Boer History1814 at the Cape of Good Hope: Albany, Somerset, and the London Convention
Albany Named — 7 January 1814
Sir John Francis Cradock governed the Cape without a council. He took the oaths on the 6th of September 1811, after Caledon sailed. On the 7th of January 1814 he gave the old Zuurveld a civil name: Albany. The tract was defined as that portion of the district of Uitenhage hitherto known as the Zuurveld. The deputy landdrost of Uitenhage therefore became the landdrost of Grahamstown, under whose jurisdiction the new district came. The name mattered because the 1812 clearing had driven Ndlambe’s people over the Fish, and a camp on Lucas Meyer’s old farm at the source of the Kowie still had no civil district of its own. [3] [4]
That same 7th of January Cradock reached Capetown again. He left on the 18th of October 1813 to tour the colony, and visited the most distant parts. A special object was the conduct of the frontier farmers toward the Xhosa driven over the Fish, because a large party in England still asserted that the Europeans in South Africa were guilty of many cruelties toward Ndlambe’s adherents, both before and after the late war. Intercourse between the two races was strictly forbidden, but could not be entirely prevented: roving bands eluded the guards at the military posts and traversed the country either to steal or to beg. The result of the governor’s investigations was published in the Gazette upon his return. His Excellency had the further satisfaction to approve of the good and unoffending conduct of the inhabitants of the frontier toward the Xhosa tribes, whom the notice called the faithless and unrelenting disturbers of the peace and prosperity of this colony. [3]
From Assegai Bush he had gone to Lombard’s Post, near the later village of Southwell, and thence across the Kowie as far as the mouth of the Great Fish. Returning, he came into Grahamstown about the 3rd of December, spent about a week at Uitenhage, and went on to Graaff Reinet. From the survey he was greatly impressed with the difficulties of life in the east. He decided, when he was in Graaff Reinet, to augment the Cape Regiment to its original strength of 800 rank and file — that is, to add 200 men — because the Khoikhoi of that corps had shown themselves the troops best adapted to the woody tracts that skirted the Fish. Circular letters to the landdrosts raised the number. Even so, frequent patrols and a constant guard at the important drifts remained necessary. [4]
The naming did not empty the Fish-river thickets. In February 1814 a large body of Xhosa established themselves on the colonial side of that river and were, with some difficulty and not without bloodshed, driven back. Ensign MacNiel with a company of the Cape Regiment was nearly surrounded in this attempt, and not until a brisk fire had been opened and 15 Xhosa shot did the others retire. Patrols still watched the posts built after the clearing of 1812, and the farmers who had taken up ground in the recovered tract remained few and uneasy. What the 7th of January fixed was a civil name and a district line: Albany instead of Zuurveld, Grahamstown as the seat, Uitenhage no longer the sole drostdy for that coastal belt. [4]
Clanwilliam and Cradock Named — 21 January 1814
On the 21st of January Jan-Dissel’s-Vlei, the residence of the deputy landdrost of Tulbagh, was named Clanwilliam by Cradock, in honour of his father-in-law. The same day’s Government Advertisement gave another name in the east. At the particular request of the landdrost and heemraden of Graaff Reinet, the residence of the deputy landdrost of that district was in future to be called Cradock. Ensign Andries Stockenstrom was appointed to that deputy seat on the 10th of June 1812. Court was held at one place and then another until June 1813, when, after first proposing Grootfontein near later Middelburg, he decided upon the loan place of Piet van Heerden called Buffel’s Kloof, in Achter Sneeuwberg — central, well watered, with a good house and building material on the spot. The place was bought for 3500 rixdollars. Cradock, visiting the east at the end of 1813, approved the position, sanctioned 12000 rixdollars on the necessary public buildings, and, asked to allow the embryo town to bear his name, said he felt much flattered and could only offer his best wishes for its prosperity. [3] [4]
Piet van Heerden’s house was found to fulfil every requirement as a prison, and also to afford accommodation for a constable and two Xhosa policemen; it was therefore appropriated for that purpose. The deputy landdrost’s house was soon commenced and ready for occupation. Contiguous land was divided into building plots — 130 to 150 feet frontage and length, depending upon quality and water — and offered for sale. Ten or fifteen morgen were attached as garden for the deputy landdrost, and he was authorised to attach a farm to the drostdy. The one chosen was Driefontein, occupied by W. J. van Heerden, Piet’s brother, who parted with it on compensation in another locality and payment for the buildings. Cradock thus became the fourth town in the Eastern Province. The names of the 21st of January mattered because two deputy seats that had been only a vlei and a kloof now sat on the map under English titles, one for Cradock’s father-in-law and one for himself. [4]
The reverend Ballot remained at Tulbagh until his death in January 1814, after which the congregation was for some time without a clergyman. Vacancies elsewhere still showed the thinness of the church roll. In Capetown, Fleck and Von Manger still ministered; at Stellenbosch, Borcherds. Drakenstein had Johan Wilhelm Ludwig Gebhard from June 1810. Schutz of Swellendam was suspended for two years in September 1813 and ordered to leave that district; the congregation there was without a clergyman. Uitenhage still had none. George had T. Herold from December 1812. The Lutheran Frederick Hesse remained in Capetown; the English Robert Jones still used the Dutch church building, there being as yet only three church edifices in the town — Dutch reformed, Lutheran, and the Long-street chapel of the South African missionary society, opened in March 1804. [3]
Although Graaff Reinet was founded so many years earlier, it was scarcely yet worthy of being regarded as a village. The Drostdy House was finished before 1814 and had by that year fallen into considerable disrepair. All other public buildings were either unfinished or not begun; the prison was in a ruinous state. The parsonage, by contrast, was a substantial, commodious, and even elegant building, described as better than the Drostdy House at Uitenhage. In 1814 vacant land extending from the river up to later Somerset Street was surveyed by Aling, the government surveyor for Graaff Reinet, and divided into 30 building plots — 15 on each side of a street afterwards named Cradock Street. The plots were put up to public auction and realised 23329 rixdollars, about 1750 pounds. Civil names on the 21st did not settle the land question the 6th of August 1813 had opened. Occupants of loan places were still required to make deposits on account of inspection and survey; qualified surveyors were few and the country was large; years would elapse before the work could be completed. Meanwhile they remained in suspense, until the impression came to be general that the scheme was meant to defraud them rather than to increase their security. [3] [4]
Grahamstown Surveyed — 1814
Grahamstown, which up to this time was little more than a name, consisted simply of the camp of the few officers and men of the Cape Regiment who were not on outpost duty. An administrative organisation was given it when, on the 13th of September 1813, Colonel Cuyler closed with Von Buchenroder for public buildings at a total of 12000 rixdollars ( 900 pounds) — among them a tronk and a messenger’s house. The next step toward a town was to attract civilian settlers. Plots 50 paces broad and 150 long, at 20 rixdollars ( 1 pound 10 shillings) to the district chest, had been talked of; in 1814 the scheme took a more definite form because a properly qualified land surveyor could be had. J. Knobel, late secretary of Uitenhage, gazetted sworn surveyor on the 22nd of January 1813, was sent at the beginning of 1814 to the lonely military camp to lay out a township. When he commenced, Buchenroder had built the outer walls of the tronk and messenger’s house almost to their intended height. The survey mattered because Albany now had a district seat that was still a line of huts, and a street on paper was the first civilian claim on that ground. [4]
The former of those buildings, though marked on his plan as the messenger’s house, was taken as the starting-point of his measurements and the line of the main street. Reporting to government on the 10th of June, Knobel said he had begun the survey by tracing the line on which the messenger’s house was now building, supposing that line to be made the south side of a straight street running from the spot where the drostdy house was to be built to the corner of the last lot as they then stood. Execution of that first plan had difficulties: lots so laid would bring the buildings now standing into an awkward position and throw some of them entirely into another person’s property; the north side of the street would run just on the most elevated ground, and the street would not be made wider than about 105 feet without interfering again with the buildings on the east corner lot. [4]
The only way, as he saw it, was to keep, with a very trifling alteration, the line on which the messenger’s house was begun all the way down for the south side of the street, only allowing an opening to the road going through between Dr. Glaeser’s lot and the hospital, by which means the line of houses on that side would be brought up above the watercourse — the houses then standing being considerably below it, so that a good deal of the best watered ground was rendered useless. The north side he would run down from the drostdy house to opposite the corner lot where the hospital stood, leaving there a passage for the road from Uitenhage, the officers’ lots remaining as they were, only brought far enough out to allow houses in front. From the opposite corners of the last two lots a straight street might hereafter be extended; that method would give the drostdy house a view of the whole street, and although a triangular space would be left open, that space, having the most elevated ground in its centre, might allow a very convenient situation for a church or any public building. Cradock approved the general plan. It was then decided that the plots on both sides of the main street — later High Street — should be sold by public auction, each purchaser to build a good house on the proper line within 18 months, not less than 30 feet long, 13 feet deep and 8 feet high, walls of stone, brick, or mud, or forfeit the erf. [4]
Knobel, in planning the street and plots, quite ignored the military encampment. He probably knew it was a temporary measure. When the huts were erected in June 1812 it was with a view to only a year’s occupation at most. They were still standing in 1814, and the surveyor’s street was drawn as if they would not always be there. Buchenroder had also obtained the contract for the public buildings in Uitenhage — court house 8000 rixdollars, secretary’s house 6000, messenger’s house 5000, a total of 21000 rixdollars (about 1570 pounds), part of the 500000 rixdollars allotted by the British government for public buildings throughout the colony and issued through the Lombard Bank. To raise interest on the Uitenhage portion, a tax of 1 shilling per muid was put upon salt from the pan near Bethelsdorp, and 1 rixdollar on every waggon load of wood cut in the district. He devoted the few available workmen to Uitenhage; Grahamstown was neglected. [4]
An area of 3000 morgen, measured in a square and containing the public buildings, was to be the commonage of Uitenhage; none of it, except small building plots near the drostdy, was to be granted to individuals. On the outskirts, grants were to be made on as reduced a scale as possible. For Grahamstown the commonage was fixed at 2000 morgen. Cradock, in fixing those quantities, said the extent might appear too large, but it was really necessary for the sustenance of the oxen and various other cattle that might be brought to rendezvous at these places; without such accommodation, and were the ground to be disposed of, all the desired communication and resort would be frustrated. Uitenhage had long felt the want of a church and resident clergyman. The inhabitants had voluntarily subscribed 4000 rixdollars and erected a building to answer as a temporary church, schoolroom, and eventually the clergyman’s residence. Government granted a further 30000 rixdollars from the public-buildings fund for a church. The east, in the year Albany was named, thus had a surveyed street at Grahamstown, a commonage figure, and a Uitenhage works account that pulled labour away from the camp on the Kowie. [4]
Theopolis Granted — 12 February 1814
Cradock, speaking in February 1814 on what had up to that time been accomplished, said that the introduction of a very extensive school at the headquarters of the Cape Regiment in Grahamstown, to the amount of some hundreds of children, could not fail to produce the happiest consequences. During his stay at Uitenhage he did not overlook Bethelsdorp. Its overcrowded state, and the need either to reduce the numbers or extend the boundaries, induced him to consider immediate relief. He was averse to acting in any manner which might discourage the real improvement of the Khoikhoi, but he shared the general anxiety that if missionary stations were enlarged or increased, the most fatal results would attend agricultural pursuits from the lack of labour. On general principles it seemed inexpedient to allot considerable portions of land to missionary stations and thus render the Khoikhoi independent of connection with their neighbours in a country where it was essential that all should work and combine. In spite of those sentiments he granted to Bethelsdorp a fine tract in Albany, on the Kasouga river and extending almost as far as the Kariega, not to do away with Bethelsdorp but to create an adjunct and lessen the numbers there. [4]
Writing on the 12th of February to the reverend John Campbell, travelling superintendent of the London society, he said that to relieve Bethelsdorp and give the best chance of improvement to a place not even designed by nature for a creditable or useful foundation, he had granted, as far as practicable — the legal difficulties of which Campbell was well aware — the beautiful tract in Albany to which they had given the name Theopolis, hoping that in that situation all the hopes of united Christianity and utility would be realised: such was the fertility and abundance of the place in every necessary of life, with wood, water, and every material for building at hand, that the very view would take away all excuse. In due course a number of families with their cattle left Bethelsdorp, and under the missionary Ulbricht, with his Khoikhoi wife, took up their residence — or squatted down — on the new domain. The grant mattered because Bethelsdorp was overcrowded, farmers feared the loss of Khoikhoi labour, and Cradock chose to plant a second station on Albany grass rather than enlarge the first. [3] [4]
The institution itself was built in a wide shallow basin along the Kasouga, scarcely deep enough and the declivity of the sides too gentle to be regarded as a valley. It consisted of separate houses or huts, each with its own garden, near the bank of a small stream. On slightly higher ground to the east stood the missionary’s house, and about 50 yards to the north the church — a rectangular building about 15 feet wide by about 30 long. Theopolis stood near the middle of a square of grassy fertile land measuring about 3000 morgen, about as large as the commonage of Uitenhage. The southern boundary was within a short distance of the sea-shore and the blind mouth of the Kasouga. It was well adapted for the purpose the governor had in view, though it was curious, considering how the authorities had always sought to prevent coalition between Xhosa and Khoikhoi, that a spot so far to the east should have been chosen. A strict order was then issued that no one should be allowed to settle at Bethelsdorp without the approval of the landdrost of the district. [3] [4]
In 1814 the London society had 20 missionaries in South Africa. Beyond the colony the Bushman station at the Zak river was abandoned, as was also the one at the Kuruman river; but the stations among the mixed people and Khoikhoi near the junction of the Orange and the Vaal remained. An attempt had been made to found a station at Warm Bath in Great Namaqualand; the missionaries and people were driven from it by the robber captain Afrikaner, and they then settled at Pella, in Little Namaqualand, near the southern bank of the Orange. Attempts at the residence of old Cornelis Kok in Little Namaqualand and among the San on the southern bank of the Orange had been abandoned. Within the colony, in 1812 a missionary was stationed at Zuurbraak, a Khoikhoi reserve in Swellendam occupied by the remnant of the Attaqua; in 1813 another went to Hoogekraal, a reserve of the remnant of the Outeniqua on the coast close to the drostdy of George — Pacalt, whose name the station later took. The Moravians had as yet only Genadendal and Mamre. [3]
Complete information had in these years been obtained concerning the Batlapin and the mixed people since known as Griquas, collected by London-society missionaries near the junction of the Vaal and Orange. William J. Burchell resided several months at Klaarwater and Lithako in 1811 and 1812. The Griquas, under Adam Kok and Barend Barends, had their principal settlement at Klaarwater — Griquatown after Campbell named it in 1813 — with outstations where Lichtenstein and Van de Graaff found them in 1805. Anderson, Kramer, and Janssen of the London and Rotterdam societies were residing with them. The Batlapin had moved from the Kuruman to a place close by the large kraal where Truter and Somerville met them in 1801; Molehabangwe died early in 1812 and was succeeded by Mothibi; Lithako contained about 5000 inhabitants. That inland map was already drawn when Theopolis took families off Bethelsdorp in 1814. [3]
Somerset Takes the Oaths — 6 April 1814
In 1813 Cradock applied for permission to return to England. On the 13th of October Earl Bathurst replied that the Prince Regent had accepted the resignation, expressed a high sense of the services rendered, and regretted that Cradock had found it necessary to withdraw from the inhabitants a superintendence in which he had shown so much assiduity, judgment, and ability, uniformly exercised with a view to their advancement in happiness and prosperity. On the 2nd of November a successor was appointed: Lieutenant-General Lord Charles Henry Somerset, spoken of in the royal commission as “Our Trusty and Well-beloved Charles Henry Somerset Esquire, commonly called Lord Charles Henry Somerset.” With his family he embarked in the ship-of-war Medway, which arrived in Table Bay on the 5th of April, and on the following morning he took the oaths of office. The oaths mattered because the Cape still sat under a British flag by conquest, not yet by treaty, and the man who now sat in the castle would have to live with Cradock’s named districts, the quitrent of August 1813, and a civil list already a frontier grievance. [3] [4]
He was a man of ability and energy, then 46 years of age. Second son of the duke of Beaufort and younger brother of the marquess of Worcester, he was allied by blood or marriage with nearly all the great tory families of the kingdom. His mother was a daughter of Admiral Boscawen. A younger brother, Major-General Lord Edward Somerset, was then serving with Wellington; another, Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Fitzroy Somerset, would lose his right arm at Waterloo. As a tory ministry was in power in England, and his relatives possessed enormous influence, he came to South Africa with very little restraint upon his actions. Unable to brook the slightest opposition to his will, relentless in crushing those who tried to thwart him, he was affable to all who conducted themselves to his liking. He was accompanied by his lady — a daughter of Viscount Courtenay — two sons, and two daughters. Unlike Caledon and Cradock, he lacked the tact and sympathy so essential with a people who had not yet had time to forget their old allegiance and become British. [3] [4]
He was as desirous as any one could be for the improvement of the colony and the prosperity of its people, only everything tending to improvement and prosperity must emanate from himself. The experimental farm at Groote Post was still under the management of a board of directors consisting of the leading agriculturists of the western districts. It had been usual to request the governor to fill the position of president, and that office had been little more than honorary. Somerset politely thanked the members when they asked him to be their president, but they soon learned that he was disposed to be something beyond a mere patron. Very early in his term he turned his attention to the further development of the country’s natural resources, tobacco being looked to as a product likely to form the basis of a profitable export — a design that would, before the year closed, send a botanist on a 27-day ride to the Boschberg. The revenue of the colony was not adequate to meet necessary expenditure; Earl Bathurst, in his letters, lost no opportunity of emphasising economy. [3] [4]
The civil list that met him was already a frontier grievance. Cradock as civil governor drew 12000 pounds a year from colonial revenues; the lieutenant-governor 3000; the government secretary 3000; departmental secretary 3000; collector of taxes 1200; controller of taxes 1000; treasurer-general 1200; auditor-general 1000; paymaster-general 1000 — nine British officials pocketing over 26000 pounds a year out of a small colony with some 80000 white inhabitants, many living in abject poverty. Somerset was to receive 10000; his lieutenant-governor 3500; colonial secretary 3500; deputy colonial secretary 1500; auditor-general 1050; colonial paymaster 1000; controller of customs 1000; collector of customs 1000; chief searcher of customs 700; collector at Simonstown 700; private secretary 500; post-captain of Table Bay 500; English clergyman of Capetown 500; English clergyman of Simonstown 350 — a total of 25800 pounds for those named, somewhat more than one-third of the whole amount expended in salaries, the colonists having now to find over 70000 pounds a year for British officials. Those salaries were fixed in England and paid in sterling; the other Cape civil servants were paid in colonial paper, the rate of exchange varying. The chief justice had less than 1000 pounds, the other judges under 500 a year each. [3] [7]
Most of the causes of discontent already in the frontier districts when he came to succeed Cradock sat beside that list: the black circuit of 1812–13, the quitrent of August 1813, the abolition of the old burgher council, and the substitution of the governor’s nominees for the independent judges of the Dutch high court, so that the administrator was no longer merely the representative of the European sovereign state but the absolute ruler of the settlement, with practically unlimited autocratic power. The Dutch East India Company had robbed by monopolies and restrictions; the Batavian Republic had removed them; British government had reintroduced official interdicts against free trade and appropriated enormous sums out of the revenue for imported officials. That was the Capetown Somerset entered on the 5th of April — a castle under a British flag, a civil list in sterling, and an east newly named Albany whose surveyor’s street was still a line on paper. [3] [7]
Cradock Sails — 1 May 1814
On the 1st of May Sir John Cradock sailed for England in the ship-of-war Semiramis. The deepest feeling was manifested at the loss the country was about to sustain. Addresses, expressive of the utmost respect and unfeigned gratitude for the many permanent benefits he had conferred upon the country in the short period of 2 years and 7 months, were presented to him by the court of justice, advocates of the court of appeals, the burgher senate, merchants and traders, Freemasons, and others. He left a worthy memorial of himself in the initiation of beneficent measures whose development would advance the Eastern Province in common with the rest of the colony. In 1819 he was created Baron Howden, a title which descended to his son but is now with his family extinct. The departure mattered because the named districts, the quitrent, the school tax, and the circuit of 1812–13 were now Somerset’s to live with, and Cradock would not be in the castle when London paid for the Cape. [3] [4]
He was not only the patron but the promoter of free schools in Capetown for poor European children; the bible and school commission of principal officials and the clergymen of the Dutch reformed, Lutheran, and English episcopal congregations still sat, with Hesse as secretary and Jones an active member. Schools for coloured children at Capetown, Stellenbosch, and Tulbagh, kept by missionaries of the London and South African societies, were aided as much as possible by him. The ordinary schools in Capetown and at the drostdies received his attention. Grahamstown’s regimental school of some hundreds of children was the east’s brightest figure in that work. Just before he left South Africa he raised the Khoikhoi regiment from 500 to 800 men, his object being to relieve the burghers who were garrisoning the posts on the frontier. Instead of that, however, some regular troops were withdrawn, and the burghers were obliged to remain on duty until April 1815. [3] [4]
He took a very warm interest in everything that tended to the improvement of the people of South Africa, white and black. An enactment regarding slaves tended in the same direction, though at first sight it looked otherwise. The old Dutch laws gave freedom to slaves who professed the Christian religion; local regulations checked manumission; by the middle of the eighteenth century baptized negroes were frequently detained in slavery. The governor-general and council of India on the 10th of April 1770 enacted that slaves confirmed in the Christian religion should not thereafter be sold; a Cape regulation of the 3rd of June 1777 required every one emancipating a slave to pay to the poor funds of the church and give security that the freed person should not become entitled to relief as a pauper within 10 years. That Indian enactment, intended to promote Christianity, placed the owner’s interest as an obstacle to instruction. For that reason, on the 9th of October 1812, Cradock issued a proclamation annulling the law of 1770, leaving baptized slaves no greater privileges than others. The measure still stood when he boarded the Semiramis. [3]
Henry Alexander, cousin of the earl of Caledon, still held the colonial secretaryship he took on the 15th of November 1808 after Andrew Barnard’s death and Bird’s acting interval. Watse Sibius van Andringa was landdrost of Stellenbosch from the 1st of July 1812; Petrus Stephanus Buissinne of Swellendam from the 1st of January 1810; J. H. Fischer of Graaff Reinet from the 10th of July 1812, the office made vacant by the murder of Stockenstrom; Olof Marthini Bergh deputy landdrost of Tulbagh from the 7th of August following. Those were the men on the drostdy roll when the Semiramis cleared Table Bay. While Caledon and Cradock were governors, 500000 rixdollars were expended upon public buildings within the colony, though hardly any of those put up in the country villages would last. In Capetown there remained the block of offices into which the old slave lodge was converted, and the building on Buitenkant-street, facing the southern side of Caledon-square. That last structure was completed in 1814, and a portion of it was for many years afterwards used as the town granary. [3] [4]
Booy and Bezuidenhout — May 1814
In the wild country near the source of the Baviaan’s River, almost upon the Xhosa frontier, lived Frederick Cornelius Bezuidenhout. A Khoikhoi servant named Booy ran from him more than once in 1813. Stockenstrom mediated; Booy returned, ran again, hired himself for another year, then ran to Grahamstown and enlisted in the Cape Corps. Adjustment of his affairs was put aside for a time by the troubles with the Xhosa and the commando that occupied attention at the end of 1813. In May 1814 Booy again visited Stockenstrom about his property, which Bezuidenhout retained. As Stockenstrom was then making an official tour through the country, he visited the fieldcornet Philippus A. Opperman and instructed him to make another demand upon Bezuidenhout. The demand mattered because a wage dispute left hanging on the Baviaan’s River was about to become a summons, and a summons ignored on that frontier would later cost more than a stick. [4]
The demand was answered on the 31st of May 1814. Bezuidenhout wrote to “Esteemed Cousin and Good Friend Philippus A. Opperman” that he had received the letter with the Khoikhoi named Booy, understood that he must deliver Booy’s goods, and would certainly do so completely, provided that Booy also paid what he owed. He had already long ago written to the landdrost of the loss caused him by Booy, and of that nothing was mentioned in Opperman’s letter. His friendly request was that Opperman come over himself to mediate in the affair, otherwise Booy might again vilify him before the landdrost and tell all sorts of lies. Had Opperman complied with that request, the subsequent trouble would in all probability have been averted. The chief object of the offices of fieldcornet and heemraad was to settle disputes of this nature and to maintain peace without reference to the more rigid operation of the regular court of law. [4]
The letter which Opperman sent to Bezuidenhout was taken by Booy himself. Words arose between them. According to Bezuidenhout, Booy was insolent and so irritated him that he lost his temper and gave the Khoikhoi a thrashing, breaking his stick over his back. This sent Booy, having left without his cattle, again running after Stockenstrom, whom he met on his return journey from the Zuurveld. Stockenstrom left a letter with Opperman ordering Bezuidenhout to appear before the board of landdrost and heemraden in Graaff Reinet on the 5th of July 1814, and threatened that if he did not appear he would be prosecuted before the commission of circuit. On receipt of this Bezuidenhout rode as far as Opperman’s — three hours’ distance — and, as before, gave reasons why he could not go to Graaff Reinet. On the 10th of December he was again summoned, but on this occasion gave as his answer to the messenger of justice, T. B. Wiese, “I shall be present without lawful hindrance.” He did not appear. The later defiance, the circuit sentence, and the attempt to arrest him belong to the next year. What 1814 fixed was a stick broken on the Baviaan’s River, a July date missed, and a December promise not kept. [4]
Convention of London — 13 August 1814
When Somerset was appointed, a great part of Europe was in the throes of revolution owing to the reverses Napoleon had sustained in Russia. In November 1813 the French party in the Netherlands was obliged to give way; a provisional independent government was formed; and on the first of December the prince of Orange, after an exile in England of 19 years, landed at Scheveningen and was received by the Dutch people as their sovereign. After Leipzig as well as after the Russian disaster, Holland again underwent a revolution. The kingship of Louis Napoleon, commenced in June 1806, was at an end. In the settlement of western Europe that was now made, the whole of the Belgic and Batavian provinces were united into one kingdom, of which the prince of Orange became sovereign. The new monarch was urgently in need of money, and his territories were temporarily exhausted. That European account is why a stroke in London could transfer the Cape without a shot in Table Bay. [3] [7]
Under those circumstances, on the 13th of August a convention was entered into at London. Great Britain undertook to pay to the king of Sweden 1 million pounds sterling in liquidation of a claim against the Netherlands, to advance 2 million pounds toward improving the defences of the Netherlands, and to bear further charges not exceeding 3 million pounds toward the final settlement of the whole of the provinces under the dominion of the house of Orange. In consideration thereof the sovereign of the Netherlands ceded to Great Britain the Cape Colony and the settlements of Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice in South America. It was stipulated that Dutch colonists in the ceded countries should be at liberty to carry on trade with the Netherlands, and that ships of every kind belonging to Holland should have permission to resort freely to the Cape of Good Hope for refreshment and repairs, without being liable to other charges than such as British subjects should be required to pay. The plenipotentiary of the prince of Orange who concluded the arrangement and signed the convention was a brother of Fagel, the government auctioneer at the Cape. From this date the claim of the Netherlands to the Cape Colony ceased, and Great Britain acquired a dominion over the country which has never since been challenged by any power. The Cape now became a British colony by legal treaty arrangement. The convention mattered because the occupation of 1806 had been a wartime seizure; after the 13th of August the flag on the castle rested on a European bargain, not on Baird’s landing. [3] [7]
The last Dutch governor of the Cape was not at Table Bay to see the claim end. Jan Willem Janssens, who signed away the colony at Papendorp in January 1806 and sailed in March, went on to face a British invasion in the former Dutch East Indies, was a prisoner-of-war in England, was exonerated by Napoleon, made a baron of the empire, and transferred to Béziers because he had been freed on condition not to fight the British any more. In 1814 he returned to the Netherlands as lieutenant-general, chief of personnel, and commissioner-general for, first, the southern, and a year later the northern provinces. The man who asked Baird to give no credit to the enemies of the inhabitants, and who called the colonists “the Dutch South Africans,” was thus in Dutch harness again in the year London paid for the Cape. The convention did not consult him; it did not consult the court of justice or the burgher senate who addressed Cradock in May. It settled a European account with colonial ground as the consideration. [3] [9]
Orphan House and Moller’s Will — 1814
In July 1814 Somerset directed the board that administered the estates of persons dying intestate to advance to the directors of the orphan asylum the sum of 8000 rixdollars on loan without interest, which was practically equivalent to a grant. The design of a South African orphan house had been long in Mrs. Moller’s hands. In 1808 she resolved to build an orphan asylum and endow it with 1200 pounds originally set aside for a church in the Roggeveld. Upon part of a Long-street plot granted for an old-women’s asylum, three houses had been put up with the accumulated funds, for the purpose of being leased; the foundation of the building originally planned was standing on another part. Caledon, upon being applied to, raised no objection to using that foundation ground for an orphanage, and in July 1811 gave 5000 rixdollars from his private purse. Somerset also approved of the design. The loan mattered because the building could be finished this year, though the house itself would not yet open. [3]
No haste was made in carrying out the design, however, for though the building was completed in October 1814, it was only on the 26th of September 1815 that the South African orphan house was formally opened. The management was vested in a board of 6 directors, three of whom were to be Lutherans and three members of the Dutch reformed church. Whenever one died or retired the survivors were to appoint a successor. The six named by Mrs. Moller to form the first board were George Willem Hoppe, Simon Stronk, Gabriel Jacobus Vos, Sebastiaan Leibbrandt, Frans de Necker, and Johan Wrensch, with Andries Richert as secretary. [3]
In her will and codicils, the last dated the 6th of December 1814, she bequeathed to the endowment, in addition to the 1200 pounds already set aside, a teacher’s residence and schoolroom in Hout-street facing Long-street, then leased to the Lutheran congregation, on condition that it should never be used for other than religious purposes, and two slaves, one to be set free after 15 years’ service, the other to be taught a trade and emancipated after 10 years on payment of 400 rixdollars. After bequests to relatives and donations of 100 rixdollars to each of several charities, the residue was to be divided equally between the orphan house and the South African missionary society. Altogether her contributions to the orphan asylum amounted to about 6000 pounds. What the December will fixed was the endowment of a house whose walls were already up, and whose doors would not open until the next year. [3]
Mackrill at the Boschberg — October 1814
A few months after Somerset’s arrival he founded a large agricultural establishment at the other end of the colony, partly to supply the troops on the eastern frontier with meal and oat-hay, and partly for experiments in the cultivation of tobacco, with a view of increasing the exports. There was in Capetown a Dr. Mackrill, an enthusiastic botanist not long arrived from America, who seemed eminently capable of furthering the governor’s views. It was he who introduced buchu to the notice of medical men in England, though the plant had long been in use in South Africa, nearly every housewife keeping a supply among the remedies for ailments. He was instructed to make a tour of the east to investigate the possibilities of the country and, if a suitable spot were discovered, to conduct experiments in tobacco and agriculture generally. After a journey of 27 days from Capetown he arrived in Uitenhage at the end of September, then inspected along the Little Fish and Bruintjes Hoogte. He did not find it necessary to visit Albany: the charms of Uitenhage, which he described as the granary of the colony, promised all he deemed needful. [3] [4]
By the end of October he decided that the Boschberg was eminently suited, and one whose natural advantages would with difficulty be surpassed. He selected two loan places, one occupied by a farmer named Triegard, the other adjoining it by Bester. The approach, he reported, was over a lawn 7 miles wide and God knows how long, comprising at least a thousand acres of level rich land, clear as a park and covered with excellent sweet pasture. Arrived at the Boschberg, one viewed with delight the beauty of the mountain which bounded the north side of the farm: not an inch of useless ground, grass and timber to the summit. The arable part consisted of two valleys of great extent and fertility; more than a thousand acres submitted without trouble to irrigation, and by good management of the water-courses, leading them over the sides of gently rising hills, arable land could be had to almost any extent. The choice mattered because the east still had to feed the posts on the Fish, Bathurst wanted revenue, and Somerset wanted an export that would emanate from himself. [4]
Government resumed its right to these places, paying Triegard 2200 rixdollars and Bester 1400 for the buildings and crops then standing. Bester’s farm was acquired on account of the spring from which both partly derived their supply. The site was the tract taken possession of by Willem Prinsloo in the time of Van Plettenberg. On Mackrill’s suggestion that the land merited His Excellency’s noble and ancient name, the farm was called the Somerset farm. The place was found to have been brought under considerable cultivation by Triegard: 6000 tobacco plants already planted and in healthy growth, two kitchen gardens well stocked, and about 30 waggon-loads of pumpkins. There were two low mud-houses, each 40 feet long, on Triegard’s place, and a small building constructed for a water-mill on Bester’s. On the 1st of January 1815 Mackrill with his family and dependants, numbering 20 in all, would take possession. The tobacco experiment would come to nothing; as a means of furnishing provisions for the troops the establishment would prove a success. [3] [4]