SHAKEN AWAKE AT two in the morning, Lord Portsmouth was even more befuddled and confused than normal. Still half-asleep and barely able to see in the darkness, it was easier to go along with what was being asked of him than to resist. The voice telling him what to do was a familiar one, and his instructions about getting dressed had been repeated many times over the last nine years, albeit usually later in the morning. Portsmouth followed the directions he was given and was led downstairs and out of the house. Waiting for him was a chaise and horses. He was persuaded to get into the carriage, which then drove away at break-neck speed. Nobody in the house had been awoken by Portsmouth’s departure. They slept peacefully within, as oblivious as Portsmouth himself that the first step in his abduction had just been successfully achieved.
Once Portsmouth’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and the movement of the carriage had finally jolted him fully awake, he recognized one of the men who sat beside him: Jean Seilaz, his valet. Portsmouth had first been introduced to Seilaz in Basel in July 1790. While going to Eton like his younger brothers was out of the question for Portsmouth, his mother was keen that he should not miss out on another key component of a gentleman’s education at this time, the ‘grand tour’. The grand tour involved travel to European cities to view key classical sites, which for Portsmouth included those in Germany and Italy. During this time abroad, most parents believed it was as important whom their sons met, as what they saw. Tutors were employed to ensure that the young men in their charge mixed in the right kind of company. The overall aim of this foreign travel was that men would return to England more cultured, refined, and polished in their manners and conversation.
This form of finishing school had worked wonders for Portsmouth’s great-grandfather; it was partly because of the connections he made with the court of Hanover that he was promoted to government posts and made an earl in 1743. Portsmouth’s parents never had this kind of aspiration for his tour, but, if nothing else, it would keep Portsmouth out of the way for a few years, giving his family, and his mother in particular, a welcome break. He had hardly covered himself with glory during his school days, and sending Portsmouth away from home was something his parents had been doing since he was five years old. Out of sight was probably out of mind.
Portsmouth had two tutors who accompanied him on his tour, John Lawson and John Dougall. They were in charge of his education and itinerary, but they needed to employ a servant who would care for Portsmouth’s everyday personal needs. Hence in Switzerland, at the start of their travels, they persuaded Portsmouth to employ Seilaz, a Swiss national from Berne, who worked as Portsmouth’s valet for his journey into Italy, and back through Germany. How they first met Seilaz we do not know.
It was probably through spending time with Seilaz that Portsmouth increased his knowledge of the French language, first learned at school and now put into practice. He learned to speak it well. It was a language he did not forget, and used in polite circles back in England, conversing at ease, it was said, and with a good accent. For a man who found so many other aspects of learning a struggle, contemporaries found his ability to speak fluent French all the more remarkable. His stammer meant that he struggled to even articulate himself in English, yet, when speaking a foreign language, these problems seemed to evaporate.1
Travelling in foreign lands, far from home, and sharing as tourists in the discovery of new places, as well as the risks and exhaustion of the unknown, Portsmouth was heavily reliant on Seilaz for company and support. His peculiarities and social awkwardness made it unlikely that many fellow aristocratic travellers would want to socialize with him for long. He may have been lonely, but he had Seilaz.
When the time came to return home, in January 1793, asking Seilaz to come to England and continue as Portsmouth’s valet seemed natural and the right thing to do. Seilaz accepted a generous pay package, which included the cost of travel back to Switzerland whenever he wished. But coming home for Portsmouth put him in a very different position to the one he had held abroad. Portsmouth at home meant performing his role as an English aristocrat, and being subject to the demands of his family. His social circle was determined by his mother, and his agenda left no room for keeping company with Seilaz. Portsmouth was back on duty.
There was something about Seilaz that Portsmouth’s family did not like. This foreigner had a familiarity of manner with Portsmouth that left everyone who saw them together uncomfortable. Seilaz seemed to forget that he was a servant, and Portsmouth was his master. The problem stemmed from Portsmouth’s lack of understanding about the proper form of relationship between master and servant. Portsmouth’s ‘easy open and unsuspecting disposition’ meant that he was ‘apt to place and repose confidence in individuals without discrimination’. Rather than maintaining a distant and formal relationship with Seilaz, Portsmouth was relaxed and familiar with him. Alarmingly, Portsmouth treated Seilaz as a friend, and that meant he saw him as his social equal, not inferior. Seilaz had such a hold on Portsmouth that Portsmouth never lost his respect for him, despite later events. ‘I had reason to be satisfied with his character,’ he told others in December 1802. ‘I believed him to be, and I found him, a faithful servant … I always had a good opinion of him.’
For years, the Portsmouth family tolerated Seilaz living in their household. They persuaded themselves that he kept Portsmouth in good order. Making an enemy of Seilaz would only upset Portsmouth, they thought, and disrupt the calm equilibrium that had been achieved since his arrival in the household. Seilaz could be charming, but also ‘cunning’. He seemed to know Portsmouth’s weaknesses better than anyone, and told Portsmouth’s parents that he could help. He warned them of ‘the necessity of watching’ their son, ‘to prevent his suffering by the deceit and imposition’ to which his ‘credulity perpetually exposed him’. Portsmouth, he said, had a ‘want of ordinary caution in his dealings with mankind’. Portsmouth’s family needed him, he argued. He could be their protector. Seilaz knew their weakest link, and it would be best for everyone if the Portsmouths kept him on their side.
If Seilaz’s persuasiveness won the ‘favourable opinion’ of Portsmouth’s family, however reluctantly they gave it, he had far less difficulty convincing the ‘credulous’ Portsmouth. Slowly, but surely, he gained his trust. Portsmouth came to place ‘the most unlimited confidence’ in Seilaz. According to Portsmouth’s family, Seilaz ‘acquired such an ascendancy’ over Portsmouth’s ‘mind and inclinations’ that Portsmouth ‘had not sufficient power or presence of mind to refuse to do any act’ Seilaz ‘prompted or advised him to perform’.
Would Portsmouth really do anything Seilaz asked? When Portsmouth’s father, the 2nd earl of Portsmouth, died on 16 May 1797, Seilaz saw the opportunity to test his ‘ascendancy’ over Portsmouth. He accompanied Portsmouth to London at the end of June, when Portsmouth was formally presented at Court to George III at St James’s Palace. Now the 3rd earl of Portsmouth, he also took his seat in the House of Lords for the first time. With Portsmouth newly ascended to his aristocratic title, fresh with excitement about the privileges that this brought, and removed from his overbearing mother, this was an ideal time for Seilaz to make his first move. They visited an attorney in Soho, who at Portsmouth’s instructions drew up a bond giving Seilaz £999 and an annuity of £100 for the rest of Seilaz’s life, which would begin on the day Seilaz left Portsmouth’s service. Portsmouth put his signature and seal to this bond without hesitation.
Seilaz was later described as appearing ‘elated’ at the ease with which he had achieved this result. He began to plan other schemes by which he could defraud Portsmouth. While Portsmouth’s family did not know of the Soho deed, when the two men returned to Hurstbourne, Seilaz was ‘materially altered in his conduct and behaviour’. Gone was the charm. Instead, Seilaz was confident and arrogant in his manner towards Portsmouth and his family. ‘Circumstances daily occurred’ to ‘create doubts and suspicions’ in the minds of Portsmouth’s family about the ‘honest intentions and faithfulness’ of Seilaz. We do not know what those circumstances were, and perhaps Seilaz did not do anything in particular wrong, because if he had it would have given Portsmouth’s mother the excuse she needed to have him dismissed. The problem with Seilaz at this stage was still intangible; it was a general disliking and uncomfortable feeling. Portsmouth’s family continued to hesitate. Portsmouth remained loyal to Seilaz, blinded by his influence, and unable to see how his behaviour had changed. Seilaz was Portsmouth’s servant, and Portsmouth could see no wrong.
By the summer of 1799, however, Portsmouth’s family had decided that Seilaz had to go. Their patience with this suspicious foreigner had finally run out. Somehow Seilaz got wind of their intentions, and knew he had to act before it was too late. A year’s worth of planning kicked in. He organized a chaise to be waiting outside Hurstbourne Park on the night of 22 July. He had awoken Portsmouth and pushed him inside. Waiting in the chaise was Gabriel Tahourdin, a Whitchurch attorney. Now all three men were making their way to London.
Fresh horses were waiting for them at different stages of their journey, so that they could continue without stopping. They arrived at Blenheim coffeehouse in Bond Street, London, between eight and nine o’clock in the morning. Seilaz asked for a private room, and took great care that Portsmouth’s arrival was not seen by anyone in the street or in the passage of the coffeehouse. They were soon joined by Peter Tahourdin, Gabriel’s brother, who was also an attorney. Peter brought with him two of his junior employees to act as witnesses to what was about to happen. A large number of ready-prepared legal papers and deeds were then produced. None was read over or explained to Portsmouth. Instead, Seilaz ordered Portsmouth to sign them. Portsmouth was ‘so intimidated’ by his circumstances, and threatened by the presence of the four men who were complete strangers to him, that he dared not refuse, and signed them.
Two were bonds, in which Portsmouth gave Seilaz one sum of £710 15s, and another of £400. In the second bond, Portsmouth also agreed to recompense Seilaz for the loss of any possessions that Seilaz had left that morning at Hurstbourne Park. The other documents were powers of attorney. In them, Portsmouth announced his intention of leaving the country, requested Seilaz to accompany him, and handed all legal control over to Gabriel Tahourdin. One paper that Portsmouth signed explained that, ‘in consideration of the trust and confidence’ Portsmouth had in Gabriel Tahourdin (he had never met him before that morning), he appointed him his attorney, giving him absolute authority over all his property and estates. Portsmouth put his signature to an order that all bailiffs, stewards, and tenants of his lands in Hampshire and Buckinghamshire should pay their rents to Gabriel. He gave Gabriel the power to make contracts on his behalf, and to sell timber, deer, horses, and sheep ‘as he the said Gabriel Tahourdin shall think proper and most for my benefit’. Gabriel was given the authority to appoint and pay wages to all Portsmouth’s servants and estate workers, and to deduct sums from the estate income as payment for being his attorney. This arrangement was to stay in place for Gabriel’s lifetime. If Portsmouth died before Gabriel, then Portsmouth’s heirs were bound to this deed. Gabriel would receive an annual salary of five hundred pounds for the ‘trouble’ of looking after the Portsmouth estates.
Fraud on a grand scale achieved, Seilaz ‘put’ Portsmouth ‘to bed’ at the coffeehouse, before locking his door and taking the key away with him so that Portsmouth ‘might not be discovered and that no person might have access to him’. Seilaz, accompanied by the Tahourdin brothers, then went to arrange for a passport so that Seilaz could leave the country. They obtained a passport ‘by false and fraudulent pretences’, and returned to the coffeehouse. Portsmouth by this stage had become unwell. The cause and symptoms of his ill health were never described. He repeatedly told the men that he was not fit to travel. But Seilaz ‘compelled’ Portsmouth to get into another chaise that evening, using ‘various threats’, which ‘greatly alarmed’ him. Seilaz would not tell Portsmouth where they were going.
Now driven by four horses, the chaise left at great speed and headed towards Yarmouth. Seilaz used ‘the most violent language to the several drivers … to make all possible haste’. Arriving at Colchester, Seilaz was told that they were too late for the next boat that was due to leave for Hamburg. So they dropped one pair of horses and proceeded to Yarmouth at a ‘more leisurely’ pace, arriving on the afternoon of 24 July. For the whole of the journey, Portsmouth was rarely allowed out of the chaise, but was concealed from all possible ‘spectators’.
On arrival at Yarmouth, Seilaz entered his passport with ‘the Superintendent of Aliens’, and got places for Portsmouth and himself on the next boat to Hamburg, which was due to leave the following morning. The two men retired to an inn for the night. Seilaz hired a ‘double bedded room’. He dined with Portsmouth at the same table, in the same room, treating Portsmouth ‘with the same familiarity as though he had been his equal’. The innkeeper certainly did not realize that one of his guests was an aristocrat. Having finished their meal, the two men went to sleep in their shared room. Seilaz ‘never permitted’ Portsmouth ‘to be out of his sight but watched him very closely’. He was ‘armed with two pair of loaded pistols’, which he frequently showed to Portsmouth ‘in so significant a manner as greatly to terrify’ him. He put the pistols by the bed so that Portsmouth could see them.
Waking up at Hurstbourne Park on 22 July, and finding Portsmouth and Seilaz gone, the Portsmouth family had their worst fears realized. ‘Being greatly alarmed’, Newton Wallop, Portsmouth’s younger brother, John Hanson, the family solicitor, and Reverend Garnett, the family’s closest friend and adviser, set off for London. At five in the morning on 24 July, having just arrived in London, Hanson spotted Gabriel Tahourdin about to board the Hampshire coach. Somehow Hanson knew that Tahourdin was involved in the plot. He asked him where Portsmouth was, but Tahourdin denied that he had seen or knew anything. It was later discovered that Tahourdin was on his way to Hurstbourne, intending to ‘turn out and evict’ the whole of Portsmouth’s family from his mansion. Tahourdin was carrying a list of the names of Portsmouth’s family and servants, as supplied by Seilaz.
From London, Portsmouth’s brother and friends followed him to Yarmouth. They arrived at midnight that same day. Having given a description of Portsmouth and Seilaz, they were told that the two men ‘were gone to bed in a double bedded room’. On hearing this, it was only because the landlord told them that Seilaz was armed that they did not immediately burst into the room. They went to fetch a constable and a magistrate. To try to catch Seilaz off guard, the landlord then knocked on the door, telling Seilaz that the ship to Hamburg was ‘getting under way’. The door was opened, and the rescue party rushed in. ‘Upon seeing his friends’, Portsmouth ‘greatly rejoiced’, and was much relieved. He immediately got out of bed, and left with them.
Seilaz was ordered ‘in a very rough manner’ to ‘dress himself immediately’. Once dressed, the constable forced him to hand over his pocket book, in which was found the papers that Portsmouth had signed. Accusing Seilaz of having used a false name to obtain a passport, this document was also taken from him. His pistols were seized, and he was arrested and taken to the house of the town gaoler. The next day, Seilaz was transported back to London and committed to Cold Bath Fields prison. From there he was deported sometime later, under the terms of the Aliens Act of 1793.2
The relief of having returned to Hurstbourne after the high drama of the previous few days reinforced in Portsmouth’s mind its association with safety and security. The world outside was a dangerous place. Meanwhile, Portsmouth’s mother, brother, and friends took stock of what had happened. This course of events was a wake-up call to the vulnerable position their family now faced. Since the 2nd earl had died in May 1797, Portsmouth had inherited his title and nominal position as head of the family. But his mental weaknesses left him not only struggling to fulfil this role, but also perilously positioned to the exploitation by others. Just two years into his new role, Portsmouth had nearly lost all the family’s fortune and honour to a daring foreigner. If there were lessons to be learned, they were that in the future Portsmouth needed to be protected. Scrupulous care was needed before anybody else was admitted to the family circle.
Seilaz had been removed, and Portsmouth had been rescued, but his family were mistaken if they thought the trouble with Portsmouth’s valet was over. Nearly two years later, on 2 May 1801, Portsmouth was staying at a house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London when he received a letter. The writing was in Seilaz’s hand, and had been sent from Hamburg. It began:
My Lord, when an English Nobleman condescends to deny his own words he puts himself upon a level with the lowest subject in his Majesty’s dominions.
Portsmouth, Seilaz said, owed him money, but he had not kept his word or bond by paying it. He continued with a sensational threat:
If I have not by return of post a restitution made me of every Bonds security and money otherwise due to me from your Lordship I will expose to the World the repeated Sodomitical attempts you made upon me. Your Lordship I suppose well knows that penalty which attaches to an attempt to commit an act of Sodomy and that penalty is death and your Lordship’s consciousness of guilt will point out to you the necessity of immediate compliance with the demand here made. My losses by your Lordship’s family amount to near £2,000. Consult your own feelings and preserve if possible yourself and family from indelible disgrace by an immediate compliance with my request.
‘Being dissatisfied’ with the conduct of Mr Tahourdin, Seilaz informed Portsmouth that he was taking instructions from another solicitor, and would be returning to England where he would expect an immediate answer to his demands. ‘My actions will depend solely on your Lordship’s conduct’ in response to this letter, he concluded.
Seilaz was right about the punishment for sodomy. The 1533 Buggery Act was still in force, and sodomy carried the death penalty. Fifty men would be executed for sodomy in England between 1805 and 1832. Being a member of the aristocracy gave Portsmouth no legal immunity. In the eighteenth century, it was largely the poor and working class who had felt the severity of the so-called ‘bloody code’ of law, many ending their lives hanging from Tyburn’s rope. But the public execution of the 4th earl of Ferrers, and his failed attempt to convince the jury that he had been insane when he shot his steward dead in 1760, showed that every English man was subject to the rule of law.3
Men feared the pen of blackmailers like Seilaz because their threats to expose sexual secrets could lead to ‘indelible disgrace’: the loss of reputation, a good name, and social as well as financial ruin. In 1822, when Viscount Castlereagh committed suicide by forcing a small knife into his throat, rumour had it that blackmailers were hounding him with claims of sodomy. The stigma surrounding sodomy at this time gave Seilaz’s attempt at blackmail its sting. He knew that, one way or another, he would get a response.
Portsmouth handed over Seilaz’s letter to his lawyer, John Hanson, and it was probably a shocked Hanson, in consultation with the rest of the Portsmouth family, who decided upon his ‘Lordship’s conduct’. When he returned to England, Portsmouth took Seilaz to court, on the charge of sending a threatening letter in an attempt to extort money. In English law, Seilaz’s offence was categorized as a misdemeanour, and one that carried the penalty of transportation for seven years.
The case was heard before the court of King’s Bench on 7 December 1802. The court sat in the vast space of Westminster Hall, adjacent to the Houses of Parliament. The judge was Lord Ellenborough, and John Hanson led the prosecution against Seilaz. ‘A great number of lawyers were employed on each side, and the trial excited an uncommon degree of interest,’ wrote one newspaper reporter. Hanson recruited an impressive legal team for Portsmouth, including Sir William Garrow, a barrister well known for his aggressive style of questioning and defence of his clients.
Portsmouth won praise for having the courage to bring the case. Lord Erskine, counsel for Portsmouth, told the court:
It must be seen how difficult it was to drag an offender of this kind to justice. These were crimes, of which it had pleased God, for the wisest ends, to implant in us such abhorrence that most men shrink back from the imputation of them, and though conscious of innocence, rather submit to extortion than appeal to the law.
Sodomy was such an ‘abhorrent’ crime that the newspapers which reported this case did not name it, instead obliquely referring to the accusation of an ‘unnatural crime’. Seilaz’s letter to Portsmouth was read out in court, before the jury, but newspaper reporters did not quote it in full, leaving out all mention of sodomy. For ‘his firmness’, and determination to resist the accusation, Portsmouth should be congratulated, the press argued. His legal action ‘was honourable to him’. In bringing the case, Portsmouth ‘performed a sacred duty to himself, but one of far higher importance to the public’. At a time of revolutionary fervour on the continent, Portsmouth was standing up for the rights of all Englishmen. He was a nobleman who would not be frightened and bullied into submitting to the demands of an immoral and socially inferior foreigner.
Portsmouth appeared in person before King’s Bench. He swore that the letter was in Seilaz’s hand, and gave details of how the two men had met. Portsmouth admitted that Seilaz had been a good servant. Nevertheless, his lawyers told the court how Seilaz was ‘at the bottom of a foul conspiracy to deprive the noble Lordship of all his estates, and to drive his revered parent [his mother] and amiable sisters from under his roof’ in 1799. Portsmouth’s sudden departure to London and Yarmouth was described, and Seilaz’s arrest and deportation was provided as a possible explanation for his subsequent extortion attempt. During a lengthy cross-examination, Portsmouth answered all the questions put to him. His responses took time, because of his stammer, which was always worse when he was under pressure. But, throughout his examination, Portsmouth’s conduct was ‘rational and sensible’, and his responses were ‘perfectly clear and consistent’. Many years later, Garrow remembered that Portsmouth gave his evidence ‘in an intelligent and sensible manner’, and was convinced that Portsmouth was at this time ‘of sound mind’.
To everyone who saw him in court, and heard his testimony, Portsmouth seemed a man with nothing to hide. He was the innocent party in this case. He had been badly used by a servant whom he had previously employed and taken into his confidence. Seilaz’s letter betrayed his depravity. ‘In the usual course of inquiry, especially of this sort,’ argued Portsmouth’s counsel, ‘the guilty party took care to conceal’ their involvement in sodomy. ‘But here the defendant had directly and plainly avowed his own guilt’ by admitting to sodomy in the letter he had sent.
Having heard the evidence, and read over Seilaz’s letter, Judge Ellenborough announced to the court that ‘he did not see that the Jury could hesitate in finding the Defendant guilty’. Given this direction, the jury did not even retire to consider their verdict. Instead, they immediately pronounced a guilty verdict on Seilaz.
Seilaz was not present in the court. Repeated attempts to call him to King’s Bench to receive judgment failed. As a result, he was outlawed and banned from English society. This put an end to all his attempts to recover his pay and money owed to him, because he lost the right to use the civil courts. In theory, anybody who offered Seilaz food, shelter, or support could be accused of aiding and abetting a criminal. Seilaz’s refusal to face justice betrayed him as a coward, and proclaimed his guilt.4
At least that was what Portsmouth and his family wanted everyone to think. It is the version of events that was presented by the best lawyers in the land, and was printed in the newspapers. However, Seilaz got to tell his side of the story at the court of Chancery the following May, when Portsmouth brought a bill to declare that the documents he had signed for Seilaz were false. Seilaz’s account of what happened was quite different. Deciding who was the abuser and who was the abused in Portsmouth’s friendship with Seilaz was altogether less certain.
Seilaz described his job as Portsmouth’s valet after he was hired in July 1790. He had to provide Portsmouth with ‘the most essential and important services on a variety of occasions’. This may sound grand, but it boiled down to providing routine day-to-day care for a man who was used to having everything done for him. Seilaz washed, dressed, and fed Portsmouth. Wealthy men expected to have servants attending to them, but Portsmouth was different. He was like a child because he was so incapable of looking after himself. As other servants would confirm, Portsmouth had no idea how to dress smartly or appropriately as a gentleman. If neglected, he dressed meanly, putting on worn clothes. He was said to have ‘slept in and worn the same shirt for a week’. He cared nothing for his appearance. He did not shave every day. Servants even had to cut his corns and nails. He seldom used a toothbrush. ‘He ate not like other people, but voraciously, and drank as if he would swallow glass and all.’ Seilaz had to keep an eye on his consumption of wine, and mix it with water if he was becoming drunk. Without Seilaz’s careful attention, Portsmouth would have smelled bad, his table manners would have been non-existent, and nobody looking at him would ever have guessed he was a nobleman.5
His personal habits were bad enough, but his temper made working for him even harder. His mood swings were unpredictable, and he could become violent when he was angry. Portsmouth developed an annoying practice of pinching Seilaz and his other servants, and pulling their hair. He seemed to think it funny when they cried out. His family said that he was ‘of an easy, open and unsuspecting disposition’, but there was nothing easy about living with Lord Portsmouth.
Seilaz argued that his hard work earned him a reward. In January 1793, and at Portsmouth’s request, Seilaz came to England, a country far from his home. He worked for Portsmouth for four long years, gaining the confidence of Portsmouth and his family because of his loyalty. After the death of the 2nd earl, he went with Portsmouth to London. Portsmouth was excited at the possibilities now open to him. He could feel the thrill of being in control, believing that for the first time in his life his inheritance and title gave him the chance to act as he, and not others, wanted. In London, he told Seilaz ‘that he then had it in his power to do that which he had long wished for an opportunity’. Portsmouth said he wanted to show Seilaz his gratitude for his ‘many services and long tried attachment to him’. He had served him well abroad, as well as at home, he said, and Portsmouth particularly remembered Seilaz’s part in ‘preserving his life at Milan’ when he became unwell. Seilaz had originally trained as a surgeon and dentist, a fact never mentioned by the Portsmouth family, who wanted to represent him as a simple servant. But his medical knowledge had obviously come in useful when they were on their travels. Exceptional service and care prompted Portsmouth’s proposal to go to a London attorney so that an annuity could be arranged. When a bond was later delivered to Hurstbourne for Portsmouth to sign, Seilaz placed so little pressure upon Portsmouth that it lay unsigned for several months.
Seilaz told the court that he did not alter his behaviour after the 2nd earl’s death. Portsmouth and his family could have dismissed him at any time, but they kept him on for another two years. Instead, Seilaz said that it was Portsmouth’s mother who changed, not him. She knew that it was her son who was in charge now, at least in theory. After so many years of running the Portsmouth household, and ordering her son around, anyone who sought instruction had first to turn to him for orders now, and she found that hard to take. In practice, she found it impossible to let go. Portsmouth had taken Seilaz into his confidence, and complained to him about how he was ‘treated by his Mother and others of his Relations’. Perhaps she suspected that her son talked to Seilaz about her, and resented their closeness. Her manner altered so much towards Seilaz that he asked her if he ‘had offended her’, saying that he was ready to quit if she was not fully satisfied. But she assured Seilaz that nothing was wrong. There was her opportunity to be rid of Seilaz, but she did not take it.
After Portsmouth’s initial elation at succeeding to his title, reality kicked in. His complaints about his mother increased. He told Seilaz that he was ‘particularly mortified at not being permitted to manage without control his own household or to give directions without restraint respecting his estates’. The restraint imposed by the 1790 legal deed, which gave Portsmouth control over the family’s estates for his lifetime only, was beginning to show. In everyday terms, even if Portsmouth was manifestly incapable of managing a household, he was not unaware that this was something he should have been doing. He was in his early thirties, after all, yet he had no more authority than the youth Seilaz had first met on his grand tour.
Portsmouth’s ‘discontent’ and unhappiness at his situation increased to such a point that by the summer of 1799 he had come to a decision. He wanted to leave England, he told Seilaz, and vest his legal authority in some ‘confidential person’ who could act for him in his absence. This course of action, he explained, would mean ‘extricating himself from the unpleasant situation in which he had been so long’. It would be a way ‘of obtaining the peaceful and comfortable possession of his Rights’. Portsmouth wanted Seilaz to go with him.
Seilaz said that he did everything to try to dissuade Portsmouth from this scheme, and repeatedly advised him against it. But Portsmouth would not listen. ‘On account of the cruel treatment he experienced from his family he had made up his mind,’ he said. Nothing would change his decision.
So, according to Seilaz, their night-time departure from Hurstbourne on 22 July 1799 was not an abduction arranged by him, but an escape plan orchestrated by Portsmouth. Portsmouth told Seilaz that he wanted Gabriel Tahourdin to act as his attorney, because he had heard his friend Reverend Williams speak highly of him. Seilaz acted as messenger and passed letters between the two men. Tahourdin would provide a copy of one of Portsmouth’s letters to him in his answer to this Chancery case. In it, Portsmouth wrote of the ‘ill treatment’ he suffered, ‘from my Mother and Mr Garnett and from almost all my own Servants and everyone of Lady Portsmouth’s servants by whom they are encouraged’. This left him, he explained, ‘miserably unhappy’. ‘I am never consulted on any Business,’ he complained, and he could only get small amounts of money to spend on himself. His mother and Garnett were still in charge of everything. ‘I am not considered as Master of my own House,’ he complained.
But he was Seilaz’s master, and Seilaz was duty bound to obey his orders. Portsmouth told Seilaz and Gabriel to be ready at night with a chaise and horses. They had to leave secretly, which meant Seilaz was forced to leave many of his possessions behind at Hurstbourne. Portsmouth was in high spirits throughout the night-time journey to London. He was excited that they had managed to leave without being detected. He had so little money given to him by his mother and Garnett that he had to borrow money from Seilaz to pay for their travel expenses. When they arrived in London at the coffeehouse, Seilaz said that Portsmouth had no trouble signing the deeds because it was he who had arranged them. Exhausted from the journey, and having achieved what he set out to do, Portsmouth then retired to bed of his own free will. Seilaz vigorously denied locking Portsmouth in his chamber: this was something he would never have dared to do. Instead, Seilaz followed more of Portsmouth’s orders while he rested, and went to arrange a passport.
According to Seilaz, Portsmouth was far from being made unwell by these events. Instead, Portsmouth said more than once on 23 July that ‘he never had felt so happy and comfortable in his lifetime’. Indeed, Portsmouth was in ‘greater spirits’ than Seilaz had ever seen him in the nine years he had known him. He was free from all that burden of responsibility and expectation. His mind relieved of the stress and pressure of performing a role that so ill-suited his abilities, he was a different man.
When Portsmouth got into the chaise to go to Yarmouth, he called Gabriel to him. He ‘shook hands with him and begged him to carry on the business he had employed him in’. Gabriel left to return to Hurstbourne. It was Portsmouth, not Seilaz, who ordered the drivers to go faster on their journey, using ‘violent expressions’ to press his point. He insisted that Seilaz carry pistols. Portsmouth had often asked Seilaz to be armed when they travelled, but on this journey he had made this a ‘particular request’.
At Yarmouth, Portsmouth was never ‘compelled’ to sleep in the same room as Seilaz. Portsmouth was the one who gave the orders on their arrival, as would be expected when a master and servant travelled together. Portsmouth told the landlord that he and Seilaz were to have a double-bedded room. He also asked that Seilaz and he eat together.
Portsmouth’s happiness was brought to an abrupt end that night. The two men were rudely awoken in the early hours by a violent banging on the door. When the rescue party rushed in, Portsmouth was far from pleased to see them. Instead, he was much ‘vexed’. Seilaz knew that Portsmouth was ‘not on very good terms’ with his brother, Newton. He had told Seilaz that Reverend Garnett and Mr Hanson were ‘particularly obnoxious to him’. Portsmouth complained many times of their treatment of him, and he especially disliked Garnett.
Portsmouth was so little inclined to be parted from Seilaz that he did not even get out of bed to greet his visitors. His brother and Garnett had to go over to his bedside to talk to him. Seilaz heard them ‘assure’ him ‘that if he would get up and go back with them everything at home should be made comfortable’. What an acknowledgement that all was not right at Hurstbourne! They treated him just like a naughty child who had run away, and for whom only promises of better treatment would ensure a return without a further scene.
While Portsmouth was gently coaxed to leave, Seilaz met with much rougher treatment. Having been deprived of his passport, papers, and pistols, he was marched off to the town gaol. From there he was sent to Cold Bath Fields prison. The name says it all. There he was held captive alongside some of the worst criminals in the country, a number facing charges of treason. Conditions were miserable. He repeatedly wrote to Portsmouth asking for help, but received no reply. He did not even have sufficient changes of linen or clothing, because this was all in the luggage that the Portsmouth family took away from Yarmouth. Some of Seilaz’s papers were returned to him, but with all their seals torn off, rendering them useless.
Gabriel Tahourdin was busy trying to salvage his legal career. He put up a notice in Whitchurch, which was printed a few days later in the Salisbury and Winchester Journal. He said that reports that he had been imprisoned because of involvement with Lord Portsmouth were false, and that he intended to clear his name. Fortunately for Gabriel, nobody appeared to believe the Portsmouth family’s version of events, which positioned him as a party to Seilaz’s plot to deprive the family of their estates. Of course, everyone who was acquainted with Lord Portsmouth and his condition thought that it was only he who could have dreamt of such a crazy scheme. Within a short time, Gabriel and his brother were practising as lawyers again, and were conducting business in Chancery.6
At last, after several months, Seilaz was visited in prison by Mr Birch, a partner in Hanson’s legal firm. He offered Seilaz a few pounds of relief, and tried to get him to sign a long document releasing him from Portsmouth’s service. Seilaz refused to sign: why should he when Portsmouth still owed him wages and an annuity? A clerk from Hanson was sent with some clothes. But he also seized all the bonds and deeds Seilaz had relating to Portsmouth.
Seilaz claimed to not even know why he was imprisoned. He wrote to the Home Secretary, the Duke of Portland, several times demanding to know the reason for his confinement. He had been told when he was first arrested in Yarmouth that it was under the terms of the Aliens Act. But this was legislation that had been introduced by the government during the French revolutionary wars to protect Britain from political subversion. All foreigners arriving in Britain after 1793 had to be registered by their local magistrate. Any foreigner who did not notify the authorities of their arrival, or who was deemed to pose a political threat, could be held without bail, and deported. It cannot have been easy living in Britain as a native of a country that was an enemy. Seilaz was forced to prove his loyalty. ‘Ever since his first arrival in England,’ he told Chancery, he had been ‘warmly and sincerely attached to the Government of that Country’. As evidence, he declared that he had given a sum of money towards the war effort. The Portsmouths had him arrested as an alien because they had nothing else with which to charge him, argued Seilaz. Even counsel for Portsmouth in King’s Bench had to admit that Seilaz had been ‘guilty of no political offence’. The Portsmouth family were forced to justify the decision to deport Seilaz from Cold Bath Fields to Hamburg, arguing that ‘the object of the statute was to protect the natives against the misconduct of foreigners of every description’. Anybody could see that this was stretching the law to its limits, and well beyond its original purpose.
In February 1800, Seilaz was sent to Hamburg, a place where he was an ‘entire stranger’. He was ‘without friends and without money’. He made ‘many appeals’ to Lord Portsmouth by letter. Eventually, he applied to an English gentleman living in Hamburg for advice. Seilaz told him all that had happened. He wanted to get back the money Portsmouth owed him. It was this gentleman, Seilaz said, who composed the letter sent to Portsmouth, and which caused such an outcry. Seilaz simply copied out his words, and was ‘entirely ignorant’ of the English law he broke by writing the letter. Afterwards though, and once the heat of his anger had cooled, he decided it was an ‘improper’ letter to send. Seilaz begged the gentleman not to send the letter, and he promised to destroy it.
Seilaz was adamant that he never intended to extort money from Portsmouth. The only reason he returned to England was to recover ‘what was justly due’. Since returning, he was imprisoned in Tothill Fields Bridewell, ‘locked up among the common thieves’ for four days. He had to raise five hundred pounds in bail to be released. When he attended the next Middlesex Quarter Sessions, as the terms of his bail required, he found that Portsmouth had moved his case to King’s Bench. His solicitor had to repeatedly ask Hanson for his papers to be returned to him, and eventually King’s Bench had to order him to do so. As well as the annuity Portsmouth had first arranged as a reward for his loyalty, these papers also contained character references he had written for Seilaz, in English and French. No wonder Hanson did not want to surrender them, for they would help Seilaz’s defence. All this legal manoeuvre and delay was ‘for the purpose of harassing and distressing me,’ Seilaz lamented. It put him to ‘great expenses’ and loss, as he could not return to his home country and his ‘professional concerns’ as a surgeon and dentist.7
Seilaz’s account of events fell on deaf ears. His statement was submitted to Chancery, but then buried within its mountains of paperwork. Nobody was interested in the grievances of a low-born French speaker when they stood opposed to the words of an honourable English nobleman and his family. Newspapers never aired his story. Seilaz was finished.
The key question about Seilaz and Portsmouth had already been asked during the trial at King’s Bench. It was left hanging in the air, tantalizingly unanswered. Just what was the nature of the relationship between these two men?
If they were bedfellows, then at the start of the nineteenth century there was nothing particularly uncommon about men sleeping next to each other. Portsmouth considered and treated Seilaz as a friend. On that night in Yarmouth before they left England behind, the two men were about to embark on a new life together. In need of reassurance and protection, perhaps there was nothing surprising about Portsmouth wanting Seilaz to be with him.
But in Yarmouth the reaction of Portsmouth’s brother and friends to news that the two men were sharing a room together, and their urgency to get into that room, may betray their suspicion that there was more to this relationship than friendship. Portsmouth’s and Seilaz’s escape from Hurstbourne was very like an elopement. Perhaps when Seilaz wrote his extortion letter to Portsmouth, he only put down in words what everyone dreaded to discover when the door opened. After all, being a gentleman’s valet means caring for him in an intimate, personal way. It has to involve touch.
Later in his life many stories were told of Portsmouth’s sexual preferences. There was nothing ordinary about what Portsmouth enjoyed. He had so little comprehension of what ‘normal’ relationships were meant to be like. If anyone had ever explained the facts of life to him, he had certainly not understood. Some would say he was impotent, but if he was then perhaps the problem was with women. He experienced sexual pleasure, but not in the usual way. He was quite capable of abusing his servants with words and violent blows, so forcing them to have sexual relations with him would not have been out of character. Many a master made his servant big with child; at least Portsmouth did not need to fear a little bastard as a consequence of his sexual relationships with men.
Or did Seilaz tempt Portsmouth to commit this crime? His French accent and foreign manners meant doubts were immediately raised about his innocence in this affair. Frenchmen, according to national prejudice, were too effeminate in their conduct, and likely to weaken the manly strength of Englishmen. Parents knew that spending too much time abroad ran the risk that their sons would return tainted by foreign habits. Worst of all, they might become morally corrupt. The French were always thought sexually immoral: it was not for nothing that the pox was called the ‘Frenchman’s disease’. If Portsmouth had come home with another sexual perversion, he would not have been alone.
Some might think Seilaz forced himself on Portsmouth. It was certainly easy to take advantage of him. Emotionally vulnerable, sexually naive, and mentally underdeveloped, he was a sitting target for sexual exploitation. If, as his lawyers argued, he ‘had not sufficient power or presence of mind to refuse to do any act’ that Seilaz ‘prompted or advised him to perform’, did this include sexual ones?
The timing of the arrival of Seilaz’s letter was doubly embarrassing for Portsmouth (and some would say deliberately so), because by then he was a married man. It was important for him to clear his name. The newspapers reported how in King’s Bench Garrow asked whether ‘his Lordship might not be permitted solemnly to deny upon his oath the crime imputed to him’. But this was impossible, Ellenborough explained, because the trial was about extortion not sodomy. In response, Erskine said he ‘regretted’ that ‘noble and honourable persons … could not be called to speak to the purity of his Lordship’s life and character’.8 The crime of sodomy was hard to prove in law, but it was equally difficult for Portsmouth to disprove. Seilaz’s accusation was out in the public domain, and suspicion would always remain. Portsmouth’s lawyers did their best to assert Portsmouth’s innocence, but it may well have been for the best that Portsmouth himself was not asked to declare what had happened. Who knows what he would have said.
Nobody dared to voice the idea that sex between Seilaz and Portsmouth was consensual. To do so would be to recognize a relationship that had crossed social as well as sexual boundaries. But could Seilaz be condemned for showing affection and kindness towards a man who received so little of this from the family and friends who were nearest to him? Neither man belonged in English society: Portsmouth’s mental problems and Seilaz’s Frenchness separated them from others, but may have been what brought them together. They clung together in a hostile world. All the evidence points to Portsmouth’s happiness with Seilaz. After Seilaz had given his answers to Chancery in May 1803, he disappeared from the historical record, and was not seen by Portsmouth again. In the years to come, many people would pore over the details of Portsmouth’s life. But the complete truth of the time he spent with Seilaz will never be known. This at least will remain a secret.