Henry Croasdaile, d. 770, marble. St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 8 3.2 Monument to John Hudson Guy, d. 749, marble. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 8 3.3 John Bacon the Younger, monument to Frances Inglis, d. 79, James Sutherland, d. 796, and Ann Sutherland, d. 79, dated 800, marble. Kingston Parish Church, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 82 3.4 John Flaxman, monument to Francis Dear, d. 802, marble. Chichester Cathedral. Photo: Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art. 82 3.5 Joseph Wilton, monument to Elizabeth Ottley, d. 766, marble. St John’s Parish Church, St John’s, Antigua. Photo: Joan Coutu. 84 3.6 Joseph Wilton, monument to Mathew Gregory, d. 779, and his wife, Lucretia, d. 750, dated 783, marble. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 84 xvi

list of figur es

3.7 Monument to Vice Admiral Thomas Davers, d. 746, marble. St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 86 3.8 Monument to William Baldwin, d. 755 and Mary Baldwin, d. 760, marble. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 86 3.9 Robert Taylor (attr.), monument to George Hinde, d. 756, marble. Kingston Parish Church, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 87 3.0 Charles Easton (attr.), monument to Elizabeth Hannah Price, d. 77, marble. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 88 3. Charles Easton, monument to Ennis Read, d. 77, and Margaret Read, d. 745, marble. St Peter’s Parish Church, Vere, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 88 3.2 Michael Sidnell, monument to William Chamberlayne, d. 736, marble. St Peter’s Parish Church, New Kent County, Virginia. Photo: Terri Lindsay, New Kent County Historical Society. 89 3.3 Monument to Henry Peers, d. 740, marble. St George’s Parish Church, Barbados. Photo: Joan Coutu. 90 3.4 F. Curtis, monument to Henry Walter, d. 737, marble. The Lord Mayor’s Chapel, Bristol. Photo: © Bristol City Council. 90 3.5 Solomon Gibson, monument to Emma Edwardes, d. 828, marble. St Peter’s Parish Church, Vere, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 9 3.6 Joseph Wilton, monument to Lady Maria Margaretta Elibank, d. 762, marble. Aberlady Church, East Lothian, Scotland. Photo: Joan Coutu. 95 3.7 Joseph Wilton, monument to Leak and Mary Okeover, 764, marble. Photo: Joan Coutu. 95

list of figur es

xvii

3.8 Robert Taylor (attr.), monument to Thomas Withers, d. 750, marble. From the Collection of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. Photo: Joan Coutu. 97 3.9 Robert Taylor, monument to John Andrews, d. 747, marble. Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Reproduced by permission of English Heritage, NMR . 97 3.20 Coade Manufacturies, monument to Bernard Birch, d. 782, Coade stone. St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 00 3.2 Coade Manufacturies, monument to Elizabeth Minto, d. 783, dated 790, Coade stone. St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 00 4. Joseph Wilton, monument to Major General James Wolfe, unveiled 773, marble. Westminster Abbey, London. Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster. 06 4.2 Joseph Wilton, detail of the monument to Major General James Wolfe, unveiled 773, marble. Westminster Abbey, London. Photo: the Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art. 07 4.3 Peter Scheemakers, monument to George Augustus Viscount Howe, unveiled 762, marble. Westminster Abbey, London. Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster. 2 4.4 Robert Taylor, The Monument of Captain James Cornewall in Westminster Abby [sic], 744–55. Engraving published in London Magazine (March 755): opposite 28. 2 4.5 Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, 77, oil on canvas, 52.6 x 24.5 cm. Photo: © National Gallery of Canada, 8007. 23 4.6 John Michael Rysbrack, design for the monument to Major General James Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, c. 759, pen and grey washes, 33 x 9 cm. Photo: V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum. 24

xviii

list of figur es

4.7 Peter Scheemakers (attr.), design for the monument to Major General James Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, c. 759, pen and brown wash with grey stone background, 33 x 22.9 cm. Courtesy of the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California. 25 4.8 Robert Adam, design for the monument to Major General James Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, c. 759. Pencil, pen, and grey washes, 85 x 65 cm. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (9/). 26 4.9 Robert Adam, design for the monument to Major General James Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, c. 759. Pen and grey washes, 6.8 x 42 cm. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (9/2). 27 4.0 Robert Adam, design for a relief on the monument to Major General James Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, c. 759, pencil, pen, and grey washes, 44 x 50.5 cm. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (9/67). 28 4. Nathaniel Smith after Louis-François Roubiliac, design for the monument to Major General James Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, c. 759–760, pen and brown ink with grey and brown wash and graphite on laid paper, mounted on heavy wove paper, 23.8 x 2.5 cm. Photo: © National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 6228. 29 4.2 T. Cook after Louis-François Roubiliac, Model of an original Design for a Monument to the Memory of Genl. Wolfe, in the possession of Charles Theomartyn Crane. Mercht London. Design c. late 759, early 760. Engraving published in The Gentleman’s Magazine 58: frontispiece for January 789. Courtesy of the University of Waterloo. 30 4.3 Louis-François Roubiliac, monument to Richard Boyle Viscount Shannon, erected 759, marble. St Mary’s, Walton-on-Thames, Middlesex. Photo: Stanley Oost, by permission of David Bindman. 3 4.4 Louis-François Roubiliac, monument to George Frederick Handel, erected 762, marble. Westminster Abbey, London. Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster. 3

list of figur es

xix

4.5 Giovanni Battista Capezzoldi, The Battle for Quebec, unveiled 773, lead, relief on the monument to Major General James Wolfe. Westminster Abbey, London. Photo courtesy of the Warburg Institute, London. 34 4.6 Francis Hayman, modello for The Humanity of General Amherst, 760, oil on canvas, 9.44 x 68.58 cm. The Beaverbrook Art Gallery/The Beaverbrook Foundation (in dispute, 2004). 37 4.7 Francis Hayman, modello for Lord Clive Receiving the Homage of the Nabob, c. 760, oil on canvas, 00.3 x 27 cm. National Portrait Gallery, London. 38 4.8 Simon François Ravenet after Francis Hayman, The Triumph of Britannia, 765, engraving, 38. x 52. cm. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. 39 4.9 James Athenian Stuart and Peter Scheemakers, monument to Vice Admiral Charles Watson, 759–63, marble. Westminster Abbey, London. Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster. 4 5. Plan of the eastern gardens at Stowe, 749, redrawn by Michael Gibbon, 970. Courtesy of Stowe School. 49 5.2 William Kent, the Temple of British Worthies, designed c. 735. Stowe, Buckinghamshire. By kind permission of the National Trust. Photo: Joan Coutu. 50 5.3 The Temple of Modern Virtue, c. 734. Stowe, Buckinghamshire (demolished). Engraving published in George Bickham, The Beauties of Stow, 750. This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, California. 5 5.4 View from the Temple of Friendship, showing from left: the Gothic Temple designed by James Gibbs in 74, Cobham’s Pillar, 747, and the Palladian Bridge, 742. Stowe, Buckinghamshire. By kind permission of the National Trust. Photo: Joan Coutu. 52

xx

list of figur es

5.5 Roger Morris and the Earl of Pembroke, the Palladian Bridge at Wilton, 737. By kind permission of Lord Pembroke and the Trustees of Wilton House Trust. Photo: Joan Coutu. 53 5.6 George Bickham, A View from Capt’n Grenville’s Monument to the Grecian Temple, at Stow. From Jean Baptiste Claude Chatelain, Sixteen Perspective Views with a General Plan of the Buildings and Gardens at Stowe, published by George Bickham in 753. This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, California. 56 5.7 View of the Elysian Fields with the Temple of Ancient Virtue and the rostral column to Thomas Grenville, 747, after its removal from the Grecian Valley by Richard, Earl Temple, in 760. Stowe. By kind permission of the National Trust. Photo: Joan Coutu. 64 5.8 Richard, Earl Temple, obelisk in memory of Major General James Wolfe, from the portico of the Temple of Concord and Victory, 76–62. Stowe, Buckinghamshire. By kind permission of the National Trust. Photo: Joan Coutu. 64 5.9 Cobham’s Pillar from the portico of the Temple of Concord and Victory, 747. Stowe, Buckinghamshire. By kind permission of the National Trust. Photo: Joan Coutu. 67 5.0 Detail of Cobham’s Pillar, 747. Stowe, Buckinghamshire. By kind permission of the National Trust. Photo: Joan Coutu. 67 5. The Grecian Temple, begun 747, renamed the Temple of Concord and Victory in 762. Stowe, Buckinghamshire. By kind permission of the National Trust. Photo: Joan Coutu. 69 5.2 Peter Scheemakers, Britannia receiving produce from the four quarters of the Earth, 737, reconfigured with additions by William Stephenson and moved to the pediment of the Temple of Concord and Victory, 76–62. By kind permission of the National Trust. Photo: Joan Coutu. 70

list of figur es

xxi

5.3 Isometric drawing of the Temple of Concord and Victory, showing the placement of the medallions. Stowe, Buckinghamshire. Drawing by Howard Eaglestone. 7 5.4 Medallion of Concordia Fædoratorum in the portico of the Temple of Concord and Victory at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, 76–63. By kind permission of the National Trust. Photo: Joan Coutu. 74 5.5 Medallion of Concordia Civium in the portico of the Temple of Concord and Victory at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, 76–63. By kind permission of the National Trust. Photo: Joan Coutu. 74 5.6 View of the Corinthian Arch from the south portico of the house. Stowe, Buckinghamshire. By kind permission of the National Trust. Photo: Patrick Eyres. 76 6. Joseph Wilton, Bust of George III , marble, c. 765. McCord Museum of Canadian History, Montreal, 5885. 83 6.2 Robert Auchmuty Sproule, Place d’Armes, Montreal, 828, watercolour, graphite, pen and ink on ivory wove paper laid down, 23. x 35 cm. McCord Museum of Canadian History, Montreal, M 385. 84 7. Benjamin Wilson (attr.), The Repeal, or the Funeral of Miss Ame-Stamp, 8 March 766, etching and engraving, 22.5 x 34.6 cm. Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. 97 7.2 The Statue, or the Adoration of the Wise-men of the West, 24 April 766, etching and engraving, 22.6 x 32.4 cm. Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. 98 7.3 Joseph Wilton, statue of William Pitt, 764–66. Cork, now in the Municipal Art Gallery. Courtesy Crawford Art Gallery, Cork. 200 7.4 Paul Revere, A View of the Obelisk erected under the Liberty-Tree in Boston on the Rejoicings for the Repeal of the — Stamp Act 766, 766, engraving, 22.86 x 27.94 cm. Courtesy, American Antiquarian Society. 204

xxii

list of figur es

7.5 Joseph Wilton, statue of William Pitt the Elder, erected 770, marble. Charleston, South Carolina. Damaged c. 776–83 and c. 790. Now in Washington Park, Charleston. Photo: From the collections of the South Carolina Historical Society. 24 7.6 Charles Fraser, View of Broad Street showing the courthouse, the exchange, Wilton’s statue of William Pitt, and St. Michael’s Church, c. 796, watercolour, approximately 8.89 x .43 cm. Private Collection. Photo: From the collections of the South Carolina Historical Society. 26 7.7 Joseph Wilton, statue of William Pitt the Elder, erected 770, marble. New York. Damaged in 776, now in the New-York Historical Society. Collection of the New-York Historical Society, 20783. 29 7.8 After Joseph Wilton, His Majesty King George III . Engraving in Town and Country Magazine 5, no. 33 (November 773), 577. The lead statue was erected in Berkeley Square, London, in 772. Courtesy of the University of Waterloo. 29 7.9 Richard Hayward, statue of Lord Botetourt, erected 773, marble. College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. 228 7.0 Charles Wilson Peale, William Pitt, 767, oil on canvas, 243.8 x 52.4 cm. Westmoreland County Museum and Library, Inc. 230 8. Joseph Wilton, monument to Sir Basil Keith, d. 777, marble. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 238 8.2 Joseph Wilton, detail of the monument to Sir Basil Keith, d. 777, marble. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 238 8.3 John Bacon the Elder, monument to Admiral Lord Rodney, 789, marble. The Parade, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 24 8.4 John Bacon the Elder, detail showing Britannia protecting Jamaica, monument to Admiral Lord Rodney, 789, marble. The Parade, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 244

list of figur es

xxiii

8.5 John Bacon the Elder, detail showing the Battle of the Saintes, monument to Admiral Lord Rodney, 789, marble. The Parade, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 244 8.6 John Bacon the Elder, detail showing Britannia Triumphant, monument to Admiral Lord Rodney, 789, marble. The Parade, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 245 8.7 Edward Woollery (attr.), rotunda and colonnade for the Rodney Monument, completed 80. The Parade, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 249 8.8 James Hakewill, The King’s Square, St. Jago de la Vega, 820 or 82, coloured engraving from James Hakewill, A Picturesque Tour of the Island of Jamaica from Drawings Made in the Years 820 and 82 (London, 825). Courtesy of the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. 250 8.9 Interior of St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay, Jamaica, begun 775. Photo: Joan Coutu. 252 8.0 Monument of the late Thomas Hibbert Esq. At Agualta Vale Penn, St. Mary’s, d. 780, marble. Coloured engraving from James Hakewill, A Picturesque Tour of the Island of Jamaica from Drawings made in the Years 820 and 82 (London, 825). Courtesy of the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. 253 8. John Bacon the Elder, monument to Francis Rigby Brodbelt, d. 795, dated 799, marble. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 254 8.2 Detail of the monument to Hugh Lewis, d. 785, marble. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 254 8.3 John Bacon the Elder, monument to Malcolm Laing, d. 78, and Eleanor Laing, d. 747, dated 794, marble. Kingston Parish Church, Kingston, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 255

xxiv

list of figur es

8.4 John Bacon the Elder, monument to John Wolmer, d. 729, dated 789, marble. Kingston Parish Church, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 257 8.5 Henry Westmacott, detail of monument to Robert Hugh Munro, d. 798, marble. Church of St John the Evangelist, Black River, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 258 8.6 Henry Westmacott, monument to Caleb Dickenson, d. 82, marble. Church of St John the Evangelist, Black River, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu.

258

8.7 John Bacon the Elder, monument to Thomas, Earl of Effingham, d. 79, and his wife, Catherine, d. 79, marble. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 260 8.8 John Bacon the Elder, detail of the monument to Thomas, Earl of Effingham, d. 79, and his wife, Catherine, d. 79, marble. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 26 8.9 John Bacon the Elder, detail of the monument to Anne Williamson, d. 794, marble. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Photo: Joan Coutu. 262 8.20 Mr Guilding and Mr Stothard, The Obelisk at St. Vincent, 795–96, engraved by E. Allen. Caribbeana  (90): opposite 93. 264 8.2 Richard Westmacott, monument to Lord Nelson, 806, bronze. Trafalgar Square, Bridgetown, Barbados (turned 80° from original siting). Photo: Joan Coutu. 265 8.22 Robert Auchmuty Sproule, Nelson’s Monument, Notre Dame Street Looking West, Montreal, 830. Watercolour, graphite, and gum arabic on wove paper laid down, 23.5 x 35.3 cm. McCord Museum of Canadian History, Montreal, M 302. 266 8.23 John Flaxman, monument to John Brathwaite, d. 800, marble. St Michael’s Parish Church, Bridgetown, Barbados. Photo: Joan Coutu.

list of figur es

268

xxv

9. John Michael Rysbrack, Britannia receiving the riches of the East, marble, commissioned 728 for East India House, now in the Foreign and Commonwealth Relations Office, London. Photo: The British Library, India Office Library and Records BL -APAC , Photo 272/(0). 272 9.2 John Michael Rysbrack, detail of Britannia receiving the riches of the East, marble, commissioned 728 for East India House, now in the Foreign and Commonwealth Relations Office, London. Photo: The British Library, India Office Library and Records F 8. 273 9.3 J.C. Stadler after Thomas Rowlandson, India House, the sale room, c. 808–0, aquatint, 23 x 28 cm. The British Library, India Office Library and Records P 57. 278 9.4 William Tyler, monument to Major General Stringer Lawrence, commissioned 775, marble. Westminster Abbey, London. Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster. 280 9.5 Thomas Banks, monument to General Sir Eyre Coote, commissioned 784, marble. Westminster Abbey, London. Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster. 282 9.6 John Bacon the Elder, design for the pediment of East India House, 799, pen, ink, and wash, 22.86 x 6.84 cm (9 /8 x 46 5/8). Photo: V&A Images/ Victoria and Albert Museum. 287 9.7 Thomas Malton, The East India House, Leadenhall Street, London, c. 799, showing Bacon’s pediment, watercolour, 65.5 x 92 cm. The British Library, India Office Library and Records WD 2460. 288 9.8 John Bacon the Elder, monument to Sir William Jones, d. 794, dated 799, marble. St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Courtesy of St Paul’s Cathedral. Photo: Joan Coutu. 290 9.9 John Flaxman, monument to Sir William Jones, d. 794, marble. University College, Oxford. Photo: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Courtesy of the Master and Fellows of University College, Oxford. 290

xxvi

list of figur es

9.0 John Flaxman, statue of Warren Hastings, commissioned 820 for East India House, now in the Foreign and Commonwealth Relations Office, London. Photo: The British Library, India Office Library and Records F 525. 29 9. John Flaxman, monument to Sir Barry Close, d. 83, marble. St Mary’s Church, Madras. Photo: Barbara Groseclose. 292 9.2 John Charles Rossi, monument to Charles, Marquess Cornwallis, 807, marble. St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Courtesy of St Paul’s Cathedral. Photo: Joan Coutu. 293 9.3 Charles Manning, monument to Captain George Nicholas Hardinge, d. 808. St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Photo courtesy of the Warburg Institute, London. 294 9.4 Thomas Daniell, East Side of the Old Fort, Clive Street, the Theatre and Holwell Monument, Calcutta, 786, coloured etching with aquatint, 40.5 x 53 cm, from Thomas and William Daniell, Views of Caluctta  (786). The British Library, India Office and Library Records P 88. 296 9.5 William Tyler, monument to John Watson, d. 774, marble. St Thomas’s Parish Church, Bombay. Photo: Bruce Bailey. 297 9.6 Charles Peart, monument to Lieutenant-Colonel John Campbell, d. 784, marble. St Thomas’s Parish Church, Bombay. Photo: Barbara Groseclose. 297 9.7 Charles Peart, monument to Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Moorhouse, d. 79, marble. St Mary’s Church, Madras. Photo: Barbara Groseclose. 299 9.8 Thomas Banks, statue of Charles, Marquess Cornwallis, 800, marble. Fort St George, Madras. Photo: Barbara Groseclose. 299 9.9 Thomas Banks, detail of relief on the base of the statue of Charles, Marquess Cornwallis, 800, marble. Fort St George, Madras. Photo: Barbara Groseclose. 30

list of figur es

xxvii

9.20 John Bacon the Elder and John Bacon the Younger, statue of Charles, Marquess Cornwallis, erected 803, marble, Calcutta. Victoria Memorial, Kolkata. 302 9.2 Richard Westmacott, statue of Warren Hastings, 830, marble, Calcutta. Victoria Memorial, Kolkata. 303 9.22 John Flaxman, monument to Josiah Webbe, d. 804, marble. St Mary’s Church, Madras. Photo: Barbara Groseclose. 306 9.23 John Bacon the Younger, monument to Captain George Nicholas Hardinge, d. 808, marble. St Thomas’s Church, Bombay. Photo: Barbara Groseclose. 307 9.24 John Bacon the Younger, detail of the monument to Charles Robert Ross, d. 86, marble. St Mary’s Church, Madras. Photo: Barbara Groseclose. 308 9.25 Richard Westmacott, monument to Alexander Colvin, d. 88, marble. St John’s Church, Calcutta. Photo: Barbara Groseclose. 30 9.26 John Bacon the Younger and Samuel Manning the Elder, statue of Richard, Marquess Wellesley, 808, marble. Calcutta. Rather free interpretation engraved in the Illustrated London News (20 November 875): 520. 3 9.27 John Bacon the Younger, monument to Jonathan Duncan, d. 8, marble. St Thomas’s Church, Bombay. Photo: Barbara Groseclose. 33 9.28 Richard Westmacott, monument to Lord William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, 835, bronze. Calcutta. Victoria Memorial, Kolkata. 34 9.29 John Bacon the Younger, monument to Frederick Christian Swartz, 806, marble. St Mary’s Church, Madras. Photo: Barbara Groseclose. 37 9.30 John Flaxman, monument to Frederick Christian Swartz, c. 798, marble. Swartz’s Church, Tanjor. Photo: Barbara Groseclose. 38 9.3 J.G. Lough, monument to Thomas Middleton, d. 822, marble. St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Courtesy of St Paul’s Cathedral. Photo: Joan Coutu. 39 xxviii

list of figur es

9.32 Francis Chantrey, detail of the monument to Bishop Heber, 830, marble. St George’s Church, Madras. Photo: Barbara Groseclose. 320 9.33 Henry Weekes, detail of the monument to Bishop Daniel Corrie, d. 837, marble. St George’s Church, Madras. Photo: Barbara Groseclose. 320 0. William Blake, View of Greenwich, with the proposed statue of Britannia in Greenwich Park, near the Observatory. Plate in Flaxman’s Letter to the Committee for raising the Naval Pillar or Monument under the Patronage of his Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence, engraving, December 799. Photo: v&a Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 323 0.2 John Flaxman, model for colossal statue of Britannia, 799, plaster, height (including base) 52.4 cm, base 6 cm square. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (m 079). 324 0.3 R. Tait Mackenzie, distant view of statue of Major General James Wolfe, 930, bronze. Greenwich Hill, London. Photo: Elisabeth Mardall. 327

list of figur es

xxix

This page intentionally left blank

per sua sion and propaganda “Working in stone is a very serious business.” – Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourse X, 1780

This page intentionally left blank

chapte r one

i

Introdu^ion

n the spring of 766 a marble bust of George III was set up on a pedestal under a small canopy in the Place d’Armes, the main public square of the small village of Montreal (see figs 6. and 6.2). A decade later, on a wintry night during the occupation of Montreal by rebel Americans, the bust was painted black, a rosary of rotten potatoes was hung around its neck, a bishop’s mitre was placed on its head, and a sign that read “Ceci le pape du Canada ou le sot anglais” was propped against its socle. By spring the bust had been torn from its pedestal and flung into a well, where it lay lost and forgotten until labourers discovered it in 834.¹ In the same year that the bust was erected in Montreal, the colonial Legislature of New York voted to erect an equestrian statue of George III in celebration of the repeal of the Stamp Act. A decade later, a group of American rebels recited the Declaration of Independence at the base of the statue and then tore the gilded, lead, antique-style statue from its pedestal. The head, with its nose cut off and laurels clipped, was mounted on a spike on the roof of a popular Revolutionary watering hole. It was then stolen by a British officer, who spirited it off to England. Meanwhile, much of the king’s torso and his horse were melted down and formed into 42,088 bullets to make “deep impressions in the Bodies of some of [the king’s] red coated and Torie subjects.”² The remnants of the monument were thrown into a swamp in Litchfield, Connecticut.³ Several hundred monuments that were executed by London and provincial British sculptors and shipped to the American colonies, Canada, the West Indies, and India during the long eighteenth century (700–820) did not share a similar colourful fate. Instead, monuments to colonial governors, planters, merchants, doctors, lawyers, and military and naval officers moulder in the churches where

they were erected. Often they are cracked and chipped. Almost all are entirely ignored or, if acknowledged, dismissed as anachronisms of a pretentious empire long since past. In Britain many monuments erected in the eighteenth century celebrate or commemorate some aspect of the British Empire. Most of these are concentrated in Westminster Abbey, which became the de facto Valhalla and showcase of British imperial strength until it was overflowing with monuments. Attention then shifted to St Paul’s Cathedral at the end of the eighteenth century. There is also a particularly high concentration of imperial monuments in the landscape garden at Stowe, the immense estate owned by Viscount Cobham and inherited by his nephew Richard Grenville, Earl Temple. They were the Whig Patriot aristocrats who espoused an empire grounded in the unlikely combination of trade and liberty. These monuments in a private garden offer an interesting counterpoint, both in terms of commission and design, to those in the very public Westminster Abbey. Other monuments that are in some way associated with the eighteenthcentury British Empire are scattered throughout the United Kingdom. These number literally in the thousands, for virtually anyone involved in trade or in the military or navy in the eighteenth century – and this was just about anyone who was making any significant money at all – had a personal stake in the emergent empire. A selection of these monuments is the subject of this study. The monuments are about the empire, but more important, they are about the people in it. Some of the monuments deal with the big men of the empire, William Pitt the Elder, Cobham and Temple, and George III , the men who had the intellectual, ideological, and practical resources to envisage the empire. Most, however, are about the people who invested significantly in the new empire, people who were for the most part new money, untitled, and often not enfranchised: the merchants and planters who settled in the colonies and the military and naval officers who fought for and protected the colonies. None of the monuments commemorate the rank and file or the lower orders of society; this would have been unthinkable in the eighteenth century. But for the historian, the monuments do indirectly commemorate the ordinary soldiers and sailors, the indentured servants, the annihilated indigenous populations, the Canadiens, the exploited people of the Indian subcontinent, and the African slaves. These were the people who made this empire of trade and liberty work. Historians of eighteenth-century England and Britain have begun to look at the incontrovertible evidence, in both the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary realms, of imperial aspirations and acceptance of the idea of empire long 4 p e r s ua s i o n a n d p ro pag a n da

before the outbreak of the Seven Years War in 756. The tendency in earlier scholarship is to portray the emergence of the empire as a felicitous by-product of the war, which was primarily fought to defend England, English interests, and English liberties from France, its long-time nefarious and tyrannical rival. This vein of history has focused mostly on the events – military, naval, and political – of the war. The impact of these events on the everyday people of Britain was more or less ignored. However, as recent scholars have pointed out, the impact was tremendous, for unlike during any other war before it, the people of Britain withstood numerous deprivations, accepted significant tax hikes, and watched as brothers, sons, and fathers voluntarily or involuntarily went off to fight.⁴ Earlier scholarship has also tended not to acknowledge the impact on Britain and its inhabitants of the evolving colonial trade. For example, by 800 West Indian sugar alone constituted 0 per cent of the entire British market, while English exports to North America and the West Indies had risen by 2,300 per cent over the course of the century.⁵ Virtually no one remained unaffected by the transformation of the British economy.⁶ Monuments are implicit or explicit testaments of the incursion of colonial trade and imperial sensibilities into the everyday life of Britons. More recent scholarship also touches on or is devoted to examinations of nationalism or at least nationalistic sensibilities in the eighteenth century. The debate about the political versus the cultural origins of nationalism rages on inconclusively, but scholars generally agree that nationalistic sensibilities, if not the use of the term nationalism, were firmly in place long before the eruption of the French Revolution, the political event traditionally cited as the starting point for nationalism. In his introduction to British Identities before Nationalism, Colin Kidd summarizes the various theoretical models concerning nationalism and points to their various deficiencies. They need not be recounted here; however, some consensual conclusions should be articulated to frame the study of monuments and the British Empire: that the emergence of nationalistic sensibilities is often linked to the rise of international trade and the modern economy; that an other can prompt ethnic self-recognition; and that modern communications, primarily the proliferation of the printed word, play a significant role in shaping a nationalistic ethos.⁷ In eighteenth-century England, there was a decisive link between nation and empire. Often the two were elided in the belief that what was good for the nation was good for the empire. The success of the colonial trade is a case in point. Relevant monuments articulate this elision. In many cases monuments are evocations of Britishness, while many more are documents of the struggle to reconcile a colonial identity with this Britishness. Introdu^ion

5

The exploration of colonial identity as a field of scholarship is very much related and indebted to studies of nationalism. Like the scholarship on eighteenthcentury England and Britain, the study of colonial identity and colonial lifestyles has undergone a significant evolution in recent years. The tendency to glory in the empire and to recount the exotic life of the Raj in India and of the colonial gentry under the Caribbean sun has been rightly replaced by evaluations that focus mainly on exploitation of indigenous populations and African slaves.⁸ However, this paradigmatic shift has tended to neglect how the colonial elite actually lived, ironically an area of study that would greatly enhance our understanding of exploitation and slavery. The notable exceptions are Edward Brathwaite’s The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 770–820, and the writings of Michael Craton, James Walvin, Jack P. Greene, and Richard B. Sheridan.⁹ P.J. Marshall and C.A. Bayly have made significant comparable contributions to the study of the British in India in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.¹⁰ All of these authors have explored the colonists’ assertions of themselves within the imperial framework. With respect to colonial America, Bernard Bailyn’s and Jack P. Greene’s writings are seminal in emphasizing that the American colonists saw themselves as English long before they evolved any sense of Americanness.¹¹ Modern scholarship on the colonies usually deals with individual colonies or with a group of colonies in a particular region of the empire. The endemic problem with such studies is that each on its own deals with only a part of the empire and, as a result, fails to highlight the distinctions and variations of the empire. In the case of the eighteenth-century British Empire, one part definitely does not stand in for the whole.¹² My premise is to take one object common to the entire eighteenth-century British Empire – the commemorative monument – and use it to underscore the economic, political, and cultural richness of the empire. Coinciding with or prompted by Jürgen Habermas’s insistence on the significance of the uncensored press in shaping the eighteenth-century political public sphere, modern scholarship on England and Britain relies heavily on the contemporary printed word, referring to newspapers and journals that espouse imperial ideology or at least imperial sentiments, the importance of print culture in the Whig ascendancy, and the proliferation of provincial newspapers in informing a public increasingly involved in, and in many cases ultimately dependent on, the continued success of an imperial economy.¹³ Similarly, the availability of newspapers, either from Europe or produced in the colonies, has been recognized as one of the essential elements in improving and civilizing the colonies and the people in them and in the emergence of radical politics.¹⁴ Some historians have gone beyond the press and print to acknowledge the significance of the emergence of 6 p e r s ua s i o n a n d p ro pag a n da

other extra-parliamentary mediums and phenomena. For example, Linda Colley has tracked the rise of societies that are clearly xenophobic but also imperial in intent. The philanthropic Marine and Troop Societies and the Anti-Gallican Society are all obvious yet, until recently, understudied examples. The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, established in 754, has also recently received increased scrutiny. The society was instrumental in commissioning or encouraging a wide range of objects (prints, medals, paintings, sculpture, embroideries, etc.) and commercial endeavours (inventions to improve weaving and dying of textiles, sponsoring the importation of New World plants, etc.) that in effect gloried in England’s imperial ambitions. Perhaps more than any other society, its membership cut across class lines, consisting of, among others, dukes and gentlemen, scientists, painters, and masons, thus attesting to the wide interest in England’s colonial endeavours.¹⁵ Near riotous celebrations of particular days in the political calendar, political and imperial orations in the form of sermons, the manufacture of celebratory ceramics, the medallic arts, and the important role of the theatre and places of gathering, such as taverns and assembly halls, in the dissemination of news and in allowing people to offer an opinion to the world were all critical to the formation and evolution of extra-parliamentary national and imperial sensibilities.¹⁶ Curiously, none of the studies on the parliamentary or extra-parliamentary culture of eighteenth-century Britain has examined monuments in any detail. Monuments that are in some way associated with the empire, either by their location, their iconography, or both, are either ignored or discussed as matterof-fact, taken-for-granted natural expressions of imperial ambitions.¹⁷ Commissioned monuments, whether in Britain or in the far-flung regions of its empire, are barometers of imperial, national, and regional economies, politics, and cultures. They are manifestations, interpretations, representations, and fictions of the eighteenth-century British Empire that at once stand apart from and are comparable to other expressions of imperial and national sensibilities. The circumstances surrounding the commission and design of the monuments have to be evaluated in light of these other expressions. As examples of the growth of cultural and imperial infrastructures in Britain and its colonies, the monuments are comparable with other media and social constructs, such as assemblies, philanthropic societies, theatre groups, and opera.¹⁸ Calls for monuments often formed part of the rhetoric that is prompted – like fireworks, parades, eulogies, and epitaphs – by catalytic events such as Major General James Wolfe’s victory at Quebec or the repeal of the Stamp Act. Quite often, as we will see in the American colonies, these calls remained little Introdu^ion

7

more than rhetoric, and only a unique confluence of events and people resulted in the commissioning of a monument. Paintings and the printed word are particularly interesting counterpoints to monuments. In some cases, like Benjamin West’s Death of General Wolfe and Joseph Wilton’s monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, monument and painting are interdependent (see figs 4., 4.2, and 4.5).¹⁹ The connections between a monument and the printed word are especially strong. In various instances, the call for a monument, the competition (if there was one), proposed inscriptions and epitaphs, and the unveiling were recorded in the newspapers and popular press. The press, like a monument, carries with it the weight of truth as well as the notion of posterity, of recording for the future. Monuments have historically been linked with the great empires of the past: the pyramids of Egypt (whose shape is evident in the composition of so many subsequent commemorative monuments); the statues of gods and goddesses, statesmen, and philosophers of ancient Greece and ancient Rome; the triumphal columns and arches of the Roman Empire; and, a more recent example for the eighteenth-century British, the statues of Louis XIV located in the places (public squares) of so many French villages and cities. Monuments, because they can be so public (in terms of commission, location, and iconography) and because they are imbued with the notions of permanence, timelessness, and posterity, are a perfect fit for an empire. They are highly visible and thus a constant reminder of the power of the empire. The implication of permanence confirms this power; timelessness suggests that the empire has always existed; and posterity implies that the empire, like its monuments, will last forever. They are illusions of eternity. In contrast to the great empires of the past, monuments, like other expressions of imperial aims, did not come naturally or automatically to eighteenth-century Britons. Indeed, such public manifestations of power and ambition were held in check by a society anxious not to see itself as tyrannical like its French neighbours. In all of the eighteenth-century British Empire, prior to the House of Commons voting to erect a monument to Wolfe in November 759, only three monuments were erected either under the auspices of a reigning monarch or by Parliament. The first two were erected by Queen Anne, who was clearly searching for a way to portray the post-688 British monarchy. The larger of the two monuments, by Francis Bird, is of Queen Anne herself surrounded by the figures of England, Ireland, Scotland, and France. It is located in front of St Paul’s Cathedral (fig. .) and commemorates the completion of this great English church during Anne’s reign.²⁰ Pointedly, this statue is the last monument that a reigning British monarch would erect of him or herself until the nineteenth century.²¹ Queen Anne’s 8 p e r s ua s i o n a n d p ro pag a n da

Fig. 1.1 Copy after Francis Bird, statue of Queen Anne, 1712, marble. St Paul's Cathedral, London

other monument is a funeral monument in Westminster Abbey to Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell (by Grinling Gibbons), who had succeeded in destroying the last of the French Mediterranean fleet at Toulon in 707 (fig. .2).²² Rather than commissioning this monument directly and opening herself to charges of ruling with absolute authority in the manner of Louis XIV, the Queen pushed the commission through Parliament so that the monument seemed to originate not with her but with the public, or at least with the public as it stood in 707. In this way, the monument was ostensibly comparable to those recently erected by the Dutch at the public’s expense.²³ The monument to Captain James Cornewall, erected Introdu^ion

9

Fig. 1.2 Grinling Gibbons, monument to Admiral Sir Cloudsley Shovell, d. 1707. Westminster Abbey, London

in Westminster Abbey in 749, was likewise a commission that came from the House of Commons but originated elsewhere – in this case, with members of the Grenville Cousinhood, Cobham’s young Whig Patriots (see fig. 4.4). Henry Grenville, one of the less adroit but no less ambitious Grenville brothers, was responsible for another legislative commission. In 756 Grenville encouraged the Barbadian House of Assembly to commission a statue of himself. It was carved by Michael Rysbrack and stood in the Town Hall in Bridgetown, Barbados, until it was destroyed, along with the hall, in the devastating hurricane of 780.²⁴ The 10

p e r s ua s i o n a n d p ro pag a n da

monument to General Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, which was emphatically more desired, or at least approved of, than either of the Grenville monuments, was, as we shall see, no less a personal and partisan puff by those who steered the call and commission through Parliament (see figs 4. and 4.2). Analyzing the political and social advantages of a monument that is a public, rather than a private, commission is one of the primary themes of this book. A related focus is examining commissions for imperial monuments in a society preoccupied with libertarian concerns. Not all of the monuments discussed in the following pages are overt examples of imperialism. In fact, few are. Most of the monuments discussed are funereal in type and were erected in churches. Yet these monuments were rarely a sign of religious devotion; very few of the people who commissioned the sculptures could be described as churchy. Instead, dynastic concerns fuelled most of these commissions. Preoccupation with personal pedigree, historically associated with feudal cultures, existed long before any concerted notion of ethnic or national identity.²⁵ In the case of the colonial plantocracy, who were, for the most part, nouveaux riches and who found themselves living thousands of miles away from home, this preoccupation was an obsession. Yet although they may not be imperial in iconography, these monuments are imperial in location. With their inherent look of permanence, the monuments implicitly claim the colonies as British, both into the past and into the future. Since this book deals with monuments and the empire, it does not fit into mainstream historical studies. It is less about the great events of the eighteenthcentury empire than about how these events were presented to contemporary and successive audiences. It is also less about the people of the eighteenth century than about what they wanted us to think of them. As such, the book is about commemoration and accords more comfortably with the new kind of history outlined by Pierre Nora.²⁶ [This is] a history less interested in causes than in effects; less interested in actions remembered or even commemorated than in the traces left by those actions and in the interaction of these commemorations; less interested in events themselves than in the construction of events over time, in the disappearance and re-emergence of their significations; less interested in “what actually happened” than in its perpetual reuse and misuse, its influence on successive presents; less interested in traditions than in the way in which traditions are constituted and passed on. In short, it is a history that is neither a resurrection nor a reconstitution nor a reconstruction nor even a representation but, in the strongest possible sense, a “rememoration” – a history that is interested in memory Introdu^ion

11

not as remembrance but as the overall structure of the past within the present: history of the second degree.²⁷

The monuments are the traces, the commemorations (in all manner of truth and fiction) of the events and the people who constituted the eighteenth-century British Empire. They purport, in their solid stone permanence, to be historical records. From the very moment that they are first envisaged by the would-be patron, monuments are never truly historically accurate because they are simply interpretations or memories of an event or a person. These adjusted historical records are the subject of this book. As interpretations or memories, monuments are intensely personal but also, by virtue of their location, inherently public. The quixotic process of making the personal public is explored in the following pages. This book also does not accord with traditional art history largely because it is about monuments. Sculpture has traditionally been the poor cousin to painting and architecture in terms of art historical scholarship. Monuments have been even more rarely considered, deemed a lesser art form because they are commissioned and are often not the product of a sculptor working alone. The design of a monument is, most often, the result of a complex discussion between patron and sculptor. The memory of the event or of the deceased that the patron wishes to transmit to the present and subsequent audiences is the most important determinant of the iconography, and it is this memory that is translated into stone by the sculptor. Similarly, the epitaph is part of this constructed memory, and its composition, too, is often based on discussions between patron and sculptor or between patron and poet, although the patron may compose it alone. Challenging the concept of the genius of the artist, the interaction of patron, sculptor, and sometimes poet in producing the design and composing the epitaph arguably results in the construction of a cohesive whole that is more artful than a work that is solely the product of one mind. The process of translating memory and idea into stone makes the monument truly a work of art. As Nigel Llewellyn points out in his study of death rituals in post-Reformation England, traditional art historical paradigms have been insufficient to discuss adequately the iconography or the complex production that is a monument.²⁸ Nicholas Penny’s article “English Church Monuments to Women Who Died in Childbed between 780 and 835” (975) and subsequent book Church Monuments in Romantic England (977) are significant and valuable transitional studies that distinguish monuments from other forms of art, acknowledge their idiosyncrasies, and evaluate them according to the societal concerns of a particular period.²⁹ Matthew Craske goes much farther in this direction with his dis12

p e r s ua s i o n a n d p ro pag a n da

cussion of the London sculpture trade and the imagery of the family in funeral monuments between 720 and 760.³⁰ In this groundbreaking study, he explores the intricate social concerns of familial dynasties, political and civic preoccupations, and the business of sculpture in the production of monuments. David Bindman also contributes significantly to reevaluating the monument in his discussion of Louis-François Roubiliac’s monuments vis-à-vis the public sphere and modes of expression of grief in the mid-eighteenth century.³¹ Llewellyn’s Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England builds significantly on his own earlier study of death rituals and offers a solid underpinning, both in terms of cultural significance and the practical art of making a monument, for studies of eighteenth-century monuments.³² My study is indebted to this recent growing body of scholarship for prompting various lines of inquiry, particularly about cultural preferences and the organization of sculptors’ workshops. The book is organized into four parts that roughly correspond chronologically to the emerging British Empire in the eighteenth century. The first part, “Family Empires,” focuses on privately commissioned funeral monuments shipped to the West Indies and America, particularly before the Seven Years War, although some examples from later in the century are also discussed. Part two, “Official Empire,” analyzes monuments that were primarily products of the Seven Years War. Part three, “Empire Secured?” discusses monuments in Canada and America that are characteristic of the first phase of the new British Empire, while the last part, “Empire Renewed,” examines monuments in the West Indies and India following the American Revolution, when this new British Empire had been completely recast. Thus the organization of the book also parallels the growing emphasis placed on the concept of empire in both the parliamentary and extraparliamentary realms. Part one looks at the colonial elite of the British West Indies and the American colonies. These were the planters and merchants who had amassed vast fortunes very quickly, mostly in West Indian sugar for the British and American markets. As new money, the plantocracy sought to imitate their social betters, the established landed gentry of England. They perceived themselves as entirely English, and their obsession with imitating the English gentry in manners, customs, and accoutrements was exacerbated by the unfamiliar and very un-English environments in which they lived. The human psyche guards against cultural fragmentation and cultural displacement. Emigration in particular causes people to long intensely for the homeland that they have left behind and to regroup and accentuate the customs of this homeland, often more acutely than they concurrently exist in the homeland. In the case of the colonists who had gone to the West Introdu^ion

13

Indies or to America solely for the prospect of financial gain (as opposed to those who had left England because of religious or cultural persecution), these sensibilities were so strong that the primary aim of most of the settlers was to make their fortunes and leave. Even if it took two or three generations to amass the required fortune and even if they had been born in the colonies and had never been to England, the overwhelming desire was to return home. The high rates of absenteeism in the West Indies are especially legendary. However, a small number of the nouveaux riches stayed in the colonies. These people did not see themselves as any different from their counterparts who had returned to England or from the landed English gentry. Indeed, because of their physical displacement, they almost frenetically strove to keep up with the latest fashions in England; they wanted to be more English than the English. In this obsessive game of keeping up with the Joneses, the resident colonial elite commissioned funeral monuments. Along with the elaborate dresses and wool coats and waistcoats imported from England that were utterly unsuitable to the West Indian or southern American climates, there is something entirely perverse about commissioning a sculptor in London, Bristol, or Bath to produce a very heavy marble monument that would be shipped many thousands of miles to be erected in a church in the western reaches of Jamaica. Equally perverse is that these monuments, like the churches in which they were erected, say nothing of the environment in which they are located; they could just as easily be in Wiltshire, Yorkshire, or Norfolk. They are entirely English. Monuments are, however, more than transient fashionable baubles. Imbued as they are with a sense of permanence, monuments are also symbols of dynasty. The concern with personal pedigree, rather than any cohesive notion of ethnic or national identity, explains the huge increase in the commissioning of funeral monuments in both Britain and its colonies over the course of the eighteenth century. The vast majority of the thousands of monuments commissioned during this period were funereal in type, were commissioned privately by the deceased, by family members, or by friends, and are tributes not only to the deceased but also to his or her lineage. The resident colonial elite, almost wholly lacking in significant pedigree and acutely conscious of this unfortunate social fact, were forever attempting to manufacture a past for themselves and to push themselves and their families into the past as well as into the future. The monuments discussed in part one range from complicated figural compositions to more prosaic stock-in-trade designs that sculptors had on hand in their workshops and that were produced primarily, if not exclusively, by workshop assistants. These stock-in-trade pieces could be seen in just about any parish 14

p e r s ua s i o n a n d p ro pag a n da

church in the eighteenth-century British Empire. Because they are not unique and are so prevalent, these monuments have been largely ignored by art historians. Yet the very prevalence of these monuments tells us much about the business practices of many eighteenth-century sculptors and masons. The second chapter in part one looks at the practical trade in monuments, with a particular emphasis on the exigencies of colonial commissions, specifically the logistics involved in commissioning, designing, and shipping monuments when several thousand miles separated patron and sculptor. Part two examines the monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey and the monuments erected at Stowe. The Wolfe monument was ostensibly a public monument commissioned by Parliament to honour the young man who had given his life for his country. However, closer examination of the circumstances surrounding the call for the monument and the subsequent commission and design indicate that William Pitt the Elder was very much involved in the entire process. The monument was ultimately as much a monument to Pitt as it was to Wolfe. The monuments in question at Stowe are those that were erected by Richard Grenville, Earl Temple, who was Pitt’s brother-in-law and ideological partner in the House of Lords. In contrast to the monuments erected by the members of the colonial elite, the Wolfe and Stowe monuments are self-consciously imperial in intent. However, they differ significantly from the standard militaristic or monarchical images traditionally associated with empires. The complex iconography, narratives, and symbols evident in the Wolfe and Stowe commissions are assessed as representations of the new libertarian, economic, and thoroughly British Empire espoused by Pitt and Temple. The pairing of the Wolfe and Stowe commissions also offers a very rich comparison of Pitt as the Great Commoner and Temple as the quintessential landed gentleman. In addition, the second chapter of this part examines some of the monuments erected at Stowe by Viscount Cobham, who was Temple’s uncle and the ideological father of the Boy Patriots. Indeed, Stowe functioned as a training ground of sorts for Pitt, Temple, and the other members of the Grenville Cousinhood both in terms of political and imperial ideology and in terms of their understanding of the persuasive and propagandistic potential of monumental sculpture. Two other monuments commissioned by other members of the Grenville family are also discussed. One monument, designed by Prince Hoare but never finished, was meant to commemorate Thomas Grenville, the youngest of the Grenville brothers, who died at sea in 747 during the battle off Cape Finisterre in an early bid to defend or pursue Whig Patriot imperial ambitions. The other is the statue of Henry Grenville in Barbados, which Henry pushed through the Barbadian Introdu^ion

15

House of Assembly in 756 to commemorate his decidedly uneventful and rather insignificant tenure as governor. These commissions are interesting precedents for the Wolfe monument and, like the Wolfe monument, afford instructive comparisons in iconography intended for a public audience versus the more circumscribed, educated audiences that would experience Cobham’s and Temple’s pieces at Stowe. Part three looks at representations of the empire following the Seven Years War, when those who wished for an empire got all and perhaps more than they wanted. This part investigates particularly the manipulation of the concept of liberty, which was so intrinsic to the ideology of eighteenth-century England and the eighteenth-century empire. The empire was not supposed to be about conquering people, but with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 763 and the official ceding of Canada to the British, Britain formally became masters of 65,000 Canadiens. The Canadiens were in their numbers too large and in their culture too European to be conveniently displaced (as the British had done with the Acadians in the 750s), returned to France, or annihilated. They were also Roman Catholic, which was anathema to the English Protestant heritage of liberty. When much of Montreal burnt to the ground in 765, Jonas Hanway, one of the new breed of English merchant-philanthropists who had emerged with the growth of the empire and of international trade, sent two fire trucks, 8,45 sterling, and a bust of George III to be erected in the Place d’Armes. The first chapter of this part examines the bust and Hanway’s construction of the benevolent face of the empire. There is considerable circumstantial evidence that the idea of including the bust in the relief package may have come from the king himself. This chapter also explores how a British king might negotiate the political risks of having himself commemorated in monumental sculpture as head of the empire without appearing to be an absolute monarch. The second chapter of part three deals with the monuments that were truly commissioned by colonial assemblies – that is, those that were not forced through the legislatures by outside interests like the Grenville Cousinhood commissions. These are the pedestrian statues of William Pitt in Charleston and New York and the equestrian statue of George III erected in New York. All commemorate the repeal of the Stamp Act. Similar calls for monuments to Pitt and the king also rang out in Massachusetts and Maryland immediately upon news of the repeal reaching the colonies; however, the monuments were never brought to fruition. In Virginia the House of Burgesses erected a statue of Governor Lord Botetourt in 773, also as an oblique sign of gratitude for the repeal of the Stamp Act and in support of the rights of the colonists. These were among the few mon16

p e r s ua s i o n a n d p ro pag a n da

uments of living individuals erected in outdoor public venues that were commissioned by public bodies in the eighteenth-century empire. Interestingly, several of these public monuments were erected on the peripheries of the empire; John Nost’s equestrian statue of George I in Dublin (722) and John Cheere’s pedestrian statue of George II in Jersey (75) are other examples.³³ The concrete visual manifestations of the empire’s leaders are assessed as ties that bind the colonies to the home country. As symbols of gratitude for the repeal of the Stamp Act, the statues of Pitt and George III in the American colonies were also symbols of liberty. The process of commissioning and designing the monuments, from the initial calls in 766 to their unveilings in 770, is an intriguing example of how the colonists in America co-opted English liberty: In 766 the monuments were about the liberty sustained by the repeal of the Stamp Act; in 770 they were intimately linked with the liberty demanded by the Wilkite radicals. The Botetourt commission offers a yet more convoluted interpretation of liberty. Although unsullied by outside interference, the colonial American commissions were no less political than prior public commissions in the empire. Scrutiny of the political climate in the various American colonies indicates that the statues were primarily about political manoeuvring within each colony. Consequently, instructive comparisons can be made between conservative (later royalist) and radical (later republican) modes of political and social conduct in the American colonies. The statues also prompt an interesting comparative evaluation across the American colonies of the role of the common people in colonial politics as well as of the manipulation, or lack thereof, of the mob. The final part of the book focuses on the British Empire during and after the American Revolution. The first chapter returns to the West Indies. The last quarter of the eighteenth century saw a substantial increase in the number of funeral monuments privately commissioned and erected in parish churches throughout the British West Indian islands. While the increase is related to the substantial growth in commissions for such monuments in Britain, and thus continues to be an example of West Indian arriviste acquisitive tendencies, the funeral monuments also point to the strengthened infrastructure in the islands, which had developed over time and which was intensified by concerns among the West Indians, both economic and cultural, that had been prompted by the American Revolution. In line with contemporary monuments in England, professionals such as lawyers, doctors, and naval and military officers were commemorated alongside the landed gentry with increasingly larger monuments (several examples of three- and four-metre-high floor monuments can be found in the West Indies from this period). This indicates both the trickle-down influence of Introdu^ion

17

the gentry on the middle classes, whose members evidently desired to improve themselves, and the substantial increase in the number of people who chose to live, die, and be commemorated in the islands. At the same time that these sometimes massive private tributes were being erected in the West Indies, no fewer than ten monuments were commissioned in the British West Indian islands by various colonial assemblies or philanthropic groups. The monuments include six to deceased colonial governors and/or their spouses, three to local island philanthropists who bequeathed money for the foundation of free schools, the statue to Admiral Rodney in Spanish Town, Jamaica, and a statue of Admiral Lord Nelson in Bridgetown, Barbados. This number is remarkable given that, other than the Grenville statue, no monuments had been commissioned by colonial assemblies or public groups in the West Indies before the American Revolution and that evidently none had been desired. Indeed, such public commissions were not terribly common anywhere in the British Empire prior to 776. The high number of ten, commissioned by a comparatively small (white) population, was unparalleled in the closing quarter of the eighteenth century. The first chapter of the final part examines the political and social concerns that motivated the West Indian colonists. Fear was a significant factor. With the American colonists’ drive for independence and their ultimate success, the West Indian colonies became almost completely dependent on England both economically and militarily. The slow down in the sugar economy toward the end of the century and the rise of abolitionism in England also placed the once strong West Indian voice in an increasingly compromised position. The publicly and privately commissioned monuments can be assessed as veiled articulations of the colonial elite’s greatest fears toward the end of the eighteenth century: fear of French invasion, fear of slave insurrection, and ultimately, fear of loss of connection with England, both economic and moral. On the one hand, such fears intensified the Englishness of the island colonists; on the other hand, they fostered an increasing appreciation by the colonists of the islands in which they lived. This latter phenomenon – a process of creolization – also came about with the almost total agrarian cultivation of the islands (or at least what could be cultivated), the development and stabilization of the political and social infrastructure in the islands over time, and perhaps most important, the “improvement” of each successive generation of (white) individuals who chose to stay in the islands. The monuments are also examined as investments in the islands and in the islands’ infrastructures, in stark contrast to the economically exploitive actions of the absentee plantocracy.

18

p e r s ua s i o n a n d p ro pag a n da

The penultimate chapter looks at monuments that are in some way associated with India. Chronologically, this chapter is appropriately placed near the end since the formal colonization of India began after the India Bill was passed in 784. With the loss of the American colonies and the economic decline of the West Indies, combined with the increasingly morally unacceptable trade in slavery, India became the focus and jewel of the imperial crown. Yet, as with Canada, India complicated the notion of a libertarian economic empire since Britain became master of another race. This chapter begins long before 784 with the East India Company’s commission in 728 of John Michael Rysbrack to design and execute a chimneypiece for East India House in London that shows Britannia receiving the riches of the East. This commission kicked off a large number of monuments commissioned by the company throughout the century for East India House, for Westminster Abbey, and late in the century, for St Paul’s Cathedral as well as for churches and public squares in India. An analysis of the iconography of the monuments indicates that one view of empire, that of economic gain at the expense of everything else, tended to prevail behind closed doors at East India House, while another view of empire, that of magnanimity, benevolence, paternalism, and morality, was offered to the public both in England and in India. The contemporary Indian rulers were cast as savage, amoral, exploitative, and tyrannical. As Hanway had done with his summary of French rule, the British glibly accentuated the disparity between the liberty-loving and libertybestowing English and the tyrannical other. The public face constructed by the East India Company is an interesting example of the persuasion and ultimately propaganda employed by the company to answer charges of their own corruption, exploitation, and amorality. The second part of the chapter looks at parliamentary intervention in the ruling of India in the last decades of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century and at how monuments were used to allay Britons’ own misgivings about ruling another race. Monuments erected in Ireland are not discussed specifically, except for the statue of Pitt commissioned by the Corporation of the City of Cork sometime between 76 and 764. Many of the monuments in Ireland were commissioned by the landed gentry, most of whom were Protestant Anglo-Irish. Unlike in the New World, the Anglo-Irish presence in Ireland was generations old by the eighteenth century, and the Anglo-Irish had a perception of Ireland vis-à-vis England that differed significantly from the relationship between the American and West Indian colonies and England or between India and England. Americans, West Indians, and latterly the British in India recognized themselves as colo-

Introdu^ion 19

nists. As William Molyneux insisted in his polemical treatise on Ireland’s relationship with England, Ireland was a “complete kingdom within itself” – that is, unequivocally not a colony like Virginia or New England. Yet Ireland, through the Anglo-Irish, could make a claim to the English heritage of liberty.³⁴ Indeed, as Colin Kidd has pointed out, “Anglo-Irish patriots celebrated their colonial heritage of English liberties, but denied that Ireland was a colony.”³⁵ The funeral monuments are about fashion, status, and familial dynasty, just as they are in England or in the West Indies and America, but unlike the colonists in the New World, the Anglo-Irish did not have the same frenetic need to appear to be like the established landed gentry because, for the most part, they already were established landed gentry.³⁶ Although British settlement began in 788 with New South Wales, Australasia has not been included because there are, to my knowledge, no British monuments that date from the eighteenth century in this region of the world; the colonial infrastructure was not sufficiently developed. Meanwhile, although the monuments in Britain that commemorate the voyages of Captain Cook (there is one at Stowe) are certainly imperial in content, these are almost exclusively about exploration rather than about settlement and colonization.³⁷ The book stops in the early decades of the nineteenth century. My concern is to examine monuments associated with an empire in formation rather than with the established empire of the nineteenth century. The fluctuation and manipulation of the definition of empire is what I find most interesting rather than the firm and comparatively straightforward definition of the monolithic and bureaucratically laden nineteenth-century empire that is so emphatically embodied in the ponderous statues of Queen Victoria. At the extra-parliamentary level, the nascent empire is evident in the privately commissioned funeral monuments located in the Atlantic colonies and, to a lesser extent, in India. At the parliamentary level, the efforts of those vying for control of all or parts of the empire are illustrated by the patrons who sought to commission imperial monuments: Pitt the Elder (under the aegis of Parliament), American and West Indian colonial assemblies, the East India Company, and finally, unconnected with any one politician, Parliament itself. Similarly, who was commemorated and thus who represented the empire attests to the considerable variation in interpretations of empire. Unlike in France, where l’état – and by extension l’empire – c’est moi, the choice of whom to commemorate was far less clear-cut in Britain and the eighteenth-century British Empire. Pitt chose to commemorate the empire by honouring Wolfe, an untitled, almost common Englishman; many of the American colonists chose to honour Pitt, the Great Commoner and Great Patriot; the 20

p e r s ua s i o n a n d p ro pag a n da

West Indian assemblies honoured their colonial governors; the East India Company honoured their officers; and finally Parliament praised Cornwallis. Only Hanway (or possibly George III) and the New York legislative council chose to depict the empire in the body of the king, and, of all the monuments erected in the British Empire in the eighteenth century, these were the two that met early and grisly ends. To return to Nora’s new kind of history. He uses this history to write a national story of France in symbolic terms that has shaped the France of our time.³⁸ My study is far less ambitious. My concern is about the ramifications of a particular group of monuments in the short run, once they are erected in churches and public squares throughout the eighteenth-century British Empire, and their immediate impact or lack of impact on an audience. In a few cases, namely the Wolfe monument in Westminster Abbey, the statues of the king in Montreal and New York, and the statues of Pitt in New York and Charleston, the monuments are tracked for a few years into their futures as the memories change with the political landscape. Beyond these instances, however, this study does not attempt any serious evaluation of the monuments over time, except to acknowledge them as crumbling anachronisms of societies and ambitions long past. One of the great paradoxes of a monument is that it often outlives its rationale for existence, that which prompted its inception. A monument is too permanent. Another paradox is that once a monument is erected, it is more often than not usually neglected by the people who walk by it every day. It becomes too much a part of the physical landscape. If there is a cataclysmic political event – for example, the American Revolution or, more recently, the collapse of the Soviet Union – some monuments are infused with new meaning (usually tyranny) and are torn literally and symbolically from their pedestals.³⁹ For the vast majority of monuments, however, particularly those that merely commemorate a person rather than an event or a person associated with an event – for events tend to enter into the collective residual consciousness – their relevance is soon lost and the monuments are neglected, ignored, and forgotten.⁴⁰ While many other parts of our pasts and ourselves continue to shape and reshape our presents and futures, such a claim is too momentous for these monuments. The monuments are the residue of a period of history that laid the foundation of the modern world, that was economically grounded in trade, and that was philosophically grounded in liberty, with the spectre of slavery present but unregistered. However, to see any of this, we have to look at the monuments.

Introdu^ion 21

This page intentionally left blank

pa rt on e Family Empires

This page intentionally left blank

chapte r two

w

Display and Dynasty

alking into an eighteenth-century Anglican parish church in the British West Indies or North America is like walking into a parish church in Yorkshire, Suffolk, or somewhere else in England. The walls are lined with marble funeral monuments, very few of which suggest, in their imagery or their inscriptions, that they are located anywhere but England (figs 2. and 2.2). Over two hundred of these monuments, designed almost exclusively by English sculptors and masons in London, Bristol, and Bath, were erected in the British colonies during the long eighteenth century (700–820). A few substantial monuments were also erected in landscape gardens in the New World. The monuments range from stock-in-trade designs of cartouches and architectural frames at the beginning of the century to more elaborate, but equally formulaic, mourning female figures later in the century. Although rare, there are a few complex unique designs that indicate substantial dialogue between patron and sculptor, a factor that makes these works all the more distinctive since patron and sculptor were often separated by thousands of miles. Demographically, the concentration of the monuments corresponds to two factors: the distribution of wealth and the dissemination of the Anglican faith. Consequently, by far the largest number of monuments were shipped to the British West Indian islands. With the exception of the brief period of the Civil War, the West Indies were colonized and plundered for their economic potential rather than as places of refuge for people persecuted for their dissenting political or religious views. By the late seventeenth century, the cultivation of sugar had made many men very wealthy very quickly. By the end of the next century, the sugar plantations of the West Indies accounted for up to 0 per cent of the entire income of the whole of the British Empire.¹ Some of the personal fortunes were

Fig. 2.1 St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, Jamaica, 1700. Tower, battlements, and lantern added in 1706.

astonishing and, in many cases, far exceeded the personal net worth of much of the English landed gentry. The famous example is William Beckford, whose Jamaican estates made him the richest man in the British Empire.² Within the British West Indies, the most numerous and grandest monuments are in Jamaica. Jamaica is twenty-seven times larger than Barbados and, by the early eighteenth century, was the wealthiest of the islands.³ Barbados, the second richest island, boasts several fine funeral monuments, and several more were erected in the church at St John’s, Antigua, the capital of the Leeward chain (fig. 2.3 shows the church that was built following the 843 earthquake that severely damaged its predecessor; the monuments from the old church that survived the earthquake, such as the one in fig. 3.5, were reerected in the new church).⁴ Outside the West Indies, the second largest concentration of monuments is in the predominantly Anglican colonies of Virginia and South Carolina, both of which were rich in rice and tobacco. Although the planters in the southern American

Fig. 2.2

Interior, St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, Jamaica, 1700.

colonies never came close on average to the wealth of their West Indian compatriots, their economic and social infrastructures were similar.⁵ In contrast, few monuments were shipped to the northern American colonies, including Canada,⁶ a factor of the large dissenting populations and/or the relatively minor accumulations of personal wealth. Yet three of the most elaborate funeral monuments shipped to any of the Atlantic colonies before the American Revolution are located in King’s Chapel in Boston (see fig. 2.30). The earliest of these commemorates the wife of Governor William Shirley (see fig. 2.28), the second honours Charles Apthorp (see fig. 2.29), a prominent Boston merchant and politician, and the third commemorates Samuel Vassall (see fig. 2.32), one of the original incorporators of the Massachusetts Bay Company in the seventeenth century. The Vassall monument was erected in 765 by Samuel’s descendant Florentius, who was a quintessential man of the British Empire, a London-based Jamaican planter with strong Bostonian ties. The first two are about the AngliDisplay and Dynasty

27

Fig. 2.3 St John’s Church, Antigua, consecrated 1848 (replaced a brick church, c. 1720, which was severely damaged in the 1843 earthquake).

can hierarchy in the predominantly Puritan colony, while the last is directly connected with the Stamp Act crisis of 765–66. Since the circumstances surrounding the commissions for these monuments are significantly different from those that prompted most of the other overseas commissions, they are discussed at the end of the chapter. All the monuments in the colonies, with perhaps only two exceptions, were commissioned by people who resided in the colonies. The colonial elite of the West Indies are historically notorious for their absenteeism. They established immense plantations very quickly and then chose to return to England, leaving managers to run the estates. Or if the planter stayed in the islands, he invariably sent his sons to be educated in England, and very few of these sons would ever return. By way of example, by 775 roughly 30 per cent of Jamaica’s sugar estates were in the hands of absentee planters, and these tended to be the larger 28 fa m i ly e m p i r e s

Fig. 2.4 Monument to Robert Hooper, d. 1700. St Michael’s Parish Church, Bridgetown, Barbados.

estates, producing 40 per cent of the island’s sugar and rum. Both contemporary and modern historians have acknowledged that absenteeism steadily increased toward the end of the century and into the nineteenth century.⁷ While contributing to the increasingly powerful West Indian lobby in London, absenteeism would significantly inhibit the development and expansion of colonial infrastructures. Nonetheless, colonial communities did take seed, and the monuments erected in the West Indies, and in the rest of the Atlantic colonies for that matter, attest to these communities despite how tenuous some may have been.⁸ The earliest known monument shipped to the British Atlantic colonies commemorates Robert Hooper, attorney general of Barbados, who died in 700 (fig. 2.4). By this date, most of the British colonies were well settled, although to varying degrees. Barbados was completely under cultivation by the 670s and was divided into fourteen parishes with a network of roads and several stone houses, Display and Dynasty

29

among other social and cultural amenities.⁹ The American colonies, from New England to South Carolina, paralleled or surpassed Barbados in terms of civility in the seventeenth century with well-organized towns and colonial administrations, printing presses, and a variety of polite entertainments. Only Jamaica, not officially acquired from the Spanish until 670 (although largely conquered in 655), could be considered a frontier settlement by 700. Yet even by 740, large tracks of Jamaica were settled as prospectors eager to make their fortunes in sugar migrated from Britain and from other islands, especially Barbados, where much of the soil had already been exhausted under the monoculture conditions of sugar production.¹⁰ Consequently, the lack of monuments shipped to American and West Indian colonies in the seventeenth century has less to do with chronologies of settlement than with predominant trends evident in England. From the post-Reformation period until the beginning of the eighteenth century, monuments were the purview of the established landed gentry and royalty. Most monuments from this time were funereal in type but by the seventeenth century had less to do with death than with how the deceased had lived.¹¹ According to the Anglican theory that explains the use of effigies and other images, a funeral monument was meant to serve as an exemplum to the viewer of virtuous behaviour and civic duty, in line with the Lutheran notion of memoria.¹² A complex but well-known example is Rysbrack’s 732 funeral monument to the Duke of Marlborough in the chapel at Blenheim, in which the statue of the Duchess casually directs the viewer’s attention to the trophies positioned along the border of the monument.¹³ By the seventeenth century, monuments were also less often commissioned by the deceased, as had been commonplace in previous centuries, and increasingly commissioned by the primary heir. Thus the monuments were not only about the memory of the deceased, but also about the family and familial pedigree.¹⁴ Such monuments were also obviously about status. In the eighteenth century, as members of the middling classes rose to positions of financial and political prominence, they coveted these objects of status and pedigree in their drive to be perceived as gentlemen. In 69 the Swiss commentator, Guy Miège, defined the traditional English gentlemen in his New State of England as “descended of a good family, bearing a coat of arms,” yet he also noted that the English were somewhat broad-minded about whom they called a gentleman, stating that “anyone without a coat of arms, has either a liberal, or genteel education, that looks gentleman-like (whether he be so or not) and has wherewithal to live freely and handsomely, is by courtesy of England usually called a gentleman.”¹⁵ The nouveaux riches, or arrivistes, the great majority 30

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

of whom lacked even a pretense of pedigree, counted enormously on this courtesy. Miège also acknowledged that the shifting economy of England was making trade, previously considered vulgar, a factor in the construction of something close to a gentleman: “whereas trading formerly rendered a gentleman ignoble, now an ignoble person makes himself by merchandising as good as a gentleman.”¹⁶ The Whiggish Daniel Defoe went further in the 720s in claiming that “trade is so far from being inconsistent with a gentleman, that, in short, trade in England makes gentlemen, and has peopled the nation with gentlemen.”¹⁷ Toward the end of the century, Joshua Reynolds, speaking in 780 at the opening of the Royal Academy in its new quarters at Somerset House, perhaps more accurately summed up the generally held view of what makes an eighteenthcentury English gentleman: “The estimation in which we stand in respect to our neighbours, will be in proportion to the degree in which we excel or are inferior to them in the acquisition of intellectual excellence, of which Trade and its consequential riches must be acknowledged to give the means; but a people whose whole attention is absorbed in those means, and who forget the end, can aspire but little above the rank of a barbarous nation.”¹⁸ A gentleman possessed not only the financial wherewithal, but also the trappings, of a gentleman. Among these trappings, a display of material wealth was a given; the less subtle the display, the more refined the gentleman. Erudition, which included education, deportment of one’s education, and sensibility, was also a measuring stick of gentility. Similarly, at least the perception of familial permanence figured in the making of a gentleman since primogeniture, derived from England’s feudal past, continued to be the social system that so fundamentally defined English society. A funeral monument could evoke possession of all these traits by both the deceased and whoever commissioned the monument. The construction of the eighteenth-century gentleman prompted entire industries associated with gentility. Peter Borsay has examined this phenomenon in detail in the provinces, as has Kathleen Wilson, whose particular interest is the dissemination of political thought in the provinces.¹⁹ The proliferation of newspapers and journals emerged out of a desire to transmit news, largely of an economic sort, but reading the papers soon became de rigeur. A reading culture prompted the creation of circulating libraries and invigorated the coffee house industry. With gentility came leisure, resulting in assembly halls, theatres, gardens, and urban walks that transformed towns and cities across the country, as did new roads, town housing, public squares, and municipal buildings. Sports activities were also increasing (Borsay examines horse racing in detail), and excursions to resorts and spas were likewise on the rise. Of all the spa towns, Display and Dynasty

31

Bath in particular reached its apogee by the middle of the century as the nouveaux riches sought to win status by association with the established gentry, who had similarly flocked to Bath after Queen Anne’s visits in 702 and 703.²⁰ The monument industry, not mentioned by either Borsay or Wilson, grew exponentially. Thousands of funeral monuments soon lined the walls of churches in cities, towns, and country parishes. Bath Abbey is a case in point: By the middle of the nineteenth century, the walls had become so obscured with monuments that many were significantly cut down or removed altogether, an act of Gothic Revivalist vandalism carried out by G.G. Scott. Monuments intended for landscape gardens were also commissioned aplenty as both old and new money indulged in the craze for private landscape parks. Public monuments, such as the equestrian statues of William III in Queen Square, Bristol (fig. 2.5), and Market Place, Hull, are also evidence of the improved man since such acts of philanthropy accord with the exemplum of civic duty, however self-serving and selfpromoting they may have been in reality.²¹ The demand for monuments prompted a corresponding rise in the number of practising sculptors and masons. Many had large workshops with several assistants: Henry and John Cheere, Peter Scheemakers, Robert Taylor, Joseph Wilton, and Charles Easton had substantial shops in London. These were eclipsed in size by the Bacons’ premises at the end of the century. Outside London, many, like the Patys in Bristol and the Kings in Bath, were also able to maintain significant practices satisfying the demand. These larger shops produced a wide range of stock-in-trade designs although the sculptors would, if the commission warranted it, produce a unique composition. In contrast, other sculptors such as Michael Rysbrack and particularly Louis-François Roubiliac had smaller workshops and would devote more time to each piece. Whether they were engaged in the art of sculpture or in the business of sculpture, each of these men were also arrivistes in their own right and, like their clients, aspired to positions of gentility and social prominence.²² The colonial elite in America and the West Indies, like their provincial and London counterparts, were similarly ardently engaged in acquiring the perceived necessities of civility and gentility. Barbados provides an early and rather extreme example: In 654 the Frenchman Father Biet commented on the excessive spending by the Barbadian elite on clothes, furnishings, handsome horses “covered with rich saddle-cloths,” the best wines from more than six areas of Europe, many “artificial drinks,” and all other manner of luxury goods, all of which were available on the island.²³ More permanent evocations of status soon followed, with improved houses “in the English style with many glass windows” 32

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

Fig. 2.5 Michael Rysbrack, statue of William iii , erected 1736, Bristol.

in Bridgetown, well-built plantation houses of stone with tree-lined avenues leading up to them, and a regular round of “Balls and Consorts” by the end of the century.²⁴ By 74 Barbados could boast a printing press and newspaper, stone churches in all of its parishes, and two bowling greens.²⁵ The Barbadian elite referred to their island as the “civilised island” or “Great Britain in miniature.”²⁶ The civilizing of the American colonies occurred at about the same time, although not with such intensity, as dictated mostly by the wealth of the colony in question. Antigua was a Barbados in miniature, and the other West Display and Dynasty

33

Indian islands, including Bermuda and the Bahamas, shared a similar experience. The civilizing of Jamaica occurred even more rapidly, as sugar production transformed much of the island within the first forty years of the eighteenth century, although aspects of a frontier mentality and the sheer size of the island meant that it would be several more decades before the community became as integrated as that in Barbados.²⁷ The colonists who built the sturdy plantation houses and stone churches, who built roads, who bowled on the bowling greens, and who attended the balls and itinerant entertainments, were rarely from the first generation of settlers in the Atlantic colonies. Although a few of the earliest settlers, especially in the West Indies, had legitimate status as English gentry – such as the Christopher Codringtons of Barbados, who hailed from ancient Gloucestershire gentry stock – the majority had obscure origins.²⁸ Later, in the eighteenth century, proportionally even fewer colonists could claim truly established origins. William May, rector in Kingston, Jamaica, could identify only six families of gentle descent on all of the island in about 720.²⁹ Similarly, few of the families that had settled in America were of ancient distinction since so many of the early British émigrés to America had fled the mother country to avoid persecution. These first generations of colonial settlers, whether in America or the West Indies, were too preoccupied with carving a subsistence out of unfamiliar and often unforgiving environments. Even in the West Indies, despite the huge profits accrued in sugar production, constructing the plantation works and acquiring slaves tended to preclude any meaningful cultural pursuits. As such, theirs was a frontier mentality and a frontier society. They were mercilessly caricatured by the English, often rightly so, for their lewd behaviour, astounding promiscuity, and lack of sociability.³⁰ In short, they were considered uncivilized. Those who did build the houses, churches, roads, and bowling greens and who regularly attended balls and other entertainments were second-, third-, or latergeneration colonists. Their fortunes had been made, and their businesses were usually managed by others; they had the money, and the time, to indulge. Thus they accord with the second phase of a process of identity formation identified by Jack P. Greene and other scholars of colonial history: “they tended to define themselves more in terms of how they were actually organizing their social and cultural landscapes and the extent to which those landscapes did – or did not – conform to inherited notions and standards of how such landscapes should be organized.”³¹ In short, they were expressing their Englishness in lands that were most unlike England. These were also the people who commissioned most of the

34 fa m i ly e m p i r e s

monuments shipped to the Atlantic colonies; with their fortunes secured and their dynasties established, pedigree and its articulation became paramount. These middle generations, before there was any self-conscious sense of a colonial identity autonomous of England (which is the subject of chapter 8), tended, in their overzealous drive to be seen as gentry, to be more English than the English. This is typical of people who have been displaced from their homeland, even if they have never set foot in their homeland. The act of displacement, of removal from the familiar to the unfamiliar, drives people to overarticulate their identity. This phenomenon was relatively new in the eighteenth century, when the numbers of people moving to new environments many thousands of miles from home was unprecedented. Indeed, it could be argued that the conscious formulation of an English identity was first more firmly articulated in the colonies than in England itself.³² The sea and thus the huge distance between the colonists and their homeland was one of the major defining elements of this process of identity formation. The sea was at once merciful but dangerous: It could bring news from the homeland, but it could also delay this news; it could bring many desired goods (including slaves), but it could also destroy them; it could enhance travel within the West Indies and to America, but it could also impede the development of an internal infrastructure of roads. While the sea and England’s dominance of the sea had captured the imagination of the post-Reformation English mind, the colonists who were on the other side of the sea had a much more practical relationship with their saviour/nemesis.³³ Other factors, all of which could be classified as unfamiliar, exacerbated the colonists’ perceptions of themselves as English. The physical environments, from the forests of New England to the jungles and deserts of the West Indies, were seen as savage and unforgiving, places to be conquered or avoided. Climates, from ferocious winters in the north to extraordinary heat and humidity in the West Indies, were wholly unlike the temperate climes of England. Especially in the West Indies, pestilence was a constant threat, and hurricanes and earthquakes, although not unknown in England, were more frequent and more devastating.³⁴ The newness of settling the land also contributed to the early phase of identity formation. As far as the colonists were concerned, the land that they settled was new; having no English history, it was devoid of history altogether. Furthermore, the relative speed of settlement and accumulation of wealth, particularly in the West Indies and especially in Jamaica, contributed to the often frenzied element apparent in the colonists’ drive to acquire English gentlemanly status.

Display and Dynasty

35

In many of the Atlantic colonies, colonists, consciously or unconsciously, sought to recreate an England that had long since past. In New England, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, for example, where the majority of colonists had fled to avoid persecution in England, medieval elements crept into socio-political infrastructures. The settlers were attempting to create an archaic England that had, before their arrival in the New World, existed only in their imaginations.³⁵ In the predominantly Anglican southern American colonies and the West Indies, archaic forms of English social organizations were the norm. Plantation life was essentially feudal in organization, at once a hangover of the Stuart reign and the early years of exploration and settlement and also ideally suited to the production of tobacco, rice, and sugar. Paradoxically, these men of new money, so dependent on the modern primacy of trade, sought to live as lords of the manor. At the top of the hierarchy was the planter and his family; at the bottom, instead of peasants, were hundreds of slaves. In between were overseers to handle the slaves and managers to look after the estates. Charles Price of Jamaica, later Sir Charles, is an exaggerated case in point: Around the middle of the eighteenth century, he owned 26,000 acres of land in Jamaica spread over eleven parishes and kept in cultivation by ,300 slaves. Educated in England – one of the few sons who returned to Jamaica – he left most of the running of his estates to his managers, choosing instead to reside at The Decoy, his mansion high in the hills. He descended with his retinue on Spanish Town for the annual parliamentary season from September to Christmas.³⁶ The form of colonial government, which consisted of an appointed governor, his lieutenants, and militia, also derived from the medieval world. The militia tended not to be terribly effective, as meetings often became occasions for socializing and drinking. However, particularly in the West Indies, where the threat of slave insurrection was omnipresent, especially after Tacky’s Revolt in Jamaica in 760, the militia still also served as a form of internal police.³⁷ Finally, already disconcerted by unfamiliar lands and vast distances from home, the presence and fear of an other further spurred the colonists’ retreat into what was familiar. As Michael Zuckerman has acknowledged, “pioneers everywhere understood themselves in absolute antitheses. Saved and damned, Christian and heathen, civilised and savage, white and black came congenially and, indeed, compellingly to the colonists, as though they could redeem their own enigmatic identities by disparaging the identities of others.”³⁸ In the British American colonies, attempts to enslave, displace, and eradicate the indigenous populations were the norm, while mixing with the Natives was frowned upon and intermarriage absolutely forbidden.³⁹ In the West Indies the Caribs had been 36

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

systematically decimated on most of the islands by the end of the seventeenth century. Yet the African or creolized slaves replaced the indigenous populations as the other for the white West Indian and also southern American. The white arriviste colonist was vastly outnumbered and overwhelmed by African and creole slaves and lived in fear of their presence. In Jamaica, for example, by 760 the proportion of whites in the entire population of whites and slaves stood at 0 per cent, a total not uncommon in the West Indies, and by 833 the proportion had fallen to 5 per cent.⁴⁰ Much was made in colonial society of the damaging effects of spending too much time with the creole nonwhite culture. Edward Long, Jamaica’s foremost apologist for the plantocracy and for the institution of slavery, felt that although the English planter in Jamaica and his womenfolk were, in principle, exemplars of the human race, they, too, could be led into improper – that is, un-English – behaviour by improper education, by too much interaction “from their Birth with Negroe domestics, whose drawling, dissonant gibberish they insensibly adopt, and with it no small tincture of their aukward [sic] carriage and vulgar manners,” and by too much time spent in the sequestered parts of the island away from the civilizing influences of Spanish Town, the island’s capital.⁴¹ The perception of the colonial elite among people who lived in England further contributed to the colonial elite’s formation of their English identity. Neil McKendrick and Peter Borsay have pointed out that the gentry of England, particularly the less affluent, were under extraordinary pressure to engage in often reckless conspicuous consumption if only to maintain their status (which was also their identity) in the face of the growing wealth of the middling classes.⁴² The colonial elite were likewise under similar pressure not only to acquire status but also to defend themselves against unflattering and socially unacceptable stereotypes constructed by their social betters. The West Indian plantocracy was especially regularly lampooned in England. In his essay on Barbadian identity, Jack P. Greene assembled a series of contemporary commentaries on the Barbadian character that were written around 730: Their early wealth had led them into luxury, “that Bane of States, ... Great Foe of Health, and Source of ev’ry Ill.” By the 730s, “the receiv’d Notion” throughout the Englishspeaking world was that Barbadians, along with other West Indians, were “the most opulent, most splendid, and gayest People of all His Majesty’s Dominions,” a people who, in the words of Joshua Gee, always lived in “great Splendor, and at Vast Expence.” Their wealth had led them not only into an extravagant life style but also into indolence and “a certain Species of Vanity not uncommon among those who[,] subsist[ing] much on Display and Dynasty

37

Credit and Reputation,” desired “to be thought wealthier than they are.” In turn, “this expensive Vanity of the Barbadians” drove them into ostentatious display, wantonness, improvidence, “willful Heedlessness,” and unjustified optimism about the future.⁴³

The colonial elite from other West Indian islands were held in equal disdain as ill-educated, poorly mannered buffoons with a penchant for fashionable excess and ostentatious display. The American arriviste colonists were less vilified, although they were often also tarred with the same brush. Even from within the plantocracy itself, such perceptions were rife. One Barbadian commentator noted that his colleagues had become a “ foolish, ridiculous, inconsistent, scurrilous, absurd, malicious, and impudent” people who, in their “extravagant Passion for Riches” and pleasure, made inadequate provision for education and other social amenities on their own island and wholly neglected all civilized moral standards, including “Honor, and Probity, Modesty and Chastity.”⁴⁴ In short, they threatened to spend and drink themselves and the islands into oblivion. A few of the colonial elite, both resident and absentee, managed to integrate with and to be accepted by the English gentry, perhaps because they did not try too hard. Although Charles Price was extravagant in his lifestyle, he garnered the respect of all who visited him at The Decoy, and James Dawkins, another arriviste planter in Jamaica, won approval for financing the aesthetically worthy publications Ruins of Baalbec and Ruins of Palmyra. William Beckford rose to become Lord Mayor of London, although his son squandered the family fortune with his extraordinary profligacy, which included building his magnificently silly Fonthill Abbey. Yet even the younger Beckford contributed positively to English culture with his book Vathek, which, after Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, is England’s second truly gothick fantasy.⁴⁵ However, those colonial elite who fit into proper English society were few. The great majority were never fully accepted as equals by the English establishment. Paradoxically, in an effort to redeem themselves and to achieve gentlemanly status, most members of the colonial elite overcompensated and engaged in extraordinary, ostentatious, and conspicuous consumption and in hedonistic pursuits. The Countess of Home, for example, who began life as Elizabeth Gibbons, daughter of one of the original English planters in Jamaica, was known as the Queen of Hell for her irascible behaviour and lavish parties, staged in the exquisite town house at 20 Portman Square, which she ordered at the age of seventy from Robert Adam (later the first home of the Courtauld Institute of Art).⁴⁶ Indeed, Portman Square and the new north end of London in Marylebone were filled with absentee planters who tended to favour each other’s company, for they were true social equals.⁴⁷ 38 fa m i ly e m p i r e s

Thus the colonial elite were in a compromised position. They were English, but they were not themselves from England or from the British Isles (several of their forebears had originated from Scotland and Ireland). They were subject to the social tenor of the time, which demanded particular modes of gentlemanly behaviour, with all the appropriate trappings, but they could never be gentlemen since they were colonials. Just as the colonial elite would often define itself against the other in the New World (whether they be Native, slave, or white labourer), the colonial elite was deemed the other by the English gentry, whether old money or new, and were consequently the object of condescension. The monuments in the colonies, especially funeral monuments, highlight many of the concerns and obsessions of the colonial elite as they struggled to ascend the social ladder. Indeed, the monuments have far less to do with the colonists’ churchiness – the West Indians were notoriously irreligious⁴⁸ – and more to do with social aspirations. The monuments also inadvertently depict the fears and indulgences of the colonial elite. The very act of commissioning and then shipping a marble monument several thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean is an act of denial, of obfuscating any sense of displacement or cultural fragmentation. The iconography of the monuments shipped to the British Atlantic colonies further obfuscate this fragmentation. None of these monuments bears any reference to the environment in which they ended up; there are no depictions of sugar cane or forests, sugar mills or sawmills, sugar ships, barrels of rum or molasses, slaves, North American Natives, bears or beavers, not even a palm tree. The monuments are identical to those erected anywhere in England. The inscriptions can also be misleading; often no reference is made to where the deceased had lived, or if such reference is made, it is still potentially confusing because so many places in the West Indies or America were named after places in Britain. Furthermore, shipping often extraordinarily heavy monuments that have no practical purpose across the Atlantic is rather perverse. Consequently, the monuments are symbols of the colonial elite’s obsessive tendencies to acquire all of the material accoutrements of a gentlemanly culture. Thus these monuments are less about exemplum than about mere ostentation. Without even considering the complex logistics of commissioning and shipping such an object, the sheer size of some of the monuments indicates the social pretensions to which many of the colonial elite aspired. While the majority of the monuments are somewhat manageable wall-mounted versions, a few are immense floor monuments that involve many figures and measure over three metres high. Historically, in Europe such huge constructions tended to be the domain of the established gentry, aristocracy, and royalty, but by the middle of the eighteenth century, more and more of Display and Dynasty

39

the minor gentry, or nouveaux riches, who had the inclination, and the money, indulged in such grand displays. Roubiliac’s theatrical monuments in Westminster Abbey to James Fleming and William Hargrave, two generals who had done little to distinguish themselves, are a case in point. These are elaborate tributes that speak more about the pretensions of the deceased and their heirs than about their true accomplishments.⁴⁹ Likewise, many of the epitaphs and inscriptions on the monuments shipped to the West Indies and to the American colonies attest to the patrons’ desire to be at one with the established gentry. Philippe Ariès has acknowledged the tendency toward simplicity in monumental funereal inscriptions at the upper end of the social scale. A perfunctory statement of name, birth, and death date was a sign of the humility of the deceased.⁵⁰ Matthew Craske has further explored the simple inscription as an indication that the deceased’s accomplishments were so great and timeless that elaborate articulations of them were considered unnecessary.⁵¹ While many of the monuments in the West Indies do bear simple inscriptions, several run to thirty or more lines and are extraordinary examples of puffing. In keeping with the habits of their nouveau riche counterparts in England as well as with the habits of some members of the minor gentry, there is a distinct sense that one doth protest too much. Ultimately, the funeral monuments in the colonies are about the primary defining ingredient of gentlemanly status that nearly all of the colonial elite lacked: a distinguished lineage. A funeral monument commemorates the family of the deceased as much or more than the person who had died. In their permanence, monuments suggest continuity; in their solidity, monuments imply that they, and the families that they commemorate, have always been there and that they, and the families, will live on forever. For the great majority of the colonial elite, who had no distinctive lineage and who had only recently acquired the land (and the wealth derived from it) that was traditionally associated with distinction, a monument helped to consolidate a familial dynasty and to manufacture a respectable lineage, or at least an illusion of one. What follows are case studies of various monuments in the British West Indian and American colonies that exemplify the different components of an English gentleman in the eighteenth century: displays of conspicuous consumption, erudition, and familial lineage. All of the monuments that are discussed were shipped to Barbados, Jamaica, and Antigua. These were the three wealthiest of the West Indian islands and thus contained the largest number of monuments. (Appendix 4 is a comprehensive, although not complete, list of the monuments located in the Leeward and Windward British West Indian colonies and in the American 40

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

colonies.) With the exception of one, no monuments from the southern American colonies are discussed, mainly because far fewer are extant. However, those that do survive and the transcriptions of epitaphs from destroyed monuments indicate that the motivations behind the commissions were similar to those that occasioned their West Indian counterparts. Evaluating the monuments according to and in conjunction with the demands of proper society emphasizes the Englishness of the monuments and of the colonial elite.

c ons picuous c onsumption The oldest known monument in Jamaica, and one of the first shipped to any of the Atlantic colonies, commemorates not a member of the colonial elite but a man of established English gentry stock. William Selwyn, governor of Jamaica, is memorialized with a marble cartouche in St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town (fig. 2.6). Selwyn owned property in Gloucestershire and had served as governor of Gravesend and Tilbury Fort before being appointed governor of Jamaica in 70. He arrived in Jamaica in January 702 but, like so many new arrivals from the Old World, succumbed within months. The monument was probably commissioned by his wife Albinia, who, as so many widows did, returned to England at the earliest opportunity. She was also responsible for commissioning another monument in her husband’s honour, executed by a member of the Easton family and erected near the family seat in Gloucestershire.⁵² The Jamaica monument, perhaps also by one of the Eastons, is embellished with military trophies and surmounted by an urn. The inscription is matter-of-fact, honouring his memory and then listing his English origins, various commissions, and his date of death. Albinia is not mentioned. Thus the monument is more about the perpetuation of William’s memory than of Albinia’s. It would be unreasonable to suggest that the Selwyn monument alone initiated the demand for funeral monuments in Jamaica, yet the West Indian elite kept a sharp eye on all the latest trends in England. As a result, the Selwyn monument may have gone some way in prompting a spate of cartouches that were shipped to the island from the 70s until the 730s. They commemorate members of the plantocracy – Matthew Gregory, Elizabeth Gale, Alexander Forbes (fig. 2.7), John Blair, Thomas Rose (fig. 2.8), Mary Bernard, Ann March, Ann and Sarah Spencer, Samuel Osborne, and two generations of John Morant – whose fathers and grandfathers had been among the original settlers of the island. Of those commemorated, only Alexander Forbes could claim gentlemanly status in his engraved epitaph, as the second son of Sir David Forbes of Edinburgh (fig. Display and Dynasty

41

Fig. 2.6 (right) Monument to William Selwyn, d. 1702. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Fig. 2.7 (middle right) Monument to Alexander Forbes, d. 1729. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Fig. 2.8 (far right) Monument to Thomas Rose, d. 1724. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

2.7). Consistent with the taste for cartouches in England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, these are rather elaborately carved stock-in-trade pieces that measure from one and a half to two metres in height. With the exception of the Forbes monument, whose patron deemed it necessary to articulate his aristocratic heritage, the inscriptions on these cartouches are perfunctory, variants on: “Near this Place / Lyes Interr’d ye Body of / THOMAS ROSE Esqr / who Departed / this Life / ye 2th of Nov 724 / Aged 35 Years.” The monument with which Elizabeth Lawes, later the Countess of Home, chose to commemorate her first husband, James Lawes, lieutenant governor of Jamaica, is an entirely more ostentatious affair (figs 2.9 and 2.0). It also provides an interesting counterpoint to Albinia Selwyn’s commemoration of her husband. By early-eighteenth-century standards, James Lawes had a lengthy pedigree in Jamaica. His grandparents had emigrated to Jamaica when his father, later Sir 42 fa m i ly e m p i r e s

Nicholas Lawes, was a young boy, and his father would eventually become governor at the turn of the eighteenth century. James died at the age of thirty-six in 733 within months of receiving the commission of lieutenant governor but before he could take up his post. The monument, erected in Lawes’s home parish of St Andrew’s, Halfway Tree, measures about two and a half metres high. At the time, it was the largest monument that had been shipped to the West Indies, and it is also the earliest unique design. Executed by John Cheere, it is a curious stylistic combination of new and old. The freestanding bust of the deceased is au courant for the 730s, depicting Lawes dégagé – that is, with unbuttoned collar and soft cap. The architectural surround, however, consisting of marble curtains pulled back to reveal the bust above a marble apron edged in gilt, is more in keeping with funeral monuments from the seventeenth and very early eighteenth centuries. The inconsistency might be explained by the possibility that the bust was Display and Dynasty

43

executed from the life (Lawes was in England the year before he died) and that the marble surround was a stock-in-trade piece ordered by Elizabeth after his death to accommodate the bust. This theory, first posited by Lesley Lewis, is corroborated by the glaringly obvious placement of Cheere’s signature on the base of the socle of the bust, a most unusual place for a signature on a monument.⁵³ The lengthy inscription, pointedly in Latin, the language of official office but also of the cultured elite, goes into significant detail, outlining Lawes’s lineage (son of Sir Nicholas Lawes and Susanna Temple), his exemplary character, and the young age at which he obtained his distinguished position. In contrast to Albinia Selwyn, Elizabeth Lawes was also careful to outline her own lineage (daughter 44

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

Fig. 2.9 (far left) John Cheere, monument to James Lawes, d. 1733. St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, Jamaica. Fig. 2.10 (left) John Cheere, detail of the monument to James Lawes, d. 1733. St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, Jamaica. Fig. 2.11 (right) John Cheere, monument to Deborah Gibbons, d. 1711. St Peter’s Parish Church, Vere, Jamaica.

and heir of William Gibbons) and to note that she had erected this memorial. Probably at the same time that she commissioned the monument to her husband, Lawes also hired John Cheere to execute a monument in memory of her mother, Deborah Gibbons, who had died over twenty years earlier (fig. 2.). Although a stock-in-trade architectural piece, it is nonetheless substantially larger than any other monument previously shipped to Jamaica. Lawes’s foray into commissioning such grand monuments suggests her social pretensions and her inclination to ostentation, which are well-documented in her later life as the Countess of Home. Her parents presumably cultivated a sense of aloofness in their daughter; her father seems not to have participated in the Display and Dynasty

45

public life of Jamaica, and her mother heralded from minor Yorkshire gentry. Elizabeth was probably a good match for James Lawes, who seems to have had a similar irascible character, proving to be a persistent thorn in the side of the then governor, the Duke of Portland. At some point after her husband’s death (it is unclear when), Elizabeth left her estates, totalling 5,287 acres, in the hands of overseers and retired to England, where on Christmas Day in 742 she married William, Earl of Home, presumably for his title, as he deserted her within two months.⁵⁴ She reappeared several years later as one of Robert Adam’s most ostentatious clients in Portman Square, demanding among other things a full baroque organ to satisfy her musical cravings.⁵⁵ Elizabeth Lawes’s elaborate monuments in Jamaica also point to her competitive streak, an unsavoury character trait that was rife among the arriviste plantocracy. Acknowledged and disparaged by the English and the plantocracy alike, competition was decidedly vulgar because anyone who was truly cultured had no need to emphasize it. Therein lies the paradox for the plantocracy. At one level, there was competition to be seen as one with the established gentry, a competition that the plantocracy could, by definition, never win. At another level, more defining for resident colonial culture, was the desire among the members of the plantocracy to outdo one another in behaviour, acquisition of material wealth, and display. The practice of gambling in the West Indies offers a case in point. Gambling could be seen as a gentlemanly pursuit, but, as Charles Leslie recounted, by the 730s it was acknowledged as a vice in the West Indies.⁵⁶ Furthermore, several contemporaries commented on the penchant especially of colonial women to try to outdo one another. In 774 Long stated: “If Mrs. S— gives a party, it is incumbent upon Mrs. W— to give a larger; if Miss A— should happen to exhibit a tiara of pearls at the King’s house, Miss B— would go into hysterics if she could not display one of diamonds at the next ball.”⁵⁷ One of the potentially damaging results of such competitive behaviour was the lack of social cohesion among the resident plantocracy. Despite the intricate network of intermarriage among the relatively small population of the colonial elite (more than a few West Indians descended into lunacy),⁵⁸ personal jealousies and factious behaviour were often so intense that the development of colonial infrastructures was severely inhibited. In this respect, Long was highly critical in his assessment of the Jamaican elite: “Ridiculous as the prejudices of faction are in so small a community, yet they are capable of producing mischievous effects. Publick spirit, and a liberal way of thinking, naturally tend to the ornament and improvement of every country where they reside. The contrary, or a perverse and selfish principle, excludes every thing that is great and generous from its narrow 46

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

view, and wages eternal war against public welfare. I am sorry to say the latter rule of conduct has been too predominant in this island.”⁵⁹ Lady Maria Nugent, the American wife of the governor of Jamaica early in the nineteenth century, also remarked on the lack of social intercourse between the resident elite. Robert Madden, who visited the islands during the transition to Emancipation, also noticed it: “all the small sweet courtesies and tranquil enjoyments of friendly intercourse in minor circles, and little reunions of neighbouring families, are unknown.”⁶⁰ Competition also led to overindulgence, which in turn provoked the stereotype, both in England and in the colonies, of the colonial planter as the gluttonous, promiscuous buffoon. Overindulgence, competition, and ostentation were unfortunate by-products that undermined the West Indians’ attempts to accentuate their Englishness. Sumptuous feasts – “a splendid side-board with the finest damask, and a dinner of perhaps sixteen to twenty covers”⁶¹ – and splendid balls were almost daily events during the parliamentary season in the West Indies from September to December.⁶² The food tended to be more English than creole or American, and the dress had to correspond to the latest styles from England, despite the unforgiving and entirely un-English climate.⁶³ Long, who recognized the perversity of wearing English fashions in the West Indies and who encouraged, at least in print, the adoption of the more suitable Spanish fashions, painted a comical picture: “the men loaded and half melting under a ponderous coat and waistcoat, richly bedaubed with gold or embroidery on a hot day, scarcely able to bear them.”⁶⁴ The women, he added, do not scruple to wear the thickest winter silks and sattins; and are sometimes ready to sink under the weight of rich gold or silver brocades. Their head-dress varies with the ton at home; the winter fashions of London arrive here at the setting in of hot weather; and thick or thin caps, large as an umbrella, or as diminutive as a half crown piece, are indiscriminately put on, without the smallest regard to the difference of climate; nay, the late preposterous mode of dressing female hair in London, half a yard perpendicular in height, fastened with some score of heavy iron pins, on a bundle of wool large enough to stuff a chair bottom, together with pounds of powder and pomatum, did not escape their ready imitation; but grew into a vogue with great rapidity, and literally might be affirmed, to turn all their heads; for it was morally impossible to avoid stooping, and tottering, under so enormous a mass. Nothing surely can be more preposterous, and absurd, than for persons residing in the West-Indies, to adhere rigidly to all the European customs and manners; which, though perhaps not inconvenient in a cold Northern air, are certainly improper, ridiculous, and detrimental, in a hot climate.⁶⁵ Display and Dynasty

47

Fig. 2.12

St Nicholas Abbey, built between 1656 and 1661. St Peter, Barbados.

Shops in Bridgetown, Kingston, and St John’s rivalled those in London in quality of merchandise.⁶⁶ Adherence to English style and customs pervaded more permanent objects associated with status. Housing tended to be very English in design and thus hardly addressed the West Indian climate. The number of great houses (plantation houses) was rather small, compared to the elite population, as planters were initially preoccupied with establishing the mills and outbuildings for sugar cultivation.⁶⁷ Barbados had the largest number of grand great houses, as it was the most densely settled colony and one of the oldest. St Nicholas Abbey, for example, is a stuccoed, gable-ended manse with small glazed windows that would be more appropriately sited at the edge of a Jacobean English village (fig. 2.2). Probably built between 656 and 66 by the planter Benjamin Berringer, it is a throwback to a style that was popular earlier in the century when either Berringer or his ancestors had left England.⁶⁸ Less elaborate great houses and town houses tended also to have low ceilings, small rooms, and small windows so that 48

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

the air could not circulate.⁶⁹ Churches were also entirely English in design. Most of the first were wooden structures, quickly erected, but by 74 Barbados had a stone church in each of its parishes, while Jamaica was not far behind (figs 2. and 2.2).⁷⁰ Fortunately, the vaulted ceilings, combined with the small windows, allowed for cooler interiors. The plantocracy’s desire for well-built churches, which often preceded their want of a well-built house, was less about their religious ardour, which was tepid at best, than about creating thoroughly English environments. Likewise, the monuments inside the churches contributed to the fiction of the colonies as little Englands. There were two audiences for the monuments erected in the Atlantic colonies: the other members of the colonial elite and their descendants. As might be expected, the lower orders of white society and the blacks and slaves did not figure in the equation. The colonial elite’s attendance at church, which increased as the eighteenth century wore on, seems to have been a reflection more of what was deemed proper English social behaviour than of any true sense of piety or faith; one commentator in 770 wrote of the Barbadians that he “heard many of the inhabitants say, [that] they went [to church] more to see and to be seen, than out of devotion.”⁷¹ Like Sir Charles Price, who drove the quarter mile from his town house to St Catherine’s Church in Spanish Town by coach, the monuments were meant to be seen. And like Sir Charles Price, who rarely sullied his hands or thoughts with the running of his sugar estates,⁷² there are no indications in the monuments’ iconography of how the deceased made their fortunes (no slaves, sugarcane, sugar mills, or even depictions of the estates). Referencing trade or business of any kind would have been vulgar, crass, and supremely ungentlemanly. The fiction to which all the patrons of the monuments ascribed was that the colonial elite were above the barbarous state of trade.

e ru d i t i o n Erudition, which encompasses education, deportment of one’s education, and sensibility, goes much farther than conspicuous consumption in convincing someone of a person’s gentlemanly status. As far as the resident elite in the colonies are concerned, and particularly in the West Indies, Sir Charles Price stands out as an anomaly of his generation for his erudition. He was a third-generation resident planter, a grandson of Francis Price, who had probably come to Jamaica from Barbados as an officer under General Venables in 655. Francis and then his son Charles built up a considerable fortune, which enabled Charles to send his son to England for his education.⁷³ Although it would become fashionable Display and Dynasty

49

– indeed, the norm – to educate West Indian sons in England, in the 720s it was still rather unusual. Charles Leslie painted a very unflattering portrait of the typical Jamaican gentleman after he toured the island in the 730s: There are indeed several Gentlemen who are well acquainted with Learning, in some of its most valuable Branches; but these are few; and the Generality seem to have a greater Affection for the moodish Vice of Gaming than the Belles Lettres, and love of a Pack of Cards, better than the Bible. To talk of a Homer, or a Virgil, of a Tully, or a Demosthenes, is quite unpolite; and it cannot be other wise; for a Boy, till the Age of Seven or Eight, diverts himself with the Negroes, acquires their broken way of talking, their Manners of Behaviour, and all the Vices which those unthinking Creatures can teach: Then if he learns, ‘tis well; if not, it can’t be helped. After a little Knowledge of reading, he goes to the Dancing-school, and commences Beau, learns the common Topicks of Discourse, and visits and rakes with his Equals. This is their Method; and how can it be supposed one of such a Turn can entertain any generous Notions, distinguish the Beauties of Virtues, act for the Good of his Country, or appear in any Station of Life, so as to deserve Applause?⁷⁴

The younger Charles Price was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Oxford, before embarking on a Grand Tour. He then, even more unusually, chose to return to Jamaica in 730, where through careful marriages and speculation, he acquired his numerous estates and vast wealth.⁷⁵ Long, clearly in awe of this powerful man, described him as the antithesis to Leslie’s buffoons: “his complacency of manners, accomplished knowledge of books and men, and delicacy of humour, rendered him the polite, instructive, and entertaining companion: here he shone the inflexible lover of truth, the firm friend, and the generous patron. His mind was amply stored with the treasures of liberal erudition. But theology seemed his favorite science; and the Great Author of nature, the chief object of his study. Though qualified in all respects to have made a respectable figure on a more extensive theatre, he preferred a residence in this island.”⁷⁶ He also gained distinction for owning one of the largest private libraries in the West Indies and perhaps in all of the colonies. Unlike the other resident planters who were fully engaged in the running of their plantations, Price’s wealth enabled him to live the life of the landed gentry, offloading the running of his various estates to managers and overseers. Craton described him as an “almost internal Jamaican absentee.”⁷⁷ He owned a sumptuous town house in Spanish Town, where he lived for the parliamentary season,

50

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

but he spent most of his time at The Decoy, the mansion on his father’s estate, Worthy Park, in the comparatively cool hills of St Mary. Long described the house and gardens: The house is of wood, but well finished, and has in front a very fine piece of water, which in winter is commonly stocked with wild-duck and teal. Behind it is a very elegant garden disposed in walks, which are shaded with the cocoanut [sic], cabbage and sandbox trees. The flower and kitchen-garden are filled with the most beautiful and useful variety which Europe or this climate, produces. It is decorated, besides, with some pretty buildings; of which the principal is an octagonal saloon, richly ornamented on the inside with lustres, and mirrors empanneled. At the termination of another walk is a grand triumphal arch, from which the prospect extends over the fine cultivated vale of Bagnals quite to the Northside Sea. Clumps of graceful cabbage-trees are dispersed in different parts, to enliven the scene; and thousands of plantane and other fruit-trees occupy a vast tract, that environs this agreable retreat, not many years ago a gloomy wilderness.⁷⁸

Imported fallow deer grazed in the constructed natural park.⁷⁹ Price had built for himself an English landscape garden in the latest fashion, with planned vistas and strategically, yet apparently randomly, placed structures and clumps of trees. The only concession to the environment was in the choice of planting. Befitting a grand estate, The Decoy was “constantly open to the reception of worthy men, whether of the island or strangers: and few gentlemen of rank, whether of the army or navy, on service here, quitted the island without having passed some of their time at The Decoy.”⁸⁰ A badly damaged triumphal column (which may be the triumphal arch, or part of it, that Long wrote about) is all that remains from Price’s garden (fig. 2.3). It was discovered in 932 and moved to a park in the northern seaside community of Port Maria. The base of the column is embellished on its four sides with personifications of Asia, Europe, Africa, and America. The images are standard portrayals of the continents, as found in such pattern books as Cesar Ripa’s Iconologia from the early seventeenth century. As such, they cannot be understood as expressions by Price of a distinctive cultural identity beyond Englishness, although the column could be interpreted as an early manifestation of the British Empire. The figures are rather clumsily executed and thus seem to be the work of a provincial English sculptor or perhaps of the masons Thomas or Charles Easton of London (the third Charles Price would hire Charles Easton to execute a monument in honour of his wife, who died in 77; see fig. 3.0).

Display and Dynasty

51

Fig. 2.13 Triumphal column with panels representing four continents, c. 1760s. Originally at The Decoy, Worthy Park, Jamaica.

According to the Shaftesburian definition, a true English gentleman was required to uphold his civic duty. The second Charles Price was engaged in gentlemanly politics, essentially working the Jamaican front on behalf of the powerful West Indian lobby in London.⁸¹ At the same time, he was very active in promoting local infrastructure initiatives, such as the construction of roads and aqueducts, apparently for the benefit of the whole island but also to the tremendous advantage of his own estates; civic improvement is a convenient way to hide 52 fa m i ly e m p i r e s

personal ambition.⁸² Price also became deeply embroiled in a planter-merchant factious dispute, a microcosm of the country-city alignments in England. Governor Admiral Charles Knowles challenged Price’s power in the 750s by allying himself with a faction of merchants in Kingston and symbolically removing the capital to Kingston from Spanish Town, the planters’ stronghold. Price, in conjunction with his cousin Rose Fuller and Richard Beckford, brother of William, played the role of disgruntled country Whig magnates and succeeded in having Knowles recalled to London and in shifting the capital back to Spanish Town.⁸³ For his proclamations of what was good for the Crown was good for Jamaica, or more to the point, “what was good for the West Indies [and himself] was good for the empire,”⁸⁴ Price earned rewards of plate, a baronetcy conferred in 768, and the nickname “the Patriot.” The latter recalled Pitt the Elder’s moniker, although certainly without the populist allusion. All of Sir Charles Price’s achievements and exploits are laid out on an immense box tomb of black marble.⁸⁵ The inscription, shot through with typical small ‘r’ Whig republican sentiments, covers the entire tomb. Rather than erecting the tomb in the common churchyard at St Catherine’s in Spanish Town, Price’s son had it placed in the park at The Decoy, perhaps in accordance with his father’s wishes, where it became another feature of the landscape.⁸⁶ Although rather plain, the box tomb is worth noting, as such tombs were often the resting place of distinguished personages in the New World.⁸⁷ Much of the inscription was written in Latin, the language of the erudite. Unfortunately for Price, his power and legacy would barely outlive him. The vastly overextended family empire collapsed in the 780s, when Price’s descendants were forced to take out a public loan to manage the 90,400 mortgages on the estates. His grandson Sir Rose Price (764–835) was hardly the incarnation of a true gentleman, exhibiting “a tyrannical paternalism to his family, explosions of anger against encroaching neighbours, and tantrums in print directed against parliamentary abolitionists.”⁸⁸ By the third quarter of the eighteenth century, it became de rigeur among the elite of the West Indies, and to a lesser extent in the American colonies, to have their sons educated in England.⁸⁹ Hundreds of West Indian sons would pass through the doors of Eton, Harrow, and Charterhouse. Long lamented the poor state of education in the West Indies.⁹⁰ The sons were shipped off to England for their education like, as Long wrote, “a bale of dry goods, consigned to some factor, who places them at the school where he himself was bred, or any other that his inclination leads him to prefer. The father, in the mean while, sends remittance upon remittance, or directs a liberal allowance, that his son may learn the Display and Dynasty

53

Fig. 2.14 (right) William Lancashire of Bath (attr.), monument to Dames Christian and Jane Abel Alleyne and John Gay Newton Alleyne, 1790s. St James’s Parish Church, Holetown, Barbados. Fig. 2.15 (facing page) William Lancashire of Bath (attr.), detail of the monument to Dames Christian and Jane Abel Alleyne and John Gay Newton Alleyne, 1790s. St James’s Parish Church, Holetown, Barbados.

art of squandering from his very infancy.”⁹¹ Grand Tours, which had once been the domain of the sons of established gentry but had now become the norm for anyone who had social pretensions, were also in order. For the colonial elite, an education in England and on the Continent represented at best the creation of a gentleman and the polishing of youth and at worst another manifestation of conspicuous consumption. Most of the sons, inculcated since birth that England was their true home and the place where they, as gentlemen (financially absolved of the need to work), should reside, chose never to return to the islands and conveniently forgot the islands.⁹² For the West Indian, the significance of an education in England is perhaps best exemplified in the monument erected in the 790s by John Gay Alleyne to his two wives and to his eldest son in St James’s Parish Church, Holetown, Bar54 fa m i ly e m p i r e s

bados (fig. 2.4). Alleyne was one of a small core of planters, like Sir Charles Price a generation earlier, who were distinct from their absentee brethren for having chosen to reside in the colonies. A descendant of an old Barbadian planter family, he stood at the apogee of Barbadian society: He resided at St Nicholas Abbey, was Speaker of the House of Assembly from 767 until 797, was made a baronet by George III in 769, and perceived slavery as something of a necessary evil.⁹³ However, like the Prices before him and the vast majority of his compatriots, whether resident or not, Alleyne also believed that nothing less than an education in England was appropriate for his sons. Unfortunately, John Gay Newton Alleyne died while he was at Eton from the “effects of overbathing.”⁹⁴ An English education is immortalized in the lower panel of this unique monument: A mourning figure of Learning is surrounded by equally melancholic putti, who Display and Dynasty

55

carry her attributes, while the famous profile of Eton College sits on the distant horizon (fig. 2.5). Another, less distinctive monument, in St Peter’s Parish Church, Vere, Jamaica, commemorates (among other family members) Samuel Alpress Osborn, who died in July 80 on his return passage from Jamaica to “resume his studies at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.” The monument was erected by his parents following the death of Samuel’s brother in the Napoleonic Wars. The father, Kean Osborn, was a resident planter and one of the more vocal detractors of abolitionism.⁹⁵ For some unknown reason, Osborn commissioned the monument from Barbato Cipriani of Siena, who, according to the sculptor’s inscription, made the monument in Rome in 88. Perhaps the Osborns had gone on a tour of Italy to recover from the loss of their sons. The daughters of the West Indian elite, like most of their English gentry counterparts, did not have the opportunity to be formally schooled and thus had even fewer educational resources at their disposal. While proper English ladies usually received at-home finishing, this was problematic in the West Indies, where effective tutors were rare. Charles Leslie recorded in 740 that some of the English ladies of Jamaica “read, they all dance a great deal, coquet much, dress for Admirers; and, at last, for the most part, run away with the most insignificant of their humble Servants. Their Education consists intirely [sic] in acquiring these little Arts. ‘Tis a thousand Pities they do not improve their Minds, as well as their Bodies; they would then be charming Creatures indeed.”⁹⁶ Members of the clergy were often charged with tutoring the young West Indian ladies but, as the highly negative stereotype of the West Indian parson implies, many, with a penchant for gaming and promiscuity, were less than perfect men of the cloth.⁹⁷ Thirty years after Leslie, Long despaired about the vulgar insensibilities evident in young West Indian women wrought by isolation from even the social circles of Spanish Town, let alone London or Bath. In his lengthy diatribe on the state of education in Jamaica, he proposed that a boarding school be established there for the daughters of the resident elite: they [the parents] either send for a governante, to instruct their daughters, or keep them uninstructed, except by such casual tuition as may be had from itinerant music or dancing masters. The utility of a boarding-school for these girls, where their numbers might admit of employing the ablest teachers, where they might be weaned from the Negroe dialect, improved by emulation, and gradually habituated to a modest and polite behaviour, needs not, I think, any argument to prove it. Young ladies, so far accomplished

56 fa m i ly e m p i r e s

as, I think, they might be on a well-conducted plan, would insensibly acquire, on their emerging into public life, the remaining graces and polish which are to be attained in genteel company and conversation. They would, by this means, become objects of love to the deserving youths, whether natives [white Jamaican elite] or Europeans, and by the force of their pleasing attractions soon draw them, from a loose attachment to Blacks and Mulattoes, into the more rational and happy commerce of nuptial union.⁹⁸

Long’s ideal boarding school to save young West Indian ladies from “Negroe” corruptions never materialized. In 805 Lady Nugent commented repeatedly on the rudeness of manners, competitive element, and all round vulgar behaviour of the women of Jamaican society, pointing out especially the deficiencies of those who had not been educated in England (which continued to be the norm). She was particularly put off by the way “they speak a sort of broken English, with an indolent drawling of their words, that is very tiresome if not disgusting.”⁹⁹ Thus, perhaps even more than West Indian men, West Indian women had to overcome extraordinarily harsh characterizations to prove their education and gentility. Elizabeth Lawes’s choice of Latin for her husband’s epitaph, which records his role in public life, may have been a way to indicate her level of education (figs 2.9 and 2.0). Epitaphs on several other monuments, such as that to Elizabeth Duncomb, who died in 786 (St Andrew’s, Halfway Tree), emphasize the deceased’s conjugal affection, maternal tenderness, piety, and prudence, all virtues that “rendered her pleasing to Society” and “did credit to her education.” The huge monument in St James’s Church, Montego Bay, by John Bacon the Elder to Rosa Palmer, who died in 790, is an exceptional testament to a West Indian lady’s genteel breeding (figs 2.6 and 2.7). A life-sized figure of Charity mourns as she drapes a garland over an urn that bears a portrait medallion of the deceased. Charity’s attributes, illustrated by depictions of a pelican feeding its young and of an overflowing cornucopia – emblems used repeatedly by Bacon – fill the bottom points of the pyramidal composition.¹⁰⁰ The following excerpt from the epitaph emphasizes that her education by her vicar father led her to acts of genteel public service: Her manners were open, chearful and agreable; and being blessed with a plentiful fortune, hospitality dwelt with her, as long as health permitted her to enjoy society. Educated by the anxious care of a Reverend Divine, her father, her charities were not ostentatious, but of a nobler kind.

Display and Dynasty

57

Fig. 2.16 (left) John Bacon the Elder, monument to Rosa Palmer, d. 1790, dated 1794. St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay, Jamaica. Fig. 2.17 (right) John Bacon the Elder, detail of the monument to Rosa Palmer, d. 1790, dated 1794. St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay, Jamaica.

She was warm in her attachment to her friends, and gave the most signal proof of it in the last moments of her life Starting with very little, Rosa Palmer grew up to be one of the wealthiest women in Jamaica. She outlived four husbands, increasing her personal wealth and property with each marriage. She became mistress of Rose Hall near Montego Bay, one of the few stone great houses in Jamaica, built at a cost of 30,000 in 760 by Rosa’s second husband, George Ash.¹⁰¹ When she married John Palmer, she also became mistress of his immense estate, called Palmyra. Palmer, member of the House of Assembly, erected the monument in his wife’s memory, although the inscription suggests his wife’s involvement. In many ways, in the Palmers’ effort to distinguish Rosa from the common stereotype of the vulgar West Indian tart, they went too far. Unlike her apparently unostentatious charities, the monument is extraordinarily ostentatious: It is the largest privately commissioned funeral monument in the West Indies, measuring over three and a half metres high. The figure of Charity and the emphasis on education and public service in the epitaph have the ring of pressing the point too much. In the eighteenth century, displays of grief were often a sign of erudition. They indicated a high degree of sensibility, one of the defining character traits of a gentleman. At a cynical level, displays of grief might be interpreted as yet one more way that the gentry sought to distinguish itself from mere men of trade, much in the same way that gentlemen would burst into tears with great affectation at the sight of a fine vista in a landscape garden. Displays of grief could also be part of the trappings of mourning, which became increasingly elaborate throughout the eighteenth century. As a sign of their humility, some people disdained complex funerals and other forms of commemoration, but the great majority of burials were conducted with increasingly complex social rituals: funeral invitations, hired mourners, solemn processions, houses enshrouded in mourning cloths, mourning dress, mourning rings, mourning fans, mourning behaviour, and of course, funeral monuments.¹⁰² On a more profound level, displays of grief could be entirely genuine, perhaps to help the mourner address the vacuum of nothingness that came out of efforts by the Latitudinarians and Deists to rationalize death earlier in the century.¹⁰³ This goes some way to explain the proliferation of such melancholic verses as Edward Young’s Night Thoughts and Thomas Gray’s An Elegy Written in a County Churchyard and of such heart-rending monuments as that by Roubiliac to Lady Elizabeth Nightingale in Westminster Abbey, in which Lady Elizabeth’s husband tries to ward off the arrow of Death.¹⁰⁴ The Display and Dynasty

59

Fig. 2.18 (right) Louis-François Roubiliac, monument to LieutenantColonel William Stapleton, d. 1754. St Peter’s Church, Port Royal, Jamaica. Fig. 2.19 (facing page) Louis-François Roubiliac, detail of the monument to Lieutenant-Colonel William Stapleton, d. 1754. St Peter’s Church, Port Royal, Jamaica.

socialization of the mourning process could also have inadvertently prompted genuine displays of grief. At a time when social behaviour was so rigorously scrutinized, there were few occasions, even during the relatively proscribed mourning period, when grief was considered socially acceptable. Elegies (including epitaphs) and monuments were the two components of the mourning process that were acceptable. They also happened to be permanent manifestations. There were few differences between the motivations that prompted manifestations of grief in the British colonies and the motivations of mourners in Britain itself, even though death was that much more prevalent in the colonies, especially in the pestilent climates of the southern American colonies and the West Indies. Monuments that are apparently emphatically about grief are rare in the first half of the century, as they are in England. In this respect, the matter-of-fact quality of the inscription on the cartouche in honour of Thomas Rose is typical 60

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

(fig. 2.8). Yet phrases such as “To the memory” and “In loving memory” became more frequent and accord with the prevailing tendency to commemorate the life rather than the death of the deceased. Such phrases also indicate the involvement of the families in the commissioning of funeral monuments and at times could be a true measure of the sorrow felt by those left behind.¹⁰⁵ A few monuments in the colonies are exceptional for either their imagery, their epitaphs, or both in communicating profound grief experienced by the patron at the loss of a family member. One of the earliest of this type is that to Lieutenant Colonel William Stapleton, which dates from the late 750s and is located in St Peter’s Parish Church in Port Royal, Jamaica (figs 2.8 and 2.9). The monument was commissioned by the deceased’s uncle, the Earl of Westmorland, and his brother, Sir Thomas Stapleton. The Earl and the Stapletons were of established English stock, although their recent fortunes had been shored up by sugar planDisplay and Dynasty

61

Fig. 2.20 Detail of monument to James Renton, d. 1748. St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, Jamaica.

tations in Antigua and Barbuda. The Stapleton monument is most peculiar. Initially, one is tempted to place it in the genre of military monuments, such as that to Captain Cornewall by Robert Taylor in Westminster Abbey (see fig. 4.4), or Roubiliac’s monument to Field Marshal Viscount Shannon in Walton-on-Thames (see fig. 4.3), or the monument by an unknown sculptor in St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, Jamaica, that commemorates Captain James Renton (fig. 2.20). In these monuments, the military prowess of the deceased is articulated in iconography (depictions of battle engagements or of the deceased standing in command above military trophies) and in epitaph (testaments to service, achievements, and connections with such heroes as Admiral Vernon). However, the Stapleton monument does not fit into this genre at all. The imagery includes various naval accessories, but the primary component is a bas-relief showing the unfortunate and utterly unheroic circumstances of Stapleton’s death. The relief shows the deceased at the very instant of the fatal accident when a cannon that he was attempting to light backfired and mortally wounded him (fig. 2.9). This 62 fa m i ly e m p i r e s

occurred while he was stationed at Port Morant, near the naval town of Port Royal. Stapleton was not even engaged in battle at the time of his fateful accident. The epitaph is equally unheroic, explaining in detail how the deceased met his fate. As David Bindman has pointed out, this depiction has no parallels in Roubiliac’s or anyone else’s oeuvre.¹⁰⁶ Obviously, the monument is not about exemplum. It is, rather, about grief. In its emphasis on the accidental nature of the death, the sense of futility and the patrons’ sense of loss are heightened. The epitaph corresponds with the imagery, as it dwells upon the inexplicable judgment of God in taking away a noble and honourable youth in such a manner. Another curious aspect of the Stapleton monument is its location. The patrons of the monument resided in England and had no apparent connection with Jamaica.¹⁰⁷ It is most unusual for a patron to erect a monument where he or she would never see it or where there was no significant connection with the family of the deceased. The Stapleton monument is one of the very few monuments erected in the colonies by nonresident patrons, nor is there a corresponding monument in England, in the manner of the two that commemorate William Selwyn. By erecting the monument near the place where the lieutenant died, the sense of futility and loss is accentuated. That this place was extremely far removed from the men who commissioned the monument only served to heighten the patrons’ apparent selfless expression of grief. The removal of the monument from their immediate circle implies that their grief was profound and that, befitting true gentlemen of their standing, they were above mere acts of ostentatious grief. As more elaborate displays of grief became socially sanctioned with the rise of sensibility in the middle of the century, epitaphs, such as that on the Stapleton monument, became increasingly more heart-rending. Numerous monuments in the colonies, like those in England, commemorate women who died in childbirth. An early and especially poignant example in the West Indies is the monument in Spanish Town to Anna Maria Aldred, daughter of a prominent planter and wife of a surgeon, who died in 76 at the age of nineteen (fig. 2.2). The rather bland architectural surround, with a skull at the base and a putto’s head radiating rays of light above, is a decidedly old-fashioned stock-in-trade design – the sculptor, W. Cope, is unknown in England and may have been based in the American colonies – but the inscription is an early example of highly-charged verse: Near this Stone embrac’d by peaceful earth Rest the Remains of much lamented Worth In life by GOD ’S indulgent grace Refin’d The fairest Virtues mark’d the purest mind. Display and Dynasty

63

In Honour firm, in innocence a Child In Manners gentle and in Morals Mild. In Softest ties endearing Nuptial life The tenderest Parent, and the Meekest Wife. In duty Strict, in piety sincere Affection polish’d every filial care. Oh let the hearts that grieve in mournful Woe, Oh let the tears that Unavailing flow Confess the truth, Whilst blest, Oh blest in peace In life eternal, joys that never cease May GOD the dear lamented Worth enroll And Crown with grace her soft Unspotted Soul. 64

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

Fig. 2.21 (facing page, left) W. Cope, monument to Anna Maria Aldred, d. 1761. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Fig. 2.22 (facing page, right) John Bacon the Younger, detail of the monument to Duncan Anderson, presumed dead 1796, dated 1800. St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay, Jamaica. Fig. 2.23 (above) William Lancashire of Bath (attr.), detail of the monument to Dames Christian and Jane Abel Alleyne and John Gay Newton Alleyne, 1790s. St James’s Parish Church, Holetown, Barbados.

Death resulting from the vagaries of the colonial environment, such as shipwrecks and fevers, also prompted profound displays of loss. The monument by Bacon the Younger in St James’s Church, Montego Bay, to Duncan Anderson, who died en route to New York in 796, is nearly as large as the nearby Palmer monument and is embellished with a weeping willow and a figure of Mourning, who holds a medallion carved with an upturned boat (fig. 2.22). Another, to the two sons of William and Ruth Atkinson in St John’s Church, Antigua, depicts two putti (perhaps substituting for portraits of the boys) holding a scroll above a sarcophagus. The inscription is effusive in describing the “intense and aggravated anguish for the poignant and crushing trial they have undergone in the loss of both their children.”¹⁰⁸

Fig. 2.24 (right) Michael Crake, monument to Eliza Musgrave, d. 1815, dated 1815. St John’s Parish Church, St John’s, Antigua. Fig. 2.25 (facing page) Michael Crake, detail of the monument to Eliza Musgrave, d. 1815, dated 1815. St John’s Parish Church, St John’s, Antigua.

The most provocative monuments tend, like the Stapleton monument, to be those that combine unique imagery and text to express the patron’s loss. The Alleyne monument not only immortalized the values of an Etonian education but also portrayed Sir John himself, rendered distraught, between the figures of Faith and Fortitude (fig. 2.23). The epitaph details the death of his thirteen-yearold son at Eton and the poignant fact that the news of his death reached Sir John one day after the death of his wife, thereby sparing her the grief and labour that he must now endure. Perhaps the most touching monument in the colonies is that to Eliza Musgrave, who died in 85 after being trampled by a bolting horse in the streets of St John’s, Antigua (figs 2.24 and 2.25). The monument, located in St John’s Church and designed by the City of London sculptor Michael Crake, 66 fa m i ly e m p i r e s

shows the ghastly scene of her death with her husband cradling her limp body in his arms as the horse charges off in the opposite direction. The inscription is as touching as the scene: “No warning given! Unceremonious Fate! “A sudden rush from life’s meridien Joys! “A wrench from all She loved.” ... BELOVED AND LAMENTED BY ALL WHO KNEW HER. HER GOD SHE REVERENCED; TOWARDS HER NEIGHBOURS SHE NEVER WILFULLY OFFENDED; TO HER HUSBAND SHE WAS EVERY THING HIS FONDEST WISHES COULD PICTURE OR EMBR ACE. HE IDOLIZED HER WHILE SHE LIVED,

Display and Dynasty

67

AND HIS RESPECT FOR HER EX ALTED WORTH SURVIVES BEYOND THE GR AVE. THE REMEMBR ANCE OF HER MANY VIRTUES REMAINS INDELIBLY INSCRIBED IN HIS DEJECTED BOSOM.

“Friends, our chief Treasure, how They drop! “How the World falls to pieces round about us! “And leaves us in the ruin of our Joy! “What says this transportation of my Friends? “It bids me love the place where now they dwell, “And scorn this wretched spot it leaves so poor.” The lines of verse are from Young’s Night Thoughts (Night 7th). Such intensely mournful and melancholic tributes had, with the rise of the Romantic tradition in the late eighteenth century, become a distinctive genre within commemorative sculpture.¹⁰⁹

dy n a s t i e s Of a monument’s inherent features, its permanence was no doubt its most attractive attribute for members of the colonial elite; monuments succeeded, if ever so thinly, in obfuscating the newness of the arrivistes’ fortunes and the newness of their land ownership. The colonial elite amassed huge tracks of land primarily for economic exploitation, and they were also acutely aware that ownership of property by subsequent generations was the defining tangible characteristic of the established English gentry. The race to accumulate land and to ensure that this land passed to their descendants meant that the chancery courts, at least in the West Indies, were developed early and were far more organized than any other court structure.¹¹⁰ A monument erected in the local parish church either in the West Indies or in the southern American planter colonies served as a sort of visual anchor, articulating for posterity the possession and inheritance of estates. Pointedly, Elizabeth Lawes chose to erect the monument to her husband not in Spanish Town, the appropriate location for a monument that commemorates a lieutenant governor, but in the church at Halfway Tree, where her husband’s plantations were situated. As a result, these monuments are no different from those in rural English parish churches. Likewise, the names of the planters’ estates are very often highlighted, sometimes in upper-case script, in the epitaphs. In many cases the colonial elite who commissioned monuments did so before they built 68

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

immense great houses or otherwise embellished their estates. A record for posterity was sometimes more important than contemporary needs. Ironically, and perhaps appropriately, the monuments are now often the only extant remains of these great estates. Matthew Craske has observed that some of the most elaborate monuments erected in eighteenth-century England commemorate individuals who knew that they were the last of family lines. The monuments thus serve as records of these dynasties.¹¹¹ There is not a single monument in the colonies that serves this purpose. Rather, most monuments in the colonies, like the vast majority in England, are about consolidating family lineage and pushing it into the future. The very existence of the monuments speaks of the perpetuation of family dynasties since so many of them were erected by heirs of the deceased. Elizabeth Lawes again provides one of the more exceptional examples in the West Indies. The monument she erected to her mother, Deborah Gibbons, who had died over twenty years previously, is located in St Peter’s Parish Church in Vere, the parish in which the Gibbons’s plantations were located (fig. 2.). By commemorating her mother, she was also articulating her own heritage. The inscription is less about Gibbons than about her ancestry and her daughter: Near this Place lies Interr’d with her Parents the Body of Mrs. DEBOR AH GIBBONS , Wife To WILLM . GIBBONS Esqr. & Daughter of JOHN FAVELL Esqr. of ye COUNTY of YORK . Who departed this Life, the 20th of JULY, 1711, in the 29th YEAR of her Age. To Summ up her CHAR ACTER in Brief, She Was one of the Best of Women & a most Pious CHRISTIAN , She left only one daughter, who Married the Honble. JAMES LAWES , Eldest son of Sr. Ns. LAWES Kt. GOVERNOR of this ISLAND , Who in HONOUR to the MEMORY of so good A Parent, Erected this Monument to her. A space was left at the bottom of the inscription panel for further epitaphs, perhaps intended for Lawes’s father or for Lawes herself. The space was never filled, presumably because Lawes left Jamaica within a few years of the monument being erected. However, the monument served as a visual representation of Lawes’s continued investment in her estates. Display and Dynasty

69

Similar to the inscription on the Gibbons monument, many other epitaphs record, in sometimes extraordinarily tedious detail, the intricacies of particular family lines. This preoccupation with lineage is evident in many books written about West Indians by West Indians. The authors were always careful to find ways to legitimate the gentlemanly status of the colonial elite.¹¹² Some epitaphs record the most tenuous connections to aristocracy or, if the opportunity presented itself, emphasize any plausible connection with a place name in England. In an age when marriages were primarily made for social and economic benefits – the West Indians were particularly adept at such unions – the acquisition of titles through marriage was also often recorded. In this case, Elizabeth Lawes had come close to acquiring a title – indicating in detail how close on monuments to both her first husband and her mother – but she did not succeed in doing so until almost a decade after the death of her first husband. A few of the deceased could claim to be genuine gentlemen. Some, such as the patron of Alexander Forbes’s monument in Spanish Town, chose to emphasize this fact, perhaps in the face of so many upstarts (fig. 2.7). In another case, a ninth baronet commissioned a monument not to emphasize his distinguished heritage – which was taken as a given – but to clear the family name. In 798 Sir Simon Clarke commissioned John Flaxman to design a monument to honour his father, the fifth baronet, also Sir Simon, who had died twelve years before (fig. 2.26). The monument is in Hanover Parish Church, Lucea, Jamaica. Much of the inscription refers to the fifth baronet’s attempts to restitute the family name: IT WAS THE MAIN OBJECT OF HIS LIFE BY INDUSTRY AND PERSEVER ANCE TO RESTORE HIS FALLEN FAMILY TO ITS ANCIENT SPLENDOUR. FOR THIS PR AISEWORTHY ATTEMPT THO’ UNSUCCESSFUL HE IS ENTITLED TO THE PECULIAR VENER ATION OF HIS OWN POSTERITY AND THOSE WHO KNEW HIM WILL STILL REMEMBER HIM WITH DISTINCTION AS A MAN OF ELEGANT MANNERS AND CLASSICAL EDUCATION.

Clarke’s ancestor had been one of the few members of the landed gentry to go to Jamaica in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The decision, however, had 70 fa m i ly e m p i r e s

Fig. 2.26 (left) John Flaxman, monument to Sir Simon Clarke, 1799. Hanover Parish Church, Lucea, Jamaica. Fig. 2.27 (right) John Bacon the Elder, detail of the monument to George MacFarquhar, d. 1786. St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay, Jamaica.

not been his own; he had been transported there for highway robbery.¹¹³ No mention is made in the epitaph of the crime, as that would only remind the viewer of the misdeed and thus sully the family’s reputation. Rather, the emphasis is placed on the deceased’s noble and valiant efforts to restore the family’s honour. Imagery could also be used to articulate a family dynasty. As Craske has pointed out, a narrative of handing a title from one generation to the next is very complex and potentially impenetrable to the viewer and, consequently, Display and Dynasty

71

was rarely attempted in England, let alone the colonies.¹¹⁴ The primary way that family lineage was legitimated on a monument was to include a heraldic shield. Heraldry has medieval antecedents, but in 555, with the establishment of the College of Arms, it became the unassailable authority in distinguishing the nuances of the English social hierarchy. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the heralds also determined and oversaw the complex etiquette associated with the funeral ritual.¹¹⁵ However, in the eighteenth century, as many scholars have acknowledged, the importance of the heralds per se was in decline. Clare Gittings ascribes this decline to increasing emphasis on rationalism; Lawrence Stone associates it with the growing emphasis on the small nuclear family; and Craske sees it as less on the decline and more as undergoing a “complex metamorphosis ... of genteel codes of conduct in which, if abused, heraldry and dynastic display might become [socially] unacceptable.”¹¹⁶ The last explanation most satisfactorily accommodates the fact that even though the heralds may no longer have played as prominent a role, heraldic devices still formed the primary embellishment on the majority of funeral monuments erected throughout Britain and the colonies in the first half of the eighteenth century. Indeed, the extraordinarily common cartouche design is derived from an elaborate heraldic device, and both it and the equally popular architectural surround were formulated to accommodate the deceased’s arms. The incorporation of the heraldic shield on a monument served as a permanent, timeless, visual manifestation of distinction in a society that was still obsessed with family lineage and in which primogeniture remained the normal mode of inheritance. An inordinate number of heraldic devices embellish funeral monuments in the colonies. In addition to the cartouches and architectural surrounds early in the century – the arms on the monuments erected by Elizabeth Lawes are particularly prominent (figs 2.9, 2.0, and 2.) – heraldic devices were still prominently displayed on the more complex figural compositions later in the century (fig 2.27). The appeal of the heraldic device accords with the feudal mentality of the plantocracy and thus is more in keeping with seventeenth- than with eighteenthcentury England. It also attests to the plantocracy’s social ambitions. Indeed, there is an extraordinary imbalance between the few families of distinguished lineage resident in the colonies and the preponderance of heraldic devices. Many were no doubt specious; it became common in the eighteenth century to have a device made without the consultation of the College of Arms.¹¹⁷ It seems that the plantocracy overshot its social ambitions once again. As Craske has pointed out, a careful articulation of pedigree, either through epitaph or imagery, was the sign of a crass man who had nothing to recommend himself.¹¹⁸ Indulging 72 fa m i ly e m p i r e s

in unfashionable pride by emphasizing their pedigree, they succeeded only in revealing their nouveau riche status.

boston and the anglican elite The fifty-one lines of Latin text on the monument to Frances Shirley (d. 746) in King’s Chapel, Boston, eulogizes the refined, virtuous, and pure nature of the deceased, who was the wife of Governor William Shirley and a member of an established English family (fig. 2.28). The monument to the prominent Boston merchant, Charles Apthorp (d. 756), also in King’s Chapel, contains twenty-four lines of Latin script outlining the deceased’s prudence, liberality, munificence, sincerity, and other virtuous traits (fig. 2.29). The significance of these monuments of exemplum is intensified by their location in a sumptuous Anglican chapel in a colony where Congregationalism was growing exponentially. In 700 there were 40 Congregationalist churches in New England; by mid-century the number had risen to above 450, each of which was populated by at least a thousand souls.¹¹⁹ Indeed, the chapel and the two monuments were part of a concerted effort by the minority yet ruling Anglican elite to display their authority. As such, they stand apart from the monuments erected in the primarily Anglican southern American colonies and the West Indies, where the socio-political status of the Anglican faith was not an issue. The original wooden King’s Chapel, built in 689, was deemed by the early 740s to be no longer suitable.¹²⁰ As Aymar Embury II stated in 94, such a grand new building was required “not by any crying need of members of the Church of England for a house of worship of their own, but by direct governmental interposition.”¹²¹ The subscription process for the new building was initiated by Governor Shirley, who put up 200 sterling. Charles Apthorp contributed ,000 old tenor.¹²² The new chapel held a commanding presence in the city (fig. 2.30). Designed by Peter Harrison, it was one of the earliest Gibbsian buildings in the colonies. It was also the first large cut-stone building to be erected in America.¹²³ The Shirley monument was commissioned while the new chapel was being built. Executed by Peter Scheemakers, it is, with the exception of the James Lawes monument, unprecedented in the Atlantic colonies in its elaborate design. The large inscription panel sits on corbels on either side of the (legitimate) Shirley arms and is bounded by marble volutes. An informal portrait bust of the deceased, perhaps executed on one of many trips to London that Frances Shirley made to press for her husband’s advancement, sits on top.¹²⁴ The Apthorp monument, erected about twelve years later, is a stock-in-trade design from Display and Dynasty

73

Henry Cheere’s workshop, but it is one of the more elaborate types. A disconsolate putto sits above the inscription panel and in his grief-stricken pose leans on a garlanded, bulbous urn. Like the Shirley monument, the Apthorp arms are prominently displayed below the epitaph, as Charles was from an ancient Welsh family.¹²⁵ The Shirley and Apthorp monuments embellished the new chapel as a stalwart bastion of Anglicanism among colonists who were inherently suspicious of the minority Anglican elite. The gap between the Anglican elite and the predominantly non-Anglican population was emphatically demonstrated at the laying of the cornerstone of the chapel in 749. Public resistance was so strong that the dignitaries were cursed and pelted with rubbish and dead animals.¹²⁶ 74

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

Fig. 2.28 (facing page, left) Peter Scheemakers, monument to Frances Shirley, d. 1746. King’s Chapel, Boston, Massachusetts. Fig. 2.29 (facing page, right) Henry Cheere, monument to Charles Apthorp, d. 1758. King’s Chapel, Boston, Massachusetts. Fig. 2.30 (above) Peter Harrison, King’s Chapel, Boston, 1749–54, portico added 1785–87.

signs of ethnicity? With few exceptions, the monuments erected in the colonies are about the resident colonial elite and their perception of themselves and the colonies in which they lived. For the most part, the concerns of the colonists were largely the same as those of minor gentry in the English provinces: social ambitions, social acceptance, and familial dynasties. In contrast to their absentee compatriots, the resident elite did not see the colonies merely as outposts that fuelled their fortunes, Display and Dynasty

75

but also as home. Virginia, Jamaica, or Antigua were thought comparable to any other part of Britain, such as Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, or Yorkshire. It was as though the colonies were located just off the coast of the Isle of Wight. In addition to obfuscating the distance and the differences in physical environments between the English provinces and the colonies, the colonists also obfuscated the newness of the colonies. The monuments, with their lack of colonial imagery and their sense of timelessness, enhanced the fictions of Englishness and English history.¹²⁷ On a day-to-day basis, the resident colonial elite tended to be preoccupied with prosaic matters that also commanded the attention of the English provincial gentry: local politics, the state of trade, the repercussions of climate on crops, and the anxious wait for news from London. The monuments in the New World often articulate these concerns and serve as evidence of a local community akin to those in the provinces, however tenuous this community may have been as a result of petty jealousies. Among the monuments that are records of exemplum and erudition, many epitaphs record the deceased’s participation in the public life of the colony, usually as custos rotulorum (a largely honorary militia title) or as Speaker or member of the assembly or council. Relations between the resident plantocracy and the Crown-appointed governor consisted of a series of peaks and valleys that are also explicitly or implicitly referred to in many epitaphs. Sir Charles Price’s involvement in the country-city squabble in Jamaica with Governor Admiral Charles Knowles in the 750s has already been discussed. Price’s primary city rival in the dispute, the merchant Edward Manning, is commemorated with one of the more sumptuous monuments in Kingston Parish Church (fig. 2.3). Designed by Robert Taylor, a relief bust of Manning is surrounded by an elaborate rococo frame. Knowles had made Manning Speaker of the assembly at the height of the controversy in 755. He was then forced out by election the following year only to be appointed to council by Knowles. In an effort to consolidate planter support, Henry Moore, Knowles’s successor, permanently suspended Manning from council, and on the day that his suspension came into effect, Manning died. His epitaph records none of this intrigue. Instead, it simply praises his patriotism and lists his political offices. Posterity is left with the impression, similar to the inscription on Price’s tomb, of noble selfless virtue. The epitaph on the monument to Thomas Harrison in Bridgetown, Barbados, is far less innocuous. In total, forty-eight lines attest to his virtuous political career in support of the people of Barbados against Thomas Robinson, governor of the island from 742–46, particularly this excerpt: 76 fa m i ly e m p i r e s

Fig. 2.31 (left) Robert Taylor (attr.), monument to Edward Manning, d. 1756. Kingston Parish Church, Jamaica. Fig. 2.32 (right) William Tyler, monument to Samuel Vassall. King’s Chapel, Boston, Massachusetts.

He was indeed displaced from his Seat at the Council board, In the Government of Sir THOMAS ROBINSON , But soon call’d forth by the Voice of the People, To be the Assertor of their Rights and Liberties In the General Assembly Relations between the Barbadian plantocracy and Robinson were particularly fraught, intensified by his habit of profligate spending.¹²⁸ Robinson was recalled and was replaced with Henry Grenville, who inaugurated a period of relative tranquillity. Harrison’s epitaph is also idiosyncratic since it emphasizes that he was nouveau riche: “Who from a small and slender Beginning, / By the Arts of honest Industry, / Grew rich, Belov’d and Honour’d.” The Stamp Act crisis in the 760s also stirred some colonists to voice their opinions in privately commissioned monuments. The most emphatic example is the monument to Samuel Vassall, erected by his descendant Florentius in King’s Chapel, Boston (fig. 2.32). Florentius was one of the largest plantation owners in Jamaica and was a quintessential socially successful absentee. He lived in fashionable Wimpole Street, at the south end of Marylebone, and members of his family had married well (the wife of Lord Holland was a Vassall).¹²⁹ He was also an upright Anglican, having contributed ten guineas to the building of King’s Chapel in Boston.¹³⁰ Florentius’s ancestor Samuel Vassall had been one of the original incorporators of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which had refused to submit to the tax of tonnage and poundage imposed upon the colonists in 628 by the Crown. The parallels between the tonnage and poundage tax and the Stamp Act in 765 were not lost on Florentius. The complex monument that he commissioned from William Tyler for King’s Chapel, Boston, contains a fortythree line English inscription outlining the injustices done to Samuel Vassall and his descendants at the hands of the Crown, as in this excerpt: assertor of the Liberties of ENGLAND in 1628, He was the first who boldly refused to submit to the tax of Tonnage and Poundage, an unconstitutional claim of the Crown arbitrarily imposed: For which (to the ruin of his family) his goods were seized and his person imprisoned by the Star Chamber of Court. 78 fa m i ly e m p i r e s

He was chosen to represent the City of

LONDON in two successive Parliaments, which met Apr. 13 and Nov. 3, 1640. The Parliament in July, 1641, voted him £10445.12.2 for his damages, and resolved that he should be further considered for his personal sufferings; But the rage of the times and the neglect of proper application since, have left to his family only the honour of that Vote and Resolution. The elaborate and highly republican imagery also pushes the point. A bust of Samuel, most likely based on a painted portrait, sits on a base embellished with a medallion inscribed “F.P.Q . REPUBLICA SEMPER ,” while the Magna Carta, John Rushworth’s Appendix, and John Thurloe’s Memoirs lie nearby. The inscription, and presumably the monument as well, were completed in May 766 before the Stamp Act was repealed.¹³¹ In these political controversies that draw lines between the colonial elite and the Crown’s authority, the seeds of a cultural identity independent from Britain can be found. Recognition of economic and political distinction usually precedes and is necessary for the formation of an independent cultural identity. It is tempting to read these monuments as examples of nationalism, either as emphatic imperial statements or as political statements by creoles or Americans that articulate their differences from their counterparts in England. However, these monuments are not about nationalism: The monuments are self-consciously ethnocentric, but their ethnocentrism is one of Englishness. As privately commissioned objects, the monuments are examples of the colonists’ self-absorption, their concerns for their personal fortunes overshadowing, and in fact precluding, any conscious, concerted political motivation either to distinguish themselves from or to consolidate themselves with the mother country. Only subsequent political events, which the colonists would deem as ever-heightening assaults on their personal English liberties, would spur the colonists to recognize themselves, emphatically and however reluctantly, as American or creole. The monuments associated with this transformation are discussed in chapter eight.

Display and Dynasty

79

chapte r three

The Colonial Trade in

Monuments

a

lthough the members of the resident colonial elite who commissioned monuments were determined to deny their coloniality by the simple act of commissioning a monument – as well as by avoiding any distinctive colonial imagery in these monuments – they could rarely, in the end, overcome the primary physical barrier that defined their coloniality: the sea. The sea prevented close contact between patron and sculptor, inhibiting all of the stages of the commission, from the patron’s approval of the design to the delivery and erection of the monument. A few patrons commissioned their monuments while visiting England, but most did it from afar. There is likewise no record or other indication that any sculptor travelled to the colonies in conjunction with a privately commissioned monument;¹ none of the commissions were sufficiently important to a sculptor’s career. The exigencies imposed by distance and the sea also help to explain the preponderance of stock-in-trade, nonunique designs in the colonies. Fewer than five of the hundreds of privately commissioned monuments erected in the Atlantic colonies are known to have entirely unique imagery. The colonial elite rarely scrupled over cost in matters of fashion and display, so they were probably not motivated by the fact that the stock-in-trade pieces tended to be cheaper than unique designs. Rather, the lack of easy communication between patron and sculptor would have been a strong contributing factor. The stock-in-trade images in the colonies, like dress and furniture fashions, correspond precisely with the reigning tastes in England. Cartouche designs were popular from the beginning of the eighteenth century until the mid-730s (see figs 2.7 and 2.8), although one very fine example in St Andrew’s, Halfway Tree, Jamaica, commemorates Henry Croasdaile, who died in 770 (fig. 3.). The

Fig. 3.1 (left) Monument to Henry Croasdaile, d. 1770. St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, Jamaica. Fig. 3.2 (right) Monument to John Hudson Guy, d. 1749. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

less exuberant sculpture on this cartouche helps to situate it in the latter part of the century, when more restrained classical styles tended to predominate. Large, imposing inscription plaques set within ponderous, often variegated architectural frames were the norm in the 730s and 740s (fig. 3.2). Both the cartouche and architectural plaque easily accommodated the deceased’s coat-ofarms, which was such an important sign of distinction in the earlier part of the century. The Colonial Trade in Monuments

81

Fig. 3.3 (left) John Bacon the Younger, monument to Frances Inglis, d. 1791, James Sutherland, d. 1796, and Ann Sutherland, d. 1791, dated 1800. Kingston Parish Church, Jamaica. Fig. 3.4 (right) Cathedral.

John Flaxman, monument to Francis Dear, d. 1802. Chichester

Such monuments were the bread and butter of some sculptors’ workshops, namely Henry and John Cheere in Westminster, various masons based in the City of London, and sculptors located in the provinces. Later in the century, when a taste for the neoclassical prevailed, the stock-in-trade designs were considerably lighter and whiter and usually consisted of an elegant, oval inscription plaque topped with the relief of an urn (fig. 3.3). More complex and thus more expensive standard designs, in which numerous personifications of virtues and their attributes were used in identical compositions or intermixed to create 82

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

more individual designs, were also available. Joseph Wilton, John Flaxman, and the John Bacons specialized in this type. Bacon the Elder’s monument to Rosa Palmer, with its freestanding figure of Charity (see figs 2.6 and 2.7) is a particularly fine example, as is Flaxman’s monument to Sir Simon Clarke (see fig. 2.26), in which figures of Faith (holding a book) and Hope (with her anchor) stand to either side of the inscription plaque. While these personifications bear some relevance to the particular circumstances of the Clarke family, the figures were part of Flaxman’s repertoire of stock-in-trade images. They appear again in the monument to Francis Dear in Chichester Cathedral (fig. 3.4). Alluding to antiquity and presented in a severe neoclassical mode, these personifications enhanced the concept of eternity implicit in a monument. Similarly, the predominance of the pyramid in funeral monuments, particularly in the second half of the eighteenth century, called to mind the timeless wonders of ancient Egypt. The allusion to ancient Egypt must surely have appealed – almost always implicitly – to the colonists’ desire to manufacture or to imply histories. The particular circumstances of the colonial trade in monuments is discussed in the following pages according to the various stages of the design process. Very little documentation concerning the privately commissioned monuments (contracts, letters, etc.) survives. The monuments themselves constitute the primary source of information. Much of the rest of the analysis is extrapolated from the few extant archival sources and from recent scholarship on the trade in sculpture in England.

choosing a s culptor If a patron was not in England to commission a monument directly, the task fell to an agent representing the patron: a friend, a relative, or a business acquaintance, who was usually a member of the absentee colonial elite. Most of the monuments in the colonies were carved by London sculptors; as the social (and political) centre of the empire, London was the focal point of much of the arriviste colonial elite. Many of the sculptors presumably secured commissions by their reputation alone. Each of the major London sculptors of the eighteenth century is represented in the colonies. By 760 Rysbrack, Scheemakers, the Cheeres, Taylor, and Roubiliac had each sent at least one monument to the colonies. In the 760s and 770s Wilton, who had been appointed sculptor to George III in 76, was awarded all of the public commissions in the American and the West Indian colonies as well as the bust of the king that was shipped to Montreal.² These prestigious commissions and Wilton’s reputation in England no doubt secured The Colonial Trade in Monuments

83

Fig. 3.5 (left) Joseph Wilton, monument to Elizabeth Ottley, d. 1766. St John’s Parish Church, St John’s, Antigua. Fig. 3.6 (right) Joseph Wilton, monument to Mathew Gregory, d. 1779, and his wife, Lucretia, d. 1750, dated 1783. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

for him the large privately commissioned monument to the wife of Richard Ottley in St John’s Church, Antigua (fig. 3.5), and another to Mathew Gregory in St Catherine’s Church, Spanish Town (fig. 3.6). In the latter case, Wilton was probably recommended to Mary Dehaney and Elizabeth Trower, the daughters of Mathew Gregory and commissioners of the monument, by the Countess of Home; she was closely connected with the Gregory family, as evidenced by the 84

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

fact that she gave Mary Dehaney first option to buy 20 Portman Square in her will.³ John Bacon the Elder would become perhaps the most prestigious sculptor of the next generation, followed by his son, John Bacon the Younger, and the two would ship more monuments to the colonies than any other sculptors. Joseph Nollekens, Thomas Banks, and the Westmacotts are also all well represented, with monuments in the Atlantic colonies and in India.⁴ Within London, many members of the absentee colonial elite aspired to and succeeded in residing in Westminster, especially in the first half of the eighteenth century. After the middle of the century, the absentees formed, as we have seen, a distinct social clique in the newly fashionable Marylebone district.⁵ Other colonists, especially the merchants who supplied the planters, had strong ties with the City, the business district of London. Which sculptors were commissioned by which segments of the colonial elite often reflected the patronage networks already in place in England. Jamaica is a case in point. The cartouches and architectural inscription plaques of the first half of the century are almost exclusively located in the planters’ parish churches in Spanish Town, Halfway Tree, and Vere. Although most are unsigned, they are stylistically comparable to pieces that originated in the workshops of Peter Scheemakers and Henry and John Cheere, whose workshops were located in Westminster and thus tended to serve landed gentry (either old or new gentry) as opposed to merchants. The elegant, variegated architectural plaques, such as those to Admiral Thomas Davers, John Hudson Guy, and William and Mary Baldwin (figs 3.7, 3.2, and 3.8), constituted Henry Cheere’s trademark design.⁶ Similarly, Elizabeth Lawes’s commissions are two of John Cheere’s earliest productions before he turned to specializing in lead and plaster casts (see figs 2.9, 2.0, and 2.). In 74 Scheemakers moved his workshops from Palace Yard in Westminster to Vine Street, Piccadilly, presumably to remove himself and his business from the proximity of Henry Cheere’s increasingly successful workshop and also to take advantage of potential customers in the new districts of London.⁷ Several years later Wilton and then the Bacons would also establish their workshops nearby in Marylebone, where they could cultivate business from the excessively socially ambitious new landed gentry.⁸ In contrast, the earliest monuments in the merchants’ parish church in Kingston, Jamaica – those to the merchants Edward Manning (see fig. 2.3) and George Hinde (fig. 3.9) – were executed by Robert Taylor, who had apprenticed with Henry Cheere but who had established himself as a City, as opposed to a Westminster, sculptor. Like his mentor, Taylor was also a social climber. He soon distinguished himself as an architect, a more definitive gentlemanly occupation than sculptor. He also maintained a prominent role in the Mason’s Company, The Colonial Trade in Monuments

85

although the company was in decline in terms of its power over sculptors and masons and was tainted with the ungentlemanly air of practitioner rather than designer.⁹ Taylor presumably kept such connections because of the social status historically accorded to guild membership. Indeed, his social manoeuvring in the city was so adept that he was knighted Sheriff of London in the 780s. His clientele were largely new money who had built in the City, several of whom were West Indians.¹⁰ However, there was no hard and fast rule; not all planters commissioned monuments from Westminster sculptors, nor did only merchants commission monuments from City sculptors. The monument to the merchant Charles Apthorp in Boston, although unsigned, bears a striking resemblance to Henry Cheere’s more complex stock-in-trade pieces, with the inclusion of the mourning putto and garlanded urn (see fig. 2.29). Similarly, the younger Sir Charles Price, who was arguably the most erudite of Jamaican planters, chose to hire the City of 86 fa m i ly e m p i r e s

Fig. 3.7 (far left) Monument to Vice Admiral Thomas Davers, d. 1746. St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, Jamaica. Fig. 3.8 (middle left) Monument to William Baldwin, d. 1755 and Mary Baldwin, d. 1760. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Fig. 3.9 (left) Robert Taylor (attr.), monument to George Hinde, d. 1756. Kingston Parish Church, Jamaica.

London master mason, Charles Easton, to execute a monument to his wife, Elizabeth Hannah Price, which was erected sometime after her death in 77 in St Catherine’s Parish Church in Spanish Town (fig. 3.0). Easton also executed the nearly identical monument to Ennis and Margaret Read in St Peter’s Church, Vere (fig. 3.). Both are rather abrupt in their detailing and are less elegant than contemporary designs by London sculptors. Ennis Read and Elizabeth Price died in 77, which, together with the similarity of design, suggests that the monuments were commissioned at the same time by the same patron. While no firm connection between Price and the Reads has come to light – the epitaph on the Reads’ monument does not indicate who erected the monument – the upper echelons of the Jamaican community were small; Price could have been a relative, friend, inheritor, or executor of the Reads’ estate. Price may also have commissioned Easton, perhaps in the same batch order, to execute the tomb for his father, who died in 772. The Colonial Trade in Monuments

87

The authorship of the monuments often also reflects the primary trade routes between particular colonies and ports in England. Bristol sculptors are especially well represented. One of the earliest colonial monuments by a Bristol sculptor is that by Michael Sidnell (active 74–45) commemorating William Chamberlayne (d. 736), in St Peter’s Parish Church, New Kent County, Virginia (fig. 3.2). Chamberlayne, a merchant, was “Descended of an antient Worthy Family / in the County of Hereford,” suggesting that he had trading and family connections with Bristol and the west of England. Several monuments by Bristol sculptors are also located in Barbados, a colony that traditionally had strong ties with the southeastern English port. Indeed, Speightstown, one of the oldest settlements in Barbados, was often called Little Bristol.¹¹ Conversely, many Barbadians, as well as other colonists with strong Bristol ties, are commemorated in Bristol Cathe88 fa m i ly e m p i r e s

Fig. 3.10 (far left) Charles Easton (attr.), monument to Elizabeth Hannah Price, d. 1771. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Fig. 3.11 (middle left) Charles Easton, monument to Ennis Read, d. 1771, and Margaret Read, d. 1745. St Peter’s Parish Church, Vere, Jamaica. Fig. 3.12 (left) Michael Sidnell, monument to William Chamberlayne, d. 1736. St Peter’s Parish Church, New Kent County, Virginia.

dral and the surrounding churches.¹² One of the earliest Bristol monuments in Barbados is the monument to Henry Peers (d. 740) in St George’s Parish Church (fig. 3.3). Although unsigned, it is similar to the monument to Henry Walter (d. 737) in the Lord Mayor’s Chapel in Bristol, signed by the local sculptor F. Curtis (fig. 3.4). At the end of the century and into the nineteenth century, the Patys, James and Thomas Tyley, and Henry Wood, all of whom had shops in Bristol, sent many monuments to Barbados, mostly typical stock-in-trade inscription plaques topped with urns. Liverpudlian sculptors did not ship many monuments to the colonies. There are only a few documented cases, one a rather weak effort by Solomon Gibson in commemoration of Emma Edwardes (d. 828) in St Peter’s Church, Vere (fig. 3.5).¹³ The paucity of monuments can be explained by the exclusive nature of The Colonial Trade in Monuments

89

the Liverpool slave trade. The slave trade was distinct from the trade conducted through the ports in Bristol and London, which supplied the colonies with goods originating in England. The Liverpool ships made a triangular circuit from Liverpool to points on the west coast of Africa and then to the West Indies and southern American colonies. The ships were also designed to carry nothing but the maximum number of human bodies.¹⁴ Several monuments in the colonies are executed by sculptors from Bath. These sculptors, like numerous other tradespeople who serviced the fashionably wealthy, had set up shop to take advantage of the expanding population of the leisure class.¹⁵ The relevant monuments include primarily stock-in-trade urns and inscription plaques by Thomas King and Charles Reeves and son, but also William Lancashire’s monument for Sir John Gay Alleyne with its highly individual 90

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

Fig. 3.13 (far left) Monument to Henry Peers, d. 1740. St George’s Parish Church, Barbados. Fig. 3.14 (middle left) F. Curtis, monument to Henry Walter, d. 1737. The Lord Mayor’s Chapel, Bristol. Fig. 3.15 (left) Solomon Gibson, monument to Emma Edwardes, d. 1828. St Peter’s Parish Church, Vere, Jamaica.

design (see figs 2.4, 2.5, and 2.23). Although Bath was not linked directly to the colonies by trade, its popularity as a spa town by the middle of the century made it a magnet for the absentee plantocracy and visiting members of the colonial elite. The often peripatetic lifestyle of the colonial elite, whether resident in the colonies or in England, is attested to by one patron, Henry Crichlow of Barbados. He commissioned two monuments (both unsigned) to his wife, Lucy Crichlow, who died in 80; one was erected in Bath, where his wife died, the other (damaged) is in St Michael’s Church, Bridgetown. Transportation of the monuments from Bath was relatively easy since an act passed in 72 had made navigation along the Avon possible between Bath and Bristol.¹⁶ Some sculptors sent many monuments to the colonies, while others, notably Rysbrack and Roubiliac, sent only one. This has to do with the type of client The Colonial Trade in Monuments

91

that each sculptor cultivated. For example, Rysbrack’s sole colonial effort can be explained by his tendency to cultivate primarily aristocratic and royal clientele.¹⁷ Indeed, the one monument that he shipped to the colonies was the statue of Henry Grenville, who was a member of one of England’s most distinguished aristocratic families.¹⁸ A sculptor’s working methods and his preferred manner of negotiation with his clients also explains the quantity, or lack thereof, of monuments shipped by individual sculptors to the colonies. This would address why Roubiliac sent only one monument, that to Lieutenant Colonel William Stapleton in Port Royal, Jamaica (see figs 2.8 and 2.9). Roubiliac, who arrived in London in the early 730s and practised sculpture until his death in 762, stands out as the most idiosyncratic sculptor of the eighteenth century in terms of his working methods. He maintained a small workshop and concentrated on highly individualistic designs, only occasionally reusing the same pose in another sculpture. He also apparently rarely worked on paper, choosing instead to work out his ideas in clay before presenting a model rather than a paper design to his clients. This working method, which entailed considerable discussion with the client or the client’s representative, was not feasible for a patron who lived thousands of miles away.¹⁹ The Stapleton monument, as we have seen, was commissioned by the deceased’s brother and uncle who lived in England. Ironically, one of the only four surviving drawings that relate to any of Roubiliac’s works is connected with the Stapleton commission.²⁰ It shows the framework of naval accoutrements around the inscription plaque, while the medallion for the relief is blank. It is impossible to know if this is in Roubiliac’s hand, as the surviving drawings are not stylistically similar. Presumably the drawing, like another extant one that focuses on an elaborate arch surrounding Roubiliac’s competition entry for the Wolfe monument (see figs 4. and 4.2), served as a working drawing for his assistants, who were to execute the framework.²¹ The majority of prominent eighteenth-century sculptors oversaw large workshops, a type of business initiated by the Cheeres. Once they had established themselves as significant sculptors and gentlemen in the 730s, they branched into high-volume stock-in-trade production. While Henry Cheere retained his interests in the production of marbles, such as the architectural plaques, John Cheere focused on the lower end of the market and turned his attention to lead and plaster casts. He opened his yard, made famous for posterity as the setting of plate one of Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty, at Hyde Park Corner in 739.²² Later in the century, Wilton had a substantial workshop, but it was not nearly the size of that begun by John Bacon in the 770s and taken over by his son at his death in 799. Although Wilton and the Bacons all received large and prestigious com92

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

missions in England and the colonies – the three would send more sculptures to the colonies than anyone else – more prosaic stock-in-trade designs (monuments and chimney pieces) and the trade in marble were the bread and butter of their businesses.²³ Eleanor Coade’s manufacturies, where stock-in-trade designs were moulded and cast in multiples, shipped at least seven monuments to the West Indies, some of which were designed by John Bacon the Elder. Coade also provided the reliefs for the base of Nelson’s column, erected in Montreal in 85.²⁴ Nollekens, Flaxman, and the Westmacotts aimed at the higher end of the market, cultivating clients among the fashionable, erudite, neoclassical circles at the turn of the nineteenth century, although they, too, each had a range of stock-in-trade designs and engaged in producing multiple copies.²⁵

the c ontract and the d e sign Once a sculptor was chosen, the patron or agent would negotiate a contract. Unfortunately, very few contracts survive for the privately commissioned monuments shipped abroad. However, the contract made between Wilton and William Young, agent for Richard Ottley, signed and dated 2 August 767, can serve as a model (see fig. 3.5). An excerpt of the contract is transcribed in Appendix .²⁶ The monument was commissioned out of profound grief by Richard Ottley to commemorate his wife, Elizabeth, who had died in childbirth. According to the inscription, her son, who died with his mother, lies upon her breast in the grave.²⁷ Elizabeth was the daughter of Ashton Warner, attorney general of Antigua and a descendant of Antigua’s first governor. She died on the island of St Vincent, which the English had recently acquired with the signing of the Treaty of Paris and where William Young, a very wealthy absentee planter, owned extensive plantations. Young, made a baronet in 769, was also experienced in commissioning sculpture, having hired Rysbrack to execute a substantial monument to himself and his wife, Sarah, who had died in 747. This monument is located in the parish church at Chartham, Kent, and Young stipulated in his will that if he died in the West Indies, his body should be shipped back to England so that he could lie beside his wife.²⁸ The Ottley contract is similar in content and payment schedule to Wilton’s surviving contracts for monuments that were erected in Britain, and this standard was also used by other sculptors.²⁹ Wilton was to be paid in three instalments for the work – in this case, 0 upon signing the contract, 20 part way through the execution of the work, and the final 20 once the sculpture was packed up “in Substantial cases, and deliver[ed] ... safely on Board a Ship in the The Colonial Trade in Monuments

93

River Thames.” Thus the sculptor was not liable for the wellbeing of the monument once it left England. An addendum to the contract requested that Wilton also supply a tombstone embellished with the Ottley coat of arms. According to the contract, Young was responsible for approving the design on behalf of the patron. The Ottley monument (severely damaged in one of the earthquakes that have rocked Antigua) is substantial, reflecting the rather significant cost of 350. It is, however, a standard composition that Wilton had already used several times, two examples of which are the monuments to Maria Margaretta Elibank (d. 762) in Aberlady Church, East Lothian (fig. 3.6), and to Mary Okeover (d. 764) (fig. 3.7).³⁰ A life-sized winged figure of Hope leans forlornly on an urn, the pedestal of which is embellished with a medallion bearing portrait reliefs of the deceased and her husband. The inscription panel is below. The Ottley contract stipulated that Wilton had “within twenty months” to complete the work, above and beyond the time it took for the monument to arrive in Antigua. Twenty months ensured enough time to carve this large and rather complex work once the design had been approved. The smaller stock-in-trade cartouches, architectural frames, and rather plain neoclassical inscription plaques from later in the century would have been less expensive and would have required much less time to carve. Such designs would also have required little negotiation between patron or agent and sculptor, and payment was probably made in just one or two instalments. Unfortunately, no contracts for these less complex monuments have come to light and, as yet, very little attention has been paid to these prosaic pieces in the study of British art. Likewise, despite the recent work on sculptors’ workshop practices by Matthew Craske, David Bindman, and Malcolm Baker, the actual management of a workshop and interaction between sculptor and client remains somewhat speculative.³¹ Certainly, many sculptors relied on paper designs, either rendered by the sculptor himself or derived from designs published in patternbooks. Such patternbooks were available early in the eighteenth century. James Gibbs’s A Book of Architecture, first published in 728, contains several designs for funeral monuments, both cartouches and architectural wall plaques. This book is known to have been available in the American colonies shortly after its publication³² and could also have surfaced in the West Indies. Thus a resident colonial patron could possibly have ordered a specific design without depending on the judgment of his or her agent in England. At this point, in the early years of the century, some of the unsigned wall plaques may have been executed by architects; the division between architect and sculptor was not decisive, and many architects, like Gibbs 94

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

Fig. 3.16 (left) Joseph Wilton, monument to Lady Maria Margaretta Elibank, d. 1762. Aberlady Church, East Lothian, Scotland. Fig. 3.17 (right)

Joseph Wilton, monument to Leak and Mary Okeover, 1764.

and later Taylor, had a hand in the monument trade. Gibbs’s book was published in multiple editions and also spawned a genre of English patternbooks, some of which contained monument designs, such as Batty Langley’s The City and Country Builder’s and Workman’s Treasury of Designs, published in 756. Later in the century John Bacon the Elder kept a large catalogue of designs, many of which were female personifications and their attributes, which he would use in various compositions.³³ For example, Bacon the Elder’s trademark detail of a pelican feeding its young, signifying charity, appears in numerous monuments erected The Colonial Trade in Monuments

95

throughout the colonies and Britain (see figs 2.6 and 2.7). The Coade manufacturies also had an extensive catalogue of paper designs.³⁴ Before catalogues were common, some sculptors may have had a certain number of stock-in-trade pieces with blank inscription panels already made up in their workshops, but, given the high cost of marble, this would have been unlikely for any but the busiest sculptors, those involved in high-volume turnover, such as the Cheeres. A more cost effective method was simply to open the workshop to prospective clients. Anecdotal evidence indicates that a visit to a sculptor’s shop was something of a leisure activity, an early form of gallery-going that had the combined effect of advertising to potential clients and raising the status of the sculptor above that of an artisan.³⁵ Ultimately, the monuments themselves were the best advertisement, visible in the sculptors’ workshops or in their final resting places in parish churches or Westminster Abbey. Puffs of many sculptures, sometimes accompanied by engravings, were also regularly published in newspapers, orchestrated by patron and sculptor alike. The best examples relevant to this study are the puffs for the various monuments commissioned by members of the Grenville family.³⁶ Some of the more complex stock-in-trade designs have an individual touch since they contain portraits of the deceased. The monuments to James Lawes and to Frances Shirley are distinct within the monuments shipped to the colonies for containing three-dimensional busts of the deceased (see figs 2.9, 2.0, and 2.28). As discussed in the previous chapter, the prominent placement of John Cheere’s signature on the socle of the bust, the dégagé nature of the bust, and the fact that Lawes had been in England the year before he died suggest that this bust was executed from the life and later incorporated into a more traditional style of funeral monument. The same could be posited for the Shirley monument. Frances Shirley frequently travelled to England and, concerned as she was with promoting her husband’s status, must surely have been highly conscious of the latest fashions. Her bust is the female equivalent of the man-at-ease, showing her with her natural hair and wearing a dress that casually defines her breasts. The bust may have been done in conjunction with six busts carved by Scheemakers of six members of the Shirley family at Staunton Harold, Leicestershire, although the connection between William and Frances Shirley and the Staunton Harold Shirleys is uncertain.³⁷ After her death, William Shirley may have ordered the inscription plaque to accommodate the bust. Relief portraits are more common in the colonial monuments than are threedimensional busts. Two of the finest early examples are Robert Taylor’s rococo monuments to the merchants Thomas Withers (d. 750), now in the Barbados 96

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

Fig. 3.18 (left) Fig. 3.19 (right) Cambridge.

Robert Taylor (attr.), monument to Thomas Withers, d. 1750. Robert Taylor, monument to John Andrews, d. 1747, Trinity Hall,

Museum and Historical Society (fig. 3.8), and Edward Manning (d. 756), in Kingston Parish Church (see fig. 2.3). Although both are severely damaged, especially the Withers monument, enough remains to indicate that these two works are almost identical, right down to the folds of drapery, unbuttoned collar, and casual floppy turban. The only distinguishing aspects are the facial features of the deceased and the epitaphs. Both, in turn, are nearly identical to Taylor’s monument to John Andrews, LLD , in Trinity Hall, Cambridge (d. 745; fig. 3.9). The Colonial Trade in Monuments

97

Taylor would also use the ornate palm-encrusted oval surround as a frame above a mantel in chimneypiece designs.³⁸ Taylor had a large workshop and, like many other sculptors of considerable repute, probably had little to do with the carving of such stock-in-trade images. Indeed, at Taylor’s death in 788, the author of his obituary in the Gentleman’s Magazine recorded that his policy, as far as sculpted portraits were concerned, was “to hew out his heads from the block and except for some few finishing touches, to leave the rest to his workmen.”³⁹ Taylor probably based his relief portraits of Withers and Manning on painted portraits or miniatures sent to him by the people who commissioned the monuments. Such objects were signs of affluence and cultural refinement, and many members of the colonial elite would sit for the best artists on one of their sojourns to England, especially in London or Bath. In the case of the Ottley monument, a memo on the back of the paper that contained the inscription for the monument directed Wilton to go to Mr Warner’s (a surgeon and relative of the deceased) in Hatton Garden, London, where he would find miniature wax profiles of Richard and Elizabeth Ottley done from the life by Isaac Gosset. These would serve as models for the relief portraits on the monument. Wilton was also to find the family’s coat of arms at Mr Warner’s, which would appear on the tombstone. In another example, the sculpted profile of Rosa Palmer on her monument in Montego Bay (see figs 2.6 and 2.7) bears a striking resemblance to a painted profile of a “Mrs. Palmer” by an artist “in the circle of Joshua Reynolds” sold at Sotheby’s, New York, in 990.⁴⁰ Among the very few privately commissioned monuments in the colonies that have unique compositions, the Stapleton and Vassall monuments were commissioned by patrons who resided in London and who thus could readily discuss the respective design with the sculptor (see figs 2.8, 2.9, and 2.32). The bust on the Vassall monument, which portrays someone who had died over a century before, was, like the relief portraits, undoubtedly based on a painted or wax version. Sir John Gay Alleyne and William Musgrave, who commissioned another of the very few entirely unique privately commissioned monuments in the colonies, resided in Barbados and Antigua respectively (see figs 2.4, 2.5, 2.23, 2.24, and 2.25). But rather than assuming that designs went back and forth across the Atlantic until the patron was satisfied or that the commission was left entirely in the hands of an agent, it is more plausible to speculate that the designs of these complex compositions were determined by patron and sculptor when the patron was on a sojourn to England. William Lancashire, the sculptor of the Alleyne monument, was based in fashionable Bath, where the distinguished Sir John Gay Alleyne may have found some respite after the death of his wife and 98

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

son. Michael Crake had established his workshop in Portland Road on the edge of West Indian-filled Marylebone, where William Musgrave may have lived for a period. Crake would subsequently also execute the monument of the younger Sir Charles Price (d. 88) in Richmond, Surrey.⁴¹ In one case it seems that more than one sculptor had a hand in a monument that was shipped to the West Indies. The monument to Captain James Renton in St Andrew’s, Halfway Tree (see fig. 2.20), contains a relief of a naval engagement, presumably the taking of Port Louis under Rear Admiral Knowles, in which Renton died. The relief’s fine carving contrasts significantly with the rest of the monument, particularly the rather heavy-handed inscription panel. The flat relief also sits rather uncomfortably, with its bottom corner overhanging the bowed inscription panel. Unfortunately, both the relief and the monument are unsigned. The relief is obviously by an accomplished sculptor, while the rest of the monument may have been made by an assistant or at another sculptor’s workshop. Such collaboration and subcontracting was not unusual.⁴²

t r a n s p o rt a n d a s s e m b ly Once a monument was crated in pieces and packed on the ship in London, Bristol, or Bath, it was out of the sculptor’s hands and usually no longer his responsibility. The voyage would take approximately three weeks to the West Indies, sometimes less to America. If the seas were rough or if the packing had not been well done, breakage might occur. John Bacon the Elder was relieved to find out that it was only a paving stone that had cracked en route to Jamaica and not the statue or relief panels on his monument to Admiral Lord Rodney (see figs 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, and 8.6).⁴³ So many of the monuments have been damaged from natural disasters and neglect over the past two centuries that it is difficult to determine how many others might have been damaged as a result of being shipped,⁴⁴ although Flaxman’s Sir Simon Clarke monument in Lucea is probably one example (see fig. 2.26). As suggested by a sketch for the monument as well as by the almost identical monument to Francis Dear in Chichester Cathedral (fig. 3.4), the monument’s apex should consist of two Greek akroteria and the word ETERNITY encircled by a serpent eating its tail.⁴⁵ Instead, the Lucea monument has a clumsy rough approximation, lacking the serpent, made of plaster on wood. When the crates arrived in the colonies, assembling the sculpture was left to the patron and his servants. On at least one occasion, they did not get it right. The Coade stone monument to Bernard Birch in St James’s Church, Montego Bay The Colonial Trade in Monuments

99

Fig. 3.20 (left) Coade Manufacturies, monument to Bernard Birch, d. 1782. St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay, Jamaica. Fig. 3.21 (right) Coade Manufacturies, monument to Elizabeth Minto, d. 1783, dated 1790. St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay, Jamaica.

(fig. 3.20), was assembled incorrectly; the lion’s paws should be situated between the panel with the circular relief and the inscription panel below. The mistake is all the more evident because the Birch monument is in the same church as a similar Coade stone monument to Elizabeth Minto, which was correctly assembled (fig. 3.2). Presumably, assembly instructions were not included.

100

fa m i ly e m p i r e s

pa rt t wo Official Empire

This page intentionally left blank

chapte r four

Heroic Imagery?

The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey The generality are not struck by anything under a complete victory; if you have a mind to be well with the mob of England, you must be knocked on the head like Wolfe.¹

h

orace Walpole’s prescient remarks to Lady Aislebury in September 76 summed up the tenor of the times. In the early years of the Seven Years War, culminating in the annus mirabilis of 759–60, the significance of the generality and the mob had reached unprecedented proportions in the British parliamentary theatre. These years also marked a decided shift in parliamentary attitude toward the idea of a British empire. As we have seen, colonial settlement and colonial trade had rapidly expanded and had become increasingly significant to the British economy over the course of the first half of the eighteenth century, yet Robert Walpole and his power base, which consisted of Whig magnates and like-minded country politicians, viewed any pretence to empire with suspicion as a potential erosion of their power by the mercantilist sector. In the 750s the balance of power began to shift in favour of the bellicose mercantilists, who were the proponents of empire. The loss of Minorca in 756 and the subsequent controversy surrounding the court martial of Admiral Byng further compromised the Duke of Newcastle’s and the Whig magnates’ control in Parliament. In an effort to save face following the sorry defeat at Minorca, Newcastle’s government laid the blame squarely on Byng’s shoulders in the popular press even though Byng had been sent out too late to counter the French forces effectively. At first, the public fell for it, and Byng was vilified, burned in effigy in front of his country house, and then repeatedly throughout London. However,

the opposition press soon took up Byng’s cause and depicted the loss of Minorca as evidence of Newcastle’s incompetent handling of foreign affairs (never one of his strong points). Although the outcry and resultant instructions and addresses demanding that the Crown hold an enquiry into the defeat were not enough to save Byng’s life, they did open the door for a change in parliamentary policy on foreign affairs and external threats.² William Pitt the Elder stood at the parliamentary head of the pro-imperialists, although his support was fragile until the tide of the war shifted in Britain’s favour. His willingness to join forces with Newcastle in a coalition government in 757 was met with some suspicion, as was his apparent interest in Hanover. But the rapid succession of military and naval victories and his careful insistence that he supported Hanover and the Continental war only in so far as they would benefit the American theatre assured his popularity and apparent patriotic zeal in the mercantilist sector as well as across a wide segment of the British public.³ Pitt was backed by his large network of cousins-in-law, the so-called Grenville Cousinhood. He was counted among the Grenvilles, the Wests, and the Lytteltons as early as the 730s, although he did not become an official member of the family until he married Hester Grenville in 754. His brother-in-law, Richard, Earl Temple, was Lord Privy Seal and also the wealthiest aristocrat in England. George Grenville, brother of the earl, served as treasurer of the Navy. Other members of the Cousinhood held key posts in the navy and government positions in colonial administration. Pitt and his cousins had been nurtured on the concept of an empire of liberty grounded in trade by Viscount Cobham, uncle to the Grenvilles. His ideal empire was supported by a strong navy and was free of the corruption of tyranny, governed as it was by a healthy tripartite system of government. In 733 Cobham and his faction of Whig Patriots had been forced out of public office by Robert Walpole after voting against the Excise Act, which would have impeded colonial trade. Cobham went into self-imposed exile at Stowe, his country estate in Buckinghamshire, from where he launched a series of stinging attacks on what he considered a hopelessly corrupt Parliament that threatened the sanctity of British liberty, for liberty could only flourish if Britain had a sound and self-sufficient economy (which included the colonial trade) that could withstand external threat. The attacks were manifest in two ways: through the printed word – in verse and prose written by Pope, Lyttelton, and anonymous authors and published in the popular press – and through the monuments erected at Stowe, especially those in the Elysian Fields.⁴ Both are discussed in detail in chapter 5. Cobham’s Cubs, or the Boy Patriots, as Pitt and the Grenville cousins were called then, learned the potential of the printed word and 104 o f f i c i a l e m p i r e

the monument as a means of persuasion directed at various audiences. Later, in their careers as members of the Whig Opposition in the 740s and 750s, they would refine their uncle’s ideology of empire and consummately exploit both the printed word and monumental sculpture to further their aims. Pitt’s manipulation of the popular press in support of his political agenda and imperialist ambitions has been well documented by numerous scholars. In effect, he used the press to win over the public, an amorphous yet increasingly significant body in the eighteenth-century political theatre. He succeeded, for a period of time at least, in portraying himself as the oxymoronic Great Commoner and Great Patriot, thus obfuscating his personal ambitions to aristocratic standing.⁵ What historians have either ignored or have not noticed is that Pitt was also very much involved in commissioning monuments. His most significant endeavour in this respect is the monument to Major General James Wolfe in Westminster Abbey (figs 4. and 4.2). Ostensibly, the Wolfe monument was a parliamentary public commission, yet, as this chapter shows, careful scrutiny of the circumstances surrounding the commission indicates that Pitt was the primary instigator of the monument and was very much involved in the design process. Pitt’s interest in pursuing the construction of a monument to Wolfe was manifold. In its publicness a monument addressed Pitt’s audience and further fuelled the public’s bellicosity for war, necessary to Pitt’s imperial aims. The design of the monument as it was finally built by Joseph Wilton seems deceptively simple but, in reality, is strikingly complex, a marriage of antique and modern dress; of narrative and allegory and emblem; and of an Englishman, two Scots, and a North American Native. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century commentators have been critical of the design, seeing it as awkward and transitional in style. Awkward it may be, but it does cleverly address a range of contemporary political concerns, something that the modern commentators have failed to recognize. In its complexity, the monument represents a new style for a new empire. Imbued with permanence and posterity, the monument also grounded this empire for eternity, placing it, for the eighteenth-century audience at least, on a par with or even surpassing the great Roman Empire of antiquity. The monument also served Pitt’s personal ambitions; it was as much a monument to himself as it was to Wolfe. The choice to commemorate Wolfe with a monument was an obvious one. Wolfe had defeated the French apparently against all odds at Quebec in September 759, thereby securing Canada for the British and ultimately protecting the American colonies, the jewels of Pitt’s empire. It was the most significant victory of the annus mirabilis. Wolfe was also Pitt’s protégé; according to Horace Walpole, he and George Grenville had hand-picked The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

105

Fig. 4.1 (facing page) Joseph Wilton, monument to Major General James Wolfe, unveiled 1773. Westminster Abbey, London. Fig. 4.2 (above) Joseph Wilton, detail of the monument to Major General James Wolfe, unveiled 1773. Westminster Abbey, London.

Wolfe to lead the land forces against Quebec “over the heads of a great number of officers” who had been involved in the bungled 757 invasion of Rochefort from which Pitt had emerged labelled “unpatriotic” and “pro-Hanoverian.”⁶ These far more experienced men, among them Conway (Horace Walpole’s cousin and favourite), Cornwallis, and Mordaunt, remained effectively unemployed. Walpole, with characteristic cattiness, described Wolfe as the ideal man for the job, “formed to execute the designs of such a master as Pitt.”⁷ After Wolfe’s death, Pitt would fuse Wolfe to the commoner-patriot image, the result at times being a conflation of the valiant young general with the similarly valiant experienced statesman. The former died for his country, the latter would perform another very public patriotic self-sacrifice by hauling his gouty and pain-ridden body into the House of Commons, where he would devotedly serve his country. Wolfe’s minor gentry background and his youth, energy, and enthusiasm served Pitt’s political agenda well. Indeed, such was his enthusiasm that on the night before he sailed for Quebec, Wolfe even rattled Pitt and Richard, Earl Temple, when he leapt onto a table, drew his sword, and swore allegiance to his country.⁸ Not only was Pitt able to use Wolfe to distance himself from the Rochefort debacle, but the image of the gallant young general giving his all for his country countered the virulent stream in the bellicose public and press that blamed the languid state of government and its apparent lack of patriotism on the effeminate aristocracy, who were, apparently, too caught up in French fashions and frivolities.⁹ That Wolfe was an army, rather than a navy, man was also useful, as it helped to justify Pitt’s demands for substantial increases to the army despite the traditional distrust of standing armies as a potential threat to British liberties.¹⁰ The monument’s inherent element of posterity no doubt also tempted Pitt’s vanity. His desire for aristocratic standing would become apparent when he accepted a pension for himself and a title for his wife in 76 and ultimately a peerage for himself in 766, but in 759–60 his careful construction of himself as a man at one with the people completely obfuscated such pretensions.¹¹ At that point, his apparent greatest pretension was to patriotism (something that he would also sacrifice for personal gain in the near future), and the monument to Wolfe exuded patriotism. Pierre-Jean Grosley, a French visitor to London in 765, who saw the Wolfe monument under construction in Wilton’s studio, paraphrased Montesquieu as he acknowledged the link between patriotism and posterity and how this link had prompted the building of so many monuments and buildings in England: “A regard for posterity is the first food of patriotic pride: this regard operates in the order of nature what should follow in the supernatural 108 o f f i c i a l e m p i r e

order from a firm belief of the immortality of the soul. It is this view or regard, this desire of engaging the attention of posterity, and interesting it in our behalf, that has, during these two centuries, procured England, and London in particular, a number of foundations, whose magnificence is equal to their utility.”¹² Wolfe – and Pitt – were to be remembered in perpetuity for their patriotism.

the call On 22 November 759 Pitt stood up in the House of Commons and called for a monument to “be erected in the Collegiate Church of St Peter, Westminster, to the memory of the ever-lamented, late Commander-in-Chief of his Majesty’s Land Forces on an Expedition against Quebec, Major-General Wolfe, who, surmounting by Ability and Valour, all Obstacles of Art and Nature, was slain in the arduous and decisive Battle against the French Army, near Quebec, fighting for their Capital of Canada, in the Year 759, and to assure his Majesty, this House will make good the Expence of erecting the said Monument.”¹³ Pitt’s call was the culmination of rumours that had been circulating since news of Wolfe’s victory reached Britain in mid-October. The call for the monument must be evaluated as part of the cult of Wolfe that sprang up almost immediately after the news of Wolfe’s death and victory was released in Britain. The news sparked bittersweet celebrations on an unprecedented scale throughout the empire. In London the celebrations lasted for several days; squibs and firecrackers were set off, candles illuminated windows, and the party was topped off when “the Park and Tower guns were fired, flags every where were displayed from the steeples, and the greatest illuminations were made throughout the city and suburbs that were ever known.”¹⁴ Many contemporary commentators exclaimed at how deeply the significance of the victory had permeated the public. Horace Walpole saw “joy, curiosity, astonishment ... painted in every countenance.”¹⁵ Oliver Goldsmith used the occasion to attack the excesses of the London mob, although his satirical comments were no doubt exacerbated by the fact that a firecracker had exploded in his hair.¹⁶ These celebrations were followed by innumerable eulogies and epitaphs published in the popular press, a raft of thanksgiving sermons delivered throughout the Atlantic colonies and Britain and subsequently published, as well as poems, books, and plays.¹⁷ Alan McNairn has documented the scale of Wolfamania in admirable detail in his book Behold the Hero. However, he did not highlight the degree to which the initial euphoria about Wolfe’s victory and grief over his death was promoted and, at times, orchestrated by Parliament, particularly by Pitt. In a letter to The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

109

Pitt dated 2 September 759, two weeks before the attack on Quebec, Wolfe had declared that “Quebec is impregnable; it is flinging away the lives of brave men to attempt it,” while affirming that despite the odds, he would launch the offensive “in conformity to the King’s intentions ... persuaded [as he was] that a victorious army finds no difficulties.”¹⁸ The letter also contained, as Newcastle mentioned to Hardwicke, several other thoroughly despondent statements about the futility of an attack.¹⁹ Pitt expunged these more defeatist lines and gave the letter to the London Gazette, which published it on 5 October 759, the day before the news of Wolfe’s victory was published, indicating that Pitt released the letter in a calculated move to enhance the bravery of Wolfe’s accomplishments as a means to intensify public reaction once the news of his death became known.²⁰ Parliament also sanctioned the firing of the guns, erected some of the larger illuminations, and declared 29 November a day of national thanksgiving. Pitt was playing upon the taste for pageantry and display that had long been a hallmark of the Whigs, used initially to help secure the Whig ascendancy with the accession of George I . At the time, Thomas Holles, the Duke of Newcastle, had been lauded as the “first New Lord call’d to that House in this Reign,” and he was accompanied by the ringing of bells and the firing of guns as he moved through London.²¹ Similarly, George I ’s sumptuous coronation was clearly a Whig construction to valorize the monarchy and secure popular consent.²² After the Whigs split in the mid-730s, the public’s patriotic zeal was left to maintain its momentum in the extra-parliamentary realm, assisted by the Whig opposition of Cobham and his Boy Patriots. In November 739 Admiral Vernon captured Porto Bello from the Spanish in a surprise attack. Public reaction to the victory was unprecedented, fuelled by the fact that the victory was the first after a long list of melancholy defeats. For the next two years, until the fall of Robert Walpole, Vernon was the focus of the antiWalpole campaign and the figurehead of the merchants’ and Boy Patriots’ drive for an empire of trade and liberty. The massive celebrations in honour of Vernon’s victory and his birthday were financed by local merchants and tradesmen, despondent by Walpole’s half-hearted persecution of the war. The celebrations in turn sparked the production of several plays, the striking of at least 02 medals, and the casting of innumerable pottery vessels, all in honour of Vernon. In 740, prompted by this unprecedented wave of patriotism, “God Save the King” was first sung, and Arne published “Rule Britannia.”²³ Almost two decades later, the Seven Years War would touch the lives of the general public far more directly than Vernon’s victory, as troops were mobilized on an unprecedented level and families had to contribute in all manner of ways 110

official empir e

on a scale hitherto unseen. Such involvement meant that the public figured even more prominently in expressions of loyalty and patriotism, which in turn contributed to a growing endemic sense of national identity. Although the public’s participation in the war was admittedly often compelled, the pro-war rhetoricians used this participation to further their aims. Early in the war, when the French had the upper hand in North America, the death of George Augustus, 3rd Viscount Howe, provided something of a rallying cry. Howe had been killed by a single French bullet while on General Abercromby’s forced march to the ill-fated battle of Ticonderoga in July 758. Grandson of George I and cousin to George, Prince of Wales, Howe had distinguished himself at his post. Within a short time of arriving in America, he had gained the confidence and admiration of his men by abandoning the elaborate uniforms, ritual, and customs of officers of his standing. He is credited with introducing light infantry companies in America; compared to the traditional British pack and uniform, the lighter packs, shorter jackets, and black (instead of white) belts better served the soldiers in the North American wilderness and in skirmishes against Native warriors. At his death he was eulogized as “Britannia’s young hero slain” and “with him the soul of the army seem to expire.”²⁴ The British colonists in America had particular reason to lament the loss of such a popular and able officer; their very livelihoods and futures depended on keeping the French at bay, the possibility of which did not look too promising in 758. In February 759, before the tide of the war shifted in favour of the British, the colonial Legislature of Massachusetts Bay voted 250 to erect a monument in Howe’s honour in Westminster Abbey (fig. 4.3). The epitaph states that the monument was a testament to “his services and military virtues and of the affection their officers and soldiers bore to his command. – He lived respected and beloved; the publick regretted his loss, to his family it is irreparable.” Designed by Peter Scheemakers, the monument originally contained a mourning personification of Massachusetts Bay set against a pyramid that contained Howe’s arms, coronet, and crest. The inscription panel was below.²⁵ The monument, unveiled in 762, was the first such colonial legislative commission, if we disregard Henry Grenville’s puff to himself in Barbados (see chapter 5).²⁶ The act of commissioning such a permanent object emphatically, if subliminally, points to what the people of Massachusetts Bay saw as their ancient right to the colony and their continued existence in the colony despite the French threat. Erected as it was in Westminster Abbey, rather than in Massachusetts, the monument functioned as a constant reminder to the English of the existence of the New England colonists. The monument also asserted the New Englanders’ Englishness. The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

111

Fig. 4.3 Peter Scheemakers, monument to George Augustus Viscount Howe, unveiled 1762. Westminster Abbey, London.

As it happened, the patriotic mourning of Viscount Howe was little more than a testing of the waters. When Wolfe fell at Quebec the following year, in the battle that assured British superiority in America and the war in general, the expressions of grief and victory encompassed all that had come before. During the festivities in London in celebration of Wolfe’s victory, six inscriptions were placed in the windows at Kensington Palace. The top one honoured God for the victories: “Praise / The only Giver of Victory / for / the renewed lustre / of the British 112

official empir e

name.” Below, inscriptions listed the British victories in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America (including Ticonderoga, which had been reclaimed by Amherst in 759), and below these was a more personal tribute to Wolfe: And By General JAMES WOLFE WHO

Dauntless, but Deliberate, Under Numerous Difficulties, September 2, 1759, Engaged to employ his little army For the Honour and Interest Of his Country; AND

In a few Days after, Gloriously fulfilled his Promise, By the Conquest of QUEBEC , At the Expense of his Life.²⁷ Wolfe’s victory was celebrated as the pinnacle of British achievement. In the window illuminations, in eulogy after eulogy, and in sermon after sermon, Wolfe was cast, almost without fail, as the gallant young hero who had given up his life for his country. Yet unlike Howe, who was commemorated for his military tactics, the emphasis of these tributes was squarely on Wolfe’s death. As Horace Walpole remarked, Wolfe’s life terminated “where his fame began.”²⁸ In contrast to Howe, private letters suggest that Wolfe’s military command was mediocre at best. Furthermore, he disliked and distrusted the Highlanders, who formed the bulk of his invasion force.²⁹ Indeed, the victory at Quebec was achieved only because the landing boats were blown off course, coming aground not where Wolfe had intended but at the base of a cliff behind the village of Quebec. Forced to climb the cliff, the invasion force caught the French off guard. When the news reached Britain, the celebrations and the press made much of his noble death and his disciplined character, overcoming the odds as he did to serve his country, thereby obfuscating his less than admirable skill as a military strategist. Ultimately, the persona of Wolfe created in late 759 was that of an everyman who had no personal pretensions, despite Walpole’s charge that the young man The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

113

had “seemed to breathe for nothing but fame.”³⁰ Another major component in the commemoration of Wolfe was that he had left behind his widowed mother and fiancée to serve his country. Innumerable cloying poems purported to articulate the grief felt by Katherine Lowther and Mrs Wolfe. In Lines occasioned by the death of Gen. Wolfe, Miss Lowther awaits Wolfe’s return: “But destiny denied, and doomed those eyes, / Which should have viewed the triumphs, to overflow / With piercing sorrows,” while Mrs Wolfe “Is racked with anguish, she in plaintive strains / Bemoans thy fate, regardless of her own.”³¹ Such lamentations from his loved ones only enhanced the everyman image. No mention was made of his minor gentry status or of the fact that he was about to marry into aristocracy (Katharine Lowther was sister to Sir James Lowther and had an immense fortune besides). Furthermore, he was cast as a rather sickly individual. Consequently, the image of Wolfe manufactured after his death would appeal to a wide audience. His self-discipline and eagerness to pursue the cause in the name of his country attracted the self-made mercantilist sector and the patriotic societies, such as the bellicose Anti-Gallicans, the Marine and Troop Societies, and the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, all of whose membership cut across class lines. His disciplined nature, coupled with his apparent sensibility – he was purported to have read Gray’s An Elegy Written in a County Church Yard the night before he died³² – made him an admirable figure among the gentry and aristocracy. Equally, his love for his fiancée and mother touched a sentimental nerve that would have had wide popular appeal. Parliament (and Pitt) outdid itself with the removal of Wolfe’s body from Portsmouth to Greenwich, where it was to be buried at the request of Wolfe’s mother. The funeral cortège was the epitome of orchestrated display. Paid for by Parliament, the event began in the harbour at Portsmouth on 2 November 759, where shots were fired from two signal ships while the body was transported from the ship upon which it had arrived to a twelve-oared barge attended by other barges in what was described in the press as “a gloomy, silent pomp.” Once ashore, the body was transferred to a waiting hearse and mourning coach and then driven to St Alfege’s in Greenwich. The long route was reportedly lined with many thousands of people lamenting the loss of the hero.³³ Rumours about an impending monument were rife in October and early November 759. The Public Advertiser reported on  November that “his Majesty has sent Orders to the Board of Works, to prepare the Plan and Estimates of a Monument to be erected in Westminster Abbey, to the Memory of Gen. Wolfe, at his Majesty’s own private Expence. The Estimate not to exceed 3000 l.”³⁴ Another

114

official empir e

note in the Public Advertiser, perhaps in response to the first, demanded an open competition, “As we have many Artists of Eminence at the Time in the Kingdom” so that “each might be allowed to present his Design, and the Author of the best to be employed, provided he had shewn by former Works, that he was able to execute, as well as invent; on this Foundation, we might expect to see, instead of that Load of Lumber, and those stolen Fragments from old Ruins, now so common, something original and new. A single Thought of this kind would be worth all the confused Clutter of modern Medleys; and might (if any Thing can) be worthy of the Subject.”³⁵ Eight days later, Pitt stood up in the House of Commons and called for the monument to be erected at the expense of the house. In effect, Pitt had stolen the king’s monument, for Parliament would ultimately honour Wolfe with a monument at the insistence of Pitt, not of the king. As I noted in the introduction, monuments commissioned by Parliament were rare in Britain. The Wolfe monument was only the third such commission. The Frenchman Grosley lamented the lack of public commissions after his lengthy analysis of the monuments in Westminster Abbey: “Had all these monuments been raised by a public decree, at the expence of the nation, and not by the family or friends of each personage, England might, in this respect, vie with the most renowned republics of antiquity.”³⁶ In Britain, where liberty was held so dear, such public (or monarchical) decrees might have smacked of tyranny, especially with the example of the Bourbon kings and their many equestrian and pedestrian statues so near at hand. George II clearly felt that he would be spared charges of absolutism given that the monument was to the wildly popular Wolfe. However, Pitt recognized the tremendous advantages to his political agenda of a monument sanctioned by the house, the members of which were ostensibly the representatives of the people, who were the foundations of Pitt’s political power base. A public commission was, as Grosley noted, far more noble than a private commission. With consummate political skill, he left the members of the house and the king no alternative but to pass the motion unanimously. Rather than making the call on the first day of the parliamentary session, which was a week before Wolfe’s funeral, Pitt waited until the day after Wolfe’s funeral, when emotions were running at their height. Walpole likened his speech to a “kind of funeral oration” pronounced “in a low and plaintive voice.” It was, he said, “perhaps the worst harangue [Pitt] ever uttered. His eloquence was too native not to suffer by being crowded into a ready prepared mould.”³⁷ Lord North, for one, acknowledged that Pitt was feathering his own cap; after the call for the monument had

The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

115

been passed by the house and Pitt was basking in the accolades, North stood up and curtly remarked that “it was proof of Mr. Pitt’s abilities that they sat there securely discerning rewards, while the French fleet sailed from Brest” to attack the British once again.³⁸ As the Wolfe monument would indirectly honour Pitt, he had needed to make it seem that he had won the approbation of the Crown and Parliament as well as the entire nation.

l o c at i o n When Pitt called for a monument to Wolfe, he specifically stated that it was to be erected in Westminster Abbey. The Abbey was both the obvious and the ideal choice. David Bindman and Matthew Craske have written extensively on the Abbey as a locus for monuments within the increasingly larger public sphere of eighteenth-century Britain.³⁹ The choice of Westminster Abbey for the Wolfe monument had significant consequences for both contemporary and successive audiences. By 760 the walls and much of the floor of the Abbey were covered with monuments, some to monarchs but also some to statesmen, aristocrats, and military and naval officers – in short, virtually anyone who had enough money to finance a monument and to pay the fines to the dean and chapter to erect it in the Abbey. Grosley compared the Abbey to the ancient Elysian Fields: “Westminster [Abbey] is the grand depository of the monuments erected to the glory of the nation. Though, upon considering these monuments in themselves, as well as those to whose honour they have been erected, we do not find them of equal merit, the intention of them is, notwithstanding, equally laudable. We see there, as in the Elysian shades of Virgil, those who, by different sorts of merit, have served their country, or contributed to render it illustrious.”⁴⁰ Wolfe would join the auspicious cast of British worthies in the Valhalla and live on into eternity. Commemorated with a publicly commissioned monument, he gained just that much more prestige over his colleagues and predecessors who were commemorated with private commissions. His was also to be one of the largest monuments in the Abbey. By 760 Westminster Abbey was still the most public indoor space in eighteenth-century Britain. Grosley remarked: “The whole nation, notwithstanding, makes up for [the lack of public commissions] by the great attention it gives to these monuments. The abbey in which they stand is essentially filled with crowds, who contemplate them: the lowest sort of people shew also their attention: I have seen herb-women holding a little book, which gives an account of them; I have 116

official empir e

seen milk-women getting them explained, and testifying, not a stupid admiration, but a lively and most significant surprize.”⁴¹ These herb-women and milkwomen were as important to Pitt’s political public as were the city businessmen and colonial planters. Finding a suitable location for the Wolfe monument within the Abbey proved something of a challenge given the limited amount of available space. In 76, after much deliberation, Wilton and the dean and chapter finally settled on a spot backing on the choir and facing the north transept, across the aisle from where the monument was ultimately erected.⁴² This original choice would have been ideal because people entering the church by the north transept, which had been the main entrance until the west towers were completed in 735,⁴³ could not have missed the larger-than-life-sized figure of the dying General filling the vista at the end of the transept aisle. The profile of the monument would also have prominently protruded into the choir aisle, making it visible from the nave as well. However, erecting the monument in this precise location would have necessitated the removal of a medieval tomb, which turned out to be that of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke (d. 324). Horace Walpole used the dilemma to vent his frustration over the dean and chapter’s apparent lack of concern for the older monuments in the Abbey (especially one dedicated to an ancestor of a close ally of his father). He wrote to his relative and friend Henry Seymour Conway: “the Chapter of Westminster sell their church over and over again; the ancient monuments tumble upon one’s head through their neglect,”⁴⁴ and to the dean, Zachary Pearce, he complained, asking whether he could have the tomb of Aymar de Valence for Strawberry Hill if the dean was intent on removing it.⁴⁵ Once the dean realized whose tomb it was, Wilton was asked to choose another location. Consequently, the monument was erected in the less visible site across the aisle. The view from the north transept was sacrificed for the angled view from the nave and crossing.

the c ompetition Pitt concurred with the commentator in the Public Advertiser and opened the Wolfe commission to competition. A competition would ostensibly ensure nonpartisan selection of a sculptor as well as quality of design. The Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Devonshire, was chosen as judge, allowing Pitt to further obfuscate his direct personal involvement. However, the aging duke had served with Pitt briefly at the head of Parliament during Newcastle’s temporary fall in 756, and he was sympathetic to Pitt and his policies. The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

117

From the point of view of the sculptors and architects who submitted designs, the potential boost to their reputations if they won such a coup proved irresistible. The older generation of sculptors who entered the competition included Henry Cheere, Michael Rysbrack, and Peter Scheemakers; Rysbrack and Scheemakers came out of virtual retirement. The aging Louis-François Roubiliac was very ill by the end of 759, but he, too, submitted a design.⁴⁶ The younger generation was represented by William Tyler, Agostino Carlini, William Chambers, Joseph Wilton, and James Athenian Stuart, who were all resident in London. Robert Adam, who was on his Grand Tour, seems to have sent his entry from Rome.⁴⁷ All of the entries were submitted by late 759,⁴⁸ and the Duke of Devonshire chose Wilton as the winner of the competition sometime in the spring of 760.⁴⁹ There is strong evidence to indicate that the duke was swayed in his decision by Pitt. In a letter dated 6 March 760 to the duke, Richard, Earl Temple, stated that Pitt highly approved of Wilton’s design.⁵⁰ This was in response to a now-lost letter from the duke to Temple in which the duke indicated his preference for Stuart’s design but noted that he would, in effect, defer to Pitt’s opinion. On the face of it, Pitt’s preference for Wilton seems somewhat inexplicable given Wilton’s young age and his lack of experience compared to several of the other competitors who had extensive and illustrious careers. By 759 he had only three relatively small funeral monuments to his credit.⁵¹ Most of his commissions had been classical statuary for landscape gardens and sculpture halls as well as a range of Greek- and Roman-inspired portrait busts. Unfortunately, Wilton’s competition entry does not survive, and we know from Grosley, who saw the partially completed monument in Wilton’s workshop in 765, that the final design of the monument was considerably different from the initial proposal.⁵² However, Wilton had a political edge over many of the other competitors. He had returned to London from his Grand Tour in 755 well connected to many young members of the Whig gentry and aristocracy, several of whom were pro-imperialist in their ideology. His primary patron, the fifth Duke of Richmond, stands out especially. Richmond’s belief in an empire of trade unhindered by any form of taxation ultimately drove him to support the American colonists in the lead up to the American Revolution. Long before that, he had met Wolfe in 752 and had kept up a friendly correspondence until Wolfe’s death. They shared similar views on military strategy, and Richmond, contradicting the prevailing charges of effeminacy levelled against the aristocracy, had gamely led his regiment in the battle at Minden. When Wolfe’s body arrived in Portsmouth, Richmond had sent Wilton to take a death mask out of respect for his friend. Wolfe’s face was too distorted, and Wilton had to settle for creating a likeness based on a servant 118

official empir e

of Lord Gower, who many agreed looked like the young general, with details corrected by Lord Edgcumbe from memory.⁵³ This compilation of Wolfe’s countenance became the source for Wilton’s busts of Wolfe and for the statue in the monument.⁵⁴ To a certain extent, Wilton had also already entered the Grenville Cousinhood camp. In 759, just prior to winning the Wolfe monument, he had secured the commission for a medium-sized monument for Westminster Abbey, complete with portrait bust, of Admiral Temple West, who was a cousin of Pitt and the Grenville brothers. In typical Grenvillian fashion, the inscription is an excruciatingly long puff telling of the admiral’s less than outstanding naval accomplishments and his virtuous patriotism. Wilton’s Englishness also may have contributed to his selection as sculptor of the Wolfe monument. Indeed, the foreignness of some of the competitors – Rysbrack, Scheemakers, Roubiliac, and Carlini – may have proved their downfall. Rysbrack and Roubiliac had lost the competition for the Mansion House pediment over twenty-five years earlier on just such xenophobic criteria.⁵⁵ Perhaps Adam’s Scottishness worked against him in the same way at a time when memories of the Jacobite Rebellion of 745 were still very ripe. Furthermore, upon his return to London in the mid-750s, Wilton, with Chambers and other young artists like Joshua Reynolds, reinvigorated what had become a languid English art world. Among their accomplishments was the drawing academy filled with plaster casts and marble copies that Wilton and Chambers had established for the Duke of Richmond in his palace at Whitehall.⁵⁶ The artists’ predilection for the neoclassical meant that English art, as far as the aesthetes were concerned, surpassed the frivolities of much contemporary art of the Continent. In a society where bellicose anti-Gallicanism was rife, where the aristocracy was generally charged with having let England down because they had become too preoccupied with pursuing French effeminacy, and where the Crown was considered to show too great an affection for Hanover, Englishness and English behaviour counted for much.⁵⁷ Ultimately, Pitt’s choice of Wilton may also have been prompted by the fact that Wilton had done some work for George, Prince of Wales, at Kew, namely the classical statuary for the Gallery of Antiques designed by William Chambers.⁵⁸ The young prince was already proving politically problematic for Pitt. Perhaps by hiring the prince’s sculptor, Pitt was trying to consolidate his own patriotic Britishness in the face of the young king-to-be, who was already emphasizing his Britishness in contrast to his grandfather’s un-British and consequently unpatriotic affection for Hanover. The poetic notion of the quintessential young British sculptor designThe Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

119

ing the monument to the quintessential young British general no doubt would also have appealed to Pitt.

the d e signs I will not enumerate the various ways by which men have endeavoured to eternize memorable actions, or to retain the remembrance of persons who have been dear to them. It will be sufficient to inform such as are not conversant in such matters that amongst those practised by the Greeks, the masters of all mankind in the fine arts, that which was in most general estimation was a simple statue of the hero, in some action or attitude according to the fancy or genius of the artist, and on the pedestal of which, some of his most memorable exploits were engraven in basso relievo [sic].⁵⁹

This was the advice offered anonymously in the London Chronicle in December 759 to young sculptors who intended to submit competition entries for the Wolfe monument. The advice goes on to suggest that the base be embellished with narrative reliefs depicting Wolfe’s gallant yet fateful victory at Quebec; his funeral, with his grief-stricken yet proud mother, his fiancée, Pitt (“that great and worthy patriot”), the king, and “all ranks and conditions of men in the three kingdoms”; and finally the apotheosis of the hero.⁶⁰ However, none of the extant competition entries, nor a description of another entry that does not survive, nor the final monument exhibits this restrained and sometimes esoteric neoclassical idiom.⁶¹ The competition entries are entirely more narrative than the primarily allegorical composition suggested in the London Chronicle. Instead of the upright proud commander, Wolfe lies dying in the arms of a grieving grenadier. The final monument is especially sentimental. A rather attenuated and nearly nude figure of Wolfe lies back with his right hand lightly resting over his heart as he looks with anticipation up to Victory, who descends to crown him with laurels (fig. 4.2). Two concerned and grieving soldiers look on. The similarities between the extant entries and the monument as finally designed suggest that certain design conditions were drawn up for the competition brief, which does not survive: Wolfe must be presented dying; either Victory or Fame must proffer a laurel wreath; and some indication of where the battle took place must be included. The obvious question is why would those who drew up the competition brief want such a highly sentimental and rather simple narrative of the general’s death and victory, especially for such a noble project, rather than a more traditional design for a great hero. Indeed, the Wolfe monument is distinctive among the monuments in Westminster Abbey in its simplicity and 120

official empir e

Fig. 4.4 Robert Taylor, The Monument of Captain James Cornewall in Westminster Abby [sic], 1744–55.

emphasis on accessible narrative. The ponderous monuments in the Abbey tend toward elaborate allegory, sometimes combined with dense Latin inscriptions. The Cornewall monument, an ostensibly public commission paid for by Parliament in the late 740s, is one of the less complicated – Fame and Britannia surround a medallion portrait of the captain, while a relief at the monument’s base depicts the battle in which Cornewall died – yet it contains a lengthy epitaph in Latin that would be understood by only a few of the many visitors to the Abbey (fig. 4.4). While the Cornewall monument served as an important antecedent The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

121

to the Wolfe monument, the people who pushed the Cornewall commission through Parliament were not terribly interested in reaching a particularly wide audience, as we shall see in chapter 5. In contrast, the simple narrative in the Wolfe monument accords with Pitt’s political, public-based agenda. The Wolfe monument had to appeal to people across class and gender lines. These were all of the people who celebrated Wolfe’s victory and mourned his death, from aristocrats to the herb- and milk-women whom Grosley had seen in the Abbey. An anonymous critic of Agostino Carlini’s design, who saw the design at the Society of Arts Exhibition in 760, harshly condemned it for being too esoteric: “First, a bad choice in point of time, viz. that moment in which his hero is expiring, where he is in a lying posture, which is by no means favourable to the art of painting or sculpture. Secondly, it is too allegorical, which was unnecessary in a hero who had done so much himself, and that any allegory, which is a perfect riddle to all but the learned. Thirdly, its being too scattered and the parts of the design not being grouped together, as they certainly ought in order to touch the spectator.”⁶² Although the critic disagreed with the propriety of the depiction of Wolfe in a dying posture, he did emphasize the importance of the readability of the composition by more than just the learned and the ability of the composition to touch the spectator. The almost unctuous sentimentality of the Wolfe monument as finally designed was consistent with the cult of Wolfe. As we have seen, the emphasis in the cult of Wolfe was on his death, not on his abilities as a great commander. Indeed, in the monument as built, the exact moment depicted is the moment that became legend in the days following Wolfe’s death: A young soldier has just run up to the injured Wolfe to tell him that the French have been defeated. This is expressed by the rather dishevelled figure in the centre of the composition, who emerges from low relief to three dimensions as though he has suddenly been stopped in his tracks by the sight of his dying commander collapsing in the arms of a similarly distraught and dishevelled grenadier. Upon hearing the soldier’s news, Wolfe lies back with his right hand on his heart, and the viewer half expects to see a word bubble containing his famous last phrase “Alas! I die in peace.”⁶³ The moment depicted is the most intense and the most pregnant, thus fulfilling the basic tenet of successful narrative art: that the critical moment should suggest both past and future actions. It is also the most sentimental, pulling at the heartstrings of the viewer. A decade later Benjamin West would choose to portray exactly the same scene for exactly the same reasons in his painting The Death of General Wolfe, no doubt having seen Wilton’s model and the unfinished sculpture in his workshop (fig. 4.5).⁶⁴ 122

official empir e

Fig. 4.5

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, 1771.

Three of the four extant competition entries are, like Carlini’s, far less sentimental and accessible than Wilton’s final monument. This could well explain why these and the lost designs by Cheere, Tyler, Chambers, and Stuart were not successful.⁶⁵ Rysbrack offered a design typical of his oeuvre (fig. 4.6). Wolfe in classical battle armour lies in a relaxed semi-recumbent pose in the arms of Britannia. It is unclear whether he is dying or in a timeless state of virtuous being, which is typical of monuments in the late seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries, such as that to Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey, which Rysbrack executed according to William Kent’s designs in the late 720s and early 730s. In his Wolfe composition, a weeping Minerva stands at the hero’s feet amid standards, cannon, and other trophies, while Fame, blowing her trumpet, descends to place the laurel wreath on his head. Below, depicted in relief, is The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

123

Fig. 4.6 John Michael Rysbrack, design for the monument to Major General James Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, c. 1759.

the scene of Wolfe’s death on the battlefield, with the hero dressed in classical garb. Compared to Wilton’s final monument, Rysbrack’s design is distant and removed; the figure of Wolfe does not generate the same emotional response, and the classical allusions obfuscate who and which battle are commemorated. Indeed, Rysbrack’s design was somewhat old-fashioned for the late 750s, lacking as it does the theatricality and emotional poignancy of Roubiliac’s contemporary works. Malcolm Baker has convincingly suggested that Rysbrack’s design for the Wolfe monument is in fact a recycled version of his composition for the Duke of 124

official empir e

Fig. 4.7 Peter Scheemakers (attr.), design for the monument to Major General James Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, c. 1759.

Argyll’s monument from the late 740s. This design had also been rejected and the commission awarded to Roubiliac, whose composition engages the viewer far more emphatically.⁶⁶ Another entry, plausibly attributable to Scheemakers given the drawing style and rather outdated design, is similarly staid and does little to strike an emotional nerve (fig. 4.7). Wolfe is again semi-recumbent, but here he is very much awake, supporting himself and firmly grasping his baton while he looks over the right shoulder of the viewer. Only the North American Native situates the The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

125

Fig. 4.8 Robert Adam, design for the monument to Major General James Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, c. 1759.

battle; he is shown kissing the foot of the general in gratitude. As in the Rysbrack design, the battle is depicted in relief, and all is shrouded in voluminous classical drapery. The erasure marks at the apex of the pyramid indicate that the artist first conceived of the backdrop as a standard pyramid that was then transformed into an elaborate tent with an eagle above, perhaps to conform with the competition brief. This, combined with the teetering pose of the Native, suggests that, like Rysbrack’s entry, this design, too, may have been recycled. 126

official empir e

Fig. 4.9 Robert Adam, design for the monument to Major General James Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, c. 1759.

Although Robert Adam’s design departs from the traditional pyramidal compositions by Rysbrack and Scheemakers (yet a pyramid still serves as a backdrop), his entry also lacks a certain immediacy. Two versions of the design, one slightly more finished, survive (figs 4.8 and 4.9). In each version a large relief of the death of Wolfe is framed by a classical surround. In the less finished design, two North American Natives, identified as such only by their loincloths, stand to either side of the relief with their hands bound behind their backs. In the more The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

127

Fig. 4.10 Robert Adam, design for a relief on the monument to Major General James Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, c. 1759.

finished drawing, the Natives have been removed to the top of the architectural surround, where they cower at the feet of Victory. All of the figures are essentially studies in a classical vein, including the Europeanized Natives. A detailed drawing of the relief of the death of Wolfe also survives (fig. 4.0). In this, the same scene is depicted as in the final monument, but everyone wears classical dress, and Quebec is transformed into a classical or medieval fortress identifiable as Quebec only by the handwritten labels “Quebeck,” “Leveepoint,” and “River St. Lawrence.” There is little to situate the battle, and the classicizing details obscure, for the less educated or illiterate viewer, the significance of the event.⁶⁷ 128 o f f i c i a l e m p i r e

Fig. 4.11 Nathaniel Smith after Louis-François Roubiliac, design for the monument to Major General James Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, c. 1759–1760

A fourth extant entry, that by Roubiliac, is entirely antithetical to the other rejected entries yet goes far beyond Wilton’s final monument in terms of degree of sentimentality. The design survives in a faint drawing by Roubiliac’s apprentice Nathaniel Smith and in a rather stilted engraving done after the terra cotta model and published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 789 (figs 4. and 4.2).⁶⁸ Both images show an extraordinarily pathetic Wolfe collapsing in the arms of a grief-stricken figure of Fame, who is so distraught that she has let her trumpet fall to her side (the horn is just visible under the standard to her left). The impact is heightened by the portrayal of Wolfe in contemporary dress, as he is instantly The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

129

Fig. 4.12 T. Cook after LouisFrançois Roubiliac, Model of an original Design for a Monument to the Memory of Genl. Wolfe, in the possession of Charles Theomartyn Crane. Mercht London. Design c. late 1759, early 1760.

recognizable. The figures at the base of the pedestal tell the story of Wolfe’s victory. To the right of Wolfe, Britannia is cast both as Minerva, the benevolent conqueror complete with a Herculean club, and as Victory, signified by the laurel wreath that she holds. She is seated on a globe, which indicates the extent of the new British Empire, while a French eagle cowers behind. On Wolfe’s left, a British lion crushes a rather imaginative version of a North American Native (bearded and curly-haired), who holds a map of Quebec, serving to remind the viewer of the vast territory that has been gained by Wolfe’s victory. A beaver, uniquely the 130

official empir e

Fig. 4.13 (left) Louis-François Roubiliac, monument to Richard Boyle Viscount Shannon, erected 1759. St Mary’s, Walton-on-Thames, Middlesex. Fig. 4.14 (right) Louis-François Roubiliac, monument to George Frederick Handel, erected 1762. Westminster Abbey, London.

only reference to the economic potential of the capture of Quebec and Canada in all of the surviving competition entries, peeps out from underneath. The impact of the entire composition would have also been increased by Roubiliac’s intention to carve all of the figures in the round and to set them against a huge illusionistic relief of a magnificent military tent, comparable to his monument to Field Marshal Viscount Shannon in the parish church at Walton-onThames, commissioned in 756 and erected in 759 (fig. 4.3).⁶⁹ Both versions of The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

131

Roubiliac’s design are set within arches topped with a plaque inscribed “Britannia Posuit.” Smith’s drawing is a study for the arch; the rest of the design is only loosely sketched. Perhaps Roubiliac intended to fill an entire bay of the Abbey with the monument and to incorporate the existing arch into his composition, as he would do with his smaller monument to George Friedrich Handel, which is contemporaneous with the Wolfe competition (fig. 4.4).⁷⁰ Roubiliac’s design is a straightforward narrative of the death of Wolfe and his victory at Quebec. In this respect it corresponds to the not terribly sophisticated tone of the illuminations and eulogies of late 759. Indeed, it may have been too simplistic, and too contemporary, for Pitt, the Duke of Devonshire, and whoever else had a say in the selection process. In the use of contemporary dress, Roubiliac’s portrayal of Wolfe is the least noble according to eighteenthcentury standards, which called for allusions to the classical or Renaissance ideal. Indeed, even though Benjamin West depicted Wolfe in a pose usually reserved for the dead Christ, George III refused to buy The Death of General Wolfe in 770 because the figures were wearing “coats, breeches and cock’d hats,” dress that belittled the hero and detracted from the significance of his accomplishments (see fig. 4.5).⁷¹ In 780 Reynolds was still insisting that classical dress was essential for monumental sculpture because it was a timeless, permanent medium.⁷² In the letter that accompanied the print in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 789, the author “R, an intimate Friend of Roubiliac” (Edward Brigden) recorded that Roubiliac had won the competition for the Wolfe monument but because he was too ill, the commission was given to Wilton.⁷³ This is surely a fabrication since it is not corroborated by the letter from Temple to the Duke of Devonshire, which indicates that Roubiliac and all of the other entrants, except for Stuart and Wilton, were out of the running by March 760.⁷⁴ However, Roubiliac’s influence in the design process of the final monument should not be entirely discounted, especially given the immediacy evident in both Roubiliac’s design and the final monument. Wilton was considered the heir apparent to the sick and elderly sculptor, who was at the height of his reputation when Wilton returned from his Grand Tour in 755. The two sculptors were obviously closely acquainted in 760 since each carved a bust of the other in that year and since, after Roubiliac died in 762, Nathaniel Smith moved over to Wilton’s workshop, where he was given the job, among others, of carving the figure of Wolfe.⁷⁵ In contrast to Roubiliac’s entry, the other extant entries, and the description of Carlini’s entry, Wilton’s design for the monument as it was finally executed satisfies all concerns (see figs 4. and 4.2). The overall composition and distribution of figures are in fact quite old-fashioned, similar to the pyramidal con132 o f f i c i a l e m p i r e

structs suggested by Rysbrack and Scheemakers. Even the crown at the top of Scheemakers’s design reappears at the apex of Wilton’s tent. Like the old-school designs, the classical allusions in Wilton’s monument exude a sense of virtue and nobility – some of the more learned viewers of the monument made the connection between the dying Wolfe and both Epaminondas and King Gustavus Adolpus⁷⁶ – yet the contemporary, sentimentally provocative elements made the composition accessible to the most illiterate of Pitt’s public. In addressing Pitt’s diversified public, the composition of the final monument swings from the dignity of Wolfe’s death to jingoistic anti-Gallicanism. In a manner no more subtle than Roubiliac’s cowering eagle and map of conquered Quebec, Wilton’s Wolfe grinds a French standard embellished with the fleur-delis under his feet. Grosley, as might be expected, was not impressed when he saw the model and the partially finished monument in Wilton’s workshop in 765: the drooping hero had, as a carpet under his feet, a great pair of colours, thrown there at random, part of which falls upon the monument: upon these colours are represented three flower-de-luces, in the strongest embroidery ... I was satisfied with a single view of this monument: I was as short a time about it as possible; but I often saw Frenchmen detained there by charitable Englishmen, who gave them a circumstantial explanation of the whole piece. I heard one of these asking a journeyman sculptor the meaning of the three fleur-de-luces, represented upon the colours, which lay under the feet of general Wolfe: the answer was as disagreeable as laconic, that is, it was such as should be expected.⁷⁷

Like Roubiliac’s entry, several clues in Wilton’s final monument easily situate the narrative of Wolfe’s death even though he is dressed in classical garb. A tomahawk and scalping knife are entwined in the branches of an oak tree on the right behind the tent that forms the backdrop of the monument. In the manner of Rysbrack’s and Scheemakers’s designs, a relief panel on the huge plinth below the monument illustrates the battle on the Plains of Abraham (fig. 4.5). This was executed in lead by Giovanni Battista Cappezoldi, who had come from Italy with Wilton upon his return to London in 755. In contrast to the reliefs in the designs by Rybrack, Scheemakers, and Adam, however, Capezzoldi’s purports to give an accurate rendering of the battle. It unfolds in three parts. On the right, the soldiers row to shore from landing craft moored in the choppy St Lawrence River. Once ashore they are faced with the seemingly impossible task of scaling the cliffs, the height, magnitude, and precipitous nature of which are accentuated as their jagged profile pushes out in very high relief into the viewer’s space. The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

133

Fig. 4.15 Giovanni Battista Capezzoldi, The Battle for Quebec, unveiled 1773, relief on the monument to Major General James Wolfe. Westminster Abbey, London.

On the left, once the troops have clambered to the top, they are shown falling into formation to attack the fort from the rear in efficient and organized British military fashion. The two grieving Highland grenadiers in the upper part of the monument also situate the battle (fig. 4.2). Many theories and legends have evolved about the identity of the two Highlanders, but their specific identity is less important than the simple fact that they are Highlanders.⁷⁸ None of the other competition entries specifically identify any of the soldiers as Scottish. Indeed, by including the Scots, Wilton addressed a significant component of English Whig political strategy, that of bringing Scotland, particularly the Highland clans, into the British fold after the Jacobite Rebellion of 745. Aware of the Highlanders’ bravery (often characterized as savagery), obedience, and loyalty to their chieftains, the English made overtures to the chieftains as early as the late 740s in attempts to quash Jacobitism and prevent any further threats to England from the North. The Highland regiments were allowed to reconstitute themselves as independent units under Scottish commanders, and the soldiers were granted 134 o f f i c i a l e m p i r e

the right to wear kilts (although civilians were not). Their reputation for brutish strength and loyalty also countered the English army’s reputation for depending on press-ganged soldiers led by effeminate aristocrats. They also, of course, provided cannon fodder for the imperial cause. The inclusion of the Highlanders in the Wolfe monument visually confirms the strength of the Union and of British (as opposed to only English) patriotism. As far as Wolfe was concerned, he had fought against the Highlanders as a young officer, and although he admired their perseverance and loyalty, he saw it as “no great mischief” if they fell at Quebec.⁷⁹ Ironically, his marble effigy lies forever dying in the arms of a Highland grenadier. Ultimately, for modern viewers of the Wolfe monument, it is hard to get around the fact that the dying figure of Wolfe is rather effeminate, which, for some, might seem to compromise the reading of the monument as an attempt to counter the charges of effeminacy levelled at the upper echelons of English society.⁸⁰ However, any implication of effeminacy can be negated if it is understood that the figure of Wolfe was supposed to be an accurate rendering of the often sickly young general, complete with his rather beaky nose and his thin, attenuated, body. Such accuracy would only serve to heighten the portrayal of Wolfe as the everyman and consequently intensify the level of sentimental response in the contemporary audience. In a similar vein, while the depiction of Wolfe in the last throes of life would strike a chord in even the apparently most unfeeling and illiterate member of Pitt’s public, it also corresponded to the burgeoning fashion among the elite for exaggerated displays of highly charged emotion.

a new style for a new empire? The final monument has been described as transitional, caught between the taste for Roubiliac’s baroque at the middle of the century and the growing preference for the neoclassical.⁸¹ Margaret Whinney was less charitable and stated that the combination of “the extreme naturalism of the two soldiers and the Baroque allegory of the Victory” “borders on the grotesque.”⁸² The discontinuities in the design are indeed awkward, but while Whinney blamed the problems on the pretensions of the artist,⁸³ it might be more appropriate to assess the design of the final monument as an attempt to create a new style for a new empire. We have seen that various elements in the composition address the wide-ranging populace that made up the political public in the late 750s and 760s. Similarly, the combination of the modern and the classical as well as the mix of narrative and allegory meant that the monument would be accessible to both contemporary The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

135

and subsequent audiences, a matter of concern to virtually anyone who commissioned a monument. The new empire was a complicated affair. It was, of course, grounded in trade, the success of which required the displacement or eradication of large numbers of indigenous peoples, the impressment of criminals and members of the lower classes into the army and the navy, and ultimately the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Africans. However, the British presented the empire to themselves as an empire of trade that also combined benevolence and liberty. As Kathleen Wilson has noted, the lists of exports in the London and provincial papers were joined before mid-century by regular sections on “American affairs” and “British plantations” that effaced the more odious bits of the empire.⁸⁴ Later, with the victories of the annus mirabilis, the empire became the upholder of liberty in the face of tyranny. For eighteenth-century commentators it was easy, and it almost behove them, to make comparisons between the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations and the new British Empire that emerged in the early years of the Seven Years War. When Pitt called for the monument to Wolfe, he had placed Wolfe’s victory on a par with those of the Ancients, but some, such as Horace Walpole, felt that the victory and the other successes of the annus mirabilis had surpassed anything accomplished by the Ancients: The parallels which [Pitt] drew from Greek and Roman story did but flatten the pathetic of the topic. Mr Pitt himself had done more for Britain than any orator for Rome. Our three last campaigns have overrun more world than they conquered in a century – and for the Grecians, their story were [sic] a pretty theme if the town of St. Albans were waging war with that of Brentford. The horror of the night, the precipice scaled by Wolfe, the empire that he with a handful of men added to England, and the glorious catastrophe of contentedly terminating his life where his fame began – ancient story may be ransacked, and ostentatious philosophy thrown into account, before an episode can be found to rank with Wolfe’s.⁸⁵

In the press Wolfe was compared, among others, to Epaminondas; to Cato, who had committed suicide in patriotic defence of Roman liberty; and, more imaginatively, to Mark Antony, who slew the oppressor of liberty.⁸⁶ Pitt, for his part, was widely touted as the new Cicero.⁸⁷ But more frequently Wolfe and Pitt were presented by Pitt himself and by others as everymen of the eighteenth century, in keeping with Pitt’s Great Commoner and Great Patriot image. Wilton’s

136

official empir e

Fig. 4.16

Francis Hayman, modello for The Humanity of General Amherst, 1760.

monument struck a balance and presented Wolfe as a modern man imbued with the legacy of the Ancients. In conjunction with the fiction of the British Empire as the upholder of liberty, there was to be another dimension in Wilton’s Wolfe monument, but for some reason this was expunged in the design as it was finally executed. When Grosley saw the model for the monument in Wilton’s workshop in 765, it included opposite the figure of Victory “a group of military men and Canadians who express, by a variety of different attitudes, the most profound sorrow.”⁸⁸ Thus Wolfe would have been seen as the saviour of the canadien peasants oppressed by French tyranny. This topos was firmly in place in the popular press.⁸⁹ In sculpture it was hinted at in Roubiliac’s design by the inclusion of Britannia as the

The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

137

Fig. 4.17 c. 1760.

Francis Hayman, modello for Lord Clive Receiving the Homage of the Nabob,

wise and benevolent Minerva, and in painting it formed the theme of one of the earliest and most public paintings to celebrate the British conquest of Canada, Francis Hayman’s The Humanity of General Amherst, painted for the Rotunda at Vauxhall Gardens in 76 (fig. 4.6). Amherst is portrayed, in emulation of Livy’s story of the Continence of Scipio Africanus, distributing food to the emaciated widows, children, and elderly of Montreal following the surrender of Montreal to Amherst in September 760. British magnanimity is underscored by the inscription on a rock in a corner of the painting that reads “POWER EXERTED , / CONQUEST OBTAINED , / MERCY SHOWN / MDCCLX .” Nowhere is it indicated that the plight of the Canadiens had been exacerbated by the months-long siege of Montreal by the British. In a companion painting at Vauxhall, Lord Clive is presented in a similarly humane vein, graciously and civilly meeting the defeated 138 o f f i c i a l e m p i r e

Fig. 4.18 1765.

Simon François Ravenet after Francis Hayman, The Triumph of Britannia,

Mir Jafar, nawab of Murshidabad, who would, in reality, become a puppet of the East India Company (fig. 4.7).⁹⁰ These were matched by allegorical renderings of Britain’s other great military and naval victories (fig. 4.8).⁹¹ It is unclear why the Canadiens were removed from the final design of the Wolfe monument. Perhaps introducing Wolfe as the liberator of the oppressed as well as the defender of British liberties would have overly complicated the narrative. Much of the success of monumental sculpture rests upon the simplicity of its narrative, a fact no doubt apparent to those who finalized the design of the Wolfe monument given its apparent straightforward narrative. At Vauxhall, in both the Amherst and Clive paintings, the figures are portrayed in contemporary dress, presumably because they represent specific events at specific times. In the allegorical paintings at Vauxhall, the emphasis is almost The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

139

entirely classical: Britannia and Neptune ride the waves triumphantly, Neptune’s nereids hold medallion portraits of the victorious admirals, and Britannia distributes laurels to her victorious generals, who wear Roman armour.⁹² In the Wolfe monument, the combination of modern and classical dress is explained by the desire to combine narrative and allegory. Thus the monument addresses the problem inherent in monumental public sculpture of both recording a specific event and addressing the timeless nature of the medium. Almost immediately after Wilton’s design for the Wolfe monument was selected, another monument was commissioned for Westminster Abbey that combines both modern and antique dress. This was the monument to Vice Admiral Charles Watson, financed by the East India Company, whose secret committee to oversee the commission approached Pitt in late 759 seeking his permission to erect a monument in the Abbey (fig. 4.9).⁹³ Watson had died of an illness during the siege led by Clive to regain Calcutta after the Black Hole debacle in 757. In July 760 the directors of the company passed the resolution to erect the monument, and shortly thereafter Athenian Stuart – who had apparently narrowly lost the Wolfe competition to Wilton – was given the commission without a competition.⁹⁴ Stuart’s design was most unconventional, yet it proved a brilliant answer to a tricky compositional problem engendered by the lack of available space in the Abbey. The monument was placed in a very prominent position in the gallery of the north transept. Three pedestrian statues each fill a bay in the gallery arcade; the middle and highest figure represents Watson, while a bound and scowling Hindu is seated to his right and a kneeling figure of Calcutta is on his left. The whole was visually linked by the transformation of the gallery columns into palm trees (which have since been removed). With his right hand Watson extends a palm branch to a chained Hindu, who is portrayed in a savage-like state of near nakedness. Watson’s attention, however, is focused on the figure of Calcutta, who bears her breast in thanksgiving. The shields below the figures are inscribed with accounts of victories in the East that emphasize the noble and civilized virtues of Watson: Chandenagore and Ghereah were “taken” by the British, whereas Calcutta was “freed.” While Watson wears a toga, the other two figures are represented in modern dress. In contrast to the Wolfe monument, the combination of antique and modern is far more harmonious because of the near nakedness of the Hindu and the flowing quality of Calcutta’s sari, comparable in appearance to an ancient chiton. The division of the composition by the palm trees also dissipates any dissonance that might be perceived. In the Wolfe monument, the discordance in the juxtaposition of antique and modern dress, and by extension instantaneous and eternal time, seems to have 140

official empir e

Fig. 4.19 James Athenian Stuart and Peter Scheemakers, monument to Vice Admiral Charles Watson, 1759–63. Westminster Abbey, London.

been acknowledged by Wilton, and he sought to address it, although not terribly successfully. This would explain why Wolfe is shown virtually naked. J.T. Smith acerbically reasoned that Wilton had portrayed Wolfe in this way to show off his “anatomical knowledge.”⁹⁵ While Wilton was indeed interested in the portrayal of the ideal human form – he had made his early reputation on marble copies of the Venus de’Medici and the Apollo Belvedere – the rendering of Wolfe nearly naked also avoided the harsh contrast between either antique armour or toga and contemporary dress.⁹⁶ The classical allusions are limited to the antique couch and a toga that looks rather more like bed linen. In conformity with the The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

141

depiction of the classical ideal in the manner of the Apollo Belvedere, Wolfe is a thin yet finely muscled youth who dies a highly sanitized death, bloodless and without a bandage in sight despite having been shot three times. In a further effort to rectify the discontinuity between the instant of Wolfe’s death and the eternal timelessness of his heroism, Wolfe’s contemporary uniform is seen in a heap at his feet. The result of this, however, is not terribly successful, as it looks as though Wolfe threw off his uniform before expiring on an antique couch that had miraculously appeared on the battlefield. In both the Wolfe and Watson monuments, the protagonists are not portrayed in classical armour, although they were, of course, a military and naval commander respectively. In this respect, Wilton’s monument also differs from all of the other extant competition entries, where Wolfe is seen either in classical armour or contemporary uniform. The emphasis is clearly on peace. Wolfe waits to hear that the French have been defeated before lying back to utter his last words, “Alas! I die in peace!” while Victory descends with a palm branch. Watson, for his part, extends a palm branch of peace to his fallen enemy. The topos of the British Empire bringing peace to the world was yet one more fiction promulgated by the British for their enemies and, more to the point, for themselves to justify imperial economic expansion on an unprecedented scale. The monuments to Wolfe and Watson taken together, and they are situated on either side of the entrance to the north transept, share some distinct similarities that are idiosyncratic to eighteenth-century British monumental sculpture and, in their accordance with the fictions of empire created in the popular press and in the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary realms, offer a new style for the new empire.

the unveiling The Wolfe monument was finally unveiled in Westminster Abbey in November 773, fourteen years after Pitt had called for the monument in the House of Commons. No reason has ever been posited to explain the delay. Perhaps it was simply the inability to get appropriate pieces of marble from Italy, especially during the Seven Years War. More likely, it was a factor of Wilton having to make numerous changes to the design over the years, as implied by Grosley’s description of the monument in 765, which is different from the final design. Over the course of those fourteen years, the imperial landscape had changed significantly, and it was about to change dramatically with the onset of the American Revolution. Indeed, the colonies that Wolfe’s victory had helped to secure – the so-called 142 o f f i c i a l e m p i r e

jewels of Pitt’s empire – were disrupting the stability of this empire. Yet despite the turmoil, Wolfe and the cult of Wolfe remained extraordinarily popular both among those who supported the American colonists’ rights and among those who upheld the decisions of the Crown and Parliament that challenged these rights. In the early 770s the American colonies remained firmly within the imperial framework; thoughts of revolution and independence were still far off and were, indeed, unthinkable.⁹⁷ The cult of Wolfe had been given a significant boost with Benjamin West’s The Death of General Wolfe, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy exhibition in 77 (see fig. 4.5). West, an ambitious American who had broken into the British art world and was establishing himself on a par with Reynolds and Gainsborough, created an epic portrait. Wolfe clings to the last threads of life, waiting to hear the outcome of the battle (the messenger runs up from the left) before lying back to die in peace. West, like those who drew up the competition brief for the monument, recognized the most critical, and thus most dramatic, point in the narrative. The last stages of the battle unfold behind Wolfe. The painting became extremely popular and ultimately became the most widely reproduced image in the history of British art. It could be found in painted copies (West himself did three more), prints, ceramics, medals, glass painting, and any other manner of medium, eclipsing the range and quantity of memorabilia produced to honour Admiral Vernon after Porto Bello.⁹⁸ The success of the painting rests on a number of factors, the first being the actual subject of the work. Despite the enormity of the cult of Wolfe and the thousands of lines of poetry, prose, and play that had been written about the general, surprisingly few visual images of Wolfe’s victory were actually produced in the years immediately following the capture of Quebec, although several portraits of the general were either fortuitously discovered or made.⁹⁹ George Romney had exhibited his Death of General Wolfe at the Society of Artists exhibition in 763, where it won a prize and was bought by a banker, who promptly sent it off to the governor of Bengal. Its removal from Britain effectively withdrew it from the British art world and from the attention of the British public. Edward Penny offered a contribution the following year, also at the Society of Artists exhibition. His Death of General Wolfe was small, prosaic, and lacking in theatricality compared to Romney’s effort and elicited a modicum of aesthetic approval.¹⁰⁰ Thus the stage was set for West to take advantage of the dearth of images and produce a highly emotive and very dramatic rendition of the famous event. He began his studies in 765 and completed the painting five years later. Part of the success of West’s painting also rests on the fact that it appears to be an accurate record of the The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

143

actual event; Wolfe’s victory and fame were so great that no allegory was needed. The irony is that the painting is as much a fiction as any allegory. None of Wolfe’s subcommanders whom West included in the painting witnessed Wolfe’s death – such military strategy would have been utterly irrational – and several other men portrayed in the scene may not have been at the battle at all.¹⁰¹ The final point that ensured the popularity of West’s painting was the controversy that raged over it concerning West’s decision to portray Wolfe and his commanders in contemporary dress. As we have seen, George III was aghast at the concept, firm in his belief that only antique dress was appropriate for such a noble and virtuous man. Grand paintings of great events of the Seven Years War, namely Hayman’s Amherst and Clive paintings at Vauxhall and Romney’s Death of General Wolfe, all employ contemporary dress and seemed to cause little uproar when they were first unveiled or exhibited. In fact, little was made of the use of contemporary dress. However, these paintings belong to an earlier era in British art, before the primacy of the classical had become entrenched with the foundation of the Royal Academy in 768 and Joshua Reynolds’s discourses. West’s painting coincided with Reynolds’s Discourse III (presented in December 770), in which Reynolds spoke passionately about the frivolity of fashion and the need to use classical dress to accentuate the nobility and virtue of the event or person depicted.¹⁰² Reynolds led the assault on West’s painting. West, as ambitious as Reynolds, countered, ultimately swaying Reynolds and the aesthetic public with his argument that classical dress was inappropriate since the event had taken place in North America, a place where neither the Greeks nor the Romans had ever been. In contrast, a discussion of the appropriate garb for monumental sculpture never materialized, the general consensus in the late 760s being that classical dress was the only type that could match the inherent timelessness of a monument. Such was the case in the Wolfe and Watson monuments, although contemporary dress was used for the secondary figures to situate the narratives portrayed. The massive popularity of West’s painting had an impact on Wilton’s Wolfe monument in two significant ways. On the one hand, it rekindled interest in the monument that had taken so long to come to fruition. This was enhanced by the announcement in mid-772 that the monument was nearing completion and that Wilton had removed the pieces from his workshop to assemble them in the Abbey.¹⁰³ In September 772 Almack’s Assembly Rooms offered 00 for an epitaph for the monument. At a time when the American colonies were particularly obstreperous, this sparked an outpouring almost as large as that prompted by the news of the victory thirteen years before.¹⁰⁴ The proposed epitaphs range 144

official empir e

from cloyingly saccharin to anodyne professions of loyalty. It is unclear who, if anyone, won the prize or whether Almack’s had the authorization of those who oversaw the commission to issue such a competition. The final inscription on the monument does not correspond to any of the entries submitted to Almack’s. On the other hand, the success of West’s painting probably also usurped the attention that would have been directed at the monument. When the monument was finally unveiled in November 773, there was no critical commentary in the press, and the event was recorded with such perfunctory remarks as “Was opened the fine monument of General Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey. The inscription as follows.”¹⁰⁵ The lack of an aesthetic response to the monument at the unveiling might be explained by the fact that the monument had been in the making too long and that anyone who mattered had already seen the model and monument in execution in Wilton’s workshop for a number of years. As a result, the Wolfe monument suffered from the great pitfall of monumental sculpture: the often lengthy time-lag between the call for a monument and its actual unveiling. The Watson monument, in contrast, was unveiled in 763, just three years after it was commissioned, and it received considerably more coverage in the popular press.¹⁰⁶ The political landscape in Britain had changed over the fourteen years more dramatically than had the imperial landscape. Pitt had resigned in the autumn of 76 in disgust at the Crown’s and Parliament’s overwhelming opposition to drawing Spain into the war. Parliament, backed by the young and very British George III and by the ambitious Earl of Bute, felt that the costs, both financial and political, would be far greater than the potential benefits. The king and Bute had also broken the back of the Grenville Cousinhood; Richard, Earl Temple, had resigned his seat as Lord Privy Seal at the time of Pitt’s departure, but George Grenville, almost as equally powerful as treasurer of the Navy, remained in office. The young king and Bute were, at least at the beginning of the king’s reign, as skilled at playing the public as was Pitt. They, combined with Pitt’s enemies in the ministry, managed to turn the tide and range public opinion against Pitt, casting him as a warmonger and as a starver of the Treasury. Playing to Pitt’s personal ambitions, the king and Bute offered him a pension and a baronetcy for his wife, which he accepted (his own peerage would come later).¹⁰⁷ The king and Bute had succeeded in appropriating Pitt’s empire. In 762 the king rode to the opening of Parliament in his new coach festooned with sculptures and paintings celebrating the empire. The coach was designed by William Chambers, and the sculpture and paintings on it were executed by Wilton and Gianbattista Cipriani respectively.¹⁰⁸ The Monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey

145

Pitt did stage a comeback, at least in London, as early as 762,¹⁰⁹ much to the outrage of Bute, who quickly became the scapegoat for all that was wrong in Britain. Pitt’s defence of the American colonists in the prosecution of the repeal of the Stamp Act in 765 further increased his public reputation, but he would never fully regain his former power and authority. In many ways, his political career fizzled with a few spurts and bursts, as had interest in the Wolfe monument during its final years of building. Ironically, with the loss of the American colonies, Wolfe’s victory became a hollow one, and the monument that had taken so long to build would, soon after it was finished, commemorate only those very first, few, heady years of the British Empire, the empire that had been Pitt’s. One final component of the Wolfe monument firmly links Wolfe and his victory to Pitt. The inscription, as it was finally cut, consists of thirteen lines taken from Pitt’s speech in November 759 calling for the monument: TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES WOLFE MAJOR GENER AL AND COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE BRITISH LAND FORCES ON AN EXPEDITION AGAINST QUEBEC ; WHO , AFTER SURMOUNTING BY ABILITY AND VALOUR ALL OBSTACLES OF ART AND NATURE , WAS SLAIN IN THE MOMENT OF VICTORY, ON THE 13TH OF SEPTEMBER 1759. THE KING , AND THE PARLIAMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN DEDICATE THIS MONUMENT

Short, perfunctory, and apparently factual (just as the narrative of the composition feigned historical accuracy), Pitt’s oratorical skills would live on forever, cut into the monument that commemorated his protégé and his empire.

146

official empir e

chapte r five

Precedents and

Parallels: The Grenville Commissions

p

itt the Elder’s interest in and exploitation of the persuasive potential of monumental sculpture and the printed word was largely acquired from the man who would become his uncle-in-law, Viscount Lord Cobham. This chapter examines some of the monuments commissioned by Cobham and other members of the Grenville Counsinhood in so far as they offer precedents and parallels to Pitt’s monument for General Wolfe. The phalanx of Cobham’s Cubs, or Boy Patriots, rose to political prominence in the 740s and 750s and moved into numerous strategically important positions in the government and the navy.¹ In terms of social standing, most members of the Cousinhood would not ascend the social ladder beyond the minor aristocracy, although Richard Grenville, the eldest of the Grenville brothers, would inherit Cobham’s estates and his titles (consequently changing his name to Temple). He then actively pursued further preferment, ultimately securing an earldom in 759. He would also become the wealthiest aristocrat in England. The monuments commissioned by the various members of the Cousinhood reflect their respective social status. Those of minor aristocratic or gentlemanly standing commissioned monuments for public spaces, namely Westminster Abbey, and also enriched their own landscape gardens, such as George Lyttelton’s Hagley Hall, George Grenville’s Wootton, and later, Pitt the Elder’s Burton Pynsent. Richard Temple, on the other hand, like his uncle before him, would not deign to address the general public. His monuments remained exclusively within his landscape garden, the vaunted boundaries of the gentleman politician. The printed word provided the primary vehicle by which he made the public – always more circumscribed than Pitt’s version – aware of his efforts. The various patrons’ designs for the monuments were also conditioned by their intended

audiences. The designs range from the easily intelligible to the extremely esoteric. Consequently, and as monuments of the new empire, they not only serve to fix the significance of Pitt’s monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, but also indicate the breadth of persuasion and propaganda promoted by the proimperialist cause.

prec edents Cobham’s political ideology was given physical presence in the landscaping of his beloved Stowe, to which he retired in self-imposed exile after resigning his seat in Parliament in opposition to Robert Walpole’s Excise Act of 733. The Act would have placed a tax on goods imported from the colonies, thereby harming the colonial trade and, from an ideological standpoint, infringing on the rights and liberties of British citizens living in the colonies. Rather than publicly denouncing Walpole – a far too vulgar act for a gentleman politician – Cobham turned to the gentlemanly pursuit of gardening to register his disapproval. Landscaping of one’s private estate was ostensibly primarily a matter of aesthetics, an activity appropriate to a man of taste and a member of the landed gentry. Landscaping and garden features were also endowed with permanence, another quality that would have appealed to the landed gentry, for whom property and dynasty were so important. However, behind the front of aesthetics and permanence, Cobham’s garden at Stowe is unique in the complexity and particularity of its political program. Cobham’s belief that Britain had descended into a state of corruption and that Prime Minister Robert Walpole had George I and then George II under his thumb is most obviously manifest in the Elysian Fields, where the souls of British worthies, housed in the Temple of the British Worthies, are to be ferried across the River Styx with the help of Mercury, where they will enter the Temple of Ancient Virtue, which contains the statues of Homer, Epaminondas, Socrates, and Lycurgus (figs 5. and 5.2; the Temple of Ancient Virtue is visible in the background of fig. 5.7). Ancient Virtue was originally juxtaposed in its refined glory against the ruined Temple of Modern Virtue (demolished in the 780s), beside which was a headless statue in contemporary dress, which was probably a representation of Robert Walpole (fig. 5.3).² By the end of the 730s, the Gothic Temple of Liberty – stylistically free of any allusion to the decline of the Roman Empire – presided over the Elysian Fields. The dynastic and factional aspect of Cobham’s ideology was fulfilled in the Temple of Friendship, located just south of the Elysian Fields

148

official empir e

Fig. 5.1 Plan of the eastern gardens at Stowe, 1749, redrawn by Michael Gibbon, 1970.

Fig. 5.2 William Kent, the Temple of British Worthies, designed c. 1735. Stowe, Buckinghamshire.

across the lake. Designed by James Gibbs in 738, this classical temple originally contained busts of Cobham and his political cronies (the Earls of Westmorland and Chesterfield; Lords Bathurst and Gower; and Frederick, Prince of Wales) as well as busts of his protégés, Richard Grenville and William Pitt. The colonial/imperial component of Cobham’s ideology was most clearly embodied in the Palladian Bridge (visible to the right in fig. 5.4; the Gothic Temple is in the centre). The Bridge was completed in 742, and it links the Elysian and Hawkwell Fields with the Temple of Friendship. As it was originally designed, it had a solid wall on the side that ran along the edge of Cobham’s property, thus containing the view. The wall was embellished with a large basrelief by Peter Scheemakers of the four quarters of the world bringing produce to a benevolent Britannia. To the left and right were paintings by Francis Sleter showing the benefits for Britons of commerce and trade. On the left was a representation of Sir Walter Raleigh holding a map of Virginia, the colony that was to become the pride of Britain because of its tobacco production. Cobham presumably also focused on Virginia in a veiled reference to the ancestor of his nephews, 150 o f f i c i a l e m p i r e

Fig. 5.3 The Temple of Modern Virtue, c. 1734. Stowe, Buckinghamshire (demolished). Engraving published in George Bickham, The Beauties of Stow, 1750.

for in 585 Richard Grenville had initiated the first, albeit unsuccessful, settlement at Virginia. On the right was a painting of William Penn holding the Laws of Pennsylvania, the utopian colony free from persecution and corruption.³ The relief was also, like the Elysian Fields, a thinly veiled attack on Walpole’s corrupt administration and his attempts to hinder overseas trade. The insinuation was all the more pointed by the fact that the relief was contained in a Palladian bridge that, with the exception of the solid wall, was almost an exact copy of the famous Palladian Bridge at Wilton erected in 737 by Earl Pembroke, one of Walpole’s strongest allies (fig. 5.5). Cobham appropriated the design of the bridge and infused it with allusions to colonization and mercantilism, the two factors that Cobham charged Walpole and his cronies with neglecting, to the detriment of Britain.⁴ Cobham was not content simply to build bridges and temples in his landscape garden and hope that his barbed messages would be understood or find their targets. Despite the outward appearance of disinterestedness, Cobham was a master of disseminating his viewpoints through the printed word. The unveilThe Grenville Commissions

151

Fig. 5.4 View from the Temple of Friendship, showing from left: the Gothic Temple designed by James Gibbs in 1741, Cobham’s Pillar, 1747, and the Palladian Bridge, 1742. Stowe, Buckinghamshire

ings of many of the temples were recorded in the popular press, many of the reports having been written by George Lyttelton or by an anonymous contributor. Cobham himself was never recorded as the author; this would have been beneath his gentleman standing. Several of Cobham’s political cohorts, including Alexander Pope, published extensive poems and praise of his gardens. The first guidebook published about a single garden – many descriptions had previously appeared as parts of tours⁵ – was a guide to Stowe, published in 744. It contains descriptions of the gardens and garden features as well as the various inscriptions on the monuments, accompanied by English translations.⁶ The guidebook was written by Benton Seeley, a local writing master in Buckingham, who, the title page implies, embarked upon this venture unaided but with the approval of Cobham. It seems hardly coincidental that the guide appeared a year after Horace Walpole’s Ædes Walpolianæ, or a Description of the Collection of the 152 o f f i c i a l e m p i r e

Fig. 5.5

Roger Morris and the Earl of Pembroke, the Palladian Bridge at Wilton, 1737.

Pictures at Houghton Hall in Norfolk, an extensive guide to the picture collection at Robert Walpole’s Palladian pile. While Ædes Walpolianæ lists the many fine old-master and predominantly foreign paintings in Walpole’s collection, Seeley’s guide concentrates on the very British gardens at Stowe, infinitely more honourable as an expression of patriotism. Cobham passed on to his many nephews and nieces his appreciation of the propagandistic element inherent in both the printed word and monumental sculpture as well as his appreciation of the permanence of the latter. Of the many monuments erected by Cobham’s nephews and nieces, the most instructive precedents for Pitt’s endeavours in Westminster Abbey are two monuments dedicated to Captain Thomas Grenville and one to Henry Grenville, governor of Barbados from 747 to 756, the influence of which was bolstered by their discussion in the popular press. The Grenville Commissions

153

Thomas Grenville, the youngest of the five Grenville brothers, was killed while in command of the Defiance under Admiral Lord Anson in the battle off Cape Finisterre in 747 during the War of the Austrian Succession. At the time of his death, Thomas was a little-known captain. Nevertheless, the Grenville family proceeded to raise him to the level of a patriotic martyr who had gallantly given up his life for his country. In this respect, Thomas Grenville provided a model for Pitt and the manufacture of the martyrdom of General Wolfe just over a decade later. Indeed, when Pitt made his call in the House of Commons for a monument to Wolfe, George Grenville seconded the call and drew comparisons between Wolfe’s gallant sacrifice and that of his brother, much to the chagrin of Horace Walpole and Lord North.⁷ Commissioning monuments in honour of Thomas was a crucial part of the construction of the myth of martyrdom. Shortly after Thomas’s death, his siblings – George, Hester (Pitt’s wife), and Henry Grenville – commissioned a monument for Westminster Abbey.⁸ The commission was given to the up-and-coming young sculptor Prince Hoare of Bath. Hoare had studied with Scheemakers – who had worked extensively for Cobham – before going on a Grand Tour. Upon his return to Bath, he executed busts and statues of many people who had been or were still in the Cobham-Grenville circle, among them Chesterfield, Ralph Allen, and Beau Nash. William Pitt might have been responsible for choosing Hoare given that Bath was his home away from home and that he acted as mediator between the Grenvilles and the sculptor over a period of several years. The monument did not get much beyond the model stage, owing mostly to Hoare’s laissez-faire temperament. Letters in a number of archives record Pitt’s cajoling of Hoare; Pitt’s last ditch efforts to rescue the commission by bringing in William Hoare the painter (Prince’s brother) and Pitt’s nephew John Pitt; Henry Grenville’s grumblings about the delays and the cost of the monument and his questions regarding the character of the sculptor; and George Grenville’s increasing irritation.⁹ The final known reference to the monument is a receipt dated 2 March 764 from George Grenville to the dean and chapter of Westminster Abbey acknowledging the return of the fine that Grenville had paid fifteen years earlier to erect the monument.¹⁰ If the monument had been completed, it would have been among the largest in Westminster Abbey at the time. According to a rather vague description written by Pitt, the monument was to have been two stories high and to have contained a series of engaged columns running above a dado. The top was to have been embellished with trophies and a life-sized statue of the deceased. In con-

154 o f f i c i a l e m p i r e

trast to the toga-clad portrait statues that were a common feature of large funerary sculpture in the first half of the eighteenth century, the statue of Thomas Grenville was to have been clothed in modern dress, although in antique pose.¹¹ The result would have been an easily accessible contemporary narrative of the patriotism and martyrdom of the young naval captain, indicating that even at this date, Pitt and the Grenvilles were consciously thinking of their audience and how best to appeal to it. In 749, very early in the monument’s design history and in a rather obvious attempt to keep the martyrdom of Thomas Grenville a current topic, the inscription for the monument was published in the London Magazine. It was written in English by George Lyttelton: To the Memory of Captn THOMAS GRENVILLE Commander of his Majesty’s ship the Defiance; Who gallantly exerting himself In an engagement to a French fleet, Being at last desperately wounded, By a splinter of his shattered ship, With the satisfaction of seeing his countrymen victors, Gloriously expired May 3, 1747. Ye weeping muses, graces, virtues tell, If, since your all-accomplished Sidney fell, You, or afflicted Britain e’er deplor’d, A loss like that these plaintive lays record; Such spotless honour, such ingenuous truth, Such ripen’d wisdom in the bloom of youth So mild, so gentle, so compos’d a mind To such heroick warmth & courage join’d, He too, like Sidney, nurs’d in learning’s arms, For nobler war forsook her softer charms; Like him, possest of every pleasing art The secret wish of ev’ry female heart; Like him cut off in youthful glory’s pride; He unrepining for his country dy’d But nobler far, and greater is the praise, So bright to shine in these degen’rate days;

The Grenville Commissions

155

Fig. 5.6 at Stow.

George Bickham, A View from Capt’n Grenville’s Monument to the Grecian Temple,

An age of heroes kindled Sidney’s fire: His inborn worth alone cou’d Grenville’s deeds inspire. G. LYTTELTON ¹²

The graphic description of Thomas’s death, combined with the elegiac comparison with Sir Philip Sidney, legitimized the pointedly young Thomas Grenville as a martyr in the cause of protecting Britain and British liberty. The choice of Sidney rather than an antique patriotic hero and the portrayal of Thomas in modern rather than antique dress also pointed to the existence of a British, or at least an English, heritage of patriotic martyrs. At about the same time that George, Hester, and Henry commissioned the monument for the Abbey, Cobham erected a monument to Thomas Grenville at Stowe (fig. 5.6). As a man of particular social standing, Cobham did not condescend to commission monuments for public places but chose instead to focus 156 o f f i c i a l e m p i r e

on his private estate. The Stowe monument is much smaller than that intended for the Abbey. It is also entirely more esoteric in its design, again demonstrating Cobham’s social position and the erudite nature of the typical visitor to Stowe. The monument is a simple dignified naval rostral column originally topped with a figure of Neptune. A Latin epitaph embellishes the base. The epitaph is much shorter than the one intended for the Abbey monument, yet it also emphasizes Thomas’s patriotism: Sororis suæ Filio THOMÆ GRENVILLE

Ducente classem Britannicam Georgio Anson, Dum contra Gallos Fortissime pugnaret, Dilaceratæ navis ingenti fragmine Femore graviter percusso, Perire, dixit moribundus, omnino satius esse, Quam inertiæ reum in judicio sist; Columnam hanc rostratam Laudans & mærens posuit Cobham. Insigne virtutis, eheu! rarissimæ Exemplum habes; Ex quo discas Quid virum præfectura militari ornatum Deceat. MDCCXLVII .¹³ An English translation was published in Benton Seeley’s 749 edition of the guidebook to assist those visitors to Stowe who were not as proficient as some in the classics: To his Sister’s Son, THOMAS GRENVILLE ,

Who, being a Captain of a Ship in the Royal Navy, (when George Anson commanded the British Fleet) whilst he fought gallantly against the French, and had a severe Stroke on his Thigh, with a large Splinter of the shatter’d Vessel, declar’d it in his last Moments, infinitely better to perish, The Grenville Commissions

157

than be brought to Judgement for Cowardice: This is alas! a rare Influence Of true English Bravery, From which let all British Officers Learn their Duty 1747¹⁴ In its classicism, the Grenville column fit well in its original location at Stowe. It was placed by Cobham in the newly developed Grecian Valley to the northeast of the house, above the Elysian Fields. The valley, begun in the late 740s, was by far the largest single component of the gardens at Stowe. The Grecian Temple, immense for a landscape garden, was built on a rise at the eastern end of the valley (visible to the right in fig. 5.6). The Grenville column was situated on a northeast diagonal from the temple, also along a crest of the valley. The valley was meant to have been flooded, no doubt in allusion to the seas, and the vista straight on from the temple was to have been filled with a triumphal arch. While the flooding was at least attempted, the arch was never built, and the vista remains empty to this day.¹⁵ That the arch was never built has usually been explained by Cobham’s death in 749. However, it might be that the valley was not finished because of the unsatisfactory results, as far as Cobham and the Grenvilles were concerned, of the War of the Austrian Succession. Indeed, the valley may have been initially conceived as a tribute to Britain’s successes in the war and thus would have been in keeping with the political and patriotic topos of the earlier Elysian and Hawkwell Fields. Given the strength of this topos in the earlier developments at Stowe, it is difficult to regard the Grecian Valley as simply an aesthetic endeavour on the part of Cobham and Richard Grenville, as some scholars have done. The war gave Cobham and his nephews the opportunity to press for a commercial and colonial empire, thus putting their political ideology of empire into practice. Britain was successful in the early years of the war, as the victories at Louisbourg and Cape Breton attest, but the war settled into a stalemate by 746–47, despite the victories at Cape Finisterre and Belle-Ile. Political upheavals also threatened the unity of the Cousinhood, and the Cousins did in fact distance themselves from their increasingly intransigent uncle. With the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, signed in 748, the hope for an empire faded. Presumably the triumphal arch, which was to have been inscribed “Fortunae Britannicae Domi Forisque” (British Fortune at Home and Abroad), was never built because there was no triumph to commemorate. Perhaps this also explains why the Grecian Temple was not dedicated. It could well have been originally desig158 o f f i c i a l e m p i r e

nated the “Grecian Victory,” as Seeley had called it in an engraving published in 759 but which many scholars have since discounted as a mistake.¹⁶ Meanwhile, the column dedicated to Thomas Grenville, standing on the edge of the flooded valley, would always serve to remind visitors to Stowe of the terrible sacrifice made by Thomas and, by extension, Cobham and the Grenville Cousinhood in their efforts to improve the nation and secure an empire. The empty vista tells of their frustrations. As was noted above, the inscription for the Grenville monument in the Abbey was published in the London Magazine in 749. This was long before even the model for the monument was completed. Similarly, the Latin inscription for the Stowe monument was published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in May 747, months before the column was finished.¹⁷ (Notably, the Stowe inscription was not translated in the magazine; another subtle demonstration of the social standing of the column’s patron.) The reason for publishing the inscriptions was twofold: They kept commissions for the monuments in the public eye while the monuments were being designed and built, and in their own right, they answered immediate political concerns. The inscription on the Abbey monument was rather nonspecific in its condemnation of the lacklustre war effort and perceived corruption of the Crown and Parliament. Thomas was puffed as a great British patriot, emphasizing that his death was But nobler far, and greater is the praise So bright to shine in these degen’rate days. The Stowe inscription was much more specific in its attack. It was published shortly after the conclusion of a lengthy, factionally skewed and contentious inquiry that highlighted Britain’s undistinguished performance in the war. The inquiry concerned the behaviour of the commanding officers Admirals Lestock and Mathews in the indecisive battle with the French fleet off Toulon in 743. Lestock, who had a longstanding quarrel with Mathews, was in command of the rear of the fleet but had not engaged in battle at Mathews’s command. Instead, he had retreated leaving Mathews’s part of the fleet outnumbered by the French. One British ship, the Marlborough, and its captain, James Cornewall, were lost. At the official inquiry, Lestock blamed Mathews’s confused signals, and as the inquiry was stacked against Mathews, Lestock was acquitted and promoted.¹⁸ Mathews, who had been backed by the Whig Patriots, was court-martialled. Cobham and the Grenville Cousinhood aired their disgust in two ways. In the The Grenville Commissions

159

inscription on the Thomas Grenville monument at Stowe, it was loudly proclaimed that Thomas had: Perire, dixit moribundus, omnino fatius esse, Quam inertiæ reum in judicio sisti¹⁹ [declar’d it in his last Moments, infinitely better to perish, than be brought to Judgment for Cowardice].²⁰ In 747, four years after the battle, an announcement backed by the Grenville Cousinhood was published in the Gentleman’s Magazine stating that a monument was to be erected in Westminster Abbey in honour of James Cornewall, the only officer whose reputation remained unscathed by the controversy (probably because he died in the battle).²¹ In an obvious exercise of familial promotion, a lengthy description of the patriotic character of Thomas Grenville appeared in the same issue.²² The Cornewall monument, designed by Robert Taylor and unveiled in 749, was, if we discount Queen Anne’s tribute to Sir Cloudsley Shovell (see fig. .2), the first monument to be erected by Parliament at the public’s expense (see fig. 4.4). George Lyttelton seconded the call in the House of Commons.²³ As a parliamentary commission that was obviously the result of factional politicking rather than a true expression of grief and loss, the monument to Cornewall did, to this end, provide a precedent for Pitt’s Wolfe monument. To a certain extent, in terms of design, the Cornewall monument also served as a starting point for the Wolfe monument. In both cases, reliefs of the fateful battles in which both men met their deaths are situated below an allegorical representation of Britannia and Fame bringing tributes to the heroes. However, the Cornewall monument is considerably more esoteric in its dependence on allegorical emblems, lack of contemporary dress, and lengthy, almost impenetrable, Latin inscription. The public that the Grenvilles wished to address was entirely more circumscribed and consisted of those in positions of power who opposed the Grenvilles and the other Whig Patriots. Another monument commissioned by a member of the Grenville clan was promoted as a public affair and paid for by government, although in this case it was a colonial legislature. The commission would also have particular resonance for the Wolfe monument in terms of posterity and as an exercise in selfpromotion. The monument was a statue of Henry Grenville that was commissioned in 756 ostensibly by the members of the Barbados House of Assembly in honour of Grenville’s tenure as governor of the island from 747 until 756.²⁴ 160

official empir e

Henry was the least able politician in the Grenville clan; as Lewis Wiggin wrote, he “led a life of sinecures in places where he could do little harm and less work.”²⁵ Public monuments to living individuals were rare anywhere in the British Empire prior to 756, and in the West Indies the Grenville statue was unique in this respect until the Jamaica House of Assembly voted in 782 to erect a monument to commemorate the actions of Admiral Lord Rodney.²⁶ The statue of Grenville, designed by Rysbrack, arrived in Barbados sometime after January 757.²⁷ It was erected in the Town Hall, where it remained until it and the building were destroyed in a devastating hurricane in 780. Unfortunately, only vague descriptions of the statue are extant, and it is unknown whether Henry was portrayed in contemporary or antique dress. However, a record of the inscription on the base of the statue does survive. As might be expected, it is full of effusive praise for Henry’s abilities to govern: The Council, and General Assembly of this Island, Cause this Statue to be Erected, At the Public Expence, To His Excellency The Honourable HENRY GRENVILLE Who presided over Us, as our Governor, Upwards of Six Years: His Power was ever guided By Moderation, Disinterestedness, Wisdom: Justice was administered with steadfast Impartiality: Government was maintain’d with Honour; Upheld by Dignity: The Govern’d were united in Harmony, Happy in uninterrupted Tranquillity, Never feeling Uneasiness during his Administration, Save only in the last Hour of it – The Hour of Parting, This Hall, the Seat of Justice, Was deemed the fittest Place, Thus, to manifest to All, our Public Gratitude: To the end that the Remembrance, and Influence, Of Such Virtues, May be perpetuated amongst Us, The Grenville Commissions

161

And that our Judges May ever have before their Eyes, So illustrious an Example Of decent Order, and unblemish’d Integrity. Erected, Anno 1756.²⁸ Like the inscriptions for the Thomas Grenville monuments, the inscription below Henry’s statue is filled with insinuations aimed at the contemporary political scene. The honest, disinterested, honourable character of Henry is further accentuated when he is contrasted with his immediate predecessor, a contrast that was not lost on Henry or on many of his contemporaries.²⁹ Sir Thomas Robinson, firm supporter of Robert Walpole and an amateur architect, had been given the governorship of Barbados in 742 as a way to recoup some of his financial losses incurred in building his country estate, Rokeby Hall.³⁰ The Barbadians were not impressed. During his tenure, he suspended habeas corpus and further piqued the Barbadians with his insatiable appetite for building by diverting much-needed defence funds to rebuild Government House. The House of Assembly drew up a petition to the king in 746, and Robinson was removed from office.³¹ Henry Grenville was sent out as his successor and inaugurated a period of unprecedented peace between the planters and the governor.³² Thus, while Government House stood as a permanent reminder of Robinson’s profligacy, the statue of Henry Grenville, commissioned and paid for by the assembly, was a testament to Grenville’s virtues and honourable tenure. However, within a decade of the statue being commissioned, a damning account was published in A Short History of Barbados, written by a distinguished Barbadian planter, George Frere, alleging that Henry Grenville had initiated the commission for the statue himself and that he had bribed three members of the assembly to have the commission pushed through the house.³³ There is little reason to doubt the accusation, especially given Henry’s driving ambitions and rather inflated opinion of himself.³⁴ As Pitt also recognized, Henry was perceptive enough to realize that commissioning a monument to oneself while one is still living is clearly rather self-serving, whereas having a public body initiate a commission is entirely more honourable. The drawback to having the statue erected in Barbados was that only a few people of consequence would see it. Henry addressed this problem by making sure that people in Britain knew of its existence before it left England’s shores. In January 757 a lengthy anonymous puff was published in the London Evening Post: 162

official empir e

From the natural Love I bear to the Art of Sculpture, I am frequently visiting the most renowned Statuaries amongst us; but of all the Performances I have ever seen in this way, none hath afforded me such entire Satisfaction, for its Grace, Elegance, and just Proportion, as one I have lately saw at Mr. Rysbrack’s of the Hon. Mr. GRENVILLE , the late Governor of the Island of Barbados, whose character is inscribed on the Pedestal: Upon reading it my Mind was filled with the most exalted Ideas of the Governor’s Merit; and I beheld with infinite Delight and a most sincere Approbation the just Sense which the Legislature of that Island appears to have entertained of Mr. GRENVILLE ’s unequalled Administration, in unanimously decreeing a Marble Statue to be erected to him at the Public Expence, with the following Inscription, in order to perpetuate so Illustrious an Example to all future Governors; and to Manifest to the World, by this first Instance of their Public Gratitude, that his Majesty’s Subjects there are not only sensible to Merit, but eager and ever forward to acknowledge it, when they are so happy as to experience it in their GOVERNOR . [The inscription follows.]³⁵

The statue was on display in Rysbrack’s workshop for all to see, if they so desired. Publishing the inscription in the popular press ensured that the virtues and merits of Grenville’s leadership were further disseminated to a much wider audience. Given the statue’s final distant destination in Barbados, it seems that the statue was directed more at posterity – to future Barbadian inhabitants and colonial administrators as a reminder of Grenville’s virtuous tenure – while the published puff had more immediate significance from a demographic perspective.

pa r a l l e l s The one member of the Grenville clan who was noticeably not involved in commissioning the monument to Thomas Grenville for Westminster Abbey was Richard, Earl Temple. Like his uncle, he left the business of overtly addressing the public either through monuments or through print to his less titled siblings and brother-in-law. This is not to say that Temple was inactive politically or that he did not recognize the potential power of the public. In fact, quite the reverse is true. While Pitt was secretary, Temple was Lord Privy Seal and steered most of Pitt’s policies through the upper house.³⁶ When in 759 Temple was turned down for the vacant garter by George Ii , he reacted by resigning his seat, nearly causing Pitt to do the same.³⁷ George Ii had to acquiesce, and Allan Ramsay’s wonderful portrait of Temple, or Squire Gawky as he came to be known, depicts Temple literally puffed up, proudly displaying the Order of the Garter.³⁸ In OctoThe Grenville Commissions

163

Fig. 5.7 (left) View of the Elysian Fields with the Temple of Ancient Virtue and the rostral column to Thomas Grenville, 1747, after its removal from the Grecian Valley by Richard, Earl Temple, in 1760. Stowe. Fig. 5.8 (right) Richard, Earl Temple, obelisk in memory of Major General James Wolfe, from the portico of the Temple of Concord and Victory, 1761–62. Stowe, Buckinghamshire.

ber 76 Pitt and Temple resigned in tandem over the question of bringing Spain into the war, and Temple further registered his disapproval of George IiI ’s and Bute’s ministry by anonymously funding publication of the North Briton, written by his protégé, John Wilkes.³⁹ Temple came out publicly in support of Wilkes 164

official empir e

only when he visited and then bailed Wilkes out of the Tower, after Wilkes had made the leap from political hack to martyr for public liberty.⁴⁰ While Pitt billed himself as the Great Commoner, Temple remained the consummate gentleman politician, operating behind the scenes and above the vulgar heads of the public. In terms of monumental sculpture, Temple, like his uncle before him, did not allow his participation in the public sphere to appear to extend beyond the boundaries of his private estate. Temple’s love of Stowe surpassed perhaps even his uncle’s. Many scholars have detected Richard’s involvement in much of the landscape and architectural design in the last decade of Cobham’s life, notably in the Grecian Valley and the Grecian Temple.⁴¹ Later, in the 750s, he redesigned the south lawn as well as the entrance approach from the Oxford Gate, but his most comprehensive project was the renovation and recasting of the Grecian Valley in the early 760s. If the Grecian Valley had been initially conceived as a monument to the hoped-for commercial and imperial gains of the War of the Austrian Succession, Temple infused the valley with new life as a monument to the empire that was gained under his and Pitt’s administration. His new Grecian Valley stands as an interesting and instructive counterpoint to Pitt’s contemporaneous monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey. They are, respectively, monuments of the private and public spheres. Redevelopment of the Grecian Valley began with the purging of the valley of any former significance that it had held. The rostral column to Thomas Grenville was moved and reerected between the valley and the Elysian Fields, where it still stands today (fig. 5.7).⁴² The statue of Neptune on top was replaced with the Muse of Heroick Poetry, more in keeping with the calm and contemplative nature of the Elysium.⁴³ As visitors walked around the garden, they would move from the Elysian Fields, with its emphasis on history and tranquillity, to the Grecian Valley, the site of contemporary action. In the valley, the Grenville column was replaced with an immense obelisk to General Wolfe (fig. 5.8), situated on the same diagonal axis from the Grecian Temple. Conceived in 76 or even as early as late 759, the obelisk is a simple, time-honoured, and thus permanent emblem of victory, in contrast to the elaborate narrative of the funeral monument in the Abbey.⁴⁴ The obelisk is embellished with a short Latin inscription that took for granted a preexisting knowledge of Wolfe’s victory and reinforced that only in his patriotic and gallant death did Wolfe achieve fame: To MAJOR GENER AL WOLFE Ostendunt terris hunc tantum Fata 1759 The Grenville Commissions

165

Seeley provided an English translation in the 763 guidebook: “the Fates but show him to the world.”⁴⁵ The obelisk was erected in the park about a mile north of the garden proper. Its distant location discouraged close inspection, and the only way to know of the inscription was to read it in the guidebook. The location, combined with the obelisk’s sheer size, more than adequately demonstrated the inscription, as the obelisk dominates the horizon and fills at least three significant vistas. The obelisk stands as a beacon along the main approach from the Oxford Gate that Temple had transformed throughout the 750s.⁴⁶ As one drives through the gate and along the straight stretch of road, the obelisk continually disappears and reappears with every hill and valley, constantly proclaiming Wolfe’s victory. The grandeur and presence of the obelisk is offset only at the end of the drive, when the immense north front of the house comes into view on the right. The obelisk also terminates the vista of a secondary approach, that through Stowe Woods from the northeast, filling a gap, as George Clarke has pointed out, in Charles Bridgeman’s military layout of the 720s.⁴⁷ The third vista is from the portico of the Grecian Temple. From this point, the obelisk is balanced by Cobham’s Pillar, which lies on a southeast axis from the portico of the Grecian Temple (figs 5.9, 5.0, and visible to the right in fig. 5.6). The Cobham Pillar was erected by Ann, Viscountess Cobham, in 747 presumably with the input of Cobham and his heir.⁴⁸ It serves as a funeral monument to Cobham, as there is no corresponding monument inside a church or a mausoleum. The shape of the pillar, with the tall base, hexagonal shaft, circular lantern, and statue on top, recalls descriptions of the Roman Pharos at Alexandria, the first lighthouse built in the ancient world and belonging to an ancient empire. The Pharos was built to guide ships of trade into the harbour.⁴⁹ At over twenty-one metres high, Cobham’s Pillar was a beacon for visitors coming to the garden. Conversely, the statue of Cobham at the summit as well as the visitors who climbed the internal staircase to the lantern could look out over Cobham’s empire of Stowe. By August 762, as part of his redevelopment scheme, Temple engraved the following verse, taken from Cicero’s De Officiis, around the base of the Cobham column: Ut L. Luculli summi Viri Virtutem quis? At quam multi Villarum Magnificent iam imitati sunt?⁵⁰ [How many have imitated the magnificence of Lucullus’s villas! But how few have aspired to emulate his virtues!]⁵¹ 166

official empir e

Fig. 5.9 (left) Cobham’s Pillar from the portico of the Temple of Concord and Victory, 1747. Stowe, Buckinghamshire. Fig. 5.10 (right)

Detail of Cobham’s Pillar, 1747. Stowe, Buckinghamshire.

Licinius Lucullus was the ancient Roman general reviled by Caesar yet praised for his generosity. He also staged lavish banquets and created an immense private garden. Those visitors to Stowe who knew their classics were left to make the unflattering connection between Caesar and both Walpole and the king. By adding this inscription to the others on the base of the pillar, Temple made the pillar his personal tribute to his uncle, who was his and Pitt’s mentor. This tribute was visually balanced by the obelisk to Wolfe, Temple’s and Pitt’s protégé. The Grenville Commissions

167

At the fulcrum of these paired vistas and at the head of the valley was the Grecian Temple. This temple also underwent a radical transformation in the early 760s (fig. 5.). Temple decided to dedicate the Grecian Temple, and apparently the idea came to him as he lay awake one night. He wrote to Pitt on  June 76: I have a Temple to consecrate; the Grecian Building will be the Temple of Peace, where, ex voto, I will erect her statue & in the 4 medallions I will write Quebec Louisbourg Mon Real Guadaloupe Pondicherry Belle Isle Senegal Goree Cherburg Niagara Pittsburg Beau se jour Crown Point Minden but then you must stop here or I shall be forced to blot out ____ All Bold Measures! ... There will likewise be Wolfe’s obelisk. This is the product of lying a little awake last night ... you see my mind bends to the triumphant.⁵²

Writing to his sister Hester three days later, Temple repeated his intentions.⁵³ In addition, he implied that the Temple of Peace was also meant to commemorate Pitt: “Little is said, & yet much of a certain gentleman with a Roman nose[,] Lady Hester, & a Roman spirit.”⁵⁴ Pitt would ultimately be portrayed in one of the medallions as the Roman god Virtus, wearing a general’s cloak and holding a phoenix. The transformation of the Grecian Temple began almost immediately. In the same letter to his sister, Temple stated that the pediment of the building was to be embellished with “the Bas relief of the four parts of the world, bring[ing] homage to Brittain [sic].”⁵⁵ This was Scheemakers’s relief from the Palladian Bridge. By this point, Temple had acquired the property behind the Palladian Bridge, and 168

official empir e

Fig. 5.11 The Grecian Temple, begun 1747, renamed the Temple of Concord and Victory in 1762. Stowe, Buckinghamshire.

the relief was taken down and replaced with a colonnade. The relief required a considerable amount of reconfiguration, as it was originally rectangular in design (fig. 5.2). Temple hired William Stephenson of Liverpool.⁵⁶ Typically, he did not hire a prominent metropolitan sculptor but preferred instead to hire someone over whom he might have a bit more control. Stephenson’s work was not a great success. The pediment is overcrowded, and the fact that Stephenson was much less accomplished than Scheemakers is evident in the bulbous animals and Egyptian figure uncomfortably fitted into the lower corners of the pediment. Nevertheless, the Grecian Temple was now thoroughly an expression of empire. The Grenville Commissions

169

Fig. 5.12 Peter Scheemakers, Britannia receiving produce from the four quarters of the Earth, 1737, reconfigured with additions by William Stephenson and moved to the pediment of the Temple of Concord and Victory, 1761–62.

The fourteen medallions that Temple envisaged for the interior were executed in plaster below lead ribbons and are ranged around the inside wall of the cella (fig. 5.3).⁵⁷ The designs are primarily derived from a series of medals cast in honour of the various victories of the Seven Years War. Several of the medals were commissioned by the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Commerce and Manufactures, prompted largely by the republican Thomas Hollis, a friend and admirer of William Pitt. Three of the medal designs were commissioned independently by Hollis himself.⁵⁸ James Athenian Stuart and Giambattista Cipriani were responsible for most of the original designs, and James Lovell enlarged and transferred them to the plaster medallions at Stowe. Iconographical devices such as fir trees, beavers, palm trees, and sugar cane were combined with more traditional motifs of land and sea battles to acknowledge both the Continental and colonial victories. Each medallion was inscribed with the name of one or more victories.⁵⁹ Temple’s initial ideas for the temple’s inscriptions, which he recorded in the letter to his sister in June 76, were very favourable to the young King George 170 o f f i c i a l e m p i r e

Fig. 5.13 Isometric drawing of the Temple of Concord and Victory, showing the placement of the medallions. Stowe, Buckinghamshire.

Iii : “In the frieze of the Portico, Diva Paci Reduci & Triumphanti suls auspiciis / fortunatissimis Georgii / terbii Principis optimi P.P. / anno regni primo.” As translated by Temple: “To the Goddess of Peace returning in triumph / Under the most fortunate auspices of / George the Third, the best of Princes / the father of his Country / In the first year of his reign.” And: “On the Tablet over the statue [of Peace], Riccardus Comes Temple / noblissimi ordinis Periscelidis Eques / ex voto.”⁶⁰ The dedicated temple was thus intended originally to honour the king as well as Pitt and Temple. Little more than a year after Temple wrote to his sister, the following announcement appeared in the 9–2 July 762 issue of the Lloyd’s Evening Post: The Right Hon. the Earl Temple has lately dedicated a most magnificent building at Stowe, of the Ionic order, CONCORDIAE ET VICTORIAE . In the pediment of the portico is a fine alto relief, representing the four quarters of the world bringing gifts to Britain. In the portico, or anti-temple, two medallions, Concordiae faederatorum, concordia civium. Over the door, Quo tempore salus eorum in ultimas angustias deducta nullum ambitioni locum relinquebat. In the inner temple, in a niche facing the entrance, the statue of Britannia over which, in a tablet, Candidas autem animus voluptatem praebuerint in conspicuo posita, quae cuique magnifica merito contingerunt. On the walls, fourteen medallions representing the taking of Quebec, Martinico, etc, Louisbourg, Guadaloupe, etc, Montreal, Pondicherry, etc, naval victory off Bellisle, naval victory off Lagos, Crevelt, and Minden, Felinghausen, Senegal, and Goree, Niagara and Crown Point, Beausejour and Fort du Quesne, Cherburg and Belleisle. On a hill at a distance in a diagonal line, rises an obelisk above 00 feet high, inscribed TO MAJOR GENERAL WOLFE Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata.⁶¹

The Temple of Peace had become the Temple of Concord and Victory, the intended statue of Peace had been replaced by one of Britannia, and any reference to the king had been eradicated from the final inscriptions. During the time between Temple’s letter to Hester and publication of the announcement in the Lloyd’s Evening Post, the Grecian Valley had taken on entirely new political significance. Within a year, the balance of British political power had shifted to George Iii and the Earl of Bute to the disadvantage of Pitt and Temple. After Temple had resigned with Pitt in October 76, he found himself much in the same position as his uncle had been following the Excise Crisis in 733: in political exile at Stowe. His building projects, like Cobham’s antiWalpolian conceits in the Elysian and Hawkwell Fields, took on a similar virulent and vindictive edge. The Grecian Temple no longer served to commemo172

official empir e

rate a peace that would end the war, a peace that Temple would have thoroughly despised. Rather, the temple commemorated the victories achieved during Pitt’s and Temple’s administration, the last of which, at Felinghausen – which provided a clear indication of the importance of the Continental war to the colonial war – is commemorated with the medallion that contains Pitt’s portrait as Virtus. Another medallion commemorates the victories at Havannah and Manila, which were achieved during Bute’s administration, but these were also a vindictive statement since these battles were with Spain, the very issue over which Pitt and Temple had resigned.⁶² The name Concord and Victory was in itself a damning indictment of Bute’s mismanagement and of his corrupt influence in the government. The Roman Temple of Concord, to which Temple may have looked for a source, was dedicated in 367 B.C. to commemorate the pact reached between the patricians and the plebeians ensuring equal representation in the administration of the city of Rome.⁶³ Like many of his colleagues, Temple believed that such concord had been achieved only during his and Pitt’s administration.⁶⁴ Their war policies had carried the weight of public approval, while Bute’s ministry fostered an everincreasing gap between the ministers (the patricians) and the nation at large (the plebeians). To emphasize his point, Temple placed the medallions of Concordia Fædoratorum and Concordia Civium – concord with the allies and concord with the citizens, respectively – on the walls of the deep pronaos of his Temple of Concord and Victory (figs 5.4 and 5.5). Neither of these medallions were mentioned by Temple in his initial thoughts on the dedication of the temple. The design of the Concordia Fædoratorum medallion consists of two classical warriors holding a globe on which stands Victory, who in turn holds a laurel wreath, halo-like, over the heads of each of the warriors. The warrior on the left is identified as British by the ensign on his oval shield, while the diamond-shaped shield beside the figure on the right indicates that he is Prussian. The design was appropriately taken from Athenian Stuart’s recto design for the medal cast to commemorate the victory at Minden.⁶⁵ The Minden battle (August 759), fought by Frederick the Great with the help of British soldiers, represented a turning point early in the Continental war in favour of Britain and its allies. The Concordia Fædoratorum medallion had a particularly harsh and even petulant edge since not long before it was described in the Lloyd’s Evening Post, Bute had left Frederick to fend for himself by cancelling British subsidies to Prussia.⁶⁶ The design of the Concordia Civium medallion was a popular motif symbolizing concord on ancient Roman coins. The three intertwined female figures also refer to the Three Graces, who had been used to symbolize concord in Florentine medals.⁶⁷ The Grenville Commissions

173

Fig. 5.14 (left) Medallion of Concordia Fædoratorum in the portico of the Temple of Concord and Victory at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, 1761–63. Fig. 5.15 (right) Medallion of Concordia Civium in the portico of the Temple of Concord and Victory at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, 1761–63.

The two Latin inscriptions that were ultimately inscribed on the walls of the Temple of Concord and Victory differed significantly from Temple’s original thoughts and were conceived at the height of his discontent with the king and with Bute.⁶⁸ The inscription over the door, “QUO TEMPORE SALUS EORUM

IN ULTIMAS ANGUSTIAS DEDUCTA NULLUM AMBITIONI LOCUM RELInQUEBAT,” which was translated in Seeley’s 763 guide as “The times with

such alarming Dangers fraught, Left not a hope for any factious Thought,”⁶⁹ refers specifically to the years of the Pitt-Newcastle coalition. When Pitt, the man of “measures not men,” was appointed prime minister in 757, party factions were left behind, or so Pitt and the Grenville Cousinhood wanted the public to 174

official empir e

believe. Temple blamed Bute and George III for the reappearance of faction in 76. In a letter to John Wilkes dated shortly after the resignations of Pitt and Temple, Temple wrote “the favourite [Bute] united with the Minister of numbers [Newcastle]; bore down the Minister of measures [Pitt], and by that means in effect removed him from the King’s Council, and deprived him of the means of further serving the public.”⁷⁰ The inscription inside the cella above the statue of Britannia reads: CANDIDAS AUTEM ANIMIS VOLUPTATEM PREABURINT IN CONSPICUO POSITA QUAE CUIQUE MAGNIFICA MERITO CONTINGERUNT

As translated by Temple: “A sweet sensation touches ev’ry breast / Of Candour’s gen’rous Sentiment possest, / When publick services with Honour due, / Are grateful mark’d out to publick View.”⁷¹ It refers to the victories represented inside the temple, victories that could have been achieved only during Pitt’s selfless, impartial, and candid ministry. The Temple of Concord and Victory commemorated the administration that had created an empire. After looking at the medallions, the tourist could (and can) walk out onto the portico of the temple and look right to see the memorial to the mentor who had envisaged the empire and look left to see the obelisk to the military protégé who actively fulfilled the directives of the administration. The final significant structure that Temple built at Stowe, which would complete his grand conceit, was the triumphal arch. However, he did not erect it in the place where an arch had originally been planned in the late 740s, at the east end of the Grecian Valley opposite the Temple of Concord and Victory. Rather, he located it beyond the Octagon Lake, where it fills the vista from the portico of the south front of the house (fig. 5.6). The arch was designed in 764 by Pitt’s nephew, Thomas Pitt of Boconnoc, later the first Baron Camelford.⁷² The arch serves as a gateway along the main approach from Buckingham, framing the central portico of the south front of the house, which would be rebuilt in the 770s and 780s. The arch is also a memorial to Britain’s Continental allies. In October 764 Temple wrote to his sister, now Lady Hester Pitt, “My works go on most prosperously ... Mr. T. Pitt had furnished me with a Triumphal arch which I most extremely admire and shall forthwith begin[.] I shall furnish it I think with an inscription to the King of Prussia, his statue[,] that of Prince Henry, Prince The Grenville Commissions

175

Fig. 5.16 View of the Corinthian Arch from the south portico of the house. Stowe, Buckinghamshire.

Ferdinand, & the Hereditary Prince. Having done Justice to my own Country in the Temple of Concord & Victory I shall with pleasure perform the rest.”⁷³ Temple clearly demonstrated what the Grecian Valley was meant to commemorate by not locating the triumphal arch there. The valley was not a memorial of British success in the Seven Years War.⁷⁴ Rather, lacking the triumphal arch at one end, the Grecian Valley became a memorial of what might have been if Pitt and Temple had stayed in power. Temple, like Pitt and the other members of the Cousinhood as well as Cobham, used the popular press to announce his landscaping schemes often well before construction on the monuments was begun. Building accounts indicate that the obelisk was not complete until the late summer of 762, while work on the Temple of Concord and Victory continued into 764, well after both structures 176 o f f i c i a l e m p i r e

had been advertised in the Lloyd’s Evening Post.⁷⁵ Waiting until the monuments were finished would have lessened the vindictive impact. Temple also augmented his political conceit at Stowe with a barrage of printed propaganda aimed at Bute that was published in the late spring and early summer of 762. The effect was devastating; Horace Walpole wrote to Horace Mann that “My father was not more abused after twenty years then Lord Bute is in twenty days.”⁷⁶ The author of most of these attacks was John Wilkes, member of Parliament for nearby Aylesbury and protégé of Temple. The attack began with a stinging article about the detrimental effect of favourites in the governing process in the 22 May 762 issue of the Monitor, one of the most vociferous PittTemple mouthpieces.⁷⁷ The favourites theme was continued in subsequent issues of the Monitor, while another article published in June 762 sharply criticized the cancellation of the subsidy to Prussia.⁷⁸ Temple gave Wilkes more rein by anonymously funding the North Briton, the first issue of which appeared on 6 June 762.⁷⁹ Temple’s adept ability to work the political press, combined with his taste for monument building, prompted the final of his changes to the Temple of Concord and Victory. When George Iii stripped him of his commissions of Lord Lieutenant of the Militia and Custos Rotulorum of Buckinghamshire in retaliation for bailing Wilkes out of the Tower in 763, Temple reacted swiftly at Stowe.⁸⁰ He commissioned a monument of a personification of Libertas Publica to replace the intended statue of Britannia inside the Temple of Concord and Victory. Seeley announced the intended change in the edition of the guidebook published later that year: “In a Niche in the Temple is to be placed the Statue of Libertas Publica, Public Liberty.”⁸¹ The Temple of Concord and Victory, like the monuments in the Elysian and Hawkwell Fields, had become a monument to liberty, the liberty that had been so seriously threatened by the Hanoverian kings. Later, when Temple rebuilt the south front of the house in the 780s, he placed the figures of Justice, Liberty, Wisdom, and Religion on the top. Liberty has a squint in the manner of John Wilkes.⁸² Yet despite his recognition of the public as an increasingly powerful ally and his active engagement with the press to address this public, Temple remained aloof. He left personal dealings with the visceral public to Pitt. In his outward behaviour, Temple fulfilled the image of the quintessential landed gentry. As Cobham had before him, he displayed the petulance of an exiled gentleman politician deprived of his civic duties by a thoughtless, corrupt, and opportunistic government. The monuments that he commissioned and the reasons why he commissioned them formed a significant component of this image. And like his The Grenville Commissions

177

uncle, he focused his attention entirely on Stowe, leaving the other, more public commissions to his less titled siblings and brother-in-law. The contemporary innuendo of each of Temple’s monuments at Stowe is mired in classical allusion, although unlike his uncle’s, Temple’s monuments are wholly lacking in satire. Temple’s obsession with social standing and appropriate behaviour seems to have precluded a sense of humour.⁸³ The dense allusions, allegories, refinement, and serenity of both Cobham’s and Temple’s gardens demanded a particular level of knowledge if one was to grasp fully the message that each part of the garden was meant to convey, a level of knowledge that was only available to a very restricted segment of British society. Neither Temple nor Cobham were interested in the type of vulgar, jingoistic narratives displayed in the Wolfe monument in Westminster Abbey. Indeed, the pretension was carried into the inscriptions on the monuments at Stowe, the majority of which were written in Latin that was impenetrable to the public at large and probably to most of the well-heeled tourists who came to Stowe. However, to ensure that the visitor did fully understand the message, Seeley’s guidebooks, published almost biennially, provided full English translations. Temple’s recognition of the power of the printed word kept his building works at Stowe consistently pertinent. Long before the various monuments were finished (and in some cases even begun), their stinging political message had reached a large contemporary audience. To compare Temple’s work at Stowe and Pitt’s monument in Westminster Abbey: While both Temple and Pitt were building for contemporary as well as successive audiences, both worked within their circumscribed spheres, the private landscape garden for the ostensibly gentleman politician and the very public Abbey for the Great Commoner. If one were to pass judgment, the more successful of the two would have to be Temple’s work at Stowe. While the success was partly the result of Temple’s masterful manipulation of the press, the location of the monuments was significant; simply because he owned the land and he or his family would continue to own it in perpetuity, Temple had more control. By placing the Wolfe monument in the public sphere of Westminster Abbey, Pitt sacrificed such control. Time also took a greater toll on the Wolfe monument in the Abbey than it did on the pieces at Stowe. We have seen how the political climate had changed in fourteen years. The time-proven validity of the simple yet powerful classical forms at Stowe – triumphal obelisks, pillars, arches, and temples – succeeded in enhancing the relevance of the Stowe monuments. The Wolfe monument, by contrast, with its new style for a new empire seemed anachronistic even before it was unveiled.

178

official empir e

pa rt t h r e e Empire Secured?

This page intentionally left blank

chapte r six

Magnanimity?

The Bust of George iii in Montreal

w

hoever – Pitt the Elder or Wilton – chose to remove the group of “mournful Canadiens” from Wilton’s design for the Wolfe monument in Westminster Abbey chose to avoid the topos of Britain as a conquering, albeit magnanimous, empire. The British Empire, grounded as it was in the supposed benefits of trade and the heritage of British liberty, was not meant to be about dominance. Just as the perfunctory shipping reports that were ubiquitous in the London and provincial papers obscured the dark side of exploration and colonization (exploitation and slavery), which had resulted in successful trade, so, too, did the Wolfe monument sidestep the issue that Wolfe’s victory would lead ultimately to Britain becoming master of 65,000 Canadiens. When, at the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 763, the Canadiens, who were mostly peasant farmers (les habitants) and a few seigneurs, did become members of the British Empire, they presented something of a conundrum for the British. Although born in Canada – the senior governing officials and clergy who were French had returned to France – the Canadiens could not be dismissed as exotic like the North American noble savage. Nor could they be enslaved. In their European-derived ancestry, they were too similar to the British despite their Frenchness and popery. Their number was the particular problem: If the population had been small enough, the British could well have expelled them, as they had done with the Acadiens after 755, perhaps shipping them to France or corralling them into some sort of a reserve. In 763, 65,000 Canadiens did not represent much of a threat – few had actively or willingly taken up arms against the British during the war, preferring instead to let the powers fight it out among themselves as they tended their land¹ – but they could become a potential threat if they were not treated well.

These concerns resulted in George III ’s Royal Proclamation Act of 763, which assured the Canadiens the rights and liberties accorded to any British subject and which also officially sanctioned the Canadiens’ right to freely practice the Roman Catholic faith.² While such concessions did meet with some condemnation in Britain from particularly vulgar anti-Gallic and antipapacy corners, the general consensus was to show the magnanimous face of the British Empire, especially to a group of people who were perceived to have suffered under the tyranny of the French king. One episode that is relevant to the premise of this book and that offers tangible evidence of the apparent magnanimity of the British king and the British people toward the Canadiens was prompted by a fire in 765 that destroyed a quarter of the houses and most of the commercial district of Montreal. In response to a subscription set up in London, 8,45 sterling was collected, and the money, along with two fire engines and a life-sized bust of George III , were shipped to Montreal in 766. The bust (fig. 6.), sculpted by Wilton, was placed on a shoulder-high pedestal under a canopy in the Place d’Armes, directly across from the Roman Catholic church of Notre Dame. It remained there until a group of American rebels or American rebel sympathizers tore it down during the occupation of Montreal in the winter of 775–76.³ (Unfortunately, there are no known views of the bust in situ, but fig. 6.2 shows a view of the Place d’Armes in the early nineteenth century with both the old and new churches of Notre Dame.) The inscription below the socle read: Temporal and eternal happiness to the sovereign of the British Empire GEORGE III

who relieved the distresses of the Inhabitants of his City of Montreal Occasioned by the Fire MDCCLXV ⁴ In many ways, the bust embodies both how Britons sought to justify their role as conqueror through visual imagery and their engagement in the fiction of a magnanimous empire. The subscription to relieve the victims of the fire was initiated by Jonas Hanway, who by 766 had established himself as the merchant-philanthropist sine qua non in London. A member of the Russia Company and an inveterate traveller, he 182

empir e secur ed?

Fig. 6.1

Joseph Wilton, Bust of George iii , marble, c. 1765.

Fig. 6.2

Robert Auchmuty Sproule, Place d’Armes, Montreal, 1828.

had also been the recipient of a small legacy that enabled him to pursue a life of good deeds and to encourage others to do the same.⁵ This was at a time when participation in philanthropic ventures was seen as a prescribed ingredient of British gentlemanly mercantilist behaviour. The great charitable institutions of the Foundling Hospital and Guy’s Hospital, founded by the merchants Thomas Coram and Thomas Guy respectively, prompted a flood of similar institutions and numerous other charities.⁶ The rise of these endeavours corresponds with the rise of commerce and trade. There were many reasons why merchants would engage in such activities. At one level, giving money, and less often time, to a charity might assuage the merchant’s guilt about acquiring huge fortunes in a society that ostensibly did not covet financial gain. There is also a Christian moral element. Indeed, such philanthropic endeavours have come to be known as Christian mercantilism.⁷ Making considerable donations provided a means of expressing one’s civic duty, 184

empir e secur ed?

a variation on Shaftesbury’s civic gentleman. In this respect, men engaged in trade were not always enfranchised, or if they were, they had a difficult time breaking into the electoral system, especially in the first half of the century. The type of charities that they supported fit well with their own climb to positions of significance; they were grounded in the Protestant work ethic in the belief that the best way to enter God’s world was through hard work. Ultimately, these acts of charitable philanthropy were also shot through with a desire to improve the nation. Much was made of improving the moral health of the nation by taking the poor and dispossessed off the streets of London and putting them to useful work. Hanway was preoccupied by this type of Christian moral philanthropy more than most, and his brand of philanthropy had a decidedly imperial thrust. His most significant contributions to this end were the establishment of the Marine and Troop Societies, founded in 756 and 759 respectively. Both built on the original purpose of the Foundling Hospital, which in Hanway’s mind was to nurture London’s abandoned infants so that they could grow to be useful members of society. Hanway felt that the hospital had veered from this path to the point that it actually encouraged immoral sexual encounters, especially once Parliament allowed for open acceptance of all infants under two months of age beginning in 756, the year Hanway became a governor.8 Hanway’s Marine and Troop Societies were meant to do what the universal admission policy of the Foundling Hospital had failed to accomplish: take the dispossessed boys and men, both illegitimate and not, off the streets of London, cloth them, equip them with prayer books, and train them for the navy and army.⁹ Such soldiers would answer the crying shortage of men for the armed forces in Britain’s pursuit of an empire, enabling the government to avoid the nasty and vulgar business of impressment. In return, at least in theory, the Marine and Troop soldiers, in their gratitude to be saved from a life of penury and crime, would be extraordinarily loyal in contrast to the impressed men, who were, by and large, criminals incapable of patriotic feeling. In terms of donations, both societies were extremely successful, another example of the nationalistic/imperial fervour that pervaded English society at large. Although Hanway had never been to Montreal, or anywhere in North America for that matter, and although he had no obvious connections with Quebec, the fire in Montreal may have been a natural cause of concern for someone for whom the wellbeing of all of the British Empire meant the wellbeing of life as a whole. His Marine and Troop Societies had ostensibly contributed to the creation of the empire. The situation in Montreal was an opportunity to maintain the health of this empire. His interest in helping to rebuild Montreal was The Bust of George iii in Montreal

185

no doubt linked to his belief that the North American colonies were the perfect place where sailors and soldiers could retire. Indeed, many people had genuine concerns that upwards of 200,000 retired servicemen would flood the streets of London at the end of the war.¹⁰ Hanway stated his concern in a number of pamphlets and suggested alternative occupations and homes for some of these men, including mercantile careers in North America.¹¹ Thus Hanway’s philanthropy came full circle; he was looking after England’s poor from birth to death. Notably, in accordance with many of his schemes, the less fortunate would not reside in England, thereby preventing the further clogging of the streets of London and putting able-bodied men to work for the empire.¹² The year after the Montreal fire, much of Bridgetown, Barbados, was also consumed by a conflagration, and Hanway responded with an almost identical call for subscriptions.¹³ The Barbadians, too, received cash and fire engines but no bust. Perhaps their Britishness and the plantocracy’s firmer position in British society, in comparison to the habitants Canadiens, as well as the apparent lack of need in Barbados for working-class settlers, precluded the need for a visual reminder of the magnanimity of their monarch. The inclusion of the bust in the relief package sent to Montreal was, in many ways, very odd. As a bust, it was unusual since a bust is atypical for an outdoor monument. This almost certainly implies that the sculpture was not made specifically to be shipped to Montreal. The bust was probably commissioned by the king from Wilton earlier in the 760s for a more intimate indoor setting. Wilton had achieved a considerable reputation for his busts; they recalled the antique tradition of extraordinary life-like renderings complete with squiggly veins, deep creases, and prominent warts and moles. His busts of the Earl of Chesterfield, Pitt the Elder, Thomas Hollis, and Antonio Cocchi are fine examples of the type.¹⁴ The heads were usually set on shoulders that were either bare in the Roman tradition or draped in an ancient toga. Unfortunately, only the head and part of the neck remain of the King’s bust, so it is unknown in what manner his shoulders were presented. However, the face is uncompromising in its naturalistic detail and fits well with this part of Wilton’s oeuvre. How Hanway came to possess the bust remains a mystery. Either he solicited it from the king or the king gave it of his own accord to Hanway for the people of Montreal along with his 500 subscription.¹⁵ Irrespective of who came up with the idea, the bust stood as a fiction of the magnanimous empire, although the motivations behind this expression of magnanimity differed considerably depending on who the donor was.

186

empir e secur ed?

Significantly, the bust was the first expression in sculpture of the British king as the head of the British Empire. If the idea to erect the bust in Montreal originated with the king, it shows the king’s careful negotiation of a potential minefield of charges of absolutism and tyranny. It also indicates the clever way that he exerted his imperial right in the manner of emperors and empires of the past. George III, quite conscious of his grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s affection for Hanover over Britain and equally conscious of establishing himself as a strong political force vis-à-vis William Pitt the Elder, came to the throne in 760 proudly proclaiming that he was British born and bred. He took on the persona of Bolingbroke’s Patriot King and as such proclaimed himself a true British king to the people of Britain. In effect, the king, supported by the Earl of Bute and the Dowager Princess Augusta, took up Pitt’s political strategies and beat him at his own game. In his youth and energy, the new king was the perfect figurehead of the new Britain that Pitt had initiated. When economic and political circumstances, fanned and somewhat exaggerated by the king and Bute, conspired against Pitt and Temple in their desire to engage Spain in war and the two men resigned their offices in October 76, the young king was unopposed as the nominal head of the empire. Following in the footsteps of his father, Frederick, Prince of Wales, yet in contrast to his grandfather and great-grandfather, George III used the visual arts to cement his position as leader of Parliament and the empire. The royal state coach, commissioned in 760 and finished in 762 for the opening of Parliament, is a superb expression of the king’s desire both to engage and to lead his people. Designed by William Chambers, with sculpture by Wilton and paintings by Gianbattista Cipriani, the coach is an explosion of rococo gilding and froth, appropriate to its ceremonial function.¹⁶ In contrast to the dowdy closed box built for Queen Anne and used by the first two Georges, the royal state coach is remarkably open, with trumpet-blowing tritons pushing out into the crowds announcing the king’s arrival. The tritons and naiads also herald British prowess on sea and land, while the annals of British history, art, and liberality are recorded in the painted panels of the many-windowed cab. However, depictions of the king as emperor, especially in the form of public monuments, could prove to be problematic and could potentially provoke considerable controversy, especially if the commission originated with the king himself.¹⁷ Within the long history of the genre of representation of emperors, there is a strong vein of presenting emperors as benevolent, paternalistic rulers, either in a pedestrian statue or in an equestrian monument with one hand out-

The Bust of George iii in Montreal

187

stretched in a protective gesture. However, for the English, always casting a sidelong glance at the French kings and the proliferation of statues erected in their honour, these images could speak more of absolutism and tyranny than of benevolence. If George III conceived the idea of sending the bust of himself to Montreal, he addressed this potentially thorny issue with considerable acumen. The choice of a bust, puny as it was in comparison to an equestrian or pedestrian statue, removed the allusion of a king lording over his people. It was left to the inscription to emphasize the king’s paternalism and munificence. That the bust was erected in Montreal, not in Britain, also absolved the king of any potential accusation of overemphasizing his power over Britons. (The same rationale can be used to explain why an image of the king was not sent to Barbados, given the Barbadians’ often ambivalent relationship with Britain.) Combined with this factor, there was a decided sense that the Canadiens needed looking after (see Hanway’s characterization of them below) and that they were used to being ruled by a king. Rather than the tyrannical French king who had lorded over them and inhibited their freedoms, they were now the subjects of a benevolent and munificent ruler, as the bust and inscription made clear. Positioning the bust directly opposite the church of Notre Dame, the other French bastion of tyranny and superstition according to the British, further emphasized the distinction. Finally, the very ambiguity regarding how the bust came into Hanway’s possession for Montreal – and it seems to have been ambiguous from the beginning – avoids the issue of the king overtly advertising himself as an emperor. If we turn now to the supposition that the decision to erect a bust in Montreal lay with Hanway, not with the king, Hanway’s motivations would have been considerably different, although he unequivocally accepted and acknowledged the king as emperor of the new British Empire. Hanway’s version of the empire fit with the imagined empire promulgated by the pro-imperialists in the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary realms. It was ostensibly an empire about economics and trade, yet when the realities of domination of other peoples, especially white European-derived peoples such as the Canadiens, were unavoidably obvious, the empire then also became an empire of magnanimity. This vision of empire also corresponded almost serendipitously with the topos of Christian mercantilism, for which Hanway was arguably the most outspoken advocate from the late 750s. Hanway expostulated on the moral and ethical benefits of trade and empire in no fewer than seventy-four (probably more) pamphlets and innumerable prayer books.¹⁸ The pamphlets, many of them excruciatingly long, range from justifications for the launch of his various philanthropic schemes – the Marine and Troop Societies and Magdalen House for repentant prostitutes 188

empir e secur ed?

being his most significant ventures – to xenophobic, anti-Semitic rants against the Naturalization of Jews Act of 753 and the pernicious effect of tea drinking among the working classes. Whatever became the focus of his interest, his motives were consistent: His involvement was ostensibly purely for the betterment of the nation and the empire. Rarely, if ever, was the individual the object of concern. The situation in Montreal presented Hanway with an interesting challenge, and one might wonder, given his virulent Francophobia, why he bothered to become involved. The answer ultimately lies in the fact that Hanway was first and foremost a man of trade. Canada was a huge landmass that had recently come into British possession, and its natural resources – fur, fish, and lumber – were ripe for exploitation. However, Montreal, the local mercantile centre and thus a key link in the commercial chain, had suffered a devastating fire. Hanway chose not to dwell on the vulgar aspects of trade when he began to solicit funds to restore Montreal. Rather, he worked the compassionate angle, seeking to appeal to the moral duty of Englishmen to help the victims of the fire. He exhorted his fellow merchants in London with a twenty-five page pamphlet entitled “Motives for a Subscription Towards the Relief of the Sufferers at Montreal in Canada,” first published in March 766, with a second edition appearing later in the year.¹⁹ After a brief introduction stating the facts – 08 houses had been destroyed, and the total cost of damages amounted to 87,750.8s.0d – he launched into a turgid, even by eighteenth-century standards, appeal to help the unfortunate victims. He carefully distinguished the Canadiens from the French to assuage any concerns that the merchants might have had about helping the enemy. He cast the Canadiens as poor innocent peasants who had been forced to live in hardship under their former king. He reached a crescendo of rhetoric two-thirds of the way through the pamphlet: Scarce was the sword well-sheath’d and the widow’s tears dried up, when this conflagration happened. Under their former governors, grown desperate by repeated defeats, these people had experienced the numerous calamities of war, not with us only, but also with the savage INDIANS . They had likewise felt the affliction of famine, the interruption of their trade, and the suspension of their paper money. They dreaded the same hard fate from us, but they were agreeably surprized [sic] by a different rule of conduct. The remains of their substance was improving when this melancholy event suddenly fell upon them. – Shall we not take a SHARE in their misfortunes? Shall not the various reasons which concern the situation of these brave CANADIANS , our NEW fellowsubjects, move our compassion.²⁰ The Bust of George iii in Montreal

189

Hanway unequivocally placed the blame for the sad plight of the Canadiens during the war squarely on the shoulders of the French governors (and, by extension, the French king). He neatly sidestepped the fact that the Canadiens, especially those in Montreal, had suffered significant hardship as a result of the British siege of the St Lawrence River. Instead, he insisted that it was “the glory of BRITISH subjects to promote UNIVERSAL happiness, to prevent real evils, and to succor the distressed in every form.”²¹ Hanway characterized the Canadiens as a “STOUT, COMELY, and INTRE PID ”²² lot who were aware that their fortunes were improving under the beneficence of the British Empire. He stressed that even under military rule, the Canadiens had “felt the advantages” of British government to the point that they had chosen to stay in Canada rather than go to France when the opportunity arose at the end of the war.²³ He did not acknowledge that France was as foreign as any other country for most of the Canadiens and that they were therefore willing to risk being governed by the British rather than give up their possessions and leave their homes. The Canadiens’ Roman Catholicism presented yet another stumbling block that may have discouraged the London merchants from offering assistance. Hanway, himself an ardent Protestant proselytizer and antipapist, dealt with this thorny problem by building on the fiction of the Canadiens as an impressionable group of peasants who had been led astray by the French papists. By assisting the Canadiens, Hanway reasoned to his audience, the Canadiens would be provided with demonstrative British models that “shew them what our PROTESTANTISM inspires, in the most essential part of christianity: we shall shew them that the BRITISH nation is not more to be dreaded for their VALOUR and INTREPIDITY than beloved for the exercise of the SOCIAL VIRTUES .”²⁴ Characteristic of the paternalistic confidence of the zealot, a tacit implication runs throughout Hanway’s pamphlet that if the Canadiens became exposed to the true nature of British Protestantism, they would quickly convert. Although it has been impossible to verify, it is tempting to speculate that Hanway was involved in a scheme initiated by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to distribute Protestant bibles to the Canadiens in the 760s in an effort to undermine the Roman Catholic Church at the grass-roots level in Canada.²⁵ Coupled and intertwined with this demonstration of British Protestant charity was an emphasis on providing the Canadiens with an initial helping hand so that they may once again be active contributors to society. This is the Protestant work ethic that so fundamentally underpinned Hanway’s brand of philanthropy.

190 e m p i r e s e c u r e d ?

It is evident in all of the charities that he established, figures prominently in his copious published exhortations,²⁶ and was central to the culture of sentiment that flourished among the merchant class of Britain in the eighteenth century. The Montreal pamphlet stressed that since the Canadiens had overcome tremendous adversity in the past at the hands of their French rulers, if they were given an initial boost to help them recover from the fire and the war, this “stout” lot would prove to be beneficial contributors to the community and to the empire as a whole: “every one preserved from beggary and restored to the exercise of a useful occupation, is an acquisition of RICHES and STRENGTH to a community.”²⁷ As a clincher, he emphasized the commercial benefits that would accrue to the British Empire and to the London merchants if the Canadiens’ plight was rectified: “Nor ought it to be deemed any diminution of the most substantial virtue, whilst we pay a RELIGIOUS regard to the LAWS of our country, that we hope, both in our national and private capacities, to reap the advantages of commerce with these very persons whose misfortunes now claim a portion of our attention.”²⁸ At the very least, it was hoped that the lure of profits from fur, fish, and timber might ultimately tip the scales and convince the London merchants to make a donation. It is in this spirit of Protestant Christian mercantilism that we should evaluate the bust of George III and its inscription. Hanway may have been astute enough to be aware that the use of a visual image, and a very public one at that, was entirely in keeping with the predisposition in Catholicism and in French culture generally toward using the visual image as a means of communication, in contrast to the Protestant and British inherent mistrust of the visual image. Images of the French kings were ubiquitous, and public monuments of Louis XIV and Louis XV could be found throughout Paris and the provincial centres, although none had been erected in French Canada. In terms of religious imagery, sculpture was, of course, fundamental to the dissemination of Catholic doctrine, and by the 760s French Canada had a rich tradition of carved (mostly wood) religious imagery, several fine examples of which had been created by an indigenous school of canadien artists.²⁹ In this respect, an image of the British king would be an effective form of communication to a population already used to such a means of dissemination. The placement outside the Roman Catholic church, the embodiment of tyranny and oppression as far as the British were concerned, was also strategic. Upon exiting the church, the Canadiens would be confronted by the bust of their new benevolent, magnanimous leader. The inscription below the bust enhanced the topos of benevolence and implied that George III was solely

The Bust of George iii in Montreal

191

responsible for alleviating the Canadiens’ plight, which was not only a testament to Hanway’s own pro-imperial views, but also perhaps a fiction considered appropriate for a people who had been used to living under absolute rule in the past. The emphasis in Hanway’s pamphlet was exclusively on the plight of the canadien victims of the fire. Not once did he mention the small British population living in Montreal, the majority of whom were merchants, and their families, who had recently arrived from the northern American colonies. Yet according to contemporary reports, the fire had begun in a Mr Livingston’s house (in the attic where a black servant was making soap) and had quickly spread all over the marketplace, “the very Place where the greatest Part of the British Merchants were collected together.”³⁰ Hanway chose to make no reference to the British in Montreal in favour of focusing on the Canadiens, casting them as the helpless victims of the fire in order no doubt to intensify reaction among the London merchants. The British residents in Montreal did not enjoy a particularly endearing reputation in London. James Murray, the military governor and then the first British civil governor of Canada, did not mince his words when he called the British merchants in Montreal “the most cruel, Ignorant, rapacious Fanatics, who ever existed.”³¹ The merchants had made quick fortunes by supplying the British troops and sailors based in the American colonies during the Seven Years War, and once this market had dried up, they had moved to Montreal to make further profits in the fur trade.³² However, these evidently unpleasant people and their loss as a result of the fire might ultimately explain, beyond Hanway’s general zeal for Protestant marcantilist philanthropy, why Hanway became involved in raising the subscription and writing the pamphlet for the people of Montreal. He might well have been prompted by Fowler Walker, a lawyer in Lincoln’s Inn who was also a cofounder of Hanway’s Marine Society, a governor of the Foundling Hospital in the 760s,³³ and the London agent for the Montreal-based British merchants.³⁴ The British merchants in Montreal were a small group, numbering about two hundred householders among the population of seven thousand in 766, but they were extremely vocal and more than once bordered on sedition.³⁵ At the time of the fire, they were involved in an acrimonious battle with Murray. Among other regulations, Murray had instituted trading restrictions and had insisted that the inhabitants billet troops of the standing army, two regulations that infuriated the British in Montreal because they perceived these rules as disruptive to their trade and as an infringement on their liberty. Their anger was intensified when it became obvious that Murray, seeking to maintain cordial relations with the seigneurs who held influence over the canadien peasants, was intent on exclud192 e m p i r e s e c u r e d ?

ing the British from his government, thereby inhibiting the merchants’ chances of establishing an oligarchy. The merchants screamed injustice and, under the leadership of Thomas Walker (no apparent relation to Fowler Walker), submitted a fierce petition to the king outlining their grievances.³⁶ This was followed by the “Considerations on the present state of the province of Québec 766,” a fifty-page pamphlet written by Fowler Walker.³⁷ Although Fowler Walker admitted that the British merchants in Montreal were “very inferior” to either the Canadiens or the British officers and soldiers who had conquered the colony, he insisted that the portrait painted of them by Murray was an exaggeration and that the merchants’ claims were legitimate.³⁸ Just as he neglected to refer to the Montreal British merchants and their loss in the fire, Hanway also did not mention the seething controversy between Murray and the merchants, although he tacitly indicated his concerns about Murray’s leadership when he stated that the Canadiens had felt the advantages of the British rule under military government but wondered “whether they will find still better under our civil economy, time must demonstrate.”³⁹ The crass and factious behaviour of the Montreal British was wholly alien to the topos of the generous and virtuous nature of the British culture of sentiment and would hardly have inspired the London merchants to contribute money. The fiction of the misguided child-like canadien peasant provided a much more needy recipient of London aid. In the end, the success of the subscription was moderate: 8,45 sterling, the two fire engines, and the bust were sent to Montreal, whereas over 4,886 was raised for the victims of the Barbadian fire that occurred the following year.⁴⁰ (The discrepancy in the two sums also reflects the strength of the Barbadian lobby and the West Indian voice in general in Britain.) Murray was recalled to London to answer the vociferous charges.⁴¹ (He would later be vindicated.) In his place, Guy Carleton, who had the political backing and clout in Britain that Murray lacked, was appointed acting lieutenant governor of Canada on  April 766.⁴² He sailed for Canada shortly after his appointment, and included in his luggage were the two fire engines, 8,45 sterling, and the marble bust of the king.⁴³ He immediately sought to appease the British merchants by first visiting Montreal before arriving at the government seat at the city of Quebec.⁴⁴ Unfortunately, reaction to the bust, either from the British or canadien inhabitants, has gone unrecorded. For the British merchants, the bust, accompanied as it was by a new lieutenant governor, might have served as a sign of the king’s concern to reassure them of their rights and liberties. The inscription after all was in English. For the Canadiens, who bore little resemblance to the image The Bust of George iii in Montreal

193

of the poor misguided peasant constructed by Hanway, the imperial display, whether benevolent or not, was unmistakable. Ironically, the bust was erected in the very place where the Canadiens had been called to arms to fight the British just a few years before. For the canadien seigneurs, whom Murray had, to a certain degree, sought to appease in order to maintain control of a very large and potentially rebellious population, the bust might well have been greeted with a certain resignation. Consonant with many of the other seigneurs’ views on the British, Michel-Eugène-Gaspard-Alain Chartier de Lotbinière wrote to his father “Je suis destiné à vivre avec les Anglais, mon bien-être est sous leur domination, je dépends entièrement d’eux, il est donc de ma politique de m’accomoder aux circonstances.”⁴⁵ Lotbinière would rise to become the most distinguished canadien politician of his generation. In 800 he commissioned a monument from John Flaxman to commemorate his wife, Marie-Josephte-Godefroy de Tonnancour.⁴⁶ Altered beyond recognition in the nineteenth century, the monument was erected in the parish church at Vaudreuil (just west of Montreal), the seat of Chartier de Lotbinière’s seigneuries.⁴⁷ It is one of the few privately commissioned monuments carved by a British sculptor for a Roman Catholic church.

194 e m p i r e s e c u r e d ?

chapte r s even

Reassurances of Liberty:

Public Monuments in the American Colonies I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves would have been fit instruments to have made slaves of the rest! – Excerpt from William Pitt the Elder’s reply to George Grenville in support of the American colonists’ resistance to the Stamp Act, 19 December 1765¹

f

or the British government, its attempts to appease the Canadiens and to deal with the grievances of the tiny, petulant group of British merchants in Montreal proved to be a minor inconvenience in comparison to the uproar in America caused by the imposition of the Stamp Act in 765. The heart of the crisis was taxation of the colonies without their due representation in Parliament, perceived by the colonists as the ultimate infringement on their personal liberty as Britons. A deep depression in trade in America following the end of the Seven Years War exacerbated the situation. The attacks on the Stamp masters, the petitions sent to the House of Commons, and the general collective malaise of the million-strong population could, if left unheeded, threaten the very foundations of the empire. The situation compelled William Pitt, who had spent much of the last four years since his resignation grumbling away in self-imposed exile, to act ostensibly in defence of the colonists’ concerns. More to the point, he was no doubt seeking to preserve his commercial empire, at the heart of which were his beloved American colonies. His speech on 4 January 766 became instantly famous on both sides of the Atlantic, notably for his attack against George Grenville, his former ally, who had crossed over to the king’s and the Earl of Bute’s camp and who was the architect of the Stamp Act. As contemporary pro-Pitt accounts unabashedly recorded, Pitt sacrificed even his health by dragging his gouty body out of his sick-bed to defend the colonists’ rights in the assembly. He

then collapsed at the end of his verbal tirade, thus managing to supersede Wolfe as the image of the pathetic patriotic hero. When news of the repeal of the Stamp Act reached the American colonies in May 766, it was received with unprecedented rejoicing. Church bells rang, bonfires were lit, and fireworks were set off. In New York, the militant and illicit Sons of Liberty – consisting mostly of artisans and middling merchants who had initially impulsively gathered in condemnation of the Stamp Act – drank toasts in their taverns before rushing into the streets “throwing ... Squibs, Crackers, firing of muskets and pistols, breaking some windows and forcing Knockers off the Doors.”² In Boston, Sam Adams gave “a grand and elegant entertainment to the genteel part of town” and rolled out a cask of Madeira for the common people, while in Virginia the planter grandees celebrated with a “ball and elegant entertainment at the Capitol.”³ Unfortunately, the festivities were marred in Connecticut when several men accidentally blew themselves up while preparing fireworks in a school house.⁴ The unequivocal hero of the day was William Pitt the Elder, never mind that he had little ultimately to do with the repeal. Pitt was not in office at the time. It was the Rockingham administration that had actually secured the repeal, and Pitt’s views on the illegality of taxing the colonies found little, if any, support in this ministry.⁵ Yet the colonists could rarely get past the combination of Pitt’s speech and the nearly simultaneous repeal of the Act. The colonial press certainly exacerbated the simplistic correlation. Pitt’s speech was widely printed at a time when parliamentary speeches rarely were, and he was virtually deified by several commentators.⁶ In Holt’s New York Gazette, a letter from a London resident to an inhabitant of New Jersey referred to: Our glorious HERO , our former deliverer, stood forth; and almost alone, supported our feeble unfashionable dying Cause. He struck at the Root; he openly denied the right of Parliament to impose internal taxations on the Colonies. With the eloquence of a Demosthenes, – with the cool reasoning of a Hampden, – with the warmth of an American enthusiast, did this Great Man plead our desperate cause, and that of liberty, in defiance of R—l favour, popularity, friends, relations, dangers and disease. For Hours could I expatiate, in heaping encomiums upon the Saviour of our Country; but you will hear them from all quarters.⁷

In the Boston Gazette he was trumpeted as another Cicero.⁸ The allusion to Cicero and implicitly to good Roman emperors was further strengthened with a medal cast in New York bearing Pitt’s profile à l’antique.⁹ The ultimate honour was a 196

empir e secur ed?

Fig. 7.1 Benjamin Wilson (attr.), The Repeal, or the Funeral of Miss Ame-Stamp, 18 March 1766.

monument, and at least six were called for throughout the American colonies. Pitt had regained the status that he had achieved at the height of his popularity in Britain in the Seven Years War. The deification of Pitt was, on the one hand, consistent with eighteenth-century British culture, which, as John Brewer and then Kathleen Wilson have observed, was fixated on rituals and symbols, especially those that were linked to the political calendar.¹⁰ Indeed, the earliest reference to a statue of Pitt following the repeal of the Stamp Act was a print that neatly encompasses this emphasis on rituals and symbols. Attributed to Benjamin Wilson and released in London within days of the repeal, the print shows the sombre funeral procession of Miss Ame-Stamp (fig. 7.).¹¹ The infant’s coffin is carried by George Grenville and escorted by the weeping Lord Bute, among others. In the harbour behind them, a box inscribed “Statue of Pitt” is about to be loaded onto the ships the Grafton, Rockingham, and Conway, which are bound for America. Obviously, this statue is fictitious and is unconnected with any of the monuments called for Public Monuments in the American Colonies

197

Fig. 7.2 The Statue, or the Adoration of the Wise-men of the West, 24 April 1766.

in America, since news of the repeal did not reach America until late April and early May. A companion print released a few days later shows Grenville and his cronies gathered about the base of a similarly imaginary statue of James Scott, who, under the pseudonym Anti-Sejanus, had published several letters in the Public Advertiser in support of the Stamp Act (fig. 7.2). On the other hand, the glory and praise heaped on Pitt by the American colonists, to the point that he was honoured with monuments, was extraordinary. Calls for monuments to living individuals were, until the repeal of the Stamp Act, extremely rare in Britain and its colonies. Even Vernon was venerated with virtually everything except a monument after Porto Bello.¹² With the spectre of the Bourbon statues near at hand, statues to living individuals were that much more controversial than monuments to those heroes, like Wolfe, who had died. Exactly contemporary with the Pitt statues was a subscription to erect an equestrian statue of the Duke of Cumberland, who had died on 3 October 765.¹³ Funeral monuments were invested with grief as well as gratitude; those to living 198 e m p i r e s e c u r e d ?

individuals smacked a little too much of deification. (Vernon, poor fellow, lived too long.) However, the statue of Pitt being shipped off to America in Wilson’s print is a highly accurate, if acerbic, reading of the American colonists’ relationship with Britain. There was, as several scholars have noted, a particular enthusiasm evident on the peripheries of the empire, whether it be exaggerated reports in the colonial press or the mob’s energetic response to the Stamp Act crisis.¹⁴ Calls for monuments were consistent with this enthusiasm. Distance from the mother country, combined with often alien environments, served to exacerbate the emphasis and ultimately the reliance on symbols among those on the peripheries of the empire. Three monuments in the British Empire serve as precedents for the monuments that were called for in America. The earliest was the pedestrian statue of Henry Grenville in Barbados, but as we have seen, Grenville had steered the call for this statue through the Barbados House of Assembly by bribing three members of the assembly.¹⁵ Thus this statue indicates more about Grenville’s perception of himself than about the feelings of the Barbadian colonists. The second monument was that commissioned by the colonial Legislature of Massachusetts to honour George Viscount Howe (see fig. 4.3). This monument, rather than the Grenville statue, is a more appropriate precedent for colonial legislative commissions and emphatically articulated the position of Massachusetts and its inhabitants vis-à-vis England in early 759. The third monument is, like the Howe commission, far more relevant than the Grenville statue to the American situation. It is a statue to William Pitt the Elder that was commissioned by the Corporation of the City of Cork (fig. 7.3). Initiated sometime after Pitt had resigned his posts in 76, it was ultimately erected in the Exchange in Cork on 30 July 766. Pitt had personal connections to Ireland; his mother was a member of the VilliersStuart family of Dromane, County Waterford, and he had served as lord lieutenant of Ireland until his resignation. For their part, the merchants of Cork, most of whom were involved in some aspect of the sea trade, were especially grateful to Pitt since their fortunes had increased considerably as a result of the British successes in the Seven Years War. The corporation had given Pitt the Freedom of the City, denoting honorary citizenship, in a gold box in February 759, and in December 76 the mayor, merchants, and traders of Cork presented an address to Mr Pitt “for his faithful, wise and vigorous conduct, whereby great honour has come to the Kingdom.”¹⁶ The timing of this address, within two months of Pitt’s resignation, leaves no doubt about the merchants’ position on the current state of the war. Given their choice, they would have supported Pitt and pressed for war with Spain. The statue was commissioned sometime after this address Public Monuments in the American Colonies

199

Fig. 7.3 Joseph Wilton, statue of William Pitt, 1764–66. Cork, now in the Municipal Art Gallery.

and before a description of it appeared in the London Chronicle in May 764. Like the address, the act of commissioning such a statue was a clear and provocative statement of the position of the Corporation of Cork. According to Charles Garth, the London agent representing South Carolina merchants, Pitt was asked to choose a sculptor for the Cork commission, and, 200

empir e secur ed?

not surprisingly, he chose Joseph Wilton, whom he had selected de facto for the Wolfe monument a few years earlier.¹⁷ Wilton thus had his chance to commemorate the mentor as well as the protégé. The style of the Cork statue was also reminiscent of the Wolfe monument, consistent with the notion of a new style for the new empire. Pitt is in full oratorical pose, harkening back to the ancient philosophers, yet he wears contemporary dress and grasps the Magna Carta. Before the statue was shipped to the far reaches of southern Ireland, where few people of significance would see it, it was puffed in the London newspapers (as the Grenville statue had also been). The London Chronicle published both a description of the monument and its inscription: Siste Viator ubiconque Terrarum Oriundus, Vera Icon GULIELMI PITT cujus si Nomen audies, nihil hic de Fama desideres In Honour of Mr. Pitt, late Secretary and Minister of State to their Majesties K. George

II and III of Great Britain, who, in a few years of his able and upright Administration restored the Honour of the British Arms, together with the Safety, Influence, and Glory of his King and Country, this Statue is erected by the Citizens of Corke, Anno, 764.¹⁸

The statue could also be seen in Wilton’s workshop. Grosley mentioned seeing it there in its uncompleted state in 765.¹⁹ It is significant that the Grenville and Pitt statues – the only two precedents in eighteenth-century Britain for statues to living individuals – are located on the peripheries of the empire. On the one hand, the calls in America for monuments to Pitt could be assessed simply as only so much rhetoric, issued by people caught up in the euphoria surrounding news of the repeal. Perhaps they were. Yet three of the calls were acted upon, indicating that something far more substantial was at work. The metaphor of a mother and her children was ubiquitous in characterizations of the relationship between Britain and its dependants. At the time of the Stamp Act crisis, the metaphor was expanded, mainly by the American colonists, to include Pitt as the father. The medal cast in New York in Pitt’s honour was not atypical in its inscription, which read “The man who, having saved the parent [in the Seven Years War], pleaded with success for his children.”²⁰ Indeed, the colonies, especially those in America, were a complex amalgam of new and old, at once firmly grounded in the mercantile/capitalist stream of the eighteenth century and curiously archaic in their need for a paternalistic leader.²¹ A statue of Pitt, erected in a public square thousands of miles away from the mother country, offered a concrete manifestation of protection and comfort. It firmly articulated Public Monuments in the American Colonies

201

the colonists’ place within the British family. When the colonists called for the statues to Pitt, they were Britons living in America. Ironically, less than a decade later they would be Americans. At the time of the repeal, calls for monuments to honour George III were issued in Virginia, South Carolina, and New York. The king was, after all, the true father of the empire. Of these calls, only one came to fruition. To whom a monument was dedicated – whether the king or Pitt – and the subsequent pursuit, or lack thereof, of the commission, design, and execution of the monument are indicative of the political climate in each colony, particularly the relationship between the upper and lower houses of the various legislatures and, in turn, each house’s relationship with the colonial governor. Broadly stated, in the colonies that did call for monuments, the more a colonial government truly represented the people of the colony, the more likely it was that a statue of Pitt, rather than of the king, would be called for, commissioned, paid for, and brought to fruition by that colonial government. The earliest call for a monument in America occurred before the repeal became a reality. In New York, on 8 March 766 (ironically, the day that Parliament announced the repeal but two months before the announcement would reach America), a raucous mob marched under the banner of the Sons of Liberty “with Sir Jeffrey Amherst’s effigy, afterwards to burn it, as they say he proposed to augment the military forces in America, towards the more effectual forcing [of] the Stamp Act. Also propose, erecting a statue of Mr. Pitt (as a friend) in the Bowling Green, on the identical spot where the Lieut. Governor’s chariot was burned and to name that Green ‘Liberty Green’ forever.”²² On  November 765, when the Stamp Act had come into effect, two thousand “Rabble or rather Rebels” had seized Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden’s coach, dragged it to the Bowling Green, and set it alight. Although Colden subsequently refrained from issuing the stamps – he left this to the incoming governor, Sir Henry Moore – he remained barricaded inside Fort George.²³ The New York assembly, along with Virginia, had been the most emphatic in its condemnation of the Stamp Act in three petitions sent to the king. The assembly acknowledged the authority of Parliament to regulate trade for the good of the mother country but insisted that “a Freedom to drive all Kinds of Traffick in a Subordination to, and not inconsistent with, the British Trade; and an Exemption from all Duties in such a Course of Commerce, is humbly claimed by the Colonies, as the most essential of all the Rights to which they are intitled, as Colonies from, and connected, in the common Bond of Liberty, with the uninslaved Sons of Great Britain.”²⁴ Dissent and riots in New York had been especially vicious, as the city had suffered sub202

empir e secur ed?

stantially during the postwar depression. Social and political rifts both within the assemby and between the assembly and the council also became increasingly pronounced. Like elsewhere in the colonies, and also in Britain, effigies and their hanging or burning (or both) figured prominently in campaigns of dissent. A monument, invested with permanence, was an appropriate contrasting symbol as a sign of favour and gratitude. Nothing came of the New York mob’s call for a monument. However, something more tangible was to appear in Massachusetts immediately following the arrival of the news of the repeal in May 766. As in New York, the imposition of the Stamp Act had provoked some of the most violent rioting in America. Massachusetts was also the home of James Otis, a member of the Assembly of Representatives, who was responsible for proposing the intercolonial Stamp Act Congress, held in New York in October 765 to consolidate colonial opposition to the Act. However, the Massachusetts Legislature was fundamentally split. The address sent by Massachusetts to the House of Commons in November 764 about the Stamp Act was a tepid commentary on taxation in which an artificial separation was made between internal and external taxes, implying that the people of Massachusetts did not object to the imposition by Parliament of an external tax – that is, the Stamp Act. All “indecencies” that might offend the king had been expunged. The adoption of the address was seen as a victory by the council and Lieutenant Governor George Hutchinson over the lower Assembly of Representatives, which had put forward a much bolder statement that objected to any form of taxation. When the address was sent to London, the Assembly of Representatives warned their agent that it did not represent their views. The assembly included a letter outlining the doctrine of natural rights with the explicit statement that any attempt by Parliament to tax colonial trade would be “contrary to a fundamentall Principall of our constitution vizt. That all Taxes ought to originate with the people.” They also sent Otis’s pamphlet The Rights of the British Colonies asserted and proved.²⁵ Indeed, when the Stamp Act was instituted, boxes of stamps were destroyed outside Faneuil Hall (which became known as the Cradle of Liberty), and Hutchinson’s house was ransacked and his library destroyed. When news of the repeal reached Massachusetts, the Legislature, in which the council was still dominated by the minority Anglican Tories, did not, as one might expect, call for a monument. Such approbations were to come, as in New York, from the extra-parliamentary realm. Official celebrations were held on 9 May, three days after the news arrived in the colony. Bells were rung, cannon were discharged, and colours were displayed on ships and on many houses, while Public Monuments in the American Colonies

203

Fig. 7.4 Paul Revere, A View of the Obelisk erected under the Liberty-Tree in Boston on the Rejoicings for the Repeal of the — Stamp Act 1766, 1766.

in the evening bonfires were built and the whole town was illuminated.²⁶ On Boston Common a large obelisk/pyramid was erected by the Sons of Liberty (fig. 7.4). Each side was divided into three segments. The top contained portraits of the king, queen, and fourteen “worthy Patriots who have distinguished themselves by their Love of Liberty,” including Pitt, Earl Temple, William Beckford, Colonel Barré, and John Wilkes. Below each grouping of four were inscriptions and allegorical narrative panels chronicling the episodes of the Stamp Act crisis. The obelisk was surrounded by 280 lamps and topped with a horizontal wheel. At eleven o’clock on 9 May, a signal of twenty-one rockets was discharged, and the wheel was set off, issuing sixteen dozen serpents into the air, which con204

empir e secur ed?

cluded the show. Two hours later the obelisk accidentally caught fire and burnt to the ground.²⁷ Obviously made of wood and other flammable materials, it was nonetheless intended to be permanent; the Massachusetts Gazette recorded that the obelisk was to have been permanently placed under the Liberty Tree on the Common.²⁸ Fortunately, the obelisk is commemorated in an engraving by Paul Revere, of which only one original print survives, entitled A View of the Obelisk erected under the Liberty-Tree in Boston on the Rejoicings for the Repeal of the — Stamp Act 766.²⁹ The Boston obelisk was one of the few instances when the colonial inhabitants acknowledged that Pitt was not solely responsible for the repeal. Yet in commemorating fourteen people in Britain other than the king and queen who had shown even marginal support for the colonists’ plight, the Boston Sons of Liberty articulated another naive interpretation current in America at the time: that George Grenville’s ministry was only an aberration in the otherwise fundamentally fair and benevolent British parliamentary system.³⁰ Indeed, the colonists naively believed – and this was also exacerbated by the colonial press – that they had the unanimous support of all of the British people.³¹ A wooden bust of Pitt placed on a column in the green in Dedham, a village near Boston, was more in keeping with the typical response of the people, which extended gratitude almost exclusively to William Pitt. The decision to erect the bust, like the Sons of Liberty obelisk, was made in the heady days of rejoicing following the repeal. Little is known about the monument, except that since it was wood, it was most likely a local effort, modelled on prints of William Pitt. The bust and column were in place by February 767.³² This was the one monument to Pitt that came to fruition without the assistance of a colonial government resolution, and as we shall see, it was one of the most honest expressions of gratitude. The Legislature of South Carolina was the first colonial government to initiate a call for a monument to Pitt. A resolution to commission a monument was passed with little debate on 8 May 766 only two days after news of the repeal had reached the colony.³³ Such enthusiasm suggests at least a pretext of unanimity within the Legislature. This was hardly the case. Most members of the lower House of Assembly were lined up in varying degrees of opposition to the Stamp Act and against a successive line of colonial governors who were perceived to be ineffectual or, worse, who had made arbitrary appointments without the consent of the assembly, which the assembly saw as infringements on the inviolable rights of the colonists. In addition to the statue of Pitt, it was voted that three full-length painted portraits should honour the three delegates sent to the Stamp Act Congress by the South Carolina House of Assembly: Christopher Gadsden, Thomas Public Monuments in the American Colonies

205

Lynch, and John Rutledge.³⁴ These three men had proven to be the most radical of all the delegates, favouring petitioning only the king and ignoring Parliament since the colonists were not represented in Parliament and since Parliament had insulted them by not accepting the colonists’ earlier petitions. (The South Carolinians were overruled by the more conservative delegates, and an address was sent to the king, a memorial to the House of Lords, and a petition to the House of Commons, thereby acknowledging the colonists’ dependence on both the king and Parliament.)³⁵ Gadsden, a successful Charleston merchant who had not been allowed to take his seat in the assembly in 762 because of his vocal attacks in the press on the lack of effective British support in the Cherokee Wars of 759–6, was particularly feted by the assembly and by the people of South Carolina. He and Otis were the two primary architects of the Stamp Act Congress, and as long as his interests coincided with those of the moderately militant (compared to their northern counterparts) working-class mechanics and artisans of Charleston who had formed themselves into the Sons of Liberty while he was at the Congress, Gadsden was their spokesperson in the assembly.³⁶ In its opposition to the Stamp Act, the assembly was emphatic; on 29 November 765 it issued a set of eighteen resolves, directly copied from the declarations of the Stamp Act Congress, that fundamentally denied the right of Parliament to tax the colonies.³⁷ Five months later, in an equally emphatic display of its independence from the council and the governor, the House of Assembly voted to commission the statue of Pitt as well as the paintings of Gadsden, Lynch, and Rutledge. Before the statue of Pitt was resolved upon, William Wragg, the lone conservative voice in the House of Assembly and the only member to vote against the resolves, moved that the monument should not be to Pitt but to the king since the king was the true head of Britain.³⁸ Another member, Henry Laurens, who was himself not terribly radical, noted that the motion was not seconded and that Wragg was “derided for his presumption.”³⁹ Although the king was still recognized by the colonists as the constitutional figurehead of the British Empire, it was Pitt specifically who was being honoured because he had stood up for the rights of the colonists. Ironically, however, by commemorating Pitt and his actions in Parliament, the South Carolinians were implicitly confirming Parliament’s power over the colonies, the very point that Gadsden, Lynch, and Rutledge had contested at the Stamp Act Congress. Perhaps spurred on by the South Carolina decision, the Virginia House of Burgesses resolved on 20 November 766 to erect a statue to the king “as a grateful Acknowledgement for repealing the Stamp Act, and thereby restoring the Rights and Privileges of his American subjects and consequently the Ease and 206

empir e secur ed?

Happiness of this Colony.”⁴⁰ Pitt was specifically acknowledged by way of the creation of a new county called Pittsylvania,⁴¹ and a fortnight later members of the assembly called for an obelisk “to commemorate the Services of sundry noble and worthy Patriots of Great Britain.”⁴² The comparatively rather reserved praise for Pitt is initially surprising given that the first declaration of rights in the American colonies made after passage of the Stamp Act came from the Virginia House of Burgesses. Patrick Henry introduced his resolves on 30 May 765 asserting the right of Virginians to share all privileges of Englishmen and the right of Virginians to be taxed only by themselves “or Persons chosen to represent them.”⁴³ Virginia was not represented at the Stamp Act Congress the following October because the Assembly of Burgesses had been dissolved by Governor Farquier after adopting five of Henry’s seven resolutions. Henry’s resolutions were perceived as dangerously close to treason, and in passing them, the entire assembly was implicated.⁴⁴ However, the assembly was not as rabidly radical as the governor and Henry’s resolutions implied. The resolutions had been passed by a slim majority at a time when only 35 of the 6 burgesses were sitting. (Henry had strategically waited until the end of the session when most members had already left for home.) The young men from the western counties who lined up behind Henry were hardly characteristic of the overwhelming majority of the burgesses, most of whom were aristocratic planters from established Tidewater families. After dissolving the assembly, Farquier wrote to the Lords of Trade that Henry’s resolutions had been passed by the “Young, hot and Giddy Members” at the expense of the old, conservative Tidewater men. Peyton Randolph, former Speaker of the assembly, declared as he left the assembly that “he would have given 500 guineas for a single vote, so deeply did he deplore the radical expressions” of Henry. Before Henry had slipped in his resolves, the Assembly of Burgesses had been content with the much more tepidly worded, yet nonetheless emphatic, condemnation of the Stamp Act in the form of the petition, memorial, and remonstrance sent to the king, Lords, and Commons in 764.⁴⁵ When the monument to the king was commissioned, the Tidewater planters were more judiciously represented in the assembly. The decision to honour the king, rather than Pitt, with a statue is an expression of the inherent conservatism of the Tidewater grandees. A monument to the king would be a concrete reassertion, particularly following Henry’s resolves, of Virginians’ fundamental loyalty to the king and a self-conscious assertion of their Britishness. Nothing came of the calls for the monument or obelisk in Virginia. This may have had something to do with the fractious nature of the Assembly of Burgesses. Indeed, given the situation, the call for a monument to the king was more imporPublic Monuments in the American Colonies

207

tant than the actual monument, which would have taken years to complete, since the call clearly articulated the position of the assembly within the British imperial family in 766, a time when this position was in question. In Maryland a call for a statue to Pitt suffered the same fate, yet the Maryland House of Assembly was far more unified than the Assembly of Burgesses in neighbouring Virginia. In contrast to the Assembly of Burgesses, the Maryland house had the reputation of being one of the most obstreperous in the American colonies. During the Seven Years War the members had refused to cooperate with the council, British Parliament, and even Virginia in supplying the troops unless Maryland benefited directly.⁴⁶ During the Stamp Act crisis, the Maryland assembly unanimously passed resolutions on 8 September 765 that denied the right of Parliament to tax the colonies, and in the following month it was one of the few colonies that sent delegates with full signing authority to the Stamp Act Congress.⁴⁷ Amid the celebrations at the news of the repeal “a few Gentlemen ... opened a subscription for erecting a monument at the city of Annapolis ... To honour Mr. Pitt, in grateful remembrance of his patriotic defence and support of the rights, liberties, and privileges of British Americans; 30 guineas were presently subscribed, and we doubt not a very considerable sum will be raised in our county.” This news appeared in the pro-Pitt Lloyd’s Evening Post in late June 766.⁴⁸ In November, when the assembly convened, a resolution was passed to put aside 2,250 in bills of exchange to pay for both a marble monument to Pitt and a painting of Lord Camden. The painting was intended for the provincial court, while the statue was to be erected in Annapolis “in such Place ... as the lower House of Assembly shall direct.”⁴⁹ The switch to a public commission was probably prompted by the South Carolina commission. Charles Garth, the London agent for South Carolina, privately congratulated the South Carolina house for their decision, declaring a public commission far more noble and dignified in contrast to one paid for by private subscription in “other colonies.”⁵⁰ After the Maryland house resolved to set aside funds to pay for the statue and the painting, nothing more was done. The resolution may have died with the council and governor, although this went unrecorded, but it seems plausible that the demographic and social make-up of Maryland also contributed to the lack of interest in pursuing the commissions. The same might be said for the Virginia commissions. Both Maryland and Virginia were planter colonies, carved up into great tobacco and cotton plantations run primarily by long-established families. Neither colony had a strong urban focus comparable to Boston, New York, or Charleston, the last of which was the major port for the southern colonies.

208 e m p i r e s e c u r e d ?

Annapolis and Williamsburg were the main urban centres respectively, but both of these existed almost exclusively because they were the seats of government. The planter class gathered in town for the political season in imitation of the English country aristocrats, but beyond this the planters’ loyalties lay with their own estates. Furthermore, the feudal-style organization of society also limited the numbers of artisans and middling-class merchants, who had proven to have such a loud and often violent voice in some of the other colonies in opposition to the Stamp Act. Indeed, the public did not figure prominently in any of the politicking surrounding the Stamp Act in either Maryland or Virginia. In the colonies where monuments did come to fruition, the public was at least ostensibly involved. Perhaps this was the necessary ingredient to spur the calls into commissions. The public, or the mob, continued to figure prominently, at least ostensibly, in the progress of the New York statue to Pitt. After the call made by the Sons of Liberty in March 766 for a statue of Pitt to be erected on the Bowling Green, nothing more was heard until news of the repeal of the Stamp Act reached New York in mid-May 766. Amid the celebrations, a subscription for a statue was opened by prominent citizens of New York.⁵¹ They were probably spurred on by a squib that appeared below the date in the 8 March 766 edition of the London Chronicle announcing the repeal, which had arrived in New York just hours before the subscription was initiated.⁵² The author of the squib and the person responsible for inserting it in the London Chronicle was Thomas Hollis, the idiosyncratic republican lawyer of Lincoln’s Inn, who was a friend of America and the primary benefactor of Harvard College Library. He also virtually idolized William Pitt. Hollis put much store in the value of symbols and emblems, obsessively collecting anything to do with Cromwell (he even owned his bed) and Milton. He commissioned numerous medals to commemorate Pitt and the victories of the Seven Years War as well as prints and seals to embellish his ornate leather-bound editions of Cromwellian tracts, Milton’s works, and other republican writings.⁵³ Hollis first wrote the squib that appeared in the London Chronicle in his diary on the day that the Stamp Act was repealed: “Englishmen, Scottishmen, Irishmen, Colonists, Brethern, Rejoice in the Wisdom, Fortitude of one Man, which hath saved you from Civil War & Your Enemies! Erect a Statue to that Man in the Metropolis of Your Dominions! Place a garland of Oak Leaves on the Pedestal and grave in it Concord.”⁵⁴ Recognizing the power of a public tribute, he prompted those who should be most grateful to honour Pitt with such a memo-

Public Monuments in the American Colonies

209

rial. In this way, he may also have indirectly contributed to the South Carolina commission.⁵⁵ In March 769 he recorded in his diary that he had been to Wilton’s workshop to see the unfinished statue intended for Charleston.⁵⁶ The South Carolina statue may also have pushed the New York commission into being. On 2 June 766 news that the South Carolina House of Assembly had made provision for a statue of Pitt was published in either Weyman’s or Holt’s New York Gazette.⁵⁷ Within days an announcement was published in Holt’s New York Gazette requesting that the freeholders and freemen of the City of New York meet “in order to choose a Committee to instruct their Members to move in the House of Assembly, that provision be made for erecting a Statue to Mr. Pitt in Testimony of the Grateful sense they entertain of his Services to the American Colonies.”⁵⁸ The resulting petition appeared in Weyman’s New York Gazette on 30 June: We, Freemen and Freeholders of the City of New York, assembled at the Coffee-House the 23d Day of June 766, impressed with the deepest Sense of Gratitude to all the Friends of Liberty and America who exerted themselves in promoting the Repeal of the Stamp Act, think it our indispensable Duty, to endeavour, by erecting a proper Monument, to perpetuate the Memory of so glorious an Event, to the latest posterity. We therefore earnestly entreat of, and strenuously recommend to, you Gentlemen our Representatives, that you will move in the House of Assembly, now sitting, for a Vote of the Honourable House, to make provision for an elegant Statue of Brass of the Rt. Hon. William Pitt, Esq.; whom we regard in the sacred Light of having a second time been the preserver of his Country.⁵⁹

An item announcing the completion of the statue of Pitt for Cork, together with its inscription, appeared in the same edition.⁶⁰ On 30 June 766 the New York House of Assembly officially sanctioned provision for a monument.⁶¹ The primary signer of the petition was James DeLancey, whose father, the elder James DeLancey, had served as Lieutenant Governor of New York from 753 to 755 and again from 758 to 760. The elder James DeLancey was one of the sons of Stephen DeLancey, a Huguenot refugee who had come to New York in 686 and made his fortune in the fur trade. His descendants rose to prominence in New York society representing the merchant faction and became well connected with the new English aristocracy; Susannah, the elder daughter of Stephen, married Admiral Sir Peter Warren in 73.⁶² The DeLanceys were also no strangers to commissioning monuments. At Warren’s death in 752, Susannah hired Roubiliac to execute a monument in Westminster Abbey. The monument 210

empir e secur ed?

is a complex allegorical narrative consistent with Roubiliac’s large pieces of the period. A figure of Fortune, portrayed as Hercules, places a bust of Warren on a pedestal, while Navigation, in the guise of Britannia, mourns the loss of such an admirable officer.⁶³ Oliver DeLancey, brother of Susannah and the elder James, had erected a monument to General Wolfe on his Manhattan estate in what is now Greenwich Village. It filled the vista at the end of a long avenue and may have been in place as early as July 762 when a model of the garden was put up for auction and advertised in the New York Mercury: This is to inform the Gentlemen and Ladies of this City, that there is just brought to Town, and to be disposed of by Way of drawing tickets ... a most curious Piece of Work, representing a Country Seat, with the Chapel, Summer House, Flower Gardens and grottos belonging to it; also a Monument in Memory of General Wolfe, on the Top of which is the Image of Fame, below which are the Ensigns bearing the English Standards; in the Body of the Piece is the Corps [sic] on a Couch, at the Foot of which is Minerva weeping, at the Head is Mars, pointing to General Amherst, who stands at a small Distance, as meaning, Behold a living Hero, with other Pieces too tedious to mention.⁶⁴

Unfortunately, the model does not survive, nor is there an extant image. However, the elaborate composition of the monument suggests the work of a British sculptor. Indeed, it sounds remarkably similar to some of the competition entries for the monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey. Perhaps through DeLancey’s London connections, one of these designs found its way to New York. In commemorating the man who secured Canada for Britain and thereby protected the American colonies, DeLancey’s monument is a display of imperial patriotism. Yet DeLancey was not being wholly altruistic. By capturing Quebec and thus prolonging the Seven Years War, Wolfe greatly increased the DeLancey fortunes since the family held many of the contracts to supply the British troops in North America.⁶⁵ Wolfe’s victory also firmly established confidence in the war and in the empire, which further benefited the DeLanceys, who were also engaged in extending credit and speculating in property.⁶⁶ On the surface, the younger James DeLancey and the other prominent New Yorkers who signed the petition for the Pitt statue were as sincere as the members of the South Carolina house in their appreciation of Pitt’s actions. However, while they were no doubt grateful for the repeal of the Stamp Act, at least for the sake of their pocketbooks, their enthusiasm to express their gratitude in the highly visible and tangible form of a public monument was more likely a political Public Monuments in the American Colonies

211

move in the ongoing partisan struggle for control of New York. New York politics were dominated by two family parties, the DeLanceys and the Livingstons.⁶⁷ The latter was primarily a family of lawyers, and like the DeLanceys, they owned huge acreages in both the city and the colony. Unlike the Charleston merchants, both New York families were conservative; the DeLanceys would become ardent Loyalists, while the Livingstons would become conservative revolutionaries. (Oliver DeLancey seems to have removed the Wolfe monument sometime before 783, perhaps to keep it out of harm’s way.)⁶⁸ Yet despite their conservative tendencies, the DeLanceys and the Livingstons cultivated the New York mob to further their political aims. The younger James DeLancey, for one, was spotted at numerous Sons of Liberty meetings, and the enthusiastic petition for a monument to Pitt was a very public broadcast of his patriotic and public sensibilities. The assembly, for its part, which in 766 was dominated by the Livingstons, had little option but to accept the petition for fear of being labelled “unpatriotic” and “anti-Pitt.”⁶⁹ However, James DeLancey’s true colours came out when, after attending a few of the Sons of Liberty meetings, he was so disgusted with the rabble that he established his own gentlemanly version.⁷⁰ Real radicals such as Isaac Sears and Alexander McDougall saw through the sham and charged the DeLanceys and the Livingstons with “bellow[ing] liberty to get into power” and with paying lip-service to liberty while secretly yearning for the power of “Turkish Bashaws, French Grandees and the Romish Clergy.”⁷¹ The Livingstons, for their part, showed their conservative nature while also succeeding in their efforts to outdo the DeLanceys. On the day that the assembly made provision for the Pitt statue, it also resolved: [Having taken] into consideration the innumerable and singular Benefits received from our most gracious sovereign, since the Commencement of his auspicious Reign, during which they have been protected from the Fury of a cruel, merciless, and savage Enemy [i.e., the French and the Indians]; and lately from the utmost Confusion, and distress, by the repeal of the Stamp Act: In Testimony therefore of their Gratitude, and the Reverence due to his Sacred Person and Character; ... this House will make Provision for an Equestrian Statue of his Present Majesty, our Most Gracious Sovereign, to be erected in the City of New York, to perpetuate to the latest Posterity, the deep Sense this Colony has of the eminent and singular Blessings received from him during his most auspicious Reign.⁷²

The Livingstons could not honour Pitt without honouring the king as well.

212

empir e secur ed?

The subsequent histories of the Pitt statue in South Carolina and the Pitt and George III statues in New York point to the fundamental differences in internal politics between the two colonies. While the South Carolina house enthusiastically proceeded with each stage of the commission, the New York projects emerged only occasionally, bounced back and forth as political hot potatoes between the rival factions. The South Carolina assembly proceeded to commission the monument without delay. The cost, choice of sculptor, design approval, and site selection were all decided by November 766. Within six weeks of passing the resolution, the assembly had asked the Public Treasurer to procure bills of exchange amounting to ,000 sterling to pay for the monument.⁷³ Charles Garth was asked to oversee the progress of the commission in London.⁷⁴ His first duty was to hire a sculptor and negotiate the contract. In his reply to the South Carolina Committee of Correspondence, dated 9 July 766, he summed up the London sculpture trade: “Rouvillac [sic] is dead, Risbrick [sic] has left off business, of the several that remain, Mr. Wilton, and Mr. Read are of the first note and Eminence, both appear to have great skill, but the Preference, I find, is given to the former, I have therefore made choice of him to give my Orders.”⁷⁵ Garth also chose Wilton, he continued, because Wilton had just completed the statue of Pitt for Cork (see fig. 7.3). Although Garth had not seen the statue, he was aware that it had been much admired, and he was very impressed with two busts of Pitt that he had seen in Wilton’s workshop. The choice was settled decisively by the fact that Pitt had chosen Wilton to design the Cork statue, an indication that Wilton had the approbation of the Great Patriot himself.⁷⁶ Garth’s reply also restated the directions that the Committee of Correspondence had given to him in a now-lost letter about the design of the monument: “at present I have given [to Wilton] your Directions to have [Pitt] at full length in a Speaking attitude and suitable Dress with a Roll in one Hand, inscribed Magna Charta [sic], and a proper Pedestal for it”⁷⁷ (fig. 7.5). While the oratorical pose, speaker’s robes, and inclusion of the Magna Carta recall the Cork statue, the South Carolina statue was not a copy of the Cork statue as some people have suggested. Although alluding to classical orators in pose and enwrapped in a great swath of robes, the Cork statue shows Pitt in contemporary dress and is therefore consistent with Wilton’s Wolfe monument and the new style for a new empire. The South Carolina statue, on the other hand, presents Pitt more thoroughly à l’antique, wearing a toga beneath his robes. It is unclear who chose the antique mode – Wilton, the members of the assembly, or Garth – but the intended allu-

Public Monuments in the American Colonies

213

Fig. 7.5 Joseph Wilton, statue of William Pitt the Elder, erected 1770, marble. Charleston, South Carolina. Damaged c. 1776–83 and c. 1790. Now in Washington Park, Charleston.

sion, as with the Cork commission, was surely to Cicero, the ancient statesman with whom Pitt was most often associated.⁷⁸ Cicero, along with Sallust and Tacitus, were the classical writers most favoured by the American radicals since, as Bernard Bailyn has acknowledged, they “had lived when the republic was being fundamentally challenged or when its greatest days were already past and its moral and political virtues decayed. They had hated and feared the trends of their own time, and in their writing had contrasted the present with a better past, which they endowed with qualities absent from their own, corrupt era. The earlier age had been full of virtue: simplicity, patriotism, integrity, a love of jus214

empir e secur ed?

tice and of liberty; the present was venal, cynical and oppressive.”⁷⁹ Pitt as Cicero embodied the pure patriotic virtues of times past. Locating the statue in Charleston precipitated the most debate in the entire design process, but even this was decided by November 766.⁸⁰ Originally, when the resolution for the statue was passed in the spring of 766, the intended location seems to have been inside the Assembly Room opposite the Speaker’s chair and near the paintings of Gadsden, Rutledge, and Lynch. However, this information was not passed on to Garth,⁸¹ and he took it upon himself to ask Wilton to draw two sketches, one of a statue inside a niche and another of a statue to be erected in an open place or square.⁸² Wilton himself favoured an outdoor setting and sent his advice to Garth, which was then relayed to the House of Assembly: the Statue can be disposed so as to form a Vista from the avenues of several large Streets, ... Public Monuments and Statues, erected judiciously in a City, adds [sic] greatly to its Elegance and Dignity, and it gave me satisfaction that you [Garth] was [sic] of that Opinion when you did me the Honour of first mentioning this affair to me; your knowledge of the Roman History; must have influenced your first Idea, for their opinion was that by as much as the Statues of their Heroes were increased in their Size, by so much was the merit and abilities of those Heroes, enhanced in the Ideas of the Beholders; and the examples which prove this rational notion of that Great People, are very frequent in Italy.⁸³

Wilton’s sketches were sent to the House of Assembly along with a bust of Pitt so that the members could see for themselves an example of Wilton’s workmanship (all are lost).⁸⁴ When the assembly reconvened in November 766, it approved Wilton’s sketch for an outdoor monument, although some of the members found it “rather too stiff in the attitude.”⁸⁵ The approval was made without having seen the bust, which was lost in the ship’s cargo until 0 December.⁸⁶ The assembly specified that the statue was to be located in “the most Public part of our Town, where two of the broadest and longest of our Streets that run East and West, North and South intersect each other at right angles [Broad and Meeting Streets], one of which is Sixty the other Seventy feet wide, and both as streight [sic] as an arrow; In the Cross way of these two Streets, the Statue is purposed to be placed and will have our new Church, our new Market, the state assembly, and armory, all public Buildings, at the several Corners next to it” (fig. 7.6). The Committee also stipulated that the marble used should be of the highest quality in order to withstand the alternating violent rain and piercing heat of the South Carolinian summers.⁸⁷ The rather stiff and awkward design Public Monuments in the American Colonies

215

Fig. 7.6 Charles Fraser, View of Broad Street showing the courthouse, the exchange, Wilton’s statue of William Pitt, and St. Michael’s Church, c. 1796.

of the final monument showing Pitt in a twisted pose was probably the result of Wilton’s attempt to address the perpendicular vistas. Nevertheless, the modern Cicero was to join the Palladian State House, the Gibbsian St Michael’s Church, the armoury, and the market at the intersection of one of the wealthiest cities in America.⁸⁸ The final piece of business in South Carolina, undertaken sometime before November 766, was composing the inscription.⁸⁹ It is effusive in its praise of Pitt: IN GR ATEFUL MEMORY OF HIS SERVICES TO HIS COUNTRY IN GENER AL AND TO AMERICA IN PARTICULAR THE COMMONS HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY

216

empir e secur ed?

OF SOUTH CAROLINA UNANIMOUSLY VOTED THIS STATUE OF THE HON . WILLIAM PITT, ESQ . WHO GLORIOUSLY EXERTED HIMSELF BY DEFENDING THE FREEDOM OF AMERICANS THE TRUE SONS OF ENGLAND BY PROMOTING A REPEAL OF THE STAMP-ACT IN THE YEAR 1766 TIME WILL SOONER DESTROY THIS MARK OF THEIR ESTEEM THAN ER ASE FROM THEIR MINDS THEIR JUST SENSE OF HIS PATRIOTIC VIRTUE .

The South Carolinians’ radical tendencies are borne out in two ways: in the emphasis on “Americans” and in the reference to Pitt as the “Hon. William Pitt, Esq.” rather than as the Earl of Chatham. At the Stamp Act Congress, Christopher Gadsden had used the term “American” with a consolidated weight that it had rarely held before: “there ought to be no New England man; no New Yorker, known on the Continent; but all of us Americans.”⁹⁰ In the letter to Garth dated 20 November 766, the Committee of Correspondence heartily congratulated Pitt on being named the Earl of Chatham but specified in a postscript that the inscription was not to be changed.⁹¹ The Charleston statue was to be a tribute to the Great Commoner, not to the aristocratic earl. Ultimately, however, the South Carolinians’ bellicose nature was tempered by their proclamation that they were “the true sons of England.” Rebellion and full-blown republicanism were still several years away. In New York, sometime after the statues to Pitt and to the king were called for at the end of June 766, Robert Charles, the colony’s London agent, was entrusted with the commissions. The next reference to the commissions does not occur until 6 February 768, when an act was passed by the DeLancey-controlled council that empowered Charles to pay for the statues; ,000 sterling was set aside Public Monuments in the American Colonies

217

for the statue of the king and 500 for the statue of Pitt.⁹² Passing the act could well have been yet another political move in the struggle between the DeLanceys and the Livingstons to gain control of the New York assembly. In an about-face from their 766 tactics, the DeLanceys sought to disassociate themselves from the mob. They cultivated the enfranchised merchant class and cast themselves as neighbourly moderates who were weary of what they saw as mob rule in the city of New York.⁹³ The mob, the DeLanceys maintained, were allied with the Livingstons, whom the DeLanceys referred to as “pettifogging attorneys,” snobbish aristocrats who made use of hired thugs to pursue their own self-interests.⁹⁴ The accusations rang true for many New Yorkers since the assembly had refused to comply with the Quartering Act of 765, which demanded room and board for Thomas Gage’s standing army. The concept of a standing army was as alien to British liberty as was taxation without representation. As a result, business in the New York assembly was suspended by, ironically, the Earl of Chatham, who had returned to power in July 766. A year later Chatham also imposed the Townshend Duties, taxes that applied to glass, lead, paper, and tea as they arrived at the colonial ports, and these were also met with violent uprisings in New York. The DeLanceys called the Livingstons a “restless set of republicans” and capitalized on most New Yorkers’ weariness with mob insurgencies.⁹⁵ By passing the act that enabled payment for the monuments, the DeLanceys expressed their loyalty and patriotic spirit as Britons to the king and to the Earl of Chatham as well as to the people of New York. In the 768 election, the Livingstons were so soundly routed that William Livingston gave up the fight and retired to New Jersey.⁹⁶ Compared to the South Carolina commission, the lack of correspondence and discussion within the New York assembly and council regarding the monuments implies a lack of sincere interest in the commissions. This is exacerbated by the fact that neither the statue of Pitt nor that of the king were original designs. Although both were executed by Wilton – as sculptor to the king, he would have been the obvious choice – they were copies of monuments that he was already in the process of executing for other clients. The Pitt statue is a slightly smaller version of the Charleston monument, also carved in marble, despite the initial proposal in DeLancey’s petition for a more expensive brass (that is, bronze) statue (fig. 7.7). As it was, the New York council set aside only half of the amount reserved for the South Carolina statue. The statue of the king seems to have been identical to the equestrian statue of George III that was commissioned in 766 by Princess Amelia, the king’s sister, for Berkeley Square in London and that would be erected in 772 (fig. 7.8).⁹⁷ Both were gilded lead, and both were most likely cast from the same mould (fig. 7.8 is an “improved” version of the Berkeley 218

empir e secur ed?

Fig. 7.7 (left) Joseph Wilton, statue of William Pitt the Elder, erected 1770, marble. New York. Damaged in 1776, now in the New-York Historical Society. Fig. 7.8 (right)

After Joseph Wilton, His Majesty King George III .

Square monument).98 The design was the standard rhetorical image of the benevolent emperor: In imitation of the equestrian statue of the enlightened Marcus Aurelius in Rome, a toga-clad George III stretches one hand out over the heads of his subjects in a protective gesture of benevolence.⁹⁹ The fundamental differences between the radical South Carolina assembly and the genuinely conservative nature of the DeLancey-dominated New York colonial government were perhaps most acutely indicated when it came time to unveil the respective statues. In South Carolina the interest and concern accorded the finished statue of Pitt were as strong as that surrounding its conception. The execution of the commission had been delayed by about six months because Wilton, unable to find a block of marble large enough for the statue in England – the contract stipulated a statue at least seven and a half feet high – had been forced to order a suitable piece from Carrara.¹⁰⁰ The finished statue was finally shipped from London in late March 770 and arrived in May at the docks in Charleston, where it was met with celebrations paralleling those that had greeted the repeal of the Stamp Act four years previously: the elegant Marble Statue of that true Friend and undaunted Assertor of the Liberties of Britain and America, the Right Honourable WILLIAM PITT ... was landed upon Charles Elliot, Esq; his wharf, amidst a vast Concourse of the Inhabitants, many of them of the first Rank and Consequence, who received it with three hearty Cheers, and preceded after a Flag had been fixed upon the Case, drew it by Hand, in fifteen Minutes to a Shade, prepared for its Reception at the Armoury, where it is to remain till the Foundation and Pedestal are raised whereon it is to be erected. – Nothing ever was conducted with greater Order, than this Procession ... and every one seemed highly pleased with the Respect that was shown to the great Patriot.¹⁰¹

The report goes on to state that all the ships in the harbour, except for three whose owners were carefully noted, raised their colours and that the church bells would have rung if a prominent member of the assembly who lived near St Michael’s Church had not been extremely ill.¹⁰² The official unveiling of the statue occurred two months later on 7 July 770 after William Adron, a sculptor from Wilton’s workshop who had accompanied the statue to Charleston, had overseen preparation of the foundations and construction of the pedestal on which the statue would be erected. (Most of Adron’s wages and transport costs were paid for out of the ,000 set aside by the assembly to pay for the statue. The actual cost of the statue, pedestal, and inscriptions was 800.)¹⁰³ The unveiling offered yet another occasion to celebrate: 220

empir e secur ed?

Early this Morning, all the Vessels in the Harbour hoisted their Colours, and a Flag, with the words PITT AND LIBERTY, and a fine branch of Laurel above it, was displayed on the Scaffolding, upon a Staff of 45 Feet high: And this Afternoon, in the Presence of almost the whole of the Inhabitants, the Statue was raised, and fixed in its Place, without the least Accident by the Numbers 26 and 92, Members of the Club No. 45, who had assembled themselves upon this Occasion. As soon as it was fixed, 26 members of our Assembly ascended the Scaffold; when the Hon. Peter Manigault, their Speaker, was pleased to condescend to the Request of the People by proclaiming the Inscription on the Pedestal, which were in these Words: [The inscription follows.] As soon as this was done, Lord Chatham’s health was drank, 26 cannon were discharged by the Artillery Company, three Huzzas succeeded, and St. Michael’s Bells rang. – Joy sat on every countenance. – This Evening the Club No. 45, consisting of a great Body of the principal Inhabitants, are to meet at Messrs. Dillon & Gray’s Tavern, when an elegant Entertainment is provided for them, when the following 45 Toasts will be drank, viz.¹⁰⁴

After the perfunctory initial three toasts to the king, the queen, and the royal governor, the fourth toast was to the Sons of Liberty, the fifth to the glorious ninety-two, the sixth to the unanimous twenty-six, the seventh to members of the assembly, the eighth to “the Men who will part with Life before Liberty,” and so on to the sixteenth, which was to “All honest, resolute, and disinterested Patriots,” and the twenty-eighth, which was to “Success to all Patriotic Measures.” The forty-fifth and final toast, if anyone was still standing, was reserved for John Wilkes: “May Wilkes always prove a Scourge to Tyrants and Traitors, and be the Glory of Old England.”¹⁰⁵ The number forty-five referred to the forty-fifth issue of Wilkes’s North Briton, which had prompted the king and Bute to issue warrants for the arrest of Wilkes on charges of sedition and treason. Obviously, the Pitt statue no longer represented solely Pitt’s contribution to perpetuating British liberty. Indeed, Pitt’s health was not drunk until the ninth toast. Consequently, the South Carolinians had inadvertently addressed the problem of the inherent delay between commissioning a monument and its actual completion, by which time the reasons for the commission had usually become irrelevant. For the South Carolina House of Assembly, by 770 the statue of Pitt had become invested with the Wilkite pursuit of liberty. The year before, the Society of the Gentlemen Supporters of the Bill of Rights (SGSB) had solicited the American colonies for financial assistance; the society had been set up in London “to defend and maintain the legal, constitutional Liberty of the subject” and, more practically, to help offset some of Wilkes’s mounting debts.¹⁰⁶ Public Monuments in the American Colonies

221

Although American radicals enthusiastically championed Wilkes as a kindred spirit, only the South Carolina House of Assembly translated this enthusiasm into a monetary contribution. The assembly pledged ,500 for the advancement of the “Just and Constitutional Rights and Liberties of the People of Great Britain and America.” The South Carolinians were especially proud since they had acted so independently, their response being totally without precedent. As one member stated, “it cannot be said we have followed the Example of the Northern Colonies.”¹⁰⁷ However, their bold move was declared illegal by both the attorney general in England and by Lieutenant Governor William Bull in South Carolina since monies could be issued from colonial treasuries only under warrants signed by the governor. Such practice had more or less been suspended in the eighteenth century, as the workings of the government were facilitated by the assembly’s borrowing the money from the treasury for routine procedures and repaying it by appropriation in the annual tax bill. Thus when Bull baulked at authorizing the payment to the SGSB because the Wilkes controversy had such a high profile and because the assembly’s pledge would no doubt come to the attention of the Crown, the South Carolinian radicals were further incensed.¹⁰⁸ Infuriated, the assembly returned to one of its ongoing bugbears and demanded that the council be disbanded and new members appointed who were men of property in the colony rather than the placemen that the Crown had hitherto supplied. (The forty-second toast at the unveiling of the statue was for “Property to the Lovers of Liberty only.”) The public was also goaded by articles in the sympathetic South Carolina Gazette into exhibiting support for the assembly in its pursuit of rights and freedoms. When news of Wilkes’s release from prison reached Charleston in April 770, there were celebrations in the streets, and the number forty-five was reiterated in myriad forms: cannon salutes, candles, toasts, and even a meal of fortyfive dishes with a forty-five-pound turtle.¹⁰⁹ The unveiling of the statue of Pitt two months later afforded another opportunity for the assembly to display its radical edge in the face of the intractable council and governor. The preponderance of the number ninety-two alongside forty-five refers to the number of members in the Massachusetts House of Representatives who had voted in June 768 not to rescind the Massachusetts Circular Letter that had reinforced the position of the radicals in the colony vis-à-vis the rights of the colonists as Britons. The number twenty-six, in turn, refers to the number of representatives in the South Carolina House of Assembly who had adopted resolutions that approved the refusal of the Massachusetts assembly to withdraw the circular. The cause of Wilkes had become wedded to the cause of America, and the South Carolinian 222 e m p i r e s e c u r e d ?

radicals in particular had appropriated Wilkite modes of political activism to articulate their identity and pursue their cause.¹¹⁰ The statues of Pitt and the king arrived in New York on 4 June 770.¹¹¹ Only around this time were decisions made about where the statues would be located. On 9 May the Legislature requested the permission of the municipal common council to erect the statue of the king in the Bowling Green, the most prominent open space in the city.¹¹² Ironically, this was where the mob, which had issued the first call for a monument to Pitt in New York before the actual repeal of the Stamp Act, had wanted to erect their statue. Meanwhile, where to locate the Pitt statue was the subject of some discussion in the Legislature, but this took place three weeks after the statue had arrived in the harbour, further indicating a lack of sincere interest in the project.¹¹³ Ultimately, the statue was located in the middle of Wall and William Streets, which was a prominent intersection but still second rate to the Bowling Green. Pointedly, the name of the Bowling Green was also not changed to “Liberty Green,” which had been the desire of the mob as well. The New York Legislature was similarly lackadaisical in terms of the composition of the inscriptions for the statues. Written sometime in the late 760s and maybe even as late as early 770, the final wording is significantly more moderate than the South Carolina inscriptions. The pedestal of the Pitt statue was inscribed: THIS STATUE OF THE RIGHT HONOUR ABLE WILLIAM PITT EARL OF CHATHAM WAS ERECTED AS A PUBLIC TESTIMONY OF THE GR ATEFUL SENSE THE COLONY OF NEW-YORK RETAINS OF THE MANY EMINENT SERVICES HE RENDERED AMERICA, PARTICULARLY IN PROMOTING THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP-ACT ANNO DOM . M ,DCC ,LXX .

In contrast to the Charleston statue, Pitt is commemorated as the Earl of Chatham, and no radical allusions are made to liberty or patriotism. The inscription below the king’s statue read: Public Monuments in the American Colonies

223

EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF GEORGE III KING OF GREAT BRITAIN , &C . ERECTED MDCCLXX

Short and partially redundant – it was obviously an equestrian statue – the inscription accords with the theory that the fewer the words, the stronger the message, a theory that had been debated periodically by those who cared throughout the eighteenth century in Britain.¹¹⁴ A statue of a benevolent king ultimately needs no explanation. The king’s statue was the first to be unveiled, on 6 August 770, which was the king’s birthday.¹¹⁵ The two-month delay also allowed for William Adron to come up from Charleston to prepare the foundations and pedestal for the statue.¹¹⁶ As might be expected, the festivities surrounding the unveiling were entirely more conservative than the South Carolina celebrations. Cadwallader Colden, who had recently been reappointed acting governor following Henry Moore’s death, recorded the event in a letter to the Earl of Hillsborough, secretary of state for the colonies: I was attended on this occasion by the Gentlemen of the Councill [sic] and members of the Assembly then in town. The Magestrats of the City, the Clergy of all denominations and very large number of principal inhabitants. Our loyalty and firm attachment and affection to his Majesty’s person was expressed by drinking the King’s health and a long continuance of his Reign, under a discharge of 32 pieces of canon and band of musick playing at the same time from the Ramparts of the Fort. The General and the officers of the Army gave us the honor of their Company on the occasion. The whole Company walked in procession from the fort round the statue while the spectators expressed their Joy by loud acclamations the Procession having returned with me to the Fort & the ceremony concluded with great cheerfullness and good humore.¹¹⁷

This and other reports stressed the preponderance of government officials and a strong military presence. The tightly controlled and orchestrated affair allowed little room for the mob, which had once again reared its ugly head at the governor and the DeLancey-controlled Legislature. New York had become embroiled in its own Wilkite controversy, and characteristically the battle lines were drawn differently from those in South Carolina. Although Colden was still very unpopular, the DeLanceys were willing to associate with him in order to consolidate 224 e m p i r e s e c u r e d ?

their patronage and power base.¹¹⁸ At the end of 769, the DeLanceys forced a bill through the assembly for the provision of the king’s troops, thereby fully endorsing the hated Quartering Act. This immediately invoked the fury of the true Sons of Liberty (not James DeLancey’s ersatz version). A broadside entitled “To the betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New-York” was immediately published, which charged the assembly with duplicity and claimed that the standing army in New York was there “not to protect us but to enslave us.” The assembly’s actions were that much more odious “especially after the laudable Example of the Colonies of Massachusetts Bay and South-Carolina.”¹¹⁹ The assembly condemned the broadside as “a false, seditious, and infamous Libel,” and Colden offered a reward for the author’s identity. After the printer was questioned, Alexander McDougall, until then a moderate member of the Sons of Liberty, was arrested, charged with seditious libel (as Wilkes had been), and thrown in prison. He immediately became the Wilkes of America. In emulation of Wilkes, he refused to post bail and became an imprisoned martyr to the cause of liberty. The Sons of Liberty took up the number forty-five, and on 4 February 770, the forty-fifth day of the year, “forty-five Gentlemen, real Enemies to internal Taxation, by, or in Obedience to external Authority, and cordial Friends of American Liberty, went in decent Procession to the New Gaol; and dined with him, on forty-five Pounds of Beef Stakes, cut from a Bullock of forty-five Months old.” On another occasion, he was visited by forty-five virgins who sang forty-five songs, and on the anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act (8 March), the Sons of Liberty issued forty-five toasts before being received as his guests at the prison. The DeLanceys retaliated by branding the Presbyterian McDougall a “republican dissenter” and a threat to the Church of England.¹²⁰ Such charges had little effect. The split between the people of New York and its assembly became excruciatingly evident to the people of the time, more than it had ever been before. The DeLanceys obviously sided with the Crown, and the dignified staid proceedings surrounding the unveiling of the king’s statue, complete with numerous members of the king’s standing army in attendance, further articulated their position. The statue of Pitt was unveiled over three weeks later on 7 September 770, and the proceedings seem to have been a wholly more restrained affair.¹²¹ According to contemporary accounts, the statue was erected “amidst the Acclamations of a great Number of the Inhabitants.”¹²² The reasons for the lack of enthusiasm, by either the Legislature or the mob, are relatively more complex than the gleeful celebrations that met the Pitt statue in South Carolina. In New York the mob had not paired Pitt with Wilkes partly because Alexander McDougall took up that Public Monuments in the American Colonies

225

honour but more because the Chathamite ministry had retaliated against New York by suspending the Livingston’s assembly when it failed to honour the Quartering Act. Thus by 770 the mob of New York had no real desire to celebrate Pitt. The DeLancey administration, composed primarily of merchants, would have had more residual appreciation of Pitt for his outspokenness against the Stamp Act (made clear in the inscription), but their enthusiasm for the man would have been tempered by the Townshend Duties, even though all of these, except the duty on tea, were repealed in late 769. As far as the DeLanceys were concerned, the unveiling of the Pitt statue offered one more opportunity to express their loyalty and patriotism to the mother country, albeit in a modest fashion in contrast to the ceremony associated with the king’s statue. The comparatively tepid celebrations surrounding the Pitt statue are mirrored by an enigmatic broadside that appeared in New York just after the arrival of the Pitt statue in the harbour. It is entitled “The Speech of the Statue, of the Right Hon. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, to the Virtueous and Patriotic Citizens of New-York.” The statue chastises the “Sons of Liberty, foes to Tyranny, glorious Non-Importers, disinterested Merchants, Guardians of the Liberties of America!” for turning a blind eye to all that he had done for them: I have bellowed for you both in the lower and upper house of the British Senate until my guts are wore to fiddle-strings, and the extremities of my body, thro’ the excruciating pain of the gout, are petrified to stone. — Your views and mine have always been similar. The distress of my country was the occasion of me emerging from my original obscurity — had England never bled I had never been a Peer — had the HIGHLAND THANE [Bute] never been a prime minister, I had never been a patriot. – BE advised by me to take care of your own interest, and be convinced from my experience, that the most successful fishing is carried on in troubled waters – Let the mechanics cry PUNIC FAITH [accuse Pitt of treachery and treason], take no notice of them. — Let the Plebians murmur, and if the French and Indians are now too pacific to take off their scalps, you can starve them, which will answer the same end. – Be courageous my friends, Does not hemp grow in your country, and is not my statue for ever with you? I shall say more when properly fix’d upon my pedestal.¹²³

Unfortunately, the statue seems not to have said anything more. The second sentence of the broadside sums up New Yorkers’ feelings for Pitt in 770: “My own merit out of the question, I imagine the respect you have for my mettle [sic] companion [the king’s statue], will insure me a welcome reception amongst you.”¹²⁴ In an about-face from 766, when the call for a statue of Pitt preceded the call for 226

empir e secur ed?

a statue of the king, Pitt was now being honoured simply because the king was being honoured. Within a year of the unveiling of the Pitt statues and the statue to the king, the Virginia House of Burgesses unanimously resolved to commission a monument to the royal governor, Lord Botetourt, who had died in October 770.¹²⁵ The pedestrian statue was designed and executed by Richard Hayward, who had recently returned from his extended Grand Tour (fig. 7.9). The head was modelled after a miniature by Isaac Gosset.¹²⁶ The statue arrived in Virginia two years later, in May 773, and was erected soon after in the main square at Williamsburg, where it was bounded by the Capitol, the Governor’s House, and the College of William and Mary.¹²⁷ Botetourt, a bumbling English aristocrat and a descendant of an earlier governor of Virginia, had been sent to the colony in 768 to placate the burgesses, who had recently unanimously responded to the Massachusetts Circular Letter with a comparable one of their own. The burgesses were also becoming increasingly irritated with a long line of royal governors who had refused to reside in the colony.¹²⁸ Botetourt succeeded in ingratiating himself with the old Tidewater planters, appealing to their vanity and love of ostentation with his Old World charms and all the pomp and ceremony associated with his office.¹²⁹ The New England patriots feared that the Virginians were being wheedled out of their liberties by Botetourt,¹³⁰ but this was not the case. In 769, in opposition to a growing number of acts passed by the burgesses against importation duties, Botetourt dissolved the assembly. The burgesses responded by signing a nonimportation act, which they upheld more fervently than any other colony.¹³¹ When they signed the act, the burgesses swore allegiance to the king, and later that year when it came time for Botetourt’s Christmas Ball, they felt no need to boycott it, although they wore homespun to express their displeasure.¹³² The decision to commission the statue of Botetourt is yet another example of what, by the early 770s, was becoming a near-schizophrenic display of loyalty to the king and to America in equal measure. One of the inscriptions on the pedestal reads: Deeply impressed with the warmest sense of gratitude for his Excellence the Right Honourable Lord Batitourt’s [sic] prudent and wise administration, and that the remembrance of those many public and social virtues which so eminently adorned his illustrious character might be transmitted to the latest posterity, the General Assembly of Virginia on the 20th. of July Anno Domini 1771, Resolved with one united voice, to erect this Statue to his Lordship’s memory. Let wisdom and justice preside in any Country, The people will rejoice and must be happy.¹³³ Public Monuments in the American Colonies

227

Fig. 7.9 Richard Hayward, statue of Lord Botetourt, erected 1773. College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia.

The inscription on the other side of the pedestal was entirely more American: America, behold your Friend! who leaving his native Country, declined those additional Honours which she had there in store for him, that he might heal your wounds and restore tranquillity to this extensive Continent. With what zeal and anxiety he pursued these glorious objects Virginia thus bears her grateful testimony.¹³⁴ The third panel on the pedestal contains personifications of Britannia and America, each holding an olive branch over an altar inscribed “Concordia.” 228 e m p i r e s e c u r e d ?

The burgesses who oversaw and handled the Botetourt commission were among the most conservative planter aristocrats in the assembly: Peyton Randolph, the former Speaker of the assembly; Robert Carter Nicholas, the only burgess who would later oppose the Declaration of Independence; William Nelson, who was serving as acting governor when the statue was commissioned; and Nelson’s equally conservative son, Thomas Nelson.¹³⁵ Just as the call for a statue to the king was made in 766 to counter more radical tendencies within the assembly, the decision to erect the statue to Botetourt was probably borne out of a desire to counter a far more radical commission made by some of their less conservative counterparts. In 767, on behalf of the planters of Westmoreland County, Richard Henry Lee had commissioned a painting of Lord Camden from Benjamin West to commemorate Camden’s role in the repeal.¹³⁶ West was given the commission because he was an American. The painting never came to fruition mostly because Camden continually broke appointments for sittings,¹³⁷ but in its place Lee acquired one of the two versions of Charles Wilson Peale’s highly controversial portrait of Pitt showing him in front of the Banqueting House, where Charles I was executed (fig. 7.0). The painting, which did not have the approbation of Pitt, is full of references to liberty and betrayal of American liberty.¹³⁸ This highly inflammatory republican image was not hung in the colonial Legislature – it remained at Lee’s plantation house¹³⁹ – but it no doubt sent shockwaves through the conservative Tidewater planters. The Botetourt statue was a more appropriate measure of the comparatively moderate radical feelings of most members of the assembly. In addition to the inscriptions, the tacit emphasis on the rights of Americans as Britons is indicated by the figure of the royal governor holding the founding Charter of the Province of Virginia in one hand and the cap of liberty in the other. Despite the enormous body of scholarship that seeks to find the seeds of American independence in the American colonial experience, the reality is that the American colonists’ faith in the British Parliament and the king was slow to die.¹⁴⁰ The colonists might have vehemently and in some cases violently opposed directives from the king and Parliament that they saw as autocratic and infringing on their rights and liberty, as was the case with the Stamp Act and the Wilkes controversy, but they still saw themselves as British subjects governed by British laws. Indeed, it was not until the very verge of outbreak of hostilities that the colonists could even think of parting with the mother country; such a break was entirely outside their frame of reference. In Virginia the burgesses were quite happy to hobnob with Botetourt and watch him ride to the opening of the Legislature in a gilded coach drawn by six white steeds, which had been a gift from the Public Monuments in the American Colonies

229

Fig. 7.10 Charles Wilson Peale, William Pitt, 1767

Duke of Cumberland.¹⁴¹ Even in South Carolina, one of the hotbeds of radical unrest, the Commons House of Assembly confirmed Parliament’s control over the colonies by commissioning and following through with the statue of Pitt. All of the government-sponsored statues in the American colonies were ostensibly signs of loyalty and as such were expressions of nationalism. Yet in each colony where the monuments came to fruition, the monuments were the product 230

empir e secur ed?

of internal colonial anxieties. In New York squabbles between rival conservative factions spurred the Pitt and king commissions, while in South Carolina the members of the assembly used the Pitt statue, first at its inception and then at its unveiling, as a vehicle to express their frustrations with an unsympathetic governor and a council full of appointed alien placemen. In Virginia the Botetourt monument evolved out of a desire among the moderate burgesses to counter their more radical colleagues. Such internal wrangling and posturing clearly indicate that not everyone entirely supported each commission, yet the monuments and their inscriptions, simply in their very existence, imply a unified voice. As a result, they are evidence of the “‘lived reality’ of national identity,” a “reality lived in representations – not in direct communal solidarity.”¹⁴² To borrow Benedict Anderson’s phrase, the cohesive, comprehensive sense of solidarity implied by the monuments contributes to the construction of an “imagined community.” The statues of Pitt and the king articulate another concept of nationalism, formulated by John Plamenatz. For him, nationalism is “the desire to preserve or enhance a people’s national or cultural identity when that identity is threatened, or the desire to transform or even create it where it is felt to be inadequate or lacking.”¹⁴³ In at least the cases of New York and Virginia, those who commissioned the monuments saw this threat coming from within. They feared that the British Parliament and Crown would see them in the same light as their raucous, impudent, and uncivilized fellow colonists. A monument is an especially strong statement of loyalty since it is extraordinarily visible and imbued with the assumption of permanence. Furthermore, one of the by-products of commissioning a monument is that a monument exhibits a genuine desire on the part of the patrons to embellish a city. The colonists on the whole were ever eager to show their sophistication. The significance of the monuments to Pitt and the king in America and to Pitt in Cork is enhanced by the fact that they were the only publicly commissioned monuments to living individuals yet erected in the British Empire. Given the distance between colony and mother country, the role of the monuments as symbols of loyalty, patriotism, and nationalism in societies already rich with symbol is especially acute. Cut off from news from the mother country and forced to await their fate by a government located thousands of miles away – a government in which they were also not directly represented – the colonists were driven to cling to such tangible expressions of British identity. Plamenatz also stated that “nationalism is a reaction of peoples who feel culturally at a disadvantage.”¹⁴⁴ In the case of the American colonists, being politically at a disadvantage also drove them to engage in such expressions of national identity. The colonists had an Public Monuments in the American Colonies

231

aching, if somewhat archaic, need for a paternal figure of benevolence and reassurance.¹⁴⁵ Finally, what makes the statues of William Pitt, George III , and Governor Lord Botetourt especially interesting in the context of eighteenth-century America is that, in the end, they were not permanent. Within a matter of years, the statues had come to represent something quite different than loyalty and patriotism. By 78 the statue of Governor Botetourt had been decapitated and one of its arms had been broken off.¹⁴⁶ In an effort to preserve what was left, some of the Virginians who were still proclaiming their loyalty to the king and Parliament moved the statue inside the capital building.¹⁴⁷ The statue of the king in New York suffered a more catastrophic fate. On the evening of 9 July 776, after the reading of the Declaration of Independence, a mob tore the monument from its pedestal. The event seems to have been at least partially planned. According to one source, revolutionary troops had long wanted to pull the statue down, but they waited for an appropriate moment, which the publication of the Declaration of Independence afforded.¹⁴⁸ George Washington, consistent with his gentlemanly demeanour, acknowledged that the people who tore the statue down were prompted by “zeal in the public cause” but disapproved of the riotous tactics and directed “in future these things shall be avoided by the soldiery, and left to be executed by proper authority.”¹⁴⁹ A few thrifty men scraped the gilding off the statue, and the lead was carried off to be melted down and formed into bullets to fire at the king’s soldiers: “it is hoped that the emanations of the Leaden George will make ... deep impressions in the Bodies of some of his red coated and Torie Subjects.”¹⁵⁰ In a similar highly provocative act, the head of the statue was saved, a bullet was driven through it, its nose was cut off, its laurel wreath was clipped, and it was mounted on a spike that was then placed on the flagstaff at Moore’s Tavern, a popular revolutionary watering hole. A British soldier rescued the head, and it eventually made its way to England, where it was presented to Lord Townshend “in order to convince them at home of the Infamous Disposition of the Ungrateful people of this distressed Country.”¹⁵¹ The bust of the king in Montreal shared a comparable fate. One night during the American occupation of Montreal in the winter of 775–76, the bust was defaced with black paint, a rosary of rotten potatoes was hung around its neck, a bishop’s mitre was placed on its head, and a sign that read “Ceci le pape du Canada ou le sot anglais” was propped against its socle. Although they defied capture, the perpetrators were presumed to be the hotheaded British Montreal merchants, who were sympathetic to the Americans’ cause and obviously

232 e m p i r e s e c u r e d ?

opposed to the Quebec Act of 774, which upheld French civil law, government without representation, and the continued free practice of Roman Catholicism in the former French colony.¹⁵² Shortly after its defacement, the bust was torn from its pedestal and thrown into a well, not to be discovered until 834.¹⁵³ The statues of the king had become symbols of tyranny and oppression; their destruction expressed American national identity. The Pitt statues fared better, although neither came out of the War of Independence unscathed. In November 776 a group of drunken British soldiers decapitated and knocked the arms off the statue in New York,¹⁵⁴ and on 6 April 780 a cannonball fired from a British ship blew off the right arm of the Charleston statue.¹⁵⁵ Pointedly, the British, not the Americans, injured the Pitt statues. Despite the Townshend Duties, the Suspending Act, and his opposition to American independence, Pitt retained, at least for awhile, a measure of the Americans’ respect because he had propelled the Stamp Act toward repeal. In South Carolina, however, this respect was to dissipate during the French Revolution, when the statue once again provided a vehicle for the inherently radical South Carolinians to express their hatred of oppression and tyranny. In August 79 a letter appeared in the City Gazette bitterly complaining about the statue: No less than four chairs have in the course of a few months been dashed to pieces against Pitt’s statue at the intersection of Meeting and Broad Streets. It is earnestly wished by many that this was wholly removed. It is at all times useless, and has often proved mischievous. Nor does there seem to be any obligation on the citizens of the United States to preserve, at the risk of the inhabitants, a statue in honor of a man who expired in a fit of raving against American Independence, not unlike the frantic ebullitions which flow from Edmond the rhapsodist [Burke], whenever the French revolution comes across his distempered brain.¹⁵⁶

The following day, a classified was placed in the same paper: “Wanted to Purchase / PITT ’S STATUE / Two Hundred Guineas will be immediately paid on delivery of the titles, and removal from the place it now stands without any expense to the public. For further particulars apply to the printers.”¹⁵⁷ In December of that year an act was passed in the Legislature to remove the statue on the pretext that it was a traffic hazard.¹⁵⁸ The statue was ultimately removed three years later, a few months after Citizen Genet had arrived in Charleston to garner support from the Americans for the French revolutionaries’ cause and was greeted with

Public Monuments in the American Colonies

233

celebrations and a toast that rivalled those prompted by the Wilkes controversy a generation before.¹⁵⁹ The statue’s dismantling was satirized in the South Carolina Gazette: Yesterday the marble statue of the Earl of Chatham, which has been standing for a number of years in Broad and Meeting Streets, was pulled down. The iron railing around it had been displaced a few days since. It is somewhat ominous to the aristocrats that, in removing this effigy, the head was literally severed from the body, though without the assistance from the guillotine. A correspondent observes that the executioners showed no kind of contrition on this melancholy occasion; not even a basket was provided to receive the head; not a single person was observed to dip a handkerchief in the blood, nor will it be at all surprising if the body should remain without interment till the sound of the last trump. ‘Sic transit gloria mundi.’¹⁶⁰

Its head was reattached, but for several years thereafter the statue languished covered in dirt in the enclosure of the Orphan’s House. In 808 it was cleaned and erected in front of the Orphan’s House presumably for no better reason than to embellish the grounds.¹⁶¹ With the passing of the years, the statue recovered some of its dignity as South Carolinians took pride in their ancestors’ participation in the drive for independence. In 880, a century following the war, the South Carolina Historical Society moved the statue to a much more public and visible site in Washington Square.¹⁶² In New York, the remains of the Pitt statue were removed in 788 when Wall Street was widened.¹⁶³ Several years later, “a whig and an amateur” saw it propping up a stonecutter’s shed at the site of the new City Hall and, recognizing its sophisticated workmanship, suggested that it be handed over to the Academy of Fine Arts. It resided there until the academy was dissolved in 84,¹⁶⁴ whereupon it languished in a railway depot, then was placed in front of a hotel on Broadway, and ultimately ended up in the collection of the New-York Historical Society in 864.¹⁶⁵ Perhaps such a slow, lingering death was more ignoble than the violent destruction of the statues of the king.

234 e m p i r e s e c u r e d ?

pa rt f ou r Empire Renewed

This page intentionally left blank

chapte r eight

Reassurances of Loyalty:

Public Commissions in the West Indies

w

hile monuments were being decapitated and torn from their pedestals in the American colonies, the Jamaica House of Assembly commissioned a monument in 777 to the recently deceased governor of the island, Sir Basil Keith (figs 8. and 8.2).¹ The monument was erected in St Catherine’s Parish Church in Spanish Town, the capital of the island. This was the first public monument to be commissioned in the West Indies, if Henry Grenville’s accolade to himself in Barbados is discounted. The monument is at once both a statement about loyalty and a confirmation of the colonists’ rights within a loyalist imperial framework. The Jamaicans were subject to the same colonial acts, laws, and levies as their American counterparts, but their dependence on the mother country was exacerbated by the lack of an economic and cultural infrastructure in the islands and, more significant, by the fact that Britain and its dependants were the primary market for their sugar. When the American market was closed with the outbreak of hostilities in 776, the West Indian position became especially precarious. For a number of years, the Jamaicans had been enjoying a comparatively happy relationship with the mother country. After years of planter-merchant squabbling that drew in first one governor and then another before leading to the recall of Governor Admiral Charles Knowles in 756 and then Governor William Lyttelton in 766, a period of amelioration began with the sympathetic appointment of Captain William Trelawny, a cousin of Edward Trelawny, who had so effectively governed the island for fourteen years in the 740s and early 750s.² Like his cousin, William Trelawny played a deft hand in appeasing both planters and merchants and won the rare approbation of the House of Assembly shortly before his death in 772.³ Basil Keith was appointed in his place, having secured the appointment (and his knighthood) primarily because his brother

Fig. 8.1 (left) Joseph Wilton, monument to Sir Basil Keith, d. 1777. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Fig. 8.2 (right) Joseph Wilton, detail of the monument to Sir Basil Keith, d. 1777. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

had thwarted a possible plot by the king of Denmark to imprison and poison his queen, Caroline Matilda, who happened to be the favourite sister of George III .⁴ Such obvious nepotism would not have sat well with the Jamaican plantocracy, but Keith succeeded in ingratiating himself with the island merchants and planters mainly because the members who had been so obstreperous in the past had, like Charles Price, Jr., left the island or were, like the merchant George Pinnock, old and ailing. Keith further endeared himself by supporting the assembly’s desire to institute duties on imported slaves, something that was roundly refused by Parliament and the Board of Trade.⁵ Finally, he proved his mettle during the Hanover Plot of 776 when overworked and underfed slaves in the newly settled parish of Hanover in the west of the island rose in rebellion against the especially small white population. When news of the plot reached Keith, he immediately declared martial law and detained the 50th Regiment and warships that were about to leave for action in West Florida. While the collapse of the plot was in reality the result of divisions among conspirators as well as the impracticalities of their aims – Spanish Town was 50 miles away on very rough new roads – Keith’s prompt defensive and retaliatory stance earned him commendations from a plantocracy particularly spooked by the fact that, for the first time in Jamaican history, a rebellion had involved the creole elite (domestic servants, artisans, and drivers) as well as newly arrived slaves.⁶ In themselves, Keith’s role in the Hanover Plot and his general support of the assembly were commendable from the point of view of the plantocracy, but if we compare his tenure to that of previous equally amenable governors, he hardly warranted a monument at his death. What distinguishes Keith’s reign as governor from that of his predecessors are the external factors. War within the British Empire was one of the West Indian planters’ worst nightmares, second only to slave insurrection and revolt. In a petition sent to the king in December 774, the assembly clearly articulated its position, “lament[ing] the unrestrained exercise of legislative power” by Parliament “for enslaving the colonies, founded as we conceive on a claim of parliament to bind the colonists in all cases whatsoever.” It then went on to criticize the recently imposed Quebec Act and various acts passed by Parliament to counter the Massachusetts Circular Letter, and it generally emphasized the rights of colonists as Britons, including their right to representation before taxation.⁷ Institution of the Stamp Act had met with little resistance in Jamaica, but this was more because the assembly had been prorogued by Lyttelton over another matter than because of a hearty endorsement of the Act by the savvy Jamaican planters and merchants. The Jamaicans were keenly aware of the fragility of their existence and reliance on Britain. The bold statements Public Commissions in the West Indies

239

of the petition were prefaced by a pathetic disclaimer of Jamaica’s loyalty to the king and its dependence on the mother country: “That weak and feeble as this colony is, from its very small number of white inhabitants [estimated at 2,200 in 770] and its peculiar situation, from the encumbrance of more than 200,000 slaves, it cannot be supposed that we intend, or ever could have intended resistance to Great Britain.”⁸ In commissioning a monument to Keith, the assembly reiterated once again, but this time in a much more tangible form, their desire to stay within the imperial framework but not to be enslaved by Parliament. The monument was designed, appropriately, by Joseph Wilton, who still enjoyed the position of sculptor to the king. The inscription is perfunctory in its praise of Keith as a paternal figure, reading in part: IN THE DUTIES OF HIS OFFICE HE WAS ASSIDUOUS WISE AND IMPARTIAL IN THE ADMINISTR ATION OF JUSTICE A FRIEND TO MANKIND AND A FATHER TO THE PEOPLE OVER WHOM HE PRESIDED THIS MONUMENT WAS ERECTED BY THE ASSEMBLY TO TR ANSMIT TO POSTERITY THE GR ATITUDE OF THE PEOPLE OF THE ISLAND FOR THE HAPPINESS THEY ENJOYED UNDER HIS MILD AND UPRIGHT GOVERNMENT.

The design is primarily an assemblage of standard elements found in some of Wilton’s other monuments.⁹ A classical architectural surround frames a putto holding a laurel wreath and trumpet who hovers above a large classical urn. At the base of the urn lies a sword, scrolls, books, scales of justice, a caduceus, a down-turned torch, and pointedly, the cap of liberty.¹⁰ In 783 the Jamaican House of Assembly made a much louder proclamation of loyalty and gratitude when it initiated a commission for a statue of Admiral Lord Rodney that was to be erected in the parade at Spanish Town (fig. 8.3).¹¹ The monument was to commemorate Rodney’s victory over the French in the Battle of the Saintes off the coast of Guadaloupe on 2 April 782. The victory saved Jamaica from almost certain attack and, as important, secured the trade routes between the island colonies and the British Isles. With the American Revolution almost a fait accompli, this tenuous line stretching across thousands of kilometres of ocean represented the umbilical cord between the island colonies and the mother country.¹² The Rodney commission, as a display of gratitude and loyalty, was a manifestation of this dependence. Indeed, the monument was a more emphatic, and entirely grander, affair than the Keith commission. Unlike the 240

empir e r enew ed

Fig. 8.3 John Bacon the Elder, monument to Admiral Lord Rodney, 1789. The Parade, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

Keith monument, in which the plantocracy expressed their loyalties under the pretence of grief, the Rodney monument, like the monuments to Pitt and George III in the American colonies, honoured a living individual for his performance of specific actions. Thus it was unencumbered with associations of grief. The House of Assembly, consisting of planters and merchants always anxious to leave an impression, recognized that if the Rodney commission was to be an effective expression of both gratitude and loyalty, it had to have a certain éclat in Britain. Once the house had resolved upon the commission, a Committee of Public Commissions in the West Indies

241

Correspondence wrote two letters to the Jamaican agent in London, Stephen Fuller, outlining the conditions of the commission and the design.¹³ Rather than asking Fuller to hire a sculptor, he was instructed to approach the Royal Academy of Arts to organize a competition, and “praemia [would be] offered for the best designs to be approved of by the Artists of the Royal Academy.”¹⁴ In another display of West Indian bravado, the Committee of Correspondence also ordered ,000 “to accelerate” the commission, and “if there was any sum outstanding, the house would provide for it.”¹⁵ The Royal Academy, for its part, gladly took up the commission. Founded in 768, the Royal Academy was the most prestigious body of arts in Britain and, at least theoretically, the arbiter of national taste. Overseeing public commissions was one of the primary roles of all the great academies of Europe, yet the Royal Academy had yet to gain such distinction. Joshua Reynolds’s proposal in 773 that the academy oversee the design and execution of monuments and history paintings for St Paul’s Cathedral had foundered, the victim of a lack of funds as well as a lack of parliamentary and monarchical support.¹⁶ Both Parliament and the king were wary of displaying undue influence in the academy given the spectre of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, which was deemed utterly at the service of the French monarch. In terms of public schemes, commissions initiated by colonial bodies or comparable groups were to sustain the Royal Academy until the Committee of Taste was established in 795 to supervise the monuments intended for St Paul’s Cathedral.¹⁷ In an attempt to maintain some control over the quality and style of design, the Royal Academy held a closed competition for the Rodney commission, open only to invited sculptors.¹⁸ Unfortunately, the closed competition defeated the purpose of having a competition in the first place. James Barry recorded in his memoirs that several members of the academy, including Reynolds, were dissatisfied with the manner in which the competition was handled: “Sir Joshua, in particular complained that [the procedure] wanted a certain éclat, and in some measure defeated the very liberal wishes of the gentlemen who entrusted this commission to the Academy; that if hereafter we [i.e., the academy] should receive any other similar commissions, it would be better to invite a general competition by public advertisement, and make an academical public exposure of the work.”¹⁹ The dissatisfaction was probably exacerbated by the fact that of the five sculptors who were invited to submit designs – Agostino Carlini, Joseph Nollekens, William Tyler, Joseph Wilton, and John Bacon the Elder²⁰ – only Tyler and Bacon submitted models by the closing date of the competition on 5 April 784.²¹

242 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

The lack of interest in the commission was probably the result of a number of factors: Wilton, for one, had become more concerned with living the life of a gentleman and increasingly less interested in the business of sculpture,²² and the prospect of the statue being shipped to Jamaica, far from the public eye of London, would hardly have been enticing. However, despite the dismal participation, the judges were almost unanimous in their choice and selected Bacon’s design nine votes to one.²³ Bacon’s design must have impressed the judges, but he was also the golden boy of the academy, having entered the Royal Academy schools as a student at their inception in 768.²⁴ The basic form of the Rodney monument had been predetermined by the Jamaica House of Assembly in letters that it had sent to Fuller. In keeping with the traditional representation of men of leadership and recalling the Grenville statue in Barbados and the Pitt and Botetourt statues in America, the Rodney monument was to consist of a statue on a “handsome pedestal” that was to be “richly ornamented, and representations of the achievements of the hero whose fame is intended to be transmitted to our posterity, ought to be sculptured on three of the squares or dies of the pedestal in basso relievo, particularly the memorable action which insured the safety of Jamaica; and on the fourth, a short inscription, correspondent with the resolution of the house.”²⁵ The Royal Academy committee further stated that the statue should be no more than eight feet high.²⁶ Bacon’s model – which he stated was for an eight-foot statue that would stand on a pedestal of an appropriate, proportional size – and his final design correspond closely to the design conditions.²⁷ The statue stands on a pedestal that is embellished with bas-reliefs of Britannia protecting a young Jamaica from the French (fig. 8.4), the surrender of the French flagship to Rodney in the Battle of the Saintes (fig. 8.5; modelled after a painting by Dominic Serres now in the National Maritime Museum), and Britannia in triumph, with the French standard firmly underfoot (fig. 8.6). A brief Latin inscription, commemorating the 782 battle as well as the Legislature and people of Jamaica who had commissioned the monument, is carved on the south side of the pedestal, which faces the parade: GEORG. BRIDG. RODNEY BARON. RODNEY NAVAL . PR ÆL , VICTORI PRID. ID. APRILIS A.D. MDCCLXXXII

Public Commissions in the West Indies

243

Fig. 8.4 (left) John Bacon the Elder, detail showing Britannia protecting Jamaica, monument to Admiral Lord Rodney, 1789. The Parade, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Fig. 8.5 (middle) John Bacon the Elder, detail showing the Battle of the Saintes, monument to Admiral Lord Rodney, 1789. The Parade, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Fig. 8.6 (right) John Bacon the Elder, detail showing Britannia Triumphant, monument to Admiral Lord Rodney, 1789. The Parade, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

JAMAICÆ SALUTEM BRITANN. PACEM REST D.D.D.S.P.Q. JAMAICENSIS .

The two aspects of the design that were not specified by the Jamaicans (although perhaps implied) and that are crucial to the representation of leadership and victory, were the pose of the statue and the choice of either antique or modern dress. There seems to have been no debate about either matter within the academy. The entire design of the Rodney monument, including the pose and the use of antique dress, corresponds precisely with the advice given by Reynolds Public Commissions in the West Indies

245

on the appropriate style for great sculpture. This advice was outlined in his third discourse and more explicitly in his tenth discourse, which is entirely devoted to sculpture and which was read in 780.²⁸ According to the Winckelmann-inspired proclamations of Reynolds, the epitome of great sculpture was the Apollo Belvedere. Consequently, Rodney is presented in a firm Apollonian contrapposto stance, complete with a mantle that falls across his outstretched arm to prevent, Reynolds concluded, “that dryness of effect which would inevitably attend a naked arm, extended almost at full length; to which we may add, the disagreeable effect which would proceed from the body and the arm making a right angle.”²⁹ In addition to the portrait bust, allowances and accessories were added to distinguish Rodney as a great naval commander, namely the baton, sword, shield, virile musculature, and antique naval dress. In the use of antique dress, while Reynolds grudgingly accepted West’s contention that modern dress was appropriate for grand history painting, he would not, as he emphasized in his tenth discourse, allow it for the much more permanent medium of sculpture: “I shall at present only observe, that he who wished not to obstruct the Artist, and prevent his exhibiting his abilities to their greatest advantage, will certainly not desire a modern dress. The desire of transmitting to posterity the shape of modern dress must be acknowledged to be purchased at a prodigious price, even the price of every thing that is valuable in art. Working in stone is a very serious business; and it seems to be scarce worth while to employ such durable materials in conveying to posterity a fashion of which the longest existence scarce exceeds a year.”³⁰ He then went on to find fault with Henry Cheere’s use of modern dress in the equestrian statue of the Duke of Cumberland, which had been erected in Cavendish Square in 772: “the familiarity of the modern dress by no means agrees with the dignity and gravity of sculpture.”³¹ Bacon, for his part, having been trained almost entirely in the antique mode in the academy’s schools, followed in his professor’s footsteps and maintained the primacy of antique dress throughout his career. Indeed, when the Royal Academy received the commission for the Marquess Cornwallis statue for Madras in 795, Joseph Farington recorded that Bacon was especially adamantly against modern dress, stating “that in 20 years when the fashion had varied it would appear disgusting. That there was an ideal grandeur from association in the appearance of the ancient dress over the modern, and that it wd. greatly add to the effect.”³² Interestingly, the design of Bacon’s Rodney statue is very similar to the advice proposed in the Scots Magazine for the design of the Wolfe monument in Westminster Abbey twenty-five years before: “a simple statue of the hero ... [with] some of his most memorable exploits ... engraven in basso relievo.”³³ It would 246 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

be tempting to ascribe this anonymous advice to a young Joshua Reynolds, but suffice it to acknowledge the enduring strength of this simple antique pose. In the case of the Wolfe monument, because the advice in the Scots Magazine was not taken up by those who initiated, participated in, and judged the commission, the monument is a testament to the exploration of other ways to commemorate a hero. The Rodney statue represents a return to a tried and true standard. While the Wolfe monument plays upon the sentimental and the everyman, the Rodney statue praises the strength and leadership of a British naval commander. The Rodney commission was as much an expression of gratitude and loyalty as it was an expression of civic pride in Jamaica. If the colonial elite had been interested only in thanking Rodney, the house would have voted a personal gift to him, as it had done in 780 when it had awarded Rodney a service of plate worth ,000 guineas after he had appointed a large reinforcement to the squadron protecting Jamaica.³⁴ The turn toward local improvement is significant, as it marks a shift in the Jamaicans’ perception of themselves within the imperial framework during and immediately following the American Revolution. While they were at once more dependent on Britain both economically and culturally, the Jamaicans were also looking at themselves and building on their internal social, cultural, and economic infrastructure. Pointedly, the Rodney monument contains the first personification of Jamaica in sculpture shipped to the island. Consistent with the tradition of personifications, Jamaica is presented as a young woman/colony shielded by a maternal Britannia. The double-focus trope of civic pride and gratitude to the mother country is not uncommon in the history of colonies and colonialism, as much of the theoretical discourse on colonialism contends.³⁵ The duality indicates a particular maturing of the colonial system from recognition of the colonies as simply economic outposts to a more complex recognition by both colonists and government administrators of colonies as self-contained societies, complete with their own cultural infrastructure. Paradoxically, in the case of the West Indies, the infrastructure developed in inverse proportion to the increasing dependence on the mother country after the American Revolution, as if the closure of the American market forced the colonial elite to look at themselves and take stock of their own coloniality. Edward Brathwaite acknowledged this dual-focus dichotomy: “An understanding of Jamaica during this period ... depends as much on an appreciation of its external colonial relationship with Britain, as on an examination of its internal social structure problems.”³⁶ While Brathwaite explores these problems in light of the obvious black-white dichotomy created by slavery, the much more attenuated example of the Rodney monument demonstrates the increasing Public Commissions in the West Indies

247

attention paid by the colonial elite to the infrastructure of the island despite their dependence on Britain for their very survival. In the case of the islands that had been in British hands for several generations, the seeds of this island-focused infrastructure was in evidence earlier in the eighteenth century. The numerous grand funeral monuments erected in the islands are tangible evidence of this concern. The monuments grounded the resident members of the plantocracy (in the face of extraordinary rates of absenteeism) and recounted the political and social controversies that preoccupied them.³⁷ The monument to Basil Keith, as the first public commission in the West Indies, points to a further strengthening of the Jamaican resident colonial elite’s interest in their immediate environment, while the even grander Rodney monument represents a maturing of the recognition of themselves as an integral yet identifiably distinct entity within the imperial realm. The greater sense of colonial community was further demonstrated when the Rodney statue arrived in the island in 790. In yet another eruption of plantermerchant rivalry, the people of Kingston petitioned the house to keep the statue in their city. Elaborate plans (since destroyed) were drawn up to situate the statue at the head of a grand cascade in a basin in the Kingston Parade.³⁸ The matter was only resolved when a motion cast in the house, passed only by the Speaker’s vote, authorized the placement of the statue in Spanish Town as originally intended.³⁹ The statue became the focal point of the parade ground, placed within a specially built rotunda at the centre of a classical arcade running along the north border of the parade (fig. 8.7). The structure was locally designed, and although the top of the statue is somewhat lost in the shadows, the neoclassical design and creamcoloured stucco are sympathetic to the severe classicism of the statue. The House of Assembly and the Governor’s House, completed in 755 and 765 respectively in an earlier phase of settlement, bound the parade on the east and west (fig. 8.8), while the south side was finally enclosed in 88 with the Court House.⁴⁰ When the statue was finally affixed to its pedestal in the winter of 792, it was honoured with a procession composed of the governor, the members of the council and the assembly, several officers of the St Catherine’s parish militia, and a regiment of the Light Dragoons playing “Rule Britannia.” The march drew to a halt in front of the statue, and the troops fired three feux de joyes. Illuminations costing the Legislature 200 were set off in the evening.⁴¹ Clearly, the tenyear delay between Rodney’s victory in the Battle of the Saintes and the statue’s completion did not diminish the monument’s significance as far as the colonists were concerned.

248

empir e r enew ed

Fig. 8.7 Edward Woollery (attr.), rotunda and colonnade for the Rodney Monument, completed 1801. The Parade, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

Bacon the Elder had been paid 2,500 for the statue.⁴² By the time the pergola was finished in 80, the Jamaica Legislature had spent the princely sum of over 3,000 on the entire scheme to honour Rodney and to improve their capital.⁴³ The commission for the Rodney monument was paralleled by other cultural, social, and industrial investments both in Jamaica and in the other settled British West Indian islands. Some, such as the theatre and comedy troupes that entertained people in Kingston, Spanish Town, Bridgetown, and St John’s, were residual

Public Commissions in the West Indies

249

Fig. 8.8

James Hakewill, The King’s Square, St. Jago de la Vega, 1820 or 1821.

bonuses from the American war as loyalists sought refuge in loyal colonies,⁴⁴ but many more were entirely indigenous efforts. Jonah, the first oratorio produced in any of Britain’s colonies, was composed in Jamaica in 775 by Samuel Felsted, the resident organist at St Andrew’s Parish Church in Halfway Tree.⁴⁵ Between 770 and 779 botanical gardens were established at Gordon Town, at Enfield in St Andrew, and at Bath in St Thomas-in-the-East (all in Jamaica), partially with the intent to diversify crop production in the face of falling sugar prices but also as a civilized retreat.⁴⁶ Sometime before 792 an obelisk dedicated to Rodney was erected in the gardens at Bath. Under Rodney’s command, various exotic Oriental, African, and South-Sea trees and shrubs, including cinnamon, were introduced to Jamaica.⁴⁷ Road building, along with aqueducts and bridges, continued apace in Jamaica, linking the increasing number of communities.⁴⁸ Substantial great houses and town houses were also being built in increasing numbers. In contrast to most of the houses built by earlier generations, concessions were made to the West Indian climate, thus a particular West Indian vernacular style was finally evolving.⁴⁹ Numerous forts, civic buildings, places of worship,

250 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

hospitals, public schools, and theatres were also built in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.⁵⁰ The printed word, which has come to signify the hallmark of settlement for many historians and theorists, was vastly on the increase from about 770. Large numbers of planting treatises (crucial to the wellbeing of the island) were published in the islands, as were reprints from Goethe and other contemporaneous, erudite authors.⁵¹ No fewer than fifteen newspapers appeared in at least five towns in Jamaica between 786 and 807.⁵² Finally, the two most comprehensive histories of the West Indies were published in London in 793 and 794, Edward Long’s The History of Jamaica and Bryan Edwards’s The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, which was followed by a new edition and a third volume in 80. Written by resident West Indians, these were the epitome of self-conscious examination. Such construction and cultural endeavours were matched by a remarkable increase in the number and size of privately commissioned funeral monuments erected in the West Indies in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The parish church of St Catherine in Spanish Town remained the centre for the Jamaican plantocracy, and this was where the publicly commissioned monuments were erected, but outlying churches were also home to some extremely large monuments, especially in the northwest corner of Jamaica, which had only recently been developed, mainly by already extraordinarily wealthy planters. The most costly church in Jamaica was the Palladian church of St James in Montego Bay, built in 775 (fig. 8.9),⁵³ and among the monuments inside are those to Rosa Palmer and Duncan Anderson (see figs 2.6, 2.7, and 2.22), the two largest privately commissioned monuments erected in the West Indies. The demographic configuration of a government church with outlying parish churches was an imitation, of sorts, of Westminster Abbey and the provincial and parish churches in England. The same could be said for Barbados and Antigua, where St Michael’s and St John’s functioned as the government churches respectively and where the parish churches were considered local home centres. Distinguished members of the plantocracy – Sir John Gay Alleyne being among the most notable – chose, on the whole, to commemorate themselves and their loved ones in their parish church (see figs 2.4, 2.5, and 2.23), imitating so many of the aristocratic families in England who preferred to have themselves interred in vaults in the family/ parish church. Some, like Charles Price the Elder and Thomas Hibbert, again in the manner of many an English aristocrat, went one step further by making their tombs fixtures within their own landscapes. Price’s grave was, as discussed in the third chapter, at Worthy Park. Hibbert, a Kingston merchant-cum-planter, is

Public Commissions in the West Indies

251

Fig. 8.9

Interior of St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay, Jamaica, begun 1775.

buried on a rise overlooking his plantation, Agualta Vale Penn, in the parish of St Mary, Jamaica. His grave was marked with a large marble urn (fig. 8.0).⁵⁴ While the resident plantocracy, both planter and merchant alike, commissioned a large number of monuments, those erected in the West Indies at the end of the century increasingly commemorated professionals such as doctors and attorneys. In some respects, this paralleled the trickle-down effect evident in Britain, where unprecedented numbers of professionals – or anybody with enough money – were commissioning monuments to themselves and their family members. Yet in the West Indies this variety also points to the increasingly heterogenous nature of the white elite population that chose to stay in the colonies. The majority of the doctors and attorneys (often employed to settle estates) who practised in the islands were inclined to get rich quick and leave, feeding off the wealth of the planter class and the slave trade to amass their for252 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

Fig. 8.10 d. 1780.

Monument of the late Thomas Hibbert Esq. At Agualta Vale Penn, St. Mary’s,

tunes before returning to Britain to live a life of luxury.55 However, those who are commemorated with monuments – such as Dr Mathew Gregory (d. 779; see fig. 3.6), Dr Francis Rigby Brodbelt (d. 795; fig. 8.), and the lawyer Hugh Lewis (d. 785; fig. 8.2) in Spanish Town; Dr George MacFarquhar (d. 786; see fig. 2.27) in Montego Bay; and Malcolm Laing (d. 78; fig. 8.3) in Kingston – are professionals from established island families who had chosen to live, and die, in the islands. Successive generations of planter families had resulted in a network stretching across the upper echelons of colonial aristocracy and professional life. As with the planter monuments, many of these monuments were elaborate stockin-trade figural pieces from the workshops of Wilton, Bacon the Elder, Bacon the Younger, the Westmacotts, and the Coade manufactories. While some were stock-in-trade designs used repeatedly, others, like that to Mathew Gregory, with a mourning female figure (see fig. 3.6), or that to Hugh Lewis, with a relief bust of Public Commissions in the West Indies

253

Cicero (see fig. 8.2), consist of standard components combined in a unique composition. Whatever their design, the privately commissioned monuments continued to be manifestations of grief, dynasty, wealth, and blatant ostentation. Befitting their social standing, and again in imitation of their English compatriots, the elite population of the West Indies clamoured to engage in philanthropic pursuits. Such ventures were ostentatious displays of new found gentlemanly and gentlewomanly virtues. They also benefited and reinforced the local infrastructure and, like the many philanthropic societies in England, functioned as patriotic rallying points for a wide range of citizenry.⁵⁶ Establishing freeschools, set up for the education of the poor, was the philanthropic act of choice in the West Indies from the very early years of settlement. In Barbados, Henry 254 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

Fig. 8.11 (far left) John Bacon the Elder, monument to Francis Rigby Brodbelt, d. 1795, dated 1799. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Fig. 8.12 (middle left) Detail of the monument to Hugh Lewis, d. 1785. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Fig. 8.13 (left) John Bacon the Elder, monument to Malcolm Laing, d. 1781, and Eleanor Laing, d. 1747, dated 1794. Kingston Parish Church, Kingston, Jamaica.

Drax left 2,000 in 682 for a free-school in Bridgetown, Thomas Harrison established a free-school in 733 also in Bridgetown, and Francis Williams left 00 acres for a free-school in the parish of Christ Church.⁵⁷ In Jamaica Sir Nicholas Lawes, father and father-in-law of James and Elizabeth Lawes as well as an early governor of Jamaica, oversaw the incorporation of a free-school in St Andrew’s Parish as early as 695.⁵⁸ In 729 John Wolmer, a Jamaican goldsmith, bequeathed 2,360 to establish a free-school in Kingston.⁵⁹ This was followed by similar ventures by Edward Manning in Savanna-la-Mar in 738, Peter Beckford in Spanish Town in 744, and Martin Rusea in Lucea, Jamaica, in 763.⁶⁰ However, despite these numerous generous acts, the free-schools, if they were ever built, languished with very few pupils until the end of the eighteenth century.⁶¹ Indeed, Public Commissions in the West Indies

255

even the most well-known act of educational philanthropy in the West Indies seemed doomed for much of the eighteenth century. Christopher Codrington (the patron of the library of All Souls College, Oxford) bequeathed his Barbados plantation to the Society of the Propagation of the Gospel in 70 for the establishment of a school of divinity and medicine, to be called Codrington College. The college was not opened until 745, and even then it was used only to educate the sons of a few colonial elite.⁶² The lack of interest in the islands’ free-schools was overcome beginning in the 770s when a series of acts were passed incorporating new free-schools and strengthening already existing institutions. The Kingston vestry was especially vocal in enhancing the free-schools, and in 776 the House of Assembly responded by voting to supplement Wolmer’s initial bequest with an annual grant of 2,000.⁶³ By 777 there were 33 students at Wolmer’s school in contrast to the 4 recorded seven years earlier.⁶⁴ Wolmer himself seems to have languished in obscurity until January 787 when a correspondent to the Essayist, a local Jamaican newspaper/journal, condemned as scandalous that “one of the best benefactors of this town ... should lie undistinguished, and without a stone to mark the place of his interment” and suggested that a concert be held to raise money for an appropriate monument.⁶⁵ The Kingston vestry took up the suggestion and commissioned a monument from Bacon the Elder (fig. 8.4). It arrived in Kingston in early January 790 and was erected in the south aisle of Kingston Parish Church by the end of the month.⁶⁶ The monument consists of a figure of Liberalitis seated on an antique couch. She holds a medallion emblazoned with the school’s seal: the sun of Learning breaking through the clouds of Ignorance. The tools of education – books, paper, scrolls, quills, compass, map, and telescope – embellish the corbels on either side of the inscription. The inscription, the shorter of two composed by Edward Long, was jointly selected by Bacon and Long because of its brevity. As Bacon wrote to Long, “Mr. Pope’s compliment to Secretary Craggs [the brief inscription on Craggs’s monument in Westminster Abbey] will apply to Mr. Wolmer ‘ennobled by himself.’”⁶⁷ The inscription is perfunctory in stating that the monument is an expression of “Public Gratitude to a Public Benefactor.” The desire in the 780s to commemorate the philanthropic gestures of a Jamaican who had died decades earlier, combined with the active reinvigoration of the free-schools, indicates the Jamaicans’ patriotic leanings. The longer inscription for the Wolmer monument, preserved in the Long papers in the British Library, pointedly refers to “The Sons and Daughters of Jamaica,” who, by Wolmer’s noble benefaction, were “Retrieved from Vice, / Initiated in Religion, / Disciplined in Virtue, / Enriched with liberal Arts / And rendered useful Citizens.”⁶⁸ The 256 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

Fig. 8.14 John Bacon the Elder, monument to John Wolmer, d. 1729, dated 1789. Kingston Parish Church, Jamaica.

Wolmer monument was followed by monuments, designed by Henry Westmacott, to Robert Hugh Munro (d. 798) and Caleb Dickinson (d. 82). These were commissioned by the vestry of St Elizabeth’s in Black River, Jamaica, in the 820s to commemorate the substantial bequests made by both men for the education of the poor (figs 8.5 and 8.6). After over a decade of relative calm, the spectre of slave insurrection reared up once again in 79 and shook the West Indian plantocracy to its core. This time

Fig. 8.15 (left) Henry Westmacott, detail of monument to Robert Hugh Munro, d. 1798. Church of St John the Evangelist, Black River, Jamaica. Fig. 8.16 (right) Henry Westmacott, monument to Caleb Dickenson, d. 1821. Church of St John the Evangelist, Black River, Jamaica.

it occurred on the French West Indian island of St Domingue, which produced the most sugar of any of the French islands. St Domingue was one of the harshest environments for the slaves, and this factor, combined with a massive importation of new slaves – their numbers increased from 250,000 in 779 to 480,000 in 79 – and revolutionary stirrings among local coloured people, propelled slaves to open rebellion in August 79 involving a level of violence and on a scale hitherto unseen in the West Indies. As many as 20,000 slaves seized and burnt 258

empir e r enew ed

hundreds of plantations, and numerous whites and blacks were butchered before the rebels retreated into the hills.⁶⁹ The Jamaican governor, Thomas Howard, the Earl of Effingham, responded by supplying French troops and the white inhabitants with arms, an action for which he received commendations from both Louis XVI and George III . By October 79 Effingham felt confident enough to declare that the insurrection was almost over.⁷⁰ (He was hasty in his assumption, as St Domingue would be caught up in more than a decade of rebellion and revolution before becoming the independent Haiti in 804.) In November 79 the Jamaican assembly was effusive in its congratulations and used the occasion to profess its loyalty to the Crown and to defend its members’ rights as slave holders: The dreadful example which the French islands present to us at this juncture, affords a melancholy proof of the fatal tendency of those wild enthusiastic notions, so widely reprobated by your excellency [Effingham]; and permit us, my lord, on this occasion, to observe, that, notwithstanding the calumnies to which we have been exposed in GreatBritain [by Wilberforce et al.], from the misrepresentations of ignorance and malevolence, the just rights of mankind are no where more highly respected than in this part of his majesty’s dominions; distinguishing, as propriety and necessity require, between civilized and uncivilized life.⁷¹

As the tide of abolitionism gained momentum – William Wilberforce had presented his twelve resolutions against the slave trade in the House of Commons in 789 – the very foundations of the West Indian economy and the plantocracy’s way of life were threatened. The plantocracy had more to fear than slave revolts and foreign invasion now that the ideological gulf between West Indian and Briton was becoming increasingly wider. The Jamaicans saw Effingham as one of their own. As the grandson of Peter Beckford and nephew of William Beckford, he was, for all intents and purposes, Jamaican.⁷² Along with the Duke of Richmond, he was also one of the most outspoken supporters of the colonists’ rights during and after the American Revolution. He was also the most high-profile governor in Jamaica’s history. When both the countess and the earl died within weeks of the initial uprising in St Domingue, precisely when the plantocracy’s nerves were particularly frayed, the response of the House of Assembly was excessively effusive. Each received a state funeral.⁷³ Combined, the two funerals cost 7,985 currency and were the most lavish and ostentatious events staged on the island in the eighteenth century.⁷⁴ The remains of the countess and the earl were placed in a vault in the chancel of St Catherine’s Parish Church, directly contravening the assembly’s Public Commissions in the West Indies

259

Fig. 8.17 (right) John Bacon the Elder, monument to Thomas, Earl of Effingham, d. 1791, and his wife, Catherine, d. 1791. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Fig. 8.18 (facing page) John Bacon the Elder, detail of the monument to Thomas, Earl of Effingham, d. 1791, and his wife, Catherine, d. 1791. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

own recent act forbidding burial inside churches on the island.⁷⁵ Bacon, presumably because of the success of the Rodney statue, which had just recently been erected in Jamaica, was immediately hired to commemorate the deceased with a monument. The monument cost ,425 currency and is one of the few really large monuments in the West Indies (figs 8.7 and 8.8).⁷⁶ The elaborate unique design is consistent with some of Bacon’s finest and largest allegorical works: A female personification of Jamaica wearing a belt embellished with an alligator mourns at the base of a large urn inscribed with the heraldic arms of the deceased. Balancing Jamaica on the left is a cornucopia and a putto holding a shield that bears 260

empir e r enew ed

the arms, supporting figures, and crest of Jamaica. The lengthy epitaph emphasizes the conjugal love of the deceased and the security that the grateful people of Jamaica had enjoyed under the protection of the earl. No longer is Jamaica a frail adolescent clutching at the leg of Britannia. Here she is a strong young woman mourning alone the loss of her son. She is not, however, independent: The act simply of honouring the governor and his wife with a monument confirmed and consolidated the Jamaicans’ intent to remain within the imperial fold. As if to reaffirm its position, the Jamaican House of Assembly commissioned a monument to Anne Williamson, the wife of Sir Adam Williamson, who had Public Commissions in the West Indies

261

Fig. 8.19 John Bacon the Elder, detail of the monument to Anne Williamson, d. 1794. St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town, Jamaica.

served as lieutenant governor under Effingham and then as governor until 795 (fig. 8.9).⁷⁷ She, like the countess and the earl, was buried in the church of St Catherine. Her monument, also by Bacon the Elder, is a much smaller, stockin-trade wall piece showing a mourning female figure with her arm wrapped around a columnar pedestal that supports an eternal flame. The cost of the monument and its installation was approximately 500.⁷⁸ The events in the West Indies in the 790s drove the plantocracy to revisit and reassess their relationship with Britain. The horrors of the ongoing revolt in St Domingue were augmented by similar violent revolts in St Lucia, Grenada, and St Vincent. Formerly French possessions, the three islands had been ceded to the 262 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

British at the end of the Seven Years War. The French Revolution and Britain’s opportunistic declaration of war against the French in the West Indies contributed to the already existing climate of anxiety in the 790s, and smouldering agitation sparked into full-scale rebellion. Grenada proved to be the worst. A coloured French planter, Jules Fédon, gathered about him a group of white and coloured French men who were disgruntled with the incursions made on their language, laws, and religion. Before long 7,000 slaves – half the total slave population on the island – had joined them, and by 796 they had succeeded in taking over the whole island, except for the town of St George. Governor Ninian Home and several other members of the British plantocracy had been taken hostage in March 795, and a month later, in retaliation for a near routing of his forces, Fédon executed forty-eight of the prisoners, including Home. The situation in St Vincent was not much better, as the Black Caribs, allied with some French revolutionaries and some slaves, retaliated against the British for their expansionist incursions. The revolts were put down on all three islands only in 796 and 797 when General Abercromby arrived with 7,000 troops.⁷⁹ In 799 the reinstated Grenada Legislature commemorated their comrades with a monument by Richard Westmacott that was erected in St George’s Church. Two mourning female figures stand to either side of an urn above an inscription that lists the names of the deceased and then describes in rather graphic detail their capture and execution. In the inscription, the blame was squarely placed on the revolutionaries, who had poisoned the minds of the island inhabitants: “taken Prisoners, on the 3rd of March, 795, / By an execrable Banditti, / Compos’d principally of white new-adopted Subjects of this Island, / And their free colour’d Descendants; / Who stimulated by the insidious Arts of French Republicans, / Lost all Sense of Duty to their Sovereign, / And unmindful of the Advantages they had long enjoy’d, / By participating in the Blessings of the British Constitution.” Meanwhile, in St Vincent an obelisk was planned (but never erected) at the end of the century to commemorate the white inhabitants who had died there (fig. 8.20).⁸⁰ In each of St Lucia, Grenada, and St Vincent, the slaves were not the primary instigators of the revolts, and the three islands had only recently been acquired by the British. Yet a climate of fear permeated the settled British islands. This was compounded by the maroon and renegade slave uprising in Trelawny Town, Jamaica, in July 795, the first such disturbance since the Hanover Plot of 776. While the Maroon War could be blamed on agitators from other islands who had whipped up antagonism among the slaves, the plantocracy of the settled islands was emphatically reminded of its precarious position.⁸¹ This precariousness was exacerbated at the end of the century by the rise of Napoleon and the continPublic Commissions in the West Indies

263

Fig. 8.20 Mr Guilding and Mr Stothard, The Obelisk at St. Vincent, 1795–96 (never erected).

ued French threat at sea. When Nelson defeated the French at Trafalgar in 805, thereby securing British naval supremacy, the relief was almost palpable across the British Empire. The Barbadians were among the most relieved. In 806 as soon as they heard about Nelson’s victory and his glorious death, they initiated a public subscription to erect a statue in his honour (fig. 8.2).82 There was only one earlier call for a monument to Nelson, which also came from the colonies, where the need for permanent effigies apparently continued to be acute: On 30 December 805 a subscription for a statue was opened in Montreal (fig. 8.22). The statue, made of Coade stone and placed on top of a tall column, was unveiled in 85.83 In the case of the West Indies, the Barbadians made Nelson out to be something 264

empir e r enew ed

Fig. 8.21 Richard Westmacott, monument to Lord Nelson, 1806. Trafalgar Square, Bridgetown, Barbados (turned 180° from original siting).

of a surrogate son since he had served in the islands early in his career and had married the heiress of a Nevis sugar fortune. Richard Westmacott was hired to design the Barbadian statue, and it was cast in bronze, a more expensive material than marble. It was the first bronze statue in the West Indies. Sporting a contemporary uniform, the statue was erected in Trafalgar Square in Bridgetown in 83.⁸⁴ Notably, the statue was erected in Barbados, where there was not (despite the Grenville statue) a strong history of public commissions. By the 770s the BarPublic Commissions in the West Indies

265

Fig. 8.22 Robert Auchmuty Sproule, Nelson’s Monument, Notre Dame Street Looking West, Montreal, 1830.

badians had struck a moderate position regarding their relationship with Britain. Indeed, in the 760s the Barbadian assembly had been one of the very few colonial representative bodies (and certainly the richest of these) to submit, with little complaint, to the Stamp Act while actually condemning the spirit of violent resistance in the North American colonies. Several Americans roundly criticized such statements, to which the Barbadians responded that they were acting prudently given their tenuous position; not only were they encumbered and vastly outnumbered by a huge slave population, their island was also small and entirely settled. There was no way of escape if revolt erupted.⁸⁵ The Barbadian concerns were articulated by John Gay Alleyne, who was then the Speaker of the house. As the century closed, the Barbadians were at pains to exaggerate this sense of prudence. They emphasized the leniency of the Barbadian slave system, made 266 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

much of the garden-like quality of the island, and saw themselves as “the most ancient, humane and polished West Indian colony ever possessed by the freest nation upon earth.” In short, Barbados was Little England.86 This civility and moderation was further articulated in monuments, as exemplified by the Alleyne monument and its emphasis on education (see figs 2.4, 2.5, and 2.23). In terms of public monuments, the Barbadian Legislature did not commission pieces such as the Keith and Effingham monuments, which carried, if somewhat obliquely, allusions to Jamaica’s sometimes fraught relationship with the mother country. In fact, the only legislative commission after the Grenville statue and before the Nelson monument in Barbados was a small wall monument, a stock-in-trade piece with a portrait relief by John Flaxman that commemorates John Brathwaite, the colonial agent for the island, who died in 800 (fig. 8.23).87 There is nothing to suggest that this monument is anything more than a sign of gratitude to a man who had served the island for so long.88 As a sign of gratitude, the Nelson statue was a fitting symbol of Barbadian prudence and moderation.89 With the end of the French Revolution, the defeat of the French navy, and the consequent safeguarding of the trade routes to Britain, the West Indian islands returned to a relative state of stability. The only thorn that remained in the plantocracy’s flesh was the abolitionist movement. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, this thorn was becoming far more than an irritant. The huge monument to Ralph Payne, Baron Lavington, governor of Antigua and commander in chief of the Leeward Islands, was in many respects a last gasp of a society that was about to change fundamentally forever. The monument was commissioned by the Antigua House of Assembly in 807, the year that the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire. Lavington was a West Indian by birth, born on the island of St Christopher’s (St Kitt’s) “of an English family distinguished for its loyalty and public spirit.”90 He also embodied the worst excesses of the plantocracy: He entertained on a lavish scale, he refused to take a letter from a slave except with a pair of golden tongs, and he required that his domestic slaves not wear shoes or stockings and that their legs be rubbed daily with butter so that they would shine like jet.9 Designed by Robert Taylor, his London house in fashionable Grafton Street had been a gathering place for Charles James Fox and the Whigs in the 770s,92 but by the 790s, facing financial constraint and Fox’s collusion with the abolitionists, Lavington switched political allegiances, accepted a baronetcy, and returned to Antigua as governor and commander in chief.93 Erected in the sumptuous parish church in St John’s, the monument was (perhaps fittingly) destroyed in the devastating earthquake that rocked Antigua in Public Commissions in the West Indies

267

Fig. 8.23 John Flaxman, monument to John Brathwaite, d. 1800. St Michael’s Parish Church, Bridgetown, Barbados.

843. No images of the monument survive although a detailed description was published by Mrs Flannigan in Antigua and the Antiguans in 844. The monument was probably the largest work by Bacon the Younger and, unlike the bulk of his work, was thoroughly individualistic in design. Indeed, its iconography was thoroughly West Indian. A statue of Lavington in contemporary court dress sat within a black marble arch above a sarcophagus. Astraea, with her scales and sword of justice, sat on the left, while a personification of Antigua, her face shaded in grief, was on the right. Antigua held a scroll inscribed “Resolved that a monument be erected to his memory.” The figure of Lavington gripped an elaborately sculpted sword, a reference to the sword presented to him by the Antiguans, who were distraught by his recall to England in 774 after his first tenure 268

empir e r enew ed

as governor.94 Foaming waves of the sea crashed against the pedestal below the figures. The inscription, which was one of the longest on any monument in the West Indies, punctiliously listed all of Lavington’s many distinctions, including his first appointment as governor of Antigua and the Leeward Islands in 77, his investiture in the Order of the Bath, his elevation to the Irish peerage in 795, and his second appointment to the Leeward Island command in 799.95 His climb up the political and social ladders is testament to the success of the West Indian arriviste in the eighteenth century. The abolition of the slave trade marked the beginning of the end of this success. A formulation of a particular West Indian identity could have come about only over a period of years, during which the islanders were forced through a variety of events and circumstances to acknowledge their differences from the mother country, often in spite of themselves. Riding hot on the heels of the so-called Golden Age – the third quarter of the eighteenth century, when sugar prices were at their peak and markets were abundant – the West Indians felt comfortable enough to articulate their concerns as colonists with the king and Parliament, some, like the Jamaicans, more forcibly than others. Paradoxically, crises for the plantocracy, such as the Stamp Act and episodes of slave rebellion, helped to drive the West Indian elite to further articulate its position. As the West Indians’ political power sharply declined at the end of the century with the drop in sugar prices, a glut on the markets, the increased momentum of the abolitionist movement, and the moral swing to the East, they were in effect compelled to see themselves as something other than Englishmen. Michael Craton used the phrase “reluctant creoles” to describe the West Indians faced with this transformation.96 The Barbadians, whose ancestors had settled the island long before the other British islands were fully developed, went further in seeking to distinguish themselves from other West Indians. They may have considered their island to be “Little England” and may have maintained their claims to British refinement, but they did not see themselves as Englishmen. Indeed, they perceived themselves to be in a category above other West Indians: “neither Carib, nor Creole, but true Barbadian.”97 Whether Barbadian or West Indian, they, like the rest of the West Indian plantocracy, were no longer gentlemen and gentlewomen of England; they were gentlemen and gentlewomen of the empire.

Public Commissions in the West Indies

269

chapte r nine

India: Empire Building

as a Moral Imperative

n

o study of the eighteenth-century British Empire would be complete without a discussion of British involvement in India. As far as monuments are concerned, none were shipped to India until the penultimate decade of the century. This was a factor of the transitory British population in India and the noncolonizing nature of the British presence there until the 780s rather than necessarily a sign of lack of interest in the East. Indeed, several very grand monuments in some way associated with India were commissioned to be erected in Britain beginning in 759. The patron of these earlier monuments was the British East India Company, the largest single corporation of trade entrepreneurs in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Chartered in 600, the company had a monopoly over the Indian trade. In 708 the company had some 3,000 shareholders, and subsequent annual sales totalled anywhere from ,250,000 to a phenomenal 2,000,000.¹ Initially, the company operated out of ports along the Indian coast: Bombay and Surat in western India and those of Madras and Calcutta on the southeast and east coasts respectively. These settlements grew very quickly over the course of the first half of the eighteenth century in response to the equally rapid growth of the trade network with Indian merchants, artisans, and labourers. Calcutta in particular, which was initially almost entirely a British settlement, grew exponentially, with its population being estimated, perhaps exaggeratedly, at 00,000 by the middle of the century.² Such expansion unsettled the Mughal Empire, which was already caught up in a fundamental reordering of rule as it sought to accommodate growing regional powers, most notably in Bengal.³ By the 740s the disruption in the Mughal Empire, compounded by the outbreak of war with France, spurred the East India Company to increase its inland incursions. The

breaking point occurred in 756 when Siraj-ud-Daulah, the ambitious nawab of Bengal, took Calcutta. Several prisoners, maybe as many as 50 (but certainly not the 50 cited in the generally exaggerated contemporary accounts),⁴ died in the Black Hole debacle. Colonel Robert Clive retaliated by retaking Calcutta in January 757 before going on to defeat the nawab at Plassey later that year with the assistance of Indian conspirators. A puppet nawab, Mir Jafar, was installed, and Clive himself was made the first governor of Bengal province. The East India Company had gone from being a company with trading interests in the East to one of territorial power and administration, overseeing millions of non-Europeans. What followed the battle at Plassey was an almost unbroken string of wars against both Indian and French coalitions, the result being the further entanglement of the company in Indian affairs and administration. By 799, with the ultimate defeat and death of Tipu Sultan in the final Mysore War, British supremacy in India was secured. The transition from trade to government was not a seamless one. At a time when nerves were already frayed over the American colonists’ concerns about liberty and virtue, many people in Britain began to voice their anxieties about an empire in the East that was so clearly based on conquest and control of nonEuropeans. These anxieties were brought to the fore especially given that the economic benefits of such an empire were not immediately obvious. In the late 760s and early 770s, instead of Britain reaping the rewards of lucrative cargoes and taxation revenues from Bengal, money was poured into sepoy armies to the point that the East India Company went bankrupt in 772. Furthermore, throughout the 770s and 780s the company was unable to thwart effectively the advances of successive Indian and French coalitions. Ministers who had in the past turned a blind eye to the goings on in India, mostly because they had not taken the time to understand them, turned their attention to these affairs and proceeded to act as the moral conscience of Britain.⁵ The company itself came under attack for claiming to bring happiness and prosperity to the people of Bengal when, in fact, disease, poverty, and famine were rampant,⁶ this at a time when company directors and soldiers were accruing huge personal fortunes. The East India Company responded with a concerted public-relations effort. It cast itself as an agency of imperial benevolence while at the same time contributing to the improvement of the wellbeing of Britain as a whole. Monuments were part of a range of mediums used for public dissemination that included grand history paintings, portraits, prints, editorials, squibs, fireworks, illuminations, and more. Unlike the West Indian planters and merchants, who as individuals did not come under the same intense scrutiny (at least not until the end of India

271

Fig. 9.1 (right) John Michael Rysbrack, Britannia receiving the riches of the East, marble, commissioned 1728 for East India House. Fig. 9.2 (facing page) John Michael Rysbrack, detail of Britannia receiving the riches of the East, marble, commissioned 1728 for East India House.

the century), the company as a monolithic entity could and did use expensive and inherently permanent monuments as a means to consolidate its reputation. Numerous monuments were erected in Westminster Abbey and later in St Paul’s Cathedral. Meanwhile, other monuments, along with allegorical paintings, were commissioned for East India House, the company’s headquarters in the City of London. These told a very different story. The East India Company’s first venture into commissioning sculpture was not a monument per se, as it does not commemorate an individual or a group of people or even a specific event, yet it does celebrate the India trade. This is John Michael Rysbrack’s chimneypiece, commissioned in 728 and set up in the Directors’ General Court Room in the recently rebuilt East India House in Leadenhall 272 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

Street (figs 9. and 9.2). This piece is a tangible manifestation of the tone within East India House. The chimneypiece contains a large bas-relief overmantel that shows Britannia sitting on a rock receiving the riches of the East. Personifications of Asia, India, and Africa bring gifts of jewels and incense, rather like the Three Wise Men bearing their gifts. To the left of Britannia, two putti play with some of the riches, while Thames lounges in the bottom right corner holding an overflowing cornucopia. Two East India Company ships (each called an East Indianman), a man cording a bale, and the triton held by Britannia symbolize naval commerce. Rysbrack’s figures depend heavily on accessories such as camels and lions for identification and are typical of depictions of non-Europeans in the first half India 273

of the eighteenth century. (Scheemakers’s 742 relief for the Palladian Bridge at Stowe, showing the continents bringing riches to Britannia, is a comparable image; see fig. 5.2). Indeed, the figures correspond to the personifications of the continents illustrated in Cesar Ripa’s Iconologia and are thus generic stereotypes that go back more than a century.⁷ George Vertue, forever puffing his friend Rysbrack, stated that the finished work was “admired by all Artists & lovers of Art. this [sic] will remain a sample of Mr. Rysbrack [sic] skill to posterity 729.”⁸ As portrayed by both Rysbrack and Scheemakers, Britannia is a passive figure. At this point, Britain and the East India Company are simply intent on commerce rather than actively engaged in colonizing India. The chimneypiece was situated in the Directors’ Court Room; thus the audience was severely circumscribed, consisting of people who were already convinced of the benefits that trade with the East would bring. Consequently, the chimneypiece functioned as a statement rather than as a mode of persuasion. The company’s next venture into the patronage of sculpture occurred in 759 when the Secret Committee of the company approached Pitt the Elder to sanction the erection of a monument in Westminster Abbey at the company’s expense to Vice Admiral Charles Watson (see fig. 4.9). The company’s desire to commission a sculpture after a thirty-year interval, and its first commemorative monument, corresponds to the company’s new role as territorial manager and administrator. The Watson monument commemorates this transition to empire builder.⁹ Charles Watson is barely remembered today and is rarely mentioned in the various histories of the East India Company. His naval exploits, although significant, were entirely overshadowed by the military coups won by Clive, Watson’s military counterpart, immediately following Watson’s death. Yet Watson’s and Clive’s earlier victories at Ghereah, Chandernagore, and Calcutta paved the way for Clive’s famous victory at Plassey in 757 and later, in 765, for his acceptance of the position of diwan (chief financial manager) of Bengal.¹⁰ Watson was appointed commander in chief in the East Indies in 754. He spent much of 755 watching the French along the Coromandel coast and building up his forces against the growing threat. Later that year he sailed to Bombay, where in February 756 he attacked and reduced Ghereah in an impressive display of naval tactics. Ghereah was a stronghold of the Angrias, a group of Mahratta pirates who had become an increasing irritant to the company. While at Bombay he heard about Siraj-ud-Daulah’s attack on Calcutta and the ensuing horror of the Black Hole. Watson and Clive combined their forces and retaliated against the nawab, retaking Calcutta in January 757. Watson went on to reduce Chandernagore in March and played a role with Clive in the preliminary negotiations with 274 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

Mir Jafar to depose Siraj-ud-Daulah. His increasingly poor health prevented him from personally taking part in the action at Plassey in June. He died in India two months later. Watson’s death afforded the East India Company a chance to celebrate its successes and make an impression, particularly when public and ministerial attention was more focused on the war in the Atlantic. As the company saw it, the monument was intended for both the company and the nation. Pitt and subsequently the king approved of the company’s wish to erect a monument, and the resolution was passed by the directors in July 760: “Resolved Unanimously that a Monument be erected at the Company’s Charge in Westminster Abbey for Charles Watson esq. late Vice Admiral of the Squadron of His Majesty’s Fleet, and Commander-in-chief of His Majesty’s Ships in the East Indies in Grateful remembrance of the many Important & signal Actions performed by him in that Command with the most remarkable intrepidity and success, wherefrom Benefits of the greatest Consequence and Advantage have been derived to the Nation in General and this Company in particular.”¹¹ The monument cost over ,000.¹² The commission was awarded to James Athenian Stuart, who like Wilton was one of the new young British artists. He had recently returned from his extended Grand Tour thoroughly influenced by the antiquities of both Rome and Greece. Upon his return to England, Stuart often worked with Peter Scheemakers, who brought Stuart’s designs to fruition. Scheemakers would execute the Watson monument.¹³ Watson’s victories, rather than his death, are commemorated in his funeral monument. Stuart provided the directors of the company with a detailed account of the victory narrative: “The Scene of this Monument is composed of four Palm Trees set at equal distances, in the middle space is represented the Vice Admiral holding a palm branch, the symbol of Victory, in one hand, & extending the other towards a figure designed to represent Calcutta; he Commands her to be freed; she appears loosed from her manacles, which are seen hanging on the Palm Tree behind her, and is returning thanks to her Deliverer ... On the right hand of the Admiral is a captive chaind [sic].”¹⁴ A pyramidal form is suggested, created by the placement of the seated and kneeling figures to either side of the standing figure of the vice admiral. Rather than alluding to eternity, which is the usual significance of pyramids in funeral monuments, this pyramid emphasizes Watson and his domination over the other two figures. The chained Angrian pirate sits snarling in defiant defeat, while Calcutta kneels and exposes one breast in an offering of thanksgiving. Although stereotypes, the Indian figures in the Watson monument are slightly more site-specific than the India 275

generic figure of India in Rysbrack’s chimneypiece relief. The muscular, scowling pirate wears the top-knot, long drooping moustache, and minimal clothing that were typical of eighteenth-century (and later) European depictions of Hindus. Calcutta is Orientalized by an elaborate jewelled armband and necklace and a voluminous sari. Nevertheless, one critic, who was obviously of a literal turn-ofmind, believed the figure to be Mrs Carey, the only woman who was incarcerated in the Black Hole.¹⁵ The overall composition of the Watson monument, as discussed in chapter 4, is highly unusual in order to accommodate the awkward site in the gallery of the north transept. Stuart’s design is an ingenious use of very little space in that he integrated the monument into the existing fabric of the Abbey by transforming the Gothic arches in the gallery into exotic palm trees (the palms were removed after the Second World War). While there was still some free wall space elsewhere in the Abbey, the company was no doubt anxious to erect the Watson monument in the prestigious north transept. There it could stand in good company with any number of monuments dedicated to Britain’s great naval and military heroes. Trade and commercial gain are notably absent in this monument, which is located in a much more public venue than Rysbrack’s chimneypiece in East India House. Watson’s absolute victory is portrayed as a justified one over tyranny and despotism. Watson holds the palm branch of victory over the snarling, obviously barbaric chained pirate while turning toward Calcutta to receive her gratitude. By focusing attention specifically on Calcutta, rather than on India as a whole, the monument also evades the issue of conquering other races, a matter of much concern to many Britons wary of an empire of occupation; by emphasizing Watson’s participation in retaking Calcutta, the company was claiming what it saw as rightfully its own since Calcutta was primarily a British factory settlement. The unveiling of the monument four years after it was commissioned gave at least one critic the opportunity to once again portray Watson’s victories as a triumph over despotic barbarism by voyeuristically recounting the Black Hole episode.¹⁶ There is a touch of the magnanimous victor in the Watson monument as well. The palm branch can also be a sign of peace – by forcing the Angrian pirates into submission, Watson brought stability to the region – and Watson wears the toga of a statesman or diplomat rather than the armour more appropriate for a naval commander. Unlike Rysbrack’s chimneypiece, where Britain is portrayed as a passive Britannia receiving riches from the East, Watson is a representative of Britain who actively reaches out, bringing freedom and civilization to a population that has suffered at the hands of a despotic ruler.

276 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

The same magnanimity infuses Hayman’s contemporaneous painting of Lord Clive Receiving the Homage of the Nabob, which was paired with Hayman’s image of The Humanity of General Amherst in the Rotunda at Vauxhall Gardens (see figs 4.7 and 4.6). Commissioned by the ever-prescient Jonathan Tyers to join the allegorical pieces of victories on land and sea (see fig. 4.8), Tyers, like the East India Company, attempted and largely succeeded in celebrating the enormity of the new British Empire while not upsetting anyone who might have been suspicious of the notion of domination inherent in the definition of empire. The Humanity of General Amherst and Lord Clive Receiving the Homage of the Nabob mark the geographical extent of the new empire and celebrate its magnanimity. Enemy leaders are not included in the images, and the idea of conquest is portrayed as a necessary evil to alleviate the suffering of those who have lived with horrendous tyranny. Amherst strikes a paternal, benevolent pose among the distressed women, children, and elderly of Montreal, while Clive graciously receives the homage of Mir Jafar, the incoming puppet nawab of Bengal. The Watson monument, unveiled in 764, and Hayman’s paintings at Vauxhall were the most public images to date that would join the torrent of pamphlets, historical accounts of questionable accuracy, plays, epitaphs, songs, and editorials that cast the new empire as a necessary counter to barbarism and oppression.¹⁷ Notably, the theme of magnanimity was not played out in contemporaneous commissions for statues for the inside of East India House. Soon after the East India Company commissioned the monument to Watson for Westminster Abbey, it resolved to erect statues of Clive, Major General Stringer Lawrence, and Admiral Sir George Pocock in the General Court Room at East India House. Scheemakers was hired to execute the works, presumably because he had already been engaged to do the Watson monument. The statues commemorate the three officers who, along with Watson, secured the company’s position in India in the late 740s and 750s and set the company on its empire-building course. While the resolution for the Watson monument emphasized the benefits that Watson’s victories had brought to the nation in general – over those secured solely for the company and its employees – the resolution to honour Clive, Lawrence, and Pocock made no pretence to national concern: “Resolved Unanimously that the Chairman and Deputy when they wait upon Vice-Admiral Pocock, Colonel Clive and Colonel Lawrence (to thank them on behalf of the Company for their Services) will desire those Gentlemen to give their Consent that their Portraits or Statues be taken in order to be placed in some conspicuous parts of this House [East India House], that their Eminent and Signal Services to this Company may

India 277

Fig. 9.3

J.C. Stadler after Thomas Rowlandson, India House, the sale room, c. 1808–10.

ever be had in remembrance.”¹⁸ The three statues cost over 600 sterling¹⁹ and were placed in niches high in the wall of the General Court Room above the directors’ table, where they formed something of a wall of fame commemorating the company’s exploits (fig. 9.3 shows the three statues in the Sale Room in the new East India House built in 799 as well as statues to Sir Eyre Coote, visible to the right, and Charles, Marquess Cornwallis, barely visible in profile on the left).²⁰ Since the statues were to be seen by the directors and employees of the company or by people already convinced of the value of company expansion into India, there was no need to construct an elaborate narrative of magnanimity that would offer ethical justifications for the company’s motives. Scheemakers’s 278 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

figures, all dressed in Roman armour and bearing shields and swords, stand in poses reminiscent of statues of great Roman generals and leaders. They represent victory, domination, and authority. Cloaked in classical allusion, they become honourable through association with the great empires of the past. Any rapport with the British public that the East India Company may have established via the Watson monument was short-lived, as spiralling costs, corruption, and charges of self-gain to the detriment of the nation plagued the company directors throughout the 770s and 780s. The company retaliated by reiterating its position as the benevolent agent of a magnanimous empire. Another of the company’s significant forays into art patronage in this light was Edward Penny’s painting Lord Clive receiving from the Nawab of Bengal the grant of the sum of money which was later used to establish the charity known as ‘Lord Clive’s Fund’ for helping disabled soldiers as well as widows of those dying in the Company’s Service.²¹ The title, as recorded in the Royal Academy catalogue of 772, says it all. On the right of the painting, two sick and distressed soldiers look dejectedly at the ground, while their companions – including a sepoy – who have noticed the arrival of the nawab and Clive, look up with hope and in thanksgiving. On the left, Clive grandly ushers the surprised nawab over to the soldiers. A widow and her young children, dressed in the white of the innocent, bridge the gap between the two groups. The painting was commissioned precisely at the time of the parliamentary enquiry investigating Clive’s acquisition of a huge personal fortune from the India trade.²² Specifically, Clive’s personal magnanimity is emphasized by his indication, as he takes the grant from the nawab, that the soldiers and sepoy will be the beneficiaries, thus countering any suspicions of personal gain at the expense of company employees. In this particular instance, a painting was far more effective than a monument since it could be executed quickly. In addition, there was also no frame of reference for a monument since at the time monuments were almost exclusively about commemorating the deceased. For maximum public exposure, the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 772, the very year the company went bankrupt. In November 774 Clive took his own life. A church monument specifically dedicated to Clive would have been an impossibility given the nature of his death. Somewhat conveniently, however, Lawrence died an honourable death in early 775, and within weeks the company commissioned William Tyler to design and execute a funeral monument in his honour that would be erected in Westminster Abbey (fig. 9.4). By focusing on Lawrence, the company directors may have been attempting to deflect some of the attention away from Clive’s death while at the India 279

Fig. 9.4 William Tyler, monument to Major General Stringer Lawrence, commissioned 1775. Westminster Abbey, London.

same time indirectly honouring Clive by association since Clive had been Lawrence’s military protégé in the early 750s.23 The composition of the monument is rather traditional; a portrait bust of Lawrence is situated on a pedestal between Britannia and Victory and is surrounded by military accoutrements. The epitaph is in keeping with the perfunctory inscriptions reserved for men who had done so much for their country that their actions did not need to be recounted again:

280 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

ERECTED BY THE EAST INDIA COMPANY TO THE MEMORY OF MAJOR-GENER AL STRINGER LAWRENCE IN TESTIMONY OF THEIR GR ATITUDE FOR HIS EMINENT SERVICES IN THE COMMAND OF THEIR FORCES ON THE COAST OF COROMANDEL FROM THE YEAR MDCCXLVI TO THE YEAR MDCCLXVI

The figure of Victory holds a plaque inscribed: FOR DISCIPLINE ESTABLISHED FORTRESSES PROTECTED SETTLEMENTS EXTENDED FRENCH AND INDIAN ARMIES DEFEATED ON THE CARNATIC

The most remarkable feature of the monument is a relief on the plinth depicting Lawrence’s greatest victory while in command of the company’s forces on the Coromandel coast. The scene shows the great rock at Trichinopoly, which Lawrence and Clive had secured from the French and their Indian allies in 75. It was a decisive victory that would pave the way to British dominance in the East.²⁴ The company remained loyal to those who had secured the company’s infiltration of the Indian subcontinent in the 760s. In April 784 the company resolved to erect a monument to Lieutenant General Sir Eyre Coote in Westminster Abbey (fig. 9.5). As the inscription on the monument contends, he fought with distinction in 760 and 76 when he “expelled the French from the coast of Coromandel.”²⁵ Equal mention is made of his actions to stave off the French and Indian coalition led by Haidar Ali in the Carnatic in the first of the Mysore Wars in the early 780s.²⁶ Weakened by years of battle, he died in India in 783. News of his death reached England nearly a year later, and shortly afterward the company voted to erect the monument. This decision came at a critical point for the company. At a time when issues of liberty and virtue were extraordinarily topical

India 281

Fig. 9.5 Thomas Banks, monument to General Sir Eyre Coote, commissioned 1784. Westminster Abbey, London.

– given the evident success of the American colonists’ bid for independence – ministerial and, by extension, public scrutiny of matters in India reached an unprecedented intensity. The company’s finances were still in ruins, as it continued to pour money into its military. This helped to fuel the growing public hostility toward the company, which in turn was further fanned by ministerial critiques of the moral legitimacy of the company’s presence in India. The most virulent critic was Edmund Burke, who lambasted the company nabobs for accruing huge fortunes, evidently at the expense of the Indian population. While the company professed to protect the happiness and prosperity of the people of India, the widely held belief in Britain was that the people of India had fallen prey to the worst excesses – extortion, oppression, and corruption – of an empire of trade. Two years of drought exacerbated the situation, and poverty and famine had devastated the Bengali population. Warren Hastings, installed as governor general of Bengal in accordance with Lord North’s Regulating Act of 774, was charged with ambitious “schemes of conquest.” He resigned in 784 and would face charges of impeachment in 787 (only to be cleared in 795 after a tedious nine-year trial).²⁷ Furthermore, the scandal surrounding Lord Pigot, governor of Madras, drew yet more unfavourable attention and press. He had tried to return the rule of Tanjor to its own rajah but had fallen foul of British creditors, was consequently thrown into prison, and subsequently died indirectly from his incarceration.²⁸ The monument to Coote, as one might expect, refers to none of this hostility. Indeed, the date of the commission suggests that it was conceived to divert attention away from these charges of iniquity. The commission was awarded to Thomas Banks, who had trained in the Royal Academy schools and who, like Athenian Stuart a generation before, was deeply influenced by the neoclassical.²⁹ Banks’s design is an interesting synthesis of some of the more unusual eighteenth-century compositions with a decidedly classical flavour. Victory pins a portrait medallion of Coote to a palm tree above a trophy of Persian armour, much in the manner of Taylor’s Cornewall monument of 745 (see fig. 4.4). At the foot of the tree, a Hindu warrior sits with his head in his hand, weeping dejectedly. Oblivious to everything around him, he neglects an overflowing cornucopia at his side, the only allusion in the monument to the riches of the East that Coote’s victories would ensure. The composition is uncomfortably asymmetrical when viewed head-on, but as Julius Bryant has pointed out, given the placement of the monument in the north transept of the Abbey, it was initially seen from an angle.³⁰ The Hindu’s feet are set at about eye-level, and the composition unfolds along the line of the Hindu’s body, up to and around the figure of Victory, before India 283

resting finally on the portrait medallion of the deceased. The “Mahratta captive,” as the Hindu was described in a puff in the European Magazine at the unveiling of the monument in 789, is clearly indebted to Stuart’s pirate in the Watson monument, but while Stuart’s pirate scowls in almost infantile anger at his captor, Banks’s figure is praised by the European Magazine commentator for the “sedate dignified character of its grief.”³¹ Alluding to the antique bas-relief of the Weeping Dacia, one of an imperial group installed in the Palazzo dei Conservatori in 79, the Mahratta is portrayed with a dignity rarely imparted to non-Europeans. In defeat, he cannot and does not pose a threat.³² In both the composition and the accompanying inscription, the East India Company left no room to question British intervention in India; it is simply implied as a God-given right. The monument is about victory and glory in the face of enemy aggression against British possessions in India, whether this aggression be French or Indian. In this sense, the Coote monument is the one company monument so publicly displayed that comes closest to the tone of the statues and other sculptures and embellishments at East India House. The imperial victory parade continued there behind closed doors. In 778 the ceiling of the Revenue Committee Room had been embellished with a painting by Spiridione Roma illustrating Britannia receiving the riches of the East. Roma’s painting is essentially an updated version of Rysbrack’s chimneypiece with Britannia firmly in control. She sits on a rock that alludes to the stability of the company and its territorial incursion into India. A British lion sits at her feet above a personification of the Ganges, and Mercury commands the countries of the East to extend their goods to Britannia: India her pearls and jewels, Persia her silks and drugs, and China her porcelain and tea. Unlike Rysbrack’s passive Britannia, Roma’s version handles a string of pearls while surveying the other goods with a discerning merchant’s eye. At the same time that Banks was given the commission for the Coote monument in the Abbey, he was also hired to execute a statue of Coote, which was to join the others in the General Court Room (visible to the right in fig. 9.3).³³ Coote stands in a rather energetic commanding pose holding a drawn but downward pointing sword in his right hand. Of the five statues that would be erected in the General Court Room prior to Flaxman’s statue of Hastings in 820, this is the only one that depicts a company officer in contemporary dress. While classical dress normally won out with respect to sculpture in the debate about classical versus contemporary dress in the 770s and 780s – and Banks himself preferred the classical – Coote is portrayed in contemporary garb presumably because the

284

empir e r enew ed

classical would have looked incongruous with the Order of the Bath that is so prominently displayed on Coote’s chest. Coote had been awarded the Order of the Bath in 77 for his successes in the Indian theatre in the Seven Years War. Such recognition by the Crown coincided with the British government’s increasing interests in Indian affairs. The erection of the Coote monument and statue, in turn, coincided with the beginning of full government involvement in British India and the end of the East India Company’s exclusive control. Pitt the Younger’s ministry passed the India Bill in 784, which established the India Board of Control in London to oversee the administration of British India. Consequently, every action now taken with respect to India would be the responsibility of the state as well as of the company and would therefore come under ever-increasing public scrutiny. Indian affairs now became the business of the British public. In 786, Charles, Marquess Cornwallis, was sent to Calcutta as the second governor general, but unlike Hastings, who went primarily under the auspices of the East India Company, Cornwallis was an agent of the British government. With consummate pragmatism, he set out to reform the administration of Bengal and to shore up the defences of British India. With respect to the latter, he nearly met his match in 792 when he narrowly defeated Tipu Sultan at Seringapatam. Although the victory was of little more than regional significance, when news of it reached Britain, it was trumpeted as a conquest of British righteousness over Asiatic tyranny. The British government unabashedly promoted it to justify its own increasing commitment and entanglement in Indian affairs. Tipu, the son of the already infamous Haidar Ali, was cast, like Siraj-ud-Daulah a generation before, as a young upstart intent on ambitious schemes of tyranny that would wreak havoc on Anglo-Indian commerce and, equally important, cause tremendous hardship and anguish for his own people. Such a portrayal was that much more piquant given the recent events of the French Revolution. News of Cornwallis’s victory was promoted in Britain with celebrations that met or surpassed those that had erupted following Vernon’s victory at Porto Bello and Wolfe’s victory at Quebec. With the loss of the American colonies and the lack of moral support for the West Indian planters, the British public’s attention for the first time was fully directed at events in India.³⁴ When Cornwallis returned to Britain in early 794, he was escorted amid “unbounded applause” to the Mansion House “in cavalcade of music” along with “the ministers of state and other distinguished persons.”³⁵ Epitaph after epitaph on Cornwallis and his victory filled the pages of the popular press; at Sadler’s Wells The Pantomime Story of Tippoo

India 285

Fig. 9.6 John Bacon the Elder, design for the pediment of East India House, 1799.

Sultan Saib was performed; and calls were made for numerous portraits of Cornwallis and paintings of the victory. The most popular episode of the victory was when Tipu handed over his two young sons to ensure that the various terms of Cornwallis’s strict treaty were carried out. Although in reality a cruel scene of conquest and dominance, the episode was packaged as a display of Britain’s magnanimity to the family of the evil enemy. A huge transparency depicting the event embellished the façade of the Mansion House and greeted Cornwallis on his victory parade.³⁶ No fewer than eight painters recorded the event.³⁷ All showed a corpulent fatherly Cornwallis graciously receiving the little boys. Subscriptions for engravings modelled after some of these works were advertised with such jingoistic descriptions as “the most splendid objects and scenery which could attract the human eye and the most pathetic incidents which could ever warm the human heart [commemorating] a generosity that would have done honour to the brightest hero of the classical page of antiquity.”³⁸ People who could not afford prints could buy medallions, tin tea trays, or Chinese glass paintings depicting the event. The widespread euphoria over Cornwallis’s victory indicates a fundamental shift in opinion about Britain’s involvement in India. Even Wilberforce, who had with Burke acted as the moral conscience of Britain in the assault on the East India Company and Warren Hastings in the 780s, stated that Cornwallis “had made the British name loved and revered” in India.³⁹ 286 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

The East India Company, now officially relieved of the yoke of administrating in India, even more emphatically embraced the topos of the magnanimous empire. In terms of monumental sculpture, there was no longer a discrepancy in theme between those pieces commissioned for the interior of East India House and those for the public domain. In 793 a statue of Cornwallis by John Bacon the Elder joined those of Clive, Lawrence, Pocock, and Coote on the victory wall in the General Court Room of East India House (visible in profile on the left of fig. 9.3; fig. 9.20 is a duplicate of the statue).⁴⁰ Bacon emphasized Cornwallis’s victory and might by clothing Cornwallis in Roman armour, yet he is gracious in his victory, as he stands with a down-turned, sheathed sword in one hand and an olive branch of peace extended in the other. At his feet, a bursting cornucopia is the only implied reference to the riches that the East could bring. The magnanimous theme also permeated Bacon’s sculptural relief on the huge pediment above the entrance to East India House, which was rebuilt between 796 and 799 by Richard Jupp and Henry Holland (figs 9.6 and 9.7). In contrast to the interior decorative schemes, Bacon’s very prominent exterior relief emphasizes what Britain can bring to the East in exchange for the bounty of India. Britannia offers her hand to a kneeling India, who bears a huge cornucopia. Between the two stands a putto, who holds a pike with the cap of liberty. Christian Religion, Justice, Order, Wisdom, and Integrity jostle for position behind Britannia in their effort to bestow their attributes on India. Furthermore, the whole is given India 287

Fig. 9.7 Thomas Malton, The East India House, Leadenhall Street, London, c. 1799, showing Bacon’s pediment.

an imperial air by George III , who stands at the centre of the pediment as ruler and protector of the empire. He is dressed in Roman armour and holds a downturned, sheathed sword in his left hand while protectively raising his shield over the head of Britannia with his right hand. The classical style of both the pediment and the building allude to the great empires of the past. The fiction of paternalistic benevolence and magnanimity spun by the British government, the East India Company, and the press to explain Britain’s incursion into India neatly dispelled any residual discomfort associated with the notion of the British government and the East India Company as invading, conquering forces. The fiction was further embellished by portraying Siraj-ud-Daulah, Tipu Sultan, and other regional Indian leaders who had challenged the British as 288 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

young upstarts whose ambitious schemes thoroughly departed from the ideals of the ancient Muslim or Hindu civilizations. Tipu had apparently “violated the law and intercourse of nations” as well as the “ancient Hindoo constitution.”⁴¹ Only the British could restore a stable and equitable society. Such a conceit thus got around the sticky issue of British incursion into and disruption of Indian society. Indeed, unlike the other parts of the British Empire, the British were confronted in India with a population so large and so visibly established – with palaces, civil institutions, codes of law, writing systems, and commercial networks (the latter especially valuable to the British) – that they were compelled to acknowledge and in some manner respect it. As India came more firmly into the British eye toward the end of the eighteenth century, a veritable industry of Asiatic scholarship emerged. Two of the greatest enthusiasts were Hastings and Sir William Jones, both company officials, the latter of whom had arrived in Calcutta in 784 as Chief Justice of the Bengal High Court. Jones and Hastings established the Asiatic Society, a serious endeavour that would be responsible for much of the early English scholarship about India. One of the main themes explored by the Orientalists, including Jones and Hastings, was the belief that at one point in the past the empires of the East had been great and honourable, comparable to the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome. For example, Jones compared the gods of ancient Greece and Rome to those of India in his discourse “On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India,” dated 784, and in 792, with Hastings, W. Chambers, and other members of the Asiatic Society, he published the highly complimentary Dissertations and Miscellaneous Pieces relating to the History and Antiquities, the Arts, Sciences and Literature of Asia.⁴² After Jones died in 794, the East India Company chose to honour him with a statue in St Paul’s Cathedral acknowledging his scholarly efforts, thereby adding a philosophical dimension to the company’s moral justifications for its incursions in India and thus further obfuscating its vulgar grab for commercial gain (fig. 9.8). The statue was designed by Bacon the Elder, and in concert with Bacon’s adamant views on the efficacy of classical over modern dress, Jones is presented as a classical scholar in classical dress. He holds a quill in his right hand and leans on bound volumes of his essays. In his left hand is a scroll that is meant to be his much-vaunted English translation of Hindu and Mohammedan laws. On the pedestal is a relief that is an allegorical rendition of his work on comparative Greek and Roman mythology and Indian antiquity. The funeral monument erected in the chapel at University College, Oxford, by Jones’s widow offers another representation of the serious scholar (fig. 9.9). Designed by Flaxman, the composition is a narrative showing Jones in modern dress gathering India 289

information for his “Digest of Hindu and Mohammedan Law” from three Indian pundits, who sit, stereotypically, cross-legged on a low platform.⁴³ Because of the scandal surrounding Hastings’s impeachment, Hastings had to wait until his death to be honoured by the East India Company. In January 820, nearly two years after he died, the company resolved to erect a statue to Hastings in the General Court Room (fig. 9.0). Flaxman was awarded the commission. Yet, in contrast to the other statues on the victory wall and also in contrast to the resolution that praised Hastings’s distinguished service in repelling “European, Mahomedan and Mahratta enemies,” the statue is not about victory and 290

empir e r enew ed

Fig. 9.8 (far left) John Bacon the Elder, monument to Sir William Jones, d. 1794, dated 1799. St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Fig. 9.9 (left) John Flaxman, monument to Sir William Jones, d. 1794. University College, Oxford. Fig. 9.10 (right) John Flaxman, statue of Warren Hastings, commissioned 1820 for East India House.

conquest.⁴⁴ In his left hand, Hastings holds a rolled map of India, while his right hand rests on a book entitled “Hindu Laws.” He is commemorated as a statesman and a scholar. Bacon’s statue to William Jones in St Paul’s Cathedral was the last monument commissioned by the East India Company for St Paul’s. Pitt’s India Act of 784 theoretically brought the company’s involvement in the administration of India to an end. The transition is perhaps best characterized by the example of the monument to Major General Sir Barry Close, a company officer who died in India in 83 (fig. 9.). In gratitude for a gift of Persian manuscripts to the India 291

Fig. 9.11 John Flaxman, monument to Sir Barry Close, d. 1813. St Mary’s Church, Madras.

company from Close’s brother, who was also his executor, the company resolved to erect a monument to Barry Close in St Paul’s Cathedral. Five months later, it was decided that the monument, which was still on the design table at Flaxman’s workshop, should be shipped to Madras.⁴⁵ The reason for the change in site is not stated in the company court minutes, but it could well be that Parliament, in the form of the Committee of National Monuments (more commonly known as the Committee of Taste), had rejected the company’s proposal to erect the monument in St Paul’s. The Treasury had established the Committee of National Monuments to deal with the numerous commissions for monuments by the House of Commons to commemorate various heroes who had fallen in the Anglo-French war of the 292

empir e r enew ed

Fig. 9.12 John Charles Rossi, monument to Charles, Marquess Cornwallis, 1807. St Paul’s Cathedral, London.

790s and subsequent Napoleonic wars. By the 790s a monument had become a necessary component of the panoply of commemoration; by 850 Parliament had spent more than 0,000 on erecting public monuments to national heroes, most of them in St Paul’s Cathedral.⁴⁶ St Paul’s became the venue of choice simply because Westminster Abbey was nearly bursting with monuments. Bacon’s statue of Jones was the third monument erected in St Paul’s. By 825 every wall in the cathedral was occupied. The compositions range from pedestrian statues to India 293

Fig. 9.13 Charles Manning, monument to Captain George Nicholas Hardinge, d. 1808. St Paul’s Cathedral, London.

complicated narratives and allegories, but all are unified in expressing the virtue of the deceased either in the defence of the British Empire or in bringing such virtue to the downtrodden.⁴⁷ The Close monument – although it emphasized, as the inscription stated, the deceased’s diplomacy in “diffusing the blessings of peace over a numerous native population” following the death of Tipu Sultan in 799 – did not fit the tenor of the monuments sponsored by the Committee of Taste because it was commissioned as gratitude for a gift to the company and because it originated with the company, which was no longer solely in charge of India. More relevant would be the statue by John Charles Rossi in St Paul’s that honours Cornwallis, commissioned by the British government after his death in 805 (fig. 9.2). It is attended by generic Indian figures. Another example is the monument, also in St Paul’s, to George Nicholas Hardinge, who had died fighting the French off the coast of Bombay in 808 (fig. 9.3). Designed by Charles Manning, Hardinge’s monument incorporates a pensive Hindu, seated with one 294 e m p i r e r e n e w e d

leg crossed over the other, mourning the loss of a man who died for his sake while protecting him from the French. By the turn of the century, anxieties over imperial expansion had entirely dissipated. It was now up to the British to protect their benevolent empire from alien attack.

monuments in india Monuments executed in Britain yet shipped to and erected in India follow a similar trajectory to those erected in England. The major events in the evolving British presence in India prompted monuments both at the centre of the empire and on its periphery. Consistent with the inherent nature of a monument, the type of image in the monuments shipped to India depended on where precisely the monument was located and who precisely was intended as the audience. The British monuments in India have been the subject of numerous recent studies by two authors, one concentrating on monuments erected before the Indian Mutiny and Rebellion of 857–58 and the other taking the discussion up to the twentieth century.⁴⁸ My concern here is much more attenuated. I will discuss the monuments erected only in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the British were just beginning to gain a foothold in India and before the British governing of India would become a monolithic bureaucracy. The earliest commemorative British monument in India – although most likely not executed in Britain – was an obelisk erected before 760 in Clive Street, Calcutta, in remembrance of those who had died in the Black Hole over the night of 20 June 756, prisoners of Siraj-ud-Daulah who had taken the city in retaliation for the increasing British intrusion in Bengal (fig. 9.4). The person responsible for the obelisk was John Zephaniah Holwell, governor of Bengal, who with twenty others had survived the experience. He was also the author of the much sensationalized and exaggerated (although this was not known then) account of the debacle published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 758 and as an independent pamphlet.⁴⁹ The account appealed to the taste for the horrific and the exotic in mid-eighteenth-century Britain and helped to foreground Anglo-Indian issues in the British public’s mind. Primarily a British settlement, Calcutta was regained by Clive in January 757. Thus the obelisk stood as a defiant symbol of retaking what Holwell and the British saw as rightfully theirs, irrespective of the fact that it was on Indian soil.⁵⁰ The theme of spurning evil tyranny dominates the military and naval monuments erected in India, of which there are many. The earliest is probably the simple stock-in-trade urn from William Tyler’s workshop that commemorates India 295

Fig. 9.14 (above) Thomas Daniell, East Side of the Old Fort, Clive Street, the Theatre and Holwell Monument, Calcutta, 1786. Fig. 9.15 (facing page, left) William Tyler, monument to John Watson, d. 1774. St Thomas’s Parish Church, Bombay. Fig. 9.16 (facing page, right) Charles Peart, monument to Lieutenant-Colonel John Campbell, d. 1784. St Thomas’s Parish Church, Bombay.

John Watson, who died in the siege of Tanna in 774 (fig. 9.5). It was erected in St Thomas’s Church, Bombay. Another early example is that by Charles Peart in honour of Lieutenant Colonel John Campbell, who died while defending Mangalore in the second Mysore War against Tipu Sultan and the French in 784 (fig. 9.6). Also located in St Thomas’s Church, the Campbell monument is rather more elaborate than the simple urn to Watson. It contains a grief-stricken figure of Victory, her torch overturned at her feet, and a mourning figure of India. The lengthy inscription states that the East India Company erected the monument as a “Memorial of / BRITISH JUSTICE ” in honour of a man who had valiantly defended Mangalore but had yielded after eight months to the persistent advances of the “INEXORABLE SULTAUN [sic].” India 297

The final lines of the epitaph to Campbell emphasize that he died while “In the Discharge of his Duty to / HIS KING and COUNTRY.” The distinction between company and national duty is further elided in subsequent monuments erected by the East India Company in India. The monument, also by Peart, to Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Moorhouse, who died in the siege of Bangalore by Tipu Sultan on 8 March 79, contains a large medallion relief showing Britannia crowning a bust of Moorhouse with a laurel wreath (fig. 9.7). Back in England, Moorhouse’s death was commemorated with a painting by Robert Home, which was advertised as being in “the size and manner of [West’s painting of] General Wolfe.”⁵¹ By capitalizing on such a phenomenally successful image, Home hoped to garner more public notice for his work. At the very least, the relationship between the two paintings, like the incorporation of Britannia on the monument in India, alludes to the British government’s increasing involvement in India and accords with the noticeable shift of interest toward the Indian subcontinent. Moorhouse’s martyrdom was almost immediately eclipsed by Cornwallis’s victory over Tipu Sultan at Seringapatam and the subsequent treaty that brought the Third Mysore War to an end in February 792. The British residents of Madras were the first off the mark, voting on 2 May 792 to commission a statue (fig. 9.8) and a full-length painting of Cornwallis.⁵² By the last decade of the century, Madras had grown into a huge Anglo-Indian settlement, the British population of which consisted primarily of company or former company men and their families. As the inscription indicates, the statue was ultimately paid for by “the principal inhabitants of Madras, and [...] the civil and military servants of the East India Company” resident in Fort St George, Madras. Selecting a sculptor and processing the commission was also facilitated by the company. As Stephen Fuller had done a decade before with the Rodney commission for Jamaica, Sir John Call, who handled the Cornwallis commission on behalf of the Madras patrons, turned to the Royal Academy.⁵³ The academy took up the matter, and according to Joseph Farington, the Cornwallis statue was “to be carried into execution in the same manner as that of Lord Rodney.”⁵⁴ However, the debate about classical versus contemporary dress flared once again, and this time the modernists had their way. Farington’s record of the debate is worth transcribing in full: Much conversation took place on the subject but the principal point of debate was whether the statue should be in a modern dress or as has been generally the custom in the habit of a Roman. Mr. Bacon & Banks thought the latter: Mr. West defended the propriety of representing Ld. Cornwallis in the dress of the time, the unpicturesque appearance of which startled the Sculptors, who said, Particularly Bacon as the chief 298

empir e r enew ed

Fig. 9.17 (above) Charles Peart, monument to Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Moorhouse, d. 1791. St Mary’s Church, Madras. Fig. 9.18 (right) Thomas Banks, statue of Charles, Marquess Cornwallis, 1800. Fort St George, Madras.

speaker, that in 20 years when the fashion had varied it would appear disgusting. That there was an ideal grandeur from association in the appearance of the ancient dress over the modern, and that it wd. greatly add to the effect. — Mr. West said He considered a Statue of an Individual should be an Historical record, and that the Ideal could not with propriety be admitted and that the prejudice in favour of representing Moderns in Ancient dress was an absurdity. India 299

To obviate the main objection that of the effect of a modern dress, I proposed to take the advantage of Lord Cornwallis’s rank in life, and add his robe of Peerage which might be so managed as to conceal or break the lines of our formal dress. This was directly admitted by Smirke, and made an impression on the others, but it was observed that Lord Cornwallis at Madrass [sic] was only in a military capacity. — I replied that He went to India in a civil capacity & his assuming the Command of an Army in the field was accidentally owing to war breaking out. That in short we were not limited to represent Ld. Cornwallis as a particular but a general character that if the statue shd. be dug up 000 years hence the dress might explain that He was a Commander Noble & a Senator of Britain: That in Bass relief on the pedestal particular allusions to his services on the Madrass station might be executed. — Mr. West firmly supported what I said as did the rest of the Council, and Mr. Banks said that He was convinced by the reasons given, in which Mr. Bacon concurred. – It was then moved that Lord Cornwallis be represented in a modern dress with his robe of Peerage, and that the Sculptors deliver their models on Monday Novr. 2d., — which was passed unanimously.⁵⁵

Thus a distinction was made between military and civil leadership. If the statue were to be dug up a millennium later, the contemporary dress would assist in identifying the statue as a portrait of a representative of the great British Empire rather than of another great ancient empire. Once the decision to go with contemporary dress was resolved upon, a closed competition was held on the cautious reasoning that it was safer to “go upon a certainty” since the academy was using the money of others.⁵⁶ However, Banks was the only sculptor to submit a design. The lack of interest may have had something to do with the design conditions. Several of the more prominent London sculptors might have baulked at the academicians’ meddling in the design process. In addition, that the statue was to be erected thousands of miles away, far from the eye of most potential patrons, could hardly have made the commission appealing. Both Bacon and Banks were instrumental in laying down the design conditions and would therefore have found them less restrictive, but Bacon, who was loathe to use contemporary dress in any of his designs, was less convinced than Banks (who also was not predisposed to the contemporary) about the appropriateness of contemporary dress. In the end, Banks’s figure is enwrapped in swaths of robes that ultimately, with the exception of the prominently displayed breeches, distract the eye from the contemporary dress. Cornwallis stands as a civil leader in a pose of inviting openness, his left hand on his hip and the palm of his right hand turned out in greeting. His military exploits are reserved for the relief on the circular base. Victory and Britan300

empir e r enew ed

Fig. 9.19 Thomas Banks, detail of relief on the base of the statue of Charles, Marquess Cornwallis, 1800. Fort St George, Madras.

nia circumscribe the powerful scene of British magnanimity when Cornwallis graciously receives the sons of Tipu Sultan (fig. 9.9). The relief is derived from Arthur William Devis’s painting of the same subject, which Banks probably saw while it was being executed.57 Banks finished the sculpture in 798, and it was unveiled in the Parade Grounds in Fort St George, Madras, on 5 May 800.⁵⁸ The British residents of Calcutta were almost as quick to act as their counterparts in Madras in voting for a statue of Cornwallis to be erected in the Town Hall (fig. 9.20).⁵⁹ This was a far less involved affair than the Madras commission. India 301

Fig. 9.20 John Bacon the Elder and John Bacon the Younger, statue of Charles, Marquess Cornwallis, erected 1803. Calcutta.

Not subject to a competition, the Calcutta commission was given directly to John Bacon the Elder and was completed by his son following his death. The Bacons provided a duplicate of the statue of Cornwallis that the elder Bacon had carved for the Court Room of the East India Company. It was placed on a high pedestal and was joined by seated figures to either side of Prudence and Fortitude. In short, Cornwallis is celebrated for his pragmatic and efficient leadership, which had brought stability to Bengal after years of uncertainty, and for his defence of this stability by repelling the “unprovoked” (as the inscription states) aggression 302

empir e r enew ed

Fig. 9.21 Richard Westmacott, statue of Warren Hastings, 1830. Calcutta.

of Tipu Sultan. The very lengthy inscription details his Britishization of Indian government in his first tenure as governor general from 786 to 793, during which, convinced of the corrupting nature of the people of India, he banished all Indians from holding significant office. The Calcutta statue to Cornwallis stands in stark contrast to the monument erected to Warren Hastings after his death in 88, also commissioned by the British residents of Calcutta for the Town Hall (fig. 9.2). Designed by Richard Westmacott, the Hastings monument corresponds to the Cornwallis in terms of India 303

its composition, but rather than the figures of Prudence and Fortitude, a Hindu brahmin holds a rolled manuscript, while a cross-legged Muslim scholar reads a book. (The standing figure of the Hindu makes for a smooth transition from the seated Muslim to the standing figure of Hastings above, in contrast to the sharply compartmentalized trio of Cornwallis, Prudence, and Fortitude.) Hastings wears the robes of an ancient scholar. Thus, like his administrative colleague William Jones, Hastings is remembered for his scholarly interest in Asiatic languages and Asiatic history. Cornwallis, on the other hand, who was never cast as the intellectual, is commemorated for purging contemporary Indian society of corruption wrought by a race that was deemed a shadow of its former self.⁶⁰ The Cornwallis monuments in Madras and Calcutta were the first two public monuments erected in India. Both attest to the significant Anglo population then resident in India and also indicate a fundamental shift in how the British perceived their presence in India. With the passing of the India Act and Cornwallis’s subsequent massive reform of the administration of India, it was clear that the British were no longer coastal traders or amateur administrators under the aegis of the East India Company. Although the majority of the British inhabitants in India at the end of the eighteenth century were still company placemen doing their turn in India, and although Burke’s charge made in 788 that “the natives scarcely know what it is to see the grey head of an Englishman”⁶¹ still held sway, the British were in India to stay. Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay had become huge cities, at the core of which were the British settlements, complete with grand avenues, manicured gardens, classical town houses, government houses, town halls, and Palladian churches. Classical villas dotted the surrounding countryside and provided refuge from the searing conditions of the cities. The extraordinary proliferation of funeral monuments erected in the churches in the 790s and into the nineteenth century further consolidated and literally grounded the British presence in India. As in the British Isles, the West Indies, and Canada, the monuments in India commemorate all manner of individuals, from military and naval officers to civil servants, company employees, and private merchants. Yet unlike the monuments erected in the Atlantic colonies, which bear little if any reference to their immediate environment, the monuments in India contain numerous depictions of Indians, a characteristic that firmly establishes and, indeed, celebrates where these monuments are located. Consequently, they contribute to the valorization of the British presence and authority in India. As do the Anglo-Indian monuments erected in Britain, the funeral monuments shipped to India articulate the range of rationales that the British used to justify their incursion into India. The topos of the British bringing intellectual 304

empir e r enew ed

civility to a society whose contemporary leaders were anything but intellectual was especially prominent. Like Westmacott’s public memorial to Hastings in the Town Hall at Calcutta (see fig. 9.2) or Flaxman’s monument to William Jones in Oxford (see fig. 9.9), many monuments shipped to India praise the deceased for their appreciation and knowledge of Asian languages, customs, and history, for exploring the rich heritage of a culture that had fallen into sharp decline under tyrants such as Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan. Many of these monuments contain statues of Hindu brahmins and Muslim clerics, who, as the intellectual elite of Indian society, were perceived to be the keepers of India’s rich intellectual heritage. As such, they represented a handy antithesis to the contemporary tyrannical Indian ruler and allowed the British to perceive themselves not as invaders and conquerors but as agents who could restore intellectual civility in Indian society. Josiah Webbe, a long-time company servant who had served as chief secretary to the governor of Madras, as resident in Mysore, and then at the court in Scindia, was honoured with a monument after his death in 804 in St Mary’s Church, Madras, in which a brahmin stands in a pose of stoic resignation beside a Muslim cleric, who is engrossed in a book, presumably the Qur’an (fig. 9.22). These figures lament the loss of a kindred spirit who, as the epitaph indicates, had displayed a rich knowledge of Eastern languages. Such an intellectual pursuit went hand-in-hand with Webbe’s integrity and firm evenness in exercising his duties, qualities highlighted in the inscription. A company officer and attendant soldier balance the Hindu and Muslim scholar. Webbe’s monument was designed by Flaxman and was commissioned by Webbe’s friends in India, the majority of whom would have been company employees. The brahmin and Muslim cleric appear again in Flaxman’s monument to General Sir Barry Close, originally intended for St Paul’s Cathedral but ultimately also erected in St Mary’s Church, Madras (see fig. 9.). Close had been a friend of Webbe’s and had paid for his grave marker.⁶² In Close’s monument, the brahmin and cleric sit below the inscription panel and are less stoic in their resignation. The brahmin reaches up in lamentation, while the cleric sits crosslegged with his head bowed. Two grieving company soldiers stand to either side of the panel. Close had been a career company soldier before becoming resident of Mysore. The epitaph praises his contribution to the Third Mysore War, which brought about the death of Tipu Sultan, but more important, much is made of “that union of conciliation and firmness which / after contributing to terminate a successful war / was eminently displayed, in diffusing the blessings of peace / over a numerous native population / who without being subject to British rule / felt the protecting influence of British counsels / in the mild administration of India 305

Fig. 9.22 Madras.

John Flaxman, monument to Josiah Webbe, d. 1804. St Mary’s Church,

autonomy / which succeeded the usurpation of Mysore.” The Hindu and Muslim scholar grieve the loss of the man who had saved them from tyranny and deprivation.⁶³ As long as the British were at war with the French in the East, the French also continued to be cast as a scourge that prevented liberty and virtue from prospering unfettered in India. George Nicholas Hardinge, a young captain who died off the coast of Bombay in 808 while helping to capture the French frigate La Piedmontaise, known as “the terror of the Indian seas,” is commemorated with a very large monument in St Thomas’s Church, Bombay, by Bacon the Younger (fig. 9.23). Following a traditional format, the narrative of the battle is chronicled in a bas-relief on the bottom third of the monument. Above, Hardinge, escorted 306

empir e r enew ed

Fig. 9.23 John Bacon the Younger, monument to Captain George Nicholas Hardinge, d. 1808. St Thomas’s Church, Bombay.

by Victory/Death, who hands him a thunderbolt, rides in a conch shell drawn by two effervescent seahorses. Hardinge’s only other apparent claims to fame were that he had learned his naval skills from the great Nelson and that he had been honoured with a comparable, large monument in St Paul’s Cathedral (see fig. 9.3).⁶⁴ One profession that was more difficult to reconcile with imperial benevolence and magnanimity was tax collecting, especially in light of the fortunes suspiciously accrued by many company servants in the eighteenth century. However, India 307

Fig. 9.24 John Bacon the Younger, detail of the monument to Charles Robert Ross, d. 1816. St Mary’s Church, Madras.

the epitaph on the monument by Bacon the Younger to the collector Charles Robert Ross showers praise on the deceased’s philanthropy: “the natives of the Kurpah Collectorate will long cherish his memory and mourn his loss,” for he “protected and supported the fellow creatures committed to his charge” yet at the same time “did justice to his employers” (fig. 9.24). The relief above the inscription panel is a variant on the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which the Samaritan, empowered by the Christian cross at the point of the framing arch, leans down to succour a poor (but finely muscled) Hindu and child. On the right, Charity is represented by a pelican plucking its own breast to feed its blood to her young, a signature symbol of the Bacons. No longer was the tax collector the unscrupulous miscreant intent on personal gain but a paternal figure offering help to the indigenous peoples, who apparently could not help themselves. At the 308

empir e r enew ed

same time, he was able to fulfil his duty for the company and, by extension, for the people of Britain. The staggering fortunes accrued by East India Company officials and by the West Indian plantocracy in the eighteenth century hardly endeared them to the British public, as we have seen. Philanthropic endeavours had become necessary to elevate commerce to a morally acceptable level in Britain, and neither the rapacious company employees nor West Indian planters were obviously engaged in such pursuits. Late in the century the West Indian plantocracy sought to allay these charges by honouring those who had left money to establish free-schools. The East India Company meanwhile resorted to portraying the benefits that Britain could bring to the East, as in Bacon the Elder’s pediment for East India House (see fig. 9.6). In another example, a private merchant engaged in the India trade was praised by both British and Indians alike for the prosperity that his business had brought to others (fig. 9.25). Alexander Colvin died in 88 after having conducted private business as a merchant in Calcutta for forty years. He was part of the increasing European community in Calcutta that was not directly linked to the East India Company, despite the company’s official monopoly on trade.⁶⁵ His monument, designed by Richard Westmacott and located in St John’s Church, Calcutta, was commissioned by both the Anglo and Indian traders with whom he dealt. Figures of Commerce and Industry sit on a beehive, the traditional symbol of industry, and the inscription on the tomb chest below cites the “forty years [that the merchants of Calcutta] witnessed in [Colvin] an union of those talents and virtues which best adorn their profession,” although, as Barbara Groseclose has noted, these precise talents and virtues are not named.⁶⁶ Westmacott employed one of his frequently used rhetorical devices, that of the lone female figure quite separate from the rest of the monument, to further celebrate Colvin’s achievements. Here the female figure represents the Trade of India; she is seated on a straw mat in the stereotypical pose of an Indian trader at the market, and her hand rests on a jug usually used for oils and spices. Westmacott noted in a letter that the figure is meant to represent indirectly “the natives ... [who] contributed very liberally to the funds for the erection of the work.”⁶⁷ The monument is thus a celebration of commerce and the benefits that trade, especially as conducted by the British, can bring both to Britons and to the people of India. Trade in itself can be a virtuous act. To return to public monuments erected in India, the statues of Cornwallis in Madras and Calcutta touched off a surge of civic commissions. This phenomenon parallels a similar surge in public commissions in England – no longer were monuments tainted with the allusion of autocracy – yet the fact that so many India 309

Fig. 9.25 Richard Westmacott, monument to Alexander Colvin, d. 1818. St John’s Church, Calcutta.

were erected in India is also an emphatic commentary on the course that the British Empire was to take vis-à-vis India. Richard, Marquess Wellesley, brother to the future Duke of Wellington, who was governor general from 798 to 804 and who killed Tipu Sultan at Seringapatam in 799, was honoured twice during his lifetime with statues in India. One, a commission for a statue won by Bacon the Younger in a competition held by the Royal Academy in 806 (Rossi was the only other competitor), joined the statue of Cornwallis in Calcutta. The other, a much more elaborate composition by Bacon the Younger and Samuel Manning the Elder, was commissioned by the merchants of Bombay (fig. 9.26). Cornwallis 310

empir e r enew ed

Fig. 9.26 John Bacon the Younger and Samuel Manning the Elder, statue of Richard, Marquess Wellesley, 1808. Calcutta. A rather free interpretation engraved in the Illustrated London News.

was the pragmatist of imperial reform, while Wellesley revelled in the trappings of imperialism. Wellesley sits on a high throne and gestures with gift in hand to a standing Hindu, who, in contrast to Wellesley’s elaborate state dress, is strikingly naked and thus demeaned. The Hindu, in turn, offers Wellesley his sword and some documents. Prudence, holding her caduceus, places a garland around a medallion that reads “Wisdom / Energy / Integrity.” The armrests of Wellesley’s chair are embellished with carved elephant heads, an unintentional ironic commentary on the elephantine bureaucracy that Cornwallis and Wellesley had set in place in India. India 311

Cornwallis’s death in India in 805, while he was serving his second term as governor general, sparked another round of monuments in his name. Bacon the Younger executed a statue of Cornwallis with attendant female allegorical figures (probably Truth on the left and maybe Fame or Duty on the right) that corresponded to his statue of Wellesley in Bombay.⁶⁸ The group was commissioned by the military officers of the Bombay presidency. The people of Prince of Wales Island (Penang) commissioned a large wall monument from Flaxman, which was destroyed during the Second World War.⁶⁹ In this monument, Flaxman returned again to the paternalistic theme of British imperialism. Britannia/Minerva encourages a young Hindu to gaze upon the portrait medallion of Cornwallis, while a weeping female figure of India sits distraught, head in her hand, at their feet. The largest memorial to Cornwallis by far is the mausoleum at Ghaziphur, where Cornwallis died. An immense Doric rotunda by Thomas Fraser was commissioned by the people of Bengal to house a cenotaph to Cornwallis, designed by Flaxman and ordered by the directors of the East India Company in February 822.⁷⁰ Generic statues of a Hindu and a Muslim join statues of a British soldier and a sepoy in mourning the loss of the governor general. Flaxman’s incorporation of the Indian figures in this and other monuments suggests as much about his own ideas about depicting exotic races as it does about the role that these figures played in rendering the magnanimity and benevolence of British imperialism.⁷¹ Despite genuine interest in Asian languages and history and the belief that Asian empires may have once rivalled those of Greece and Rome, the British (and other Europeans) were suspicious of and condemned numerous Asiatic customs that they deemed barbaric. Infanticide, practised in some Hindu regions, and suttee, or sati (the self-immolation of the widow on her husband’s funeral pyre), were especially disconcerting, as they were alien to the Western/Christian notion of the sanctity of human life. As a result, they provided the British with another opportunity to portray the Indian people as needing to be saved from themselves. In St Thomas’s Church, Bombay, a monument by Bacon the Younger commemorates the Honourable Jonathan Duncan, governor of Bombay from 795 until his death in 8 (fig. 9.27). He is praised in the epitaph as a “friend and protector” to “the natives in particular” and is especially commemorated for having abolished infanticide in the provinces of Benares and Kattywar. A generic, muscular Hindu in mourning is used again, to the left of the inscription panel, while on the right, Justice reaches up and, in the manner of Fame on Roubiliac’s Argyll monument, inscribes an urn with the words “He was a good

312

empir e r enew ed

Fig. 9.27 John Bacon the Younger, monument to Jonathan Duncan, d. 1811. St Thomas’s Church, Bombay.

man and just.” Below the epitaph, two babies representing the children saved by Duncan’s actions, hold a scroll recording the abolition of infanticide. The imagery on Richard Westmacott’s bronze monument to Governor General Lord William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, who signed an edict banishing suttee in 829, is far more graphic (fig. 9.28). As Groseclose has acknowledged, this monument belongs to the era of heightened romantic and sexual sensuality rather than to the preceding period, in which curious intellectualism held sway.⁷² Suttee had captured the imagination of western Europeans thirsty for what they

India 313

Fig. 9.28 Richard Westmacott, monument to Lord William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, 1835. Calcutta.

saw as the horrific and macabre. Bentinck, clearly confident in his robes of state, stands on a circular pedestal that is embellished with a high relief showing a determined widow preparing to die with the assistance of a priest. The barbarity of the situation is made more acute by the fact that the widow is ignoring her crying babies and by the enhancement of her sexuality – she is bare-breasted and nearly naked, a state further accentuated by the contrast both with the robed priest and with the even more voluminously enshrouded Bentinck above. The contrast between civility and barbarity is further heightened by the staid pose 314

empir e r enew ed

of Bentinck above the energetic, almost chaotic relief below. The inscription on the back of the pedestal, which makes no mention specifically of suttee, emphasizes Bentinck’s even, moderate rule over a race too much involved in sensual excesses: TO WILLIAM CAVENDISH BENTINCK WHO , DURING SEVEN YEARS RULED INDIA WITH EMINENT PRUDENCE , INTEGRITY AND BENEVOLENCE , WHO , PLACED AT THE HEAD OF A GREAT EMPIRE NEVER LAID ASIDE THE SIMPLICITY AND MODER ATION OF A PRIVATE CITIZEN , WHO INFUSED INTO ORIENTAL DESPOTISM THE SPIRIT OF BRITISH FREEDOM , WHO NEVER FORGOT THAT THE END OF GOVERNMENT IS THE WELFARE OF THE GOVERNED , WHO ABOLISHED CRUEL RITES , WHO EFFACED HUMILIATING DISTINCTIONS , WHO ALLOWED LIBERTY TO THE EXPRESSION OF PUBLIC OPINION , WHOSE CONSTANT STUDY IT WAS TO ELEVATE THE MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER OF THE NATION COMMITTED TO HIS CHARGE . THIS MONUMENT WAS ERECTED BY MEN , WHO DIFFERING IN R ACE , IN MANNERS , IN COUNTRY AND RELIGION , CHERISH WITH EQUAL VENER ATION AND GR ATITUDE THE MEMORY OF HIS WISE , UPRIGHT AND PATERNAL ADMINISTR ATION CALCUTTA , FEBRUARY 4 1835⁷³

It was up to Bentinck, and the British, to set this so-called lesser race on the right (read British) path. Bentinck’s statue belongs to the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign. In subsequent decades innumerable statues of British government officials and at least thirty-five statues of Queen Victoria were erected throughout the Indian subconIndia 315

tinent, Singapore, and Bangkok.⁷⁴ Many of the latter were erected by members of the Indian (that is, non-Anglo) Raj in honour of the Empress of India. The first British monuments shipped to India in the last two decades of the eighteenth century were small but potentially invidious toeholds that anchored the British along the edges of India. The excessive and often ponderous statues of Victoria were symbolic of the British bureaucracy that would blanket the entire Indian subcontinent and, indeed, Australia and Canada as well.⁷⁵ Perhaps the best way to bring this chapter to an end is to look at six monuments that, as a group, articulate the shifting nature of the perception of British involvement in India from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Three commemorate the German missionary Frederick Christian Swartz, who died in India in 798. The other three commemorate Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, first bishop of Calcutta (d. 822), Reginald Heber, second bishop of Caluctta (d. 826), and Daniel Corrie, first bishop of Madras (d. 837). The relationship between missionaries in India and the East India Company was complicated. The East India Company did not encourage missionaries and, in fact, deemed them “illegals” until the Charter Act of 83.⁷⁶ The proselytizing activities of the missionaries were considered disruptive to the natural course of commercial trade. However, the company had no authority over missionaries from other European countries. Frederick Christian Swartz was one of these. He was a German working in south India under the auspices of the Danes and, ironically, the Londonbased Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. When he died in 798, he was honoured with three monuments. One was commissioned by the East India Company (fig. 9.29). It was designed by Bacon the Younger and was erected in St Mary’s Church, Madras. Charles Grant, one of the few evangelicals among the company directorate, who had long lobbied for missionary involvement, apparently persuaded the company to erect the monument.⁷⁷ Yet the monument may also have been a sincere act of gratitude on behalf of the company for Swartz’s assistance in the company’s attempt to secure its status in south India. Swartz had been a valuable mediator between the company and Haidar Ali in the Carnatic and had been extremely instrumental in securing the company’s control of Tanjor through Rajah Tulaji and his son, Sarabhoji. In Bacon’s relief Swartz is shown on his deathbed and is surrounded by three fellow European missionaries and a gaggle of Indianized putti. It is a scene of grief and mourning, yet in the end the monument commemorates the East India Company’s further territorial expansion. Once again a benevolent public face hid the company’s political and commercial aims.⁷⁸

316

empir e r enew ed

Fig. 9.29 John Bacon the Younger, monument to Frederick Christian Swartz, 1806. St Mary’s Church, Madras.

Another monument dedicated to Swartz was erected in Tanjor by none other than Sarabhoji, who, as a child, was made a ward of Swartz by the British and then, as an adult, made rajah of Tanjor (fig. 9.30). Designed by Flaxman and erected in 805, it is the only monument in India that contains a portrait of a specific non-European. The rather static monument shows Sarabhoji, now rajah, with two attendants lamenting the loss of Swartz, who lies very stiffly on his deathbed. Another European missionary, called Kohler, stands with Bible in hand at the top of the bed, while four young boys, meant to allude to Swartz’s missionary school and perhaps to Sarabhoji’s early years as Swartz’s ward, support each other at the foot of the bed.⁷⁹ This was the first monument erected in India to a European by a non-European. Commissioned through the auspices of the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, the monument is entirely a display of gratitude to Swartz, who not only had given Sarabhoji Christian knowledge, but also had secured for him the rajahship of Tanjor under the aegis of the East India Company. Sarabhoji’s monument set a precedent for the multitudinous displays

India 317

Fig. 9.30 John Flaxman, monument to Frederick Christian Swartz, c. 1798. Swartz’s Church, Tanjor.

of fawning gratitude to Queen Victoria commissioned by subsequent Indian rajahs. Sarabhoji and his compatriots were a new race of Indian, not fully Indian and certainly (as far as the British were concerned) not British. This was a race made by the British. Sarabhoji’s depth of gratitude prompted him to commission a second monument, also designed by Flaxman. It consists of portraits of Swartz and Sarabhoji on a pedestal embellished with lotus-petals and couchant lions. It was erected in one of the courtyards of Sarabhoji’s palace in Tanjor, where it still stands among the palace ruins.⁸⁰ Monuments to the Right Reverends Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, Reginald Heber, and Daniel Corrie belong to the period following the repeal of the East India Company’s monopoly and the consequent circumscription of its power (figs 9.3, 9.32, and 9.33). Middleton’s monument was erected in St Paul’s Cathedral at the expense of the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, while the 318

empir e r enew ed

Fig. 9.31 J.G. Lough, monument to Thomas Middleton, d. 1822. St Paul’s Cathedral, London.

monuments to Heber and Corrie were erected in St George’s Church, Madras, and were both products of public subscriptions. Chaplains had been sent out to India by the company throughout the eighteenth century, as mandated by the Charter of 698, and these chaplains were ostensibly charged with converting the indigenous population to Christianity. But as we have seen, such activities were rarely pursued. Like the chaplains who went to the West Indies, most were not stellar examples of the cloth. Indeed, the majority seemed more interested India 319

Fig. 9.32 (left) Francis Chantrey, detail of the monument to Bishop Heber, 1830. St George’s Church, Madras. Fig. 9.33 (right) Henry Weekes, detail of the monument to Bishop Daniel Corrie, d. 1837. St George’s Church, Madras.

in trade and, on the whole, like their expatriate compatriots, were unwilling to mingle with the heathens. The evangelical reformists, who had long persisted, finally achieved success with the Charter Act of 83. A bishop and three archdeacons were appointed to India. Their mandate was not only to serve the British inhabitants of India, but also to proselytize to the indigenous populations.⁸¹ In the monuments to Middleton, Heber, and Corrie, full-length representations 320

empir e r enew ed

of the deceased are portrayed preaching to the newly converted. In each case the Indians portrayed are youths. On the one hand, this indicates the degree to which Britishization had penetrated Hindu and Muslim societies. On the other hand, the incorporation of the youths suggests that the plight of India can be ameliorated only through India’s children, the adults being beyond restitution. Yet the diminutive stature of the youths vis-à-vis the seemingly larger-than-life bishops implies that the Indians are little more than children in need of constant guidance. British imperial incursion in India was now about saving the morally weak. The British had succeeded in convincing themselves that their empire of trade, which had always carried the stigma of self-interest and self-gain, was now an empire of magnanimity and benevolence committed to bringing civility and moral rectitude to a downtrodden, ill-educated, debased society led astray by the corrupting influences of tyranny.

India 321

chapte r ten

t

Conclusion

he one great scheme for a monument in the eighteenth century that has not been discussed so far in this book was the intention in 799 to erect a 230-foot monument in the form of a column in London to celebrate Britain’s recent naval successes – in other words, to revel in Britain’s imperial superiority.¹ A parliamentary committee chaired by the Duke of Clarence, who was the fourth son of George III and an active naval officer, was established to oversee a competition. Specifically, the column was to celebrate Nelson’s victory over the French in the Battle of the Nile the previous year. Nelson’s devastating victory reassured the British that they were in the right. The revolution in France had descended into irrevocable chaos, and Napoleon, the rising star of the revolutionary forces and persistent thorn in the side of the British, was no better and no more civilized than the nefarious tyrannical upstarts in India. Several architects submitted numerous variants on naval columns and triumphal arches. Others, such as John Opie, proposed a “Temple of Naval Virtue,” while a Major Cartwright offered a massive structure – part column and part temple – that would contain ninety-six statues, each eight feet high, twenty-four tritons for pedestals of flagstaffs, sixteen figural groups, sixteen sea horses, a colossal statue, and relief work. Forty-six drawings for Cartwright’s scheme by J.M. Gandy, William Hamilton, Thomas Stothard, and J.M.W. Turner were on view in Pall Mall in 800.² John Flaxman, the only sculptor to enter a design, proposed a 230-foot colossus of Britannia (figs 0. and 0.2). In A Letter to the Committee for Raising the Naval pillar, or Monument, under the patronage of His Royal Highness, the Duke of Clarence, Flaxman claimed that a statue was more appropriate than a column or a triumphal arch, citing the statues of Jupiter in front of the Theatre of Pompey in Rome and at the Temple of Elis, the great statue

Fig. 10.1 (above) William Blake, View of Greenwich, with the proposed statue of Britannia in Greenwich Park, near the Observatory. Fig. 10.2 (overleaf) John Flaxman, model for colossal statue of Britannia, 1799. This 1924 photograph includes several model soldiers on horseback to give a sense of scale.

of Minerva in the Parthenon, and “above all, the brass Colossus of Rhodes, one hundred and five feet high.”³ He went on to say that “a statue might be raised like the Minerva in the Athenian citadel, whose aspect and size should represent the Genius of the Empire: its magnitude should equal the Colossus of Rhodes; its character should be Britannia Triumphant; it should be mounted on a suitable pedestal and basement; the pedestal might be decorated with the Heroes and Trophies of the Country, and the History of its Prowess inscribed on the basement. The whole work might be raised to the height required, two hundred and thirty feet, and present the noblest Monument of National Glory to the world.”⁴ Furthermore, “Such a work should be worthy of the grandeur of the country, and the mighty objects it is intended to perpetuate; it should be a decided proof of the excellence of our Artists, the skill of our Mechanics and Builders, and in Conclusion

323

all respects a lasting memorial of the Magnanimity, Virtue and Wisdom of the Country.”⁵ Alexander Dufour, who answered Flaxman’s letter with one of his own, accused Flaxman of trying to influence the committee against arches and columns simply because he was a sculptor and informed him that he had effectively eliminated himself from the competition by publishing his letter, which included his designs for the colossus, as engraved by William Blake, since the competition entries were supposed to be anonymous.⁶ Flaxman, it seems, never expected his design to be chosen. Rather, he was engaging in paper sculpture, something akin to Etienne-Louis Boullée’s and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux’s contemporaneous exercises in paper architecture. His point was to emphasize that an architectural motif does not, in contrast to a statue, easily manifest or transmit magnanimity, virtue, and wisdom.⁷ A figure of Britannia, rather than one of George III , was more appropriate for the brand of magnanimous imperialism practised by the British. Britannia also more aptly characterized the type of government in the British Empire, despite the contemporaneous revived appreciation for the British monarchy.⁸ A colossal statue of George III would have been quite frightening, and it would have smacked too much of despotic authority, which, according to the British, had been the pitfall of all previous empires. The revolution in France was a glaring and very disconcerting recent example. In contrast, the allegorical figure of Britannia embodied the tripartite system of British government, where no one office (monarch, House of Lords, or House of Commons) had too much control, thereby nicely sidestepping any allusion to tyranny. Finally, as Flaxman stated, Britannia could also represent the country, which by implication included the public, which in turn had become an essential element of political and imperial sensibilities by the end of the century. In Britain it was safer to represent George III in monumental sculpture alongside or under the wing of Britannia, as in Bacon’s pediment sculpture for East India House (see fig. 9.6). Only on the peripheries of the empire, where colonists craved a familiar, paternal, and tangible (as opposed to allegorical) figure of home, could a statue of the king stand alone. But, as we have seen, even these were few in number. Most colonial legislatures were more willing to erect statues to Pitt the Elder, Rodney, Nelson, or particular colonial governors. These people were usually less imperial figureheads than they were individuals whom the colonists felt had truly supported or represented their cause and situation visà-vis the mother country. Only well into the middle of the nineteenth century, when the empire was a firmly entrenched fact and colonists were comfortable with their place therein, did the British both in the centre and on the peripheries Conclusion

325

regularly represent the monarch as the head of the empire in monumental sculpture, as the plethora of statues of Queen Victoria indicate. In a postscript attached to the letter, Flaxman proposed that his statue of Britannia be erected at the top of Greenwich Hill, overlooking Wren’s naval hospital and all of London (see fig. 0.): The summit of Greenwich Hill appears to be the best situation for the Naval Monument, from the following considerations: the gradation of scenery from the Thames, rising with the fine architecture and porticos of this great Naval Hospital of the country, continued with the high ground and woods, and connected by the Observatory, with such a finish would afford a sublimity of prospect not to be equalled in any other place. Besides, its vicinity to and visibility in the high parts of London and its environs, to the south and east it would most likely be seen as far as the sea. It is also to be remembered, that the port of the Metropolis is the great port of the whole Kingdom; that the Kent Road is the ingress to London from Europe, Asia and Africa; and that, as Greenwich Hill is the place from which the longitude is taken, the Monument would, like the first Milestone in the city of Rome, be the point from which the world would be measured.⁹

Such overtly imperial exclamations and, by extension, a competition for such a grandiose imperial scheme would have been unheard of a half-century earlier. Only the Whig Patriot coterie of Cobham and his Cubs had such blatant pretensions to empire. The statue of Cobham on top of a naval column at Stowe, although far smaller than Flaxman’s proposed Britannia, lords over the landscape in a similar fashion (see figs 5.4, 5.9, and 5.0). However, beginning with the bust of George III in Montreal (see fig. 6.), any number of public or privately commissioned monuments erected in the latter half of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century in Britain, Canada, the West Indies, and especially India are evocations of imperial rhetoric. Britons and the British colonists were persuading or had persuaded themselves that theirs was an empire of magnanimity and benevolence underpinned by divine providence. “BRITANNIA BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE TRIUMPHANT ” was to be inscribed on the massive base of Flaxman’s statue. For the colonists, this act of persuasion was also as much about achieving a self-identity as a community within the imperial fold. As Jack P. Greene has stated: “Only as [a] definition of collective self was, little by little, first articulated and refined by both the [colonial] inhabitants and those who observed them from the outside and then internalized by the inhabitants did they come to some clear understanding of what they and their society were about.”¹⁰ 326

p e r s ua s i o n a n d p ro pag a n da

Fig. 10.3 1930.

R. Tait Mackenzie, distant view of statue of Major General James Wolfe,

Ultimately, nothing came of the competition to erect a naval monument in London. The project was to have been funded by public subscription. Such a fundraising method, which carried the implied weight of public support and was a standard means of financing large projects in the eighteenth century, was not an ideal means of raising funds for very expensive monuments.¹¹ Even in colonial America, where there was an apparent need for public monuments as a memory of home, calls for monuments to be erected by public subscription came to naught. It seems that the average arriviste American colonists with their more pragmatic and commercial turn of mind could not, when it came to it, reconcile contributing money to such impractical aesthetic public schemes. However, in contrast, a preponderance of monuments paid for by public subscription were erected in the British settlements in India. Contributions from the East India Conclusion

327

Company no doubt helped to ensure the success of these commissions. Yet the fact that these monuments were to be erected in a land so foreign (in geography, climate, and people) to the recently arrived Britons and that India was so distant from the mother country must have further propelled these commissions to successful completion. The statues of Nelson in Barbados and Montreal were also funded by public subscriptions (see figs 8.2 and 8.22). In both of these cases, the tenuous link to the mother country across the Atlantic Ocean, exacerbated by the increased dependence of Canada and Barbados on Britain following the American Revolution, drove the people of each colony to find solace in such tangible visual symbols. Margaret Whinney called Flaxman’s model for the Greenwich Britannia “a pathetic classical nightmare, from which Wren’s domes had a happy escape.”¹² Indeed, the crest of Greenwich Hill remained bare until the twentieth century. In 930, in celebration of the man whose victory put Britain firmly on its empirebuilding course, a life-sized bronze pedestrian statue of Wolfe by R. Tait Mackenzie was erected on a tall granite base. According to the inscription, the monument was “a gift of the Canadian people, [and] was unveiled by the Marquis de Montcalm.” The inscription perpetuated the fiction of the happy unity and apparent equality of Anglo and French Canadians within the imperial Commonwealth framework. The less than overwhelming statue of Wolfe took the place of Britannia at “the point from which the world would be measured.” Indeed, from a distance Wolfe looks puny and silly (fig. 0.3), an unintentional ironic commentary on what became of the great British Empire.

328 p e r s ua s i o n a n d p ro pag a n da

appendix one

Excerpt from the Agreement between

Joseph Wilton and William Young for the Ottley Monument, St John’s Church, Antigua, 21 August 1767

Source: London, Royal Academy of Arts Library Joseph Wilton paid 0 in Hand by the said William Young esquire, or the Agent of the aforesaid Richard Ottley Esquire at or upon the signing and Delivery of these presents the Receipt of which sum of one hundred and ten pounds. The said Joseph Wilton doth hereby acknowledge thereof and every Parcel thereof, acquit and discharge the said William Young Esquire [illegible] the said Joseph Wilton, shall and will execute (within twenty months next ensuing the Date hereof) a Monument of Statuarian & other Marble; intended to be erected abroad, to the Memory of the deceased Lady of Richard Ottley Esquire. according to a Model or Design approved of by the said William Young Esquire, and also pack up the same in Substantial cases, and deliver them safely on Board a Ship in the River Thames. And the said William Young Esquire for and in behalf of the said Richard Ottley [illegible] well and truly pay or cause to be paid unto the said Joseph Wilton [illegible] the further sum of two hundred and forty pounds [illegible] 20 on 25 June 768 & remaining sum [illegible] as soon as the Work aforesaid shall be safely delivered on Board a Ship in the River Thames [illegible] [signed] William Young for Ottley, Joseph Wilton, Alexander Campbell and Je Smith. Note: A memo attached to the contract asked Wilton to supply a gravestone engraved with the Ottley coat of arms for six guineas. A transcription of the epitaph is also included.

appendix two

Advice Concerning a Monument

to Major General Wolfe

Source: London Chronicle, reproduced in Scots Magazine 2 (December 759): 64–3. As nothing contributes more to the honour and prosperity of a nation than the perpetuating the memory of great actions, and as every one is interested in the recording merit, I therefore flatter myself you will permit me to communicate a hint to the public, at a time when some noble mark of the generosity and of the gratitude of this nation is about to be erected, in honour of one of the most brilliant actions which adorn the annals of any people. I will not enumerate the various ways by which men have endeavoured to eternize memorable actions, or to retain the remembrance of persons who have been dear to them. It will be sufficient to inform such as are not conversant in such matters, that amongst those practised by the Greeks, the masters of all mankind in the fine arts, that which was in most general estimation was a simple statue of the hero, in some action or attitude according to the fancy or genius of the artist, and on the pedestal of which, some of his most memorable exploits were engraven in basso relievo. Now, as that intended for our late British hero may possibly be of this sort, which is second to none, whether for nobleness of aspect, or for the pleasure of the beholder, I imagined a hint of this kind might not be unacceptable to young candidates for the performance; as I make no question that the British nation, whose act by their representatives this undoubtedly is, will take care to intrust the eternizing of merit to none but the most deserving, and will make use of this singular noble opportunity to provoke an equally noble emulation in those of a profession so honourable in itself, and of so much utility to the public. Everybody knows that the chief glory of sculpture, and indeed of the fine arts, as well as of poetry, is that of invention; being that gift of heaven which characterizes the

first artists, and distinguishes great geniuses from the mechanics of the profession. Now, though this talent depends entirely on the happy influence of our stars, yet a noble fancy may be infinitely improved by viewing the best pieces, by a constant observation of nature, and, lastly, which is inferior to none of them, by the study of good authors, especially the poets, to whom some of the noblest performances owe not only their merit, but their very existence. Phidias, that divine artist, whose Olympian Jove was esteemed one of the seven wonders of the world, took the hint of it from Homer; and made no secret to declare, that he owed the chief merit of that inestimable piece of workmanship to the father of the verse. The admirable lines, which gave birth to this miracle of art, are these: [Illegible Greek text] Homer, Illiad I He spoke, and awful bends his fable brows; Shakes his ambrosial curls and gives the nod, The stamp of fate, and sanction of the God, High heav’n with trembling the dread signal took, And all Olympus to the centre shook. Pope. After such an example, I hope I shall be forgiven if I quote a new poem, intitled, Daphnis and Menaclas, a pastoral sacred to the memory of the late Gen. Wolfe; which, besides a number of beauties of a different kind, affords one of the noblest hints for the sculptures on three sides of a pedestal of a statue of Gen. Wolfe, that can any where be found; and on which might be carved, on the first, his conduct and bravery on the day of battle, so fatal to himself, and so honorable to his country: on the second, his funeral, with the grief of the happy matron who gave him birth; of the illustrious lady on the eve of wedding this young hero, ravished from her arms in the flower of his youth; of that great and worthy patriot who planned the expedition, in which he succeeded, though at the expence of life; of that august monarch, who is sorry for the loss of such a servant so early wise and that his munificence is thus deprived of a noble occasion of exerting itself; and, lastly, of all ranks and conditions of men in the three kingdoms: finally, on the third and last side, the apotheosis of the hero, and the joy above at the reception of this welcome and most worthy guest. It would be doing injustice to the author of this performance to suppress the lines; which, besides that they convey this exalted thought, are extremely beautiful in themselves; and with these I shall conclude this already too long epistle; but for which I hope the merits of this illustrious cause will plead my excuse. Lond. Chron. Raise to his mem’ry and deathless name The sculptur’d tomb and monument of fame. Show him like Phoebus, patron of the bow, Graceful in youth, like Jove’s his awful brow, Advice Concerning a Monument to Major General Wolfe

331

How gazing armies fix on him their eyes, Resolved like him each soldier fights or dies. Show how the French and savage Indians fly The thunders of his arm and lightnings of his eye; How at his feet approach their city shakes, Thro’all its 00 states their empire quakes, Resigns its forests, and submits its lakes. Raise to his mem’ry and deathless name The sculptur’d tomb and monument of fame. Now show the sad reverse: the hero lies As if in pleasing slumbers clos’d his eyes; That martial ardour still in death exprest, That country’s love which warm’d his dauntless breast. With wreaths of laurel let his brows be bound, With broken arms and truncheons strew the ground, Plant armies, senates, princes weeping round By golden armour, and a radiant crest, And martial port, distinguish’d from the rest. Place noble Granby, Amherst, Townshend there, Mourning their friend, and brother of the war. Fix’d as a statue near his much-lov’d side, In silent sorrow, place the beauteous bride. But oh! what magic sculpture can express the parent’s grief, the mother’s deep distress! Like Hector’s mother be the matron said, A sable mantle o’er her rev’rend head. Growing to earth, and grov’ling on the dead. Then show the Royal Sire, with outspread hands And lifted eyes. (as now perhaps he stands), Invoking heav’n; and on his awful brow Engrave in living lines this solemn vow: “The conquer’d world, that caus’d the fatal strife, Shall pay the price of this lamented life.” While at his side our second father stands To hear, and to fulfil his dread commands; And Britain’s Genius having in midair Confirms the solemn vow, and hears the monarch’s pray’r. Raise to his mem’ry and deathless name The sculptur’d tomb, and monument of fame. Now high above let op’ning heav’n display Its everlasting gates, that flame with day; Place gods, and demi gods, and heroes round, By Jove himself the sacred synod crown’d: Let all behold th’immortal spirit rise: 332 a p p e n d i x t w o

With song the Muses hail him to the skies: His seat with those who conquer’d as they bled, Betwixt the Theban and the valiant Swede; While his great father, with a father’s joy, Receives alas! too soon, his darling boy.

Advice Concerning a Monument to Major General Wolfe

333

appendix three

Correspondence of Charles Garth,

Joseph Wilton, and the Committee of Correspondence of the Commons House of Assembly of South Carolina Concerning the Monument of William Pitt for Charleston, 1766–70

Source: South Carolina Historical Society, reproduced in Joseph W. Barnwell, “Correspondence of Charles Garth: The Pitt Statue,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 28 (927): 79–93, from which the following was transcribed. Original spelling has been retained.

CHARLES GARTH TO THE COMMITTEE OF CORRESPONDENCE RECEIVED [via] THE TWO FRIENDS , CAP t. BALL

London July 9th. 766

Gentlemen. On the first Instant I had the Honour of your favour of the 3th. of May, I believe I need not say, that I had a very particular pleasure in hearing the joyful reception which the Repeal of the Stamp Act has met with in America, As needless will it be to tell you how much I approve and am pleased with the Commission you have given me to procure for you a Statue of Mr. Pitt: It is a mark of grateful respect in my opinion extremely judiciously pointed: Taking the Lead, and expressing his opinions in that able and Spirited manner he did in the Course of the Debate upon the 4th. of January 766 ought ever to be held in Remembrance by every true Friend and well wisher to the Liberty, the Peace and Welfare of His Majesty’s Dominions. By the first post I wrote to Mr. Pitt to apprize him of the Complement passed in your House of Assembly, enclosed him their Resolutions and an Extract from your Letter to me in relation to this Subject, I am pleased as this is not only the first but the most distinguished Complement paid to him from America, other Colonies, I hear, approving

the thing set on foot private Subscriptions, a Plan infinitely short of yours in nobleness and Dignity: You may be assured, Gentlemen, it shall be my earnest Endeavour that your Orders be obeyed in the Compleatest manner possible. I have since the receipt of your Epistle been employed first in making the most diligent Enquiry as to the Repute and Estimation in which the several Artists in this way stand, and next in going to them to take a View of their works, and to Collect from them their several Opinions as well to the Manner in which your Directions may be obeyed, as to the price, and the time requisite for finishing the same. – Rouvillac [Roubiliac] is dead, Risbrick [Rysbrack] has left off business, of the several that remain, Mr. Wilton, and Mr. Read are of the first note and Eminence, both appear to have great skill, but the Preference, I find, is given to the former, I have therefore made choice of him to give my Orders, to which indeed I have been the rather induced, as he has signalized himself remarkably by a Statue of Mr. Pitt, finished this Spring for the City of Cork, and admired by every body before sent to Ireland, the City of Cork, when they asked the above Favour of Mr. Pitt beg’d his recommendation of the person he would chuse they should give their Directions to, and Mr. Wilton was honoured therewith, in this Gentlemen’s Offices I saw two Busts of him to be sent to Ireland very shortly, and which for likeness and workmanship both are very greatly admir’d. I mention these Circumstances, that you may know the motives for the preference I have given, being myself greatly anxious to have it finished in the most elegant Stile: – Tho’ I have been and am a good deal perplexed notwithstanding your Letter not being sufficiently explicit, where intended to be placed, this being a Circumstance that must make a very material difference in the Execution: if to be set in any Room, or niche of any Building, the Figure must be less in Size than if placed in a Square or open Area, so likewise the Pedestal in order to produce a good effect in the open Air, these are the Sentiments of Mr. Wilton, and of all the artists in general: at present I have given in your Directions to have him at full length in a Speaking attitude and suitable Dress with a Roll in one Hand, inscribed Magna Charta, and a proper Pedestal for it, that he may turn in his mind in what Design to execute your order, in the mean time I may learn either from some Correspondent to the merchants of tollerable authority, or from persons who are lately come or may come by the next vessels, what the Idea and Intention is at Charles-town. – As to the Expence I cannot send you any precise information, the artists vary in their accounts, but much must depend upon the Design, in general they talk from Five Hundred to Eight Hundred Guineas, if to be set in an Open Square, which seems the noblest Scheme; till a modell of the Design is finished, there is no making any agreement with propriety, as that might be a means of limiting his Fancy; I dont find it practicable to finish the models of Statue and Pedestal and afterwards the marble there from in less than fifteen or Eighteen Months. – ... I am Gentlemen, with great Respect, Your very faithful, & most obedt. humble Servant Charles Garth Correspondence Concerning the Monument of William Pitt

335

CHARLES GARTH TO THE COMMITTEE OF CORRESPONDENCE RECEIVED [via] THE AMERICA CAP t. COOMBES . London

July the 25th. 766.

Gentlemen. In my last I hinted a difficulty I had in giving positive orders for the Execution of your Commands in regard to Mr. Pitt’s Statue for want of knowing where intended to be placed, which by the enclosed Letter you will perceive to be a necessary piece of information: I have since made the best enquiry I can upon the Subject, private Letters have mentioned that it is intended to be erected in the Square, Mr. Blake informs me that he beleives it is to be placed in the assembly room opposite the Speaker’s Chair, but desires me not to depend upon his authority. – In this State of uncertainty Mr. Thos. Gadsden thinks with me that it is much better in a thing of this nature, which should give a general satisfaction, and is to last for ages, that the Execution thereof be protracted for four or five months, in which time I may have your answer, than to run the risque of giving disatisfaction to a single individual by a direction that might not have the voice and Sanction of the House of assembly. Having thus determin’d within my self I desired, Mr. Wilton would give me a Sketch of two Designs either for an open Area or for a niche in any room, that you might see his Idea and remit to me such remarks as might occur, with such alterations to all or any part of either as may be wished or desired: as these Sketches are not intended to convey any likeness of Mr. Pitt’s person, I send you also a Bust done by Mr. Wilton from a marble one that he has lately executed, and which is an exact Similitude. – According to the Orders you shall return me, he says he shall be able to agree with me as to the price, a thousand pounds will be the outside for the most finished and Compleat Order; his manner is to agree for payment at three Installments, one third upon the agreement, another third when half finished and the last when put on board the Ship for Exportation. Since I wrote last a like order has arrived from New-England but to have Designs transmitted for their approbation and direction, before begun upon. ... I am very respectfully – Gentlemen Your most faithful & Obedient humble Servant Charles Garth –

336

appendi x thr ee

CHARLES GARTH TO THE COMMITTEE OF CORRESPONDENCE London August 3d. 766 – Gentlemen The enclosed and the above are Copies of Letters sent [via] the American Capt. Coombes, who carries with him, the two Sketches and Bust alluded to, and hope will come safe to hand; should they not, I dare say, you will see from these Copies of necessity of sending me more particular orders agreeable to Mr. Wilton’s Suggestions. – Mr. Pitt is since created Earl of Chatham. I remain Gentlemen Your most Obedt. Humble Servant Charles Garth –

JOSEPH WILTON , TO CHARLES GARTH Great Portland Street, the 24th. of July 766. Sir The shortness of time has not allowed me to make the present Designs more perfect than Sketches, which I hope nevertheless may prove sufficient to answer the purpose you intend of giving the Gentlemen abroad an Idea of what is purposed: in order that they may return you their remarks upon them and which of the Themes they may think proper to adopt. I have shewn two forms: the one marked A. to erect in an open place or Square, the other is a niche and Statue, proper to be set up in a large Room or Hall, it may easily be calculated by the scale of feet, express’d on each Drawing, what space is required for their respective Situation, as also whether any Wall will admit of this Cavity, necessary to cut into its thickness, for the formation of the niche; these things are absolutely to be known, before we proceed to the Execution; it will also be proper to have a small plan and Elevation (if possible) of the seize and Height of the room, describing the Disposition of the windows in the same; if the inside Scheme be resolved on, also the extent and disposition of the Square or open places, and if the Statue can be disposed so as to form a Vista from the avenues of several large Streets, if the other plan be adopted; such description will enable us better to regulate the size of the Statue and Pedestal; Public Monuments or Statues, erected judiciously in a City, adds greatly to it’s Elegance and Dignity, and it gave me satisfaction that you was of that Opinion when you did me the Honour of first mentioning this affair to me; your knowledge of the Roman History; must have influenced your first Idea, for their opinion was that by as much as the Statues of their Heroes were increased in their Size, by so much was the merit and abilities of those Heroes, enhanced in the Ideas of the Beholders; and the examples which prove this rational notion of that Great People, are very frequent in Italy.

Correspondence Concerning the Monument of William Pitt

337

I think I have said all that is necessary concerning the information which is necessarily wanted, and I humbly submit the choice of which Scheme may be found most eligible, to the better Judgment of the Gentlemen, who live upon the spot. I am, very respectfully, Sir Your most Obedt. Humble Servant Joseph Wilton

THE COMMITTEE OF CORRESPONDENCE , TO CHARLES GARTH . ORIGINAL SENT [via] THE TWO FRIENDS , CAP t. BALL Charlestown, So. Carolina, November 20th. 766 Sir. During the late recess, we received your several favours of the 6th. of June, 9th & 25th. of July[,] 3d. of August, and 3d. of September. These were all read yesterday before the House, when that Letter concerning the Statue voted for the late Mr. Pitt, now Lord Chatham, was taken immediately into Consideration, being the first business enter’d upon at this meeting, it was then determin’d by the House to have it fix’d in the most Public part of our Town, where two of the broadest and longest of our Streets that run East and West, North and South intersect each other at right angles, one of which is Sixty the other Seventy feet wide, and both as streight as an arrow; In the Cross way of these two Streets, the Statue is purposed to be placed and will have our new Church, our new Market, the State House, and armory, all public Buildings, at the several Corners next to it. Mr. Wilton’s Form marked A designed by him for an open place, is thought rather too stiff in the attitude however we have no additional directions to give you on this matter farther than that you will consult the best Connoisseurs and have it finished in the most elegant manner, excepting that too great care we think cannot be taken to have the marble as hard, solid and smoothly polished as possible, because of the many sudden and violent showers of Rain that happen here in the summer time, and those frequently followed immediately by such piercing and intense heats of the Sun as would (without such precaution) quickly penetrate into any Cracks and less solid parts, Scale and moulder them away, and thereby soon spoil the Beauty of the Statue. The other matters in your several Letters, will be answered with all Expedition, This, the House could not think of defering a moment especially at the present nice Juncture when such ungenerous and indefatigable pains are taking on your side the Water in Volumns of news papers and pamphlets to vilify and bespatter Lord Chatham, and misrepresent his patriotic actions and Intentions in order if possible to deprive him of that Popularity he hath so justly acquired, and thereby lessen his influence in public matters; but these attempts we think too violent and barefaced, as well as their Design too apparent to impose upon any sincere lovers of their Country, and that free Constitution he has so often and so nobly defended, and therefore cannot but be treated by them with the

338 a p p e n d i x t h r e e

Greatest Contempt. – For our parts we most heartily Congratulate the nation in general on this great man’s being placed once again so near His Majesty, are sincerely rejoiced at all Honours conferred upon him, and do not harbour any ungenerous Distrust, or the most distant doubt, that the present Lord Chatham will be less forward and zealous to serve his Country, and her true interests to the utmost of his power and abilities, than was the late truely Great Commoner Mr. Pitt. – The Bust you mention, if on board of Capt. Coombes’s Ship now unloading, has not yet come to hand, he has been ask’d about it, and does not recollect to have received such an One on board. We are, Sir Your most Humble Servants. Peter Manigault, Speaker William Scott Christopher Gadsden Miles Brewton William Roper James Parsons Charles Pinckney Isaac Mazyck John Rutledge Benja. Smith Benjamin Dart Arthur Middleton P.S. We desire not the least alteration may be made in the Inscription already sent you.

THE COMMITTEE OF CORRESPONDENCE TO CHARLES GARTH . ORIGINAL SENT [via] CAP t. BALL . Charles Town, South Carolina, 28th. Novr. 766 –

Sir We wrote you the 20th. Instant about Mr. Pitt’s Statue, and as the House has Just agreed to a Petition to his Majesty relative to paper Currency, we embrace the same opportunity to transmit it to you, and desire that you will take the earliest opportunity of laying the same before our Most Gracious Sovereign. – We shall write you on other matters in a few days, and are with great regard and Esteem. – Sir Your most Humble Servants. Benjamin Dart Peter Manigault John Rutledge Benjamin Smith Miles Brewton Isaac Mazyck Thomas Bee William Roper Charles Pinckney

Correspondence Concerning the Monument of William Pitt

339

[Postscript to a letter from] THE COMMITTEE OF CORRESPONDENCE , TO CHARLES GARTH . ORIGINAL [via] THE CAROLINA PACKET. CAP t. WHITE . DUPLICATE [via] THE HILLSBOROUGH PACKET. CAP t. ADAMS . Charles Town South Carolina December 6th. 766 – P.S. December the 0th. 766. The Bust of Mr. Pitt, which you sent us by Capt. Coombes is just now found.

CHARLES GARTH TO THE COMMITTEE OF CORRESPONDENCE . RECEIVED BY A SHIP FROM BRISTOL . London, November 20th. 769.

Gentlemen ... Mr. Wilton authorises me to inform the Committee that Mr. Pitt’s Statue shall be ready by the latter end of January to be sent from England, the Block of marble is larger than any that was to be met with in England, that he was obliged to send an Order for a Block, and which was near six months later in its arrival than he was given to expect, or the Statue would have been done long before this Time: You may depend upon my forwarding it by the very first opportunity that offers after finishing. – ... with great Respect. – I am – Gentlemen. – Your most Obedient and faithful Hum. Servant. Charles Garth. –

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM CHARLES GARTH TO THE COMMITTEE OF CORRESPONDENCE . RECEIVED BY THE SNOW POLLY, CAP t. RANNIER London, February 5th. 770 Gentlemen – ... Mr. Wilton has sent to inform me, I may now engage for the Freight &c. of Lord Chatham’s Statue, which I shall forthwith set about, and hope to send it by one of the next Vessels from hence. I am – Gentlemen – with great respect. – Your most Obedient, and faithful Hum. Servant. Charles Garth – 340

appendi x thr ee

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM CHARLES GARTH TO THE COMMITTEE OF CORRESPONDENCE . RECEIVED BY THE SHIP PORTLAND , CAP T. WILSON London, March 0th, 770 – Gentlemen – ... In a few Days Lord Chatham’s Statue will be on board the Carolina Pacquet Capt. White, Mr. T. Smith desires I will give him leave to Compliment the province with the Freight. – Mr. Wilton has proposed to me the sending over one of his Workmen who has been used to Works of this sort, in order to superintend and see to the proper Execution of the Work upon its arrival, which he anxiously wishes, lest the masons in Carolina should not have been accustomed to things of this magnitude, and for want of proper Experience, Damage should happen to it: I desired him to let me know upon what Terms such person would undertake the Expedition, as if not unreasonable I think you would not disapprove my agreeing to such proposal; – Enclosed I send you a Copy of the Terms which has been sent me by him, and which not thinking unreasonable, I propose to agree with, as I dare say I shall have money enough left in my hands out of the 000. transmitted, after paying Mr. Wilton and other Charges, I have the less Difficulty in the Exercise of this Discretion, as I shall not engage the province in any Addition Expence. – I likewise send you a Letter from Mr. Wilton of Instructions for such preparations as he thinks should be immediately set about to be in readiness to receive the Work upon its arrival. – An Equestrian Statue of His majesty, and a Statue of Lord Chatham done by Mr. Wilton are going to New York, whose agent will acquaint his Constituents that One of Mr. Wilton’s Workmen is gone to South-Carolina, from whence he imagines the Gentlemen at New York may send for the man to go thither after having finished in South-Carolina. – I am – Gentlemen – with great Respect – Your most Obt. and faithful Humble Servant Charles Garth –

CHARLES GARTH TO THE COMMITTEE OF CORRESPONDENCE RECEIVED BY THE SHIP CAROLINA PACKET, CAP t. WHITE

London, March 23d. 770 –

Gentlemen In my last I acquainted you that I should send by Capt. White, the Pedestal and marble Statue of the Earl of Chatham, which having been safely put on board, I hope will arrive safe; with it I send the Person, whose Proposals I have transmitted a Copy of in my last Dispatches, to see to the due and compleat finishing of the Work; and enclosed you have a Copy of the articles of agreement enter’d into by him and me; in the proposals the sum of four Guineas over and above the Expences of passage to and fro is mentioned, Correspondence Concerning the Monument of William Pitt

341

but finding upon enquiry that the time of passage was seldom so short as four weeks, he gave me notice that instead thereof he must be allowed One Guinea per Week, as well during his passage, as during his stay in Charles Town, otherwise he should be a loser, earning of Mr. Wilton every week eighteen Shillings wages; as it will make no very material difference in the Charge, I have agreed to the alteration, and have prepared articles accordingly and with a view likewise to secure myself and the province from as little Imposition as possible. – I likewise send herewith Mr. Wilton’s Original Agreement with me, and his Receipt thereupon for the money paid; foreseeing there might occur contingent Expenses, and as the province had provided not exceeding 000 Sterling on this account, and for other reasons, I thought it my Duty to enquire among the most celebrated Statuaries, the extent of Price that in reason might be demanded for a Work of this sort to be finished in the most masterly manner, and in Consequence was better enabled to enter into an agreement with the Statuary I should employ: The sum I agreed with Mr. Wilton being 800 Sterling, there remains 200 Sterling for me to account for, which I will send as soon as the several Expences are discharged: I have given directions to have the Cases on board ensured on 800 value, and the expence of Entry &ca. at the Custom House I have directed to be paid upon my account, of all which I shall transmit the particular Vouchers. – ... I am Gentlemen – with great Respect. – Your most Obt. and faithful hum. Servant. Charles Garth –

COPY OF M r. JOSEPH WILTON ’S AGREEMENT WITH CHARLES GARTH ESQUIRE , FOR MAKING A STATUE OF THE RIGHT HONORABLE WILLIAM PITT ESQUIRE , NOW EARL OF CHATHAM – (VIZ ) It is Agreed this twentieth Day of March, One thousand seven Hundred and Sixty Eight. Between Charles Garth Esquire, on the One part, and Joseph Wilton of the Parish of Marybone in the County of Middlesex, Statuary, on the other part, in Form and manner following – (viz) The said Joseph Wilton, for and in Consideration of the sum of Three Hundred Pounds of lawful Money of Great Britain, to him in hand paid, by the aforesaid Charles Garth Esqr. at or upon the Signing and Delivery of these presents, the Receipt of which said sum of Three Hundred Pounds, the said Joseph Wilton doth hereby acknowledge, and of every part and parcel thereof, acquit and discharge the said Charles Garth Esqr. his Executors, administrators and assigns. And also for other the Considerations hereunder mentioned, – The said Joseph Wilton doth, for himself, his Executors, administrators and assigns, Covenant and agree to and with to said Charles Garth Esqr. his Executors, administrators and assigns, in a good and artistlike manner, and to the best of his Abilities, in the space of Twenty months, little more or less, next ensuing the date 342 a p p e n d i x t h r e e

hereof, Execute and Compleat (at his own Cost and Charge) in Statuarian Marble of Corrara, One Statue of the Right Honble William Pitt Esquire, now Earl of Chatham, of the Height of Seven feet six Inches at least, exclusive of it’s Plinth, And also a suitable Stone Pedestal with marble Tables for Inscriptions, Shields for arms, &ca. of proper Magnitude, in proportion to the aforesaid Statue, according to a model and Design, seen and approved by the said Charles Garth Esqr. And likewise furnish the Cases, and pack up the said Statue and Pedestal, with all and every it’s appurtenances, in a substantial manner, and deliver the whole, unbroken or Damages, free of all Charges on board a Ship in the River Thames. – And the said Charles Garth Esqr. doth hereby, for himself his Executors, administrators and assigns, covenant and agree, well and truly to pay or cause to be paid unto the said Joseph Wilton, his Executors, administrators and assigns, the further sum of Five Hundred Pounds of lawful money of Great Britain, at the times hereafter mentioned, (that is to say) the sum of Two Hundred and fifty Pounds, part of the aforesaid sum of Five Hundred Pounds, on or about the twenty-fifth day of March, One thousand seven hundred and sixty nine, and the remaining sum of Two Hundred and fifty pounds, other part of the aforesaid sum of Five Hundred pounds as soon as the aforesaid Statue and Pedestal, conditioned as above, shall be safely delivered on board a Ship, to the Order of the said Charles Garth Esquire: And for the true performance of the Covenant herein before contained, on the part and behalf of the said Joseph Wilton, his Executors, administrators and assigns, he the said Joseph Wilton doth hereby bind himself, his Executors administrators and assigns unto the said Charles Garth Esqr. his Executors, administrators and assigns in the Penal sum of Eight Hundred Pounds; In Witness whereof he the said Joseph Wilton, hath hereunto set his Hand and Seal, the Day and Year above written. – Sealed and Delivered, being first duly Stamped in the presence of} Joseph Wilton – (Seal) – Edwin Belk – Owen Jones – Received, March 9th. 770 of Charles Garth Esquire, the sum of Two Hundred and fifty pounds, which with the sums of Two Hundred and fifty pounds, and Three Hundred pounds, heretofore received, according to the Tenor of the above article, makes the sum of Eight Hundred pounds, which was to be paid me for the Execution &ca. of a colossal Statue of the Right Honorable William Pitt Esquire, and a Stone Pedestal whereon to erect the said Statue, and is in full of all Demands. – 800.. – .. – by me, Joseph Wilton –

Correspondence Concerning the Monument of William Pitt

343

appendix four

Eighteenth- and

Early-Nineteenth-Century Monuments in North America and the British West Indies

The following list consists of monuments, executed primarily but not exclusively by British sculptors, that were erected in numerous cities and towns in North America and in several of the British West Indian islands in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The list was compiled by the author based on first-hand verification and/or on published sources. In the case of funeral monuments, only monuments erected inside churches are recorded, with the exception of Thomas Hibbert’s monument at Agualta Vale Penn in Jamaica. The list is not comprehensive; natural disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, as well as fires, and simply the vagaries of time have resulted in the destruction of many monuments. The list is organized according to location; outdoor monuments are listed first, followed by funeral monuments, which in turn are grouped by parish church. Signed monuments and firmly attributed monuments are listed alphabetically by artist before unattributed monuments within the categories listed above. If two dates are given, the first is the date of death of the person whom the monument commemorates and the second is the date of execution or erection of the monument.

a n t i g ua John Bacon the Younger, monument to Lord Lavington, d. 807, 809, marble. St John’s Parish Church. The monument was destroyed in the 843 earthquake. Michael Crake, monument to Eliza Musgrave, d. 85, 85, marble. Signed l.r.: “CRAKE , SCULPTOR , / PORTLAND ROAD , / LONDON .” St John’s Parish Church. Figs 2.24 and 2.25.

Joseph Wilton, monument to Elizabeth Ottley, d. 766, marble. St John’s Parish Church. Badly damaged in the 843 earthquake. Fig. 3.5. Monument to William Warner, d. 77, marble. St John’s Parish Church. Destroyed. Monument to George and William Atkinson, d. 779, marble. St John’s Parish Church. Destroyed. Mrs Flannigan (Antigua, vol. 2, 223–4) described the monument as “pyramidal supported by fluted pillars and bearing a small sarcophagus surmounted by two figures of children or cherubs holding in their hands a scroll on which is written texts from scripture.” Monument to Sarah Kelsick, d. 785, 792, marble. St John’s Parish Church. Destroyed. Mrs Flannigan (Antigua, vol. 2, 225) described the monument as white marble with a female figure leaning on a “storied urn” that had a beautifully chiselled wreath of flowers thrown around it. Unknown (French), statue of St John the Baptist, eighteenth century. St John’s Parish Church. This and the statue of St John the Divine are French works and were intended for the island of Dominica, but the ship on which they were being carried was captured by the English. Mrs Flannigan (Antigua, vol. 2, 234) wrote that “by universal consent [in Antigua, the figures] were placed as sentinels in their present position, instead of being decked out in gold and silver leaf, and mock jewels. The negroes, however, refuse to recognise them by their own title, but have unanimously dubbed them ‘Adam & Eve’ – the Baptist, I suppose, playing the part of the lady, as his garments are larger and more voluminous than those of his companion.” Unknown (French), statue of St John the Divine, eighteenth century. St John’s Parish Church. See commentary at previous entry.

barbad os John Michael Rysbrack, monument to Henry Grenville, marble. Originally erected in the Town Hall, Bridgetown, Barbados, but destroyed in the 780 hurricane. Richard Westmacott, monument to Lord Nelson, bronze. Bridgetown, Trafalgar Square (original name of the square). Fig. 8.2. Robert Taylor (attr.), monument to Thomas Withers, d. 750, marble (damaged). Coll.: Bridgetown, Barbados Museum and Historical Society. Fig. 3.8. ? Ashton, monument to Henrietta Leyden, d. 844, marble. Signed l.r.: “ASHTON / PICCADILLY / LONDON .” Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church.

Monuments in North America and the British West Indies

345

John Bacon the Younger, monument to Laetitia Austin, d. 80, marble. Signed l.r.: “John Bacon junior / Sculptor London 803.” Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. Robert Blore, monument to Sir William Myers, d. 805, marble. Signed: “R . BLORE Sculp Piccadilly LONDON .” Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. John Flaxman, monument to John Brathwaite, d. 800, marble. Signed on right edge: “FLAXMAN R .A . / SCULPTOR / LONDON .” Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. There is a plaster model for the Brathwaite monument in the John Flaxman Gallery at University College, London. Fig. 8.23. John Gibson, monument to Francis Bovell, d. 823, marble. Signed: “GIBSON SCULPSIT ROMA .” Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. Josephus Kendrick, monument to the Second or Queen’s Royal Regiment of Foot, d. 86–7, marble. Signed l.r.: “J . KENDRICK , SCULPTOR / LONDON .” Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. James Legrew, monument to the Honourable John Alleyne Beckles, d. 840, marble. Signed l.r.: “I . LEGREW, SC . / CATERHAM , SURRY, ENGLAND.” Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. William Paty, monument to Thomas Griffith, d. 795, and Jane, d. 796, marble. Signed l. centre: “W. PATY BRISTOL F t.” Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. W. Rogerson, monument to Michael Keane, d. 796, marble. Signed l. centre: “W. Rogerson London Fecit.” Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. William Spence, monument to Joseph Lowe, d. 827, marble. Signed l.l.: “W. SPENCE /

LIVERPOOL .” Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church.

Henry Wood of Bristol, monument to Catherine Smith, d. 800, marble. Signed l.r.: “WOOD BRISTOL .” Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. Henry Wood of Bristol, monument to Margaret Ann Dunn, d. 85, marble. Signed l.l.: “WOOD F t.”; l.r.: “BRISTOL .” Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. Henry Wood of Bristol, monument to Maria Ward, d. 829, and Maria Jane, d. 829, marble. Signed l. centre: “WOOD , BRISTOL .” Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. Henry Wood of Bristol, monument to William Dalzell, d. 842. Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church.

346 a p p e n d i x f o u r

Monument to Robert Hooper, d. 700, marble. Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. Fig. 2.4. Monument to Thomas Harrison, d. 746, marble. Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. Monument to Jonas Maynard, d. 78, and Christian Mercy Maynard, d. 777, marble. Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. Monument to Dottin Maycock, d. 793, and Catharine Maycock, d. 849, marble. Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. Monument to Mary Toosey, d. 799, marble. Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. Monument to Lucy Crichlow, d. 80, marble. Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. Monument to General William Grinfield, d. 803, marble. Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. Monument to Frances Orderson, d. 80, marble. Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. Monument to Benjamin Ifill, d. 835, marble. Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. Monument to Henrietta Pearce Sharp, d. 840, marble. Bridgetown, St Michael’s Parish Church. Matthew Wharton Johnson, monument to Samuel and Mercy Drayton, d. 83, marble. Signed l. centre: “M .W. JOHNSON , NEW ROAD , LONDON .” St George’s Parish Church. Joseph Nollekens, monument to Richard Salter, d. 776, marble. Signed l.r.: “Nollekens Ft.” St George’s Parish Church. A design for the Salter monument exists in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Prints and Drawings Department. William Paty of Bristol, monument to Christian Gibbes, d. 780, marble. Signed l. centre: “W. PATY, BRISTOL F t.” St George’s Parish Church. William Paty of Bristol, monument to Henry Frere, d. 792, marble. Signed l. centre: “W.

PATY, BRISTOL F t.” St George’s Parish Church.

Charles and William Thompson, monument to John Prettejohn, d. 803, marble. Signed l.r. side of corbel: “THOMPSON , FECIT.” St George’s Parish Church.

Monuments in North America and the British West Indies

347

James and Thomas Tyley and Sons, monument to Henry Trotman, d. 804, and Elizabeth, d. 790, marble. Signed l.r.: “J . TYLEY Bristol.” St George’s Parish Church. Richard Westmacott, monument to George Hall, d. 80, marble. Signed l.r.: “RICHARD WESTMACOTT SCULPTOR / LONDON , 83.” St George’s Parish Church. Monument to Henry Peers, d. 740, marble. St George’s Parish Church. Fig. 3.3. Monument to Thomas Applewhaite, d. 749 and his wife, Elizabeth, d. 750, marble. St George’s Parish Church. Monument to Thomas Carmichaell, d. 789, sandstone?. St George’s Parish Church. Monument to John Carter, d. 796, marble. St George’s Parish Church. William Lancashire of Bath (attr.), monument to Dames Christian and Jane Abel Alleyne and John Gay Newton Alleyne, marble. Holetown, St James’s Parish Church. Figs 2.4, 2.5, and 2.23. William Paty, monument to Edward Jordan, d. 787, marble. Signed on the corbel: “W.

PATY, BRISTOL F t.” Holetown, St James’s Parish Church.

Henry Wood of Bristol, monument to Rev. Francis Fitchatt, d. 802, marble. Signed l.r.: “H . WOOD BRISTOL .” Holetown, St James’s Parish Church. Monument to Ann Woodbridge, d. 739, marble. Holetown, St James’s Parish Church. Monument to Mercy Alleyne, d. 774, marble. Holetown, St James’s Parish Church. Richard Westmacott, monument to Elizabeth Pinder, d. 799, marble. St John’s Parish Church. The monument was damaged in the 83 hurricane. Monument to the Honourable William Bishop, d. 80, marble. Speightstown, St Peter’s Parish Church. Monument to Edward Panter, d. 804, marble. Speightstown, St Peter’s Parish Church. Monument to Elizabeth Jennett Sober, d. 795, marble. Speightstown, St Peter’s Parish Church. Monument to Michael Howard, d. 86, marble. Speightstown, St Peter’s Parish Church. Monument to Ward Harris, d. 76, marble. Speightstown, St Peter’s Parish Church.

348

a ppendi x four

Monument to Richard Alleyne Ellcock, d. 82, marble. St Thomas’s Parish Church. Monument to Elizabeth Martha Smitten, d. 808, marble. St Thomas’s Parish Church.

canada Joseph Wilton, bust of George III , marble, early 760s. Coll: Montreal, McCord Museum of Canadian History, 5885. The bust was originally erected in the Place d’Armes in Montreal in 766. Fig. 6.. John Flaxman, monument to Marie-Josephte Godefroy de Tonnancour, d. 799, marble and bronze (severely mutilated). Vaudreuil, Quebec, Church of St Michel. There are also numerous monuments to military and naval officers and members of their families in parish churches on the east coast of Canada (e.g., St Paul’s in Halifax and St John’s in Lunenburg) that date from around the turn of the nineteenth century.

dominica Source: London, Courtauld Institute of Art, Rupert Gunnis Papers William Storey of London, tablet to James Brown, 824. St George’s, Roseau. William Storey of London, tablet to William Robinson, 82. St George’s, Roseau. William Storey of London, tablet to William Nicolay, 836. St George’s, Roseau. J.J. Sanders, tablet to James Lockhart, 837, marble. St George, Roseau. J.J. Sanders, tablet to Alexander Robinson, 839, marble. St George, Roseau. J.J. Sanders, tablet to James and Ann Corlett, d. 84, marble. St George, Roseau.

grenada Source: “Monumental Inscriptions in the Parish Church and Churchyard of St George’s, Grenada,” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 6 (949): 8–27. W. Behnes, monument to Joseph Marryat, d. 824, marble. Signed: “W. BEHNES London.” St George’s Church. John Ternouth, monument to Reverend William Heath, d. 838, marble. Signed: “Ternouth Sc / Pimlico / London.” St George’s Church.

Monuments in North America and the British West Indies

349

Richard Westmacott, monument to Ninian Home, d. 795, marble. Signed: “Westmacott Junr London.” St George’s Church. Richard Westmacott, monument to Mather Byles, d. 802, marble. Signed: “WESTMA-

COTT, Junr., Fecit, London.” St George’s Church.

Monument to the Victims of the 795 Rebellion, marble. St George’s Church. Monument to Josiah Rogers, d. 795, marble. St George’s Church. Monument to Catherine Dickinson, d. 83, marble. St George’s Church.

jamaica John Bacon the Elder, monument to Admiral Lord Rodney, marble. Signed l.r.: “J. Bacon R.A. Sculptor / London 789.” Spanish Town Parade. Figs 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, and 8.6. Obelisk to Admiral Lord Rodney, after 782, marble?. Botanical Gardens at Bath. Lit.: Thomas Dancer, Catalogue of Plants, Exotic and Indigenous, in the Botanical Garden, Jamaica, 2. Triumphal Column with Panels Representing the Four Continents, c. 760s, marble?. Port Maria. Originally at The Decoy, the estate of Sir Charles Price. Fig. 2.3. Monument to the Late Thomas Hibbert, Esq., d. 780, marble. St Mary’s Parish, Agualta Vale Penn. Fig. 8.0. John Bacon the Elder, monument to Thomas, Earl of Effingham, d. 79, and his wife, Catherine, d. 79, marble. Signed l.r. below putto: “J. Bacon / Sculptor / LONDON 796.” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Figs 8.7 and 8.8. John Bacon the Elder, monument to Anne Williamson, d. 794, marble. Signed l.l.: “Jo. Bacon, Fecit.”; l.r.: “LONDON 798.” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. There is a design for the Williamson monument in the British Museum, Prints and Drawings Department. Fig. 8.9. John Bacon the Elder, monument to Francis Rigby Brodbelt, d. 795, 799, marble. Signed l.r.: “J. Bacon Sculptor / London.” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Fig. 8.. John Bacon the Elder, monument to Richard Batty, d. 796, marble. Signed, according to Lawrence-Archer (Monumental Inscriptions, 24): “Sculp. J. Bacon London, 798.” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Most of this monument was destroyed in the 907 earthquake. Only one mourning female figure is extant, and it is now located in the foyer of the church. According to Lawrence-Archer, the monument originally consisted 350 a p p e n d i x f o u r

of a female figure leaning over an altar tomb, on which appeared in relief a pelican feeding her young. Batty was custos rotulorum and member of the assembly for the parish of Vere. Edward Hodges Baily, monument to Mary McLarty, d. 857, marble. Signed l.l. side: “E .H . BAILY R .A . / SCULP. / LONDON .” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. W. Cope, monument to Anna Maria Aldred, d. 76, marble. Signed l.r.: “W. COPE Fect.” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Fig. 2.2. Charles Easton (attr.), monument to Elizabeth Hannah Price, d. 77, marble. Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Fig. 3.0. Reeves and Son, monument to James Lee, d. 82, marble. Signed bottom centre: “REEVES & SON Ft. BATH , ENGLAND.” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Reeves and Son, monument to John Gardner Millward, d. 822, Thomas James Brown, d. 823, Mary Kerr, Mary Anna, and Thomas James, his children and the grandchildren of M.G. Millward, marble. Signed l.l.: “REEVES & SON F t. BATH .” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Charles Regnart, monument to Robert Milligan, d. 88, marble. Signed: “Regnart, Sculpt.” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. John Steell, monument to Elizabeth Mary, Countess of Elgin and Kincardine, d. 843, marble. Signed lower back of pedestal: “J. Steell, Sculpt. 842.” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Charles and William Thompson, monument to Charles Graham, d. 80, marble. Signed upper right side: “THOMPSON / Fecit / LONDON .” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. F. Viner, monument to Anne Ramsay, d. 764, and Peter Ramsay, d. 78, marble. Signed on corbel: “F. Viner Ft. Bath.” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Richard Westmacott, monument to Elizabeth Burton, d. 823, marble. Signed l.r.: “RICHARD WESTMACOTT R .A . / SOUTH AUDLEY STREET LONDON .” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Richard? Westmacott, monument to Captain George Dyson, d. 26 June, 806, marble. Signed l.l: “WESTMACOTT, LONDON .” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Presumably this work is by Richard Westmacott, later Sir Richard Westmacott. In 798 he married Dorothy Wilkinson, the daughter of Dr Wilkinson of Jamaica, and may have secured this and other West Indian commissions through his father-in-law. Monuments in North America and the British West Indies

351

Joseph Wilton, monument to Sir Basil Keith, d. 777, marble. Signed l.r.: “I. Wilton ft.” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Figs 8. and 8.2. Joseph Wilton, monument to Mathew Gregory, d. 779, and his wife, Lucretia, d. 750, marble. Signed underside edge of inscription panel: “Joseph Wilton Invt. and Sculp. 783.” Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Fig. 3.6. Monument to William Selwyn, d. 702, marble. Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Fig. 2.6. Monument to Matthew Gregory, Sr, d. 75, marble. Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Monument to Samuel Osborne, d. 723, and Elizabeth Spruce, d. 725, marble. Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Monument to Thomas Rose, d. 724, marble. Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Fig. 2.8. Monument to Mary Bernard, d. 724, and an infant daughter, marble. Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Monument to Alexander Forbes, d. 729, marble. Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Fig. 2.7. Monument to Ann March, d. 739, Sarah Spencer, d. 746, and Ann Spencer, d. 747, marble. Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Monument to John Blair, d. 742, marble. Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Monument to William Nedham, d. 746, marble. Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Monument to John Hudson Guy, d. 749, marble. Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Fig. 3.2. Monument to William Baldwin, d. 755, and Mary Baldwin, d. 760, marble. Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Fig. 3.8. Monument to Andrew Arcedeckne, d. 763, marble. Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Monument to Hugh Lewis, d. 785, marble. Spanish Town, St Catherine’s Parish Church. Fig. 8.2. 352 a p p e n d i x f o u r

John Bacon the Elder, monument to John Wolmer, d. 729, marble. Signed: “J. Bacon R.A. Sculptor / London 789.” Kingston Parish Church. Fig. 8.4. John Bacon the Elder, monument to Malcolm Laing, d. 78 and Eleanor Laing, d. 747, marble. Signed l.r.: “J. Bacon R.A. Sculptor / London 794.” Kingston Parish Church. Fig. 8.3. John Bacon the Elder, monument to Ann Margaret Neufville, d. 782, and Fortunatus Dwarris d. 790, marble. Signed l.l.: “J. Bacon R.A. Sculptor”; l.r.: “London 792.” Kingston Parish Church. There is a drawing for the Neufville monument in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Prints and Drawings Department. John Bacon the Elder, monument to Mary Carr, d. 798, marble. Signed l.l.: “J. Bacon Sct.”; l.r.: “London 799.” Kingston Parish Church. John Bacon the Younger, monument to Frances Inglis, d. 79; James Sutherland, d. 796; and Ann Sutherland, d. 79, marble. Signed l.r.: “J. Bacon junr. Sct. London. 800.” Kingston Parish Church. The pyramidal background has been damaged, and the neck of the urn has been replaced with plaster. Fig. 3.3. John Bacon the Younger, monument to Margaret Taylor, d. 806, marble. Signed l.r.: “J. Bacon junr. Ft. / London 806.” Kingston Parish Church. John Bacon the Younger, monument to Bartholomew Samuel Rowley, d. 8, marble. Signed l.r.: “J . BACON JUN R. FECIT, LONDON 83.” Kingston Parish Church. John Bacon the Younger and Charles Manning, monument to Anne Smith, d. 825, marble. Signed l.l.: “Bacon, London”; l.r.: “Manning Ft.” Kingston Parish Church. Blychenden and Wilson, monument to Robert Dewhurst Brown, d. 87, marble. Signed l. centre: “BLYCHENDEN & WILSON K N JAM A.” Kingston Parish Church. T. Brock, monument to Horatio S. Cross, d. 854, marble. Signed l.r.: “T. BROCK JAM A.” Kingston Parish Church. This is one of the earliest monuments in Jamaica executed by a local sculptor. John Golden, monument to Joseph Fitch, d. 778, marble. Signed l.l.: “In Golden / Fecit / High Holborn / London.” Kingston Parish Church. Robert Taylor (attr.), monument to Edward Manning, d. 756, marble. Kingston Parish Church. Fig. 2.3. Robert Taylor (attr.), monument to George Hinde, d. 756, marble. Kingston Parish Church. Fig. 3.9. Monuments in North America and the British West Indies

353

Richard Westmacott, monument to Augustus Leveson Gower, d. 802, marble. Kingston Parish Church. Monument to Carl Lloyd, d. 75, marble. Kingston Parish Church. Monument to John Becher, d. 762, marble. Kingston Parish Church. Monument to Nathaniel Milward, d. 775, marble. Kingston Parish Church. Monument to Richard Cargill, d. 78, and John Cargill, d. 780, marble. Kingston Parish Church. Monument to Sir Alexander Leith, d. 78, marble. Kingston Parish Church. Monument to Solomon Ferris, d. 83, marble. Kingston Parish Church. This monument is probably only a fragment of a larger original. Monument to William Brown, d. 84, marble. Kingston Parish Church. Monument to Captain Edward Rowley, d. 87, marble. Kingston Parish Church. Monument to Charles Hill, d. 89, marble. Kingston Parish Church. Monument to Captain William George Martin, d. 822, marble. Kingston Parish Church. Monument to Thomas Stopford, d. 824, marble. Kingston Parish Church. Sefferin Alken and James Arrow, monument to Ann DeLapierre Litteljohn and Alexander and David DeLapierre Bennet Litteljohn, d. 77, marble. Signed l.l.: “Jas. Arrow Archt.”; l.r.: “Sefⁿ. Alken Sculpt.” Halfway Tree, St Andrew’s Parish Church. John Bacon the Younger, monument to Honora Watson Popham, d. 820, marble. Signed l.r.: “J . BACON FT LONDON ”. Halfway Tree, St Andrew’s Parish Church. John Cheere, monument to James Lawes, d. 733, marble. Signed on socle of bust: “Jno. Cheere Fecit.” Halfway Tree, St Andrew’s Parish Church. Figs 2.9 and 2.0. William Paty of Bristol (attr.), monument to Edward Foord, d. 777, marble. Halfway Tree, St Andrew’s Parish Church. Monument to Vice Admiral Thomas Davers, d. 746, marble. Halfway Tree, St Andrew’s Parish Church. Fig. 3.7.

354 a p p e n d i x f o u r

Monument to James Renton, d. 748, marble. Halfway Tree, St Andrew’s Parish Church. Fig. 2.20. Monument to Anthony Langley Swymmer, d. 760, marble. Halfway Tree, St Andrew’s Parish Church. Monument to Elizabeth Dalling and her infant daughter, d. 768, marble. Halfway Tree, St Andrew’s Parish Church. Monument to Zachary Bayly, d. 769, marble. Halfway Tree, St Andrew’s Parish Church. Monument to Henry Croasdaile, d. 770, marble. Halfway Tree, St Andrew’s Parish Church. Fig. 3.. Monument to Eleanor Duncomb, d. 786, marble. Halfway Tree, St Andrew’s Parish Church. Monument to William Anne Villettes, d. 808, marble. Halfway Tree, St Andrew’s Parish Church. John Cheere, monument to Deborah Gibbons, d. 7, marble. Signed l.r.: “Jno. Cheere Fecit.” Vere, St Peter’s Church. Fig. 2.. Barbato Cipriani, monument to Samuel and Margaret Eleanor Alpress, Samuel Alpress Osborn, d. 80, and Kean Osborn, d. 82, marble. Signed l.l.: “BARBATO CIPRIANI DI SIENA FECE IN ROMA L’A NNO MDCCCXVIII .” Vere, St Peter’s Church. This is the only monument in the West Indies known to have been carved by an Italian sculptor. Charles Easton, monument to Ennis Read, d. 77, and his wife, Margaret, d. 745, marble. Signed l. centre: “Easton Fecit London.” Vere, St Peter’s Church. Fig. 3.. Solomon Gibson, monument to Emma Edwardes, d. 828, marble. Signed l.r.: “S . GIB-

SON . SCULP t L’POOL .” Vere, St Peter’s Church. Fig. 3.5.

James Hickey, monument to William Pusey, d. 783, and Elizabeth Pusey, d. 780, marble. Signed l.r.: “I . HICKEY Sculpt.” Vere, St Peter’s Church. Richard Westmacott, monument to the Hon. Kean Osborn, d. 820, marble. Signed: “R . WESTMACOTT, R .A . 4 SOUTH AUDLEY STREET, LONDON .” Vere, St Peter’s Church. Monument to John Morant, d. 723, John Morant, d. 734, and Elizabeth Gale, d. 740, marble. Vere, St Peter’s Church. Monuments in North America and the British West Indies

355

Monument to John Morant, d. 74, marble. Vere, St Peter’s Church. Monument to John Gale, d. 743, marble. Vere, St Peter’s Church. Monument to Elizabeth Gale, d. 76, marble. Vere, St Peter’s Church. Monument to John Pusey, d. 767, marble. Vere, St Peter’s Church. Monument to Samuel Alpress George Osborn, d. 828, marble. Vere, St Peter’s Church. John Bacon the Elder, monument to George MacFarquhar, d. 786, marble. Signed l.r.: “J. Bacon R.A. Sculpt. / London 79.” Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. Fig. 2.27. John Bacon the Elder, monument to Rosa Palmer, d. 790, marble. Signed l.r.: “J. Bacon R.A. Sculptor / London 794.” Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. Figs 2.6 and 2.7. John Bacon the Younger, monument to Duncan Anderson, presumed dead 796, marble. Signed l.r.: “J. Bacon Junr. Sculptor / London, 800.” Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. Fig. 2.22. John Bacon the Younger, monument to John Thomas Hughes, d. 802, marble. Signed l.r.: “J. Bacon Junr. / Sculptor. / London.” Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. John Bacon the Younger, monument to John Tharp, d. 8, marble. Signed bottom centre: “J . BACON Junr. Sculptor, LONDON 83.” Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. The Coade manufactories, monument to Elizabeth Minto, d. 783, 790, Coade stone. Signed l.r.: “COADE LONDON 790.” Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. Fig. 3.2. Thomas King, monument to John Perry, d. 809, Elizabeth Perry, d. 805, and Ann Perry, d. 809, marble. Signed on edge of corbel: “T. KING Fecit, BATH .” Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. James and Thomas Tyley and Sons of Bristol, monument to Jane Mountague, d. 89, marble. Signed l. centre: “TYLEY, Bristol.” Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. Henry Westmacott, monument to Sarah Newton Kerr, d. 84, marble. Signed l.l.: “Henry Westmacott. / London.” Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. Richard Westmacott the Elder, monument to William Fowle, d. 796, marble. Signed bottom centre edge: “Westmacott Junr. London.” Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. Henry Wood, monument to David Bernard, d. 804, marble. Signed l.l.: “H . WOOD ”; l.r.: “BRISTOL F T.” Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. 356 a p p e n d i x f o u r

Monument to Margaret Bernard, d. 78, marble. Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. Monument to Bernard Birch, d. 782, Coade stone. Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. Fig. 3.20. Monument to John Cunningham, Jr, d. 804, Coade stone?. Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. Monument to Elizabeth Cunningham, d. 808, Coade stone?. Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. Monument to John Cunningham, d. 82, Coade stone?. Montego Bay, St James’s Parish Church. Thomas Brock, monument to Mary Isabella Dugald Garsia, d. 86, marble. Lucea, Hanover Parish Church. John Flaxman, monument to Sir Simon Clarke, d. 777, marble. Signed upper left side: “FLAXMAN / LONDON / 799.” Lucea, Hanover Parish Church. A related drawing for the Clarke monument is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Prints and Drawings Department. Plasters for the figures are in the collections of University College, London, and the Sir John Soane Museum. Fig. 2.26. Monument to A. Reddie, d. 820, marble. Lucea, Hanover Parish Church. Monument to W. Carr Walker, d. 832, marble. Lucea, Hanover Parish Church. Henry Rouw or Peter Rouw the Younger, monument to Thomas Warren, d. 807, marble. Signed l. centre: “ROUW, Sculptor LONDON .” Black River, Church of St John the Evangelist. Henry Westmacott, monument to Robert Hugh Munro, d. 798, marble. Signed l.r. on side: “Henry Westmacott. London.” Black River, Church of St John the Evangelist. Fig. 8.5. Henry Westmacott, monument to Caleb Dickenson, d. 82, marble. Signed l.r. on side: “Henry Westmacott, London.” Black River, Church of St John the Evangelist. Fig. 8.6. John Wills and Son, monument to Duncan Robertson, d. 850, marble. Signed l.r.: “Jo. WILLS & SON / 5 NEW ROAD LONDON .” Black River, Church of St John the Evangelist. Monument to Henry Gale, d. 767, marble. Black River, Church of St John the Evangelist. Monuments in North America and the British West Indies

357

Monument to Andrew Miller, d. 830, marble. Black River, Church of St John the Evangelist. John Bacon the Elder, monument to Elizabeth Prince, d. 792, marble. Signed base of urn: “J. Bacon London 795.” Port Antonio, Christ Church. Thomas Denman, monument to the Wife and Children of John George Brown, marble. Signed l.r.: “Denman / 83 Regent St / London.” Port Antonio, Christ Church. Charles Regnart, monument to Anne Margaret Brymer, d. 840, marble. Signed l.r.: “Regnart, Sculptor / Hampstead Rd, / London.” Port Antonio, Christ Church. Joseph Smith, monument to Charles Bryan, d. 80, marble. Signed l. r.: “Jos. Smith of London.” Port Antonio, Christ Church. Henry Wood, monument to Henry Burke, d. 827, marble. Signed l.r.: “WOOD Bristol.” Port Antonio, Christ Church. Monument to Annesley Voysey, d. 839, marble. Port Antonio, Christ Church. Monument to Henry James Passley, d. 8, marble. Port Antonio, Christ Church. Louis-Francois Roubiliac, monument to William Stapleton, d. 754, marble. Signed l.r.: “L.F. Roubiliac int. et sct.” Port Royal, St Peter’s Church. Figs 2.8 and 2.9.

mas sachus etts Daniel Gookin and Mr. Skilling, The Pillar of Liberty, 766–67, wood, Dedham. Henry Cheere, Monument to Charles Apthorp, d. 758, marble. Signed: “Hen: Cheere Fect.” Boston, King’s Chapel. Fig. 2.29. Peter Scheemakers, monument to Frances Shirley, d. 746, marble. Signed l.r.: “P.

SCHEEMAKERS Fect.” Boston, King’s Chapel. Fig. 2.28.

William Tyler, monument to Samuel Vassall, 766, marble. Signed: “W. Tyler, Sculpsit, Londini,” Boston, King’s Chapel. Fig. 2.32.

m o n t s e r r at Coade, monument to Emma Sanders, d. 797, Coade stone. St Anthony’s Church. Coade, monument to Henrietta Cornelia Skerett, d. 797, Coade stone. St Anthony’s Church. 358 a p p e n d i x f o u r

Coade, monument to Brownbill, Coade stone. St Anthony’s Church.

nevis Lancaster and Walker, monument to Joseph Brazier, d. 824, marble. Signed l. centre: “Lancaster & Walker BRISTOL .” Figtree, St John’s Church. Monument to William Woolward, d. 779, marble. Figtree, St John’s Church. Monument to Fanny Henrietta Parris, d. 87, marble. Figtree, St John’s Church. Monument to John Richardson Herbert, marble. Figtree, St John’s Church. Monument to Mary Crosse, d. 804, marble. St Paul’s Church.

new york Joseph Wilton, equestrian Statue of George III , 770, gilded lead. Originally erected in the Bowling Green, New York. Destroyed in 776. See fig. 7.8. Joseph Wilton, statue of William Pitt, Earl Chatham, 770, marble (damaged). Coll.: New York, New-York Historical Society. Originally erected at the intersection of William and Wall Streets, New York, in 770. Fig. 7.7. Monument to General Wolfe, c. 760, marble?. Mandeville (Oliver DeLancey’s Country Seat, present day Greenwich Village). Destroyed, probably during the American Revolution. Jacques Caffieri, monument to General Richard Montgomery, d. 775, erected 789, marble. Trinity Parish, St Paul’s Chapel, portico. Commissioned by Benjamin Franklin on behalf of the Second Continental Conference. Monument to Effingham Warner, d. 796, marble. New York, Trinity Parish Church, St Paul’s Chapel. Monument to Christiana Chapman, d. 86, marble. New York, Trinity Parish Church, St Paul’s Chapel. Monument to James Duane, d. 797, marble?. Duanesburg, Christ Church.

p e n n s y lva n i a Robert Cooke, monument to Robert Meade, d. 796, marble. Philadelphia, Christ Church. Monuments in North America and the British West Indies

359

Monument to John Cox, d. 73, marble. Philadelphia, Christ Church. Monument to Mrs. Mary Andrews, d. 76, marble. Philadelphia, Christ Church. Monument to John Waller James, d. 836, marble. Philadelphia, Christ Church.

rhode is land John Smyth of Dublin, monument to Rev. Mr Brown, marble?. Newport, Trinity Church.

st kitt’s Source: Vere Langford Oliver, The Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies (Dorchester, 927). John Bacon the Younger, monument to William Henry Sanderson, b. 788, d. ?, marble. Signed: “J . BACON , Junr., Sculptor, LONDON .” Basseterre, St George’s Church.

st vinc ent Design for an Obelisk in Memorial of the Victims of the French and Carib Uprising in St Vincent, 795–96. Never built. Fig. 8.20.

s outh carolina Joseph Wilton, statue of William Pitt, 770, marble (damaged). Charleston, Washington Park. It was originally erected at the intersection of Broad and Meeting Streets in Charleston in 770. Figs 7.5 and 7.6. John De Vaere, monument to General McPherson, 80, marble. Signed: “John De Vaere, Native of Ghent, 80.” Charleston, Carolina Art Association, Gibbes Art Gallery. According to a note in the Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, the monument was apparently originally commissioned for the Presbyterian Church in Charleston but was rejected because the general and his daughter were depicted semi-clad. It stayed in the McPherson family until the 930s. Legend attributed the monument to Canova. Thomas Woodin (attr.), monument to Lady Anne Murray, d. 768, and George Murray, d. 772, white pine. Charleston, reerected in the First Scots Presbyterian Church in 84. Monument to James O’Brien Parsons, d. 769, marble. Charleston, St Michael’s Church. Monument to George Parsons, d. 778, marble. Charleston, St Michael’s Church.

360

a ppendi x four

Monument to Louis de Saussure, d. 779, marble. Charleston, St Michael’s Church. Monument to Theodore Dehon, d. 87, marble. Charleston, St Michael’s Church. Monument to Christina Harris, d. 88, marble. Charleston, St Paul’s Church. Monument to Rev. Peter Manigault Parker, d. 802, marble. Charleston, St Peter’s Church. Monument to Isaac and Elizabeth Motte, marble. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. St Philip’s Church in Charleston and its monuments were destroyed in 835. Frederick Dalcho described the church and recorded the monuments in An Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South-Carolina (Charleston, 820). Monument to Edward Post, d. 76, marble. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. Destroyed in 835. Monument to John Garrard, d. 722, marble?. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. Destroyed in 835. Monument to Robert Johnson, d. 735, marble?. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. Destroyed in 835. Monument to Sarah Whitaker, d. 747, marble. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. Destroyed in 835. Monument to Hector Berenger de Beufain, d. 766, 767, marble?. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. Destroyed in 835. Monument to Othniel Beale, d. 773, 788, marble. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. Destroyed in 835. Monument to Major Benjamin Huger, d. 779, 786, marble. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. Destroyed in 835. Monument to Philip Neyle, d. 780, marble. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. Destroyed in 835. Monument to Alicia Powell, d. 78, marble. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. Destroyed in 835. Monument to Jacob Motte, d. 78, and Rebecca, d. 85, marble. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. Destroyed in 835.

Monuments in North America and the British West Indies

361

Monument to Mary Champneys, d. 800, marble. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. Destroyed in 835. Monument to John Vicars, d. 806, marble. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. Destroyed in 835. Monument to Thomas Radcliffe, d. 806, marble. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. Destroyed in 835. Monument to Charles Dewar Simons, d. 82, marble. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. Destroyed in 835. Monument to Martha Cannon, d. 84, marble. Charleston, St Philip’s Church. Destroyed in 835. Monument to Thomas Jones, d. 788, marble. Georgetown, Church of Prince George, Winyah. Peter Mathias Vangelder, monument to Ralph Izard, d. 804, marble. Goose Creek, St James’s Church. Monument to Col. John Gibbes, d. 7, marble. Goose Creek, St James’s Church. Monument to Jane Gibbes, d. 77, marble. Goose Creek, St James’s Church. Monument to Peter Taylor, d. 765, marble. Goose Creek, St James’s Church. Monument to Elizabeth Ann Smith, d. 769, marble. Goose Creek, St James’s Church. Monument to Theodore Dehon, d. 87, marble. Sullivan’s Island, Grace Church.

virginia Richard Hayward, statue of Lord Botetourt, marble. Williamsburg, College of William and Mary. Fig. 7.9. Monument to Daniel Parke, d. 679, 76, marble. Bruton Parish Church. Monument to Dr. William Cocke, d. 720, marble. Bruton Parish Church. Michael Sidnell, monument to William Chamberlayne, d. 736, marble. Signed: “M. Sidnell Bristol fecit.” New Kent County, St Peter’s Parish Church. Fig. 3.2.

362

a ppendi x four

Michael Sidnell (attr.), monument to David Mossom, d. 767, marble. New Kent County, St Peter’s Parish Church. Isaac Dent, monument to William Byrd, d. 744, marble. Signed: “Isaac Dent, Crutched Fryers, London.” Westover County, Charles City Council.

Monuments in North America and the British West Indies

363

This page intentionally left blank

Notes

chapte r one  Roy, “Réponses,” 24–5. See also chapter 6. 2 The demise of the statue is recorded in several contemporary accounts: see Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 5, 992–3. Quotation from Journal of Lieutenant-Colonel Isaac Bangs, 0 July 776, in Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 5, 992. See also Marks, “The Statue.” 3 Pieces of the horse and the king’s body were still being found as late as 972. On the search for pieces of the statue, see “Where is King George’s Head???” 4 The work most dedicated to exploring the extra-parliamentary realm is Kathleen Wilson’s The Sense of the People, especially 98 ff. In this incisive analysis of politics, culture, and imperialism, the influence of Linda Colley, John Brewer, and Nicholas Rogers is considerable. Their work, in turn, has a scholarly pedigree that ultimately lies with E.P. Thompson’s studies of class struggle, J.G.A. Pocock’s examination of the intellectual milieu surrounding the Whig ascendancy, and Jürgen Habermas’s analysis of the constitutive elements of the private and the public spheres in early modern Europe. This book is indebted to these several related lines of analysis. 5 The sugar export figures were probably even higher in the years preceding the American Revolution; Sheridan, “The Wealth,” 306; Wilson, The Sense, 56 ff.; also Engerman, “Mercantilism,” 9–2. 6 Several recent publications have also explored the transformation of the English landscape as a result of contact with other cultures and the colonial trade. See Stuart, The Plants. 7 Kidd, British Identities, –6. The term “nationalism,” as so many people have stated, was not coined until the end of the eighteenth century and did not fall into anything approaching common usage until the end of the nineteenth century; Kidd, British Identities, 5. On nationalism and the rise of the modern economy and communications, refer to Gellner, Thought and Change; Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism; Deutsch, Nationalism; and Anderson, Imagined Communities. On the notion of the other as the defining factor, Newman, The Rise, and Colley, Britons, are particularly pertinent to my

8

9

0  2

3

4 5

6

study, as they evaluate England’s love-hate relationship with France. On the cultural significance in effecting a sense of nationalism, see, along with Newman and Colley, Plamenatz, “Two Types.” The political component of nationalism, in connection with the French Revolution, has been most strongly put forward by Kamenka, “Political Nationalism.” The primordialist camp emphasizes continuities in the evolution of the nationstate; Smith, “The Origins”; Armstrong, Nations. Edward Said’s writings prompted much of the revisionist scholarship on colonialism and imperialism; see especially Said, Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism. Ethnicity, representation, repression and resistance, language, and cultural fragmentation were some of the main themes that would preoccupy those who contributed to the debates in colonial and postcolonial theory that proliferated in the 980s and 990s. The scholarship on slavery is also enormous, but see especially the seminal investigations of Michael Craton and James Walvin. Brathwaite, The Development; Craton and Walvin, A Jamaican; Walvin, Black Ivory, 6–78; Craton, “Reluctant Creoles”; Greene, “Changing Identity.” Richard B. Sheridan has examined West Indian society primarily from an economic point of view; Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, “The Formation,” and “The Rise.” See especially Marshall, Trade and Conquest and “The British”; Bayly, Indian Society. See especially Bailyn, The Ideological Origins; Greene, Pursuits of Happiness; also Kidd, British Identities, 250–, 26–79. Greene’s comparative studies of the colonial elite in the British West Indies and America (Pursuits of Happiness), Bailyn and Morgan’s edited series of essays on the intersection of various cultures in the British Empire prior to the American Revolution (Strangers within the Realm), and P.J. Marshall’s edited volume on the eighteenth century for the Oxford History of the British Empire series have gone some way to address this problem. A series of essays edited by Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden (Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World) explores differences and similarities in colonial identity across the Atlantic colonies owned by the British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Habermas, The Structural Transformation, 57–67. Particularly relevant to my study are Brewer, Party Ideology, especially 39–60; Peters, Pitt and Popularity; and Wilson, The Sense, 27–53. For America, see especially Copeland, Colonial American Newspapers; and Bailyn and Hench, eds, The Press. On the West Indies, see Cave, “Printing.” Colley, Britons, 85–00, especially 90–. Much of the history of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (later the Royal Society of Arts) has been published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. Several of these articles have been republished in Allan and Abbott, eds, The Virtuoso Tribe. Wilson is particularly strong on these often ephemeral expressions. Of particular note for my study is her examination of the exuberant and apparently spontaneous celebrations prompted by the news of Admiral Vernon’s victory at Porto Bello after decades of desultory military and naval performance by the British and amid the increasing dual threat posed by France and Spain. These celebrations mark an important precedent for the honouring of Wolfe twenty years later. Wilson, The Sense, 40–65, passim. On the

366

n o t e s t o pag e s 6–7

7

8 9 20

2

dissemination of Wilkite radicalism through the proliferation of ceramics, see Brewer, “Commercialization and Politics.” In Britons (258–9), Linda Colley is unusual in including a discussion of the statue of Achilles in honour of the Duke of Wellington erected at Hyde Park Corner by the women of Britain in 822. A few art historians have examined British monuments to particular heroes of the long eighteenth-century empire or monuments located in various sectors of this empire. As with the scholarship on colonial identity that does not go beyond a particular group of colonies that share similarities, these regional studies do not stand in for the empire as a whole. In terms of various sectors of the empire, Barbara Groseclose and Mary Ann Steggles have studied the monuments erected in India, especially those in the nineteenth century (comparatively few British monuments in India date from the eighteenth century), and Arthur S. Marks has written an excellent analysis of the life and death of the equestrian monument of George III in New York; Groseclose, British Sculpture; Steggles, “The Empire Aggrandized,” “Evangelical Philosophy,” Statues, “The Myth,” and “Art and Politics”; Marks, “The Statue.” In the 960s Lesley Lewis (“English Commemorative Sculpture”) put together a catalogue of many monuments erected in Jamaica, which, while useful, does not tell us much about why these monuments are there. There have been a few other publications on the monuments in the colonies, but these are mainly late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century sources that analyze the heraldic emblems on the monuments or record their epitaphs for antiquarian and genealogical interest; the sculpture is rarely discussed. The most extensive work in this vein is Lawrence-Archer, Monumental Inscriptions (875). In Behold the Hero, Alan McNairn looks at the monument to Wolfe in Westminster Abbey, sponsored and financed by Parliament, as part of his larger analysis of depictions of Wolfe in the arts, yet he does not acknowledge the rarity of such a public commission at the time. Alison Yarrington, in The Commemoration of the Hero, examines the proliferation of monuments to heroes of the Napoleonic Wars, primarily in England although those in Montreal and Barbados are also discussed. On the emergence of cultural and political infrastructures in the English provinces, see Borsay, The English; and Wilson, The Sense. See chapter 4, 22, 32, and 43–5. The statue that presently sits outside St Paul’s is a nineteenth-century copy. The original is at Holmhurst near Hastings, East Sussex. There are variants of the Queen Anne statue in Kingston-upon-Thames and Minehead, Somerset. Whinney, Sculpture in Britain, 52, 448n0. The next monarch to commission a statue of himself was George IV, who commissioned Sir Francis Chantrey to execute an equestrian statue. It was intended for the top of Marble Arch but ended up at Buckingham Palace; Yarrington, The Commemoration, 232 and 236–9. Many statues of George I , George II , and George III were erected during each of their respective reigns, but none of the commissions originated with the monarchs. On George I , see Arciszewska, “Re-casting George I ”; on George II , see Whinney, Sculpture in Britain, 34, 242, 460, and Legouix, “John Cheere’s Statue”; and on statues of George III , see chapters 6 and 7.

n o t e s t o pag e s 7– 8

367

22 Shovell then met an untimely death. He was murdered by a woman who stole his emerald ring from his still-living body, which had been thrown up on shore after his ship grounded and broke apart near the Scilly Isles; Beard, The Work, 78–9. 23 Joseph Addison made the comparison to the Dutch monuments, probably those erected to the Admirals van Tromp and de Ruyter. Whinney, Sculpture in Britain, 26. 24 Both the Cornewall and Henry Grenville commissions are discussed in chapter 5. 25 Kidd, British Identities, 287. 26 Nora, Realms of Memory. 27 Ibid., xxiv. 28 Llewellyn, Funeral Monuments, 0–2. While the studies of monuments conducted by Margaret Whinney, Katharine Ada Esdaile, Rupert Gunnis, and John Physick have been seminal simply for acknowledging the English monument as a work of art, I agree with Llewellyn that these studies are disappointing because they try to insert monuments into the contemporary art historical framework, which does not serve monuments well. Whinney’s Sculpture in Britain, and Physick’s 988 revision of it, runs into difficulties by discussing monuments together with other forms of sculpture within stylistic periods; the translation of the patron’s memory into image and epitaph is rarely addressed. Esdaile’s English Church Monuments, 50–840 does focus on the monument as a discrete phenomenon but tends to categorize monuments according to style and often fails to examine fully the role of the patron; see also Esdaile, The Life and Work of LouisFrançois Roubiliac. Esdaile’s large archive on British sculpture was taken up by Gunnis to form his Dictionary of British Sculptors, which, while undeniably useful for locating monuments and identifying authorship, does little to explain the proliferation of monuments in post-Reformation England or to examine societal concerns such as the death ritual or the political infrastructure that prompted the commissioning of these monuments. Esdaile’s extensive archive is now housed at the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino. 29 Penny, “English Church Monuments” and Church Monuments. 30 Craske, “The London Trade.” 3 Bindman and Baker, Roubiliac. Malcolm Baker’s ongoing extensive exploration of the making and viewing of sculpture in eighteenth-century Britain constitute the largest body of revisionist work on British sculpture. His contributions to the study of sculpture are too numerous to list here. Two of his larger and more significant publications are his contribution to Bindman and Baker, Roubiliac, and Baker, Figured in Marble. 32 Llewellyn, The Art of Death and Funeral Monuments. 33 Dublin’s statue of George I (now at the Barber Institute, Birmingham) was commissioned in 77 by the Corporation of the City of Dublin in commemoration of the suppression of a Jacobite movement the previous year. The idea for erecting a monument in the market place in Jersey had been entertained by the States of Jersey since 698, but only in 750 at the behest of one man (Abraham Gosset) was an image of the king decided upon, and the gilded lead statue was unveiled on 9 July 75. On the Dublin statue see Kelly, “A Sculptural Tale”; and Spencer-Longhurst and Naylor, “Nost’s Equestrian.” On the Jersey statue, see Legouix, “John Cheere’s Statue,” 278–83.

368

n o t e s t o pag e s 9–17

34 William Molyneux, The case of Ireland’s being bound by acts of parliament in England, stated (698), cited in Kidd, British Identities, 255. For a discussion of the emergence of Anglo-Irish identity, see Kidd, British Identities, 46–77 and 250–6. 35 Kidd, British Identities, 255. 36 On funeral sculpture in Ireland generally, see Harbison, Potterton and Sheehy, Irish Art, 26–30, 7–9. 37 Smith, European Vision, one of the seminal works on European perceptions of the New World, deals with Australasia. A proliferation of relevant scholarship also appeared in conjunction with the bicentenary of Australia in 988. 38 Nora, Realms of Memory. 39 The destruction of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in March 2003 is in itself an interesting study of the recognition of the symbolic power inherent in the destruction of a monument. 40 A case in point is the media coverage of a fire that destroyed one of the oldest Anglican churches in Canada. St John’s, in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, originally built in 754 and enlarged in 840, was burnt to the ground, the catastrophic result of a Hallowe’en prank in 200. Inside were several British monuments that dated from the early nineteenth century. Although not terribly elaborate, they were still fine specimens of sculpture that had few contemporary parallels in Canada. While the loss of the church made national headlines and provoked considerable grief, no mention was made, as far as I am aware, of the monuments within.

chapte r two  The figure was probably higher in the years preceding the American Revolution during the so-called Golden Age of the sugar plantations; Sheridan, “The Wealth,” 306. 2 The size of plantations in Jamaica also attests to the concentration of wealth: By 754 landholdings in Jamaica averaged ,045 acres, with 29 per cent of these being over ,000 acres and 4 per cent over 5,000 acres; Higman, Jamaica Surveyed, 6. For a lavish study of the Beckfords, see Hewat-Jaboor and McLeod, eds, William Beckford. 3 Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 37. 4 There are numerous other monuments, usually simple plaques, in other parish churches in Antigua and the other West Indian islands. See Appendix 4 for a comprehensive, although not complete, list. 5 Estimates of the new worth per free white person in the West Indies tallied nearly ten times that of a free white person in the southern American colonies (,200 versus 32); Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, 229–32; McCusker and Menard, The Economy, 6. 6 The largest concentration of British funeral monuments in Canada is in the Anglican churches in Nova Scotia. These date primarily from the early nineteenth century, once British settlement of Canada was firmly in place. Most of the monuments commemorate members of the families of officers who were stationed in the colony. The monuments tend to be rather prosaic designs, the most distinctive being the stock-in-trade urn motifs from the workshops of John Bacon the Younger. A fine example was destroyed in 200 in a fire that consumed the Anglican church in Lunenburg. n o t e s t o pag e s 20–7

369

7 Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, 385; Higman, Jamaica Surveyed, 7. 8 The phenomenon of absenteeism has been studied extensively, if not the individual absentees. Frank Pitman, Lowell Joseph Ragatz, and Orlando Patterson use absenteeism to support their theory of the fall of the planter class, while others, notably Edward Brathwaite and Michael Craton, look at the development of creole communities despite the high rates of absenteeism; see Pitman, The Development, 30–4; Ragatz, The Fall, 42–67; Patterson, The Sociology, 26–5, 278; Brathwaite, The Development; and Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 346–56. Edward Long, one of the earliest Jamaican (pro-slavery) historians to write on Jamaica, repeatedly lamented the effects of absenteeism on colonial life; Long, The History, especially vol. 2. On individual absentees, see especially Hewat-Jaboor and McLeod, eds, William Beckford; Taylor, “The Journal,” 67, passim; and Knight, Gentlemen of Fortune. 9 Greene, “Changing Identity,” especially 228–34. 0 Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 37; Greene, “Changing Identity,” 237.  Ariès, The Hour, 223–30, 30–0. 2 For adherents of the Anglican faith, images were thus theoretically justified and needed such justification amid accusations of idolatry during the reign of Elizabeth and then again under Cromwell; Llewellyn, The Art, 22–3, and Funeral Monuments, 25–8 and 374–7. 3 Craske, “The London Trade,” 66–77. 4 Ariès, The Hour, 229–33; Llewellyn, Funeral Monuments, 275–7; Craske, “The London Trade.” 5 Miège, New State of England, 49, quoted in Borsay, The English, 226–7. 6 Miège, New State of England, 5, quoted in Borsay, The English, 229. 7 Defoe, The Complete English Tradesmen, 246, quoted in Borsay, The English, 229. 8 Reynolds, “Discourse XI ,” in Discourses on Art, 69. 9 Borsay, The English; Wilson, The Sense. 20 Defoe found the bathing “more a sport and a diversion than a physical prescription for health.” For this quotation and an examination of the popularity of Bath, see Little, “Augustan Bath,” 304–6. 2 Eustace, “William III , Queen Square, Bristol, 73–736,” in Michael Rysbrack, 23–33; Whinney, Sculpture in Britain, 78, 80–. 22 Henry Cheere and Robert Taylor were knighted for their services to the City of London; Craske, “Contacts and Contracts,” 94–3; Binney, Sir Robert Taylor; Bindman and Baker, Roubiliac. Artists generally gained more respect in the eighteenth century as the notion of individual genius took hold in England. Roubiliac in particular garnered considerable respect, while Joseph Wilton was appointed sculptor in ordinary to George III . For near contemporary, highly opinionated biographies of various sculptors’ lives, see Smith, Nollekens. Smith’s life of Wilton is particularly revealing of Wilton’s social aspirations; Smith, Nollekens, vol. 2, 64–82. 23 Jerome S. Handler, “Father Antoine Biet’s Visit to Barbados in 654,” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 32 (967): 67–8, quoted in Greene, “Changing Identity,” 224.

370 n o t e s t o pag e s 29–32

24 Quoted in Greene, “Changing Identity,” 23. 25 Nearly all of the churches in Barbados were rebuilt following the devastating 780 hurricane; Hill, “Historic Churches.” 26 Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 339; Greene, “Changing Identity,” 25–2, passim. 27 For a comparison of the degree of settlement in the British West Indies, see Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 34–39. 28 On the Codringtons, see Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 329–3. 29 Quoted in Lewis, “English Commemorative,” 2. 30 For a case study of Barbados, see Greene, “Changing Identity.” 3 Greene, “Changing Identity,” 27. 32 On the formation of English (or British) identities in England, see Colley, Britons; Newman, The Rise; and Wilson, The Sense. Colin Kidd offers an interesting case study of Ireland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; Kidd, British Identities, 46–8. 33 On the romance and significance of the sea, see Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 322–4. 34 The numerous devastating hurricanes and earthquakes that have hit the West Indies, as well as the eruption of the volcano on Montserrat, destroyed several monuments, thus making an accurate count of all monuments impossible. 35 Zuckerman, “Identity,” 5–57, especially 6. 36 Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 333–5; Craton and Walvin, A Jamaican, 84. 37 Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 324–7; Ragatz, The Fall, 3; Craton, Testing the Chains, 25. 38 Zuckerman, “Identity,” 43. 39 Zuckerman compares British relations with the indigenous populations to those of the French and the Spanish; Zuckerman, “Identity,” 45–7. 40 For comparative tables, see Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 38–9. 4 Long, The History, vol. 2, 278 and 279. 42 Borsay, The English, 20–2; McKendrick, “The Commercialization of Fashion,” in McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb, The Birth, 55. 43 Greene, “Changing Identity,” 245, emphasis in the original. 44 Quoted in ibid., 247, emphasis in the original. 45 See Hewat-Jaboor, “Fonthill House: ‘One of the Most Princely Edifices in the Kingdom,’” in Hewat-Jaboor and McLeod, eds, William Beckford, 5–72; Aldrich, “William Beckford’s Abbey at Fonthill: From the Picturesque to the Sublime,” in Hewat-Jabbor and McLeod, eds, William Beckford, 7–35; Hewat-Jaboor and McLeod, eds, William Beckford. 46 On the Countess of Home, see Lewis, “Elizabeth,” 443–53; and Knight, Gentlemen, 53– 64. 47 Knight, Gentlemen, 60–3; Taylor, “The Journal.” 48 Contemporary comments about the Barbadians’ lack of interest in attending church could also be applied to other West Indians; see Greene, “Changing Identity,” 225, 25–2. 49 Bindman and Baker, Roubiliac, 7–8, 3–8, and passim. 50 Ariès, The Hour, 22. 5 Craske explores this phenomenon, especially with reference to Rysbrack’s monument to the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim; Craske, “The London Trade,” 66–77.

n o t e s t o pag e s 33– 40

371

52 While the House of Assembly granted Selwyn’s family 2,500, the Assembly would not pay for Albinia’s return voyage to England; Cundall, The Governors, 0–; Lewis, “English Commemorative,” 49–50. 53 Lewis, “Elizabeth,” 444. 54 Ibid., 447. 55 For some unknown reason, the organ was never installed; Knight, Gentlemen, 53. 56 Leslie, A New and Exact, 37–8. 57 Long, The History of Jamaica, quoted in Madden, A Twelvemonth’s Residence, vol. , 5. 58 Refer to Taylor, “The Journal,” 72 and 8n9, although she does not specifically ascribe lunacy to intermarriage in the small West Indian elite community. 59 Long, The History, vol. 2, 26. 60 Madden, A Twelvemonth’s Residence, vol. , 52; Nugent, Lady Nugent’s Journal. 6 Edwards, The History, vol. 2, 0. In the early nineteenth century, Lady Nugent was appalled at the quantities of food served and eaten in Jamaica: “The men eat like cormorants and drink like porpoises”; Nugent, Lady Nugent’s Journal, 8, also 57, 58, 64–5, 68, 70, 79, 90–. 62 Long, The History, vol. , 33. References to balls and other polite entertainments are scattered throughout Leslie, A New and Exact; Edwards, The History; and Nugent, Lady Nugent’s Journal. 63 Greene quotes several late-seventeenth-century commentaries on the Englishness of Barbadians; Greene, “Changing Identity,” 23. 64 Long, The History, vol. 2, 520–. 65 Ibid., 522, emphasis in the original. 66 Andrews and Andrews, eds, Journal, 5. 67 Long on the early plantation houses: “[The planters’] general rule was, to build what they called a make-shift; so that it was not unusual to see a plantation adorned with a very expensive set of works, of brick or stone, well-executed; and the owner residing in a miserable, thatched hovel, hastily put together with wattles and plaister [sic], damp, unwholesome, and infested with every species of vermin”; Long, The History, vol. 2, 22. Edwards called them little more than barns despite the great feasts that would be put up in them; Edwards, The History, vol. 2, 0. 68 Fraser et al., A-Z of Barbadian, 73–4; Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 35. St Nicholas Abbey, Drax Hall, also in Barbados, and Bacon’s Castle, in Virginia, are the only surviving Jacobean houses in the Atlantic colonies. 69 Greene, “Changing Identity,” 224. The English in Spanish Town were a little less stubborn, adapting and expanding the basic design of the original Spanish town and its architecture; Long, The History, vol. 2, 2–2. 70 Greene, “Changing Identity,” 25; Hill, Historic Churches; Lewis, “English Commemorative,” 25–40. 7 William Doyle, Some Account of the British Dominions beyond the Atlantic (London, 770), 37, quoted in Greene, “Changing Identity,” 252. 72 On Price riding to church and his lack of involvement in his estates, see Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 348 and 334.

372 n o t e s t o pag e s 41– 9

73 The elder Price perceived England as home, although he had never been there; Craton and Walvin, A Jamaican, 67. 74 Leslie, A New and Exact, 38. 75 Craton and Walvin, A Jamaican, 72, and on Sir Charles Price more generally, 7–94. 76 Long, The History, vol. 2, 76n. 77 Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 334, and on the Price dynasty, 332–5, 348. 78 Long, The History, vol. 2, 76. 79 Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 334. 80 Long, The History, vol. 2, 77. 8 Craton and Walvin, A Jamaican, 7. 82 On the pursuit of status, sociability, and public works, see Borsay, The English, 250–83. On Price and road building, see Craton and Walvin, A Jamaican, 82–3. 83 The controversy is recounted in detail in Metcalf, Royal Government, 22–3, 26, 30–3, 37, 4–4; and in Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 333–4. 84 Craton and Walvin, A Jamaican, 7. 85 It is tempting to speculate that the marble was indigenous, as Long noted a quarry of black marble along the road to The Decoy but stated that it had never been worked; Long, The History, vol. 2, 79. 86 Price’s tomb was moved to the cemetery in Spanish Town in 932; Cundall, Historic Jamaica, 259–62. 87 Ariès remarked on the prevalence of the box tomb in Virginia; Ariès, The Hour, 339–40. 88 Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 348. On the subsequent life of the Price dynasty, see Craton and Walvin, A Jamaican, especially 55–82. 89 Education systems in Virginia and New England were much farther advanced; Yale, Harvard, and the College of William and Mary were founded in the seventeenth century. 90 Long devotes an entire chapter to education, lamenting the poor state of educational facilities in Jamaica for both boys and girls and the loss of so many young men to Britain; Long, The History, vol. 2, 246–60. 9 Ibid., 246–7. 92 Taylor, “The Journal,” 75, passim. 93 Fraser et al., A-Z of Barbadian, 3–4; Greene, “Changing Identity,” 260–3. 94 Connell, “Some Church Monuments,” 0. 95 Taylor, “The Journal,” 74–7. 96 Leslie, A New and Exact, 38. 97 Long remarked in 770 that “some labourers of the Lord’s vineyard have at times been sent, who were much better qualified to be retailers of salt-fish, or boatswains to privateers, than ministers of the Gospel”; Long, The History, vol. 2, 238. 98 Ibid., 250. 99 Nugent, Lady Nugent’s Journal, 98. 00 Cox-Johnson, John Bacon. 0 Rose Hall still exists and is now a museum. It became the seat of the legend of Rosa the Witch (a descendant of the Rosa who is commemorated by the monument). For the history of Rose Hall, see Shore, In Old, 3–62; and Cundall, Historic Jamaica, 34. n o t e s t o pag e s 49–59

373

02 Llewellyn, The Art, 73–9, passim; Litten, The English. Horace Walpole’s description of the Duke of Newcastle erupting into great sobs at the funeral of George II is one of the more humourous contemporary commentaries on affectation of grief; see Walpole, Walpole’s Corr., vol. 9, 322–3. 03 Ariès, The Hour, 322, 34–6; Bindman, “The Consolation,” 25–46; Bindman and Baker, Roubiliac, 24–32; Craske, “The London Trade,” 273–3. 04 Bindman and Baker, Roubiliac. 05 Ariès explores the prevalence of these phrases in monuments in Europe, mostly in terms of the affections of the family – conjugal, paternal, or filial love – replacing noble, official sentiments or statements in earlier monuments. Ariès, The Hour, 230. 06 Bindman and Baker, Roubiliac, 68–9. 07 Stapleton is not one of the names included in the list of landholders in Jamaica, compiled by Edward Long circa 750; BL Add. MS . 2436. Nor is a Stapleton listed in the “List of Landholders in the Island of Jamaica together with the number of Acres each person Possesses taken from the Quick Rent Books in the Year 754,” PRO CO 42/3. However, the family did have extensive plantations in the Leeward Islands; Johnston, “The Stapleton Sugar.” 08 The monument was destroyed in the 843 earthquake. The epitaph and a description are published in [Flannigan], Antigua, vol. 2, 223–4. 09 Penny, Church Monuments. 0 Craton, “Reluctant Creoles,” 329.  Craske, “The London Trade,” 0–54. 2 Greene, “Changing Identity,” 240. 3 Cundall, Historic Jamaica, 343. 4 Craske, “The London Trade,” 9, 85–93. 5 Llewellyn, The Art, 6, 63–4; Litten, The English, 73–94; Gittings, Death, Burial, 66–87. 6 Gittings, Death, Burial, 203–5; Stone, The Family, 95; Craske, “The London Trade,” 249. 7 Craske, “The London Trade,” 25. 8 Ibid., 252–3. 9 Bonomi, Under the Cope, 72. As early as the 720s the Massachusetts Congregationalist minister Cotton Mather was unhappy with a congregation of a thousand, calling it “Thinner ... than Ordinary”; quoted in Bonomi, Under the Cope, 90. 20 Mayer, King’s Chapel, 0; Foote, Annals, 43–4. 2 Embury, Early American, 59. 22 Foote, Annals, 45. 23 The portico, whose columns are made of wood, was not added until 785–87; Mayer, King’s Chapel, 7–9. 24 Entry for William Shirley in the DNB ; Schutz, William Shirley. 25 Apthorp was born in 698 in England and was educated at Eton. He moved to Boston sometime before 726 and quickly rose to prominence, becoming the agent for the colony. His eldest daughter, Grizzell, married Barlow Trecothick, later Lord Mayor of London, and his fourth son, East Apthorp, built Christ Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was viewed with jealousy as an attempt to institute Episcopacy in the American colonies; Bridgman, Memorials, 276–8. 374 n o t e s t o pag e s 59–74

26 Bahne, The Complete, 3. 27 Kidd offers an interesting comparison in the formation of Irish identities; Kidd, British Identities, 46–8. 28 Schomburgk, The History, 326–7; and [Frere], A Short History, 68. 29 Knight, Gentlemen, 62. 30 Foote, Annals, 20, also 47–8. 3 The inscription is dated May 766.

chapte r three  Joseph Wilton did send an assistant to oversee the erection of the statues of William Pitt in Charleston and New York and the statue of George III in New York, but these were prestigious and expensive public commissions; see chapter 7, 220, 224, and 34–2. 2 The public statues include those of Pitt in New York and Charleston, the equestrian statue of George III in New York, and the funeral monument to Sir Basil Keith in Spanish Town. These are discussed in detail in subsequent chapters. The official appointment of Wilton as sculptor in ordinary to His Majesty is preserved in the Royal Academy Library, London. 3 Lewis, “Elizabeth,” 443–53; PRO PROB /2, Elizabeth, Countess of Home, d. 784. 4 See Appendix 4 for a list of most of the monuments in the West Indies and colonial America. 5 Taylor, “The Journal”; Knight, Gentlemen, 56–64. 6 On Cheere’s business practices, see Craske, “Contacts and Contracts,” especially 07. 7 Gunnis recorded Scheemakers’s movements; Gunnis, Dictionary, 34. Craske suggested that he was driven out by Henry Cheere’s success; Craske, “Contacts and Contracts,” 06. 8 Smith, Nollekens, vol. 2, 68–9; Cox-Johnson, John Bacon, 7–8. 9 On the decline of the Mason’s Company, see Craske, “Contacts and Contracts,” 04–5. 0 Marcus Binney’s biography of Taylor as an architect remains the best source for his career as a sculptor; Binney, Sir Robert Taylor. On his clientele, see Craske, “Contacts and Contracts,” 06; and Binney, Sir Robert Taylor, 33, 60.  Fraser et al., A-Z of Barbadian, 68–9. 2 Oliver, ed., “Monumental Inscriptions,” vol. 2, 78–85, 37–42, 82–90, 272–9, 304–0, and 37–82. 3 See also the monument to Joseph Lowe, d. 827, by William Spence in St Michael’s Parish Church, Bridgetown, Barbados. 4 See, for example, “Stowage of the British Slave Ship ‘Brookes’ under the Regulated Slave Trade Act of 788.” Broadside published in 789. 5 Little, “Augustan Bath,” 305. 6 Ibid., 307. 7 For a comparison of the Cheeres’ and Rysbrack’s clientele, see Craske, “Contacts and Contracts.” 8 See chapter 5, 60–3. 9 On Roubiliac’s working methods, see Bindman and Baker, Roubiliac. n o t e s t o pag e s 74– 92

375

20 The drawing is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Prints and Drawing Department. 2 On Roubiliac’s workshop practices, see Bindman and Baker, Roubiliac, 234–6, passim. 22 On Henry Cheere’s career, see Craske, “Contacts and Contracts,” 94–3. On John Cheere’s career, see Friedman and Clifford, The Man. 23 I am currently writing a book on Joseph Wilton, tentatively titled Whigs and Sculpture: Joseph Wilton and the Political Use of the Antique in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Smith, Nollekens, vol. 2, 64–82, remains the best published source on Wilton’s biography. On Bacon’s workshop practices, see Cox-Johnson, John Bacon. 24 Collard, “Nelson in Old Montreal,” 20–; “Some Nelson Statues,” 4–7. The Coade monuments in the West Indies are those to Bernard Birch (d. 782) and to Elizabeth Minto (d. 783) in St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay; to Finlater and to Lawrence, also in Jamaica; to Henrietta Cornelia Skerrett (d. 797); to Emma Saunders (d. 797); and to Brownbill in St Antony, Montserrat (presumably no longer extant). This list was compiled from Coade’s Gallery, or Exhibition in Artificial Stone, xii; Kelly, Mrs. Coade’s Stone, 294; and Gunnis, Dictionary, 08. I could not locate the Finlater or Lawrence monuments when I was in Jamaica. 25 Busco, Sir Richard. Nollekens began his career by piecing together bits of antiquities for Grand Tourists. More than any other sculptor, he created and reproduced multiple copies of busts, such as those of George III and William Pitt the Younger. Smith, Nollekens, remains the best, although highly prejudiced, source on Nollekens. Many of Flaxman’s designs were made intentionally for multiple reproduction, especially those for Josiah Wedgwood; Tattersall, “Flaxman and Wedgwood,” in Bindman, ed., John Flaxman, 47–70; Bindman, ed., John Flaxman. 26 The contract is now located in the Royal Academy Library, London. 27 “The son with whom she died reclines upon that Breast which would have nourished him had the Almighty so permitted.” 28 William Young died in 788. PRO PROB /68, Sir William Young, d. 788. 29 Some other examples of Wilton’s contracts survive in the Royal Academy Library, London. 30 Wilton also used the same composition for the monument to Charlotte St Quentin, d. 762, in Harpham, Yorkshire. 3 Craske, “Contacts and Contracts”; Bindman and Baker, Roubiliac; Baker, “Collaboration and Sub-contracting in Eighteenth-Century British Sculptors’ Workshops,” in Figured in Marble, 70–84. 32 Whiffen and Koeper, American Architecture, 45. 33 Cox-Johnson, John Bacon. 34 Coade’s Gallery; Kelly, Mrs. Coade’s Stone. 35 Friedman and Clifford, The Man, 6; Thomas Hollis, a republican and inveterate walker in London, recorded in his diary several visits to Wilton’s workshop, on one occasion to see the statue of William Pitt the Elder, which Wilton was just finishing for Charleston; the manuscript diaries of Thomas Hollis, vol. 5, 4 March 769, Houghton Library, Harvard University. On the contrast between accessibility to sculptors’ and masons’ yards, see Craske, “Contacts and Contracts,” 04–5. 376 n o t e s t o pag e s 92– 6

36 These are recounted in chapter 5. 37 Gunnis, Dictionary, 343. 38 Several drawings by Robert Taylor in the Taylorian Institute employ the palm frond motif. Another drawing at the institute suggests the original appearance of the monument to George Hinde in Kingston Parish Church before it was damaged in the 907 earthquake. Captain Lawrence-Archer describes the Hinde monument as a much more sumptuous monument than has survived; Lawrence-Archer, Monumental Inscriptions, 80. 39 Gentleman’s Magazine 58 (788): 930. 40 Sotheby’s New York, Arcade Sale: Old Master and European Paintings, 9–20 July 990. 4 Gunnis, Dictionary, 6. 42 Baker, Figured in Marble, 70–84. 43 Cox-Johnson, John Bacon, 3. 44 In 99 I found several pieces of broken marble sitting on top of inscription panels exactly where they were located when some of the monuments were photographed nearly forty years before. 45 The sketch for the monument is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Prints and Drawings Department.

chapte r four  Horace Walpole to Lady Ailesbury, 27 September 76, in Walpole, Walpole’s Corr., vol. 38, 28. 2 Obviously, my account of the shift in Parliament to an imperial stance is severely truncated. For a detailed, succinct account, including the Byng controversy, see Rogers, Whigs and Cities, 87–29. 3 Ibid., 04–0. 4 A significant body of scholarship about Stowe has emerged since the late 980s, when the landscape garden was acquired by the National Trust. The seminal works are a series of essays written by George Clarke and Michael Gibbon and published in the Stoic, the Stowe School journal in the 970s. For a more accessible discussion of the Elysian Fields, see Clarke, “Grecian Taste.” See also chapter 5. 5 See Brewer, Party Ideology, 96–2; and Peters, Pitt and Popularity. 6 Walpole, Geo. II , vol. 2, 290. The Rochefort invasion, intended by Pitt to provide a distraction for the French from the Prussia-Hanover front, proved to be a tactical disaster, as it was thwarted by lack of communication and poor management. The Citizen “spared only the Vowel of Mr. Pitt’s Name” in demanding “an Account of the late Expence and Disgrace”; quoted in Peters, Pitt and Popularity, 95. For a detailed discussion of the Rochefort debacle, see Peters, Pitt and Popularity, 9–02. 7 Walpole, Geo. II , vol. 3, 50–. 8 Henry Reeve, ed., The Greville Memoirs, vol. 5 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 888), 22–3, quoted in Gibbon, “The History of Stowe XVI ,” 5. See also Smith, ed., The Grenville Papers, vol. 3, lxxxix, n. 9 On the effeminate body politic, see Wilson, The Sense, 85–205. n o t e s t o pag e s 96–108

377

0  2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20

2 22 23 24 25

26

27 28 29

30 3

32

On Pitt’s army policy, see Rogers, Whigs and Cities, 05, 09–0, passim. Brewer, Party Ideology, 96–, passim. Grosley, A Tour, vol. , 27. Journals of the House of Commons, vol. 28, 643. Gentleman’s Magazine 29 (759): 495. Walpole, Geo. II , vol. 3, 75. McNairn, Behold the Hero, 0. Ibid., especially 40–6. Gentleman’s Magazine 29 (759): 469. The Duke of Newcastle to the Earl of Hardwicke, 5 October 759, BL Add. MS 32897, folio 88. On Pitt’s editing of the letter, see Newcastle to Hardwicke, 5 October 759, BL Add. MS 32897, folio 88. The letter was published in the London Gazette, 6 October 759, and reprinted in Gentleman’s Magazine 29 (759): 466–70. News of the victory was published the following day; Gentleman’s Magazine 29 (759): 495. Quoted in Wilson, The Sense, 87. Ibid., 87–8. For an excellent account of the Vernon phenomenon, see Wilson, The Sense, 40–65. “On the Death of Lord Howe,” Gentleman’s Magazine 28 (758): 530. The monument was originally situated high on the wall in the south aisle of the nave; Combe, The History, vol. 2, 34. It was taken down, and the pyramid, arms, coronet, and crest were removed. The remains are in the northeast chapel in the north aisle of the nave, usually partially hidden by stacks of chairs. On the unveiling, see Gentleman’s Magazine 32 (762): 340; and London Magazine 3 (762): 395. See also A.B., “Remarks in Westminster Abbey,” London Magazine 32 (763): 492. Gentleman’s Magazine 29 (759): 495. Walpole, Geo. II , vol. 3, 80. On Wolfe’s military skills and Townshend’s and Murray’s questioning of them, see McNairn, Behold the Hero, 2–5. On Wolfe’s appraisal of the Highlanders, see his letter to William Rickson: “I should imagine, that two or three independent Highland companies might be of use; they are hardy, intrepid, accustomed to a rough country, and no great mischief if they fall”; Wolfe to William Rickson, 9 June 75, quoted in Waugh, James Wolfe, 0. Walpole, Geo. II , vol. 3, 5. “Lines occasioned by the death of Gen. Wolfe,” Scots Magazine 2 (October 759): 527, quoted in McNairn, Behold the Hero, 44. For other similar poems, see McNairn, Behold the Hero, 44–6. Wolfe’s copy of Thomas Gray’s An Elegy Written in a County Church Yard (London, 754) is now in the collection of the Thomas Fischer Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. Although such lines as “The paths of glory lead but to the grave” and “On some fond breast the parting soul relies” are underlined, there is nothing to suggest that Wolfe read the Elegy the night before he died. Indeed, his marginalia indicate that he was more concerned with such prosaic issues as advancement through patronage than with talent 378 n o t e s t o pag e s 108–14

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 4 42 43 44 45 46 47

48

49

50

and wealth. At the bottom of page seven, he noted: “How ineffectual are often our own unaided exertions – especially in early Life? How many shining Lights owe to Patronage & Affluence what their Talents would never procure them?” And at the bottom of page eight, he wrote: “The Poet might have said with Truth that Penury forbids even the performance of Common Duty.” Royal Magazine  (759): 270; London Magazine 28 (759): 580. Public Advertiser,  November 759. Public Advertiser, 3 November 759. Grosley, A Tour, vol. , 205. Walpole, Geo. II , vol. 3, 80. Ibid. Bindman and Baker, Roubiliac, 9–23; Craske, “Westminster Abbey, 720–70: A Public Pantheon Built upon Private Interest,” in Wrigley, Pantheons, 57–80. Grosley, A Tour, vol. , 204–5. Ibid., 205. Horace Walpole to Henry Seymour Conway, 5 August 76, in Walpole, Walpole’s Corr., vol. 38, 09–2. Bindman and Baker, Roubiliac, 3. Walpole to Conway, 5 August 76, in Walpole, Walpole’s Corr., vol. 38, 09–2. Zachary Pearce to Horace Walpole, 0 July 76, in Walpole, Walpole’s Corr., vol. 40, 200–2. Roubiliac indicated in a letter to the Duke of Newcastle that his submission was delayed due to ill health; the letter is reproduced in Esdaile, The Life, 6. This list of entrants was drawn up from a variety of contemporary sources: on Wilton, Adam, and Chambers, see Walpole to Mann,  August 760, in Walpole, Walpole’s Corr., vol. 2, 428; on Adam, see also Mann to Walpole, 2 July 760 and 3 September 760, in Walpole, Walpole’s Corr., vol. 2, 42–4, 436; on Roubiliac and Cheere, see Esdaile, The Life, 6; and Gentleman’s Magazine 57 (788): 668–89; on Rysbrack, see Webb, Michael Rysbrack, 204; on Carlini and Tyler, see Imperial Magazine  (760): 247. Several surviving drawings for the monument are discussed in detail in this chapter. Some of the drawings are signed, while others have been firmly attributed. In a letter to Horace Mann, Walpole stated that “the designs [for the monument to Wolfe] have been laid before my Lord Chamberlain several months”; Walpole to Mann,  August 760, in Walpole, Walpole’s Corr., vol. 2, 428. Roubiliac sent his competition entry to the Duke of Newcastle in January 760, and in an accompanying letter, dated 8 January, he apologized for submitting a late entry, implying that the other entries had already been submitted; this letter is reproduced in Esdaile, The Life, 6. “The designs have been laid before my Lord Chamberlain several months: Wilton, Adam, Chambers, and others, all gave in their drawings immediately; & I think the Duke of Devonshire decided the first”; Walpole to Mann,  August 760, in Walpole, Walpole’s Corr., vol. 2, 428. Chatsworth, the 4th Duke of Devonshire’s Correspondence, 402.7, Richard, Earl Temple, to the Duke of Devonshire, 6 March 760. I am grateful to His Grace the Duke of Devonshire for permission to consult the 4th Duke’s Correspondence in the Chatsworth Library. n o t e s t o pag e s 114–18

379

5 By 759 only two of three monuments had been completed: that to Admiral Graves (d. 755, Antony, Cornwall) and that to Pyke Crouch (d. 756, Buntingford, Herts); Gunnis, Dictionary, 437. Wilton had also been awarded the monument to Admiral Temple West (d. 759, Westminster Abbey), which he had yet to complete when he won the Wolfe competition. 52 Grosley, A Tour, vol. , 02–3. In a recent discussion of the Wolfe monument, Malcolm Baker ascribes a date of c. 760 to a drawing of the Wolfe monument and attributes the drawing to Wilton and Chambers; Baker, Figured in Marble, 46. I contend that the date of this drawing is after the monument was completed (i.e., post-773), as it does not accord with the description of the model as Grosley saw it in Wilton’s studio in 765. According to Grosley, the model included “a group of military men and Canadians.” While two Highland soldiers were included in the final monument (and in the drawing) the Canadians were not, indicating that the design underwent some changes after 765. 53 Walpole, Anecdotes, vol. 3, 56. 54 For a discussion of the Wolfe busts and Richmond’s involvement, see Kerslake, Early Georgian, 37–8; and McNairn, Behold the Hero, 63–9. 55 According to George Vertue, Robert Taylor – who was a much less experienced sculptor – was given the commission by the Common Council of the City of London because he was “their Country man & a Cittizen”; “Vertue Notebooks III ,” Walpole Society 22 (934): 22. 56 Coutu, “‘A Very Grand.’” 57 Wilson, The Sense, 85–205. Gallic affection and Gallophobia are themes treated throughout Newman, The Rise. 58 Coutu, “William Chambers and Joseph Wilton,” in Harris and Snodin, eds, Sir William Chambers, 76–8. 59 Scots Magazine 2 (759): 64–3. 60 The entire article is transcribed in Appendix 2. The advice sounds very similar to that given by Joshua Reynolds in his discourse on sculpture in 780; Reynolds, Discourses on Art, 84–8. 6 A seventh design, by William Tyler, was exhibited at the Society of Arts exhibition in 760. The reviewer for the Imperial Magazine wrote it off as “in a little Manner, and little noted” without describing it; Imperial Magazine  (760): 247. 62 Ibid. 63 Although these may not have been his exact words, it was widely reported that Wolfe died only after being satisfied that the French had been defeated; London Magazine 28 (759): 568, 580. See also Walpole, Geo. II , vol. 3, 76. 64 Malcolm Baker concurs that Wilton’s unfinished Wolfe monument did have significant bearing on West’s painting; Baker, Figured in Marble, 2. 65 Malcolm Baker has recently ascribed the design of the final monument to both Wilton and Chambers; Baker, Figured in Marble, 45–7. The two men did work together frequently, and Wilton executed Chambers’s designs for monuments to the Duke of Bedford and the Countess Mountrath, but in each instance when they did work together, the joint authorship was always acknowledged. There is no such evidence of collaboration for the Wolfe monument, and all contemporary reports clearly state that Wilton was 380 n o t e s t o pag e s 118–23

66 67

68 69 70 7 72 73 74 75 76

77 78 79 80 8 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

9

the winner of the competition and sole designer of the monument. On the collaboration between Wilton and Chambers, see Coutu, “William Chambers and Joseph Wilton,” in Harris and Snodin, eds, Sir William Chambers, 75–85. Baker, “Roubiliac’s Argyll,” 785–7. Horace Mann wrote to Walpole in July and September 760 stating that Bréton, a Frenchman, was carving the bas-relief for Adam for the Wolfe monument. Mann was mistaken: Bréton was more likely working on the bas-relief for the Roger Townshend monument for Westminster Abbey, which Adam had been awarded. The Townshend design is very close to Adam’s entry for the Wolfe monument; Mann to Walpole, 2 July 760 and 3 September 760, in Walpole, Walpole’s Corr., vol. 2, 42–4, 436. Gentleman’s Magazine 58 (789): frontispiece for January. On the Shannon monument, see Bindman and Baker, Roubiliac, 323–5, passim. Roubiliac received the Handel commission in 759, and the monument was unveiled in 762; Bindman and Baker, Roubiliac, 8–2, 23–3, 332–8, passim. Galt, The Life of Benjamin West, quoted in von Erffa and Staley, The Paintings, 23. Reynolds, Discourses on Art, 86–8. Gentleman’s Magazine 58 (789): 668–9. Brigden owned the model from which the print was made. Chatsworth, the 4th Duke of Devonshire’s Correspondence, 402.7, Richard, Earl Temple, to the Duke of Devonshire, 6 March 760. Smith, Nollekens, vol. 2, 73. George Hardinge to Horace Walpole, c. 2 June 77, in Walpole, Walpole’s Corr., vol. 35, 556; and Gentleman’s Magazine 43 (773): 94. Epaminondas had died in victory in the Battle of Mantinea in 326 B.C., and King Gustavus Adolphus had likewise succumbed in the Battle of Lützen in 632. Grosley, A Tour, vol. , 02–3. The legends and myths are recounted in McNairn, Behold the Hero, 80–. Alistair MacLeod’s award-winning novel has renewed the fame of the letter from Wolfe to his friend William Rickson; McLeod, No Great Mischief, especially 235–4. See Wilson, The Sense, 85–205. Baker, “Rococo Styles,” 306. Whinney, Sculpture in Britain, 266. Ibid. Wilson, The Sense, 39 ff. Walpole, Geo. II , vol. 3, 80. McNairn, Behold the Hero, 40–73, passim. See chapter 7. Grosley, A Tour, vol. , 02–3. On the fictions of the benevolent empire, see Wilson, The Sense. The paintings at Vauxhall commissioned by the patron Jonathan Tyers offer an interesting parallel study of public paintings for the new empire. For a comprehensive account, see Allen, Francis Hayman, 62–70; and Solkin, Painting for Money, 90–9. The paintings of the military and naval victories, like the Amherst and Clive paintings, have not survived. Fig. 4.8 is an engraving showing the naval victories, and a detailed n o t e s t o pag e s 125–39

381

92 93 94 95

96 97 98 99 00 0 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09

description of the military allegory was published in 764; unidentified newspaper cutting, 2 June 764, in Warwick Wroth Papers, Museum of London, vol. 3., 7. Unidentified newspaper cutting, 2 June 764, in Warwick Wroth Papers, Museum of London, vol. 3, 7. See also Solkin, Painting for Money, 90–9. OIOC , East India Court Minutes, B /76 (2 April 760–3 April 76), 30 July 760. Ibid. Smith, Nollekens, vol. 2, 73. Smith’s comments were all the more sarcastic if G.E. Lessing’s comments in Laokoön on a sculptor’s proficiency in the portrayal of the nude figure are taken into account; Lessing, Laokoön (766). On Wilton’s copies after the antique, see Mann to Walpole, 9 November 753, in Walpole, Walpole’s Corr., vol. 20, 397–8; and Coutu, “‘A Very Grand,’” 49, passim. The scholarship on Americanness in the eighteenth century is immense. For an interesting variant, see Kidd, British Identities, 263–9. For the most recent analyses of West’s painting, see Solkin, Painting for Money, 209–3; and McNairn, Behold the Hero, 09–64. The most recent account on the portraits of Wolfe is McNairn, Behold the Hero, 84– 204. On the efforts by Romney and Penny, see McNairn, Behold the Hero, 9–08. On Penny’s painting, see also Solkin, Painting for Money, 99–209. Solkin, Painting for Money, 209–. Reynolds, Discourses on Art, 48–53. Gentleman’s Magazine 43 (773): 524, 526. The Almack’s announcement and excerpts from some of the competition entries are recorded in McNairn, Behold the Hero, 82–90. Gentleman’s Magazine 43 (773): 66, and another transcription of the inscription in Gentleman’s Magazine 43 (773): 524. Gentleman’s Magazine 33 (763): 32; A.B., “Remarks in Westminster Abbey,” London Magazine 32 (763): 493. Rogers, Whigs and Cities, 9–20. Coutu, “William Chambers and Joseph Wilton,” in Harris and Snodin, eds, Sir William Chambers, 79–8; Marsden and Hardy, “‘O fair Britannia.’” Rogers, Whigs and Cities, 22–3.

chapte r five  For example, George Grenville was made a lord of the Admiralty in 744 and a lord of the Treasury in 747, as was George Lyttelton; William Pitt became vice treasurer of Ireland in 746, in addition to acquiring other posts; Henry Grenville was appointed governor of Barbados in 747; James Grenville was a lord of Trade and Plantations; and Thomas Grenville and Temple West made their marks in the navy as captains. 2 Nowhere was it explicitly stated that the statue was meant to be Walpole; doing so would have been too crass for Cobham. For a more elaborate discussion, see Clarke, “The History of Stowe X ,” especially 6.

382

n o t e s t o pag e s 140– 8

3 The continued success of the colony of Virginia depended on the tobacco trade, which Robert Walpole had threatened to destroy in 734 when he sought to introduce duties on tobacco imports. He desisted because of the furore caused by the Excise Crisis the previous year. Pennsylvania’s success had resulted not only from its trade, but also from the laws that Penn had instituted. 4 The attack on Walpole’s administration in the Palladian Bridge was carried over into print; see Gilpin, A Dialogue, 36–9. 5 Daniel Defoe’s A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (742) was one of the first. 6 Seeley, A Description (744). Other descriptions of Stowe were published before 744, such as Gilbert West’s poem Stowe, the Gardens of the Right Honourable Richard Lord Viscount Cobham (738), but they were not technically guides to the gardens. Samuel Richardson’s description, from which Seeley borrowed heavily, was only one part of the appendix to the third edition of Defoe’s, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (742), which Richardson edited. For a selection of descriptions of Stowe, see Clarke, ed. Descriptions. 7 Walpole, Geo. II , vol. 3, 80. 8 The earliest reference to the monument is in a letter from Henry Grenville to George Grenville dated 5 January 749. Henry rather parsimoniously inquired about the 5.0.0 fine paid to the dean and chapter of Westminster for the monument: “As the Expence of this monument is to be borne Equally by yourself, Ldy. Hester, & me, ought not Hetty to pay a third of this Charge?” The letter was sent from Barbados, San Marino; HEH , STG Box 24 (6). On  April 749 George Grenville paid 20.00 in half-burial fees to the dean and chapter of Westminster Abbey for the burial of Thomas Grenville plus a further 3.0 fine toward erecting a monument in the Abbey; Westminster Abbey Muniments, Funeral Fee Book, 742–60. 9 On Pitt’s involvement, see letters in Smith, ed., The Grenville Papers, vol. , 99–00, 03– 4. In a letter dated 4 December 752, Henry Grenville wrote to George Grenville: “The statuary you have Engag’d for the Monument, is Surely either a very Curious Artificer, or a very Negligent One, Since 5 years I think are now compleatly Ended since that Work was first resolved upon, & Undertaken”; HEH , STG Box 25 (53). By 758 George Grenville was trying to interest Rysbrack in taking over the project, but he proved too expensive for George’s tastes; BL Add MS 57807, folios 60–, George Grenville to Henry Grenville,  June 758. 0 Westminster Abbey Muniments, 493.  Pitt to George Grenville, 6 November 752, and Pitt to George Grenville, 29 January 754, in Smith, ed., The Grenville Papers, vol. , 99–00 and 03–4. 2 London Magazine 8 (749): 523. 3 Transcribed from George Bickham’s unauthorized The Beauties of Stow (750), 49. 4 Seeley, A Description (749), 2–2. 5 For the flooding of the valley and a description of its first design, see Seeley, A Description (749), 22. 6 Seeley, quoted in Bevington, “The Development,” 60.

n o t e s t o pag e s 151– 9

383

7 The inscription appeared in Gentleman’s Magazine 7 (747): 540. 8 The best secondary account of the Mathews-Lestock controversy can be found in the entries for each man in the DNB . 9 Gentleman’s Magazine 7 (747): 540. 20 The English translation is from Seeley, A Description (749), 2–2. 2 Gentleman’s Magazine 7 (747): 246 and 255. 22 Ibid., 246–7. 23 Gentleman’s Magazine 7 (747): 255. 24 “Some Records,” 92. 25 Wiggin, The Faction, 7. 26 See chapter 8. 27 The statue could still be seen in Rysbrack’s workshop in January 757; London Evening Post, 3 January 757. 28 Ibid. 29 In his correspondence with George Grenville, preserved in the Huntington Library and the British Museum, Henry Grenville regularly contrasted his tenure with that of his predecessor. 30 Sedgwick, The House, vol. 2, 389. 3 Schomburgk, The History, 326–7; and [Frere], A Short History, 68. 32 Greene, Changing Identity, 255. 33 Frere stated that Grenville had told John Fairchild, a member of the Barbados House of Assembly, and William Duke, the clerk of the assembly, about his desire for a statue. The leader of the “popular” party, John Lyte, the only potential threat to the passing of the resolution for the statue, was apparently bought off with a judgeship; [Frere], A Short History, cited in Schomburgk, The History, 328–9. 34 As Henry’s letters to George Grenville indicate, Henry was unusually preoccupied with his reputation, even by eighteenth-century standards. For example: “The Worst Thing I can learn [the Barbadians] say of me, is, that my Manner of life is too close, too near, & too covetous. The Truth is, I keep ‘em at a Distance, Suffer no Freedoms with my person, or Authority, & will not allow my House to be a Banqueting Place for Them”; HEH , STG Box 24 (8), Henry Grenville to George Grenville,  December 747. 35 London Evening Post, 3 January 757. 36 Michael J. Gibbon has suggested that since Pitt was often ill and away from Parliament, it was left to Temple to put much of the legislation through; Gibbon, “The History of Stowe XVI ,” 5. 37 Pitt to Temple, 3 November 759, in Smith, ed., The Grenville Papers, vol. , 330–; Peters, Pitt and Popularity, 52–3. 38 The portrait is now in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Smart, Allan Ramsay, 73–784, 36 and plate 35. 39 Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, 2. 40 Ibid., 25. 4 One of the more comprehensive analyses is Bevington, “The Development,” 52–6, passim.

384

n o t e s t o pag e s 159– 65

42 A bill exists for the recutting of the inscription, done after the column was moved; HEH , STG Accounts (Repairs) Box 2 (2), 2 July 76. 43 Clarke, “The History of Stowe XIX ,” 267. 44 The first recorded reference to the Wolfe obelisk is in a letter from Temple to Pitt, in PRO , Chatham MSS PRO 30/8/6, Temple to Pitt,  June 76. However, the wording in the letter suggests that Temple had thought of the obelisk before this date. 45 Seeley, Stow: A Description (763), 32. 46 Giambattista Borra was hired to improve Vanbrugh’s Boycott Pavilions by replacing the baroque pyramidal superstructures with classical shallow domes and cupolas in keeping with Temple’s more austere archeological tastes. A new three-arched bridge, complete with urns, was built over the small River Ouse, and the stone gates were moved further out to the edge of the property; Gibbon, “The History of Stowe XVIII ,” 200–5. 47 See Sarah Bridgeman’s 739 plan of Stowe, in Clarke, “The History of Stowe XIX ,” 267. 48 The classicizing element suggests Temple’s involvement; see Bevington, “The Development,” 60. 49 Montfauçon, Supplement au livre, vol. 6, ch. 3, 23–9; and The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 609. 50 HEH , STG Accounts (Repairs) Box 2 (4), 4 August 762, bill for cutting letters at the Cobham Pillar; George Clarke, “The History of Stowe X ,” 20. 5 The translation is from Seeley’s guidebook and is reproduced in Clarke, “The History of Stowe X ,” 20. 52 PRO , Chatham MSS , PRO 30/8/6 ff. 54–5, Temple to Pitt,  June 76. I am indebted to George Clarke for this and other references to Stowe in the Chatham MSS . 53 PRO , Chatham MSS , PRO 30/8/62 ff. 3–4, Temple to Lady Hester Pitt, 4 June 76. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 HEH , STG Accounts Box 4 (), 26 September 76. 57 For detailed discussion of the medallions, see Clarke, “The Medallions,” 66; and Eyres, “Interpretation,” 79–07. 58 For a discussion of the medals, see Eimer, “The Society’s Concern,” 753–62. 59 The names on the medallions do not always correspond to the medals. There were more medallions than there were medals; Eyres, “Interpretation,” 79–07, illustrates which battle was paired with which medallion. 60 PRO , Chatham MSS , PRO 30/8/6 f. 33, Temple to Lady Hester Pitt, 4 June 76. 6 Lloyd’s Evening Post, 9–2 July 762. 62 On the Felinghausen, Havannah, and Manila medallions, see Eyres, “Interpretation,” 98–00. 63 Coarelli, Guida archeologica, 75–6. The story of the ancient Temple of Concord was well known in the eighteenth century. See for example, Montfauçon, L’Antiquité expliquée, vol. 3, chs 0 and . The Temple of Concord may have well been a source for the Grecian Temple as it was first conceived. Philip Ayres notes the similarity of the proportion of width to height and the use of Ionic capitals in Palladio’s reconstruction of the Roman Temple of Concord in the fourth of his four books of architecture; Ayres, Classical Cul-

n o t e s t o pag e s 165–73

385

64 65 66 67 68

69 70 7 72 73 74

75

76 77 78

79 80

ture, 80, 06. For a thorough discussion on other architectural sources for the Temple of Concord and Victory, see Bevington, “The Development,” 52–6, passim. Temple to Wilkes, 4? June 76, in Smith, ed., The Grenville Papers, vol. , 456-8; PRO , Chatham MSS , PRO 30/8/6 ff. 67–8, Temple to Pitt,  July 762. Stuart took the diamond-shaped shields from Roman coins engraved with captured German shields; Clarke, “The Medallions,” 62. Peters, Pitt and Popularity, 240; Monitor, 9 June 762. Clarke, “The Medallions,” 64–5. On  July 762 Temple wrote to Pitt saying that he had changed his mind about the inscriptions and that he had just come up with the inscriptions that were ultimately used. These were the same as what appeared in the 9–2 July 762 issue of the Lloyd’s Evening Post; PRO , Chatham MSS , PRO 30/8/6 f. 67–8, Temple to Pitt,  July 762. Seeley, Stow: A Description (763), 3. Temple to Wilkes, 6 October 76, in Smith, ed., The Grenville Papers, vol. , 404–5. PRO , Chatham MSS , PRO 30/8/6 f. 67–68, Temple to Pitt,  July 762. PRO , Chatham MSS , PRO 30/8/62 f. 9, Temple to Lady Hester Pitt, 28 October 764; Bevington, “The Grand Avenue.” PRO , Chatham MSS , PRO 30/8/62 f. 9, Temple to Lady Hester Pitt, 24 October 764. The erroneous idea that the Temple of Concord and Victory was dedicated to the 763 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years War, first appeared in Seeley’s 788 guidebook; Seeley, Stow: A Description (788), 29. Emberley spent twelve days “Cutting Letters on the Oblesk in the park”; HEH , STG Accounts (Repairs) Box 2 (4), 4 August 762. Edward Batchelor, another mason, was paid for “Writeing [sic] in the Greschon [sic] Temple”; HEH , STG Accounts (Repairs) Box 2 (folder), 25 September 762. Emberley spent six days “putting up Medals in the Gretion [sic] Tempel [sic]”; HEH , STG Accounts (Repairs) Box 2 (6), 8 October 763. On gilding at the temple, see HEH , STG Accounts Box 5 () to 28 July 764. On carving the egg and tongue mouldings on the door at the temple, see HEH , STG Accounts Box 5 (0), 4 August 764. Walpole to Mann, 20 June 762, in Walpole, Walpole’s Corr., vol. 22, 42. Monitor, 22 May 762. Monitor, 2 June 762; 3 July 762; 24 July 762; 28 August 762; 4 September 762; 9 October 762. On the subsidy, see the Monitor, 9 June 762. See also Peters, Pitt and Popularity, 24. Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, 2. Lady Temple wrote the following verse describing the injustices done to her husband by the king: To honour virtue in the Lord of Stowe, The power of courtiers can no farther go; Forbid him court, from council blot his name, E’en these distinctions cannot rase his fame. Friend to the liberties of England’s state, ‘Tis not to Courts he looks to make him great:

386

n o t e s t o pag e s 173–7

He to his much lov’d country trusts his cause, And dares asserts the honour of her laws. Lady Temple, in Smith, ed., The Grenville Papers, vol. 2, 55n2. 8 Seeley, Stow: A Description (763), 3. 82 Personal communication with George Clarke, early 990s. 83 Temple actually adjusted some of Cobham’s monuments and expunged the element of satire: He allowed the Temple of Modern Virtue to disintegrate, and it correspondingly disappeared from Seeley’s guides, presumably because it had become an embarrassment, and he removed the epitaph to Fido, the Italian greyhound, from the back of the Temple of British Worthies.

chapte r six  On identity formation among the Canadiens vis-à-vis the French, see Paquet and Wallot, “Nouvelle-France,” 95–0. 2 For a fuller discussion of the Royal Proclamation Act and its implications, see Tousignant, “The Integration”; and Paquet and Wallot, “Nouvelle-France,” 0. 3 On the removal of the bust, see Collard, “American Invaders”; and Roy, “Réponses,” 2–5. The bust is now in the collection of the McCord Museum of Canadian History in Montreal. The authorship of the bust is confirmed by a reference to the bust and a copy of the inscription in a collection of papers related to Wilton in the Library of the Royal Academy, London. They were acquired by the academy from Sir Alexander Boyle, a descendant of Wilton. 4 The inscription is among the Boyle papers in the Library of the Royal Academy, London. 5 For biographies of Hanway, see Pugh, Remarkable Occurrences; and Taylor, Jonas Hanway. Hanway is also discussed at length in Andrew, Philanthropy and Police. 6 The amount of scholarship on these pursuits and on the rise of philanthropy in general is significant and continues to grow. See Andrew, Philanthropy and Police; Colley, Britons, ch. 2, 55–00; Solkin, Painting for Money, 57–66; and numerous histories on the individual charities. 7 Taylor, Jonas Hanway, 24, passim. 8 Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, 99. Scholars agree that such an open-door policy had something to do with the war, as it would increase the number of troops. In fact, the decision had devastating consequences, namely a significant increase in infant mortality. The policy was ultimately rescinded. 9 These schemes were complemented by the establishment of the Magdalen charity, in which Hanway was significantly involved, to train repentant prostitutes as house servants; Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, 9–27. 0 Colley, Britons, 0.  See for example, Jonas Hanway, “Reasons for an Augmentation.” 2 As it turned out, the expected flood did not occur. For example, of the 4,787 boys who had joined the Marine Society, only 295 were accounted for at the end of the war. There

n o t e s t o pag e s 177– 86

387

3 4

5 6

7 8

9 20 2 22 23 24 25

26

27 28 29 30 3 32 33 34 35

36

was no mechanism in place to determine where the unaccounted individuals had actually gone, but Hanway reasoned that many must have settled in the North American colonies and that some perhaps had found their way to Montreal; Hanway, “Reasons for an Augmentation,” 2; Taylor, Jonas Hanway, 72, 43. Pugh, Remarkable Occurrences, 99. The Chesterfield bust is in the British Museum; the Pitt busts are in the National Gallery, Scotland, and in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; the Hollis bust is in a private collection on loan to the National Portrait Gallery; and the Cocchi bust is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. On the king’s contribution, see Taylor, Jonas Hanway, 23. The most detailed history of the commission and execution of the state coach can be found in Marsden and Hardy, “‘O fair Britannia Hail.’” See also Coutu, “William Chambers and Joseph Wilton,” in Harris and Snodin, eds, Sir William Chambers, 79–8. However, such images commissioned by groups other than the king were a different matter. See chapter 7. In accordance with the topos of disinterestedness, several of Hanway’s known works were published anonymously. For a list of some of the pamphlets that he authored, see the entry for him in the DNB . [Hanway], “Motives,” st and 2nd eds. [Hanway], “Motives,” 2nd ed., 28–9. Ibid., 4. Ibid., . Ibid., . Ibid., 3. See the entry for James Murray in the DCB , vol. 4, 574. Hanway became a subscribing member of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in November 766; Taylor, Jonas Hanway, 24. His rather extreme position on the value of hard work is perhaps best implied in his pamphlet on the pernicious, sloth-inducing effects of tea drinking among the working classes; Hanway, “An Essay on Tea.” [Hanway], “Motives,” 2nd ed., 6. Ibid., 5. Walker, “Instructions.” Québec Gazette, 30 May 765. Quoted in the DCB , vol. 4, 545. On the early British settlers in Canada and their relationship with the Canadiens and Britain, see Paquet and Wallot, “Nouvelle-France,” 0–3. “Considerations on the present state of the province of Quebec, 766,” BL Add. MS 3595, folio 22. Taylor, Jonas Hanway, 200. DCB , vol. 4, 574. Murray estimated the number of British in Montreal in October 766; DCB , vol. 4, 573. Hanway estimated the entire population of Montreal to be 7,000 in 766; [Hanway], “Motives,” 2nd ed., 2. DCB , vol. 4, 258–9, 574–7. 388 n o t e s t o pag e s 186– 93

37 BL Add. MS 3595, folios 20–46. 38 bl Add. MS 3595, folios 20–46, passim. 39 [Hanway], “Motives,” st ed., 0. In the second edition, –2, Hanway lowered the tone: “if [a civil government] is duly administered, and not tinctured with military power, it will probably be the most grateful to a brave and intelligent people.” 40 Pugh, Remarkable Occurrences, 99. 4 DCB , vol. 4, 576–7. 42 Murray had enjoyed the backing only of the Earl of Bute and the Duke of Newcastle; DCB , vol. 4, 57. When this support dissipated, he was replaced by Carleton, who had the support of the Duke of Richmond and the Rockingham administration. The king referred to Carleton as “a galant & Sensible Man”; DCB , vol. 4, 4–2. 43 Webster, Georgian Canada, 3. 44 Letter from Francis Maseres to Fowler Walker, 4 September 766, BL Add. MS 3595, folio 69. 45 “I am destined to live with the English, my wellbeing is under their control, I depend entirely on them, it is therefore politic of me to adjust to the circumstances.” My translation. Letter from Chartier de Lotbinière to Chartier de Lotbinière, quoted (but no date given) in Nicolini-Maschino, “Michel Chartier,” 87. 46 Flaxman recorded the cost of designing, carving, and packing the monument in his account book, which is now in the British Library; BL Add. MS 39784. The account book was transcribed, indexed, and published in Croft-Murray, “An Account Book.” 47 The monument is located in the north transept.

chapte r s even  Quoted in McCrady, The History, 584–5. 2 Recorded 20– May 766 by Captain John Montresor in his personal journal; Scull, ed., “The Montresor Journals,” 367–8. 3 From Scull, ed., “The Montresor Journals,” 367–8. 4 Miller, Origins, 59–60. 5 In fact, the Rockinghamites deliberately coupled the repeal with the passage of the Declaratory Act, which asserted the right of the king and Parliament to impose laws on the colonies that were binding “in all cases whatsoever”; Langford, “British Correspondence,” 285. 6 Ibid., 285–6, passim. 7 Holt’s New York Gazette,  May 766, quoted in Langford, “British Correspondence,” 286–7, emphasis in the original. 8 Boston Gazette, 2 April 766, cited in Langford, “British Correspondence,” 286. 9 Weyman’s New York Gazette, 30 June 766, cited in Wall, “The Statues,” 38. 0 Brewer, “The Number 45,” 362–7. Britons’ emphasis on rituals and symbols is one of the primary themes in Wilson, The Sense.  The attribution is pencilled in the margin of Stephens, Catalogue. 2 On the deification of Vernon, see Wilson, The Sense, 40–65. 3 Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (London), 5, 7, and 30 May and 8 June 766; the manuscript diaries of Thomas Hollis, vol. 4, 3 October 765, 4 and 6 June 766, Hough-

n o t e s t o pag e s 193– 8

389

4 5 6 7 8 9 20 2 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29

30 3 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

40 4

ton Library, Harvard University. The statue was executed by Henry Cheere and was in place by 770. On the press, see Langford, “British Correspondence.” See chapter 5, 60–3. Collins, “Historic Statues.” Charles Garth to the Committee of Correspondence of the Commons House of Assembly of South Carolina, 9 July 766, cited in Barnwell, “Correspondence,” 79–80. London Chronicle, 8–0 May 764. Grosley, A Tour, vol. , 202. Weyman’s New York Gazette, 30 June 766, quoted in Wall, “The Statues,” 38. Zuckerman, “Identity,” 5–7. Entry dated 6 March 766, in Scull, ed., “The Montresor Journals,” 353. Entry dated  November 765, in Scull, ed., “The Montresor Journals,” 337; Countryman, A People, 38. An excerpt from a November 765 New York newspaper stating Colden’s position on the stamps is reproduced at http://independence.nyhistory.org/item.php? item_no=&seq=0. Journal of the Votes and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Colony of New York, vol. 2, quoted in Morgan, The Challenge, , emphasis in the original. Otis, The Rights. The Massachusetts response is outlined in Morgan, The Challenge, 4– 5. Boston Gazette, 9 May 766, and Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter, 22 May 766, cited in Brigham, Paul Revere’s Engravings, 20–2. Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter, 22 May 766, cited in Brigham, Paul Revere’s Engravings, 2–2. Ibid. The plate survives, and subsequent series have been pulled, but the print in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society is the only known extant original; Brigham, Paul Revere’s Engravings, 2. Langford, “British Correspondence,” 282–3. Ibid., 283–4. “The Pillar of Liberty,” 40, illustrated opposite 2. The Journal of the Commons House of Assembly of the Province of South Carolina, 8 May 766, cited in Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 2. On 3 May 766 the three men were asked to sit for their portraits; McCrady, The History, 586. Miller, Origins, 38. McDonough, Christopher Gadsden, , 40 ff., 67–8. Morgan, The Challenge, 2. McCrady, The History, 586–7. Quoted in McDonough, Christopher Gadsden, 76. See also McCrady, The History, 587. Wragg would be one of the few prominent South Carolinians to maintain his Loyalist leanings throughout the revolution. Entry dated 20 November 766, quoted in Kennedy, ed., Journal of the House, 33. Kennedy, ed., Journal of the House, ix. 390

n o t e s t o pag e s 199–207

42 Entry dated 2 December 766, quoted in Kennedy, ed., Journal of the House, 48, emphasis in the original. 43 Quoted in Morgan, The Challenge, . 44 Henry declared that “in former times Tarquin and Julius had their Brutus, Charles had his Cromwell, and he Did not Doubt but some good american would stand up, in favour of his Country”; see “Journal of a French Traveller,” 745. 45 On Henry’s resolves and the Virginia house, see Miller, Origins, 22–6. 46 No supplies were voted, and Maryland flooded the colonies with depreciated paper money; Miller, Origins, 39–40. 47 Morgan, The Challenge, 9; Miller, Origins, 37–4. 48 Lloyd’s Evening Post, 23–5 June 766. 49 “Proceedings and Acts,” 88–9. 50 Garth to the Committee of Correspondence, 9 July 766, quoted in Barnwell, “Correspondence,” 80–. 5 Halsey, “America’s Obligation,” 38. Montresor recorded that the subscription was still in place on 23 June 766; Wall, “The Statues,” 42. 52 Halsey, “America’s Obligation,” 38. 53 Hollis’s diaries are deposited in the Houghton Library, Harvard University. The best published sources on Hollis are Bond, Thomas Hollis; and Robbins, “The Strenuous Whig.” For Hollis’s relationship with America in particular, see Sommer, “Thomas Hollis.” 54 The manuscript diaries of Thomas Hollis, vol. 4, 8 March 766, Houghton Library, Harvard University. 55 On 20 and 2 June 766 Hollis prepared “a set of the Publications of the Oeconomical Society instituted at Berne in Switzerland ... which are going to be sent by me to the Society instituted at Charles Town in South Carolina for promoting arts & Commerce”; the manuscript diaries of Thomas Hollis, vol. 4, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Hollis was a prominent member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London. Throughout 765 and occasionally in 766 and 769, he refers in his diary to Woodin, a friend of his, who had emigrated to Charleston. 56 The manuscript diaries of Thomas Hollis, vol. 5, 4 March 769, Houghton Library, Harvard University. 57 Wall refers to the announcement in Wall, “The Statues,” 40. 58 Holt’s New York Gazette, 9 June 766, quoted in Wall, “The Statues,” 40. 59 Weyman’s New York Gazette, 30 June 766, quoted in Wall, “The Statues,” 40–. 60 Weyman’s New York Gazette, 30 June 766, cited in Wall, “The Statues,” 38. 6 New York Mercury, 30 June 766, cited in Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 4, 766. 62 On the DeLancey family and its connections with Britain, see Gwyn, The Enterprising Admiral, 0, passim. 63 The Warren monument was originally backed by a huge flag. The removal of it has resulted in a somewhat disjointed composition. For comprehensive discussions of the Warren monument, see Bindman and Baker, Roubiliac, 62–8, 38–23. 64 New York Mercury, 2 July 762, quoted in “The Elusive Monument,” 74–5. Bernard Ratzer’s map of 767 refers to “The Monument Lane” on the DeLancey-Warren estate,

n o t e s t o pag e s 207–11

391

65 66

67

68 69

70 7 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 8

82 83 84 85 86 87

while John Montresor’s map of 767 records “Road to the Obelisk”; Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 4: 76. Bonomi, A Factious People, 75–6. There were no banks in New York at the time. According to Countryman, the DeLanceys were “a major factor in guiding the city’s development,” and their “ability to extend [credit] depended on their success in an economy compounded of roughly equal measures of confidence in the imperial trading system and land speculation under the royal governor’s favor”; Countryman, A People, 9. Here, the term “parties” is used in its loosest sense since, although the DeLanceys and the Livingstons provided the precedent, they came nowhere near embodying the strict partisanship of postcolonial and nineteenth-century New York. Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 4, 76. In 773 the Bancker survey referred to “Old Greenwich Lane” rather than to “Road to the Obelisk” or “The Monument Lane.” On the DeLanceys and Livingstons, see Miller, Origins, 299–303. On party faction in colonial New York in general, see Bonomi, A Factious People, especially 40–78, 229–78; and Countryman, A People, especially 3–98. Miller, Origins, 30. Quoted in ibid., 302. Weyman’s New York Gazette, 30 June 766, quoted in Wall, “The Statues,” 42. Journal of the Commons House of Assembly, 30 June 766, cited in Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 22. See Appendix 3 for the comprehensive correspondence. Garth to the Committee of Correspondence, 9 July 766, quoted in Barnwell, “Correspondence,” 8. Ibid. Ibid., 82. See for example, the pamphlet entitled “The Trial of England’s Cicero” and note 8 above. Bailyn, The Ideological, 25. Garth to the Committee of Correspondence, 25 July 766, cited in Barnwell, “Correspondence,” 82–3. Garth only learned of the possible interior location from a Mr Blake, with whom he had been speaking in London; Garth to the Committee of Correspondence, 25 July 766, cited in Barnwell, “Correspondence,” 82–3. Ibid., 83. Wilton to Garth, 24 July 766, quoted in Barnwell, “Correspondence,” 84–5. Garth to the Committee of Correspondence, 25 July 766, cited in Barnwell, “Correspondence,” 83. The Committee of Correspondence to Garth, 20 November 766, quoted in Barnwell, “Correspondence,” 85. The Committee of Correspondence to Garth, postscript dated 0 December 766 to a letter dated 6 December 766, cited in Barnwell, “Correspondence,” 88. The Committee of Correspondence to Garth, 20 November 766, cited in Barnwell, “Correspondence,” 85–6. 392

n o t e s t o pag e s 211–15

88 For a discussion of the buildings at the intersection of Broad and Meeting Streets and in colonial Charleston generally, see Severens, Charleston Antebellum, 8–2. A new Exchange and Customs House, to be located at the east end of Broad Street near the harbour, was commissioned by the House of Assembly in 767. The members displayed the same degree of interest in the new Exchange as they had in the Pitt statue, reserving the right to “direct any alterations or additions [to the Exchange] to be made different or other than those herein already expressed and set down”; quoted in Severens, Charleston Antebellum, 3. 89 The date when the inscription was written is implied by the Committee of Correspondence to Garth, 20 November 766, cited in Barnwell, “Correspondence,” 86. 90 Meinig, The Shaping, vol. , 306. 9 The Committee of Correspondence to Garth, 20 November 766, cited in Barnwell, “Correspondence,” 86. 92 Colonial Laws of New York, vol. 4, 002–3. 93 Miller, Origins, 302. 94 The rhetoric was virulent. In reference to the lawyers, the DeLanceys said: “Does not this Country as much swarm with them as Norway does with Rats, or our Salt-Meadows, in a calm Summer’s Evening Musquetoes? And do not both kinds of Vermin sustain themselves by drawing the Blood from our very Bodies?”; quoted in Miller, Origins, 30–2. 95 Quoted in Miller, Origins, 302. 96 Miller, Origins, 302. 97 On the commission for the Berkeley Square statue, see Annual Register 9 (766): 06. On the unveiling, see Annual Register 5 (772): 32. 98 “At the request of many of our correspondents, we have given the representation of an equestrian statue of his present majesty. It was accordingly proposed to take a design of that lately erected in Berkley-Square; but our designer, upon inspection, finding it in many respects extremely defective, judiciously substituted a drawing of his own, from which the annexed plate is taken, preserving, however, by the desire of our subscribers, the Roman habit”; Town and Country Magazine 5 (773): 576, illustration on 577. 99 Precedents in a similar style in Britain include the statues of George I by John Van Nost at Stowe (79) and Dublin (722), of William III by Scheemakers in Kingston-upon-Hull (734), of William III by Rysbrack in Bristol (734) (see fig. 2.5), and of William III in St James’s Square, London, by John Cheere (739). For contemporary descriptions of the New York statue, see the New York Post-Boy, 20 August 770, cited in Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 4, 83; and Scull, ed., “The Montresor Journals,” 23–4. 00 Garth to the Committee of Correspondence, 20 November 769, and Garth to the Committee of Correspondence, 5 February 770, cited in Barnwell, “Correspondence,” 88–9. 0 South Carolina Gazette, 3 May 770, quoted in Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 25. 02 South Carolina Gazette, 3 May 770, cited in Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 25. 03 Garth had made enquiries with other “celebrated statuaries” about the cost of such a work and had agreed upon 800 with Wilton; Garth to the Committee of Correspondence, 0 March 770 and 23 March 770, quoted in Barnwell, “Correspondence,” 89– 9; Journal of the Commons House of Assembly, 23 July 770, cited in Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 23.

n o t e s t o pag e s 216–20

393

04 South Carolina Gazette, 5 July 770, quoted in Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 25. The unveiling was also described in Gentleman’s Magazine 40 (770): 396. 05 South Carolina Gazette, 5 July 770, quoted in Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 25. 06 Quoted in Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, 6–2. 07 South Carolina Gazette, 8 December 769, quoted in Greene, “Bridge to Revolution,” 22, emphasis in the original. 08 Greene, “Bridge to Revolution,” 20–4. 09 The festivities continued into the evening: Captain Benjamin Stone invited forty-five guests to his retreat on James Island and greeted them with a forty-five-cannon salute. Forty-five candles were on the table, forty-five dishes were served, including a turtle weighing forty-five pounds, forty-five toasts were drunk, and everyone left at forty-five minutes past eleven o’clock; Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 30–; Greene, “Bridge to Revolution.” 0 For more on the relationship between Wilkes and America (often overly simplified by American radicals), see Langford, “British Correspondence,” 290–3; and Maier, “John Wilkes.” On Wilkite radicalism and nationalism, see Wilson, The Sense, 236.  New York Post-Boy, 4 June 770, cited in Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 4, 80. 2 Minutes of the Common Council, vol. 7, 22–3, cited in Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 4, 809. 3 Minutes of the Common Council, vol. 7, 220, cited in Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 4, 8. 4 See chapter 2, 40; and Ariès, The Hour, 22. 5 New York Mercury, 20 August 770, New York Post-Boy, 20 August 770, and a newspaper clipping in the Du Simitière Collection, Philadelphia, cited in Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 4, 83–4. 6 At least this was Wilton’s intent. Although Adron probably did go to New York, there is no record of it; Garth to the Committee of Correspondence, 0 March 770, cited in Barnwell, “Correspondence,” 89–90; Journal of the Commons House of Assembly, 23 July 770, cited in Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 23. 7 Cadwallader Colden to the Earl of Hillsborough, 8 August 770, quoted in Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 4, 83. A similar note appeared in the New York Journal, or The General Advertiser, 23 August 770. 8 Bonomi, A Factious People, 265. 9 A Son of Liberty [Alexander McDougall], “To the betrayed.” 20 See Miller, Origins, 304–7; Bonomi, A Factious People, 265–78; Maier, “John Wilkes,” 385–6. 2 A newspaper clipping in the Du Simitière Collection, Philadelphia, cited in Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 4, 84. 22 A newspaper clipping in the Du Simitière Collection, Philadelphia, quoted in Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 4, 84. 23 “The Speech of the Statue.” 24 “The Speech of the Statue,” emphasis added. 25 Journal of the House of Burgesses, 20 July 77, Courtauld Institute of Art, Gunnis Papers, misc. files, letters about single sculptors.

394

n o t e s t o pag e s 221–7

26 John Norton to John Hatley Norton, 0 March 772 and 6 August 772, Courtauld Institute of Art, Gunnis Papers, misc. files, letters about single sculptors. 27 Virginia Gazette, 20 May 773, Courtauld Institute of Art, Gunnis Papers, misc. files, letters about single sculptors. 28 Horace Walpole to Horace Mann, 3 August 768, in Walpole, Walpole’s Corr., vol. 23, 43–4; Walpole to Henry Seymour Conway, 3 August 768, in ibid., vol. 39, 04; Mapp, The Virginia Experiment, 330–. 29 Miller, Origins, 36. Apparently, at the time of his appointment, some members of Parliament glibly questioned his ability to read or write. 30 Miller, Origins, 36. 3 Mapp, The Virginia Experiment, 339–4. 32 Ibid., 338–9. 33 The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 774–77, Courtauld Institute of Art, Gunnis Papers, misc. files, letters about single sculptors. 34 Ibid. 35 Journals of the House of Burgesses, 20 July 77, Courtauld Institute of Art, Gunnis Papers, misc. files, letters about single sculptors. 36 Sellers, “Virginia’s Great Allegory,” 59. 37 Ibid., 59–60. 38 Ibid., 60–. A broadside print modelled after the painting was accompanied by a lengthy description by Peale explaining the references and allusions. The broadside is reproduced in Miller, ed., The Selected Papers, vol. , 74–6. 39 Sellers, “Virginia’s Great Allegory,” 64. 40 On the colonial press, see Langford, “British Correspondence,” 282–3, passim. 4 Mapp, The Virginia Experiment, 332–3. 42 Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism, 83–4. On print culture and nationalism, see also Wilson, The Sense, 29–54. 43 Plamenatz, “Two Types,” 23–4. 44 Ibid., 27. 45 Zuckerman, “Identity,” 5–7. 46 Isaac Neld, Jr, Travels through the States of North America, Courtauld Institute of Art, Gunnis Papers. 47 Journal of Lieutenant William Feltman, 78–82, Courtauld Institute of Art, Gunnis Papers. 48 Samuel B. Webb’s journal, 0 July 776, cited in Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 5, 992. 49 From a book of general orders issued by Washington, via an address of a Mr Gibbs on  October 844, for the New-York Historical Society, quoted in Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 5, 993. 50 Journal of Lieutenant Isaac Bangs, 0 July 770, quoted in Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 5, 992; Stokes also transcribes several other accounts of the destruction of the statue. Some pieces of the tail and saddle survive. Ironically, four of these pieces turned up on a farm in 87 in Wilton, Connecticut, a town named after the sculptor. 5 “The Montresor Journals,” undated note, quoted in Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 5, 992–3.

n o t e s t o pag e s 227–32

395

52 The Quebec Act was seen by many, both colonists and Britons alike, as fundamentally in opposition to British liberties and as upholding popery, slavery, and despotic government; see Wilson, The Sense, 25–2. 53 Roy, “Réponses,” 24–5. 54 Journal of Hugh Gaine, cited in Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 5, 058. 55 Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 3. 56 City Gazette, 8 August 79, quoted in Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 3–2. 57 City Gazette, 9 August 79, quoted in Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 32. 58 The Legislature’s resolution of 2 December 79 appeared in the City Gazette, 20 December 79; transcribed in Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 32. 59 Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 32. 60 South Carolina Gazette, 4 March 794, quoted in Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 37–8. 6 Smith, “Wilton’s Statue,” 35. 62 Ibid. 63 Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 4, 058, 225. 64 Stokes, The Iconography, vol. 5, 535–6. 65 Ibid., 778, 802, 9.

chapte r eight  Entry dated  November 777, JAJ , vol. 8, . 2 On Knowles’s and Lyttelton’s tenures as governor, see Metcalf, Royal Government, 09– 65. 3 On William Trelawny’s governorship, see ibid., 7–8. 4 Keith secured earlier advancements in his career through his father, who had ingratiated himself with Pitt the Elder; ibid., 82–4. 5 Ibid., 90–, 85–6. 6 For an account of the Hanover Plot, see Craton, Testing the Chains, 72–9. 7 Entry dated 23 December 774, JAJ , vol. 6, 569–70, quoted in Metcalf, Royal Government, 88. 8 Entry dated 23 December 774, JAJ , vol. 6, 569. For the population estimates, see McCusker, “Tables to Accompany,” table , “Population Estimates for the British West Indies, 760–790.” What the authors of the petition hoped to gain by the address is unclear. In an attempt not to provoke undue irritation, Keith played down the petition by emphasizing that only twenty-six of the forty-three members were sitting in the house when it was passed and that most of these were Kingston merchants since the planters had already left to return to their plantations; Metcalf, Royal Government, 89–90. T.R. Clayton makes a case for the socio-political differences between Jamaica and the American colonies to explain why Jamaica did not rebel; Clayton, “Sophistry.” 9 For example, the Keith monument is very similar to the one to Sir Thomas Street in Worcester Cathedral, dated 774. 0 The cap of liberty, the caduceus, and the handle of the torch have been removed by vandals. John Roby described the monument in 824; Roby, Monuments, 9. The cost of 396

n o t e s t o pag e s 233– 40

 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 2

22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 3 32 33 34 35 36 37

executing the monument and shipping it was 735 currency. It arrived in Jamaica in 780 and was then erected at a further cost of about 275. The exact figures are quoted in Lewis, “English Commemorative,” 54–5. Entry dated 20 February 783, JAJ , vol. 7, 559. For a detailed discussion of the trade and economy of the West Indies in the second half of the eighteenth century, see McCusker and Menard, The Economy; Sheridan, “The Wealth” and “The Commercial”; and Craton and Walvin, A Jamaican, 7–94, passim. The letters were transcribed (without their original dates) in the Royal Academy, Council Minutes, 27 February 784. Ibid. Ibid. Leslie and Taylor, Life and Times, 443; Whinney, Sculpture in Britain, 362; Yarrington, The Commemoration, 6–2. On the Committee of Taste, see Yarrington, The Commemoration, 6–74; and Whinney, Sculpture in Britain, 363–73. Royal Academy, Council Minutes, 27 February 784. Barry, The Works, vol. 2, 504. Royal Academy, Council Minutes, 27 February 784. Barry, The Works, vol. 2, 504. The competition had opened six weeks earlier. The delay between the resolution to commission a monument and the call for competition entries was presumably occasioned by the distance between Jamaica and Britain as well as by the dates when the Jamaican House of Assembly was sitting. On Wilton’s lifestyle, see Coutu, “Joseph Wilton.” Barry, The Works, vol. 2, 504. For a biography of Bacon the Elder, see Cox-Johnson, John Bacon. Royal Academy, Council Minutes, 27 February 784. Memo attached to resolution, Royal Academy, Council Minutes, 27 February 784. Bacon to Joseph Wilton, Joseph Nollekens, Agostino Carlini, and William Tyler, Royal Academy, Council Minutes,  June 784. The plaster maquette in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, signed by John Bacon, and hitherto supposed to have been a model for the Spanish Town commission, is rather more likely to be a model by John Bacon the Younger for the competition for a funeral monument to Rodney in St Paul’s, sponsored by the Committee of Taste in 80. John Charles Rossi secured this commission. Reynolds, Discourses on Art, 39–64, 73–88. Ibid., 84. Ibid., 87. Ibid. Garlick and Macintyre, eds, 24 July 795, The Diary, vol. 2, 369n34. Scots Magazine 2 (759): 64–3. Entry dated 5 November 780, JAJ , vol. 7, 254. See for example, the various essays in Canny and Pagden, eds, Colonial Identity. Brathwaite, The Development, xiv. See chapter 2. n o t e s t o pag e s 240– 8

397

38 The arrival of the statue in Jamaica was announced in the Cornwall Chronicle,  May 790. For the attempts by the people of Kingston to keep the statue in Kingston, see Cundall, “Sculpture,” 66–7, and “The Rodney Memorial,” 34–5; and Lewis, “English Commemorative,” 20–4. 39 Cundall, “Sculpture,” 67. 40 For a short history of the construction of the buildings in the Parade at Spanish Town, see Lewis, “English Commemorative,” 20–4. On English buildings in Spanish Town in general, including the buildings around the Parade, see Robertson, “Architectures.” 4 The festivities surrounding the unveiling were recorded by Edward Long, “Long’s Collections for The History of Jamaica,” BL Add. MS 244, folio 39. 42 Edward Long believed that Bacon had been paid 2,500; “Long’s Collections for The History of Jamaica,” BL Add. MS 244, folio 39. 43 Lewis, “English Commemorative,” 20–4. 44 Cave, “Printing,” 94; Wright, Revels; Brathwaite, The Development, 66; Ragatz, The Fall, 94–6. 45 “Jonah an Oratorio, Disposed for a Voice and Harpsicord: Composed by Samuel Felsted, Organist of St Andrew’s Jamaica,” Jamaica, 775. The original program was embellished with an engraving of Jonah by Benjamin West. A special concert performance was sung in St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, in November 990 to commemorate the oratorio. I gratefully acknowledge Mr Robert Barker for providing this information. 46 Brathwaite, The Development, 28. On establishing the Botanical Gardens in Bath, see entry dated 30 November 775, JAJ , vol. 6, 597; and Brathwaite, The Development, 84. 47 Dancer, Catalogue, -2; and BL Add. MS 22678, Correspondence of Thomas Dancer, M.D. with Edward Long [790s]. 48 By early in the eighteenth century, Barbados had been entirely settled and roads laid out. On Jamaica, see JAJ , vol. 7, 8, 9, passim; and Brathwaite, The Development, 26–7. 49 Brathwaite, The Development, 24–9; Nugent, Lady Nugent’s Journal, 55–6. See also Binney, Harris, and Martin, Jamaica’s Heritage. 50 Brathwaite lists the construction efforts in Jamaica; Brathwaite, The Development, 27– 8. 5 Cave, “Printing,” 87–206. See also Ingram, Sources. 52 Brathwaite, The Development, 3–40; Cave, “Printing.” 53 For a history of the building of St James’s Parish Church, see Lewis, “English Commemorative,” 36–8. 54 Cundall, Historic Jamaica, 79. 55 Twenty-four doctors were registered in Kingston alone in 770. On doctors and attorneys in the West Indies, see Brathwaite, The Development, 44–6 and 39–42 respectively. 56 Wilson, The Sense, 67; and Colley, Britons, 88–98. 57 Fraser et al., A-Z of Barbadian, 38–9, 63. 58 Cundall, The Governors, 97–9; Brathwaite, The Development, 268–70. 59 Brathwaite, The Development, 5–6. 60 Ibid., 268–70. 6 In 770 Wolmer’s school was reported to have four scholars, Manning’s eight, Vere’s five, and Beckford’s eleven. Lawes’s school in St Andrew’s Parish had shut down, and Rusea’s 398

n o t e s t o pag e s 248–55

62

63 64 65 66 67

68

69 70 7 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 8 82 83

84

was yet to be established; Brathwaite, The Development, 269–70. Similarly, Drax’s school lasted only a few years and Francis Williams’s bequest seems not to have been taken up until 809; Fraser et al., A-Z of Barbadian, 38–9, 63. Codrington College did not become a theological college until 829; Fraser et al., A-Z of Barbadian, 42. A replica bust of Codrington, copied from Henry Cheere’s full-length statue at All Souls College, was set up in a niche in Codrington College, Barbados, in 843; Schomburgk, The History, 232. Brathwaite, The Development, 270. Lewis, “English Commemorative,” 70. Enclosed with Edward Long’s notes for his History of Jamaica, BL Add. MS 244, folio 42. Daily Advertiser (Kingston), 8 January 790; and Cornwall Chronicle, 6 February 790. The inscription on the monument reads: “This Marble, / intended as a Monument of / Public Gratitude / to a / Public Benefactor, / is sacred to the Memory of / JOHN WOLMER , / Goldsmith. / Founder of the Free school at Kingston. / Obt. 29th. June 729.” Long’s proposed inscription was: “Sacred to the Memory of / John Wolmer / Goldsmith / Founder of the Freeschool in Kingston / Obt. 29th June MDCCXXIX / Reader, / Thou viewest in this Marble / An humble Monument of Gratitude / to a / Public Benefactor! / Woulds’t thou behold on nobler materials / His Worth indelibly recorded, / Contemplate’d / In the rising Generations of Youths / The Sons and Daughters of Jamaica / Retrieved from Vice, / Initiated in Religion, Disciplined in Virtue, / Enriched with liberal Arts / And rendered useful Citizens / by / His patriotic munificence, / Which, / (If the best of Beings permit) / Shall immortalize the name of / Wolmer, / And bless our latest(?) Posterity, / In this Island”; John Bacon to Edward Long, 9 August 789, BL Add. MS 22677, folio 83. Walvin, Black Ivory, 29–20. Entry dated 25 October 79, JAJ , vol. 9, 2; and Brathwaite, The Development, 246. Entry dated 3 November 79, JAJ , vol. 9, 6; and Brathwaite, The Development, 246. Cundall, Historic Jamaica, 98. Entries dated 27 October 79, JAJ , vol. 9, 4; and 9 November 79, JAJ , vol. 9, 22. Lewis, “English Commemorative,” 58. Ibid. Ibid.; and Cundall, Historic Jamaica, 98. Brathwaite, The Development, 247; and Cundall, Historic Jamaica, 8, 353. Lewis, “English Commemorative,” 60–. The best account of the uprisings in Grenada, St Vincent, and St Lucia is in Craton, Testing the Chains, 80–20. Oliver, “The Obelisk,” 93. Craton, Testing the Chains, 2–23. “Some Nelson Statues.” Collard, “Nelson.” Birmingham, just as dependent on the sea trade as the colonies, was also quick to erect a statue to Nelson. Meanwhile, Parliament dawdled over the Trafalgar Square memorial until 842. “Some Nelson Statues.” n o t e s t o pag e s 256– 65

399

85 See Clayton, “Sophistry.” 86 Greene, “Changing Identity,” 260–6. 87 The portrait was modelled after a painting of Brathwaite by Reynolds. The painting is in the National Portrait Gallery, London, S 23.7.980 (237). Flaxman would use the same composition for the monument to the Jamaican resident and Bristol merchant William Miles (d. 803) in Ledbury Church, Herefordshire; Croft-Murray, “An Account Book,” 80–. 88 Brathwaite died in Epsom, Surrey, and is commemorated there with a monument, also by Flaxman, commissioned by his sisters. The composition consists of a draped female figure who leans against an urn situated on a high pedestal; Croft-Murray, “An Account Book,” 69. 89 Soon after Barbados achieved independence in 966 the statue was turned 80 degrees so that it no longer towered over the square. In 999 the Government of Barbados voted to remove the statue and replace it with one of Errol Walton Barrow, who led the island to independence. Trafalgar Square became National Heroes’ Square; “In another break with Britain, Barbados to remove Nelson statue” CNN , 28 April 999. Nelson’s statue remains in situ. 90 Quoted from the epitaph on the monument, reproduced in Lawrence-Archer, Monumental Inscriptions, 42; and [Flannigan], Antigua, vol. 2, 226–7. 9 HEH , Esdaile Collection, Box B , Folder , “Noted: Hand Notes”; Binney, Sir Robert Taylor, 33; entry for Baron Lavington in the DNB . 92 Binney, Sir Robert Taylor, 33, 60. Lavington’s neighbours in Grafton Street were two prominent absentee Jamaican planters. 93 Entry for Baron Lavington in the DNB . 94 HEH , Esdaile Collection, Box B, Folder  “Notes: Hand Notes.” 95 “SACRED / TO THE MEMORY OF / RALPH PAYNE, LORD LAVINGTON , / OF THE KINGDOM OF IRELAND , / ONE OF HIS MAJESTY’S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL , / KNIGHT OF THE MOST HONOURABLE ORDER OF THE BATH , / AND CAPTAIN -GENERAL AND COMMANDER-IN -CHIEF OF / THE LEEWARD ISLANDS .” On the base of the monument: “HE WAS BORN IN THE ISLAND OF ST. CHRISTOPHER’S , OF AN ENGLISH FAMILY, DISTINGUISHED FOR ITS LOYALTY AND PUBLIC SPIRIT. HIS EDUCATION HE RECEIVED IN ENGLAND , AND IT

PREPARED HIM FOR THE DISTINCTIONS WHICH AWAITED HIS RETURN TO HIS NATIVE ISLE , WHEN HE WAS ELECTED A MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY, AND ON ITS FIRST MEETING UNANIMOUSLY CALLED TO THE CHAIR OF THE HOUSE , IN WHICH HIGH SITUATION HE GAVE AN EARLY DISPLAY OF THOSE SUPERIOR TALENTS AND EMINENT QUALIFICATIONS WHICH AFTERWARDS SECURED HIM THE CONFIDENCE OF HIS KING , AND THE ESTEEM OF HIS COUNTRY. ON HIS RETURN TO ENGLAND IN 762, HE WAS ELECTED A MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS FOR THE BOROUGH OF PLYMPTON , DEVONSHIRE ; AND FROM HIS PERFECT KNOWLEDGE OF COLONIAL AFFAIRS , HE WAS APPOINTED IN 77 – a PERIOD OF NATIONAL INTEREST – TO BE CAPTAIN -GENERAL AND COMMANDER-IN -CHIEF OF THE LEEWARD ISLANDS , AT WHICH TIME HE WAS ALSO INVESTED WITH THE 400

n o t e s t o pag e s 266– 9

MOST HONOURABLE ORDER OF THE BATH . HE REMAINED IN THE EXERCISE OF HIS GOVERNMENT UNTIL 774, WHEN HE RETURNED TO ENGLAND , AND WAS APPOINTED A MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF GREEN CLOTH . DURING THE PERIOD OF HIS RESIDENCE IN ENGLAND , HE SAT IN FIVE PARLIAMENTS , AND IN 795, HIS MAJESTY WAS GRACIOUSLY PLEASED TO RAISE HIM TO THE DIGNITY OF A PEER IN IRELAND , BY THE STYLE AND TITLE OF BARON LAVINGTON OF LAVINGTON . IN 799, HE WAS SWORN ONE OF HIS MAJESTY ’S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL , AND AGAIN APPOINTED TO THE CHIEF COMMAND OF THE LEEWARD ISLANDS , IN THE WISE AND ABLE ADMINISTRATION OF WHICH IMPORTANT TRUST HE PASSED HIS LATTER YEARS AND CLOSED HIS VENERABLE LIFE . / THIS NOBLEMAN / WAS REVERED FOR HIS PUBLIC QUALITIES , / AS HE WAS BELOVED FOR HIS PRIVATE VIRTUES . / HE BLENDED THE DIGNITY OF HIS HIGH OFFICE WITH THE / AFFABILITY OF / HIS DISPOSITION AND THE GRACEFULNESS OF HIS MANNERS , / AND AT ONCE COMMANDED THE RESPECT, AND CONCILIATED THE / AFFECTIONS / OF ALL / AND RANKS OF PEOPLE / WITHIN THE CIRCLE OF HIS GOVERNMENT. / AS A SINCERE AND LASTING TESTIMONY OF THEIR VENERATION AND / REGRET, / THE LEGISLATURE OF ANTIGUA / HAVE ERECTED THIS MONUMENT. / HE DIED AT THE GOVERNMENT HOUSE OF THIS ISLAND , ON THE 3RD / DAY OF / AUG . / 807, AGED 68; AND WAS INTERRED AT HIS OWN ESTATE , CALLED / CARLISLES ”; Lawrence-Archer, Monumental Inscriptions, 42. Lavington’s distinctions are also listed in the DNB .

96 Craton, “Reluctant Creoles.” 97 Greene, “Changing Identity,” 265.

chapte r nine  2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Marshall, “The British,” 488. Ibid., 495. Ibid., 495–8. See also Ray, “Indian Society,” 508–29. One of the most sensationalized accounts was published by one of the survivors, J.Z. Holwell, governor of Bengal; Holwell, A Genuine Narrative. See Bowen, “British India,” 530–5, especially 530–40. The situation was exacerbated by a devastating drought that killed a third of the population of Bengal in 770; Ray, “Indian Society,” 54. The Iconologia was first published in Rome in 593 without illustrations. The first illustrated edition was published in Rome in 603. Vertue, “Vertue Notebooks III ,” in “Notebooks,” Walpole Society 22, 37. Vertue recorded that the directors and some of their advisors were not initially pleased with Rysbrack’s model. They then solicited a design from Arthur Pond, who had trained with John Vanderbank and whose Grand Tour had taken him to Italy. Vertue called Pond’s design a “demonstrative contradiction” in contrast to Rysbrack’s much better design, which was ultimately chosen. On Rysbrack’s chimneypiece, see also Allen, “From Plassey,” 27. n o t e s t o pag e s 269–74

401

9 Much has already been said in chapter 4 about this monument in conjunction with the discussion of the Wolfe monument and the definition of a new style for a new empire. 0 Clive’s acceptance of the diwani was recorded by a number of artists. The most famous is Benjamin West’s Lord Clive Receiving from the Moghul the Grant of Duanney (completed 765), which had been commissioned by Clive himself as part of a large scheme to decorate the Eating Room at Claremont, his country house in Surrey. The scheme was abandoned after Clive’s suicide in 774; see Bayly, ed., The Raj, 02–3.  OIOC , India Office Records, East India Court Minutes B /76 (2 April 760 – 3 April 76), 30 July 760. 2 Various payments to the artists, James Stuart and Peter Scheemakers, are recorded in the OIOC , India Office Records, East India Court Minutes B /77 (3 April 76 – 2 April 762) 25 November 76; 2 December 76; 9 December 76. 3 On the Stuart-Scheemakers partnership, see Roscoe, “James ‘Athenian,’” 78–84. 4 OIOC , India Office Records, Miscellaneous Letters Received E /I /45, 50 (763). 5 Gentleman’s Magazine 33 (763): 32. 6 Ibid. 7 There are several accounts of Hayman’s paintings for the Rotunda at Vauxhall Gardens. The most relevant to this study are Solkin, Painting for Money, 90–9; and Allen, “From Plassey,” 28–33. 8 Minutes of a General Court, 24 September 760, quoted in Archer, The India Office, 03. 9 The Third Report of the Committee of Secrecy (773) recorded the cost of the statues; see Archer, The India Office, 03. 20 The statues to Clive, Lawrence, Pocock, Coote, Cornwallis, and Hastings (see fig. 9.0), as well as Rysbrack’s chimneypiece (see figs 9. and 9.2) are now in the collection of the Foreign and Commonwealth Relations Office, London. 2 The painting is in the collection of the Oriental and India Office Collections, the British Library. 22 Allen, “From Plassey,” 33. 23 Entry for Stringer Lawrence in the DNB . 24 Lawrence’s family erected a much less grand monument in the church at Dunchidock, Devon, where Lawrence was buried. This monument was also designed by Tyler and is dated 776. 25 Coote won a decisive battle against the French and Indian coalition at Wandiwash in 760 and oversaw the surrender of the French at Pondicherry in 76. 26 He achieved a decisive victory at Porto Novo in the south of India against Haidar Ali on  June 78, won another against Haidar Ali at Pollilur on 27 August 78, and finally routed Haidar’s force at Sholingarh a month later. He virtually saved the Madras presidency from destruction. The inscription reads: “This monument is erected by / the East India Company, / as a memorial of the military talents of / Lieutenant General Sir Eyre Coote, K.B. / Commander in Chief of the British Forces in India / who / By the success of his arms, in the year MDCCLX and MDCCLXI , / expelled the French from the coast of Coromandel / In MDCCLXXXI and MDCCLXXXII / he again took the field in the Carnatic, / in opposition to the united strength of the French and Hyder Ally [sic] / and, in

402

n o t e s t o pag e s 274– 81

27 28 29

30 3 32 33

34

35 36 37

38 39 40 4 42 43

44

several engagements, defeated the numerous / forces of the latter / but death interrupted his career of glory / on the XXVII th day of April, MDCCLXXXIII , / in the fifty-eighth year of his age.” Quoted in Bowen, “British India,” 540. On Burke and Hastings, see Bowen, “British India,” 54–2; and Marshall, The Impeachment. The Pigot affair and the complexities of the relationships between company representatives, European creditors, and Indian rajahs are outlined in Bayly, Indian Society, 58–6. Minutes of a General Court, 28 April 784, cited in Archer, The India Office, 90; Bell, ed., Annals, 58–60. At about the same time that he received the Coote commission, Banks was elected an associate of the Royal Academy and within three months became a full academician; Bryant, “The Church Memorials,” 50. Ibid., 55. European Magazine 20 (79): 64. Barbara Groseclose noted the allusion to the Weeping Dacia in Groseclose, British Sculpture, 58. Minutes of a General Court, 28 April 784, cited in Archer, The India Office, 90. Banks was paid ,066.7s for both the statue and the monument. The final payment was made in 793; Archer, The India Office, 90. See also Bell, ed., Annals, 60. Cornwallis’s victory and reception in England are discussed in Marshall, “‘Cornwallis Triumphant’: War in India and the British Public in the Late Eighteenth Century,” in Trade and Conquest, 59–64. See also Allen, “From Plassey,” 34–7. Quoted in Marshall, “‘Cornwallis Triumphant,’” in Trade and Conquest, 62. Marshall, ibid., 64. Archer recorded paintings of the event by James Northcote, Edward Bird, George Carter, Robert Smirke, Mather Brown, Henry Singleton, Robert Home, and Arthur Devis; Archer, India and British, 42–4. Quoted in Marshall, “‘Cornwallis Triumphant,’” in Marshall, Trade and Conquest, 63–4. Quoted in ibid., 72. The resolution was passed on 23 January 793. Bacon was paid 500 guineas; Archer, The India Office, 88. Quoted in Bayly, Indian Society, 8–2. Jones, “On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India” (784), in Works, vol. 3, 39–97. Nicholas Penny discusses the two monuments to Jones in Penny, Church Monuments, 46–9. For a postcolonial reading of Flaxman’s monument to Jones, see Groseclose, “Imag(in)ing Indians,” 500, and British Sculpture, 03–4. The resolution reads: “That as a lasting testimony of approbation of the long, zealous, and successful services of the late Right Honourable Warren Hastings, in maintaining without diminution the British Possessions in India against the combined efforts of European, Mahomedan, and Mahratta enemies, a statue of that distinguished servant of the East India Company be placed among the statesmen and heroes who have contributed in their several stations to the recovery, preservation, and security of the British power and authority in India”; Minutes of a General Court, 2 January 820, quoted in Archer, The India Office, 95–6.

n o t e s t o pag e s 283– 91

403

45 Groseclose, British Sculpture, 3–4. 46 For the most comprehensive discussion of the Committee of Taste, see Yarrington, The Commemoration, 6–74; and Hoock, “The British Military Pantheon in St. Paul’s Cathedral: The State, Cultural Patriotism, and the Politics of National Monuments, c. 790– 820,” in Wrigley, Pantheons, 8–06. See also Whinney, Sculpture in Britain, 363–73. 47 The committee also oversaw the erection of monuments outside of St Paul’s. The Corporation of London was another agency that was very involved in commissioning monuments, mostly for the Guildhall. See Whinney, Sculpture in Britain, 363–73, passim. 48 Groseclose, British Sculpture; and Steggles, Statues. The latter is based on Steggles’s P hD dissertation, completed in 992 at the University of Leicester, “The Empire Aggrandized: A Study of Commemorative Portrait Statuary Exported from Britain to her Colonies in South Asia, 800–939.” See also Steggles, “Evangelical Philosophy,” “The Myth,” and “Art and Politics”; and Groseclose, “Imag(in)ing Indians.” 49 Gentleman’s Magazine 28 (758): 68–75; Holwell, A Genuine Narrative. See also Marshall’s relevant catalogue entry in Bayly, ed., The Raj, 95. 50 The monument became known as Holwell’s Monument, and by the time Thomas Twining saw it in 792, it had fallen prey to the vagaries of the Calcutta climate and was in a state of disrepair; Archer, Early Views, plates 4, 5, and 95. Lord Curzon took it upon himself to restore the monument in the late nineteenth century. It became a focus for Indian nationalists in the 940s; catalogue entry by Marshall in Bayly, ed., The Raj, 95. 5 Quoted in Archer, India and British, 30. The Moorhouse painting was intended as a pendant to Home’s painting The Hostage Princes leaving home with the Vakil, Ghulam Ali, c. 793. See also Groseclose, British Sculpture, 52–4. 52 Steggles, Statues, 58. 53 Steggles, Statues, 0, 58. For the commission and the participation of the Royal Academy, see Royal Academy, Council Minutes, 2 June 793; 28 March 795; and  April 795. 54 Garlick and Macintyre, eds, 8 July 795, The Diary, vol. 2, 368. I am indebted to Evelyn Newby for this and other references in Farington’s diaries, consulted before Newby published her index to Farington’s diaries. 55 Garlick and Macintyre, eds, 24 July 795, The Diary, vol. 2, 369–70. 56 Ibid. 57 Groseclose, British Sculpture, 65. 58 The unveiling was reported in the Madras Courier, 2 May 800; see Bell, ed., Annals, 35. 59 Archer, “Neo-Classical,” 53; and Steggles, Statues, 60-. 60 The Cornwallis and Hastings monuments in Calcutta are also discussed by Groseclose, British Sculpture, 04–9. On the Hastings monuments, see also Steggles, Statues, 5–6. 6 Quoted in Marshall, “The Whites,” 26. 62 Groseclose, British Sculpture, 4. 63 Groseclose discusses the depiction of Indians in the Webbe and Close monuments in detail; ibid., 2–5. 64 Ibid., 58–60. 65 Many of these people had originally come to India as members of the company but, once there, had decided to strike off on their own. As well, several non-British Europeans 404

n o t e s t o pag e s 292–309

66 67 68 69 70 7

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 8

were also engaged in trade and lived in the European settlements along the coasts. As the company finally began to prosper in the 790s, it massively increased employee salaries to inhibit private trade (from a range of 0 to 40 per year to 500); ibid., 43. The Charter Act of 83 finally broke the company’s monopoly. Ibid., 72. Quoted in ibid., 73. Samuel Manning the Elder assisted in carving the group; Steggles, Statues, 6. Penang was administered by British India. The monument is illustrated in Groseclose, British Sculpture, 63. Archer, “Neo-Classical,” 53–4; Ross, ed., Correspondence, vol. 3, 563; Steggles, Statues, 64–6. A similar noble demeanour is evident in Flaxman’s portrayal of a North American Native warrior who stands stoically on the monument to Lieutenant Colonel John Graves Simcoe in Exeter Cathedral. Groseclose also makes this observation; Groseclose, British Sculpture, 2–3. Ibid., 8–2. Emphasis added. Many of the statues of Queen Victoria were commissioned following her death in 90; see Steggles, Statues, 78–24, for a listing of the monuments. For monuments of Queen Victoria throughout the British Empire, see Darby, “Statues.” For a discussion of the evangelical movement in India, see Steggles, “Evangelical Philosophy,” especially chapter 2, 6 ff. Steggles, “Evangelical Philosophy,” 29; Groseclose, British Sculpture, 9. See also Archer, “Neo-Classical,” 50; Steggles, “Evangelical Philosophy,” 26–9; and Groseclose, British Sculpture, 90–3. See also Archer, “Neo-Classical,” 52; and Groseclose, British Sculpture, 92–3. Archer, “Neo-Classical,” 52. Steggles, “Evangelical Philosophy,” 6 ff.; Groseclose, British Sculpture, 90–; Marshall, “Britain,” 584.

chapte r ten  On the connection between the British navy and British imperialism, see Pratt, “Naval Contemplation.” 2 For a discussion of the competition, see Yarrington, The Commemoration, 57–9, 338–44; and Pratt, “Naval Contemplation,” 4. 3 Flaxman, A Letter, 7. 4 Ibid., 7–8. 5 Ibid., 9. 6 Dufour, Letter to the Nobility, 3–4. 7 See also Campbell, “An Alternative.” 8 Colley discusses the revived appreciation for the British monarchy beginning in the late 780s, prompted first by George III ’s success in deflecting blame away from himself for the American Revolution and subsequently by his illness in 788–89. The appreciation n o t e s t o pag e s 309–25

405

9 0 

2

of the monarchy intensified and monarchical pageantry was enhanced in the 790s and the first decades of the nineteenth century to create a contrast with the chaos of revolutionary society in France and then with Napoleon, the upstart emperor; Colley, Britons, 20–7. Flaxman, A Letter, 3. Greene, “Changing Identity,” 24. Thomas Hollis complained bitterly in his diary and in the St. James’s Chronicle that although a subscription for a statue of the late Duke of Cumberland had been open for several weeks, only six guineas had been subscribed; the manuscript diaries of Thomas Hollis, vol. 4, 4 June 766 and 6 June 766, Houghton Library, Harvard University. See also the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (London), 5 May 766. A lead equestrian statue by Henry Cheere was ultimately erected in Cavendish Square in 770. Whinney, Sculpture in Britain, 346.

406

n o t e s t o pag e s 326– 8

Bibliography

m a n u s c r i p t s a n d a rt c o l l e c t i o n s boston

Houghton Library, Harvard University, Diaries of Thomas Hollis, 759–70, MS Eng 9 Massachusetts Historical Society, King’s Chapel Papers

b r i d g e t ow n , b a r b a d o s Barbados Museum and Historical Society

c h at s wo rt h h ou s e , d e r b y s h i r e 4th Duke of Devonshire’s Correspondence

fa r m i ng t o n , c o n n e c t i c u t Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

f r e d e r i c t o n , n e w b ru n s w i c k Beaverbrook Art Gallery

h a l i fa x , no va s c o t i a Archives of the Anglican Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island

k i ng s t o n , ja m a i c a Institute of Jamaica National Gallery of Jamaica National Library of Jamaica

london British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections, India Office Record, East India Company Court Minutes B /77

– Oriental and India Office Collections, India Office Record, Miscellaneous Letters Received E /I /45 – Add. MS 22678, Correspondence of Thomas Dancer, M.D., with Edward Long – Add. MS 39784, John Flaxman’s Papers – Add. MS 57807, Grenville Papers – Add. MS 3595, Hardwicke Papers, Canada Papers – Add. MS 22677, Letters of James Knight, C. Long, and planters and merchants of Jamaica, 725–89 – Add. MS 2436, List of Landholders and quantity of land occupied in Jamaica about the year 750 – Add. MSs 24-244, Edward Long’s Papers – Add. MSs 32883, 32888, 32897, Official Correspondence of Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle – Add. MS 57706 ff. –3, Plans of Montreal British Museum, Prints and Drawings Department Courtauld Institute of Art, Conway Library, “Description of Marble Memorial Monuments by English and Other European Sculptors in St. John’s Church of England at Calcutta, India,” compiled by Phillip C. Longley, 95 – Conway Library, Rupert Gunnis MSs Douglas and Sophie Blain, Lesley Lewis MSs Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Simon Taylor Archive Museum of London, Warwick Wroth Papers National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery Archives Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Brinsley Ford Archive – Diary of Thomas Hollis, 4 April 759 to 3 July 770, entries relating to art and artists compiled by W.G. Constable Public Record Office, PRO 30/8/6-62, Chatham MSs – CO 42/3, “List of Landholders in the Island of Jamaica together with the number of Acres each person Possesses taken from the Quick Rent Books in about the year 754” – Cust 3, Ledgers of Imports and Exports until 780 – Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills Royal Academy of Arts Library, Boyle Papers – Council Minutes Royal Society of Arts Sir John Soane’s Museum University College, London, John Flaxman Gallery Victoria and Albert Museum, Prints and Drawings Department – Sculpture Department Westminster Abbey, Westminster Abbey Muniments, 493 – Westminster Abbey Muniments, Funeral Fee Books, 742–60 and 760–83 – Westminster Abbey Muniments, Treasurers’ Accounts

408 b i b l i o g r a p h y

mo n t r e a l McCord Museum of Canadian History

n e w h av e n Yale Center for British Art

nevis Nevis Museum and Historical Society

o t tawa National Gallery of Canada

s t jo h n ’s , a n t igua Museum of Antigua and Barbuda

s a n m a r i no , c a l i f o r n i a Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, Bull Granger Print Collection – Esdaile Collection – Stowe MSs (STG ) – Pocock MSs – Prints and Drawings Department

a n n ua l s , p e r i o d i c a l s , a n d n e w s pa p e r s o f t h e eighteenth and nineteenth c enturie s a n n ua l s Annual Register, London, J. Dodsley

per iodica ls

Essayist, Jamaica, BL Add. MS 244, folio 42 European Magazine, London Gentleman’s Magazine, London Imperial Magazine, London London Magazine Royal Magazine, London Scots Magazine, Edinburgh Universal Magazine, London

n e w s pa p e r s Cornwall Chronicle, Falmouth, Jamaica Daily Advertiser, Kingston, Jamaica Daily Gazette, London

bibliogr a phy

409

Gazetteer and London Daily Advertiser, London Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, London Lloyd’s Evening Post, London London Chronicle London Evening Post Monitor, London Montreal Gazette North Briton, London Public Advertiser, London Quebec Gazette, Quebec Royal Gazette Extraordinary, Kingston, Jamaica St. James’s Chronicle, London Town and Country Magazine, London

bio graphical dictionarie s Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribners, 928–36. Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vols –7. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 966– 88. Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 885–90. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–05.

b o o k s a n d o t h e r pu b l i c at i o n s Acworth, A.W. Treasure in the Caribbean. London: Pleiades Books, 949. Alexander, Capt. J.E. Transatlantic Sketches, Comprising Visits to the Most Interesting Scenes in North and South America and the West Indies. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 833. Allan, D.G.C., and John L. Abbott. The Virtuoso Tribe of Arts and Sciences. Athens, GA , and London: University of Georgia Press, 992. Allen, Brian. Francis Hayman. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 987. – “Francis Hayman and the English Rococo.” P hD dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 984. – “From Plassey to Seringapatam: India and British History Painting, c. 760 – c. 800.” In The Raj, India and the British 600–947, ed. C.A. Bayley, 26-37. London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 990. Allen, Louise R. “Alleyne of Barbados.” The Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 3 (936): 223–34. Alleyne, Warren, and Henry Fraser. The Barbados-Carolina Connection. London and Basingstoke: MacMillan, 988. Allodi, Mary. Printmaking in Canada. Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, 980. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso, 983. 410

bibliogr a phy

Andrade, Jacob. A Record of the Jews in Jamaica from the English Conquest to the Present Time. Kingston: Jamaica Times, 94. Andrew, Donna. Philanthropy and Police. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 989. Andrews, Evangeline Walker, and Charles McLean Andrews, eds. Journal of a Lady of Quality: Being the Narrative of a Journey from Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina and Portugal in the Years 774 to 776. New Haven: [Yale Historical Publications], 92. Archer, Mildred. British Drawings in the India Office Library. 2 vols. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 969. – Early Views of India: The Picturesque Journeys of Thomas and William Daniell, 786794. London: Thames and Hudson, 980. – India and British Portraiture, 770–825. London and New York: Sotheby, Park, Benet, 979. – The India Office Collection of Paintings and Sculpture. London: The British Library, 986. – “Neo-Classical Sculpture in India.” Apollo 20 (984): 50–5. Arciszewska, Barbara. “Re-casting George I : Sculpture, the Royal Image and the Market.” In The Lustrous Trade, ed. Cinzia Sicca and Alison Yarrington, 27–48. London and New York: Leicester University Press, 2000. Ariès, Philippe. The Hour of Our Death. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 98. Armstrong, John. Nations before Nationalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 982. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 995. Ayres, Philip. Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 997. Bahne, Charles. The Complete Guide to Boston’s Freedom Trail. Cambridge, MA : Newtowne, 990. Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 967. – and John B. Hench, eds. The Press and the American Revolution. Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 980. – and Philip D. Morgan, eds. Strangers within the Realm. Chapel Hill: The University Press of North Carolina, 99. Baker, Malcolm. Figured in Marble: The Making and Viewing of Eighteenth-Century Sculpture. London: V&A Publications, 2000. – “Rococo Styles in Eighteenth-Century English Sculpture.” In Rococo: Art and Design in Hogarth’s England, 278–309. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 984. – “Roubiliac’s Argyll Monument and the Interpretation of Eighteenth-century Sculptors’ Designs.” Burlington Magazine 4 (992): 785–97. – “Roubiliac and His European Background.” Apollo 20 (984): 06–3. Ballhatchet, Kenneth, and John Harrison, eds. East India Company Studies. Hong Kong: Asian Research Series, 986.

bibliogr a phy

411

Barker, Robert. “Jamaican Goldsmiths and Assayers, 665 to 765.” The Proceedings of the Silver Society 3 (984): 33–7. – “Jamaican Goldsmiths: Some Early Eighteenth-Century Inventories.” The Proceedings of the Silver Society 3 (986): 90–3. Barnwell, Joseph. “Correspondence of Charles Garth: The Pitt Statue.” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 28 (927): 79–93. – “Garth Correspondence.” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 29 (928): 22–30. Barrell, John. The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt: “The Body of the Public.” New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 986. Barry, James. The Works of James Barry, Esquire. 2 vols. London, 809. Bayly, C.A. Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 988. – ed. The Raj, India and the British, 600-947. London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 990. Beard, Geoffrey. The Work of Grinling Gibbons. London: John Murray, 989. Beckford, William. “Vathek.” In Three Gothic Novels, ed. E.F. Bleiler, 07–253. New York: Dover, 966. Bell, C.F., ed. Annals of Thomas Banks Sculptor Royal Academician. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 938. Bevington, Michael. “The Development of the Classical Revival at Stowe.” Architectura 4 (992): 36–63. – “The Grand Avenue, the Corinthian Arch and the Entrance Drives.” Templa Quam Dilecta, no. . Buckingham: Capability Books, 989. – “The Palladian Bridge.” Templa Quam Dilecta, no. 8. Buckingham: Capability Books, 990. Bhabha, Homi K., ed. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge, 990. Bickham, George. The Beauties of Stow. 750. Reprint, with an Introduction by George Clarke, Los Angeles: Augustan Reprint Society, 977. Bignamini, Ilaria. “The Accompaniment to Patronage: A Study of the Origins, Rise and Development of an Institutional System for the Arts in Britain, 692–768.” P hD dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 988. Bindman, David. “The Consolation of Death: Roubiliac’s Nightingale Tomb.” Huntington Library Quarterly 69 (986): 25–46. – Hogarth. New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 98. – “Meeting with Strangers: Sculpture and Public Space in Eighteenth-Century London.” Paper presented at the College Art Association, Washington, DC , 99. – “Roubiliac: Some Problems.” In The Rococo in England: A Symposium, ed. Charles Hind, 34–42. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 986. – ed. John Flaxman. London: Thames and Hudson, 979. – and Malcolm Baker. Roubiliac and the Eighteenth-Century Monument. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 995. Binney, Marcus. Sir Robert Taylor: From Rococo to Neoclassicism. London: Allen and Unwin, 984. 412

bibliogr a phy

– John Harris, and Kit Martin. Jamaica’s Heritage: An Untapped Resource. Kingston: The Mill Press, 99. Black, Clinton. Port Royal: A History and Guide. Jamaica: Bolivar Press, 970. – Spanish Town: The Old Capital. Spanish Town, 960. Blackburne, Francis. Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, Esq. F.R. and A.S.S. London, 780. Blain, Douglas. “Falmouth in Peril: ‘An Almost Unspoilt Town.’” Georgian Group Annual Report (989): 06–4. Blundell, Joe Whitlock. Westminster Abbey: The Monuments. Introduction by John Physick. London: Murray, 989. Bond, W.H. Thomas Hollis of Lincoln’s Inn: A Whig and His Books. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 990. Bonomi, Patricia U. A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 97. – Under the Cope of Heaven, Religion, Society and Politics in Colonial America. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 986. Borsay, Peter. The English Urban Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 989. Bosher, J.F. The Canada Merchants. Oxford: Clarendon, 989. Boswell, James. The Life of Samuel Johnson. London, 79. Bowen, H.V. “British India, 765–83: The Metropolitan Context.” In The Eighteenth Century, ed. P.J. Marshall, 530–5. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 998. Brathwaite, Edward. The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 770–820. Oxford: Clarendon, 97. Brewer, John. “Commercialization and Politics.” In The Birth of a Consumer Society, ed. Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J.H. Plumb, 97–262. London: Europa, 982. – “The Number 45: A Wilkite Political Symbol.” In England’s Rise to Greatness, 660– 763, ed. Stephen B. Baxter, 349–80. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 983. – Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 976. – Pleasures of the Imagination. London: HarperCollins, 997. Bridgman, Thomas. Memorials of the Dead in Boston. Boston, 853. Brigham, Clarence S. Paul Revere’s Engravings. Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 954. Bryant, Julius. “The Church Memorials of Thomas Banks.” Journal of the Church Monuments Society , part  (985): 50–64. Busco, Marie. “The Sculptor Sir Richard Westmacott, 775–856: Life and Works.” P hD dissertation, New York University, 988. – Sir Richard Westmacott, Sculptor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 994. Bynoe, Clennell. “There’s Rich Sculpture in Barbados’ Churches.” Barbados Advocate, 6 January 967. Calder, C.M. John Vassall and His Descendants by One of Them. Hertford, 920. Cameron, Kenneth Walter. Letter-Book of the Rev. Henry Caner SPG Missionary in Colonial Connecticut and Massachusetts until the Revolution: A Review of His Correspondence from 728 through 778. Hartford: Transcendental Books, 972. bibliogr a phy

413

Campbell, Malcolm. “An Alternative Design for a Commemorative Monument by John Flaxman.” Record of Art Museum 7 (Princeton, 958): 65–73. Canny, Nicholas, and Anthony Pagden. Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 500800. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 987. Carrington, Selwyn H.H. The British West Indies during the American Revolution. Dordrecht and Providence: Foris Publications, 988. Casgrain, Abbé. Wolfe and Montcalm. Toronto: Morang and Co., 905. Catalogue of the Exhibition of the Society of Artists. London, 760. A Catalogue of the Genuine, Large and Curious Collection of Models, etc. of Mr. Michael Rysbrack. London, 766. Cave, Roderick. “Printing in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica.” The Library 5th series 33 (978): 87–206. Cecil, Richard. Memoirs of John Bacon, Esq. R.A. London, 80. Chamberlayne, C.G. The Vestry Book and Register of St. Peter’s Parish, New Kent and James City Councils, Virginia, 684–786. Richmond: Division of Purchasing and Printing, 937. Chancellor, E. Beresford. The History of the Squares of London. London: Kegan Paul, 907. – The Lives of the British Sculptors. London: Chapman and Hall, 9. Christie, Ian. Wars and Revolutions: Britain, 760–85. London: Edward Arnold, 982. Clarke, Colin G. Jamaica in Maps. London: University of London Press, 974. Clarke, George. “The Gardens of Stowe.” Apollo 97 (973): 558–65. – “Grecian Taste and Gothic Virtue: Lord Cobham’s Gardening Programme and Its Iconography.” Apollo 97 (973): 566–7. – “The History of Stowe X , Moral Gardening.” The Stoic (July 970): 2–2. – “The History of Stowe XVIII , Earl Temple and Giambattista Borra.” The Stoic (December 973): 265–73. – “The History of Stowe XIX , Earl Temple’s Gardens: The First Phase.” The Stoic (December 973): 265–73. – “Introduction.” In George Bickham, The Beauties of Stow, i–xiii. 750. Reprint, Los Angeles: Augustan Reprint Society, 977. – “The Medallions of Concord: An Association between the Society of Arts and Stowe.” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 29 (98): 6–6. – “The Moving Temples of Stowe: Aesthetics of Change in an English Landscape over Four Generations.” Huntington Library Quarterly 55 (992): 50–9. – “Signior Fido and the Stowe Patriots.” Apollo 22 (985): 248–5. – ed. Descriptions of Lord Cobham’s Gardens at Stowe, 700–750. Buckingham: Buckinghamshire Record Society, 990. – and Michael Gibbon. “The History of Stowe I –XXVI .” The Stoic (March 967 to July 977): various articles. Clayton, T.R. “Sophistry, Security, and Socio-Political Structures in the American Revolution, or Why Jamaica Did Not Rebel.” The Historical Journal 29 (986): 39–44. Clifford, Timothy. “John Bacon and the Manufacturers.” Apollo 22 (985): 288–304. Clout, Hugh, ed. The Times London History Atlas. London: Times Books, 99. 414

bibliogr a phy

Coade’s Gallery, or Exhibition in Artificial Stone. London, 799. Coarelli, Filippo. Guida archeologica di Roma. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 974. Coleridge, Henry Nelson. Six Months in the West Indies. London, 862. Collard, Edgar Andrew. “American invaders threw king’s bust down well.” Montreal Gazette, [986]. Clipping. Collection of the McCord Museum of Canadian History, Montreal. Collard, Elizabeth. “Nelson in Old Montreal.” Country Life 46 (969): 20–. Collection de Cartes Anciennes et Modernes pour servir à l’étude de l’Histoire de l’Amerique et du Canada. Quebec, 948. Colley, Linda. Britons Forging the Nation, 707–837. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 992. Collins, John T. “Historic Statues in the School of Art.” Cork Evening Standard, 26 January 955. Colonial Laws of New York, 664–775. Vol. 4. Albany, 894. Colton, Judith. “Monuments to Men of Genius: A Study of Eighteenth Century English and French Sculptural Works.” P hD dissertation, New York University, 974. Colvin, Howard. A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 600–840. New York: Facts on File, 978. Combe, William. The History of the Abbey Church of St. Peter’s Westminster: Its Antiquities and Monuments. 2 vols. London, 82. Connell, Neville. “Eighteenth-Century Furniture and Its Background in Barbados.” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 24 (959): 62–89. – “St. George’s Parish Church, Barbados.” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 20 (953): 33–6. – “Some Church Monuments in Barbados.” The Bajan (October 964): 9–. “Considerations of the Importance of Canada and the Bay and River of St. Lawrence. And of the American Fisheries Dependant on the Islands of Cape Breton, St. John’s, Newfoundland and the Seas Adjacent, address’d to The Right Hon. William Pitt.” London, 759. Copeland, David. Colonial American Newspapers: Character and Content. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 997. Corry, John, and John Evans. The History of Bristol Civil and Ecclesiastical. 2 vols. Bristol, 86. Countryman, Edward. A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 760–790. New York: Norton, 989. Coutu, Joan. “Carving Histories: British Sculpture in the West Indies.” Journal of the Church Monuments Society 2 (997): 77–85. – “Eighteenth-Century British Monuments and the Politics of Empire.” P hD dissertation, University College, London, 993. – “Joseph Wilton.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. – “Legitimating the British Empire: The Monument to General Wolfe in Westminster Abbey.” In Conflicting Visions: War and Visual Culture in Britain and France, c. 700– 830, ed. John Bonehill and Geoff Quilley, 6–83. Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2005. bibliogr a phy

415

– “Philanthropy and Propaganda: Wilton’s Bust of George III in Montreal.” RACAR 9 (992, published 994): 59–67. – “The Rodney Monument in Jamaica and an Empire Coming of Age.” The Sculpture Journal 2 (998): 46–57. – “Stowe: A Whig Training Ground.” The New Arcadian Journal, ed. Patrick Eyres, 43/44, The Political Temples of Stowe (997): 66–78. – “‘A very grand and seigneurial design’: The Duke of Richmond’s Academy in Whitehall.” British Art Journal  (2000): 47–54. Cox-Johnson, Ann. John Bacon R.A., 740–799. London: St Marylebone Society, 96. Craske, Matthew. “Contacts and Contracts, Sir Henry Cheere and the Formation of a New Commercial World of Sculpture in Mid-Eighteenth-Century London.” In The Lustrous Trade, ed. Cinzia Sicca and Alison Yarrington, 94–3. London and New York: Leicester University Press, 2000. – “The London Trade in Monumental Sculpture and the Development of the Imagery of the Family in Funerary Monuments of the Period, 720–760.” P hD dissertation, Queen Mary and Westfield College, London, 992. Craton, Michael. Empire, Enslavement and Freedom in the Caribbean. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 997. – “Reluctant Creoles: The Planters’ World in the British West Indies.” In Strangers within the Realm, ed. Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan, 34–62. Chapel Hill: University Press of North Carolina, 99. – Testing the Chains. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 982. – and James Walvin. A Jamaican Plantation: The History of Worthy Park, 670–970. London: W.H. Allen, 970. Craven, Wayne. Sculpture in America. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 986. Creighton, Hugh. “The Temple of Concord at Stowe.” Country Life. Undated offprint in the Huntington Library. Croft-Murray, Edward. “An Account Book of John Flaxman, R.A.” The Walpole Society 28 (939–40): 52–0. Crossley, David, and Richard Saville, ed. The Fuller Letters, 728–755. Lewes: Sussex Record Society, 99. Cundall, Frank. A Brief History of the Parish Church of St. Andrew, Jamaica. Kingston, 93. – The Governors of Jamaica in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century. London, 937. – Historic Jamaica. London: Institute of Jamaica, 95; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 97. – “A Re-discovered Monument.” West India Committee Circular, 4 September 933, 372. – “The Rodney Memorial in Jamaica.” Connoisseur 76 (926): 34–7. – “Sculpture in Jamaica.” Art Journal 8 (907): 65–70. Cunningham, Allan. The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. 6 vols. London, 829–33. Dalcho, Frederick. An Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in SouthCarolina. Charleston, 820.

416

bibliogr a phy

Dancer, Thomas. Catalogue of Plants, Exotic and Indigenous, in the Botanical Garden, Jamaica. St Jago de la Vega [Spanish Town], 792. Darby, Elisabeth. “Statues of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert: A Study in Commemorative and Portrait Statuary, 834–937.” P hD dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 983. Deák, Gloria Gilda. Picturing America, 497–899. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 988. Defoe, Daniel. A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain. 3rd ed. Ed. Samuel Richardson. London, 742. de Montfauçon, Bernard. L’Antiquité expliquée et representée en figures and Supplement au livre de l’Antiquité expliquée. 6 vols. Paris, 726. A Descriptive Catalogue of Coade’s Artificial Stone Manufactory. London, 784. Desultory Sketches and Tales of Barbados. London, 840. “A Detection of the False Reasons and Facts, contained in the Five Letters (entitled, Reasons for keeping Guadaloupe ...).” London, 76. Deutsch, Karl W. Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality. Cambridge: MIT Press, 966. Devas, Raymond P. A History of the Island of Grenada, 498–796. St George’s, Grenada: Carenage, 974. Diamonstein, Barbaralee. The Landmarks of New York. New York: Abrams, 988. Doezema, Marianne, and June Hargrove. The Public Monument and Its Audience. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 977. Dorsey, Stephen. Early English Churches in America, 607–807. New York, 952. Dossie, Robert. Memoirs of Agriculture and Other Oeconomical Arts. 3 vols. London, 767–82. Dufour, Alexander. Letter to the Nobility composing the Committee for raising the Naval Pillar or Monument Under the Patronage of His Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence in answer to the Letter of John Flaxman, sculptor, on that subject. London, 800. Dunn, Richard S. Sugar and Slaves. London: Norton, 973. Edelstein, T.J. Vauxhall Gardens. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 983. Edwards, Bryan. The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies. 3 vols. London, 80. Eimer, Christopher. “The Society’s Concern with ‘The Medallic Art’ in the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 39 (99): 753–62. “The Elusive Monument Erected to General James Wolfe.” New York Society Quarterly Bulletin 4 (920): 74-5. Embury II , Aymar. Early American Churches. Garden City, 94. Engerman, Stanley T. “Mercantilism and Overseas Trade, 700–800.” In The Economic History of Britain since 700, vol. , 700–860, ed. Roderick Floud and Donald McCloskey, 82–204. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 994. The Equestrian Statues of the World. New York: American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, 93. Esdaile, Katharine Ada. English Church Monuments, 50–840. New York: B.T. Batsford, 946. bibliogr a phy

417

– The Life and Work of Louis-François Roubiliac. London: Oxford University Press, 928. – “Sir Robert Taylor As Sculptor.” The Architectural Review 03 (948): 63–6. Etchings of Coade’s Artificial Stone Manufactures. London, 777–79. Etlin, Richard. The Architecture of Death. Cambridge: MIT Press, 984. Eustace, Katharine. Michael Rysbrack, Sculptor, 694–770. Bristol, 982. Eyres, Patrick. “Interpretation, Conservation, Re-interpretation: The Iconography of the Medallions of Concord and Victory.” New Arcadian Journal (997): 79–07. Fabricant, Carole. “The Literature of Domestic Tourism and the Public Consumption of Private Property.” In The New Eighteenth Century, ed. Felicity Nussbaum and Laura Brown, 254–75. London and New York: Methuen, 987. Fauteux, Aegidius. The Introduction of Printing into Canada. Montreal: Rolland Paper Co., 930. Feurtado, W.A. Official and Other Personages of Jamaica, from 655 to 790. Kingston: W.A. Feurtado Sons, 896. Five Centuries of Art in Jamaica. Kingston: National Gallery of Jamaica, 976. [Flannigan, Mrs]. Antigua and the Antiguans. 2 vols. London: Saunders and Ottley, 844. Flaxman, John. A Letter to the Committee for Raising the Naval pillar, or Monument, under the patronage of His Royal Highness, the Duke of Clarence. London, 799. Fleming, John. “Robert Adam, Luc-François Breton and the Townshend Monument in Westminster Abbey.” Connoisseur 50 (962): 63–7. Foote, Henry Wilder. Annals of King’s Chapel from the Puritan Age of New England to the Present Day. Boston: Little, Brown, 896. Fournier, Rodolphe. Lieux et monuments historiques de Quebec et environs. Quebec: Editions Garneau, 966. Fowkes Tobin, Beth. Picturing Imperial Power. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 999. Fraser, Henry, Sean Carrington, Addinton Forde, and John Gilmore. A-Z of Barbadian Heritage. Kingston: Heinemann, 990. Fraser, Walter J. Charleston! Charleston! Columbia, SC : University of South Carolina Press, 989. “A Frenchman Visits Charleston in 777.” Trans. Elmer Douglas Johnson. The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 5 (95): 88–92. [Frere, George]. A Short History of Barbados, from Its First Discovery to the Present Time. London, 768. Friedman, Terry, and Timothy Clifford. The Man at Hyde Park Corner: Sculpture by John Cheere, 709–787. Leeds: Temple Newsam House, 974. Galarneau, Claude. La France devant l’opinion canadienne (760–85). Quebec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval; Paris: Librarie Armand Colin, 970. Galt, John. The Life of Benjamin West. 86–20. Reprint, Gainesville: Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, 960. Garlick, Kenneth, and Angus Macintyre, eds. The Diary of Joseph Farington. 6 vols. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 978–84. 418

bibliogr a phy

Gellner, Ernest. Thought and Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 964. Georgian Society of Jamaica. Falmouth, 79–970. Kingston: N.p., 970. Gibbon, Michael J. “The History of Stowe XVI : The Grenville Family.” The Stoic (July 972): 09–5. – “The History of Stowe XVIII : Earl Temple and Giambattista Borra.” The Stoic (July 973): 200–5. Gibbs, James. A Book of Architecture Containing Designs of Buildings and Ornaments. London, 728. Gilpin, William. A Dialogue upon the Gardens of the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Cobham, at Stow in Buckinghamshire. London, 748. Gittings, Clare. Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England. Beckenham, Kent: Croome Held, 984. Gowing, C.N., and G.B. Clarke. Drawings of Stowe by John Claude Nattes in the Buckinghamshire County Museum. Buckingham: Buckingham County Museum, 983. Graham, Conrad. Mont Royal – Ville Marie. Montreal: McCord Museum of Canadian History, 992. Gray, Thomas. An Elegy Written in a County Church Yard. London, 754, specifically General Wolfe’s copy in the Fischer Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. Greene, Jack P. “Bridge to Revolution: The Wilkes Fund Controversy in South Carolina.” Journal of Southern History 29 (963): 9–52. – “Changing Identity in the British Caribbean: Barbados As a Case Study.” In Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 500–800, ed. Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden, 23–66. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 987. – Peripheries and Center. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 986. – Pursuits of Happiness. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 988. – Richard Bushman, and Michael Kammen. Society, Freedom, and Conscience. New York: Norton, 976. Greenwood, F.W.P. History of King’s Chapel in Boston, the First Episcopal Church. Boston, 833. Grieg, James, ed. The Farington Diary. 8 vols. London: Hutchinson, 922–28. Groseclose, Barbara. British Sculpture and the Company Raj. Newark and London: University of Delaware Press, 995. – “Imag(in)ing Indians.” Art History 3 (990): 488–55. Grosley, Pierre-Jean. A Tour to London, or New Observations on England and Its Inhabitants. 3 vols. London, 772. Guinness, Desmond, and Julius Trousdale Sadler, Jr. Palladio: A Western Progress. New York: Thames and Hudson, 976. Gunnis, Rupert. Dictionary of British Sculptors, 660–85. London: Abbey Library, [95]. Gwyn, Julian. The Enterprising Admiral: The Personal Fortune of Admiral Sir Peter Warren. Montreal and London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 974. Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. 962. Reprint, trans. Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence, Cambridge: Polity Press, 992. bibliogr a phy

419

Hakewill, James. A Picturesque Tour of the Island of Jamaica, from Drawings Made in the Years 820 and 82. London, 825. Halsey, R.T.H. “America’s Obligation to William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.” Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 3 (June 98): 38–43 Hamilton, S.B. “Coade Stone.” Architectural Review 4 (954): 295–30. Hammond, N.G.L., and H.H. Scullard, eds. The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon, 970. Hanway, Jonas. “An Account of the Society for the Encouragement of British Troops in Germany and North America.” London, 760. – “An Essay on Tea, Considered as Pernicious to Health, Obstructing Industry, and Impoverishing the Nation.” London, 757. – “A Letter Against the Proposed Naturalization of the Jews.” London, 753. [–] “Motives for a Subscription towards the Relief of the Sufferers at Montreal in Canada.” st ed. London, March 766. BL Add. MSS 3595, folios 3–7. [–] “Motives for a Subscription towards the Relief of the Sufferers at Montreal in Canada.” 2nd ed. London, 766. – “Reasons for an Augmentation of at Least 2,000 Mariners to be Employed in the Merchants-service, & Coasting-Trade, with some Thoughts on the Means of Providing for a Number of our Seaman after the Present War is Finished ...” London, 759. – “A Review of the Proposed Naturalization of the Jews.” London, 753. – “Thoughts on the Proposed Naturalization of the Jews.” London, 753. Harbison, Peter, Homan Potterton, and Jeanne Sheehy. Irish Art and Architecture from Prehistory to the Present. London: Thames and Hudson, 978. Harris, Edward D. “The Vassalls of New England.” The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 7 (863): 56–6, 3–28. Harris, John, and Michael Snodin, eds. Sir William Chambers, Architect to George III . New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 997. Harrison, Walter. A New and Universal History, Description and Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and Their Adjacent Parts. London, 775. Hart, Charles Henry. “Peale’s Allegory of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.” Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings 68 (95): 29–303. Haskell, Francis, and Nicolas Penny. Taste and the Antique. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 982. Haskell, H.N. “Some Notes on the Foundation and History of Harrison College.” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 8 (94): 86–93. Heckscher, Morrison H., and Leslie Greene Bowman. American Rococo, 750–775: Elegance in Ornament. New York: Abrams, 992. Hewat-Jaboor, Philip, and Bet McLeod, eds. William Beckford, 760–844: An Eye for the Maginificent. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 200. Higman, B.W. Jamaica Surveyed. Kingston: Institute of Jamaica, 988. Hill, Barbara. Historic Churches of Barbados. Barbados: Art Heritage, 984. “The Historic Sites and Buildings of Barbados.” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society  (933): 6–32. 420 b i b l i o g r a p h y

An Historical Description of Westminster Abbey, Its Monuments and Curiosities. London, 783. Hobsbawm, Eric. Nations and Nationalism since 780. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 990. Holwell, J.Z. A Genuine Narrative of the Deplorable Deaths of the English Gentlemen and others who were suffocated in the Black Hole. London, 758. Hume, Edgar Erskine. “A Colonial Scottish Jacobite Family: Establishment in Virginia of a Branch of the Humes of Wedderburn.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 38 (930): –37, 97–24, 95–234, 292–346a. Hunt, John Dixon. “Emblem and Expressionism in the Eighteenth-Century Landscape Garden.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 4 (97): 294–37. Hutchins, John H. Jonas Hanway, 72–786. London: SPCK , 940. “In another break with Britain, Barbados to remove Nelson statue.” CNN , 28 April 999. Ingram, K.E. Sources of Jamaican History, 655–838. 2 vols. London and Zug: Inter Documentation, 976. – “The West Indian Trade of an English Furniture Firm in the Eighteenth Century.” The Jamaican Historical Review 3 (962): 22–37. Inskip, Peter. “Discoveries, Challenges, and Moral Dilemmas in the Restoration of the Garden Buildings at Stowe.” Huntington Library Quarterly 55 (992): 5–26. Institution and First Proceedings of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, Established in Barbados 78. Barbados, 78. “The Interest of Great Britain Considered with Regard to Her Colonies and the Acquisition of Canada and Guadaloupe.” London, 760. Jackson-Stops, Gervase. Hagley Hall. Derby: English Life, 979. Jayne, R. Everett. Jonas Hanway: Philanthropist, Politician and Author, 72–786. London: Epworth Press, 929. Johnston, J.R.V. “The Stapleton Sugar Plantations in the Leeward Islands.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 48 (965): 75–206. “Jonah an Oratorio, Disposed for a Voice and Harpsicord: Composed by Samuel Felsted, Organist of St. Andrew’s Jamaica.” Jamaica, 775. Special concert performance sung in St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree, 26 November 990. “Jonas Hanway, 72–786.” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 34 (986): 636–62. Jones, Thomas. “Memoirs of Thomas Jones.” Walpole Society 32 (946–48). Jones, William, Sir. The Works of William Jones. 3 vols. London, 807. – et al. Dissertations and Miscellaneous Pieces Relating to the History and Antiquities, the Arts, Sciences and Literature of Asia. London, 792. “Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 765, [Part] .” American Historical Review 26 (92): 726–47. Journal of the Legislative Council of the Colony of New-York, Began the 8th Day of December 743 and Ended the 3rd Day of April, 775. Albany, 86. Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica, 663–826. 4 vols. Kingston, 8–29. Journals of the House of Commons. Vol. 28. London, 759. Journals of the Votes and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Colony of New York. Vol. 2, 743–765. New York, 766. bibliogr a phy

421

Kamenka, Eugene. “Political Nationalism: The Evolution of the Idea.” In Nationalism: The Nature and Evolution of an Idea, ed. E. Kamenka, 2–20. New York: St Martin’s Press, 976. Kammen, Michael. Colonial New York: A History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 975. Kelly, Alison. Mrs. Coade’s Stone. Upton-upon-Severn, Worcester: Self-publishing Association, 990. – “A Sculptural Tale of Two Cities.” Irish Arts Review Yearbook 9 (995): 03–7. Kemp, Brian. English Church Monuments. London: Batsford, 980. Kennedy, John Pendleton, ed. Journal of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 766–69. Richmond, 906. Kennedy, Roger C. Architecture, Men, Women and Money in America, 600–860. New York: Random House, 985. Kerslake, J.F. Early Georgian Portraits. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 977. – “The Likeness of Wolfe.” In Wolfe Portraiture and Genealogy, 7–44. Westerham, Kent, 959. Kidd, Colin. British Identities before Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 999. Kidder Smith, G.E. The Architecture of the United States. New York: Anchor Press Doubleday, 98. Knight, Derrick. Gentlemen of Fortune. London: Muller, 978. Kramnick, Isaac. Bolingbroke and his Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 968. Lambert, Susan. Drawing, Technique and Purpose. London: Trefoil Books, 984. Langford, Paul. “British Correspondence in the Colonial Press, 763–775: A Study in Anglo-American Misunderstanding before the American Revolution.” In The Press and the American Revolution, ed. Bernard Bailyn and John B. Hench, 273–33. Worcester: American Antiquary Society, 980. – A Polite and Commercial People: England, 727–783. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 992. Langley, Batty. The City and Country Builder’s and Workman’s Treasury of Designs. London, 756. Lawrence, Cynthia Miller. Flemish Baroque Commemorative Monuments, 566–725. New York: Garland, 98. Lawrence-Archer, J.H., Capt. Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies. London, 875. Le Roy de Sainte-Croix, François Noël. Vie et ouvrages de L.F. Roubillac. Paris, 882. Lecky, William. A History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century. London: Longmans, Green, 93. Legouix, S.Y. “John Cheere’s Statue of George II .” Connoisseur 88 (975): 278–83. Leslie, Charles. A New and Exact Account of Jamaica. Edinburgh, 740. Leslie, Charles Robert, and Thomas Taylor. Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds. London, 865. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Laokoön. Dresden, 766. 422 b i b l i o g r a p h y

“A Letter Addressed to Two Great Men.” London, 760. Lewis, Lesley. “Elizabeth, Countess of Home, and Her House in Portman Square.” Burlington Magazine 09 (967): 443–53. – “English Commemorative Sculpture in Jamaica.” Commemorative Art 32–4 (965–67). Reprint, Jamaican Historical Review 9 (972). – “A Wilton Monument in Jamaica.” Burlington Magazine 08 (966): 20–3. Litten, Julian. The English Way of Death. London: Robert Hale, 99. Little, Bryan. “Augustan Bath.” In Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. Boris Ford, 304–6. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 992. Llewellyn, Nigel. The Art of Death. London: Victoria and Albert Museum and Reaktion Books, 99. – Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. [Lloyd, Charles]. “The Conduct of the Late Administration Examined, with an Appendix.” London, 767. Long, Edward. The History of Jamaica. 3 vols. London, 774. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 972. Lowther Clark, W.K. A History of the SPCK . London, 959. Madden, R.R. A Twelve Month’s Residence in the West Indies during the Transition from Slavery to Apprenticeship. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 835. Maier, Pauline. “John Wilkes and American Disillusionment with Britain.” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series 20 (963): 373–95. MacKesy, Piers. The War for America, 775–783. London: Longmans, 964. Mapp, Alf J., Jr. The Virginia Experiment. Lanham, MD : Hamilton Press, 985. Marks, Arthur S. “The Statue of King George III in New York and the Iconology of Regicide.” The American Art Journal 3 (98): 6–82. Marsden, Jonathan, and John Hardy, “‘O fair Britannia Hail’: The ‘most superb’ state coach.” Apollo 53 (200): 3–2. Marshall, P.J. “Britain without America: A Second Empire?” In The Eighteenth Century, ed. P.J. Marshall, 576–95. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 998. – “The British in Asia: Trade to Dominion, 700–765.” In The Eighteenth Century, ed. P.J. Marshall, 487–507. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 998. – The Impeachment of Warren Hastings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 965. – Trade and Conquest: Studies on the Rise of British Dominance in India. Aldershot, Hampshire: Variorum, 993. – “The Whites of British India, 780–830: A Failed Colonial Society?” International History Review 2 (990): 26–44. – ed. The Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 998. Martin, Denis. Portraits de Héroes de la Nouvelle-France. Quebec: Hurtubise, 988. Mayer, André. King’s Chapel: The First Century, 686–787. [Boston], 976. McCarthy, Michael. “James Lovell and His Sculptures at Stowe.” Burlington Magazine 5 (973): 22–3. McCrady, Edward. An Historic Church: The Westminster Abbey of South Carolina: A Sketch of St. Philip’s Church, Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston, 897. bibliogr a phy

423

– The History of South Carolina under the Royal Government, 79–776. New York, 899. McCusker, John J. “Tables to Accompany ‘Growth, Stagnation, or Decline? The Economy of the British West Indies, 763–790.’” Quantitative Economic History Discussion Group, London School of Economics, 2 February 985. – and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 607–789. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 985. McDonough, Daniel J. Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laurens. Sellinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 2000. McDowell, R.B. Ireland: The Age of Imperialism and Revolution, 760–80. Oxford: Clarendon, 979. McKendrick, Neil, John Brewer, and J.H. Plumb. The Birth of a Consumer Society. London: Europa, 982. McLeod, Alistair. No Great Mischief. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 999. McNairn, Alan. Behold the Hero: General Wolfe and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 997. Meade, Bishop. Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 857. Meinig, D.W. The Shaping of America. Vol. , Atlantic America, 492–800. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 986. Metcalf, George. Royal Government and Political Conflict in Jamaica, 729–783. London: Longmans, 965. Middleton, Richard. The Bells of Victory: The Pitt-Newcastle Ministry and the Seven Years War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 985. Miller, John C. Origins of the American Revolution. 943. Reprint, revised, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 959. Miller, Lillian B., ed. The Selected Papers of Charles Wilson Peale and his Family. Vol , 735–79. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 983. Mitchell, Charles. “Benjamin West’s ‘Death of General Wolfe’ and the Popular History Piece.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 7 (944): 20–33. Montgomery, Charles F., and Patricia E. Kane. American Art, 750–700: Towards Independence. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 976. “Monumental Inscriptions in the Parish Church and Churchyard of St. George’s, Grenada.” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 4 (949): 8–27. Morgan, Edmund S. The Challenge of the American Revolution. New York: Norton, 976. Morgan, Philip D. “British Encounters with Africans and African-Americans.” In Strangers within the Realm, ed. Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan, 57–29. Chapel Hill: The University Press of North Carolina, 99. Mozley, Geraldine, ed. Letters from Jamaica, 788–796. London, [938]. Namier, Lewis, and John Brooke. The House of Commons, 754–790. 3 vols. London: Secker and Warburg, 964. A Narrative of the Revolt and Insurrection of the French Inhabitants in the Island of Grenada. Edinburgh, 795. 424 b i b l i o g r a p h y

Neumeyer, Alfred. “Monuments to ‘Genius’ in German Classicism.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 2 (938–39): 59–63. Newby, Evelyn. The Diary of Joseph Farington Index. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 998. Newman, Gerald. The Rise of English Nationalism. New York: St Martin’s Press, 987. Nicolini-Maschino, Sylvette. “Michel Chartier de Lotbinière, l’action et la pensée d’un canadien du 8ème siècle.” P hD dissertation, Université de Montréal, 978. Nora, Pierre, ed. Realms of Memory. New York: Columbia University Press, 996. Nugent, Lady Maria. Lady Nugent’s Journal of her Residence in Jamaica from 80 to 805. Ed. Philip Wright. Kingston: Institute of Jamaica, 966. Oliver, Vere Langford. The History of the Island of Antigua. London: Mitchell and Hughes, 899. – The Monumental Inscriptions in the Churches and Churchyards of the Island of Barbados, British West Indies. London: Mitchell Hughes and Clarke, 95. – The Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies. Dorchester: Longmans, 927. – “The Obelisk at St. Vincent.” Caribbeana  (London, 90): 93. – ed. “Monumental Inscriptions in England Relating to West Indians.” Caribbeana –4 (London, 90–6). Otis, James. The Rights of the British Colonies asserted and proved. Pamphlet. Boston, 764. Owen, John B. The Rise of the Pelhams. London: Metheun, 957. The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon, 949. Paquet, Gilles, and Jean-Pierre Wallot. “Nouvelle France/Québec/Canada: A World of Limited Identities.” In Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 500–800, ed. Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden, 95–4. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 987. Pares, Richard. “Merchants and Planters.” Economic History Review supplement 4 (Cambridge, 960). – Yankees and Creoles. London: Longmans, Green, 956. Parkman, Francis. Montcalm and Wolfe. London: Macmillan, 887. Patte, Pierre. Monumens érigé en France à la gloire de Louis XV. Paris, 765. Patterson, Orlando. The Sociology of Slavery. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 967. Pears, Iain. The Discovery of Painting. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 988. Penny, Nicholas. Church Monuments in Romantic England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 977. – “English Church Monuments to Women Who Died in Childbed between 780 and 835.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 38 (975): 34–32. – Mourning. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 98. Penson, Lillian M. The Colonial Agents of the British West Indies. London: University of London Press, 924. Peters, Marie. Pitt and Popularity: The Patriot Minister and London Opinion during the Seven Years’ War. Oxford: Clarendon, 980. Phillimore, Robert, ed. Memoirs and Correspondence of George, Lord Lyttelton, from 734–773. London, 845. bibliogr a phy

425

Physick, John. Designs for English Sculpture, 680–860. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 969. Pigou, Elizabeth. “Western Responses to Death in a Jamaican Context.” Jamaica Journal 20 (May–July 987): 2–6. “The Pillar of Liberty.” Dedham Historical Register  (890): frontispiece opposite 2, 40. Pitman, Frank Wesley. The Development of the British West Indies, 700–763. 97. Reprint, Hamden, CT : Archon Books, 967. – “The Settlement and Financing of British West India Plantations in the Eighteenth Century.” In Essays in Colonial History Presented to Charles McLean Andrews, 252–83. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 966. Plamenatz, John. “Two Types of Nationalism.” In Nationalism: The Nature and Evolution of an Idea, ed. E. Kamenka, 22–36. New York: St Martin’s Press, 976. Plumb, J.H. “The Public, Literature and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century.” In The Triumph of Culture: 8th Century Perspectives, ed. Paul Fritz and David Williams, 27–48. Toronto: A.M. Hakkert, 972. Pocock, J.G.A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Republican Thought and the Atlantic Tradition. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 975. Poole, H. “Annals of the Masonry of Westminster Abbey.” Royal Institute of British Architects Journal 6 (889–90): 2–6, 36, 69–72, 87–8, 28–20, 253–5, 28–2, 30–4. Porter, John R., and Jean Bélisle. La Sculpture Ancienne au Québec. Montreal: Editions de l’Homme, 982. Porter, Roy. English Society in the Eighteenth Century. London: Penguin Books, 982. “Portraits by Blackburn.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (878): 385–92. Potts, Alex. Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 994. Poyer, John. History of Barbados. London, 808. Pratt, Lynda. “Naval Contemplation: Poetry, Patriotism and the Navy, 797–99.” Journal for Maritime Research (December 2000): –20, http://www.jmr.nmm.ac.uk. [Pringle, John, Sir]. The Life of General Wolfe: The Conqueror of Canada, or the Eulogium of that Renowned Hero, Attempted according to the Rules of Eloquence. London, 760. “Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly of Maryland, 766–768.” Archives of Maryland. Vols 6 and 64. Baltimore, 944. Proun, Jules. “Charles Wilson Peale in London.” In New Perspectives on Charles Wilson Peale, ed. Lillian B. Miller and David C. Ward, 29–50. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 99. Pugh, John. Remarkable Occurrences in the Life of Jonas Hanway, Esq. London, 787. Purcell, Edmund Sheridan. Life of Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster. London: Macmillan, 895. Ragatz, Lowell Joseph. “Absentee Landlordism in the British Caribbean, 750–833.” Agricultural History 5 (93): 7–24. – The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean, 763–833. New York: Century, 928. 426 b i b l i o g r a p h y

Ray, Rajat Kanta. “Indian Society and the Establishment of British Supremacy, 765– 88.” In The Eighteenth Century, ed. P.J. Marshall, 508–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 998. “Reasons for Keeping Guadaloupe at a Peace Preferable to Canada, explained in five Letters from a Gentleman in Guadaloupe to his Friend in London.” London, 76. “Replies.” Magazine of American History 7 (88): 67. “Reprint: The Statue to William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, in Chatham, in Charleston, S.C.” Magazine of American History 8 (882): 24–20. Reynolds, Joshua, Sir. Discourses on Art. Ed. Robert R. Wark. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 988. Reynolds, Paul R. Guy Carleton: A Biography. Toronto: Gage, 980. Robbins, Caroline. The 8th-Century Commonwealthman. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 959. – “The Strenuous Whig: Thomas Hollis of Lincoln’s Inn.” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series 7 (950): 406–53. Robertson, James. “Architectures of confidence? Spanish Town, Jamaica, 655–792.” In Articulating British Classicism, ed. Barbara Arciszewska and Elizabeth McKellar, 227–58. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. Robinson, John Martin. Temples of Delight: Stowe Landscape Gardens. London: George Philips in association with the National Trust, 990. Roby, John. Monuments of the Cathedral Church and Parish of St. Catherine. Montego Bay: A. Holmes, 824 and 83. Roettgen, Steffi. Anton Raphael Mengs, 728–779, and his British Patrons. London: Zwemmer, 993. Rogers, Col. H.C.B. The British Army of the Eighteenth Century. London: Allen and Unwin, 977. Rogers, Nicholas. “London Politics from Walpole to Pitt: Patriotism and Independency in an Era of Commercial Imperialism, 738–763.” P hD dissertation, University of Toronto, 975. – Whigs and Cities: Popular Politics in the Age of Walpole and Pitt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 989. Roscoe, Ingrid. “James ‘Athenian’ Stuart and the Scheemakers Family.” Apollo 24 (987): 78–84. Ross, Charles, ed. Correspondence of Charles, First Marquis Cornwallis. London: John Murray, 859. Roy, Pierre-Georges. “Réponses: Le buste de George III à Montréal.” Bulletin de recherches historiques 8 (902): 2–5. Rudé, George. Wilkes and Liberty. 962. Reprint, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 983. Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage, 993. – Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 978. Samuel, Sigmund. The Seven Years War in Canada. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 934. Saunders, Richard H., and Ellen G. Miles. American Colonial Portraits, 770–776. Washington, DC : Smithsonian Institute, 987.

bibliogr a phy

427

Savage, Kirk. “The Self-Made Monument: George Washington and the Fight to Erect a National Memorial.” Winterthur Portfolio 22 (987): 225–42. Schlesinger, Arthur M., Sr. “The Aristocracy in Colonial America.” In The American Record, vol. , ed. William Graebner and Leonard Richards, 32–45. New York: Knopf, 982. Schomburgk, Robert H. The History of Barbados. 848. Reprint, London: Frank Cass, 97. Schutz, John A. William Shirley, King’s Governor of Massachusetts. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 96. Scull, G.D., ed. “The Montresor Journals.” In Collections of the New-York Historical Society for the Year 88. Vol. 4. New York, 882. Sedgwick, Romney. The House of Commons, 75–754. 2 vols. London, 970. Seeley, Benton. A Description of the Gardens of Lord Viscount Cobham at Stow in Buckinghamshire. Northampton, 744. – A Description of the Gardens of Lord Viscount Cobham at Stow in Buckinghamshire. Northampton, 749. – Stow: A Description of the Magnificent House and Gardens of the Right Honourable Richard, Earl Temple, Viscount and Baron Cobham. London, 763. – Stow: A Description of the Magnificent House and Gardens of the Right Honourable Richard, Earl Temple, Viscount and Baron Cobham. London, 769. – Stow: A Description of the Magnificent House and Gardens of the Right Honourable Richard, Earl Temple, Viscount and Baron Cobham. Buckingham, 777. – Stow: A Description of the Magnificent House and Gardens of the Right Honourable Richard, Earl Temple, Viscount and Baron Cobham. Buckingham, 788. – Views of the Temples and Other Ornamental Buildings in the Gardens of at Stow. London, 750. Sellers, Charles Coleman. “Virginia’s Great Allegory of William Pitt.” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series 9 (952): 58–68. Severens, Kenneth. Charleston Antebellum Architecture and Civic Destiny. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 988. Sheridan, Richard B. “The Commercial and Financial Organization of the British Slave Trade, 750–807.” Economic History Review 2nd series 5 (958): 249–63. – “The Formation of a Caribbean Plantation Society, 689–748.” In The Eighteenth Century, ed. P.J. Marshall, 394–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 998. – “The Molasses Act and the Market Strategy of the British Sugar Planters.” Journal of Economic History 7 (957): 62–83. – “Simon Taylor, Sugar Tycoon of Jamaica, 740–83.” Agricultural History 45 (97): 285–96. – “The Rise of a Colonial Gentry: A Case Study of Antigua, 730–775.” Economic History Review 2nd series 3 (960–6): 342–57. – Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 623–775. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 974. – “The Wealth of Jamaica in the Eighteenth Century.” Economic History Review 2nd series 7 (965): 292–3. 428 b i b l i o g r a p h y

Shilstone, E.M. “Harrison of Barbados.” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 8 (940): 75–83. Shore, Joseph. In Old St. James (Jamaica). Ed. John Stewart. 9. Repint, Kingston: Sangster’s Book Store, 970. A Short History of Grenada. St George’s: Grenada Independence Secretariat, 974. Siliciano, M. Catherine. “‘A Very Good Epitome of the World’: Politics and Gardening at Lord Cobham’s Stowe.” Senior paper, Yale University, 23 April 978. Smart, Alastair. Allan Ramsay. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 992. – Allan Ramsay, 73–784. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 992. Smith, Anthony. “The Origins of Nations.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 2 (989): 340–67. Smith, Bernard. European Vision and the South Pacific. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 985. Smith, D.E. Huger. “Wilton’s Statue of Pitt.” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 5 (94): 8–38. Smith, J.T. Nollekens and His Times. 2 vols. London, 829. Smith, William James, ed. The Grenville Papers. 4 vols. London, 852–53. Society for Historical Archaeology, 25th Annual Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology, Kingston, Jamaica, January 992. Solkin, David H. Painting for Money. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 993. “Some Nelson Statues.” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 8 (950– 5): 4–7. “Some Records of the House of Assembly of Barbados.” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 3 (945–46): 86–92. Sommer, Frank H., III . “Thomas Hollis and the Arts of Dissent.” In Prints in and of America to 850, ed. John D. Morse, –59. Winterthur: Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum and the University Press of Virginia, 970. A Son of Liberty [Alexander McDougall]. “To the Betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New-York.” Broadside. New York, 6 December 769. Sotheby’s New York, Arcade Sale: Old Master and European Paintings. 9–20 July 990. Speck, W.A. Stability and Strife in England, 74–760. London: Edward Arnold, 977. Spector, Robert Donald. English Literary Periodicals and the Climate of Opinion during the Seven Years War. The Hague: Mouton, 966. “The Speech of the Statue of the Right Hon. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, to the Virtueous and Patriotic Citizens of New-York.” New York, 6 June 770. The Library Company of Philadelphia. Spencer-Longhurst, Paul, and Andrew Naylor. “Nost’s Equestrian George I Restored.” The Sculpture Journal 2 (998): 3–40. Spendlove, F. St George. The Face of Early Canada. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 958. Stainton, Lindsay. “Hayward’s List: British Visitors to Rome 753–775.” Walpole Society 49 (983): 3–36. Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn. Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey. London: John Murray, 876.

bibliogr a phy

429

Steggles, Mary Ann. “Art and Politics: The Visualization of British Imperialism in the Bombay Presidency, 800–927.” MARG (997): 92–207. – “The Empire Aggrandized: A Study of Commemorative Portrait Statuary Exported from Britain to Her Colonies in South Asia, 800–939.” P hD dissertation, University of Leicester, 992. – “Evangelical Philosophy as Manifest in the Late Eighteenth- and Early NineteenthCentury British Sculpture Commissions for Madras, South India, Complete with Listings and Epitaphs.” MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 990. – “The Myth of the Monuments.” In Architecture of Victorian and Edwardian India, ed. Christopher W. London, 3–48. Bombay: MARG , 994; also in MARG 46 (994): 67–84. – Statues of the Raj. Putney: British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, 2000. Stephens, Frederick George. Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. Vol. 4. London: The British Museum, 952, specifically the copy in the Print Room at the Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, Connecticut. Stevenson, Sara. A Face for Any Occasion. Edinburgh: Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 976. Stokes, I.N. Phelps. The Iconography of Manhattan Island. 6 vols. New York: Robert H. Dodd, 95–28. – New York Past and Present. New York: New York Historical Society, 939. Stone, Lawrence. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 500–800. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 979. “Stowage of the British Slave Ship ‘Brookes’ under the Regulated Slave Trade Act of 788.” Broadside. London, 789. Strickland, Walter George. A Dictionary of Irish Artists. 93. Reprint, Blackrock: Irish Academic Press, 989. Strong, Roy. A Pageant of Canada. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 967. Stuart, David. The Plants That Shaped Our Gardens. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. Stuart, James Athenian. Critical Observations on the Buildings and Improvements of London. London, 77. Reprint, with an Introduction by Diane Sigler Ames, Los Angeles: Augustan Reprint Society, 978. Summerson, John. Architecture in Britain, 530–830. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 977. Susswein Gottesman, Rita. “Sculptors.” In The Arts and Crafts in New York, 726–776: Advertisements and News Items from New York City Newspapers, 35–8. New York: New-York Historical Society, 954. – “Stonecutters.” In The Arts and Crafts in New York, 726–776: Advertisements and News Items from New York City Newspapers, 228–32. New York: New-York Historical Society, 938. Sutton, Denys. “Editorial: ‘The faire majestic paradise of Stowe.’” Apollo 97 (973): 542– 5. Taylor, Clare. “The Journal of an Absentee Proprietor: Nathaniel Phillips of Slebech.” The Journal of Caribbean History 8 (984): 67–82. 430

bibliogr a phy

Taylor, James Stephen. Jonas Hanway: Founder of the Marine Society. London: Scolar, 985. Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Pantheon, 964. Thompson, H.P. Into All Lands: The History of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 70–950. London: SPCK , 95. Thorne, R.G., ed. The House of Commons, 790–820. 5 vols. London: Secker and Warburg, 986. Tomlinson, John. Cultural Imperialism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 99. Tousignant, Pierre. “The Integration of the Province of Quebec into the British Empire, 763–79.” Part , “From the Royal Proclamation Act to the Quebec Act.” In Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 4, xxxii–xlix. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 979. Tremaine, Marie. A Bibliography of Canadian Imprints, 75–800. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 952. “The Trial of England’s Cicero, on the Four Important Articles of His Being An Orator, a Patriot, An Author and a Briton.” Pamphlet. London, 767. Trusted, Marjorie. “‘A Man of Talent’: Agostino Carlini, c. 78–790, Part I .” Burlington Magazine 34 (992): 776–84. Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. 920. Reprint, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 962. Tyler, Lyon G. Bruton Church. Richmond, VA : 895. Vertue, George. “Notebooks, 73–46.” Walpole Society 8 (930), 20 (932), 22 (934), 24 (936), 26 (938), 29, index (942), 30 (950). von Erffa, Helmut, and Allen Staley. The Paintings of Benjamin West. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 986. von La Roche, Marie Sophie. Sophie in London, 786: Being the Diary of Sophie von La Roche. Trans. Clare Williams. London: Jonathan Cape, 933. Walker, Doreen. “Instructions pour etablir les Manufactures: A Key Document in the Art History of New France.” Journal of Canadian Art History 2 (975): –8. Wall, A.J. “The Statues of King George III and the Honourable William Pitt Erected in New York City, 770.” New York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin 4 (920): 36–57. Walpole, Horace. Ædes Walpolianæ, or a Description of the Collection of Pictures at Houghton Hall in Norfolk. 2nd. ed. London, 752. – Anecdotes of Painting in England. 3 vols. 762. Reprint, ed. J. Dalloway and R.N. Wornum, London, 888. – “The Castle of Otranto.” In Three Gothic Novels, ed. E.F. Bleiler, –06. New York: Dover, 966. – Horace Walpole’s Correspondence. 48 vols. Ed. W.S. Lewis. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 937–83. – Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second. 3 vols. Ed. John Brooke. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 985. – Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third. 4 vols. Ed. Sir Denis Le Marchant. Reedited by G.F. Russell Barker. London: Lawrence and Bullen, 894. bibliogr a phy

431

Walvin, James. Black Ivory. Oxford: Blackwell, 200. Watts, David. The West Indies: Patterns of Development, Culture and Environmental Change since 492. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 987. Waugh, W.T. James Wolfe: Man and Soldier. Montreal and New York: Louis Carrier, 928. Webb, M.I. “Henry Cheere, Henry Scheemakers, and the Apprenticeship Lists.” Burlington Magazine 99 (957): 5–20. – Michael Rysbrack Sculptor. London: Country Life, 954. Webster, Donald Blake. Georgian Canada: Conflict and Culture, 745–820. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 984. Webster, John Clarence. Wolfe and the Artists: A Study of His Portraiture. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 930. – Wolfiana. Shediac, NB ?: Privately printed, 927. Whately, Thomas. Observations on Modern Gardening. London, 778. “Where is King George’s Head???” SAR Magazine (Winter 998): http://www.ctssar.org/ articles/king_georges_head.htm. Whiffen, Marcus, and Frederick Koeper. American Architecture, 607–976. Cambridge: MIT Press, 98. Whinney, Margaret. Sculpture in Britain, 530–830. 964. Reprint, rev. John Physick, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 988. – and Rupert Gunnis. The Collection of Models by John Flaxman, R.A., at University College, London. London: Athlone Press, 967. Whistler, Laurence, Michael J. Gibbon, and George Clarke. Stowe: A Guide to the Gardens. 3rd ed. Buckingham: E.N. Hillier and Sons, 968; reprint, 974. Whitley, William. Artists and Their Friends in England, 700–799. 2 vols. 928. Reprint, New York and London: Benjamin Blom, 968. Wiggin, Lewis. The Faction of Cousins. New Haven: Yale University Press, 958. Willson, Beckles. “Portraits and Relics of General Wolfe.” Connoisseur 28 (909): 3–2. Wilson, Kathleen. The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 75–785. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 998. Winckelmann, J.J. Gedanken über die Nachahmung der greichischen Werke in Malerei und Bildhauerkunst. Dresden, 755. – Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums. Dresden, 764. – History of Ancient Art. 764. Trans. Alexander Gode. New York: Frederick Ungar, 968. Wind, Edgar. Hume and the Heroic Portrait. Ed. Jayne Anderson. Oxford: Clarendon, 986. – “The Revolution of History Painting.” Journal of the Warburg Institute 2 (938): 6– 27. Wittkower, Rudolf. “The Artist.” In Man Versus Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. James L. Clifford, 70–84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 968. – Sculpture, Processes and Principles. London: Allen Lane, 977. Wood, Henry Trueman. A History of the R.S.A. London, 93.

432 b i b l i o g r a p h y

Worthington, Erastus. The Proceedings at the Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Town of Dedham. [Boston], n.d. Wright, F.A., ed. Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary. 788. Reprint, London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 972. Wright, Philip. Monumental Inscriptions of Jamaica. London: Society of Genealogists, 966. Wright, Richardson. Revels in Jamaica, 682–838. 937. Reprint, New York: B. Blom, 969. Wrigley, Richard. Pantheons: Transformations of a Monumental Idea. Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2004. Yarrington, Alison. The Commemoration of the Hero, 800–864: Monuments to the British Victors of the Napoleonic Wars. P hD dissertation, Cambridge University, 980. New York: Garland, 988. – “Nelson the Citizen Hero: State and Public Patronage of Monumental Sculpture, 805– 8.” Art History 6 (983): 35–29. Yates, Frances. The Art of Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 966. Young, Edward. The Complaint, or Night-thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality. London: R. Dodsley, 742. Young, William. A Tour through the Several Islands of Barbadoes, St. Vincent, Tobago and Grenada in the Years 79 and 792. London, 80. – The West-India Common-Place Book. London, 807. Zuckerman, Michael. “Identity in British America: Unease in Eden.” In Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 500–800, ed. Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden, 5–58. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 987.

bibliogr a phy

433

This page intentionally left blank

Index

Abercromby, James (706–8), , 263 Aberlady Church, East Lothian: monument to Maria Margaretta Elibank, 94, 95 abolitionism, 8, 259, 267, 269 absenteeism: and colonial elite, 4, 8, 28–9, 38, 55, 75, 78, 83, 85, 9, 93, 248, 370n8, 400n92 Academy of Fine Arts, New York, 234 Acadiens, 6, 8 Adam, Robert (728–92), 9; monument to Roger Townshend, 38n67; 20 Portman Square, 38, 46; monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 8, 26, 27, 28, 33, 27–8, 38n67 Adams, Samuel (722–803), 96 Admiralty, 382n Adron, William, 220, 224, 34–2, 375n Agualta Vale Penn (St Mary, Jamaica): monument to Thomas Hibbert, 25–2, 253, 344, 350 Aislebury, Lady. See Campbell, Caroline Aldred, Anna Maria: monument to, 63, 64, 35 Alexandria: pharos at, 66 Alken, Sefferin (sculpted 744–83), and James Arrow: monument to Ann DeLapierre Litteljohn and Alexander and David DeLapierre Bennet Litteljohn, 354 All Souls College, Oxford, 256 Allen, Ralph (bap. 693, d. 764), 54 Alleyne, Christian: monument to, 54–5, 54, 55, 65, 66, 90–, 98, 25, 267, 348

Alleyne, Jane Abel: monument to, 54–5, 54, 55, 65, 66, 90–, 98, 25, 267, 348 Alleyne, John Gay (724–80), st Baronet, 54–5, 266–7; monument to Christian Alleyne, Jane Abel Alleyne, and John Gay Newton Alleyne, 54–5, 54, 55, 65, 66, 90–, 98, 25, 267, 348 Alleyne, John Gay Newton, 55; monument to, 54–5, 54, 55, 65, 66, 90–, 98, 25, 267, 348 Alleyne, Mercy: monument to, 348 Alpress, Margaret Eleanor: monument to, 56, 355 Alpress, Samuel: monument to, 56, 355 Amelia, Princess (7–86), 28 American colonies: amenities, 30; calls for monuments to George III , 202; calls for monuments to Pitt the Elder, 97–8, 20–2; identity, 229–3; monuments in, 230–, 237; Pitt the Elder, 96–9; repeal of Stamp Act, 96–9 American Revolution (776–83), 2, 7, 8, 2, 27, 42, 22, 233, 240, 250, 259, 285, 328, 405n8; and Jamaica, 247 Amherst, General Jeffrey, st Baron (77–97), 3, 202, 2, 277, 332; and The Humanity of General Amherst, 37, 38, 44, 277; and surrender of Montreal (760), 38 Anderson, Duncan: monument to, 64, 65, 97, 25, 356 Andrews, Mary: monument to, 360

Anglican faith: and distribution of monuments, 25 Anglo-French War (790s), 292 Angrias, 274, 275, 276 Annapolis (Maryland), 208, 209 Anne, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland (665–74), 87; commissions for monuments, 8; monument to, 8, 9; and monument to Cloudsley Shovell, 9, 0, 60; visits to Bath, 32 annus mirabilis (759–60), 03, 05, 36 Anson, George (697–762), st Baron, 54 Anti-Gallican Society, 7, 4 anti-Gallicanism, 9, 33, 82 Antigua: personification of, 268; settlement of, 33; St John’s Parish Church, 26, 28, 344–5 Anti-Sejanus (James Scott), 98 Antony (Cornwall): monument to Admiral Graves, 380n5 Apollo Belvedere, 4, 246 Applewhaite, Elizabeth: monument to, 348 Applewhaite, Thomas: monument to, 348 Apthorp, Charles, 73, 374n25; monument to, 27, 73–4, 74, 86, 358 Apthorp, East (733–86), 374n25 Arcedeckne, Andrew: monument to, 352 Argyll, Duke of. See Campbell, John, 2nd Duke of Argyll Arne, Thomas Augustine (70–78): Rule Britannia, 0 Arrow, James, and Sefferin Alkin: monument to Ann DeLapierre Litteljohn and Alexander and David DeLapierre Bennet Litteljohn, 354 Ash, George, 59 Ashton: monument to Henrietta Leyden, 345 Asiatic Society, 289 assembly halls, 3; as place of dissemination of news, 7 Athens: monument of Minerva (Athena) in the Parthenon, 323 Atkinson, George: monument to, 345 Atkinson, Ruth, 65 Atkinson, William the Elder, 65 Atkinson, William the Younger: monument to, 345

436

August Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia (730– 83), 75–6 Augusta, Princess of Wales (79–72), 87 Austin, Laetitia, monument to, 346 Australasia, 20 Australia, 36 Avon River, 9 Bacon, John the Elder (740–99), 83, 85, 243, 298–300; and antique/classical dress, 246, 287, 289, 298–9, 300; and designs for Coade stone, 93; monument to Richard Batty, 350; monument to Francis Rigby Brodbelt, 253, 254, 350; monument to Mary Carr, 353; monument to Cornwallis, in Calcutta (with Bacon the Younger), 30–4, 302, 309, 30; monument to Cornwallis, in East India House, 278, 278, 287, 302; monument to Earl and Countess of Effingham, 260–, 260, 26, 267, 350; monument to William Jones, in St Paul’s Cathedral, 289, 290, 29, 293; monument to Malcolm Laing, 253, 255, 353; monument to George MacFarquhar, 7, 72, 253, 356; monument to Ann Margaret Neufville, 353; monument to Rosa Palmer, 57–9, 58, 65, 83, 98, 25, 356; monument to Elizabeth Price, 358; monument to Rodney, in Jamaica, 8, 99, 6, 240–9, 24, 244, 245, 249, 250, 260, 298, 350; monument to Anne Williamson, 26–2, 262, 350; monument to John Wolmer, 256, 257, 353; pediment for East India House, London, 287–8, 287, 288, 309, 325; workshop, 32, 85, 92, 95–6 Bacon, John the Younger (777–859), 83, 85, 253; and antique dress, 246; maquette for monument to Rodney, in St Paul’s Cathedral, 397n27; monument in St John’s, Lunenburg (Nova Scotia), 369n6; monument to Duncan Anderson, 64, 65, 97, 25, 356; monument to Laetitia Austin, 346; monument to Cornwallis, in Bombay, 32, 405n68; monument to Cornwallis, in Calcutta (with Bacon the Elder), 30–4, 302, 309, 30; monument to Jonathan Duncan, 32–3, 33; monument to George Nicholas Hardinge, in Bombay, 306–7, 307;

index

monument to John Thomas Hughes, 356; monument to Francis Inglis and James and Ann Sutherland, 82, 82, 353; monument to Lord Lavington, 267–9, 344; monument to Honora Watson Popham, 354; monument to Charles Robert Ross, 308–9, 308; monument to Bartholomew Samuel Rowley, 353; monument to William Henry Sanderson, 360; monument to Frederick Christian Swartz, in Madras, 36, 37; monument to John Tharp, 356; monument to Margaret Taylor, 353; monument to Wellesley, in Bombay (with Samuel Manning the Elder), 30–, 32; monument to Wellesley, in Calcutta, 30, 3; workshop, 32, 85, 92 Bacon, John the Younger, and Charles Manning: monument to Anne Smith, 353 Bacon’s Castle, Virginia, 372n68 Baghdad: statue of Saddam Hussein, 369n39 Bahamas, 34 Baily, Edward Hodges (788–867): monument to Mary McLarty, 35; monument to Nelson, in Trafalgar Square, London, 399n83 Baldwin, Mary: monument to, 85, 86, 352 Baldwin, William: monument to, 85, 86, 352 Bangalore, 298 Bangkok, 36 Banks, Thomas (735–805), 85, 283, 298–300, 404n29; monument to Coote, in East India House, London, 278, 278, 284–5, 287; monument to Coote, in Westminster Abbey, 28–4, 282; monument to Cornwallis, in Madras, 246, 298–300, 299, 30, 304, 309 Barbados, 26, 328, 382n; and Bristol, 88–9; and Britain, 266–7; Drax Hall, 372n68; House of Assembly, 0, 6, 60, 99, 266; houses, 29; Legislature, 267; as Little England, 267, 269; roads, 29; St Nicholas Abbey, 48, 48, 55, 372n68; settlement of, 29, 33; and Stamp Act, 266 Barbados Museum and Historical Society: monument to Thomas Withers, 96–8, 97, 345 Barré, Isaac (726–802), 204 Barrow, Errol Walton (920–87), 400n89 Barry, James (74–806), 242

index

Bassetree (St Kitt’s): St George’s Parish Church, monument to William Henry Sanderson, 360 Bath (St Thomas-in-the-East, Jamaica): obelisk to Rodney, 250 Bath (Somerset), 32, 90–, 98, 99, 54; Bath Abbey, monuments in, 32; Thomas King and sons, 32; sculptors, 4, 90 Bathurst, Henry, 2nd Earl of (74–84), 50 Battle of the Saintes, 240, 243, 244, 248 Batty, Richard: monument to, 350– Bayly, Zachary: monument to, 355 Beale, Othniel: monument to, 36 The Beauties of Stow, 5 Becher, John: monument to, 354 Beckford, Peter (672/3–735), 255, 259; free school, 255, 398–9n6 Beckford, Richard, 53 Beckford, William (bap. 709, d. 770), 26, 38, 204, 259 Beckford, William the Younger (722–57), 38, Vathec, 38 Beckles, John Alleyne: monument to, 346 Bedford, 2nd Duke of. See Russell, Wriothesley Bee, Thomas, 339 Behnes, W. (795–864): monument to Joseph Marryat, 349 Belk, Edwin, 343 Belle-Ile: British victory at (747), 58 Benares, 32 Bengal, 270, 274, 277, 283, 285, 289, 295, 302, 32 Bennet Litteljohn, Alexander DeLapierre: monument to, 354 Bennet Litteljohn, David DeLapierre: monument to, 354 Bentinck, Lord William Henry Cavendish (744–839): monument to, 33, 34 Bentinck, William Henry, st Duke of Portland (682–726), 46 Berkeley Square, London: monument to George III , 28–20, 29 Bermuda, 34 Bernard, David: monument to, 356 Bernard, Margaret: monument to, 357 Bernard, Mary: monument to, 4, 352

437

Berne (Switzerland), 39n55 Berringer, Benjamin, 48 Beufain, Hector Berenger de: monument to, 36 Biet, Father, 32 Bickham, George (c. 704–7), The Beauties of Stow, 5; Temple of Modern Virtue, at Stowe, 48, 5, 387n83; A View from Capt’n Grenville’s Monument to the Grecian Temple, at Stow, 56 Birch, Bernard: monument to, 99, 00, 357 Bird, Edward (772–89), 403n37 Bird, Francis (667–73): monument to Queen Anne, 8, 9 Birmingham: monument to Nelson, 399n83 Bishop, William: monument to, 348 Black Hole debacle (Calcutta, 757), 40, 27, 274, 276, 295; obelisk to victims, in Calcutta, 295 Black River (Jamaica): St Elizabeth’s Parish Church, monuments in, 357–8. Blair, John: monument to, 4, 352 Blake, Mr (of South Carolina), 336, 392n8 Blake, William (757–827), 325; View of Greenwich, with proposed statue of Britannia in Greenwich Park, 323 Blenheim: monument to the st Duke of Marlborough, 30, 37n5 Blore, Robert: monument to William Myers, 346 Blychenden and Wilson: monument to Robert Dewhurst Brown, 353 Board of Trade, 239 Bolingbroke, Henry St John, st Viscount (678–75), 87 Bombay, 270, 274, 304, 306, 32; monument to Cornwallis, 32, 405n68; monument to Wellesley, 30–, 32; St Thomas’s Parish Church and monuments in, see St Thomas’s Parish Church, Bombay Borra, Giambattista (73–70), 385n46 Boston, 208, 209; Boston Common, 204–5; Faneuil Hall, 203; King’s Chapel and monuments in, see King’s Chapel; Liberty Tree, 204–5; obelisk commemorating repeal of Stamp Act, 204–5, 204; repeal of Stamp Act, 96, 204–5; Sons of Liberty, 204

Boston Gazette, 96 botanical gardens: in Jamaica, 250 Botetourt, Norbonne Berkely (78–70), 4th Baron de: monument to, 6–7, 227–9, 228, 23, 243, 362 Boullée, Etienne-Louis (728–99), 325 Bourbon monarchy: and monuments, 5, 98; see also Louis XIV, Louis XV Bovell, Francis: monument to, 346 Boy Patriots, 04–5, 0, 47 Brathwaite, John: monument to, in Bridgetown, 267, 268, 346; monument to, in Epsom, 400n88 Brazier, Joseph: monument to, 359 Brest, 6 Breton, Luc-François (73–800), 38n67 Brewton, Miles, 339 Bridgetown (Barbados) 249, 255; fire (766), 86, 93; Barbados Museum and Historical Society, monument to Thomas Withers, 96– 8, 97, 345; Government House, 62; housing, 33; monument to Henry Grenville, 8, 92, , 53, 60–3, 99, 20, 237, 243, 265, 267, 345; monument to Nelson, 8, 264–5, 265, 267, 328, 345; St Michael’s Parish Church and monuments in, see St Michael’s Parish Church, Bridgetown; shops, 48; Town Hall, 0, 6, 345; Trafalgar Square, 265; 345 Brigden, Edward, 32 Bristol, 88–90, 9, 99; Lord Mayor’s Chapel, monument to Henry Walter, 89, 90; monument to William III (Queen’s Square), 32, 33, 393n99; Patys, 32; sculptors, 4, 88–9 Britannia, 9, , 2, 23, 30, 32, 37, 39, 40, 50, 60, 70, 72, 75, 77, 2, 228, 243, 244, 247, 26, 272, 273, 274, 276, 280, 284, 287, 288, 298, 32, 322–3, 323, 325, 326, 328 Brock, T.: monument to Horatio S. Cross, 353 Brock, Thomas: monument to Mary Isabella Dugald Garsia, 357 Brodbelt, Francis Rigby: monument to, 253, 254, 350 Brown, James: tablet to, 349 Brown, John George: monument to, 358 Brown, Mather, 403n37 Brown, Rev. Mr: monument to, 360 Brown, Robert Dewhurst: monument to, 353

438 i n d e x

Brown, Thomas James: monument to, 35 Brown, William: monument to, 354 Brownbill: monument to, 359 Brutus, 39n44 Bryan, Charles: monument to, 358 Brymer, Anne Margaret: monument to, 358 Buckingham (Buckinghamshire), 52, 75 Bull, William (70–9), 222 Buntingford (Herefordshire): monument to Pyke Crouch, 380n5 Burke, Edmund (729/30–97), 233, 286, 304; and East India Company, 273 Burke, Henry: monument to, 358 Burton Pynsent, Somerset, 47 Burton, Elizabeth: monument to, 35 Bute, 3rd Earl of. See Stuart, John Byles, Mather: monument to, 350 Byng, Admiral John (bap. 707, d. 757): and Minorca, 03–4 Byrd, William: monument to, 363 Caffieri, Jacques (725–92): monument to General Richard Montgomery, 359 Calcutta, 270–, 274, 275–6, 285, 289, 295, 30, 304; regained by British in 757, 40; Clive Street, 295, 296; East Side of the Old Fort, Clive Street, the Theatre and Holwell Monument, Calcutta, 296; monument to William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, 33, 34; monument to Cornwallis, 30–4, 302, 309, 30, monument to Hastings, 303–4, 303, 305; monument to Wellesley, 30, 3; obelisk commemorating the victims of the Black Hole debacle (Holwell’s monument), 295, 296, 404n50; St John’s Church, monument to Alexander Colvin, 309, 30; Town Hall, 30–4, 303, 305 Call, Sir John, st Baronet (732–80), 298 Cambridge (Massachusetts): Christ Church, 374n25 Cambridge: Trinity Hall, 56 Camden, st Earl. See Pratt, Charles Campbell, Alexander, 329 Campbell, Caroline, Lady Aislebury (72– 803), 03 Campbell, John: monument to, 297–8, 297

index

Campbell, John, 2nd Duke of Argyll and Duke of Greenwich (680–743): monument to, 25, 32; and Rysbrack’s design for monument to, 24–5 Canada, 27, 2, 304, 36, 328 Canadiens, 6, 8–8, 95; Jonas Hanway’s description of, 89–94; and James Murray, 92–3; and religious sculpture, 9; and Roman Catholicism of, 82, 90 Cannon, Martha: monument to, 362 Cape Finisterre: battle and British victory (747), 5, 54, 57 Cappezzoldi, Giovanni Battista (sculpted 755–74): and monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 33–4, 34 Carey, Mrs, 276 Cargill, Richard: monument to, 354 Caribs, 36 Carleton, Guy, st Baron Dorchester (724– 808), 93, 389n42 Carlini, Agostino (d. 790), 9; and monument to Rodney, for Jamaica, 242; and monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 8, 22, 23, 32 Carmichael, Thomas: monument to, 348 Carnatic, 28, 36, 402n26 Caroline Matilda, Princess of Wales and Queen of Denmark (75–75), 239 Carr, Mary: monument to, 353 Carrara, 220 Carter, George (bap. 737, d. 794), 403n37 Carter, John: monument to, 348 Cartwright, Major: scheme to commemorate Britain’s naval successes in the 790s, 322 Castle of Otranto, 38 Cato, 36 Cavendish, William, 4th Duke of Devonshire (bap. 720, d. 764), 7; and competition for the monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 7–9, 32 Chamberlayne, William: monument to, 88, 89, 362 Chambers, Sir William (723–96), 9, 289; Gallery of Antiques at Kew, 9; and George III ’s state coach, 45, 86; monument to Duke of Bedford, 380n65; and monument

439

to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 8, 23, 380n52, 380–n65 Champneys, Mary, monument to, 362 Chandenagore: British victory at, 40, 274 Chantrey, Sir Francis (78–84): monument to Reginald Heber, 36, 38–2, 320 chaplains: in India, 39 Chapman, Christiana: monument to, 359 Charles I (600–49), 229, 39n44 Charles, Robert, 27 Charleston (South Carolina), 206, 208–9, 342, 39n55; armoury, 25–6, 338; Assembly House, 25–6, 338; Broad Street, 25, 26, 233, 234, 338; Exchange and Customs House, 26, 393n88; market, 25–6, 338; Meeting Street, 25, 233, 234, 338; Messrs Dillon & Gray’s Tavern, 22; merchants, 22; monument to Pitt the Elder, 6–7, 2, 24, 26, 28, 220–3, 223, 224, 225, 230, 23, 24, 243, 334–43, 375n, 375n2, 376n35; Orphan’s House, 234; St Michael’s Parish Church and monuments in, see St Michael’s Parish Church, Charleston; and Sons of Liberty, 206; Washington Square, 234 Charlotte, Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Queen of Great Britain (744–88), 204, 22 Charter Act (698, East India Company), 39 Charter Act (83, India), 36, 320, 404–5n65 Charter of the Province of Virginia, 229 Charterhouse, 53 Chartham, Kent: monument to Sarah Young, 93 Chatelain, Jean Baptiste Claude: Sixteen Perspective Views with a General Plan of the Buildings and Gardens at Stowe, 56 Chatham, st Earl of. See Pitt, William the Elder Cheere, John (709–87), 82–3, 85; monument to George II , in Jersey, 7, 368n33; monument to Deborah Gibbons, 45, 45, 69–70, 72, 85, 355; monument to James Lawes, 43, 44, 72–3, 85, 96, 354; monument to William III , in London, 393n99; workshop, 32, 92, 96 Cheere, Sir Henry (702–8), 82, 83, 85, 370n22; monument to Charles Apthorp,

440

27, 73–4, 74, 86, 358; monument to Christopher Codrington, All Souls College, Oxford, 399n62; monument to Duke of Cumberland, in London, 246, 406n; monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 8, 23; replica bust of Christopher Codrington, at Codrington College, 399n62; workshop, 32, 92, 96 Chenies (Buckinghamshire): monument to 2nd Duke of Bedford, 380n65 Cherokee Wars (759–6), 206 Chesterfield, 4th Earl of. See Dormer, Philip Chichester Cathedral: monument to Francis Dear, 82, 83, 99 chimneypieces, 93, 98 Christ Church (Barbados), 255 Christ Church, Port Antonio (Jamaica): monuments in, 358 Christ Church, Philadephia: monuments in, 359–60 Christian mercantilism, 84–6, 88, 90–2 Christian VII , King of Denmark, 239 churches: in India, 304; in West Indies, 4, 33–4, 49, 25, 37n25 Churchill, John, st Duke of Marlborough (650–722): monument to, 30, 37n5 Churchill, Sarah, st Duchess of Marlborough (660–744), 30 Cicero, 254; De Officiis, 66–7; and Pitt the Elder, 36, 96, 24–5, 26, 392n78 Cipriani, Barbato: monument to Samuel and Margaret Eleanor Alpress, Samuel Alpress Osborn, and Kean Osborn, 56, 355 Cipriani, Giovanni Battista (727–85): and George III ’s state coach, 45, 87; and designs for medals, 70 Circular Letter, 222 Citizen, 377n6 City Gazette (Charleston), 233 Civil War (642–5), 25 Claremont, Surrey, 402n0 Clarence, Duke of. See William Henry Clarke, Simon, 3rd Baronet, 70–; monument to, 70, 7, 83, 99, 357 Clarke, Simon, 5th Baronet, 70 clergy, 8, 22, 229; and India, 39–20; in West Indies, 56, 39

index

Clive, Robert, st Baron of Plassey (725–74), 38–40, 27, 274, 279–80, 295; death of, 279; Lord Clive Receiving the Homage of the Nabob, 38–40, 38, 44, 277; monument to, in East India House, 277, 278, 287 Close, Sir Barry, baronet (756–83), monument to, 29–2, 292, 294, 305 Club No. 45 (South Carolina), 22 Coade, Eleanor (sculpted 769–820), 93 Coade stone, 93, 96, 253; monument to Bernard Birch, 99, 00, 376n24; monument to Brownbill, 359, 376n24; monument to Finlater, 376n24; monument to Lawrence, 376n24; monument to Elizabeth Minto, 00, 00, 356, 376n24; monument to Nelson, in Montreal, 264, 266, 328; monument to Emma Saunders, 358, 376n24; monument to Henrietta Cornelia Skerett, 358, 376n24 Cobham, Anne Viscountess, (née Halsey, d. 760): and Cobham’s Pillar at Stowe, 52, 66, 67 Cobham, Richard Temple, st Viscount (675–749), 4, 0, 5, 04, 0, 47, 48, 54, 66, 77–8, 326; death of, 57; and Cobham’s Pillar, at Stowe, 52, 66, 67, 75, 326, and monument to Thomas Grenville, at Stowe, 56–9, 56, 64; and political ideology, 48, 58–9; and the press, 04, 5–3, 76; and Stowe, 04, 48–53, 65, 72, 78 Cobham’s Cubs, 04, 47, 326 Cocchi, Antonio: bust of, 86, 388n4 Cocke, William: monument to, 362 Codrington, Christopher (d. 656), 34 Codrington, Christopher (640–698), 34 Codrington, Christopher (668–70), 34; and All Soul’s College, Oxford, 256; and Codrington College, 256; monument to, in All Souls College, Oxford, 399n62; replica bust of, at Codrington College, Barbados, 399n62 Codrington College, Barbados 256; replica bust of Christopher Codrington, 399n62 coffee houses, 3 Colden, Cadwallader (689–776), 202, 224–6 College of Arms, 72 College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, 372n88; monument to Lord Botetourt, 6–7, 227–9, 228, 23, 243, 362

index

colonial elite, 6, ; and absenteeism, 4, 8, 28–9, 38, 55, 75, 78, 83, 85, 9, 93, 248, 370n8, 400n92; in American colonies, 6, 3–4; and acquisitiveness, 32; and competition, 46–7; criticized in England, 37–8; criticized by themselves, 38; and dress fashion, 47; and education, 28, 37, 53–9; and gentility, 3–2, 57; and identity, 6, 35–6, 68; in India, 6; and the “other,” 36; overindulgence, 47; and relationship to England, 3–4; and religion, 39, 49; in West Indies, 6, 3–4 colonial government: form of, 36 colonial identity, 23, 326; in Barbados, 269; in Jamaica, 247–8; and periphery, 264; in West Indies, 254, 269 colonial militia, 36, 76, 248 colonial press, 96 colonial trade, 5, 237, 27, 320; and East India Company, 276; and India, 270; 309; and Jamaica, 240; and Montreal, 89, 9 colonies, as “children” of Britain, 20; communities in, 29; as peripheries, 99, 20, 295, 325–8 colonization, 20, 5, 8; and India, 9, 304 Colvin, Alexander: monument to, 309, 30 Committee of National Monuments (Committee of Taste), 242, 292–4, 397n27 Committee of Taste (Committee of National Monuments), 242, 292–4, 397n27 Congregationalism, 73 Connecticut: repeal of Stamp Act, 96 Considerations on the present state of the province of Québec 766, 93 Conway, 97 Conway, Henry Seymour (79–95), 08, 7 Cook, Captain James (728–79): monument, at Stowe, 20; monuments to, 20 Cook, T.: and monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 30 Cooke, Robert (sculpted 780–87): monument to Robert Meade, 359 Cooper, Anthony Ashley, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (67–73), 52, 85 Coote, Sir Eyre (726–83), 28, 285; monument to, in East India House, 278, 278, 284–5, 287; monument to, in Westminster Abbey, 28–4, 282

441

Cope, W.: monument to Anna Maira Aldred, 63, 64, 35 Coram, Thomas (c. 668–75), 84 Cork (Ireland): merchants of, 99; monument to Pitt the Elder, 9, 99–202, 200, 20, 23, 23, 335; and Pitt the Elder, 99 Corlett, Ann: tablet to, 349 Corlett, James: tablet to, 349 Cornewall, Captain James (bap. 698, d. 744), 59, 60; monument to, 9–0, 62, 2–2, 2, 60, 283 Cornwallis, Charles, st Marquess (738–805), 2, 08, 300, 303, 304, 30–; death of, 32; mausoleum to, in Ghaziphur, 32; monument to, in Bombay, 32, 405n68; monument to, in Calcutta, 30–4, 302, 309, 30; monument to, in East India House, 278, 278, 287, 302; monument to, in Madras, 246, 298–30, 299, 30, 304, 309; monument to, in Penang, 32; monument to, in St Paul’s Cathedral, London, 293, 294; painting of, for Madras, 298; victory at Seringapatam, 285–6, 298 Coromandel: coast of, 274, 28, 402n26 Corporation of London, 404n47 Corrie, Daniel: monument to, 36, 38–2, 320 Cox, John: monument to, 360 Craggs, James the Younger (686–72): monument to, 256 Crake, Michael, 99; monument to Eliza Musgrave, 66, 66, 67, 98–9, 344, monument to Charles Price, 2nd Baronet, 99 creolization, 8 Crichlow, Henry, 9 Crichlow, Lucy: monument to, in Bath, 9; monument to, in Bridgetown, 9, 347 Croasdaile, Henry: monument to, 80–, 8, 355 Cromwell, Oliver (599–658), 209, 39n44 Cross, Horatio: monument to, 353 Crosse, Mary: monument to, 359 Crouch, Pyke: monument to, 380n5 Crown, 53, 66, 78, 79, 04, 6, 9, 43, 45, 59, 222, 225, 23, 259, 285, 389n5 Cumberland, Duke of. See William Augustus Cunningham, Elizabeth: monument to, 357 Cunningham, John: monument to, 357 Cunningham, John, Jr: monument to, 357

Curtis, F. (sculpted 737–43): monument to Henry Walter, 89, 90 Curzon, George Nathaniel (Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, 859–925), 404n50 Dalling, Elizabeth: monument to, 355 Dalzell, William: monument to, 346 Daniell, Thomas (749–840): East Side of the Old Fort, Clive Street, the Theatre and Holwell Monument, Calcutta, 296 Dart, Benjamin, 339 Davers, Admiral Thomas: monument to, 85, 86, 354 Dawkins, James (722–57), 38 Dear, Francis: monument to, 82, 83, 99 Declaration of Independence, 3, 229, 232 Declaratory Act (766), 389n5 The Decoy, Worthy Park (Jamaica), 36, 38, 373n85; Charles Price’s tomb, 53, 76, 87, 25; Edward Long’s description of, 5; triumphal column, 5, 52, 350 Dedham (Massachusetts): bust of Pitt the Elder, 205, 358 Defiance, 54–5 Defoe, Daniel (660?–73): A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (742), 383n6; on trade, 3, 370n20 Dehaney, Mary, 84–5 Dehon, Theodore: monuments to, 36, 362 Deism, and grief, 59 DeLancey, James (703–60), 20 DeLancey, James the Younger, 22, 225; and monument to Pitt the Elder, in New York, 2–3 DeLancey, Oliver (78–85): and monument to Wolfe, in New York 2, 22 DeLancey, Stephen (663–74), 20 DeLanceys, 22, 27–8, 220, 224–6, 392n66, 392n67, 393n94 Demosthenes, 50, 96 Denman, Thomas (b. 787): monument to the wife and children of John George Brown, 358 Dent, Isaac: monument to William Byrd, 363 Devis, Arthur William (762–822), 403n37; Lord Cornwallis receiving the sons of Tipu Sultan as hostages, 30

442 i n d e x

Devonshire, 4th Duke of. See Cavendish, William Dickenson, Caleb: monument to, 257, 258, 357 Dickinson, Catherine: monument to, 350 Dissertations and Miscellaneous Pieces relating to the History and Antiquities, the Arts, Sciences and Literature of Asia, 289 Dominica, St George’s Parish Church, Roseau: monuments in, 349 Dormer, Philip, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (694–773), 50, 54; bust of, by Wilton, 86; 388n4 Drax Hall, Barbados, 372n68 Drax, Henry: and free school in Barbados, 254–5, 398–9n6 Drayton, Mercy: monument to, 347 Drayton, Samuel: monument to, 347 dress: antique/classical, 05, 40–2, 44, 56, 6, 245–6, 279, 287, 288, 289, 298–300; modern 05, 35, 40–, 55, 56, 245–6, 289–90, 298–300 Duane, James: monument to, 359 Duanesburg (New York): Christ Church, 359 Dublin: monument to George I , 7, 368n33, 393n99 Dufour, Alexander, 325 Duke, William, 384n33 Duncan, Jonathan (bap. 756, d. 8): monument to, 32–3, 33 Dunchidock (Devon): monument to Stringer Lawrence, 402n24 Duncomb, Eleanor: monument to, 57, 355 Dunn, Margaret Ann: monument to, 346 Dwarris, Fortunatus: monument to, 353 dynasties: family, 3, 68–73 Dyson, Captain George: monument to, 35 earthquake, in Antigua (843), 26, 374n08 East India Company, 9–2, 39, 270–2, 279, 283, 286, 304, 309, 32, 37, 38, 327–8; and magnanimity, 279, 287–8; and missionaries, 36; monument to Charles Watson, 4, 274–6, 277, 40; and monuments, 27–85, 287–94, 36; and public, 309; and role in India, 27; Secret Committee, 40, 274 East India House, London, 272, 284, 288; chimneypiece by Rysbrack, 9, 272–4, 272,

index

273, 276, 284; General Court Room, 272, 277–8, 284, 287, 290, 302; monument to Clive, 277–9, 278; monument to Coote, 278, 278, 284–5; monument to Cornwallis, 278, 278, 287, 302; monument to Hastings, 284, 290–, 29; monument to Stringer Lawrence, 277–9, 278; monument to Pocock, 277–9, 278; pediment for, 287–8, 287, 288, 309, 325; Revenue Committee Room, 284; Sale Room, 278, 278 Easton, Charles (d. 786), 5; monument to Elizabeth Hannah Price, 5, 87, 88, 35; monument to Ennis and Margaret Read, 87, 88, 355 Easton, Thomas (b. 704), 5 Easton family: monument to William Selwyn, in Gloucestershire, 4 Ecole des Beaux Arts, 242 Edgcumbe, Richard, 2nd Baron (76–6), 9 education: and colonial elite, 28, 37, 53–9; in American colonies, 373n89 Edwardes, Emma: monument to, 89, 9, 355 Edwards, Bryan: The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies, 25; and plantation houses, in West Indies, 372n67 effeminacy, 08, 8, 9, 35 Effingham, Catherine, Countess of. See Howard, Catherine Effingham, Thomas, Earl of. See Howard, Thomas Elibank, Maria Margaretta: monument to, 94, 95 Elizabeth Mary, Countess of Elgin and Kincardine: monument to, 35 Ellcock, Richard Alleyne: monument to, 349 Elysian Fields, 6 empire: and domination, 8, 88, 286; and East India Company, 27, 284; emergence of, 4; and India, 27; and magnanimity, 9, 82, 86, 88, 276–7, 279, 286, 32, 325, 326; and trade, 283, 32; and tyranny, 325 Enfield, St Andrew (Jamaica), 250 Epaminondas, 33, 36, 48, 38n76 epitaphs, 2, 224; on cartouches, in West Indies, 42; and education, 57; as elegies, 60; and family lineage, 70; and grief, 60–8; and

443

identity of colonial elite, 68; on monuments, in Atlantic colonies, 39, 40 Epsom (Surrey): monument to John Brathwaite, 400n88 erudition, 3, 49–68 Essayist (Jamaica), 256 Eton College, 50, 53, 56, 66, 374n25 European Magazine, 284 Excise Act (733), 04, 48, 72, 383n3 Exeter Cathedral: monument to John Graves Simcoe, 405n7 Fairchild, John, 384n33 Fane, John, 7th Earl of Westmorland (bap. 686, d. 762), 6, 50 Farington, Joseph (747–82), 246, 298–300 Farquier, Francis (703–68), 207 Fédon, Jules, 263 Felsted, Samuel (743–802), 250 Ferris, Solomon: monument to, 354 50th Regiment, 239 Figtree (Nevis): St John’s Parish Church, monuments in, 359 Finlater: monument to, 376n24 First Scots Presbyterian Church, Charleston: monument to Anne and George Murray, 360 Fitch, Joseph: monument to, 353 Fitchatt, Rev. Francis: monument to, 348 Flannigan, Mrs: Antigua and the Antiguans, 268, 345 Flaxman, Sir John (755–826), 83, 93, 376n25; colossus of Britannia, for London, 322–5, 323, 324, 326, 328; A Letter to the Committee for Raising the Naval pillar, or Monument, under the patronage of His Royal Highness, the Duke of Clarence, 322–5, 323, 326; monument to John Brathwaite, in Bridgetown, 246, 268, 346; monument to John Brathwaite, in Epsom, 400n88; monument to Simon Clarke, 70, 7, 83, 99, 357; monument to Barry Close, 29–2, 292, 294, 305; monument to Cornwallis, in Ghaziphur, 32; monument to Cornwallis, in Penang, 32; monument to Francis Dear, 82, 83, 99; monument to Hastings, in East India House, 284, 290–, 29; monu-

444

ment to William Jones, University College Oxford, 289–90, 290, 305; monument to William Miles, 400n87; monument to Nelson, in Montreal, 93, 266; monument to John Graves Simcoe, 405n7; monument to Frederick Christian Swartz, at Sarabhoji’s Palace in Tanjor, 38; monument to Frederick Christian Swartz, Swartz’s Church, Tanjor, 37, 38; monument to Marie-Josephte Godefroy de Tonnancour, 94, 349; monument to Josiah Webbe, 305, 306 Fleming, James: monument to, 40 Fonthill Abbey (Wiltshire), 38 Foord, Edward: monument to, 354 Forbes, Alexander, 4–2, monument to, 70, 43, 352 Forbes, Sir David, 4 Fowle, William: monument to, 356 Fox, Charles James (749–806), 267 Fox (later Vassal), Henry Richard, 3rd Baron Holland (773–840), 78 Fraser, Charles, View of Broad Street showing the courthouse, the exchange, Wilton’s statue of William Pitt, and St. Michael’s Church, 26 Fraser, Thomas: mausoleum to Cornwallis, in Ghaziphur, 32 Frederick, Lewis, Prince of Wales (707–5), 50, 87 Frederick the Great, King of Prussia (72–86), 75; and battle at Minden (759), 73 Frederick Wilhelm II , King of Prussia (744– 97), 76 free schools: in West Indies, 255 French Revolution (789–99), 5, 263, 267, 285, 322, 325, 405–6n8; and South Carolina, 233–4 Frere, George, A Short History of Barbados, 62 Frere, Henry: monument to, 347 Fuller, Rose, 53 Fuller, Stephen (76–99), 242, 243, 298 Gadsden, Christopher (724–805), 205–6, 25, 27, 339 Gadsden, Thomas, 336

index

Gage, Thomas (79/20–87), 28 Gainsborough, Thomas (722–88), 43 Gale, Elizabeth: monument to, 4, 355 Gale, Henry: monument to, 357 Gale, John: monument to, 356 gambling, 46 Gandy, Joseph Michael (77–843), 322 Garrard, John: monument to, 36 Garsia, Mary Isabella Dugald: monument to, 357 Garth, Charles, 200, 208, 23, 25, 334–43 Genet, Edmond-Charles (763–834), 233–4 gentility: and colonial elite, 3–2, 57 gentleman: notion of English, 30– Gentleman’s Magazine, 98, 29, 32, 59, 295 George I (660–727), , 48, 87; accession of, 74, 0; monument to, in Dublin, 7, 368n33, 396n99; monument to, at Stowe, 393n99 George II , (683–760), 20, 48, 63, 87, 20, 33, 332; funeral of, 374n02; monument to, in Jersey, 7, 368n33; and monument to Charles Watson, 275; and monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey 4–5; and Stowe, 67 George III (738–820), 4, 2, 83, 32, 44, 64, 20, 204, 206, 207, 22, 225, 229, 23, 232, 239, 242, 259, 269, 322, 325, 339, 405n8; bust of, in Montreal, 3, 6, 2, 82–94, 83, 232, 326, 349; call for monument to, in New York, 202; call for monument to, in South Carolina, 202, 206; call for monument to, in Virginia, 202, 206–8; calls for monuments to, in American colonies, 202; and Canada, 82; and French kings, 88; and Gallery of Antiques, Kew, 9; and identity, 6, 87, 9–2; and Jamaica, 239; monument to, in Berkeley Square, London, 28–20, 29; monument to, in New York, 3, 2, 22–3, 27–20, 223–7, 23, 24, 34, 359, 375n2; and monuments, 87–8, 325; and pediment on East India House, 287, 288, 288; and Pitt the Elder, 45, 87; as Prince of Wales, ; and state coach, 45, 87; and Stamp Act, 95; and Stowe, 70–5; and Richard, Earl Temple, 77; and John Wilkes, 22 Ghaziphur: mausoleum to Cornwallis, 32

index

Ghereah: British victory at, 40, 274 Gibbes, Christian: monument to, 347 Gibbes, Jane: monument to, 362 Gibbes, John: monument to, 362 Gibbon, Michael: plan of the eastern gardens at Stowe, 49 Gibbons, Deborah, 45–6; monument to, 45, 45, 69–70, 72, 85, 355 Gibbons, Grinling (648–72): monument to Cloudesley Shovell, Westminster Abbey, 9, 0, 60 Gibbons, William, 45 Gibbs, James (682–754), 94; A Book of Architecture, 94–6; Temple of Liberty (The Gothic Temple), at Stowe, 48, 52 Gibson, John (796–866): monument to Francis Bovell, 346 Gibson, Solomon (b. 796?, d. 866): monument to Emma Edwardes, 89, 9, 355 God Save the King, 0 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (749–832), 25 Golden, John (sculpted 78–808): monument to Joseph Fitch, 353 Goldsmith, Oliver (728?–74), 09 Gookin, Daniel, and Mr Skilling: The Pillar of Liberty (bust of Pitt the Elder), Dedham (Massachusetts), 358 Gordon Town, St Andrew (Jamaica), 250 Gosset, Isaac (73–99), 98, 227 Gower, Augustus Leveson: monument to, 354 Gower, Granville Leveson: st Marquess of Stafford (72–803), 50; servant of, as model for Wolfe, 9 Grace Church, Sullivan’s Island (South Carolinia): monument to Theodore Dehon, 362 Grafton, 97 Graham, Charles: monument to, 35 Granby, Charles Manners, 4th Duke of Rutland (754–87), 332 Grand Tour, 54 Grant, Charles (746–823), 36 Graves, Admiral: monument to, 380n5 Gravesend, 4 Gray, Thomas: An Elegy Written in a County Church Yard, 59, 4, 378n32

445

Greenwich (London): Greenwich Hill, 323, 327, 326, 328; St Alfege’s Parish Church, 4 Gregory, Lucretia: monument to, 84, 84, 253, 352 Gregory, Mathew: monument to, 84, 84, 253, 352 Gregory, Matthew, Sr: monument to, 4, 352 Grenada, 262–3; for St George’s, see St George’s, Grenada Grenville, George (72–70), 04, 45, 47, 54, 98, 382n, 383n8, 383n9; and appointment of Wolfe, 05–8; ministry of (763–5), 205; and monument to Thomas Grenville, intended for Westminster Abbey, 54–6; and Stamp Act, 95, 97 Grenville, Henry (77–84), 0, 78, 6–2, 382n, 383n8, 383n9; and monument to, in Bridgetown, 0, 5, 8, 92, , 53, 60–3, 99, 20, 237, 243, 265, 267, 345; and monument to Thomas Grenville, intended for Westminster Abbey, 54–6 Grenville, Hester. See Pitt, Hester Grenville, James, 382n Grenville, Richard. See Temple, Richard, Earl Grenville, Sir Richard (542–9), 5, 382n Grenville, Thomas (79–47), 54, 60; monument to, at Stowe, 53, 56–9, 56, 64, 65; monument to, intended for Westminster Abbey, 5, 53–7, 59, 63 Grenville Cousinhood, 0, 5–6, 04, 9, 45, 47, 58–60, 74–6 Grenville family, 04 Griffith, Thomas: monument to, 346 Grinfield, General William: monument to, 347 Grosley, Pierre-Jean (78–85), 5–8, 22; and monument to Pitt the Elder, for Cork, 20; and monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 08, 8, 33, 37, 42, 380n52, 380– n65 Guadaloupe, 240 Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, 33, 38n76 Guy, John Hudson: monument to, 8, 8, 85, 352 Guy, Thomas (644/5–724), 84 Habermas, Jürgen (929–), 6

446

Hagley Hall, Worcestershire, 47 Haidar Ali (d. 782), 28, 285, 305, 36, 402n26 Hakewill, James, 250 Halfway Tree (Jamaica): St Andrew’s Parish Church, 26, 27, 85, 250; monuments in, 354–5 Halifax (Nova Scotia): St Paul’s Parish Church, 349 Hall, George: monument to, 348 Hamilton, William (75–80), 322 Hampden, John (bap. 653, d. 696), 96 Handel, George Friedrich: monument to, 3, 32 Hanover (Germany), 04, 9, 263 Hanover Parish Church, Lucea (Jamaica): monuments in, 357 Hanover Plot, Jamaica (776), 239 Hanway, Jonas (bap. 72, d. 786), 9, 82–4, 85–6; and bust of George III , in Montreal, 6, 2, 82–94, 83; and colonial trade, 89; and empire, 85–6, 88–9, 92; An Essay on Tea, 388n26; and fire in Montreal, 85–6; and Foundling Hospital, 85; and James Murray, 93; and Magdalen House, 88–9; and Marine Society, 85–6, 88–9; “Motives for a Subscription Towards the Relief of the Sufferers at Montreal in Canada,” 89–93; and Montreal, 88–9; and Naturalization of Jews Act, 89; and pamphlets, 86, 88–9, 9; and Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 90; and tea drinking, 89, 388n26; and Troop Society, 85–6, 88–9 Hardinge, George Nicholas, monument to, in Bombay, 306–7, 307; monument to, in St Paul’s Cathedral, 294–5, 294, 307 Hardwicke, st Earl of. See Yorke, Philip Hargrave, William: monument to, 40 Harpham (Yorkshire): monument to Charlotte St Quentin, 376n30 Harris, Christina: monument to, 36 Harris, Ward: monument to, 348 Harrison, Peter: King’s Chapel, Boston, 73, 75 Harrison, Thomas (will dated 745), 255; monument to, 76–8, 347 Harrow, 53 Harvard College Library, 209 Harvard University, 373n89

index

Hastings, Warren (732–88), 283, 285, 286, 289, 290; monument to, in Calcutta, 303–4, 303, 305; monument to, in East India House, 284, 290–, 29 Hayman, Francis (707/8–76): The Humanity of General Amherst, 37, 38, 44, 277; Lord Clive Receiving the Homage of the Nabob, 38–40, 38, 44, 277; The Triumph of Britannia, 39, 39–40 Hayward, Richard (728–800): monument to Lord Botetourt, 6–7, 227–9, 228, 23, 243, 362 Heath, William: monument to, 349 Heber, Reginald: monument to, 36, 38–2, 320 Henry, Patrick (736–99): and resolutions, 207 Henry, Prince of Prussia (726–802), 75–6 heraldry, 72–3 Herbert, Henry, 9th Earl of Pembroke and 6th Earl of Montgomery (c. 689–750), 5; Palladian bridge at Wilton House, 5, 53 Herbert, John Richardson: monument to, 359 Hercules, 2 Hibbert, Thomas: monument to, 25–2, 253, 344, 350 Hickey, James: monument to William and Elizabeth Pusey, 355 Highland soldiers, 34–5 Hill, Charles: monument to, 354 Hills, Wills, st Marquess of Devonshire and Earl of Hillsborough (78–93), 224 Hillsborough, Earl of. See Hill, Wills Hinde, George: monument to, 85, 87, 353, 377n38 Hindus: representation of, 276, 283–4, 290, 304, 305–6, 308, 3, 32, 32 Hoare, Prince (c. 7–69): and Pitt the Elder, 54; monument to Thomas Grenville, intended for Westminster Abbey, 5, 53–7, 59, 63 Hoare, William (707/8–92), 54 Hogarth, William (697–764): Analysis of Beauty, 92 Holetown (Barbados), St James’s Parish Church, monuments in, 348 Holland, 3rd Baron. See Fox, Henry Richard

index

Holland, Henry (745–806): East India House, 287 Holles, Thomas Pelham-, st Duke of Newcastle under Lyme (693–768), 03, 0, 7, 379n48, 389n42; and funeral of George II , 374n02; Pitt–Newcastle coalition, 74 Hollis, Thomas (720–74), 376n35, 406n; bust of, by Joseph Wilton, 86, 388n4; and call for monument to Pitt the Elder, 209–0; and Cromwell, 209; and medals, 70, 209; and Milton, 209; and Pitt the Elder, 209; and prints, 209 Holt’s New York Gazette, 96, 20 Holwell, John Zephaniah (7–98), 295; Holwell’s monument, 295, 296, 404n50 Home, Elizabeth, countess of. See Lawes, Elizabeth Home, Ninian, 263; monument to, 263, 350 Home, Robert (752–834), 403n37; The Death of Colonel Moorhouse, 298; The Hostage Princes leaving home with the Vakil, Ghulam Ali, 404n5 Home, William, 8th Earl of Home (d. 76), 46 Homer, 50, 48, 33 Hooper, Robert: monument to, 29, 29, 347 horse racing, 3 Houghton Hall, Norfolk, 53 House of Commons, 8, 0, 08, 09, 5, 42, 54, 60, 95, 203, 206, 207, 259, 292, 325; and call for monument to Wolfe, 5 House of Lords, 5, 206, 207, 325 houses, in India, 304; in West Indies, 29, 3, 32–3, 34, 48, 50, 69, 250, 372n67, 372n68, 372n69 Howard, Catherine, countess of Effingham: funeral of, 259; monument to, 260–, 260, 26, 267, 350 Howard, Michael, monument to, 348 Howard, Thomas, Earl of Effingham: 262, 259; funeral of, 259; monument to, 260–, 260, 26, 267, 350 Howe, George Augustus, 3rd Viscount (724?– 58), , 3; monument to, –2, 2, 99, 378n25 Huger, Benjamin: monument to, 36 Hughes, John Thomas: monument to, 356

447

Hussein, Saddam: statue of, in Baghdad, 369n39 Hutchinson, George, 203

Jones, Thomas: monument to, 362 Jordan, Edward: monument to, 348 Julius Caesar, 67, 39n44 Jupp, Richard (728–99): East India House, 287

Ifill, Benjamin: monument to, 347 Imperial Magazine, 380n6 India, 85; and clergy, 39–20; colonization, 9; and France, 270; infanticide in, 32–3; and Indian and French coalitions, 27, 28, 402n25; and monuments, 9, 295–32, 304–5; and public monuments, 309–0; and trade, 309; personification of, 297, 309, 32 India Act (784), 9, 285, 29, 304 India Board of Control, 285 Indian Mutiny and Rebellion (857–58), 295 infanticide: in India, 32–3 Inglis, Frances: monument to, 82, 82, 353 Ireland: Anglo–Irish, 20–; and monuments, 20–; and Pitt the Elder, 99 Izard, Ralph: monument to, 362 Jacobite Rebellion (745), 9, 34 Jamaica, 26; Agualta Vale Penn, monument to Thomas Hibbert, 25–2, 253, 344, 350; and American Revolution, 247; Bath, Botanical Gardens, obelisk to Rodney, 350; and Britain, 237; and civic pride, 247; and colonial identity, 247–8; and colonial trade, 237, 240; Committee of Correspondence, 24–2; and diversification, 250; and empire, 237; and George III , 239; House of Assembly, 6, 237, 239–4, 243, 247, 256, 259, 26–2, 372n52; Legislature, 248–9; and Parliament, 239, 240; personification of, 247, 260–; and road building, 250; settlement of, 30, 34; and Stamp Act, 239–40; white population of, 37, 239, 240 Jersey: monument to George II , 7, 368n33 Johnson, Matthew Wharton (sculpted 820–60): monument to Samuel and Mercy Drayton, 347 Johnson, Robert: monument to, 36 Jonah, 250 Jones, Owen, 343 Jones, Sir William (746–94), 289, 304; monument to, University College, Oxford, 289–90, 290, 305; monument to, in St Paul’s Cathedral, 289, 290, 29, 293

448

Kattywar, 32 Keane, Michael: monument to, 346 Keith, Sir Basil, 237–9; monument to, 237, 238, 240–, 248, 267, 352, 375n2 Kelsick, Sarah: monument to, 345 Kendrick, Josephus (79–832): monument to the Second or Queen’s Royal Regiment of Foot, 346 Kent, William: monument to Isaac Newton, 23; Temple of British Worthies, at Stowe, 48, 50, 387n83 Kerr, Mary: monument to, 35 Kerr, Sarah Newton: monument to, 356 Kew: Gallery of Antiques, 9 King, Thomas (74–804) and sons, 32, 90; monument to John, Elizabeth, and Ann Perry, 356 King’s Chapel, Boston, 27, 73, 75, 78; monument to Charles Apthorp, 27, 73–4, 74, 86, 358; monument to Frances Shirley, 27, 73–4, 74, 96, 358; monument to Samuel Vassall, 27, 77, 78–9, 98, 358 Kingston (Jamaica), 34, 249, 255; as capital, 53; and monument to Rodney, 248; Parade; 248; shops, 48; vestry, 256 Kingston Parish Church, Kingston (Jamaica), 76, 85; monuments in, 353–4 Kingston-upon-Hull: monument to William III , 32, 393n99 Knowles, Admiral Charles (d. 777), 53, 76, 99, 237 Kurpah Collectorate, 308 Laing, Malcolm: monument to, 253, 255, 353 Lancashire, William, 90; monument to Christan, Jane Abel, and John Gay Newton Alleyne, 54, 54–5, 66, 98, 25, 267, 348 Lancaster and Walker: monument to Joseph Brazier, 359 Langley, Batty (696–75), The City and Country Builder’s and Workman’s Treasury of Designs, 95 Latitudinarianism: and grief, 59

index

Laurens, Henry (724–92), 206 Lavington, Baron. See Payne, Ralph Lawes, Elizabeth, Countess of Home (née Gibbons), 38, 42–6, 57, 68, 69–70, 72, 84–5, 255; and 20 Portman Square, 38, 46, 85, 372n55; and monument to Deborah Gibbons, 45, 45, 69–70, 72, 85, 355; and monument to James Lawes, 42–4, 44, 57, 72–3, 85, 96 Lawes, James, 42–4, 46, 69, 96, 255; monument to, 42–3, 44, 57, 72–3, 85, 96, 354 Lawes, Sir Nicholas, 42–3, 69, 255; and free school, 255, 398–9n6 Lawrence: monument to, 376n24 Lawrence, Stringer (697–775): monument to, in Dunchidock (Devon), 402n24; monument to, in East India House, 277, 278, 287; monument to, in Westminster Abbey, 279–8, 280 Ledbury (Herefordshire): monument to William Miles, 400n87 Ledoux, Claude–Nicolas (736–806), 325 Lee, James: monument to, 35 Lee, Richard Henry (733–94), 229 Leeward Islands, 26, 40, 267, 269, 374n06 Legrew, James (804–57): monument to John Alleyne Beckles, 346 Leith, Alexander: monument to, 354 Lennox, Charles, 5th Duke of Richmond, 259, 389n42; and drawing academy, 9; and Wolfe, 8; and Joseph Wilton, 8 Leslie, Charles: on education of West Indians, 50, 56; on gambling in West Indies, 46 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (729–8): Laokoön (766), 382n95 Lestock, Richard (679?–746), 59 Lewis, Hugh: monument to, 253–4, 254, 352 Leyden, Henrietta: monument to, 345 liberty, 5, 6, 9, 79, 36–7, 77, 8, 95, 202, 204, 208, 20, 22–2, 226, 227, 229, 240, 28, 306, 35, 334, 396n52; and American colonists, 7; and Anglo–Irish, 20 libraries, 3 Licinius Lucullus, 66–7 Litchfield (Connecticut), 3 Litteljohn, Ann DeLapierre: monument to, 354 Little Bristol [Speightstown] (Barbados), 88

index

Liverpool: sculptors, 89; slave trade, 89–90 Livingston, William (723–90), 28 Livingston family (of New York), 22, 28, 392n67 Livy, 38 Lloyd, Carl: monument to, 354 Lloyd’s Evening Post, 62–3, 72–3, 208 Lockhart, James: tablet to, 349 London, 83, 98–9; Almack’s Assembly Rooms, 44–5; Banqueting House, 229; Cavendish Square, 246, 406n; City of, 82, 85; Courtauld Institute of Art, 38; East India House and monuments in, see East India House; Foundling Hospital, 84–5, 92; Grafton Street, 267; Greenwich Hill, 323, 327, 326, 328; Guildhall, 404n47; Guy’s Hospital, 84; Hyde Park Corner, 92; Kensington Palace, 2; Kent Road, 326; Leadenhall Street, 272–3; Mansion House, 9, 285–6, 380n55; Marylebone, 38, 78, 85, 99, 342; monument to the Duke of Cumberland, 246, 406n; monument to George III in Berkeley Square, 28–20, 29; monument to Nelson in Traflagar Square, 399n83; monument to William III , 393n99; naval hospital, Greenwich, 326; Palace Yard, 85; Pall Mall, 322; Portland Road, 99; Sadler’s Wells, 285– 6; scheme to commemorate Britain’s naval successes in the 790s, 322–8; Somerset House, 3; St James’s Square, 393n99; St Paul’s Cathedral and monuments in, see St Paul’s Cathedral; statue of Achilles, at Hyde Park Corner, 367n7; 20 Portman Square, 38, 46, 85, 372n55; Vauxhall Gardens, 38–40, 44, 277; Vine Street, Piccadilly, 85; Westminster Abbey and monuments in, see Westminster Abbey; Wimpole Street, 78 London Chronicle, 20, 200, 20, 209, 330 London Magazine, 55, 59 Long, Edward (734–83), 37, 46, 373n85; description of The Decoy, 5; on education in West Indies, 53, 56; The History of Jamaica, 25; and monument to John Wolmer, 256; and plantation houses, 372n67; on Sir Charles Price, 50 Lonsdale, Earl of. See Lowther, James Lord Privy Seal, 04, 45, 63

449

Lords of Trade, 207 Lotbinière, Michel-Eugène-Gaspard-Alain Chartier de, 94 Lough, John Graham (798–876): monument to Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, 36, 38–2, 39 Louis XIV (638–75), 9; and monuments, 8, 9 Louis XV (70–74): and monuments, 9 Louis XVI , 259 Louisbourg: British victory at (745), 58 Lovell, James (sculpted 752–78), 70 Lowe, Joseph: monument to, 346, 375n3 Lowther, James, st Earl of Lonsdale (736– 802), 4 Lowther, Katherine (736?–809), 4, 20, 33, 332 Lucea (Jamaica), 99, 255; Hanover Parish Church, monuments in, 357 Lunenburg (Nova Scotia): St John’s Parish Church, monuments in, 349, 369n6 Lützen: Battle of, 38n76 Lycurgus, 48 Lynch Thomas (c. 720–76), 205–6, 25 Lyte, John, 384n33 Lyttelton, George, 47, 52, 55–6, 60, 382n Lyttelton, William, 239 Lyttelton family, 04 MacFarquhar, George: monument to, 7, 72, 253, 356 Mackenzie, R. Tait (867–938): monument to Wolfe, on Greenwich Hill, 327, 328 Madden, Robert (798–886), 47 Madras, 270, 298, 304, 305; Fort St George, monument to Cornwallis, 298–30, 299, 30, 304, 309; St George’s Parish Church and monuments in, see St George’s Parish Church, Madras; St Mary’s Parish Church and monuments in, see St Mary’s Parish Church, Madras; presidency, 402n26 Magdalen House, 88–9, 387n9 Magna Carta, 79, 20, 23, 335 magnanimity, 9, 38, 82, 86, 88, 277, 278, 279, 286, 288, 30, 307, 32, 32, 325, 326 Mahrattas, 274, 275, 276, 284, 290

450

Malton, Thomas: The East India House, Leadenhall Street, London, 288 Mangalore, 297 Manigault, Peter (73–73), 22, 339 Manning, Charles (776–82): monument to George Nicholas Hardinge, in St Paul’s Cathedral, 294–5, 294, 307 Manning, Edward, 76, 255; free school, 255, 398–9n6; monument to, 76, 77, 85, 97–8, 353 Manning, Samuel the Elder (788–842): monument to Cornwallis, in Bombay, 405n68; monument to Wellesley, in Bombay (with Bacon the Younger), 30–, 32 Mantinea: Battle of, 38n76 March, Ann: monument to, 4, 352 Marcus Aurelius, 220 Marine Society, 7, 4, 85–6, 88–9, 92 Mark Antony, 36 Marlborough, 59 Marlborough, Duchess of. See Churchill, Sarah Marlborough, Duke of. See Churchill, John Maroon War, in Jamaica, 263 Marryat, Joseph: monument to, 349 Maryland: and call for monument to George III , 6; and call for monument to Pitt the Elder, 208; House of Assembly, 208; planter colony, 208–9; and Seven Years War, 208; and Stamp Act, 208, 209 Marylebone, London, 38, 78, 85, 99, 342 Mason’s Company, 85–6 masons, 82 Massachusetts, 225; Anglican elite, 73–4; Boston, King’s Chapel and monuments in, see King’s Chapel, Boston; call for monument to Pitt the Elder, 6; Dedham, bust of Pitt the Elder, 205, 358; House of Representatives, 203, 222; and Stamp Act, 203–4; and monument to George Augustus Howe, –2, 2, 99 Massachusetts Bay: and monument to George Augustus Howe, –2, 2, 99 Massachusetts Bay Company, 27 Massachusetts Circular Letter (768), 222, 227, 239 Massachusetts Gazette, 205 Mather, Cotton (663–728), 374n9

index

Mathews, Thomas (676–75), 59 May, William (695–?), 34 Maycock, Catherine: monument to, 347 Maycock, Dottin: monument to, 347 Maynard, Christian Mercy: monument to, 347 Maynard, Jonas: monument to, 347 Mazyck, Isaac, 339 McDougall, Alexander (732–86), 22, 225–6; “To the betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New York,” 225 McLarty, Mary: monument to, 35 McPherson, General: monument to, 360 medals: commemorating victories in the Seven Years War, 70, 209; of Pitt the Elder, cast in New York, 20 Middleton, Arthur, 339 Middleton, Thomas Fanshaw: monument to, in St Paul’s Cathedral, 36, 38–2, 39 Miège, Guy (bap. 644, d. 78?): New State of England, 30– Miles, William: monument to, 400n87 militia: colonial, 36, 76, 248 Miller, Andrew: monument to, 358 Milligan, Robert: monument to, 35 Millward, John Gardner: monument to, 35 Milton, John (608–74), 209 Milward, Nathaniel: monument to, 354 Minden, 8 Minorca: Battle of (756), 03–4 Minto, Elizabeth: monument to, 00, 00, 356 Mir Jafar: nawab of Murshidabad, 39 Mir Jafar Ali Khan (c. 69–765), 27, 275, 277 missionaries: in India, 36 mob, 7, 03, 99; in London, 09; in New York, 202, 203, 209, 22, 28, 223, 224, 225–6, 232 Molyneux, William (656–98), 20 Monitor, 77 Montagu, Lord Charles Greville (74–8), 22 Montcalm, 2nd Marquis, 328 Montego Bay (Jamaica): St James Parish Church and monuments in, 25, 356–7 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis Secondat, Baron de (689–755), 08 Montfauçon, Bernard de (665–74): L’Antiquité expliquée, 385n63 Montgomery, Richard: monument to, 359

index

Montreal: American occupation of (775–6), 3, 82; British inhabitants, 92–3, 232; bust of George III , 6, 2, 83, 82–94, 83, 232, 326; Church of Notre Dame, 82, 88; and fire (765), 6, 82, 92; monument to Nelson, 93, 266, 328; Place d’Armes, 3, 6, 82, 84, 94, 349; surrender to General Amherst (760), 38 Montserrat, 37n34; St Anthony’s Parish Church, monuments in, 358–9 monuments: and Anglican faith, 25; architectural frames, 8–2, 85, 89–90, 92, 94; and art history, 2; and Atlantic colonies, 304, 344– 63; and audience, in Atlantic colonies, 49; calls for, as rhetoric, 7, 8; cartouches, 4–2, 80–2, 85, 94; choosing a sculptor, 83–93; and colonial identity, 5, 75–9; in colonies, 326; and commemoration, 2; commissioned by heirs, 30; containing portrait busts, 96; containing relief portraits, 96–8; contract and design, 93–9; as displays of grief, 59–68; and empire, 7, 8, , 326; as exemplum, 30; and family dynasties, 4, 68–73; and family lineage, 40; funeral, , 304, 4, 7, 25, 248; and heraldry, 72–3; in Holland, 9, 368n23; in India, 270, 304–5; and iconography of, in Atlantic colonies, 39, 49; to living individuals, 6–7, 98–9; as objects of social pretension in Atlantic colonies, 39; to officers, in West Indies, 7; and pattern books, 94; and press, 96; to professionals, in West Indies, 7, 252–3; and public, 337; and public, in colonies, 325, 326, 327–8; and public, in India, 309; pyramidal form, 83; stock-intrade designs, 4–5, 80, 89, 90, 93–4; and trade routes, 88–9; to those who died in childbirth, 63; transport to and assembly of, in colonies, 99–00; urns, 82, 90 Moore, Henry, st Baronet (73–69), 76, 202, 224 Moorhouse, Joseph: monument to, 298, 299 Morant, John: monument to, 356 Morant, John the Elder: monument to, 4, 355 Morant, John the Younger: monument to, 4, 355 Mordaunt, Sir John (696/7–780), 08

451

Morris, Roger (695–749): Palladian bridge, at Wilton House, 5, 53 Mossom, David: monument to, 363 “Motives for a Subscription Towards the Relief of the Sufferers at Montreal in Canada,” 89–93 Motte, Elizabeth: monument to, 36 Motte, Isaac: monument to, 36 Motte, Jacob: monument to, 36 Motte, Rebecca: monument to, 36 Mountague, Jane: monument to, 356 Mountrath, countess: monument to, 380n65 Mughal Empire, 270 Munn, Horatio, st Baronet (bap. 706, d. 786), 77 Munro, Robert Hugh: monument to, 257, 258, 357 Murray, Anne: monument to, 360 Murray, George: monument to, 360 Murray, James (722–94), 92–4, 378n29, 389n42 Musgrave, Eliza: monument to, 66, 66, 67, 98–9, 344 Musgrave, William, 98–9 Muslims: representation of, 290, 304, 305–6, 32, 32 Myers, Sir William: monument to, 346 Mysore, 305 Mysore Wars, 27, 28, 297, 298, 305–6 Napoleon Bonaparte (769–82), 263–4, 322, 406n8 Napoleonic wars, 293 Nash, Richard (Beau) (674–76), 54 nationalism, 5, 230– Naturalizaton of Jews Act (753), 89 Nedham, William: monument to, 352 Nelson, Horatio, st Viscount (758–805), 264–5, 307; Battle of the Nile, 322; monument to, in Birmingham, 399n83; monument to, in Bridgetown, 8, 264–5, 265, 267, 328, 345; monument to, in Montreal, 93, 264, 266, 328; monument to, in Trafalgar Square, London, 399n83; monuments to, 325; Nelson, Thomas (738–89), 229 Nelson, William (7–72), 229 Neptune: monument of, at Stowe, 57

452

Neufville, Ann Margaret: monument to, 353 Nevis, 265; St John’s Parish Church, Figtree, and monuments in, see St John’s Parish Church, Figtree; St Paul’s Church, monument to Mary Crosse, 359 New Kent County (Virginia): St Peter’s Parish Church, monuments in, 362–3 New South Wales, 20 New York, 208, 23; Academy of Fine Arts, 234; Bowling Green, 209, 223; 359; Broadway, 234; Christ Church, Duanesburg, 359; City Hall, 234; condemnation of Stamp Act, 202; Council, 27–8; and the DeLanceys, 220; Fort George, 202; and mob, 202, 203, 209, 22, 28, 223, 224, 225–6, 232; Greenwich Village, 2, 359; House of Assembly, 202–3, 20, 28; Legislature, 3, 223–6; Liberty Green, 202; Manhattan, 2; and monument to George III , 3, 6–7, 2, 202, 22–3, 27–20, 223–7, 23, 24 34, 359, 375n, 375n2; and monument to Pitt the Elder, 6–7, 2, 202–3, 209–0, 2–3, 27–20, 29, 223–7, 23, 24, 243, 34, 359, 375n, 375n2; monument to Wolfe, 2; Moore’s Tavern, 232; and Pitt the Elder, 226–7; and repeal of Stamp Act, 96, 209, 2–2; Sons of Liberty, 96, 209; Stamp Act Congress (765), 203; Trinity Parish, monuments in, 359; Wall Street, 223, 234; William Street, 223; and John Wilkes, 224–6 New York Mercury, 2 Newcastle, Duke of. See Holles, Thomas PelhamNewport (Rhode Island): Trinity Church, monument to Rev. Mr Brown, 360 Newton, Sir Isaac: monument to, in Westminster Abbey 23 New-York Historical Society, 234 Neyle, Philip: monument to, 36 Nicholas, Robert Carter (728–80), 229 Nicolay, William: tablet to, 349 Nightingale, Lady Elizabeth: monument to, 59 Nollekens, Joseph (737–823), 85, 93, 376n25; and busts of George III , 376n25; and busts of William Pitt the Younger, 376n25; and monument to Rodney, for Jamaica, 242; monument to Richard Salter, 347 Nora, Pierre (93–), , 2

index

North, Francis, st Earl of Guildford (704– 90), 5–6, 54, 283 North Briton, 64, 77, 22 Northcote, James (746–83), 403n37 Nost, John van (d. 729): monument to George I , in Dublin, 7, 368n33, 393n99; monument to George I , at Stowe, 393n99 Nova Scotia: monuments in, 369n6 Nugent, Lady Maria (770/7–834), 47, 372n6; on behaviour of colonial elite, 57 Okeover, Leak: monument to, 94, 95 Okeover, Mary: monument to, 94, 95 “On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India,” 289 Opie, John (76–807): “Temple of Naval Virtue,” for London, 322 Order of the Bath, 269, 285 Orderson, Frances: monument to, 347 Osborn, Kean: monument to, 56, 355 Osborn, Kean, Sr, 56; monument to, 355 Osborn, Samuel Alpress: monument to, 56, 355 Osborn, Samuel Alpress George: monument to, 356 Osborne, Samuel: monument to, 4, 352 Otis, James (702–88), 203, 206; The Rights of the British Colonies asserted and proved, 203 Ottley, Elizabeth: monument to, 84, 84, 93–4, 98, 329, 345 Ottley, Richard (730–75), 84, 93, 98, 329 Oxford: All Souls College, 256; monument to Christopher Codrington, 399n62; Taylorian Institute, 377n38; Trinity College, 50; University College, monument to William Jones, 289–90, 290, 305 Paintings: and monuments, 8 Palladio, Andrea (508–80): I quattro libri dell’architettura, 385n63 Palmer, John, 59 Palmer, Rosa, 57–9; monument to, 57–9, 58, 65, 83, 98, 25, 356 Palmer, Rosa the Witch, 373n0 Panter, Edward: monument to, 348 The Pantomime Story of Tippoo Sultan Saib, 285–6 Parke, Daniel: monument to, 362 Parker, Peter Manigault: monument to 36

index

Parliament, 8, 9, , 20, 2, 03, 04, 09–0, 4–5, 6, 7, 2–2, 43, 45, 48, 60, 77, 85, 87, 229, 230, 23, 232, 242, 292–3, 367n7, 377n2, 384n36, 389n5, 395n29, 399n83; and American colonies, 95, 96, 202, 203, 206, 208, 229, 230, 23, 232; and India, 285; and Jamaica, 239, 24; and monument to Cloudesley Shovell, 9, 0; and monument to Nelson, in Trafalgar Square, London, 399n83; and monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 5, 4–5; and West Indies, 239, 240, 269 Parris, Fanny Henrietta: monument to, 359 Parsons, George: monument to, 360 Parsons, James, 339 Parsons, James O’Brien: monument to, 360 Passley, Henry James: monument to, 358 Paty, James the Elder (sculpted 72–46), 32, 89 Paty, James the Younger (b. 746), 32, 89 Paty, Thomas (73–89), 32, 89 Paty, William (758–800), 32, 89; monument (attr.) to Edward Foord, 354; monument to Henry Frere, 347; monument to Christian Gibbes, 347; monument to Thomas Griffith, 346; monument to Edward Jordan, 348 Payne, Ralph, Baron Lavington (739–807), 267–9; monument to, 267–9, 344 Peale, Charles Wilson (74–827), William Pitt, 229, 230; print after William Pitt, 395n38 Pearce, Zachary, bishop of Rochester (690– 774), 7 Peart, Charles (759–98): monument to John Campbell, 297–8, 297; monument to Joseph Moorhouse, 298, 299 Peers, Henry, monument to, 89, 90, 348 Pembroke, 9th Earl of. See Herbert, Henry Penang (formerly Prince of Wales Island): monument to Cornwallis, 32 Penn, William (644–78), 5 Penney, Edward (74–9): Lord Clive receiving from the Nawab of Bengal the grant of the sum of money which was later used to establish the charity known as ‘Lord Clive’s Fund’ for helping disabled soldiers as well as widows of those dying in the Company’s Service, 279; Death of General Wolfe, 43

453

Pennsylvania, 5, 383n3 peripheries (of empire), 7, 99, 20, 264, 295, 325–8 Perry, Ann: monument to, 356 Perry, Elizabeth: monument to, 356 Perry, John: monument to, 356 Phidias, 33 Philadelphia: Christ Church, monuments in, 359–60 A Picturesque Tour of the Island of Jamaica, 250 La Piedmontaise, 306 Pigot, Lord George (77–77), 283 Pinckney, Charles (746–825), 339 Pinder, Elizabeth: monument to, 348 Pinnock, George, 239 Pitt, Harriet (née Villiers) (d. 736), 99 Pitt, Hester (née Grenville), Countess of Chatham (720–803), 04, 08, 75–6, 383n8; and Richard, Earl Temple, 68, 72; and monument to Thomas Grenville, intended for Westminster Abbey, 54–6 Pitt, John, 54 Pitt, Thomas, st Baron Camelford (737–93): and triumphal arch, at Stowe, 75, 76 Pitt, William the Elder, st Earl of Chatham (766) (708–78), 4, 20, 04, 20, 70, 72, 204, 27, 33, 332, 382n, 384n36; and Administration (757–6), 73, 76; and American colonies, 96–9; and appointment of Wolfe, 05–8; and Atlantic colonies, 43; and Burton Pynsent, 47; bust of, in Dedham, 205, 358; bust of, at Stowe, 50; busts of, by Joseph Wilton 86, 23, 25, 335, 337, 339, 340, 388n4; and Earl of Bute, 75, 87; and call for monument to, by Thomas Hollis, 209–0; and call for monument to, in Maryland, 208; and call for monument to, in Massachusetts, 6; and call for obelisk to, and to Patriots, in Virginia, 207–9; and calls for monuments to, in American colonies, 97–8, 20–2; and Cato, 36; and Cicero, 36, 96, 24–5, 26, 392n78; and Richard Viscount Cobham, 04–5, 67; and Cork, 99; and cult of Wolfe, 09–6; and empire, 36, 95; and Epaminondas, 36; as “father” of the colonies, 20; and George III , 87;

454

as Great Commoner, 05, 36, 65, 78, 27, 339; as Great Patriot, 53, 05, 36, 23; and Grecian Temple (Temple of Concord and Victory), at Stowe, 68, 73; and Grenvilles, 04–5; and Prince Hoare, 54; and Thomas Hollis, 209; and imperial ambitions, 05, 46; and Ireland, 99; and Mark Antony, 36; medal of, cast in New York, 20; monument to, in Charleston, 6–7, 2, 208, 20, 23–7, 24, 26, 28, 220–3, 223, 224, 225, 230, 23, 24, 243, 325, 334–43, 360, 375n, 375n2, 376n35; monument to, in Cork, 9, 99–202, 200, 20, 23, 23, 335; and monument to Thomas Grenville, intended for Westminster Abbey, 54; monument to, in New York, 6–7, 2, 202, 209–0, 2–3, 27–20, 29, 223–7, 23, 24, 243, 325, 34, 359, 375n, 375n2; and monument to Charles Watson, 40, 274–6, 277; and monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 5, 05–46, 54, 78, 8; and monuments, 47–8, 53, 62; and New York, 28, 226–7; and peerage, 08; and personal ambitions, 45; Pitt-Newcastle coalition, 04, 74; and press, 05, 0, 47, 76, 338; and public, 05, 7, 22, 33, 35, 74–5, 77; and resignation, 45, 63–4, 72–3, 75, 87, 95, 99; and Rochefort invasion (757), 08; and South Carolina, 22; and Stamp Act, 95–9, 226, 334; and Richard Earl Temple, 63, 68; and Virginia, 207; William Pitt, 229, 230; and Wolfe, 08–9, 46, 54, 67, 96 Pitt, William the Younger (759–806), 285, 29 Pitt-Newcastle coalition, 04, 74 Pittsylvania (Virginia), 207 plantocracy, , 3, 8, 37, 38, 4, 46, 49, 72, 76, 78, 9, 86, 239, 24, 248, 25, 252, 257, 259, 262, 263, 267, 269, 309; and public, 309 Plassey: British victory at, 27, 274–5 Pocock, George (706–92): monument to, 277, 278, 287 political calendar: celebrations, 7, 97 Pollilur, 402n26 Pond, Arthur (bap. 70, d. 758), 40n8 Pondicherry, 402n25 Pope, Alexander (688–744), 52, 33; and monument to James Craggs, 256

index

Popham, Honora Watson: monument to, 354 popular press, 6, 8, 3, 5–3, 55–6, 59–60, 62–3, 72, 76–7, 8; in the colonies, 96 population: in Jamaica, 37, 239; in West Indies, 8, 37, 46, 48, 252 Port Antonio (Jamaica): Christ Church, monuments in, 358 Port Louis (St Domingue), 99 Port Maria (Jamaica): triumphal column from the estate of Charles Price, 5, 52, 350 Port Morant (Jamaica), 63 Port Royal (Jamaica), 63; St Peter’s Church, monument to William Stapleton, 60–3, 60, 6, 66, 92, 98, 358 Portland, st Duke of. See Bentinck, William Henry. Porto Bello, 98, 285, 366n6 Porto Novo, 402n26 Portsmouth, 4, 8 Post, Edward: monument to, 36 Powell, Alicia: monument to, 36 Pratt, Charles, st Earl Camden (74–94), 208, 229 Prettejohn, John: monument to, 347 Price, Colonel Charles (677/8–730), 49 Price, Elizabeth Hannah: monument to, 5, 87, 88, 35 Price, Francis, 49 Price, Sir Charles, st Baronet (708–72), 36, 49, 55, 86–7; and The Decoy, 5; and education, 50; and politics, 52–3, 76; tomb of, 53, 76, 87, 25; and road building, 52 Price, Sir Charles, 2nd Baronet (732/3–88), 5, 239, monument to, 99 Price, Sir Rose (764–835), 53 Prince, Elizabeth: monument to, 358 Prince George Church, Winyah, Georgetown (South Carolina): monument to Thomas Jones, 362 public, 6, 9, 9, 03, 04, 05, 08, 09, 0–, 7, 33, 35, 43, 44, 45, 47, 60, 63, 65, 74–5, 77, 78, 209, 222, 233, 279, 285, 295, 309, 325, 330, 33; and East India Company, 309; and India, 285, 289; and plantocracy, 309; and press, 6 Public Advertiser, 5, 7, 98

index

public subscription, 73, 82, 86, 89, 92, 93, 98, 208, 209, 264, 286, 39, 327, 328, 335, 406; in colonies, 327–8 Pusey, Elizabeth: monument to, 355 Pusey, John: monument to, 356 Pusey, William: monument to, 355 Quartering Act (765), 28, 225, 226 Quebec, 7, 05, 08, 09, 0, 2, 3, 20, 28, 30, 3, 32, 33, 34, 35, 43, 46, 68, 72, 85, 93, 2, 285; Wolfe’s victory at, on Plains of Abraham (759) 7, 05, 09, 2–3, 20, 33 Quebec Act (774), 08, 233, 239 Queen’s Royal Regiment of Foot: monument to, 346 Qur’an, 305 Radcliffe, Thomas: monument to, 362 Raj, 36 Raleigh, Sir Walter (554–68), 50 Ramsay, Allan (73–84), 63 Ramsay, Anne: monument to, 35 Ramsay, Peter: monument to, 35 Randolph, Peyton (72/2–75), 207, 229 Ravenet, Simon (72–74): The Triumph of Britannia, 39, 39–40 Read, Ennis: monument to, 87, 88, 355 Read, Margaret: monument to, 87, 88, 355 Read, Nicholas (c. 733–87), 23, 335 Reddie, A.: monument to, 358 Reeves, Charles and sons (sculpted 778–860), 90; monument to James Lee, 35; monument to John Gardner Millward, Thomas James Brown, Mary Kerr, et al., 35 Regnart, Charles (759–844): monument to Anne Margaret Brymer, 358; monument to Robert Milligan, 35 Regulating Act (774), 283 Renton, James: monument to, 62, 62, 99, 355 The Repeal, or the Funeral of Miss Ame-Stamp, 97–9 Revere, Paul (735–88): A View of the Obelisk erected under the Liberty-Tree in Boston on the Rejoicings for the Repeal of the Stamp Act 766, 204, 205

455

Reynolds, Sir Joshua (723–92), 3, 9, 32, 44, 400n87; on antique and modern dress, 32, 44, 245–7; Discourse III , 44; Discourses on Art, 246; and Royal Academy of Arts, 242; and Benjamin West, 246 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, in the circle of: portrait of Rosa Palmer, 98 Rhodes: Colossus, 323 rice, 26 Richardson, Samuel (bap. 689, d. 76), 383n6 Richmond, 5th Duke of. See Lennox, Charles Richmond (Surrey): monument to Charles Price, 2nd Baronet, 99 Rickson, William, 378n29 The Rights of the British Colonies asserted and proved, 203 Ripa, Cesar, Iconologia, 5, 274 road building, 35, 52 Robertson, Duncan: monument to, 357 Robinson, Alexander: tablet to, 349 Robinson, Thomas, st Baronet (02/3–77), 76; as governor of Barbados, 62 Robinson, William: tablet to, 349 Rochefort: British invasion of (757), 08, 377n6 Rockingham, 97 Rockingham administration (765–66), 96, 389n42, 389n5 Rodney, George Bridges, st Baron (bap. 78, d. 792), 246, 247, 250; maquette by John Bacon the Younger for monument to, in St Paul’s Cathedral, 397n27; monument to, in Spanish Town, 8, 99, 6, 240–9, 24, 244, 245, 249, 250, 260, 298, 325, 350; obelisk to, in Bath (Jamaica), 250, 350 Rogers, Josiah, monument to, 350 Rogerson, W. (sculpted 794–8): monument to Michael Keane, 346 Rokeby Hall, County Durham, 62 Roma, Spiridione: Britannia receiving the riches of the East, 284 Rome, 326, 337; Palazzo dei Conservatori, 284; Temple of Concord, 73 Romney, George (734–802): Death of General Wolfe, 43–4 Roper, William, 339

456

Rose Hall, Jamaica, 59 Rose, Thomas: monument to, 4–2, 43, 60, 352 Roseau (Dominica): St George’s Parish Church, monuments in, 349 Ross, Charles Robert: monument to, 308–9, 308 Rossi, John Charles (762–839): monument to Cornwallis, in St Paul’s Cathedral, 293, 294; monument to Rodney, in St Paul’s Cathedral, 397n27; and monument to Wellesley, in Calcutta, 30 Roubiliac, Louis-François (702–62), 2, 83, 9, 23, 335, 370n22; and clients, 9–2; monument to Duke of Argyll, 25, 32; monument to James Fleming, 40; monument to George Frederick Handel, 3, 32; monument to William Hargrave, 40; monument to Elizabeth Nightingale, 59; monument to Richard Boyle Shannon, 62, 3, 3; monument to William Stapleton, 60–3, 60, 6, 66, 92, 98, 358; monument to Peter Warren, 20–; and monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 92, 8, 29–33, 29, 30, 37–8, 379n48; and Joseph Wilton, 32; workshop, 32, 92 Rouw, Henry (sculpted 795–834), or Peter Rouw the Younger (770–852): monument to Thomas Warren, 357 Rowlandson, Thomas (757–827): India House, the sale room, 278 Rowley, Bartholomew Samuel: monument to, 353 Rowley, Edward: monument to, 354 Royal Academy of Arts (London), 3, 44, 279, 283, 329, 403n29; as arbiter of national taste, 242; and monument to Cornwallis, in Madras, 246, 298–30, 299, 30; and monument to Rodney, for Jamaica, 242–3; and monument to Wellesley, in Calcutta, 30, 3; Royal Academy Exhibition (77), 43; Royal Proclamation Act (763), 82 Ruins of Baalbec, 38 Ruins of Palmyra, 38 Rule Britannia, 0, 248 Rusea, Martin (will dated 764): free school, 255, 398–9n6

index

Rushworth, John (c. 62–90), 79 Russell, Wriothesley, 2nd Duke of Bedford (680–7): monument to, 380n65 Russia Company, 82 Rutland, Duke of. See Granby, Charles Manners, 332 Rutledge, John (739–800), 206, 25, 339 Rysbrack, John Michael (694–770), 83, 9, 23, 335; chimneypiece, in East India House, London, 9, 272–4, 272, 273, 276, 284; clients, 9–2; and monument to Duke of Argyll, 24–5; monument to Henry Grenville, 0, 8, 92, , 53, 60–3, 99, 20, 237, 243, 265, 267, 345; and monument to Thomas Grenville, intended for Westminster Abbey, 383n9; monument to Duke of Marlborough, 30, 37n5; monument to Isaac Newton, 23; and monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 8, 23–6, 24, 27, 33; monument to William III , Bristol, 32, 33, 393n99; monument to Sarah Young, 93; workshop, 32 St Andrew’s Parish (Jamaica), 255 St Andrew’s Parish Church, Halfway Tree (Jamaica), 26, 27; monuments in, 354–5 St Antony’s Parish Church, Montserrat: monuments in, 358–9 St Catherine’s Parish Church, Spanish Town (Jamaica), 49, 53, 85, 25, 259, 262; monuments in, 350–4 St Christopher (St Kitts), 267 St Domingue (Haiti), 258–9, 262 St George, (Grenada), 263 St George’s Parish Church, Barbados: monuments in, 347–8 St George’s Parish Church, Bassetree (St Kitt’s): monument to William Henry Sanderson, 360 St George’s Parish Church, Madras: monument to Daniel Corrie, 36, 38–2, 320; monument to Reginald Heber, 36, 38–2, 320 St George’s Parish Church, Roseau (Dominica): monuments in, 349 St George’s Parish Church, St George’s (Grenada): monuments in, 263, 349–50 St. James’s Chronicle, 406n

index

St James’s Parish Church, Goose Creek (South Carolina): monuments in, 362 St James’s Parish Church, Holetown (Barbados): monuments in, 348 St James’s Parish Church, Montego Bay (Jamaica), 252; monuments in, 356–7 St John the Baptist: monument to, St John’s Parish Church, Antigua, 345 St John the Divine: monument to, St John’s Parish Church, Antigua, 345 St John the Evangelist Parish Church, Black River (Jamaica): monuments in, 357–8 St John’s (Antigua), 249; shops, 48 St John’s Parish Church, Barbados: monuments in, 348; monument to Elizabeth Pindar, 348 St John’s Parish Church, Figtree (Nevis): monuments in, 359 St John’s Parish Church, Lunenburg (Nova Scotia), 349; monuments in, 349, 369n6 St John’s Parish Church, St John’s (Antigua), 26, 28, 25; monuments in, 344–5 St Kitts, Basseterre, St George’s Parish Church: monument to William Henry Sanderson, 360 St Lucia, 262–3 St Mary (Jamaica), Agualta Vale Penn: monument to Thomas Hibbert, 25–2, 253, 344, 350; The Decoy, Worthy Park, 5 St Mary’s Parish Church, Madras: monument to Barry Close, 29–2, 292, 294, 305; monument to Joseph Moorhouse, 298, 299; monument to Charles Robert Ross, 308–9, 308; monument to Frederick Christian Swartz, 36, 37; monument to Josiah Webbe, 305, 306 St Michael’s Parish Church, Bridgetown (Barbados), 29, 25; monuments in, 345–7 St Michael’s Parish Church, Charleston (South Carolina), 25–6, 26, 220–, 338; monuments in, 360– St Michel Church, Vaudreuil (Quebec): monument to Marie–Josephte Godefroy de Tonnanacour, 94, 349 St Nicholas Abbey, Barbados, 48, 48, 55, 372n68

457

St Paul’s Cathedral, London, 4, 9, 242, 272; and monuments, 293–4; monument to Queen Anne, 8, 9; monument to Barry Close (erected in Madras), 29–2, 292, 294, 305; monument to Cornwallis, 293, 294; monument to George Nicholas Hardinge, 294–5, 294, 307; monument to William Jones, 289, 290, 29, 293; monument to Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, 36, 38–2, 39 St Paul’s Parish Church, Charleston (South Carolina): monument to Christina Harris, 36 St Paul’s Parish Church, Halifax (Nova Scotia), 349 St Paul’s Parish Church, Nevis: monument to Mary Crosse, 359 St Peter’s Church, Port Royal (Jamaica), 63; monument to William Stapleton, 60–3, 60, 6, 66, 92, 98, 358 St Peter’s Parish Church, Barbados: monuments in, 348 St Peter’s Parish Church, Charleston (South Carolina): monument to Peter Manigault Parker, 36 St Peter’s Parish Church, New Kent County (Virginia): monuments in, 362–3 St Peter’s Parish Church, Vere (Jamaica): monuments in, 355–6 St Philip’s Parish Church, Charleston (South Carolina): monuments in, 36–2 St Quentin, Charlotte: monument to, 376n30 St Thomas’s Parish Church, Barbados: monuments in, 349 St Thomas’s Parish Church, Bombay: monument to John Campbell, 297–8, 297; monument to Jonathan Duncan, 32–3, 33; monument to Charles Nicholas Hardinge, 306–7, 307; monument to John Watson, 295–7, 297 St Vincent, 93, 262–4; obelisk in, 263, 264, 360 Sallust, 24 Salter, Richard: monument to, 347 Sanders, Emma: monument to, 358 Sanders, J.J. (sculpted 82–46): tablet to Alexander Robinson, 349; tablet to James and Ann Corlett; tablet to James Lockhart, 349

458

Sanderson, William Henry: monument to, 360 Sarabhoji, Rajah of Tanjor, 36; and monument to Frederick Christian Swartz, in Swartz’s Church, Tanjor, 37, 38; and monument to Frederick Christian Swartz, at Sarabhoji’s Palace, in Tanjor, 38 sati (or suttee), 32, 33–5 Saussure, Louis de: monument to, 36 Savanna-la-Mar (Jamaica), 255 Scheemakers, Peter (bap. 69, d. 78), 83, 85, 9, 54; busts of Shirley family, 96; monument to Clive, 277–9, 278, 287; monument to George Augustus Viscount Howe, –2, 2, 99, 378n25; monument to Stringer Lawrence, in East India House, 277–9, 278, 287; monument to Pocock, 277–9, 278, 287; monument to Frances Shirley, 27, 73–4, 74, 96, 358; monument to Charles Watson, 40–2, 4, 274–6, 277; monument to William III , in Kingston-upon-Hull, 32, 393n99; and monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 8, 25–7, 25, 33; and relief sculpture at Stowe, 50–, 68–70, 70, 274; workshop, 32 Scipio Africanus, 38 Scots Magazine, 246–7, 330 Scott, James (733–84), 98 Scott, Sir George Gilbert (839–97), 32 Scott, William, 339 sculptors: workshop practices, 94–9 Sears, Isaac (c. 730–86), 22 season, parliamentary: in West Indies, 36, 47, 50, 209 Second or Queen’s Royal Regiment of Foot: monument to, 346 Second World War, 276, 32 Seeley, Benton, 77; and English translations in guide books to Stowe, 57–8, 66, 74, 78; guide books to Stowe, 52 Selwyn, Albinia, 4,44, 372n52 Selwyn, William: monument to, 4, 42, 63, 352 Seringapatam: battle at (792), 285–6, 298, 30 sermons: political, 7 Serres, Dominic (722–93), 243 Seven Years War (756–63), 5, 2, 6, 36, 42, 44, 92, 95, 97, 99, 20, 208, 209, 2, 263,

index

285, 386n74; effect on public, 0–; and Stowe, 70, 76 Shaftesbury, Earl of. See Cooper, Anthony Ashley Shannon, Richard Boyle, 2nd Viscount (675– 740): monument to, 62, 3, 3 Sharp, Henrietta Pearce: monument to, 347 Sherriff of London, 86 Shirley, Frances, 73; monument to, 27, 73–4, 74, 96, 358 Shirley, William (694–77), 27, 73, 96 Sholingarh, 402n26 Shovell, Admiral Sir Cloudesley, 60, 368n22; monument to, in Westminster Abbey, 9, 0, 60 Sidnell, Michael (sculpted 74–45): monument to William Chamberlayne, 88, 89, 362; monument to David Mossom, 363 Sidney, Philip, 3rd Earl of Leicester (69–98), 55–6 Simcoe, Lieutenant Colonel John Graves (752–806): monument to, in Exeter Cathedral, 405n7 Simons, Charles Dewar: monument to, 362 Singapore, 36 Singleton, Henry (766–839), 403n37 Siraj-ud-Daulah (born c. 729–38, d. 757), 27, 274, 279, 285, 288–9, 295 Skerett, Henrietta Cornelia: monument to, 358 slave trade: abolition of (807), 267, 269 Sleter, Francis: paintings on Palladian bridge at Stowe, 50– Smirke, Robert (753–845), 300, 403n37 Smith, Anne: monument to, 353 Smith, Benjamin, 339 Smith, Catherine: monument to, 346 Smith, Elizabeth Ann: monument to, 362 Smith, James, 329 Smith, Joseph: monument to Charles Bryan, 358 Smith, Nathaniel, 32; and monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 29, 29 Smith, T., 34 Smitten, Elizabeth Martha: monument to, 349 Smyth, John: monument to Rev. Mr Brown, 360

index

Sober, Elizabeth Jennett: monument to, 348 Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, 7, 4, 70, 39n55 Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, 36; and monument to Frederick Christian Swartz, in Swartz’s Chruch, Tanjor, 37 38; and monument to Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, in St Paul’s Cathedral, 38–9, 39 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 90, 256 Society of Artists, London: Society of Artists Exhibition (763), 43; Society of Artists Exhibition (764), 43 Society of Arts, London: Society of Arts Exhibition (760), 22, 380n6 Society of the Gentlemen Supporters of the Bill of Rights (SGSB), 22–2 Socrates, 48 Sons of Liberty, 22; in Boston, 204; in Charleston, 206; in New York, 96, 202, 225, 226; in South Carolina, 22 South Carolina, 26, 225; and call for monument to George III , 202, 206; Charleston, and monuments in, see Charleston; Committee of Correspondence, 23; Commons House of Assembly, 205–6, 208, 20, 23, 25, 220–3, 230, 23, 334–43, 393n88; and French Revolution, 233–4; Georgetown, and monuments in, see Georgetown; Goose Creek, and monuments in, see Goose Creek; Historical Society, 234; Legislature, 233; and monument to Pitt the Elder, 205–6, 208, 20, 23–7, 22; and repeal of Stamp Act, 27; and Stamp Act, 205; and Stamp Act Congress, 205–6; and James Wilkes, 22–3, 224, 234 South Carolina Gazette, 222, 234 Soviet Union: collapse of, 2 Spanish Town (Jamaica), 50, 237, 239, 248, 249, 255; as capital of Jamaica, 53; Court House, 248; Governor’s House, 248; House of Assembly, 248; houses, 372n69; King’s Square, 250; monument to Rodney, 8, 6, 240–9, 24, 244, 245, 249, 250, 260, 298, 350; parliamentary season, 36; St Catherine’s

459

Parish Church and a list of monuments in, 49, 53, 85, 25, 259, 262, 350–2 “The Speech of the Statue, of the Right Hon. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, to the Virtueous and Patriotic Citizens of New York,” 226–7 Speightstown (Barbados), 88; St Peter’s Parish Church, monuments in, 348 Spence, William (793–849): monument to Joseph Lowe, 346 Spencer, Ann, 4 Spencer, Sarah, 4 Sproule, Robert Auchmuty (799–845): Nelson’s Monument, Notre Dame Street Looking West [Montreal], 266; Place d’Armes, Montreal, 84 Stadler, J.C., India House, the sale room, 278 Stamp Act, 28, 78–9, 95, 20, 204, 229, 269; and Barbados, 266; colonial condemnation of, 202; and Jamaica, 239–40; and Maryland, 208; repeal of (766), 3, 7, 6–7, 96, 203, 223, 233, 334; and Virginia, 207 Stamp Act Congress (765), 203, 206, 27; and Maryland, 208; and South Carolina, 205–6; and Virgina, 207 Stapleton, Sir Thomas, 6 Stapleton, William: monument to, 60–3, 60, 6, 66, 92, 98, 358 The Statue, or the Adoration of the Wise-men of the West, 98, 98 Staunton Harold (Leicestershire), 96 Steell, Sir John (804–9): monument to Elizabeth Mary, Countess of Elgin and Kincardine, 35 Stephenson, William (sculpted 752–56), 69, 70 Stone, Benjamin, 394n09 Stopford, Thomas: monument to, 354 Storey, William (sculpted 800–26): tablet to James Brown, 349; tablet to William Nicolay, 349; tablet to William Robinson, 349 Stothard, Thomas (755–834), 322 Stowe, Buckinghamshire, 4, 5–6, 04; and Richard Viscount Cobham, 72; Boycott Pavilion, 385n46; bridge over River Ouse, 385n46; bust of Mercury, 48; Cobham’s

460

Pillar, 52, 66, 67, 75, 326; Elysian Fields, 04, 48–5, 58, 64, 65, 72, 77; Grecian Temple (Temple of Concord and Victory), 56, 59–60, 64, 65, 66, 68–77, 69, 70, 7, 74; Grecian Valley, 56, 58–9, 65; guide books to, 52–3; Hawkwell Fields, 50, 58, 72, 77; monument to Captain James Cook, 20; monument to George I , 393n99; monument to Thomas Grenville, 53, 56–8, 56, 64, 65; obelisk to Wolfe, 64, 65–6, 68, 72, 75; Octagon Lake, 75; Oxford Gate, 65–6; Palladian bridge, 50–, 52, 68–9, 274; plan of the eastern gardens, 49; relief sculpture by Peter Scheemakers, 50–, 68–70, 70, 274; River Styx, 48; Seven Years War, 70; south front of house, 77; statue of Epaminondas, 48; statue of Homer, 48; statue of Lycurgus, 48; statue of Socrates, 48; Temple of Ancient Virtue, 48, 64; Temple of British Worthies, 48, 50, 387n83; Temple of Concord and Victory, see Stowe, Grecian Temple; Temple of Friendship, 48, 52; Temple of Liberty (The Gothic Temple), 48, 50, 52; Temple of Modern Virtue, 48, 5, 387n83; triumphal arch, 58, 75, 76 Strawberry Hill, 7 Stuart, James Athenian (73–88), 283; and medals commemorating victories in the Seven Years War, 70, 73; monument to Charles Watson, 40–2, 4, 274–6, 277, 284; and monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 8, 23, 32 Stuart, John, 3rd Earl of Bute (73–92), 45–6, 64, 72–7, 97, 226; 389n42; and Pitt the Elder, 75, 87; and Stamp Act, 95; and John Wilkes, 22 Sullivan’s Island (South Carolinia): monument to Theodore Dehon in Grace Church, 362 Surat, 270 Suspending Act (767), 233 Sutherland, Ann: monument to, 82, 82, 353 Sutherland, James: monument to, 82, 82, 353 suttee (or sati), 32, 33–5 Swartz, Frederick Christian, 36–7, 38; monument to, in Madras, 36, 37; monument to, at Sarabhoji’s Palace in

index

Tanjor, 38; monument to, in Swartz’s Church, Tanjor, 37, 38 Swymmer, Anthony Langley: monument to, 355 Tacitus, 24 Tacky’s Revolt (760), 36 Tanjor, 283, 36; monument to Frederick Christian Swartz, in Swartz’s Church 37, 38; monument to Frederick Christian Swartz, at Sarabhoji’s Palace, 38 Tanna, 297 Tarquin, 39n44 taverns: as places of dissemination of news, 7 Taylor, Margaret: monument to, 353 Taylor, Peter: monument to, 362 Taylor, Sir Robert (74–88), 83, 85–6, 95, 267, 370n22, 377n38, 380n55; monument to John Andrews, 97, 97; monument to James Cornewall, 9–0, 62, 2–2, 2, 60, 283; monument to George Hinde, 85, 87, 353, 377n38; monument to Edward Manning, 76, 77, 85, 97–8, 353; monument to Thomas Withers, 96–8, 97, 345; workshop, 32, 98 tea drinking, 89, 388n26 Temple, Anne, Countess (née Chambers) (709?–77), 386n80 Temple, Richard (formerly Grenville), st Earl Temple (7–79), 4, 04, 32, 47, 77–8, 204, 384n36, 385n46; and Administration (757– 6), 73, 76; bust of, at Stowe, 50; and Earl of Bute, 77; and Cobham’s Pillar, at Stowe, 52, 66–7, 67; and George III , 70–5, 77; and Grecian Temple (Temple of Concord and Victory), at Stowe, 56, 68–77, 69, 70, 7, 74; and Grecian Valley, at Stowe, 56, 58, 65; and monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 88; and monuments at Stowe, 5, 63–78; and Order of the Garter, 63; and Pitt the Elder, 63,68; and press, 72, 63,76–7; and the public, 65; and resignation, 63–4, 45, 72–3, 75, 87; and Stowe, 47–8, 64, 65, 78; and John Wilkes, 64–5; and Wolfe, 08,67 Temple, Richard, st Viscount Cobham. See Cobham, Richard Temple Temple, Susanna, 44

index

Ternouth, John (795–849): monument to William Heath, 349 Tharp, John: monument to, 356 theatres, 7, 3; in West Indies, 249–50, 25; as places of dissemination of news, 7 Thompson, Charles and William: monument to Charles Graham, 35; monument to John Prettejohn, 347 Thurloe, John (bap. 66, d. 668), 79 Ticonderoga, , 3 Tidewater planters (Virginia), 207, 227, 299 Tilbury Fort, 4 Tipu Sultan (d. 799), 27, 285–6, 288–9, 294, 297, 298, 30, 303, 305, 30 “To the betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New-York,” 225 tobacco, 26 tonnage and poundage tax (628), 78 Tonnancour, Marie-Josephte Godefroy de: monument to, 94, 349 Toosey, Mary: monument to, 347 Toulon: battle (707), 9; battle (743), 59 Town and Country Magazine, 29 Townshend, Charles (725–67), 232, 332, 378n29 Townshend, Colonel Roger: monument to, 38n67 Townshend Duties, 28, 226, 233 Trade and Plantations, 382n Trafalgar: Battle of (805), 264 Treasurer of the Navy, 04, 45 Treasury: British Parliamentary, 45, 292, 382n; colonial, 222 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (748), 58 Treaty of Paris (763), 6, 93, 386n74 Trecothick, Barlow (78?–75), 374n25 Trecothick, Grizzell (née Apthorp), 374n25 Trelawny, Edward (bap. 699, d. 754), 237 Trelawny, William, 6th Baronet (722/3–72), 237 Trelawny Town (Jamaica), 263 Trichinopoly, 28 Trinity Hall, Cambridge: monument to John Andrews, 97, 97 Trinity Parish Church, Newport (Rhode Island): monument to Rev. Mr Brown, 360 Trinity Parish Church, New York: monuments in, 359

461

triumphal column, The Decoy, Worthy Park (Jamaica), 5, 52, 350 Troop Society, 7, 4, 85–6, 88–9 Trotman, Henry and Elizabeth: monument to, 348 Trower, Elizabeth, 84 Tulaji, Rajah, 36 Tully, 50 Turner, Joseph Mallord William (775–85), 322 Twining, Thomas (776–86), 404n50 Tyers, Jonathan (702–67), 277, 38n90 Tyler, William (d. 80): monument to Stringer Lawrence, in Dunchidock, 402n24; monument to Stringer Lawrence, in Westminster Abbey, 279–8, 280; and monument to Rodney, for Jamaica, 242; monument to John Watson, in Bombay, 295–7, 297; and monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 8, 23, 380n6; monument to Samuel Vassall, 27, 77, 78–9, 98, 358 Tyley, James and Thomas, and sons (sculpted 792–864), 89; monument to Jane Mountague, 356; monument to Henry and Elizabeth Trotman, 348 tyranny, 04, 36, 226, 325; British perception of, 9; British perception of in France, 5, 8, 5, 37, 82, 87, 88, 9, 306, 322; British perception of in India, 9, 276, 277, 285, 288–9, 295, 305, 306, 32, 322; and empire, 325; and India, 295, 305, 35, 32, 322; and monuments, 2, 88, 233, 295 Vaere, John De (755–830): monument to General McPherson, 360 Valence, Aymer de, th Earl of Pembroke (d. 324), 7 Vanbrugh, Sir John, (664–726), 385n46 Vanderbank, John (694–739), 40n8 Vangelder, Peter Mathias (739–809): monument to Ralph Izard, 362 Vassall, Florentius, 27, 78 Vassall, Samuel, 78; monument to, 27, 77, 78–9, 98, 358 Vathec, 38 Vaudreuil (Quebec): St Michel Parish Church, monument to Marie-Josephte-Godefroy de Tonnancour, 94, 349

Venables, Robert (62/3–687), 49 Venus de’Medici, 4 Vere (Jamaica): free school, 398–9n6; St Peter’s Parish Church, 85; St Peter’s Parish Church, monuments in, 355–6 Vernon, Admiral Edward (684–757), 62, 98–9, 285, 366n6; and capture of Porto Bello (739), 0, 43 Vertue, George (684–756), 274 Vicars, John: monument to, 362 victims of the 795 Rebellion (Grenada): monument to, 350 victims of the French and Carib uprising in St Vincent: design for an obelisk, 263, 268, 360 Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom and empress of India (89–90), 35; as Empress of India, 36; monuments to, 20, 38, 326; monuments to, in India, 34–6 A View of the Obelisk erected under the Liberty–Tree in Boston on the Rejoicings for the Repeal of the Stamp Act 766, 204, 205 Villettes, William Anne: monument to, 355 Viner, F.: monument to Anne and Peter Ramsay, 35 Virgil, 50, 6 Virginia, 26, 50–; Bacon’s Castle, 372n68; box tombs, 373n87; Bruton Parish Church, monuments in, 362; and call for monument to George III , 202, 206–9; and call for obelisk to Pitt the Elder and Patriots, 207–9; College of William and Mary, 373n89; House of Burgesses, 6, 202, 206–9, 227–30; Legislature, 229; monument to Lord Botetourt, 6–7, 227–9, 228, 23, 243, 362; New Kent County, St Peter’s Parish Church, monuments in, 362–3; and Pitt the Elder, 207; planter colony, 208–9; repeal of Stamp Act, 96; and Stamp Act, 207, 206–7, 209; and Stamp Act Congress, 207; tobacco trade, 383n3; Westover County, Charles City Council, monument in, 363 Voysey, Annesley: monument to, 358 Walker, Fowler, 92–3; “Considerations on the present state of the province of Québec 766,” 93 Walker, Thomas (d. 788), 93 Walker, W. Carr: monument to, 357

462 i n d e x

Walpole, Horace, 4th Earl of Orford (77–97), 03, 08, 77; Ædes Walpolianœ, 52–3; Castle of Otranto, 38; and monument to Wolfe, 5, 54; on monuments in Westminster Abbey, 7; on Seven Years War, 36; on Wolfe, 05–8, 09, 3–4 Walpole, Robert, st Earl of Orford (674–745), 03–4, 0, 48, 5, 62, 77, 383n3; and headless statue of, at Stowe, 48; and Houghton Hall, Norfolk, 53; and Stowe, 67 Walter, Henry: monument to, 89, 90 Walton-on-Thames (Middlesex): monument to Richard Boyle Viscount Shannon, 62, 3, 3 Wandiwash, 402n25 War of the Austrian Succession, 54, 58, 65 Ward, Maria: monument to, 346 Warner, Ashton, 93 Warner, Effingham: monument to, 359 Warner, Mr, in Hatton Garden, London, 98 Warner, William: monument to, 345 Warren, Admiral Sir Peter (703/4–52), 20; monument to, in Westminster Abbey, 20– Warren, Susannah (née DeLancey), 20 Warren, Thomas: monument to, 357 Washington, George (732–99), 232 Washington Park, Charleston: monument to Pitt the Elder, 24, 360 Watson, Vice Admiral Charles (74–57), 40, 274–5, 277; monument to, in Westminster Abbey, 40–2, 4, 274–6, 277, 284 Watson, John: monument to, 295–7, 297 Webbe, Josiah: monument to, 305, 306 Wedgwood, Josiah (730–95), 376n25 Weekes, Henry (807–77): monument to Daniel Corrie, 36, 38–2, 320 Wellesley, Arthur, Duke of Wellington (769– 852), 30; statue of Achilles, at Hyde Park Corner, London, 367n7 Wellesley, Richard, marquess (768–842), 30–; monument to, in Bombay, 30–, 32; monument to, in Calcutta, 30, 3 Wellington, Duke of. See Wellesley, Arthur West, Admiral Temple (bap. 75, d. 757): monument to, 9, 380n5, 382n West, Benjamin (738–820), 298–300; The Death of General Wolfe, 8, 22, 23, 32, 43–

index

5, 298, 380n64; engraving of Jonah, 398n45; Lord Clive Receiving from the Moghul the Grant of Duanney, 402n0; and monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 22; portrait of Lord Camden, 229; and Joshua Reynolds, 246 West, Gilbert (703–56), Stowe, the Gardens of the Right Honourable Richard Lord Viscount Cobham, 383n6 West Indies, 304, attorneys, 252–3; churches, 250; civic buildings, 250; and clergy, 39; comedy troupes, 249–50; doctors, 252–3; economy, 8; forts, 250; free schools, 255; funeral monuments, 248, 25; hospitals, 25; houses, 32–3, 250; merchants, 252–3; and Parliament, 269; plantocracy, 248, 252–3, 269, 285; plantocracy and slave revolts, 257–9; and press, 25; schools, 25; sugar cultivation, 25; theatres, 249–50, 25; trade, 269 Westmacott, Henry, 253; monument to Caleb Dickenson, 257, 258, 357; monument to Sarah Newton Kerr, 356; monument to Robert Hugh Munro, 257, 258, 357 Westmacott, Richard the Elder (747–808), 93, 253 Westmacott, Richard the Younger (799–872), 85, 93 Westmacott, Sir Richard (775–856), 85, 93, 253; statue of Achilles, at Hyde Park Corner, London, 367n7; monument to Mather Byles, 350; monument to William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, 33, 34; monument to Elizabeth Burton, 35; monument to Alexander Colvin, 309, 30; monument to George Dyson, 35; monument to William Fowle, 356; monument to Augustus Leveson Gower, 354; monument to George Hall, 348; monument to Hastings, in Calcutta, 303–4, 303, 305; monument to Ninian Home, 263, 350; monument to Nelson, in Bridgetown, 8, 264–5, 265, 267, 328, 345; monument to Nelson, in Birmingham, 399n83; monument to Kean Osborn, 355; monument to Elizabeth Pinder, 348 Westminster Abbey, London, 4, 9, 82, 85, 96, 47, 25, 272, 293; dean and chapter, 54; monument to the Duke of Argyll, 25, 32; monument to Coote, 28–4, 282; monument

463

to James Cornewall, 9–0, 62, 2–2, 2, 60, 283; monument to James Craggs, 256; monument to James Fleming, 40; monument to Thomas Grenville (not executed), 5, 53–7, 58, 59, 63; monument to George Frederick Handel, 3, 32; monument to William Hargrave, 40; monument to George Augustus Howe, –2, 2, 378n25; monument to Stringer Lawrence, 279–8, 280; monument to Countess Mountrath, 380n65; monument to Isaac Newton, 23; monument to Lady Elizabeth Nightingale, 59; monument to Cloudesley Shovell, 9, 0, 60; monument to Roger Townshend, 38n67; monument to Peter Warren, 20–; monument to Charles Watson, 40–2, 4, 274–6, 277, 284; monument to Temple West, 9, 380n5; monument to Wolfe, , 5–6, 2, 05, 06, 07, 09–8, 20–35, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 34, 42–6, 60, 65, 78, 8, 20, 2, 23, 246–7, 38n67; monuments in, 6, 53, 276 Westover County (Virginia), monument to William Byrd, 363 West family, 04 Weyman’s New York Gazette, 20 Whig Patriots, 4, 0, 5, 04–5, 59–60, 326 Whigs: and pageantry, 0 Whitaker, Sarah: monument to, 36 Wilberforce, William (759–833), 259, 286 Wilkes, John (727–97), 77, 204, 229; and New York, 224–6; and South Carolina, 22–3, 224, 234; and Richard Earl Temple, 64–5, 75; Wilkite radicals in American colonies, 7 Wilkite radicals in American colonies, 7 William, Augustus, Prince and Duke of Cumberland (72–65), 98, 230; monument to, 246, 406n William, Henry, Duke of Clarence (later William IV, 765–837), 322 William Pitt, 229 William III (650–702): monument to, in Bristol, 32, 33, 393n99; monument to, in Kingston-upon-Hull, 32, 393n99; monument to, in London, 393n99 Williams, Francis: free school, 255, 398–9n6

464

Williamsburg, 209, 227; College of William and Mary, 227; Governor’s House, 227; monument to Lord Botetourt, 227–9, 228, 23, 243 Williamson, Anne: monument to, 26–2, 262, 350 Williamson, Sir Adam (733/4–98), 26–2 Wills, John, and son: monument to Duncan Robertson, 357 Wilson, Benjamin (bap. 72, d. 788), The Repeal, or the Funeral of Miss Ame-Stamp, 97–9, 97 Wilton House, Wiltshire, 5 Wilton, Joseph, (722–803), 83, 23, 275, 329, 340–3, 335–8; and ambitions, 243, 370n22; bust of Earl of Chesterfield, 86, 388n4; bust of Antonio Cocchi, 86, 388n4; bust of George III , in Montreal, 6, 2, 73, 82–94, 83, 232, 326, 349; bust of Thomas Hollis, 86, 388n4; busts of Pitt the Elder, 86, 23, 25, 335, 336, 337, 339, 340, 388n4; contract with William Young for monument to Elizabeth Ottley, 84, 84, 93–4, 98, 329, 345; copy of the Apollo Belvedere, 4; copy of Venus de’Medici, 4; death mask of Wolfe, 8–9; and drawing academy for Duke of Richmond, 9; and Gallery of Antiques, Kew, 9; and George III ’s state coach, 45, 87; on location of monuments, 25; monument to Duke of Bedford, 380n65; monument to Pyke Crouch, 380n5; monument to Maria Margaretta Elibank, 94, 95; monument to George III , London, 28–20, 29; monument to George III , in New York, 3, 2, 27–20, 223–7, 23, 24, 34, 359, 375n, 375n2; monument to Admiral Graves, 380n5; monument to Mathew and Lucretia Gregory, 84, 84, 253, 352; monument to Basil Keith, 237, 238, 240–, 248, 267, 352, 375n2; monument to Countess Mountrath, 380n65; monument to Mary and Leak Okeover, 94, 95; monument to Elizabeth Ottley, 84, 84, 93–4, 98, 329, 345; monument to Pitt the Elder, in Charleston, 6–7, 2, 20, 23–7, 24, 26, 28, 220–3, 223, 224, 225, 230, 334–43, 360, 375n, 375n2, 376n35; monument to Pitt the Elder, in Cork, 9, 99–202,

index

200, 20, 23, 23, 335; monument to Pitt the Elder, in New York, 6–7, 2, 27–20, 29, 223–7, 23, 24, 243, 34, 359, 375n, 375n2; and monument to Rodney, in Jamaica, 242; monument to Charlotte St Quentin, 376n30; monument to Temple West, 9, 380n5; monument to Wolfe, in Westminster Abbey, 8, , 2, 05, 06, 07, 8, 20, 22–46, 8, 20, 23, 380n52, 380–n65; reputation of, 83–4; and Duke of Richmond, 8; and Louis-François Roubiliac, 32; as sculptor to George III , 83, 28, 240, 370n22; workshop, 32, 85, 92, 376n35 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim (77–68), 246 Windward Islands, 40 Winyah (South Carolina): Prince George Church, Georgetown, monument to Thomas Jones, 362 Withers, Thomas: monument to, 96–8, 97, 345 Wolfe, Henrietta (née Thompson, d. 764), 4, 20, 33, 332 Wolfe, Major General James (727–59), 7, 20, 330–3; and advice concerning monument to, 330–3; call for monument to, 09–6; and cult of, after his death, 09, 22, 43; and funeral, 4; and Thomas Gray’s An Elegy Written in a County Church Yard, 378n32; and Highlanders, 3, 35; monument to, on Greenwich Hill, 327, 328; monument to, in New York, 2, 359; monument to, in Westminster Abbey, see Wolfe, James: monument to, in Westminster Abbey; and Pitt the Elder, 08–9, 96; and Richard, Earl Temple, 08; and victory at Quebec (759), 05, 285 Wolfe, James: monument to, in Westminster Abbey, , 5, 2, 03–45, 06, 07, 20, 47–8,

index

98, 20, 2, 23, 246–7, 380n52, 380–n65, 38n67; competition for, 7–8,32; designs for 05, 06, 07, 20–35, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 34; epitaph on, 44–6; location of, 6–7; unveiling of, 42–6 Wolmer, John, 255–6; free school, 255, 398– 9n6; monument to, 256, 257, 353 Wood, Henry (sculpted 80–30), 89; monument to David Bernard, 356; monument to Henry Burke, 358; monument to William Dalzell, 346; monument to Margaret Ann Dunn, 346; monument to Francis Fitchatt, 348; monument to Catherine Smith, 346; monument to Maria Ward, 346 Woodbridge, Ann: monument to, 348 Woodin, Mr: of South Carolina, 39n55 Woodin, Thomas (attr.): monument to Lady Anne and George Murray, 360 Woollery, Edward (attr.): rotunda and colonnade for the monument to Rodney in Spanish Town, 249 Woolward, William: monument to, 359 Wootton, Buckinghamshire, 47 Worthy Park, 25; The Decoy, 36, 38, 5, 53, 76, 87, 25, 373n85 Wragg, William (74–77), 206, 390n39 Wren, Sir Christopher (632–723): naval hospital at Greenwich, 326 Yale, 373n89 Yorke, Philip, st Earl of Hardwicke (690– 764), 0 Young, Edward, Night Thoughts, 59, 68 Young, Sarah: monument to, 93 Young, William, st Baronet (724–88), 93; contract with Joseph Wilton for monument to Elizabeth Ottley, 93–4, 329

465