SCOTSMAN SENDS MADEIRA WINE TO BENGAL
Hannay, Samuel, Sir: Autograph letter, signed, to Captain Thomson of the Calcutta, Bengall. London, 22 December 1766.
This letter describes a Scotsman’s plan to send wine to his brother in Bengal in the eighteenth century.
John Johnstone grew up in Dumfriesshire and moved to India in 1751. By the 1760s he had risen through the ranks of the East India Company and also had business dealings in Bengal with his brother, Gideon, a ‘“free merchant,” or trader who was not a servant of the East India Company.’ (Rothschild 2013, p. 51). Following a scandal involving alleged corruption, John Johnstone resigned his post in the East India Company and returned to Scotland in May 1766.
On his behalf, six months later, Samuel Hannay (c.1742-1790), financier and later MP for Camelford, writes to a Captain Thompson in Bengal explaining that Messrs Newton and Gordon are delivering a pipe of Madeira to him intended for Gideon Johnstone, at the behest of his brother John. Hannay reminds Captain Thompson that he ‘so obligingly promised’ to pass along the Madeira, and assures him that ‘these gentlemen have also instructions to repay you any consideration for this indulgence that you think reasonable’.
Hannay, who was based in London, ‘had important Indian (City and shipping) interests; he was one of the creditors of the Nawab [sovereign ruler] of Arcot’ (Namier 1964). The ‘Messrs Newton and Gordon’ referenced in the letter are a company of Madeira wine shippers today known as Cossart Gordon & Co. In 1745, Francis Newton migrated to Madeira and founded the company. He was later joined by his brother Thomas, and Thomas Gordon.
Details
Manuscript. Bifolium (leaf dimensions 23.3 cms. x 18.5 cms.) 8 lines of text (fol. [1r]) and an addressee (fol. [2v]), the remainder (fols. [1v-2r]) blank. Folded for sending. Browning and foxing to paper, seal carefully removed. The addressee has marked the letter 'Answer'd' (fol. [2v]). Small pencil note ‘349’ (filing or stock?) to outer margin of fol. [2v].
Bibliography
Haden-Guest, Edith, Lady, ‘Johnstone, John (1734-95), of Denovan and Alva, Stirling’, History of Parliament Online, originally published in L. Namier and J. Brooke (eds.), The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1754-1790 (London: Published for the History of Parliament Trust by H.M.S.O., 1964). Last accessed by us 16 April 2024 via https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1754-1790/member/johnstone-john-1734-95
History of Cossart Gordon & Co, last accessed by us 16 April 2024 via https://www.cossartgordon.com/philosophy.html
Namier, Lewis, Sir, ‘HANNAY, Sir Samuel, 3rd Bt. (c.1742-90), of Kirkdale, Kirkcudbright, and Philpot Lane, Fenchurch St., London’, History of Parliament Online, originally published in L. Namier and J. Brooke (eds.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1754-1790 (London: Published for the History of Parliament Trust by H.M.S.O 1964). Last accessed by us 16 April 2024 via https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1754-1790/member/hannay-sir-samuel-1742-90
Rothschild, Emma, The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2013).