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30 THE NAVAL MUTINIES OF 1797
remarkably sudden.
In the early morning of the seventeenth
the Board still had thoughts of setting aside the
petitions and hurrying the fleet out to sea. Before the
end of the day three of them had set out to Portsmouth
to hear the claims of the seamen. The deputation consisted
of Earl Spencer, First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir
Richard Arden, and Admiral Young; with them came
Marsden, the second secretary. 1 They left London at
five o'clock in the afternoon, and reached Portsmouth
on the following day (18th) at noon. They made no
pause after the journey, but immediately held a Board
at the Fountain Inn. 2 Bridport and other officers
1. Spencer was a politician from his youth upwards. He entered
Parliament when he was twenty-three years old ; and, after a short
service as Ambassador in Vienna, became First Lord of the Admiralty
in 1794, at the age of thirty-six. He held the position with considerable
success for about six years (D.N.B., vol. liii, pp. 355, 356). An estimate
of his policy during the mutinies is given below, pp. 97, 98.
Sir Richard Pepper Arden was a civil lord of the Admiralty, and a
distinguished lawyer. He was afterwards given the title of Baron
Alvanley. He received his early education at the Manchester Grammar
School, and afterwards became a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
While he was reading law in the Middle Temple he became acquainted
with Pitt, and they remained close friends during the rest of Pitt's life.
Arden eventually reached the position of Chief Justice of the Common
Pleas (ibid., vol. ii, pp. 74, 75).
Young was at this time a Rear-Admiral. He had taken part in the
attack on Toulon, in 1793. In the following year he led the assault on
the tower in Martella Bay, which resulted indirectly in the building of
"martello" towers on the English coast. From 1804 to 1807 he was the
port admiral at Plymouth, and he commanded the North Sea fleet in
the latter years of the war (ibid., vol. lxiii, pp. 400, 401).
Marsden combined in a curious way the qualities of a scholar and an
administrator. He had lived in Sumatra, and had taken a considerable
part in the government. Hie residence in the East gave him an interest
in oriental studies, and he became a leading authority on Eastern
history, languages, customs and coinage. Soon after his return to
England he was appointed to the second secretaryship to the Board of
Admiralty. In 1804 he succeeded Sir Evan Nepean as first secretary,
and held the position until 1807 [ibid., vol. xxxvi, pp. 260, 207).
Nepean himself never played a prominent part in the dealings with
the mutineers ; nor is there any indication of the influence which he may
have had on the policy of the Admiralty. But he did a vast amount of
work in connexion with the Mutinies. From the number of " outletters
" which he wrote, and the number of " in-letters " docketed by
him, I judge that he must have been one of the busiest men in the
country.
2. A.S.M. 136 (Rough Minutes); Times, 19 April. The whole of this
account of the negotiations at Portsmouth, with the exception of those
facts for which other references are given, is based on the official report
in the Rough Minutes.