The beginning of 1729 was a period of stasis brought on by hostile weather conditions. The winter weather was fierce. Trade had virtually ground to a halt. Hardly any English ships had bought or sold anything. The only news that John Deane felt fit to report concerned a tobacco ship that had come to grief when it had run aground.
In February the winter was still holding commerce to ransom but by March John Deane was embroiled in a fresh controversy. A Dutch court had banned imports of grain. On a personal level the news did not particularly concern Deane as grain was not an enormous English export. But Deane was obliged to play his part martialling a legal response to Holland’s aggressiveness. The actions of the Dutch courts unified a normally fractious community. English merchants and Dutch merchants affected adversely by the court order were bonded in opposition to it. John Deane was all of a sudden useful to the community he had been at perpetual loggerheads with. He tried as best he could to collate everyone’s grievances in a single petition, confident that the courts would overturn the Dutch embargo.
By March, tensions had not abated. Three English ships had been seized. The ships were released but their cargo of corn was retained by the Dutch. On top of this, John Deane had to field the new influx of tittle-tattle doing the rounds in Ostend. According to the rumour mill this time, British-ruled Jamaica had fallen to the Spanish.
As John Deane reached the end of his first year in Ostend his principle concern was neither the state of Jamaica or English grain exports. It was, as it had been from the beginning of his tenure, money. Deane had performed his duties faithfully, and for the most part successfully. But he was virtually penniless. Deane had been forced to let a valued servant go who had been in his employ for a decade. The loss of the servant further reduced his social status, engendering diminished respect among his enemies and his peers. He wrote yet another impassioned plea to Townsend asking for money. The tone was less accusatory than his last correspondence on the subject had been. It was heartfelt but there was a thinly veiled ultimatum, albeit one born of genuine desperation:
So if your Lordship don’t please in some way to consider and assist me, I must of necessity soon follow, for I freely own I cannot be content to spend the rest of my days here in indolence which appears to me like dying by inches, and leave either myself or my family exposed to beggary in old age.
19
The Duke of Lorraine
John Deane served in Ostend for ten years. Less than halfway through his tenure things had changed for the better and for the worse. By 1731 Deane had won his battle for wages. On top of the consulage he was allowed to collect, Deane was paid £200 per year plus expenses. Deane had brought a considerable degree of reform to Ostend. The consequence of reform was unpopularity and enemies. When harried and besieged, John Deane could always rely on the support of Lord Townsend; even when they disagreed. Even when John Deane overstepped the mark in terms of propriety, the bond was always a strong one and difficult to sunder. But Townsend had fallen.
Walpole and Townsend’s relationship had been gradually disintegrating. Townsend’s wife had died. The end of the blood bond that united the two statesmen placed something of a distance between them. The second catalyst for the rift was Townsend’s deep-seated belief in an alliance with France as the key to Britain’s stability. The alliance had been established by the Treaty of Hanover at the conclusion of the War of Spanish Succession. From Walpole’s point of view the treaty was a temporary pragmatic necessity, not something to be clung to in perpetuity. Townsend believed in the treaty as if it were holy writ. From Walpole’s perspective Townsend’s attitude lacked forward thinking and was somewhat fossilised. For Walpole, political flexibility was the key to the nation’s survival and prosperity. If Townsend were to remain entrenched with regard to the Treaty of Hanover then he was of no more use to Walpole.
The prime minister would not move directly against Townsend but he would not support him as he had done in the past. Townsend’s constant banging of the drum for the Treaty of Hanover was gradually alienating the majority of his political contemporaries. All Walpole had to do was withdraw his patronage and protection, and wait for Townsend to step down when it became obvious to the secretary of state just how isolated he had become. Townsend’s political career ended when he lost the confidence of the king. The catalyst was a public argument between Townsend and the duke of Newcastle. When the king sided with Newcastle, Townsend resigned and retired to Norfolk. Townsend was replaced as secretary of state for the north by William Stanhope, the 1st Earl of Harrington.
Lord Harrington had inherited John Deane, he hadn’t recruited him. From Harrington’s perspective the relationship between the two men would be more formal, distant and professional. Harrington would be subject to the sort of demands for redress that Deane had routinely laid at the feet of Townsend. Deane’s future complaints would be listened to and weighed fairly but Deane would not be indulged in the same way he had been by Townsend. And John Deane would learn to his cost that there was a point beyond which even he could not push.
Deane’s last great fall from grace took place in the autumn of 1738. He would be permitted one final triumph before his life of adventure ended for good.
By the summer of 1731 John Deane had settled into the role of a spectacularly unpopular man representing the interests of a resented nation. Deane had just returned from France and had almost immediately run into conflict with the packet boat, the ship that transported and delivered mail between Ostend and England. Deane had sent a man to the packet boat with a letter for a Mr Casey, the mate onboard. Casey was instructed by Deane, ‘for the good of His Majesty’s service not to proceed to sea with the mail you may expect this day, but wait till you hear further from me’. Deane punctuated his order with a threat: ‘Your compliance here is expected as you will answer the contrary at your peril.’ The letter went on to order Casey not to talk to his compatriots about why he had delayed the packet boat. Deane’s reason for ordering the packet boat to be delayed was that he was waiting for intelligence from another boat and, if the intelligence necessitated a response, he wanted to send a letter to Lord Harrington as quickly as possible. Casey’s response was to ignore Deane’s orders and set sail at the proper time. Deane summoned Casey to give account for his disobedience. Casey ignored Deane’s summons.
Both Deane and Casey represented the interests of Great Britain but each man clearly hated the other. The rest of Ostend seemed united in their mutual fear and suspicion of the English. Feelings towards the English were hostile at the best of times but the presence of an ‘English frigate and Brigantee’ at Dunkirk inflamed existing hostility. Despite the presence of the English navy at Dunkirk, Deane reported that the British in Ostend were, ‘much resented by all degrees of men here, as if the affront (as they call it) had been done to this place’. Deane perceived that ill feeling toward the British was such that Ostend would ‘gladly come under’ French rule. But concerns about internal divisions and international tensions were of secondary importance during summer 1731. One event eclipsed everything else. Francis Stephen, the Duke of Lorraine, and his wife were coming to Ostend. The Flemish port was in a mad state of preparation for the visit.