The Privateersman (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 1) (23 page)

“Would you wish to open one of the bags out here to
check it, Mr Martin? Easier to count gold in the sunlight.”

Martin kept a straight face and opened a sack,
displaying it clearly to the fascinated crowd, an audience now, staring at more
money than they had imagined in all of their lives. They counted the men going
in laden and coming out empty-handed, awestruck.

The show ended and Martin stepped up to his doors
again, invited the queue to reform; few of his waiting customers bothered.

“Thirty seven thousand five hundred to Mr Star’s
account, the remainder to mine, if you please, Mr Martin.”

“Certainly, gentlemen. Thank you!”

“My pleasure, sir. I would expect Andrews Pit to
come onto the market fairly soon, Mr Martin – if you get word of it put the
owners in my direction, if you would be so good. You have the knowledge of high
finance that I do not, sir – would you set my money to work for me?”

“And mine,” Joseph added.

“I will double it within the month, gentlemen, if I
can do no better!”

Every short-term loan in the country was called and
more than half of businesses lost all of their working capital, the money that
paid their day-to-day bills and the wages and bought their working raw
materials while they waited for orders to be completed and their customers to
pay up. A month and these businesses had closed down and were doing all they
could to avoid liquidation, anxiously trying to sell stock and finished goods
and machinery, eventually their premises, anything to keep out of bankruptcy
and debtor’s prison; many a firm went down with ten thousands in finished goods
in stock and one hundred pounds in unpaid bills and unable to find a penny in
cash. Some businessmen were wealthy, possessed cash in gold and Bank of England
notes, and they profited; many more had been wealthy, their assets in country
banknotes and bank accounts, and they left the ranks of the new rich to rejoin
the old poor.

Prices collapsed, for lack of demand – there was no
cash to purchase anything. Desperate wives tried to sell their jewellery to
save their husbands and discovered that diamonds were as worthless as any other
asset in the absence of a buyer – there was no such thing as intrinsic value,
they discovered, anything was worth only what people would, or could, pay for
it. The few who could pay hardly needed to, for money was worth much more than
it had been a month before.

Tom bought back his coal mine, paying five thousands
in coin for it and being thanked for his generosity; he would not have paid so
much had not Clapperley privately pointed out that one of the gentlemen
involved was son to the Lord Lieutenant of the County, potentially a dangerous
enemy to create. He refused to buy Collins’ mine, being able to make his choice
of local pits, and took on half a dozen small, new enterprises, all similar to
his own pit in its earliest days, possessing thick, shallow seams that had
hardly been touched yet. Joseph bought four spinning mills, deciding to
specialise – he did not like the potential for trouble he could see in weaving.
Clapperley and Martin were kept unceasingly busy, acting as go-betweens,
talking to the three or four other men possessed of gold and interested in
buying – there was no sense at all in bidding each other up. Tom bought five
steam engines, new and in perfect condition, for less than the price of one the
previous month; he picked up ten thousand tons of coke and the yards it was
stored in for almost nothing, then added five miles of wrought iron rails for
new trackways and four shiploads of Canadian timber for considerably less than
cost; almost as an afterthought he bought out Roberts’ largest competitor.
Joseph the meanwhile attended the dockside auctions, buying shiploads of the
best cotton for pennies and then spending a few pounds on drays and horses to
move it and warehouses to store it in.

At the end of four frantic weeks they took stock,
counted up what they had spent and all that they had got for their money.
Between them they decided they were worth well over a million at boom prices,
with assets that would actually value at anything from half to three-quarters
of that when the market stabilised again, and would grow over the next decade.
They were rich beyond any expectation – they decided it was better to recast
their partnership – senior and junior no longer made sense to either. The new
purchases in textiles would go one hundred per cent to Joseph, coal and iron
wholly to Tom, organised in new firms; the old Andrews and Star would retain
Roberts and Star Spinners only, more or less for old times’ sake. It was
important they thought that they should never be brought into conflict with one
another – they were too big to risk arguing.

“Friends always, I trust, Joseph, but we cannot work
together any more – we’re just too damned big!”

Joseph burst into tears and then apologised – the
leap in ten years from barefoot half-caste wandering the streets of English
Harbour, to rich, respected gentleman in Lancashire was too much for him to
think of without emotion, without reminding himself of all that he believed he
owed to Tom. Now, to be setting himself up as Tom’s equal, that was too much for
him – almost.

“The children know that you are the most important
man in England, Tom, as far as we are concerned. They will not forget it. I
want to take a risk, Tom – do you think I could send money back to Antigua, to
my mother? Might it become known if I did? Could I be putting the law onto us?”

“I don’t know – let’s ask Martin. Not Clapperley, I
think, not the sort of thing I want him to know.”

Martin had no direct correspondent in Antigua, but
he had contacts with Mr Lacey in Liverpool who was banker to the sugar there.
Mr Lacey had not closed his doors because Martin had been able to put fifty
thousands across to him on the night Tom had delivered the guineas; he had
already paid back fifty-five thousands, with his best thanks, and would be able
to make an anonymous gift to Mrs Laetitia on the island, the more so because
the planters who had sold their sugar through his offices had received their
money and knew that they owed him debts of gratitude at least – they would
ensure that no nosey-parker asked awkward questions.

Two months into the depression Martin begged the
favour of an interview with Tom.

“I know that you are unsettled in the manufacturing
life, Mr Andrews, and that mere money-making must seem a little pointless now.
I am able to put you in the way of an opportunity that rarely arises. My
Correspondent in Kettering, being aware that Martins is solvent, and must have
at least one of very wealthy depositors to have kept it so – the whole country
in fact, the financial part that is, must have made that surmise – two tons of
gold attracts a remarkable degree of attention, you know! Where was I? Ah, yes,
Kettering – a very rich iron town, as you will know, one of the earliest in the
whole Midlands, finding problems now for lack of charcoal and distance from the
nearest coal mine – there was used to be Rockingham Forest surrounding the
town, but it is all gone now, every last tree gone to charcoal! Just to the
south of the town, across the river, the Ise, there is a large and
old-fashioned estate, the Quillers, the family that owned it, said to be
Papist, certainly reclusive and out of favour with government and their peers;
they died out some five years ago, no male issue, no cousins or nephews; one
daughter, a spinster of uncertain years, not in the way of marrying certainly,
who inherited and sold, is reputed to have retired to Rome to die in an odour
of sanctity – or what passes for it amongst the Papists!”

Tom, who was not entirely certain of the distinction
between Papist and any other sub-division of Christianity, and had thought them
to be Irish anyway, smiled his sympathetic understanding - very strange and not
really English, he implied.

“A Mr Rockingham – my correspondent understands the
name to be of choice, not birth – was an ironmaster who was generally held to
have made his fortune during the last war, certainly was prominent in the
business community; he decided to set up for a gentleman and bought the estate.
Quite rightly, he enclosed and began to improve the estate, but it transpires
that he borrowed heavily to do so – his fortune stretched to the initial
purchase but no further. Unfortunately for him, he went outside of the normal
banking houses for his funds, for reasons of secrecy, one presumes; he went to
the Jews! He failed to make his payments last month, asked for time, a friendly
accommodation, he hoped, and was rapidly taken up and is temporarily held in a
sponging house, under arrest but not yet cast into debtor’s prison. If he can
sell and pay off his debts then he may yet come out of the affair with a few
thousands, enough to live upon in retirement. He married late in life and has a
son of about eight years, a wife as well, but she is of lesser importance; he
had intended to bring the boy up as a country gentleman, it would seem, but
must now be content to bring him up at all. If he does not arrange an early
sale then he will find himself in court and his assets taken from him and
placed into administration, the costs involved wiping out any surplus there may
be – he will lose everything and may never be able even to regain his freedom.
He has no choice, and cannot hold out for a high price, or indeed for anything
more than a bare minimum.”

Tom nodded – it was obvious where Martin was
leading. Did he want it? An estate, at Kettering, where was that exactly? The
geography of England had never been one of his strong points – there was a map
on the wall behind Martin, just too far distant to read the small print easily
from where he was sat. He stood, grinned an apology and leant across to check
the location of the town. Smack in the centre of lowland England, well away
from Dorset and a respectable distance north of London.

“Tell me more, Mr Martin.”

“He owes perhaps ten thousands to the Jews, probably
as much again to builders and road contractors and for drainage and bridges and
who knows what else – it behoves the great man of the manor to be open-handed,
and he was certainly that, even when his hands were technically empty. Twenty
or so thousands in his pocket besides and he would go into his retirement; less
than that and he might try to fight, to drag things out for two or three
years.”

“So, forty thousands that would probably turn into
somewhat more with fees and interest and extra debts turning up out of the
blue. In exchange a large estate bought cheap. How large, Mr Martin?”

“Precisely, to the last acre, I do not know –
indeed, the last stages of the enclosure are still in completion so probably no
one knows for certain yet. The farms will be paying no rents this year and
there will be money still to spend – enclosed land must be fenced and drained
and set immediately to work; roads must be built, drains finished, new
farmhouses built perhaps. There could be another ten thousands to go yet this
year and three or four a year for each of the next five. After that, enclosed
arable pays rent of thirty shillings an acre typically and the Thingdon Estate
will be mostly wheat land and will amount to about seven thousand acres. So, an
income of about ten thousands gross, but with expenditure to be made each year
on improvements and always the risk of a bad harvest or failing prices – over a
ten year stretch you would probably expect to net five thousands on average.”

Roberts and the mines would be worth at least five
thousands this year, probably twice as much next – a clear ten thousand a year
that would make him very rich indeed, would mean that he could afford to live a
life of leisure, which would rapidly become very boring – he would be able to
choose what he wanted to work at – perhaps he could encourage engineers to come
to his shops and build new inventions, better steam engines, new ways of
mining, of producing iron, or maybe he could improve the world of agriculture –
farmers were generally backward, primitive sorts of folks – there would be a
lot to do. Maybe, just possibly, he could look about for a wife and set up as a
family man, probably he ought to, on an estate that needed an heir. Joseph
would be pleased to see him settled in domestic bliss, though not, he rather thought,
blessed ten times over.

“I would be able to keep the mines, and Roberts, Mr
Martin? I have heard that ‘gentlemen’ do not approve of trade.”

“You would, but at a distance, with managers to do
the work for you, you would have to pander to their prejudices to that extent.
As well, Mr Andrews, you may not have considered the political implications of
your position if you buy – the estate effectively controls the nomination of
the local member – he is elected by about thirty burgesses of the old village of
Finedon, some eighteen of whom will be your tenants, the estate owning the
freehold of their shops or cordwainer’s sheds or blacksmith’s yards. It is one
of the old rotten boroughs, the electorate small local men exclusively and
possessing neither political knowledge nor independence of mind and they will
be obedient. Your name will be known in Downing Street as a result and the
government of the day will always wish to sweeten you if it can be done at
little expense; the barracks in Lancashire may well be instructed to go to
Andrews Pit for their coals for winter firing for example; as another instance,
a minor knighthood would be yours for the asking – not the
Order of the Bath
certainly, but one of the lesser honours – and a baronetcy would be quite cheap,
two or three years of good behaviour, a ‘loan’ of ten thousand to the Prime
Minister’s personal funds and you could be Sir Thomas Andrews, Bart..”