At Kingdom's Edge: The Suriname Struggles of Jeronimy Clifford, English Subject by Jacob Selwood

Author:Jacob Selwood
Format: epub

“I Am Vastly Rich, Nay Vastly Rich”: A Colonial Subject’s Delusions of Wealth

Clifford remained imprisoned for debt until as late as 1720, a period during which he continued to pursue his case in both petition and print. By the final years of his incarceration he believed that vast riches awaited him in the British Treasury from bonds posted by the Dutch after officials had seized thirteen of their ships on his behalf. This was, presumably, inspired by Sir John Cooke’s 1702 allusion to possible letters of reprisal.¹³⁰ If he could just get the appropriate government officials to act, he could win his freedom, escape poverty, and take his rightful place as a wealthy man. While probably delusional, the assumptions underlying Clifford’s claims of wealth are revealing. The force of his colonial English subjecthood, underwritten by treaties from the previous century, had, he thought, finally moved the Crown to act against the Dutch. And despite his earlier experience of fraud at the hands of the Earl of Jersey, he remained the subject of a monarch whose servants protected his interests. No one had embezzled the money that had resulted from the ships’ seizure, which was waiting for him to claim as compensation for his years of suffering.

During the preceding years in debtors’ prison Clifford had launched numerous enquiries about his case, all of which hit dead ends. By August 1705 he was again asking the queen to intervene with the States General. In the same petition he asked that the Court of Holland in the Hague determine a suit he had brought against “the heir of one Lodge in Suriname” in 1698 “for a considerable sum of money due to me.”¹³¹ Later that year he wrote from the Fleet suggesting a settlement of £110,000 in damages.¹³² By March 1706 he was petitioning Robert Harley, noting in his papers that he had “not had any answer.”¹³³ Within a year Harley had asked how much he demanded. Clifford responded that he was willing to accept 120,000 guilders (plus interest), taking payment in “lands, exchequer notes, bank bills &c. or otherwise,” as the queen would see fit.¹³⁴ Replying via his chief clerk, Harley stated that he would write to the queen’s minister in Holland.¹³⁵ However, he seems not to have acted further.

By 1707 Clifford had been told by “a gentleman at court” that the queen had placed the matter in the hands of the Earl of Sunderland. Consequently, he forwarded Sunderland a trove of papers related to his case, stating that his “whole pretension of damages shall be discharged” if he could only be paid the amount he had asked of Harley. For ten thousand pounds more, he wrote, “I will either sell or abandon all my plantation, monies and effects in Holland and Suriname and will give such discharges and transfers as shall be required of me.” Clifford suggested that the money paid to him “remain in the treasury for the service of my Queen and country during this present war,” so long as he be paid interest at 5 percent per annum every six months.

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