As a political double act, Walpole and Townsend complemented one another. Walpole was shrewd but could be abrasive and ruthless. He was hated by his enemies and was not always liked by his allies. Although he could be imperious, Townsend was the softer of the two men, better liked, more affable and an important tempering influence to Walpole’s sharper edges. Many filial bonds held Walpole and Townsend together in this, the golden age of their professional partnership. But both men were equally united in fear of a great mutual enemy: Jacobitism.
In 1668 the English king, James II, had converted to Catholicism. His change of faith was initially tolerated. But for what remained of his reign the king set about what was perceived to be an incremental catholicising of the country as laws were challenged and Catholics were appointed to key government positions. The king, from his perspective, was simply trying to create a level playing field where Catholic and Protestant had equal status under the law. But the king’s incrementalism soon gave way to a force-feeding of pro-Catholic reform that turned his own people against him. The king unwittingly created an open door for the Dutch Protestant monarch William of Orange to sail up the Thames and take the English throne without a shot being fired in protest by James II’s own army and navy.
The transition was not without deferred bloodshed. There were followers of James on British soil who were willing to take up arms. They were called Jacobites after ‘Jacobus’, the Latin translation of the name James. There would be a Jacobite rebellion in 1715 that was not fully suppressed until the following year.
James II was still alive and resided in France. He had the sympathy of Catholic Europe and a core of loyal exiles who dreamed of invasion and a second restoration of the Stuart monarchy. And when James II died that core of loyalty transferred to his son, who was called the ‘Pretender’ by his enemies and James III by the faithful.
Walpole and Townsend were ever alert to the prospect of Stuart plots and conspiracies, the worst manifestation of which would be a foreign-backed Jacobite invasion of Great Britain. Walpole and Townsend had their spies dotted throughout Europe, but Russia was something of a blind spot. And Russia was becoming a concern since the death of Peter the Great. There were disquieting rumours that the Jacobites were gathering strength and influence in the court of the new Russian monarch. Experienced eyes and ears were needed in St Petersburg.
Despite the relatively benign presence of Admiral Norris’ squadron in the Baltic during the Great Northern War, as the conflict between Russia and Sweden had come to be known, George I and Peter the Great despised one another. When the war began, relations between the British and the Russians had been cordial. William and Mary reigned in England. William had even made a present of a yacht to the young tsar. But Peter the Great had little love for the House of Hanover as it replaced the House of Orange on the throne of Great Britain. When the tsar died, George I had hoped to take advantage of what he believed would be an inevitable downturn in Russian influence in European affairs. He anticipated Britain would fill the breach. But events in 1725 scotched British ambition and made her international footing precarious. The choice of a bride for a French king had caused a ripple effect that threatened to leave Britain in a vulnerable position. The Spanish had presented their Infanta as a prospective wife for Louis XV. He was not interested. Spain was offended. With a potential alliance sundered, Spain needed an ally to protect it against France. Spain looked to Austria. A Spanish/Austrian alliance was hostile to British interests. France’s actions provoked a succession of alliances and counter alliances that left Britain in the cold and in need of allies lest it leave itself exposed to potential enemies in the north and south of the continent. It was time to make friendly overtures toward Russia and persuade it to make compatriots of Britain and France. Britain’s choice of diplomat was a Frenchman named Campredon. He approached the Russian court and made a hash of negotiations, pushing the Russian royal family further into the arms of George I’s enemies.
A new problem was the tsarina. With Peter the Great gone, his widow Catherine ruled. Catherine I only reigned for two years, but in that small amount of time she managed to generate a disproportionate amount of grief and anxiety for Britain. The chief cause of tension was her favouring of the House of Holstein. Peter the Great had married his daughter to the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. The Duke held enormous sway at the Russian court in St Petersburg. Holstein hated George I because of a disputed territory held by the Hanoverians. Holstein ensured that the bad blood between the tsar and the British monarchy was held over into the new administration. Campredon’s failure only exacerbated old hatreds. Holstein and Catherine embraced the British-born enemies of George I. St Petersburg was now more of a haven for Jacobites than it had ever been. But the news didn’t seem to have rattled British cages as much as it should have done. Certainly in the early months of Catherine I’s reign,few prominent British politicians took her seriously. The exception was Townsend. A reliable and knowledgeable man in St Petersburg was now essential. Townsend had recently read a document by an observant and disgruntled mercenary who had fought for the dead tsar for a decade and seemed to loathe Jacobites as much as he did. Townsend arranged to meet the anonymous author of A History of the Russian Fleet.
Viscount Townsend persuaded Captain John Deane to go back to Russia. Deane’s official title was to be the new consul of British governancy. He was supposed to salve the tensions between Britain and Russia by encouraging trade, but his real purpose was to gather intelligence about the levels of antipathy among the Russians toward the British.
12
Who Sent You Here?
John Deane was torn between a sense of duty, a need to advance and deep disquiet in his gut about revisiting the place that had, in its own way, damaged and tormented him as much as Boon Island ever did. Later, when Deane had come back from Russia, he would write a candid letter to Townsend admitting the levels of anxiety he had felt and how near he had come to refusing to go:
It was not without great reluctance that I engaged in that affair having formerly experienced the malice of that set of men. But as it was impossible for any person not present to believe with what bitterness they had persecuted me in Russia, so I could not absolutely refuse going.
John Deane would last a scant sixteen days in his new post before being expelled from Russia a second time.
The three years between the end of John Deane’s first Russian adventure and the beginning of his disastrous second are another of the numerous black spaces in his biography during which virtually nothing is known about his life. The unassailable facts are that he was recruited by Townsend and that he married. John Deane’s marriage, presumably the most intimate and personal venture he ever embarked upon, yields virtually nothing in the way of illumination. In the chaotic, intermittently well-documented sprawl of John Deane’s existence his spouse remained something of an ‘Ahab’s wife’ figure. Her first name is known. She was called Sarah. But her maiden name cannot be determined without a degree of guesswork. In 1722 a Sarah Hughes married a John Deane in St Mary Somerset Church, in the City of London. Whether this was the Captain John Deane of Boon Island and St Petersburg cannot be absolutely determined. Other than her name, the possible date of her wedding and the date of her death, little else is known about Sarah Deane. And so Sarah Deane joined the better, deeper part of the captain, invisible in the shadows of his own story.