Why did Mr. Hill specify Mr. Jordan's bookshop as the place that Nelson could forward money in his second attempt at extortion?
Hill's second blackmailing letter to Nelson ended "... I shall take it for granted that you have no objection to my printing the pamphlet, because you think your reputation too well established with the public to suffer from any thing I can say. - But a plain statement of facts... so different from that of the newspapers - and the failure at Boulogne may perhaps have more weight than you imagine."
According to Jordan, he had received a different letter, presumably from Hill, in the regular post:
"Mr Jordan is requested to have the goodness to take care of, till called for, a small parcel directed, by mistake, to Mr. R. Hill, at Mr. Jordan's &c..."
Jordan also added "that he is totally unaquainted with the author; and should detest the publishing of any manuscript from a person prompted by such disgraceful motives."
Having recently completed a little research project involving 18th century booksellers/publishers, this had me intrigued, so I did a bit of extra digging to try to find out more about Mr. Jordan and his activities.
Jeremiah Samuel Jordan, it seems, had previously got himself into very hot water by publishing 'seditious works' liable to inflame public unrest. As the country felt the heat of the French Revolution, and republican sympathies in some influential circles ran high , Jordan published numerous diatribes denigrating the King, the Constitution, the Government, the Church and their public servants.
"In England, at least 27 people were tried for seditious words and 14 for seditious libel during 1793. In these trials, the government did not hesitate to use packed juries in order to obtain convictions. In other cases, prosecutors argued that the case was too complicated to be decided by uneducated men, and thence "special juries" of higher-class citizens were necessary, which contributed significantly to the number of sedition convictions reached. An even more effective tool of intimidation was the issuing of ex officio charges, which allowed the government to eliminate a hearing by a grand jury.
"Sedition trials continued throughout the decade, with the 1798 trial of Gilbert Wakefield demonstrating many of the characteristics which so discouraged reformers and radicals of the time, especially since it marked the first major trial in which a publisher was tried even though he admitted the author of the offensive publication. Fox went so far as to label it a "death blow to the liberty off the press"
Wakefield was tried for seditious libel along with several sellers of his book, Joseph Johnson, Jeremiah Jordan and John Cuthell. All were convicted, and the special jury sentenced Wakefield to two years imprisonment, a security of 500 pounds for good behavior for the term of five years, and two sureties in 250 pounds each."
Mr. Jordan was a central figure in two famous sedition cases, and found himself facing trial at the Old Bailey for both of them. He was also the publisher of numerous other critical pamphlets and essays which sailed pretty close to the wind, and counted Charles James Fox amongst his many acquaintances and correspondents.
Briefly from 'The Life of Thomas Paine:
'"The Rights of Man" was printed by Johnson in time for the opening of Parliament (February 1792), but this publisher became frightened, and only a few copies bearing his name found their way into private hands, one of these being in the British Museum. J. S. Jordan, 166 Fleet Street (later of 19 Ludgate Hill), consented to publish it" and Paine, entrusting it to a committee of his friends, fled to France.
It appears that Jordan, although indicted for 'seditious libel,' turned over all the papers concerning the book to the authorities, and escaped further prosecution.
Wakefield served his sentence, and when he was released in the summer of 1801, he was a dying man. Suffering from typhus, he breathed his last on September 9th 1801 (incidentally three days after Nelson's defiant letter to Jordan.)
Jordan was a anti-establishmentarian (never thought I'd get to use that word) publisher, and his vigorous rebuttal in the case of Nelson and Mr. Hill is surely compromised in light of his past (and future) activity in publishing tracts critical of the state.
Criticism of the King and Constitution, and all who served them was what Jordan peddled and (as he admitted at Paine's trial) made a profit from.
Was he complicit or not?
In view of his past brushes with the law, twice indicted and once convicted of seditious libel, Jordan would have been a fool to have involved himself in such a cack handed looking attempt at extortion. The provision of his personal name and address to Nelson, especially in the wake of Nelson's defiant reaction, is odd in the extreme. It could be seen as making Jordan as much a victim of the escapade as Nelson was intended to be.
Perhaps Hill thought the use of Jordan's name and business address would intensify the threat, and indicate that he was serious about publishing, highlighting the public damage his pamphlet could do to Nelson's reputation and the campaign on the coast.
One would also assume that Jordan, a convicted enemy of the state, would have expected a speedy visit from the authorities.
If Nelson himself was unconcerned, I struggle a bit with the thought that the Government, in the midst of a sharp propaganda war and looking for the best peace terms they could lever out of the ongoing negotiations, would have taken the threat lightly.
Possibly this helped to prompt Jordan's public denial of any knowledge of the affair. He had seen first hand what had happened to Gibert Wakefield, and would be keen to keep (just) on the right side of the 'flexible' law practiced by an establishment under threat and at war.
As Kester suggests, Nelson (or Nelson's name and reputation) was a political appointment to support the Government's political ends. I suspect it wasn't so much about conquering the French at sea, but thrashing them around the negotiating table, and Buonaparte definitely had the measure of Addington there. Certainly, the Government could well do without an escalation of public concern in an already sensitive arena.
Smoke and mirrors. From the sparseness of material on the affair, it seems impossible to decypher what really went on. From his letters, Nelson seemed to feel he was consigned to his 'particular service' as a pawn in someone else's game, and he was clearly very unhappy about it.
Hill's second letter to Nelson is rather cryptic. He isn't particularly interested in making money out of it; financial gain doesn't appear to be the name of the game.
'... Small notes, to the amount you may think proper. I leave it to yourself.'
With this second attempt, I'm not at all sure that money was Hill's objective.
A proper little mystery.
A quick question though. Does anyone know if Hill's first blackmailing letter to Nelson was published in the press at the time?
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