Adams Family Correspondence, volume 8
Portsmouth
It may perhaps afford you satisfaction to learn that Mr
Adams and his secretary pro tempore1
arrived at the Crown Inn within the ramparts of this naval arsenal last evening before
eight, after a journey as pleasant as coud be expected considering the unverdant aspect
of far the greater portion of the country through which we travel'd. To speak candidly
(excepting the farm at Cobham) I never beheld so complete a fulfilment of Churchills
prophesy of famine as stares one in the face on each side of the hedge from Kingston to
Portsmouth.2 Mr Adams protests that he will never return by the same road: how chearfully do I
acquiesce!
The culprit Muir was had before us this morning and underwent an examination. His
answers were all contradictory inexplicit and evasive. He seems to be either a subtle
and supereminent practitioner in dissimulation, or a vulgar villain without capability
of mighty mischief or any ingenious system of enormity. I am rather inclin'd to the
latter opinion at present. Perhaps he may be the agent of more crafty contrivers. He
says he is a native of Scotland. I believe him. He has a hollow, hungry hanging look.
The Court of Quarter Sessions, who have conducted with extreme propriety in this
bussiness have just recommitted him for three months. This measure is pleasing to Mr Adams since it furnishes time to investigate & detect
whatsoever may or can be investigated or detected in London or elswhere.3
Mr Wren guided us to view Fortune Prison this afternoon—and
tomorrow if the weather shall be favourable Mr Adams is
resolute to survey on horseback the rural felicity of the Isle of Wight. He has just
gone to rest in high spirits at the prospect. I believe from circumstances we may
condescend to revisit the smoak of the Metropolis within a fortnight.
Particular compliments to Mrs Smith and little Steuben.
from, Dear Madam, Yours respectfully
RC (Adams Papers).
That is, Cutting himself.
JA and Cutting
traveled the seventy miles from London to Portsmouth on 24 April, passing through
Kingston upon Thames and the village of Cobham in Surrey, site of the gardens at
Painshill, which the Adamses had previously visited in June 1786. Charles Churchill's
1763 political satire The Prophecy of Famine predicted
that a growing Scottish influence on English culture would result in a metaphorically
barren England of the future: “Far as the eye could reach, no tree was seen, / Earth,
clad in russet, scorn'd the lively green.” In 1787, the Portsmouth Road was already
known for passing through particularly barren country, “past ragged heaths, tumbled
commons, and waste lands, chiefly unenclosed” (Karl Baedeker, Great Britain: Handbook for Travellers, 8th edn., N.Y., 1927, p. 55;
AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 13 June 1786,
note 9, vol. 7:221; Thomas Lockwood, Post-Augustan
Satire: Charles Churchill and Satirical Poetry, 1750–1800, Seattle, 1979, p.
133–139; Charles Churchill, The Prophecy of Famine,
London, 1763, p. 15; Charles G. Harper, The Portsmouth Road
and Its Tributaries: To-day and in Days of Old, London, 1895, p. 194,
197).
In March Robert Muir, a
native of Scotland, arrived in London from Charleston, S.C., in the guise of “a common
seaman.” He soon began contacting engravers and printers in an attempt to counterfeit
the paper currency of North and South Carolina. London metalworker William Caslon made
plates of decorative elements on the currency at Muir's request in early April. When
Muir approached London engraver Richard Carpenter and Portsmouth printer Walter
Mowbray, however, they reported his plans to authorities, and Muir was arrested and
imprisoned. Rev. Thomas Wren, who had assisted American prisoners of war in Forton
Prison in the late 1770s, hosted JA when he visited Portsmouth to
interrogate Muir. From April to July, Wren sent JA updates on the case,
acted as a liaison between American and British officials, and advanced funds for
Muir's board in jail. On 25 June, JA wrote to recommend that Muir be
released for lack of evidence. Wren responded on 12 July to say that rather than be
released as innocent, Muir would be tried later that month and acquitted for lack of
evidence, an outcome that had been judged more likely to serve as a deterrent to
further nefarious activity (Sheldon S. Cohen, “Thomas Wren: Portsmouth's Patron of
American Liberty,” The Portsmouth Papers, 57:11, 23, 28
[March 1991]; vol. 4:201;
Thomas Wren to JA, 12 July, Adams
Papers; JA to Wren, 21 April and
25 June, both LbC, APM Reel 113; Dipl. Corr.,
1783–1789, 2:738–739, 741–744; Devon Libraries Local Studies Service, The London Book Trades 1775–1800: A Checklist of Members,
www.devon.gov.uk/etched, 6 Feb. 2006).