The earl of Abingdon and the treatment of American prisoners of war

In the latest post for the Georgian Lords, Dr Robin Eagles highlights the career of one of the House’s more eccentric orators: Willoughby Bertie, 4th earl of Abingdon: musician, breeder of champion race-horses and radical politician concerned about corruption at the top and the treatment of prisoners.

The 4th earl of Abingdon, is probably best known as one of the 18th century’s more talented amateur musicians. He was a flautist and a composer of some talent, and also played an important role in patronizing Joseph Haydn in England. When not playing the flute or composing he was a passionate follower of the turf and breeder of prized race-horses. His most celebrated horse was the eccentrically named ‘Potoooooooos’. The story was that he had wanted the stable lad to call the horse ‘Potato’ or ‘Potatoes’ but the boy misheard and wrote the name down as Pot followed by eight Os. Abingdon was amused, and kept the name.

Abingdon’s contribution to Parliament is less well remembered. When noticed he is normally dismissed as an ‘eccentric’ or recalled because of a very public spat with Edmund Burke. As a lively and combative speaker in the House of Lords, however, he probably ought to be better known. He certainly had his hobby-horses, the Bishops being one. He found pretty much any opportunity to insult the bench, even finding time in a speech on the Lords responding to a motion relating to rat poison to refer it back to his spiritual colleagues.

Although at heart an independent, Abingdon had his friends and allies. He met John Wilkes while travelling on the continent. The two visited Voltaire together and remained on close terms thereafter. Abingdon worshipped Pitt the Elder (Chatham) and was a loyal follower of the man who inherited Chatham’s mantle, the 2nd earl of Shelburne. Having also been a firm friend of the marquess of Rockingham, though, Abingdon grew to detest Charles James Fox, largely because of Fox’s decision to enter government with Lord North, whom Abingdon also none too cordially loathed.

The issue which particularly energized Abingdon was the war with America. Abingdon was a firm opponent of the conflict and at every opportunity argued for a cessation of hostilities. While he had not been to the colonies himself, he had close links with many that had. His countess, Charlotte Warren, was the niece of James De Lancey, a lieutenant-governor of New York, while one of her sisters was married to New Jersey-born Colonel Skinner. The Skinners’ daughter would later marry Henry Gage, 3rd Viscount Gage, son of one of the most prominent British commanders of the opening stages of the American war. Via the Warrens Abingdon also had links to Antigua, where the family owned plantations. It was perhaps this that later persuaded him to adopt a pro-slavery stance, in spite of the remainder of his rhetoric, which was all about freedom and the constitution.

One point concerning the conflict that exercised Abingdon especially was the treatment of American prisoners of war. On 11 December 1777 he rose in the Lords objecting to a motion to adjourn proceedings pointing out that he had only just come up from the country to attend Parliament and was surprised they intended to curtail their deliberations so soon. Laying into the ministry for the conduct of the war, he turned his attention to the poor conditions in which American prisoners were being held in English prisons. Pointing out that ‘humanity has ever been the characteristic of Englishmen’ he now worried that ‘our national character is now stamped with inhumanity.’ [Cobbett, xix. 593; Greene, 227] He went on to highlight one particular example of abuse. Many of the Americans, he noted, objected to being inoculated for smallpox on religious grounds. Despite this, one prisoner had been inoculated and then locked in a cell with five more who had not had the disease. They protested against being forced to share their space with him, but ‘neither fears, nor tears nor prayers’ succeeded in having the man removed. This, Abingdon conceived was an example of the kind of abuse they were facing, and which surely called for punishment, prompting him to pose the question:

what is civil society, but a public combination for private protection?

(c) Trustees of the British Museum: 1868,0808.6382

He then moved for an address for the House to have sight of the orders given to the various gaolers dealing with the prisoners of war.

Abingdon was not done with the issue. In January, the newspapers reported that he had set on foot a subscription for the relief of distressed colonials in English prisons and he returned to the topic in the Lords again at the end of March 1778 when he declared the treatment of the prisoners ‘equally barbarous, unconstitutional, and illegal’.

Abingdon’s speeches were often carried in the press. Like Wilkes, he often sent his orations to the papers for publication. Not all were complimentary. The Morning Chronicle of 1 April 1778 carried a report of his latest effort, dismissing it as being in that:

bold and peremptory style of accusation and charge, which generally distinguishes the Earl’s harangues.

While Abingdon never tired of raising issues that mattered to him, his frustration with the administration was more than apparent. A few days after his latest contribution on the war, he complained of how hard it was for the opposition to be heard, concluding:

These dead majorities will be the ruin of this nation. Let the question be what it will, though the salvation of the country depend upon it, if it be moved by the minority, it is sure of a negative…

Abingdon rejoiced in the eventual fall of North, and then (ultimately) of Fox North and had the satisfaction of seeing the son of his hero, Chatham, made Prime Minister. Always strident, he spent time in prison for libel in the 1790s, emulating his friend, Wilkes, which no doubt encouraged yet another of his leitmotifs: the evils caused by too many ‘pettifogging’ lawyers. He was still complaining about them in his final oration in the Lords just a few weeks before his death.

RDEE

Further Reading

Cobbett, Parliamentary History xix

Jack P. Greene, Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 2013)

Derek McCulloch, ‘The Musical “Oeuvre” of Willoughby Bertie, 4th earl of Abingdon’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle xxxiii (2000)