Read Online Coal Black Heart by John Demont - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John Demont
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bag to show the king a selection of the firm’s latest creations.”
Why am I telling you all this? Because George’s son Prince Frederick, the Duke of York and Albany, also had a thing forbaubles. When he saw his brother, George IV, dressed for the coronation in 1821, he admired the profusion of jewellery (not all real) and exclaimed, “By God I’ll have everything the same at mine.” His biographer called Frederick the king’s favourite son, “inattentive to his pecuniary affairs, in consequence of which he fell into many difficulties, and in some instances his name stood on tradesmen’s books.” The death of George III in 1820 meant that the prince was without the £10,000 a year he had received for looking after his father. When he died in 1827, he left such staggering debts that the Duchess of York approached Christie’s to sell his extensive silver collection to cover them. By 1825 Messrs Rundell and Bridge of Ludgate Hill were holding a big slice of the £250,000 in debts which the Duke could barely cover.
The jewellers had another problem: what to do with the money that filled their coffers at a time when the world seemed decidedly short on sound investment opportunities. A year earlier, Rundell and Bridge had been persuaded to form a company with the intriguing title of Colombian Pearl Fishery Association. They raised £120,000 on the stock market, then sent two ships to Latin America in search of lucrative pearl beds. Their ships didn’t find anything that would yield the kind of return the London jewellers needed on their investment. They went back to the drawing board, rounded up some more London investors and formed the General South American Mining Association. The company moved quickly, sewing up mineral rights in Brazil and Colombia. A year later—with Latin American mining companies failing everywhere—the GSAMA abandoned its adventure. Which is precisely where the Duke of York and his marker with Rundell, Bridge and Rundell (Philip’s nephew, Edmond, had joined them in 1803) came in.
In 1788—even though his mental illness had yet to explode intofull-blown mania—George III had drafted a lease to all the mineral rights in Nova Scotia that he fully intended to give to the Duke of York. The documents, for one reason or another, were never completed and the lease seemed to have slipped the duke’s mind—until Parliament and his moneylenders at some point started looking askance at his dissipated ways. By then the paperwork had been mislaid, the king was too far gone to recall the past, and all the officials from 1788 were dead or gone. No one put any stock in the duke’s claim. So you can imagine the bafflement when the document was found in the Crown’s patent office. And in 1826 the Duke immediately turned around and sublet the mining leases to the London jewellers. Then he no doubt issued a royal “whew.” Everyone was happy. He had reduced his debts and acquired a 25 percent cut in the anticipated profits from a new foreign venture. Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, who had shortened the name of their offshore company to the General Mining Association, must have been relieved not to have to write off the royal debt. When the deal was examined from one angle the people of Nova Scotia had lost out: their minerals, and the riches that went with them, had been cavalierly handed away to old-country landlords in an act of outrageous royal whimsy. On the other hand, the pragmatists in Nova Scotia understood that suddenly there was capital and mining expertise—in short, an industry—where before there had been none.
There was no denying that the arrangement started poorly. The GMA had been misinformed; they expected to find veins of copper, since Nova Scotia’s soil was supposed to teem with it. In 1825 they sent out a Cornish mining engineer named Blackwell to tally up the vast colonial riches. He spent a summer considering every known copper deposit in the province. According to Brown, he
Why am I telling you all this? Because George’s son Prince Frederick, the Duke of York and Albany, also had a thing forbaubles. When he saw his brother, George IV, dressed for the coronation in 1821, he admired the profusion of jewellery (not all real) and exclaimed, “By God I’ll have everything the same at mine.” His biographer called Frederick the king’s favourite son, “inattentive to his pecuniary affairs, in consequence of which he fell into many difficulties, and in some instances his name stood on tradesmen’s books.” The death of George III in 1820 meant that the prince was without the £10,000 a year he had received for looking after his father. When he died in 1827, he left such staggering debts that the Duchess of York approached Christie’s to sell his extensive silver collection to cover them. By 1825 Messrs Rundell and Bridge of Ludgate Hill were holding a big slice of the £250,000 in debts which the Duke could barely cover.
The jewellers had another problem: what to do with the money that filled their coffers at a time when the world seemed decidedly short on sound investment opportunities. A year earlier, Rundell and Bridge had been persuaded to form a company with the intriguing title of Colombian Pearl Fishery Association. They raised £120,000 on the stock market, then sent two ships to Latin America in search of lucrative pearl beds. Their ships didn’t find anything that would yield the kind of return the London jewellers needed on their investment. They went back to the drawing board, rounded up some more London investors and formed the General South American Mining Association. The company moved quickly, sewing up mineral rights in Brazil and Colombia. A year later—with Latin American mining companies failing everywhere—the GSAMA abandoned its adventure. Which is precisely where the Duke of York and his marker with Rundell, Bridge and Rundell (Philip’s nephew, Edmond, had joined them in 1803) came in.
In 1788—even though his mental illness had yet to explode intofull-blown mania—George III had drafted a lease to all the mineral rights in Nova Scotia that he fully intended to give to the Duke of York. The documents, for one reason or another, were never completed and the lease seemed to have slipped the duke’s mind—until Parliament and his moneylenders at some point started looking askance at his dissipated ways. By then the paperwork had been mislaid, the king was too far gone to recall the past, and all the officials from 1788 were dead or gone. No one put any stock in the duke’s claim. So you can imagine the bafflement when the document was found in the Crown’s patent office. And in 1826 the Duke immediately turned around and sublet the mining leases to the London jewellers. Then he no doubt issued a royal “whew.” Everyone was happy. He had reduced his debts and acquired a 25 percent cut in the anticipated profits from a new foreign venture. Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, who had shortened the name of their offshore company to the General Mining Association, must have been relieved not to have to write off the royal debt. When the deal was examined from one angle the people of Nova Scotia had lost out: their minerals, and the riches that went with them, had been cavalierly handed away to old-country landlords in an act of outrageous royal whimsy. On the other hand, the pragmatists in Nova Scotia understood that suddenly there was capital and mining expertise—in short, an industry—where before there had been none.
There was no denying that the arrangement started poorly. The GMA had been misinformed; they expected to find veins of copper, since Nova Scotia’s soil was supposed to teem with it. In 1825 they sent out a Cornish mining engineer named Blackwell to tally up the vast colonial riches. He spent a summer considering every known copper deposit in the province. According to Brown, he
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