Boer History1824 at the Cape of Good Hope: Greig’s Press, Bird’s Dismissal, Farewell at Natal, and the First Synod
English in Albany, the Commissioners, and Edwards — January–March 1824
On the 30th of January a proclamation announced that English would be used exclusively in judicial acts and proceedings in Albany after the 1st of March of that year. The period first named in 1822 was also shortened for Simonstown, where Dutch was seldom spoken. Lord Charles Henry Somerset was still in the oaths from the evening of the 30th of November 1821. English had issued from the secretary’s office since the 1st of January 1823, under Somerset’s proclamation of the 5th of July 1822. That earlier paper had given the rest of the colony until 1825 for exclusive English in official acts, and until the 1st of January 1827 for English alone in the courts. Albany and Simonstown were brought forward because English was widely spoken there. No one in those two districts objected. In Stellenbosch, Swellendam, and Graaff-Reinet, where Dutch was the language of the great majority, exclusive English in the courts was still treated as a serious grievance. The January order mattered because the 1820 locations now had an English bench months ahead of the old Dutch districts, and because the commissioners of inquiry were about to hear Albany in that language. [3]
Late in the afternoon of the 4th of February the commissioners of inquiry, William Macbean George Colebrooke and John Thomas Bigge, arrived in Grahamstown. They had landed at Simon’s Bay on the 12th of July 1823. So many complaints of Somerset’s arbitrary government had reached England that the ministry sent them to take evidence on the spot, and to head off a debate in the commons. Their presence was a slight on the governor, even when he made a show of helping them. They had been hourly expected, and every possible demonstration of delight greeted their entry. After dark the place was “illuminated” in their honour: a few tallow candles in the windows of A. B. Dietz, of Pieter Retief, and of the reverend William Geary. About nine o’clock some muskets and pistols were fired. Harry Rivers sent a messenger to the East Barracks and called for the military on the pretence that a riot had broken out. Colonel Henry Somerset ordered out the soldiers under the impression, so it was afterwards said, that Xhosa were attacking the town. The demonstration of the inhabitants was as feeble as could well be imagined; the military gave it an interest no one had looked for. The commissioners wrote to England on the 8th of February in very strong terms on Geary, and on others known to harbour resentment against the government — after one day in the town, and on what Rivers and Colonel Somerset had told them. The entry mattered because Albany’s landdrost and the governor’s son treated a few candles and a volley as a riot, and because the men sent to inquire into Somerset’s rule were welcomed as if they were a relief. [4]
In Capetown a notary who went by the name of William Edwards had been employed in January by Launcelot Cooke to draw up a memorial to the lords of the treasury. In it Charles Blair was charged with allotting prize negroes — Africans taken from illegal slavers and apprenticed by the customs — to his creditors in payment of his debts. On the 12th of January the case in the colonial court was withdrawn, and a long memorial drafted by Cooke and Edwards was sent to Somerset for transmission to England. The governor, with whom Blair was a favourite, handed it to the fiscal and caused Cooke and Edwards to be tried for libel. That is why a memorial meant for London became a Capetown prosecution. On Monday the 16th of February the court and the avenues leading to it were crowded at an early hour. Edwards handed in a list of 59 witnesses, among them the governor. The fiscal objected. Edwards then urged four exceptions, charged the fiscal with a gross and detestable falsehood, and, twice warned against indecorous language, was removed to the Capetown gaol on a sentence of a month’s imprisonment for contempt. The case was resumed on Wednesday the 18th with even greater public excitement. [3] [4]
On the 26th of March Cooke and Edwards were acquitted of the libel, but Edwards suffered his month for abusive language in court towards the fiscal, Daniel Denyssen. A report of the trial appeared in the South African Commercial Advertiser and was calculated to bring the chief law officer into disrespect. A leading article on a model administrator, and several extracts from books, also gave offence to the governor. In April Edwards was again brought before the high court, charged with addressing a malicious and libellous letter to Somerset, and in his defence did all he could to cast slurs upon the governor’s character. The public regarded Somerset as the real prosecutor, though the fiscal took the responsibility. What hung on the January memorial was not only Blair’s prize negroes. It put a notary, a favourite collector, and the governor himself into the same crowded court, and it gave the new weekly a trial it would not be allowed to report. [3]
The Commercial Advertiser and the South African Journal — January–May 1824
On the 7th of January the first number of the South African Commercial Advertiser was issued from the office, No. 30 Longmarket-street, Capetown. George Greig had reached the Cape in 1823 with a press obtained from Dr John Philip and type from a vessel calling at Table Bay on her passage to India. In July he had memorialised for leave to publish a magazine. Somerset had not yet received instructions from Earl Bathurst, and Greig was told that prior applicants would be considered first. He waited until December, heard nothing further, abandoned the magazine, and issued a prospectus of a weekly newspaper. In it he pledged that the paper would ever most rigidly exclude all personal controversy, however disguised, or the remotest discussion of subjects relating to the policy or administration of the colonial government. A copy went to the governor with a letter requesting his patronage, but not formally asking his leave. The pledge seemed to comply so exactly with Bathurst’s instructions — no political or personal controversy in a country of different nationalities and of slavery — that Somerset made no objection. A little later Thomas Pringle and John Fairbairn became its joint editors. Both were well-educated and able, and its literary character was high. The first number mattered because Capetown had never before had a weekly that was not the Gazette, and because the pledge that got it past the castle was the same pledge the fiscal would later demand in money. [3]
On the 2nd of December 1823 Somerset had formally given leave to Pringle and the reverend Abraham Faure to publish the magazine they had proposed on the 3rd of February 1823. Bathurst’s answer of the 7th of July had been that he had no objection, provided that all topics of political or personal controversy were rigidly excluded. On the 5th of March the first number of the South African Journal appeared, followed in April by the first number of the Nederduitsch Zuid-Afrikaansch Tijdschrift. Each magazine was issued as an octavo pamphlet of 64 to 100 pages. The Tijdschrift was the Cape periodical that in this year showed a lively interest in the old journal of the gardens of 1652. The second number of the Journal appeared on the 7th of May and contained, among other articles, one upon the state and prospects of the British settlers, in which their distress was partly attributed to “an arbitrary system of government and its natural consequences: abuse of power by local functionaries, monopolies, restrictions, &c.” That sentence is why the English octavo did not get a third number. [1] [3]
On the 13th of May the fiscal sent for Pringle and demanded security that he would abstain in future from political and personal controversy. Pringle declined to give it. The governor then sent for him, and in offensive language upbraided him with being ungrateful. Somerset had enlarged the grant to Pringle’s party of settlers at Glen Lynden by 9400 acres, and had conferred upon him the situation of sub-librarian of the public library in Capetown, with a salary of 75 pounds a year. Pringle replied that he presumed the grant of ground had been made as a matter of public duty, and as for the sub-librarianship he begged to resign it. Somerset then expressed a wish that the Journal should be continued, but that care should be taken to avoid offensive matter. Pringle declined to conduct it longer unless it was protected by law from arbitrary interference on the part of the executive, and to this no reply was made. The Zuid-Afrikaansch Tijdschrift continued to be published as before, but the Journal expired with the second number. An academy conducted by Pringle and Fairbairn, which had been in a thriving condition, now rapidly lost its best pupils, as the governor showed himself unfriendly to those who sent children to it. He regarded it as a school where seditious principles were being instilled into the young, and wrote so urgently to Bathurst that the secretary of state engaged a clergyman of the English church, Edward Judge, to come out and establish a seminary — a counter-stroke that belongs to the next year, but the damage to the academy was done in May. [3]
Pringle’s resignation of the library was received. After a short time in the post he gave it up in May, and A. J. Jardine succeeded to it. The books bequeathed by Van Dessin, 62 years under the consistory of the Dutch reformed church, sat in the same rooms, kept separate by agreement with the perpetual trustees named in the donor’s will. The May quarrel mattered because the English magazine died for want of a legal shield, the Dutch magazine lived, a librarian would not give security, and a governor still held that a printing press in a country of different nationalities and of slavery could not sit without a pledge. [3]
Seal on the Press, Bird Dismissed, Edwards Transported — May–June 1824
To prevent a report of Edwards’s April trial appearing in print, on the 3rd of May the governor instructed the fiscal to require Greig to furnish security to the amount of 750 pounds that he would adhere to the terms of his prospectus, and unless such security were forthcoming by the 7th of the month to stop the press until it should be given. The fiscal was also directed to look over the proof-sheets of the paper to be published on the 5th, and to suppress anything offensive in them. On the evening of the 4th these instructions were carried out. The following morning the eighteenth number of the Commercial Advertiser appeared with a notice that as the fiscal had assumed a censorship, the publisher found it his duty to discontinue the paper until he had applied for redress to his Excellency the governor and the British government. The 7th passed without an offer of the required security, but with a notification by Greig that he intended to publish an advertising sheet and an account of the facts connected with the suppression. The 750 pounds mattered because the December pledge, which had been enough to start the weekly, was now demanded as a bond, and because a report of Edwards in type was what Somerset would not have in Longmarket-street. [3]
On the 8th of May the governor directed the fiscal to put a seal upon the press, and issued a warrant requiring Greig to leave the colony within a month. The matter was regarded as of such importance that these directions were carried out on Sunday by the fiscal and a commission from the high court of justice. Greig then managed to print an account of what had occurred on slips of paper, which were extensively distributed; and he also put up a notice offering his type for sale, to enable him to proceed to England to seek redress. This so irritated the governor that he issued an order to place a seal on the type, and when it was thus made unsaleable, offered to purchase it at a valuation. To get money, Greig gave his consent, and though a fortnight later it was intimated to him by the fiscal that, unless he provoked the governor again, his quitting the colony would not be enforced, he took passage in the first vessel that sailed for England. A few days later the type was transferred by the governor to a printer in the Gazette office named William Bridekirk, who had a small shop for the sale of books and stationery. Upon reaching England Greig applied to Bathurst and received an attentive hearing. The secretary of state was no more in favour of an uncontrolled newspaper at the Cape than Somerset was, but the suppression was exciting comment in London, and the opponents of the ministry were turning it to account. Greig and Somerset agreed on the facts and differed on the deductions. Philip’s claim that the press was the London missionary society’s property was repudiated by Greig, who said it had been purchased, not borrowed, and that the sale of the type to the Cape government had been forced upon him. [3]
Shortly after Greig left, his press was claimed by Philip as the property of the London missionary society, but the governor refused to give it up without proof of ownership and security to the amount of 750 pounds that it would not be used for purposes of political or personal controversy. He then referred the matter to Bathurst. Meantime a petition to the king in council was numerously signed in Capetown, praying that the press in South Africa might be placed under legal protection. This tended to exasperate the governor still more, and his displeasure was vented upon as many of those who signed it as came in his way. He threatened to put in force his proclamation against illegal meetings if the members of a newly-formed literary and scientific society — who were chiefly men that signed the petition — should venture to assemble, and he compelled all civil servants of standing to withdraw their names from that association. The petition mattered because it asked London to do what the castle would not: put a Cape press under law instead of under a fiscal’s seal. [3]
Edwards was found guilty and sentenced to 7 years’ transportation to New South Wales. The full court of 8 judges under the presidency of Sir John Truter heard him on the 28th of May, Edwards being defended in forma pauperis. English convict ships called at the Cape for supplies of fresh provisions, and by order of the imperial government persons sentenced to transportation by the colonial high court were received on board and conveyed to Australia, where they were kept in detention just as if they had been sentenced in England. When on the way to Simonstown to be consigned to a convict ship, Edwards made his escape, but was subsequently discovered in the house of a retired shipmaster named John Carnall, at Wynberg, and when re-arrested made an abortive attempt to commit suicide. Captain Carnall was then tried before a court of two judges for aiding Edwards to escape, and was sentenced to banishment from the colony for a year. The fiscal appealed to the full court, and on the 8th of November the sentence was increased to 5 years’ transportation to New South Wales. The governor mitigated it to 5 years’ banishment from the colony, and Carnall took passage for England. Edwards was regarded by a large number of people as a kind of martyr for liberty, pursued for a letter in unguarded language; Carnall as an inoffensive and amiable man required, in the evening of life, to sacrifice his property. At daybreak on the morning of the 1st of June Captain Findlay, a master mariner resident in the town, observed a placard pasted on a post at the Heerengracht end of the parade, a malignant and obscene charge against the governor. He did not remove it, and a little later it was not there, though no one else could be found who saw it. Upon nothing but Findlay’s report the governor offered a very large reward for the discovery of the author, the leading people in the town supplemented the offer, no discovery was made, and warrants issued to search the premises and papers of certain individuals brought nothing whatever to light. An opinion became prevalent that the placard was designed by some of his Excellency’s minions purposely to enable search warrants to be issued. These matters found their way into the London newspapers, greatly to Somerset’s disfavour. [3] [4]
Colonel Christopher Bird was at open enmity with the governor. In May 1818, upon the death of Henry Alexander, he had been recommended by Somerset for the office of colonial secretary, with a salary of 3500 pounds and a perquisite of 300 pounds a year. Early in 1823 Somerset came to suspect that certain documents made use of to his detriment by Sir Rufane Shawe Donkin in London were supplied by the colonial secretary, and the result was a despatch from Earl Bathurst, dated the 13th of March, announcing that the king was pleased to dispense with Colonel Bird’s services. On the 4th of June this despatch was received, and on the same day Pieter Gerhard Brink was directed to act as colonial secretary. Bird was obliged to retire with 6 months’ salary in advance, and thereafter a pension of 600 pounds a year, with a promise of 200 pounds a year to Mrs Bird should she survive him. A petition to the king and parliament from a considerable number of people in Capetown opposed to the redemption of the paper money at the low rate of 18 pence sterling to the rixdollar had gone to England in Bird’s charge, and excited much comment. Those smarting under the loss held that Somerset was to blame because he had not reduced the public expenditure so as to apply the interest of the loan bank to the redemption of the paper, instead of crediting it to the revenue. In this year, to Bathurst’s chagrin, Somerset drew bills, under the storm-loan authority of 1822, for 35097 pounds 10 s. 7 d., with which he redeemed the 200000 paper rixdollars, issued other sums on loan to the amount of 11163 pounds, and applied the balance — 8934 pounds — to the repair of public buildings. The June chair mattered because the colonial secretary at 3500 pounds, a Roman Catholic whom the governor himself had recommended in 1818, was removed on suspicion of feeding Donkin in London, while the storm-loan of 1822 was drawn at last against Bathurst’s grain. [3] [4]
Green Point Light, the French Hoek Road, and the Northern Boundary — April–September 1824
In 1820 the erection of the first lighthouse on the South African coast had been commenced at Green Point, on the shore of Table Bay, by order of Donkin. The building was completed early in this year, and the light — a double one from 2 lanterns — was first exhibited on the 12th of April. Until then Table Bay, the roadstead of the occupation, had had no lighthouse of its own. The double light mattered because shipping still made the Cape in the dark, and because Donkin’s work, finished under Somerset, was the first beam the colony put on its own coast. [3] [4]
In this year a road was completed through the first range of mountains, at the pass behind French Hoek. It was designed by Major Holloway, of the royal engineers, and the work was chiefly performed by soldiers of the Royal African corps. This road opened direct communication between Capetown and Worcester, and shortened the journey to Graaff-Reinet by about 40 miles. Its construction cost the colony 8375 pounds. Worcester was a creation of Somerset’s. After the western storms of July 1822 he had moved the Tulbagh landdrost there and renamed the district on the 8th of November 1822. On the 5th of March that portion of Worcester west of a line from the end of Piketberg to Verloren Vlei was cut off and added to the district of the Cape. In January William Mackay succeeded Captain Harding as deputy landdrost at Cradock. The March paper and Holloway’s pass mattered because a western slice of Worcester went back to the Cape district, a new deputy sat at the Boschberg’s inland door, and soldiers cut 40 miles off the north-eastern journey at 8375 pounds. [3]
On the 17th of January 1822 Lieutenant Bonamy, of the 6th regiment of infantry, had been attached to the engineer department and directed to proceed to Graaff-Reinet, to aid the landdrost in the inspection of a north-eastern and northern boundary line, and to frame a map of that part of the colony. In March of that year Andries Stockenstrom and Bonamy had reported the Zwart Kei, Klaas Smiths river, and the Stormberg spruit on the north-east, and had inspected the Orange from the junction of the Stormberg spruit to a little below the junction of the Seacow river. In August of this year Bonamy and Stockenstrom completed their inspection from the point where they had left off 17 months before. The names of the various ridges have nearly all been changed in later years, but the line followed the Orange river about as far down as to longitude 24° 20′, then turned in a direction almost straight to the Pramberg, and thence formed an irregular curve cutting the junction of the Zak and Riet rivers and continuing to the mouth of the Buffalo river on the shore of the Atlantic. On the 9th of September the boundary thus fixed upon was approved of in a letter from the colonial office to the landdrost, and though it was never formally proclaimed, the government thereafter exercised full control within it. Including the work of Bonamy, about 10000 square miles were completed under Holloway, at a cost to the colony of only 1100 pounds, but the survey was then stopped for want of funds. The September letter mattered because the colony took a northern line to the Buffalo mouth without a proclamation, and because 10000 square miles of map cost 1100 pounds and then stopped. [3]
By the 28th of July 120 men, 44 women, and 82 children of John Ingram’s Irish, who had come on the Barrosa in December 1823, had been disposed of at the rates named: in the case of men Rds. 300, of women Rds. 200, and of children Rds. 150, to buy freedom from the 3-year indenture, or they worked for Ingram. A certificate of Mr Crozier, cashier of the bank, dated the 3rd of August, showed a total collected for the settlers’ fund of Rds. 4252, of which Rds. 1352 had been expended for lying-in women and the like, Rds. 500 remitted to the landdrost in December 1822, and Rds. 2400 still in the bank — money whose existence seems to have been forgotten while Rivers’s “Governor’s Fund” showered and then ceased. The Irish of the Barrosa and the rixdollars in Crozier’s book sat on the same winter table as Holloway’s pass and a northern line that had never been proclaimed: labour placed, a fund still in the bank, and a boundary exercised without a gazette. [4]
The Julia, the Antelope, and Farewell at Natal — April–December 1824
Francis George Farewell had brought home in the Salisbury on the 3rd of December 1823 a resolution to return. The Salisbury had left Table Bay on the 23rd of June 1823 to look at the south-eastern coast; what Farewell wanted now was not another look but a station. Some 25 individuals joined him. They purchased a sloop of 30 tons burden, named the Julia, which was intended to ply between Natal and the Cape, and chartered the brig Antelope to convey them with their stores and some horses to their destination. In April the Julia sailed for Natal with a few of the party under the leadership of Henry Francis Fynn, son of a man who for many years after the English conquest in 1806 kept an inn called the British Hotel, in Long-street, Capetown. Fynn later said he arrived in March; but on the 27th of March the Julia reached Table Bay from Saldanha Bay with a cargo of grain, and no notice of her sailing to Natal on that occasion appeared in the Gazette. The April sailing mattered because the castle still did not call Natal a drostdy, and because a thirty-ton sloop and a chartered brig were all that sat between Capetown and a port Tshaka claimed. [3] [7]
Farewell with the remainder of the party sailed from Table Bay in the Antelope on the 27th of May, and arrived safely at Natal 6 weeks after the Julia. But the hearts of most of the adventurers soon failed them. On the 7th of September Messrs Hoffman, father and son, Pietersen, Buxman, Collins, Nel, De Bruin, Johnstone, and Davids embarked in the Julia and set sail for the Cape. The Julia returned to Natal, and on the 1st of December sailed again for Algoa Bay with 11 other members of the party. She was never afterwards heard of, and is supposed to have foundered at sea with her crew and passengers. The Europeans at Natal were now completely cut off from intercourse with the outer world. The little party consisted of Farewell and Fynn, two men named John Cane and Henry Ogle, and a boy named Thomas Holstead. Farewell had three Khoikhoi servants. Cane was a man of unusual physical strength who had arrived in Capetown from London in August 1813, worked as a storeman, gone with Dr Mackrill to the Somerset farm as a labourer, then bound himself to a carpenter and learned that trade before he joined the Natal party. Of Ogle and Holstead little was known. The December loss mattered because five Englishmen and three Khoikhoi were left on a coast the colony did not govern, with no vessel of their own. [3] [7]
All that they knew of the country around them was that its soil seemed rich, that it abounded with elephants, that it was almost uninhabited, and that Tshaka claimed it. Early in July Farewell, accompanied by Fynn, Pietersen, and several others, visited Tshaka at his principal military kraal, where no European had ever been before. To their surprise they found the interpreter Jacob, who had run away from the Salisbury at St Lucia Bay in 1823 and was supposed to be dead. Jacob, who had received from the Zulus the name Hlambamanzi, was high in Tshaka’s favour, and by then had a large drove of cattle and several wives. He was obliging enough to commend his former master to his present one, and the Europeans were therefore well received. When the rest of the party returned to Natal, Fynn and a Khoikhoi remained at the kraal. Two days afterwards an attempt was made to assassinate Tshaka while he was dancing, and he received a very severe wound. Fynn, who knew something of surgery, attended him, and by means of ointments and medicines sent by Farewell a rapid cure was effected. Nothing could have happened more opportunely for the interests of the Europeans, as from that time forward Tshaka was their friend. The July visit mattered because a runaway interpreter and a wound dressed with Cape ointment were what opened the kraal; without them Farewell had no grant and no friend at the military town. [3] [7]
As soon as the chief was out of danger, Fynn sent a message to Natal, and Farewell, accompanied by Henry Ogle, three of the crew of the Julia, and a Khoikhoi, proceeded to the kraal to congratulate him upon his escape. Tshaka presented a number of oxen to the party, and attached his mark to a document in which he granted, made over, and sold unto F. G. Farewell and Company the entire and full possession in perpetuity to themselves, heirs, and executors, of the port or harbour of Natal, together with the islands therein and surrounding country, running about 100 miles inland and embracing the coast 10 miles to the south-west and about 25 miles to the north-east of the harbour. This deed was dated the 7th of August. It had upon it the marks of Tshaka himself and four of the indunas, among whom Jacob appeared under his Zulu name, and it was signed by the whole of Farewell’s party. The territory thus ceded was described by Farewell in a letter to Somerset as containing not more than 300 or 400 native inhabitants, living in the most wretched condition imaginable, though one of them — a man named Umnini — had once been the head of a powerful clan. On the 27th of August Farewell hoisted the English flag at the port, fired a royal salute, and in the presence of several of Tshaka’s indunas proclaimed the territory ceded to him a British possession. England neither possessed nor claimed any territory to the north of the Orange river; in Natal a small colony of merchants and traders from Capetown had, in this year, settled by permission of the Zulu king on the Bay. The August paper and the flag mattered because a private deed and a salute were all the title the five men had, and because the castle still did not call that port a drostdy. [3] [7]
The First Synod, Elim, the Tyumie, and Geary — September–November 1824
In the regulations of the Batavian commissioner De Mist a synod or general assembly of the clergymen and elders of the Dutch reformed church, to meet every second year, had been contemplated; but after the conquest of the colony by the English the design was abandoned, though a general assembly was more than ever needed, owing to the severance of the connection with the classis of Amsterdam. In this year Somerset sanctioned the convocation of a synod, and on the 2nd of November it met in Capetown. At the opening there were 12 clergymen and 10 elders present. The reverend Jan Christoffel Berrangé was chosen to be moderator. The reverend Meent Borcherds was appointed secretary. Two political commissioners represented the government: Sir John Truter, chief justice of the colony, and P. J. Truter. The session closed on the 19th of November, when the resolutions were sent to Somerset for approval, and by him were provisionally confirmed pending the decision of the imperial government. He neglected, however, to forward them to England. The main result of the deliberations was that all the congregations in the colony were divided into 3 presbyteries. The church sat under 2 political commissioners, and its paper waited on a governor who did not send it home. That is how thoroughly subject the church was to the state. [3] [4]
Upon their arrival, in September Henry Sutherland became minister of a new congregation formed at Worcester; in December of the same year Colin Fraser was appointed to Beaufort West in succession to Taylor, who had been removed to Cradock in December 1823. They were two of the three students Dr George Thom had arranged should proceed to Holland and learn the Dutch language, preparatory to taking employment in South Africa. In this year the Moravians founded the station of Elim, only a few miles from Cape Agulhas. The Glasgow missionary society’s first agents, W. R. Thomson and John Bennie, who in November 1821 had proceeded to the assistance of John Brownlee at the Tyumie, were reinforced by others from Scotland, and in this year a station was founded eight or ten miles farther down the same river, near the later institution of Lovedale. By this year the Chumie, founded in June 1820 as for a time the only mission station in Xhosa country, was no longer alone on that river. The new pulpits mattered because Worcester and Beaufort West now had Dutch-speaking Scots, Agulhas had a Moravian station, and the Tyumie had a second Glasgow post — the frontier church moving with the map. [3] [4]
Practically after 1820 there was political and civil equality for persons of every religious belief, though it was still vaguely held in theory that Roman Catholics could be excluded from civil offices by laws of England that were binding in South Africa. If this was correct, the theory was not reduced to practice, for Colonel Bird, the colonial secretary, was a member of that church. In this year Mr Scully, the only priest in South Africa, left the country, and the flock was left shepherdless. The small but neat building off Harrington-street, where Trinity church later stood, had been put up from a fund to which not only the principal civil servants and townspeople but even the clergymen of other denominations had subscribed, and the burgher senate had approved of a site granted free of charge. Donkin had allowed the clergyman a stipend; Somerset on his return had withdrawn it. The flock without a priest mattered because Bird could sit as colonial secretary in a church whose only priest was gone, and because the stipend Donkin had allowed did not survive Somerset’s return. [3] [4]
The reverend William Geary, clergyman of the English episcopal church, had come to the colony with a letter of recommendation from the duke of Beaufort, and had been stationed at Grahamstown. He soon showed himself as a petty-minded man, unsuited to his position, and continually in conflict over what he termed his surplice fees. The commissioners, arriving on the 4th of February, wrote to England on the 8th in very strong terms on Geary, as well as on some others known by his enemies — Rivers and Colonel Somerset — before they could have known much except what those enemies had told them. In October Somerset dismissed him, and appointed the reverend Thomas Ireland as his successor, greatly to the satisfaction of the Grahamstown people. Geary returned to England, where he represented himself as a victim of the governor’s tyranny, and was attentively listened to. Finding himself in straitened circumstances in Capetown before he sailed, he had to look for other means. The soldiers were not allowed to listen to his farewell sermon. The October chair mattered because a Beaufort letter had put Geary in Grahamstown, surplice fees had kept him in conflict, and the commissioners’ first despatch — written after one day — helped to take him out. [3] [4]
Fort Willshire, the Chronicle, and Plasket — July–December 1824
On the 23rd of July a proclamation published the regulations under which barter was to be carried on only at Fort Willshire, and only by persons who had obtained a special licence from the landdrost. On the 2nd of August 1823 Colonel Scott had consulted Gaika at the Chumie with a view to securing his co-operation in establishing fairs in his country; the chief had expressed his willingness, and Fort Willshire was chosen as more central than the Chumie and under the officer commanding the troops there. From the 18th of August of this year the bugles sounded the commencement of business. Agricultural implements such as picks and hoes, highly coloured handkerchiefs, blankets, cotton stuffs, and, in accordance with the proclamation, trousers and other parts of European clothing, sat on one side; ivory by the pound, gum, and hides on the other. All ivory sold by the pound had to be taken to the market master’s scales, the duty performed by a sergeant or some other non-commissioned officer. A small picket of soldiers patrolled continually to prevent quarrelling or the supply of forbidden articles; more than one licence was cancelled on that account. The average price given for ivory, in beads and the like, was Rds. 2 — 3 shillings — per pound. The fair mattered because licensed barter at a military post was meant to replace the old unlicensed trade across the Fish, and because ivory, gum, and hides now crossed a sergeant’s scales under a picket. [4]
On that same 18th of August a new paper, called the South African Chronicle and Mercantile Advertiser, appeared from Bridekirk’s type. This paper, like the Commercial Advertiser, was published in the English and Dutch languages once a week. It was to all intents a government organ, and was eulogistic of Somerset personally. It continued until the close of 1826. The same day, in the old Commercial Exchange in Capetown, about 120 people sat the annual meeting of the Society for the Relief of Distressed Settlers. The speeches of Philip and of H. E. Rutherfoord, who had gone east after the flood of 1823 to see the distress for themselves, embodied the results of their investigations and gave rise to much turmoil. They charged the landdrost with wilful neglect. Rivers hurriedly collected testimonials to his humanity, as well as one taken through the district and signed by 225 names, and a pamphlet entitled Authentic Copies of a Correspondence was printed at the government press and circulated, one being sent to Earl Bathurst. The settlers’ own testimonial from Albany was dated the 1st of September. Philip, a few weeks afterwards, published a reply; Rutherfoord another. The August meeting mattered because the flood of October 1823 was still the settlers’ case, and because a government weekly from Greig’s type appeared on the same day that Philip charged Rivers in the Exchange. [3] [4]
On the 9th of November Bishop Burnett was pronounced guilty of libel for the memorial of the 2nd of December 1823 against the circuit judges, when he was sentenced to banishment from the colony for 5 years, and to imprisonment until his embarkation. The latter part of the sentence was not enforced, and with an early opportunity Burnett left South Africa and proceeded to England. Bird’s successor, Sir Richard Plasket, assumed duty on the 23rd of November with the title of secretary to government, and a salary of 3000 pounds a year — less than Bird’s 3500 and 300 perquisite, but a full colonial secretary’s chair. At Bathurst the contractor T. Mahony, who had undertaken on the 12th of April 1821 to finish the magistrate’s house after Mandy’s failure, finished it in December of this year — and it was then consigned to the scrap-heap, the drostdy having sat Grahamstown since February 1822. Retief’s contracts for the Grahamstown drostdy house and Scott’s barracks remained in litigation: decayed and refuse wood, a stopped second instalment, loose wording, and a field commandant who had had to take the field against Magomo while his workmen went unsupervised. Burnett’s 5 years and Plasket’s 3000 pounds mattered because the December 1823 memorial against the circuit was now a sentence, and because Bird’s chair was filled at a lower figure while Albany still litigated a house it no longer needed. [3] [4]
On the 7th of December, being just on the eve of leaving town, the reverend Andrew Murray wrote to Philip from Capetown that he was not ignorant of Philip’s most unpardonable conduct in giving a communication to one of His Majesty’s commissioners of inquiry purporting the same to have come from Murray himself, and reflecting most unwarrantably on one of the constituted authorities — Stockenstrom — all of which Philip must know was in direct opposition to strict honour and plain truth; no further communication would be made to, or held with, him. Philip was returning to England. Manumissions in this year numbered 56, against 44 in 1823 and 34 in 1822. The slave population of the colony stood at some 35509. Murray’s letter mattered because a Graaff-Reinet clergyman broke with the superintendent of the London missions over a paper shown to Colebrooke and Bigge in Stockenstrom’s name; the 56 manumissions were still purchases and kindnesses, not a general emancipation, in a colony of more than 35000 slaves. [4] [4]