o_199m9vaui14ib1cnu10di10pocoj4h.pdf

FINANCIAL SUPPORT 339
The resources of the seamen therefore would not be
adequate to the expenses of the mutiny. Although there
was no need to buy victuals and other stores, the delegates
at the Nore found others means of spending money, and
spent it with a freedom which suggests that it was not
their own.
As long as they were allowed to go ashore, they held
meetings in the taverns in Sheerness, and after the
meetings they held carousals which must have cost a
considerable sum. 1 The four delegates who went to
Portsmouth in the middle of May were given ^"20 for
their travelling expenses. There is every indication that
the mutineers continued their free expenditure as long as
they had the opportunity. According to Cunningham,
there was a common treasury, under the control of a
"secret committee" — possibly the Committee of Internal
Regulations. The delegates of the Iris and the Niger
told their captains that they had plenty of money, but
that they did not know the source of the supply. The
natural supposition is that some part of the money came
from an external source. 2
One or two curious circumstances give support to this
idea, although they do not reveal the identity of those
who gave the secret endowments. Cunningham says
that on 4 June, while the Nore mutiny was at its height,
a clergyman who was standing at dusk on Rochester
Bridge was accosted by two sailors. They asked him
whether he was the " gentleman in black " for whom
they were looking. s At that time the mutineers were
forbidden to communicate with people on shore. The
two seamen, therefore, if they were mutineers, as is most
probable, ran a considerable risk in coming to Rochester,
and the object that would induce them to hazard their
lives in this venture must have been of some importance.
Its nature is suggested by the rumour that Parker himself
1. Cunningham, p. 98.
2. Ibid., p. 97.
3. Ibid., p. 98.