The London spring had yet to appear that year. In a cold drizzle falling for the seventeenth consecutive day in May, Sir Jeremy Riggs stepped out of the Honourable East India Company offices in Leadenhall Street, and looked up and down the row of narrow houses in search of his carriage. Seeing no sign of it, he raised his eyes to the clock on Plunkett’s Buttery opposite the East India Company. He had only ten minutes before he was due in Whitechapel; he would have to walk the twelve streets to his destination. His cloak would be soaked, his boots mired when he got there, but he could not be late for the meeting.
Hearing the thunder of horses’ hooves to his right, he turned and saw a carriage rushing towards him from Aldgate. He stepped back to avoid being splattered.
In front of the East India office, the driver reined in the frothing beasts. A red face with shaggy grey eyebrows appeared like an apparition at the carriage window, ordering, ‘Get in, Riggs.’
Benjamin Cowcross was the last person Sir Jeremy Riggs wanted to see, particularly here, in front of Company headquarters.
‘Get in out of the rain,’ repeated Cowcross, throwing open the carriage door. ‘Ride with me to Whitechapel.’
Without even leaving word for his coachman that he had gone on, Sir Jeremy climbed into the carriage and slammed the door, urging, ‘Tell your driver to move on, Cowcross! Move on! We must not be seen together. Not here. Not yet.’
Cowcross laughed at the baronet’s concern, his ale-foul breath filling the carriage as he scoffed, ‘You’re too cautious, Riggs. Too damned cautious. Everybody in the City will know soon enough you’re doing business with me. And that you’re a richer man for it. Our new company is going to take the cake out of the mouths of your fancy cronies at the East India Company. Mark my words. We’re on to a pot of gold, Riggs.’
Sir Jeremy sank into the opposite corner of the rumbling carriage. Public knowledge of the fact that he was in partnership with Ben Cowcross, the manufacturer of iron manacles and collars for the slave trade with the American colonies, was precisely what he did not want. He was associating with Cowcross only because he was too poor to partake in commercial ventures sponsored by the East India Company.
* * *
Less than an hour after Sir Jeremy had left Leadenhall Street, he was sitting in cramped offices in Whitechapel with the five men who formed the board of the new East Sea Trading Company. The smell of rancid suet drifted in from an adjoining pie shop, and a serving girl scuffed around the low-ceilinged room, handing out pewter tankards from a tray as she eyed each man.
At the head of the table presided Josiah Creddige, the portly heir of a Liverpool merchant whose fortune was based on hand-painted chintzes imported from India. Creddige the younger hoped to double his inherited fortune by bringing silks from China.
To Creddige’s right sat David Potter, a hatchet-faced broker of coffee. Potter was anxious to capitalise on England’s growing taste for China tea and was already negotiating for larger premises in St James’s.
Nicholas Kidley, a short man with a face covered in warts, was sitting on the opposite side of the table. His successful apothecary business depended on oriental spices and herbs; an increased supply of camphor, cloves and opium—all the oriental ingredients that composed his nostrums and potions—would enable him to expand his activities.
Next to Kidley sat swarthy David Thistle who owned the shipyards in Deptford renowned for building swift frigates sold to privateers. Thistle had ambitions to expand into the lucrative business of merchant shipping. He was offering his yards—as well as financing—to build the first merchantman for the East Sea Trading Company.
Beside Thistle sat Sir Jeremy Riggs, his worried face and refined tailoring making him appear out of place among this group of ruthless businessmen. Sir Jeremy had inherited his baronetcy and a manor house, but little money to support the style of living that went with them. Through social connections, he had won a sub-licence from the East India Company to import pepper from Bantam; but on going out to the Indies to oversee the venture, he had quickly found he hated the life there and had returned to England ill and on the verge of bankruptcy. In London, he had thrown himself on the mercy of Ben Cowcross, who had willingly loaned Sir Jeremy money on his manor house to finance the Bantam adventure. But after investigating the baronet’s financial situation, Cowcross had discovered that his most valuable possession was not the house but the licence to import pepper to England. With characteristic cunning, Cowcross had devised an intricate scheme by which Sir Jeremy could retain his family seat and make a fortune for himself. All he had to do was take five partners into a complicated, and not wholly legal, trading adventure.
Seated at the opposite end of the table from Josiah Creddige, Cowcross asked the first question of the day’s meeting. ‘Riggs, have you spoken recently to your friend the Duke of Turley?’
‘Of Course.’ Sir Jeremy disliked the way Cowcross ignored his title. ‘He’s waiting to hear if the Chinese Co-Hung will grant us permission to trade in China before he presents our case to the Crown.’
‘And when we stuff money into his purse,’ said Cowcross.
‘That, too.’ answered Sir Jeremy.
The only salve for Sir Jeremy Riggs in this uncomfortable situation was that men like the Duke of Turley also needed money and were prepared to do business with such rogues. The Duke had lost his own fortune on an East India Company convoy which the Company had failed to insure properly. Turley still carried a grudge against the Company’s Board of Directors and, for revenge as well as profit, was willing to help secure a Royal Charter from his hunting partner, King George, for a rival trading company to import goods from the Orient. But the Duke would only act when the new company had proof that they could trade with the Imperial Co-Hung of China.
‘Any news of the China Flyer?’ asked Creddige from the other end of the table.
‘It will be at least another three months before George Fanshaw returns to England,’ answered Sir Jeremy.
As the meeting had been called for the purpose of obtaining a progress report from each member, Sir Jeremy himself now asked a question. ‘What’s the progress on the Charity Bourne, Mr Thistle?’
The shipbuilder answered with confidence. ‘We’re keeping to the estimate of twenty pounds per ton on the Charity, Sir Jeremy. Two pounds cheaper than the Thames Company builds for the East India Company.’
He turned to Cowcross. ‘Have you sold all your shares?’
Like the East India Company, the East Sea Company divided shares in a voyage into thirty-two lots. All shares in the new company’s first voyage had been purchased by the five businessmen at the table, who in turn, had sold them at profit to family and close friends. Sir Jeremy was promised fifteen per cent of the profit for his part in the venture.
‘What word do we have on insurance?’ asked Potter the coffee merchant.
Cowcross snorted. ‘The blackguards at Lloyd’s Coffee House are as jittery as titmice about going against anything or anyone challenging the East India Company!’
Horrified, Sir Jeremy sat forward in his chair, ‘You’ve not told anyone yet about our new company, Cowcross?’
‘Nay. I know how to keep my hat on my head, Riggs. I’m no fool. But I sounded out them Lloyd’s coffee guzzlers enough to know they’ll remain loyal to the old company. But don’t you worry about insurance. I lied about dumping fifty niggers overboard on an Atlantic Crossing two years ago, so City Assurance owes me a pretty favour. The Charity Bourne won’t sail without proper insurance.’
Kidley the apothecary said, ‘But Sir Jeremy is right. If the East India Company catches a whiff of what we’re doing, Cowcross, they’ll slap us all in irons as traitors for plotting against the Company’s Crown Charter.’
He turned to Sir Jeremy. ‘Have you got your Company licence renewed?’
The baronet nodded. ‘Renewal was granted to me this very day, I’m pleased to say.’
‘Did the Company ask any questions?’ inquired Thistle.
‘No,’ answered Sir Jeremy. The licence to trade in Bantam was a cover for the building and fitting of the merchantman. ‘So far nobody has shown any interest in my plans.’
‘Any questions about how you raised the money to renew your licence?’ Cowcross’s eyes danced beneath his thick brows, enjoying the execution of the plot he had laid.
‘I mentioned to the Court of Directors that I’m contemplating taking on partners.’
‘Did they ask who those gentlemen might be?’
‘The licence allows me partners, and I assure you, Mr Cowcross,’ Sir Jeremy added quickly, ‘there will be no problem on my part. Especially when the Duke of Turley intervenes on our behalf with the Crown.’
‘Yes, back to Turley,’ said Thistle. ‘When do we meet him?’
‘As I said, sir, the Duke of Turley is waiting to hear whether we obtain China’s permission to trade.’
‘And he gets his money,’ repeated Crowcross.
The apothecary, Kidley, interrupted. ‘It’s all very fine to be concerned about Crown approval. But the important side of this venture still remains the Orient. Let us fret not so much about the Duke of Turley as about George Fanshaw in China. Did he make his escape from Madras? Is the Company pursuing him? What are his chances with the Chinese?’
A momentary silence fell over the table.
Cowcross belched. ‘George Fanshaw. Damn’ right. He’s the key to this puzzle. But I said it before and I will say it again—I don’t like the man. I know, I know. I introduced him into our group. But he’s a rat. No better than a rat that crept out of the mire.’
There was a general murmur of agreement round the table. George Fanshaw was not a likeable creature. The only dissenter was Sir Jeremy Riggs, and he kept his peace, musing on how ironic it was that these five should pass judgement on a man little different from themselves—uncouth, uneducated, rough upstarts in the world. But, then, were the shareholders and board members of the Honourable East India Company any better? No. The difference lay in the fact that the directors of the East India Company—and their families—had been involved longer in the lucrative oriental trade. They had had time to marry into the aristocracy, buy titles from the Crown, cultivate the patina of the gentry. Some day Thistle, Creddige, Potter, Kidley—even coarse Ben Cowcross—would take their own places within England’s titled society.
The meeting continued.