On this week in 1798, Irish-born army officer Edward Marcus Despard was arrested at his home in Soho on suspicion of conspiracy of treason. The London Times reported that the arrest took place while Despard was in bed with a “black woman”. Although the Times did not see fit to mention the detail, the “black woman” was Despard’s wife, Catherine (née Gordon), whom he had met and married while serving in the Caribbean.
While Despard languished in jail, accused of being the leader of a United Irish conspiracy, but without being charged, Catherine took on the British establishment to secure his release. She began a letter-writing campaign to the newspapers and corresponded with senior figures in the government, including the Duke of Portland, the then home secretary. Because of his wife’s efforts, Despard’s imprisonment became the subject of a three-week debate in the House of Commons.
Despard was finally released in May 1801. But he was picked up again 18 months later after a meeting at the Oakley Arms in Lambeth. This time, he was charged, found guilty of high treason and executed on February 21st, 1803, alongside six convicted co-conspirators, among them John MacNamara, a 40-year-old carpenter from Ireland.
But how was it that an officer from a distinguished military family who had served with distinction in the British Army came to be publicly executed as a revolutionary?
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Born in 1751 in Coolrain in Queen’s County (as Co Laois was named at the time), Despard was educated at the Quaker school in Ballitore, Co Kildare, before joining the British army. In 1772, he was sent to Jamaica. When hostilities broke out between Britain and Spain in 1779, Despard was chosen to participate, as chief engineer, in a naval expedition to Nicaragua. The 21-year-old Horatio Nelson – then a recently promoted post-captain in command of the frigate HMS Hinchinbrook – was responsible for the naval transports and supply ships. Although the expedition was a disaster – about 100 of the 2,000 men who sailed from Jamaica returned – neither Despard’s nor Nelson’s reputations suffered.
It was Despard’s appointment as governor of British Honduras (modern-day Belize) in 1786 that set him on the path that was to end with his execution in London in 1803. Belize had been part of the Mayan civilisation before the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century; the arrival of British buccaneers and logwood cutters in the first half of the 17th century shaped the subsequent history of the region.
The logcutting planters who settled around Belize City on the Bay or the Gulf of Honduras became known as the Baymen. Their settlements were an affront to the Spanish but, under the terms of a series of treaties between the British and Spanish in the latter part of the 18th century, they were granted the right to export logwood and the increasingly more valuable mahogany.
Despard’s brief term as superintendent was marked by a confrontation with the Baysmen, who were inflamed by his efforts to strengthen British (and his own) authority over the territory at their expense. Under the terms of the most recent treaty with the Spanish, the settlers on the Mosquito Coast were forced to relocate to the Bay of Honduras. This resulted in a confrontation between the wealthy trading class, the Baysmen, and the newcomers, a mixture of labourers, former soldiers and sailors, smugglers, one-time slaves and Miskitos, known as the Shoremen.
Despard’s instructions from London were to make sure that the Shoremen were resettled in the Bay of Honduras. He distributed parcels of land by lottery to the settlers, regardless of colour or class. This policy was opposed by the Baysmen, who believed that whites should take precedence over other races in the region. Eventually the Baysmen managed to have Despard recalled to England to explain his actions.
At this time, Despard had already begun a relationship with and married Catherine Gordon. They returned to England at a time when mixed-race marriages were uncommon. The Despards never returned to the Caribbean; the Baysmen had successfully lobbied the British government to protect their interests. Edward went bankrupt trying to defend himself from writs issued by commercial interests allied to the Baysmen and spent two years in a debtors’ prison. The Despards’ experiences deepened their radical convictions, leading to them becoming part of the English revolutionary underground.
Catherine died in 1815. Although Nelson, who in 1803 was a famed admiral, was unable or disinclined to prevent Edward’s execution, he was reportedly moved by the plight of the couple, remarking that Mrs Despard had been “violently in love”.
