John Deane returned to the College of Foreign Affairs to get his passport. He was made to wait several hours for Count Golovkin to come out of the senate. When Golovkin arrived, Deane was subject to another barrage of questions.
When Deane left for good, did he intend to ‘travel by land or sea?’
Deane had ‘not yet determined’ his mode of transportation.
Golovkin and the attendant panel demanded that Deane be specific.
Deane refused to answer their question. Deane had very little in the way of retaliatory sticks with which to beat his enemies but this was one. His adversaries had had their way. They had defeated Deane’s designs before they had ever properly got under way. What difference did it make how he left the country so long as he did it in the time prescribed? His refusal to answer the question annoyed his enemies disproportionately and Deane seemed to take a great deal of pleasure in their blustering and harrumphing. Nevertheless, many of Deane’s enemies rejoiced rather conspicuously at his downfall. Iaguzhinsky and three members of the Factory went into the countryside and hurled themselves into a four-day eating and drinking binge in celebration of John Deane’s defeat.
The next day John Deane received his passport. The passport gave Deane, ‘liberty to travel by land or water’. He now had ten days to leave St Petersburg and one month to get out of Russia. The humiliation of Deane’s return to Russia could only have been compounded by the brevity of his stay. But in the remaining time allotted to the English captain, John Deane met a man who promised to redeem the entire sorry business.
13
O’Connor
Britain was not completely blind in Russia and John Deane was not entirely without friends in St Petersburg.
There was Joseph Ney with whom Deane lodged. Information regarding Deane’s support in the events leading up to his expulsion had been leaked to him by an unnamed cabinet secretary. Dr Thomas Consett was a chaplain within the Factory. His pro-Hanoverian stance and support of bishops in favour of friendly relations with Britain had earned him overt persecution from Factory members who spat at him and threatened to beat him with their canes.
John Deane recruited informers while he was at St Petersburg. There was an anonymous Factory member. There was Mr Trescod, a former sailor-turned-landlord. Deane placed a high value on Trescod’s usefulness and friendship. Trescod spoke numerous languages. He was very familiar ‘with the state of maritime affairs’ and in his position as publican associated with ‘all men except those of a very high degree’. Trescod intended to send his son to school in England. John Deane hoped to assist him in placing the boy in a good school as a reward for the exemplary service Trescod had provided in channelling information to Deane. It was through Trescod that John Deane was introduced to a young Irishman named Edmund O’Connor.
Two days before John Deane came to Kronslot, Edmund O’Connor had attended a dinner at a general’s house. The dinner was a Jacobite gathering. Many of those present were discussing Deane’s imminent arrival. The levels of venom directed at John Deane surprised O’Connor and somewhat piqued his interest. ‘I never knew a man so hated and ill spoken of as he was this day at the general’s table,’ O’Connor observed. Once John Deane arrived in Russia it was O’Connor’s express intention to meet the reviled English captain.
Edmund O’Connor was a Jacobite. He was about 30 years old. He was cousin to Peter Lacey, a Jacobite general in the Russian army. O’Connor was a courier. Five months prior to Deane’s arrival O’Connor had come to Russia from Spain. He had brought dispatches with him, which he delivered to prominent Jacobites. But O’Connor was disillusioned with the cause and wanted to leave. He was weary of Russia. He had sought a commission in the Russian army and had been offered a lieutenancy. He was insulted by the low rank and consequently resentful toward Russia. But mostly he was homesick and lovesick. He wanted to return to Ireland and settle down permanently in his country of origin where his fiancée waited for him.
For once, John Deane’s appalling reputation abroad worked in his favour. O’Connor knew that Deane was in St Petersburg. He knew who John Deane was and everything negative he represented to the Jacobite cause in Russia. Through Trescod, O’Connor brokered a secret meeting with Deane and put his case to the Englishman. He wanted a pardon from the king of England. Deane told O’Connor that he could not authorise summary royal pardons but that he would use his influence to try and secure one on the Irishman’s behalf. But O’Connor would have to earn his pardon. The condition was that O’Connor offer up information on his former compatriots. This was something O’Connor was perfectly willing to do and had already done in the early stages of his conversation with Deane.
Deane was particularly interested in a Scotsman named William Hay. Hay had been a captain in Peter the Great’s navy. He had been dismissed from the Russian navy on his own request shortly after Deane’s first expulsion. Deane knew William Hay and hated him. Hay was a Jacobite and his brother was a surgeon in the family of James III. Hay had been absent from Russia for two years. He had spent a considerable portion of that time in France, Italy and Spain. But about two weeks before Deane arrived in Russia William Hay returned and was currently staying with another prominent Jacobite named Henry Stirling.
Since setting foot in Russia, Deane had been convinced the Jacobites were planning something significant. Deane’s suspicions were well-timed, aligning themselves with rumours in England that a dozen Russian ships were making ready to sail. Deane remembered the three men-of-war en route to Spain that he had seen on his journey to Kronslot. Stephen Poyntz, Townsend’s man in Stockholm, had reported the movements of two known Jacobites. Poyntz believed the activity of the two Jacobites was linked to the destination and purpose of the three warships. Poyntz would go even further and claim that the three ships were carrying weapons and that the weapons had been deposited in Northern Scotland. Back in Britain, the alarmists in Walpole’s government assumed that the combined weight of rumour pointed to one thing, a coordinated plan of invasion between Russia, Spain and Sweden designed to put James III back on the English throne. More cautious heads prevailed and Britain elected not to respond until more solid evidence was available.
John Deane assumed that William Hay was involved in whatever Jacobite plot was being devised. Prior to meeting O’Connor, Deane had tried unsuccessfully to ‘learn Hay’s business’. O’Connor was now perfectly placed to glean that information. Deane decided to take a chance on O’Connor. It was dangerous for O’Connor to risk being spotted with Captain Deane, so most of their communication was done through a trusted intermediary. Once a system of communication had been established, Deane schooled the Irishman on how to best position himself among his brethren to be of maximum usefulness. The first thing O’Connor needed to do was convince the Jacobites that he intended to return to Spain. Deane hoped that the Jacobites would use O’Connor to transport sensitive correspondence back across Europe. If the Jacobites took the bait then John Deane would encourage O’Connor to try and time his departure as would best ‘answer the design of being entrusted with those letters’.
Deane wanted O’Connor to fully embed himself into the social fabric of Jacobite life in St Petersburg. O’Connor must do as the other Jacobites did to further win their confidence. To quickly accomplish this, John Deane gave O’Connor an important piece of hard-won wisdom. There was no better shortcut to securing fellow Jacobite affection than to insult Deane behind his back. So if O’Connor was in the company of Jacobites and they started defaming Deane, Deane encouraged the Irishman to join in. When the time came to leave Russia, O’Connor would need to be issued with a passport. As he was a foreigner this would normally take a fairly long time and would cost O’Connor money. Deane told the Irishman to consult a mutual friend who could get him a passport in four days. Deane had also instructed the friend to ‘advance O’Connor forty roubles on his departure.’ All things being well, if the Jacobites took the bait and entrusted O’Connor with letters, then O’Connor was to go straight to Hamburg where Deane would read the letters and pass them on to Townsend. Deane gave O’Connor the name of a contact in Hamburg who would tell the Irishman what to do next.