Early English adventurers in the East (1917)/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
The Last Scene of All
Condemnation of the Amboina prisoners—Reprieve of two of the English—A fateful lottery—The condemned Englishmen refused the Sacrament—They solemnly renew their protestations of innocence—The last night passed in prayer and praise—A touching memorial of the occasion—The day of execution—Meeting between the English and the Japanese prisoners—Bearing of the English in their last moments—The execution—Strange happenings—Effect produced in England by the episode—A belated settlement—What was "the Massacre of Amboina"?—The English withdraw from the Eastern Islands
ON February 25, 1623 (old style), the unfortunate prisoners were assembled in the great hall of the castle of Amboina to receive the inevitable condemnation. None of the gloomy accessories of justice were wanting to lend impressiveness to the occasion. At the head of the chamber sat at a massive table Van Speult and the members of his council in full uniform. The Fiscal, De Bruyne, who had taken such a prominent and sinister part in the examinations, was there also, with the Dutch chaplain, in the severe habiliments of his order. On all sides were armed soldiers in the buff uniforms of Holland's greatest mercantile association. On the fringes of the crowd were probably a few islanders holding menial offices, who looked with curious questioning eyes upon this spectacle of the members of one European race sitting in judgment upon the representatives of another Western nationality.
There was a brevity about the final proceedings consistent with the settled belief with which the judges had from the first pursued the investigations. De Bruyne, to follow the Dutch record, "stated his suit and drew his conclusion." It is almost unnecessary to say what that conclusion was. The Fiscal was an apt tool of an infamous system under which men could be done to death with due judicial forms. Torquemada was not more indefatigable in scenfcing out a heretic than De Bruyne was in discovering a conspirator. To his own satisfaction he brought home guilt to all the prisoners save four of the least important of them, viz., Powle, Ramsey, Sadler and Ladbrook. It now only remained for the Court to pass sentence. Before this was done, we are told, "prayers were said to the Lord that He might govern their (the Council's) hearts in this gloomy consultation and that He might inspire them only with equity and justice"—hollow words after such "equity and justice" as had been dealt out to the unfortunate prisoners.
With quivering lips and blenched faces Towerson and his companions listened to the declaration which sealed their fate. Towerson himself was condemned to be decapitated and quartered, and his head to be hung on a post as a warning to other evil-doers. His fellow captives were sentenced to simple decapitation. In every instance the victim's private property was ordered to be confiscated—an idle injunction, for the poor fellows had so little to leave that the Dutch were afterwards content that the surviving English should divide their hapless comrades' possessions amongst themselves.
Before the prisoners were removed, it occurred to the Council that the wholesale execution of the English would give rise to inconvenience by throwing upon them the onus of administering the affairs of the English factory. They, therefore, resolved to reprieve two of the prisoners to look after the Company's interests. Beomont, who had a firm friend at Court in the person of a Dutch merchant, was released on the latter's earnest intercession. For the other pardon it was settled that Coulson, Thomson and Collings should draw lots. In due course the trio were brought together for the fateful purpose. They prepared themselves for the ordeal by devoutly kneeling in prayer. Then uprising, with calm faces they submitted themselves to the arbitrament of the lottery box. Upon Collings fell the selection of the paper which conferred life and liberty. He bore himself, we may be sure from what had passed previously, with becoming humility; equally may we be confident that the other two resigned themselves to their fate without unmanly repining.
After condemnation the prisoners, with the exception of Towerson, were removed to a room in the Castle, where they were left to pass the night by themselves. They were visited there by the Dutch ministers, who, "telling them how short a time they had to live, admonished and exhorted them to make their true confessions, for (they said) it was a dangerous and desperate thing to dissemble at such a time." The prisoners in the most earnest language reasserted their innocence and asked the ministers to administer the Sacrament to them—"as a seal of the forgiveness of their sinnes and withall thereby to confirme their last profession of their innocencie." "But," says the narrative, "this would by no means be granted."
Upon this Coulson, who throughout these dread last hours seems to have played the part of leader, asked the reverend visitors the following question— "You manifest unto us the danger of dissimulation in this case. But tell us, if we suffer guiltlesse, being otherwise also true believers in Jesus Christ, what shall be our reward?"
The answer came from the principal minister—
"By how much the cleerer you are, soe much the more glorious shall be your resurrection."
"With that word Coulson started up, embraced the preacher and gave him his purse with such money as hee had in it, saying—
" 'Domine, God bless you. Tell the Governor I freely forgive him; and I entreat you to exhort him to repent of this bloody tragedy wrought upon us poor innocent souls.'
"Here all the rest of the Englishmen signified their assent to this speech.
"Then spake John Fardo to the rest in presence of the ministers, as followeth—
" 'My countrymen and brethren that are heere with mee condemned to dye, I charge you all as you will answer it at God's Judgment Seat if any of you bee guilty of this matter, whereof we are condemned, discharge your consciences and confesse the truth for satisfaction of the world.'
"Hereupon Samuel Coulson spake with a loud voyce, saying—
"According to my innocency in this treason so, Lord, pardon all my sinnes, and if I be guiltie thereof, more or lesse, let me never be partaker of Thy heavenly joys.'
"At which words every one of the rest cryed out—
" 'Amen for me, amen for me, good Lord!'
"This done, each of them knowing whom he had accused, went one to another begging forgiveness for their false accusation, being roung from them by the pains or feare of torture. And they all freely forgave one another: for none had bene so falsely accused but he himself had accused another as falsely."
Moved by the sufferings of the condemned, the good-natured Dutch guard offered them wine, with the suggestion that they should drown their sorrows in drink as the Dutch, in similar cases, were, he said, accustomed to do. But the offer was gratefully but emphatically rejected. Face to face with death the Englishmen were in no mood to stain their last hours with a drunken orgy. Though rude men who, in most cases, had led dissolute lives, they had, deep down in their natures, a strong strain of religious feeling. They preferred, therefore, to pass the night with devotional exercises. Thus, as the sentry kept his solitary vigil outside, there was borne upon his ears in the silence of the tropical night, the deep bass voices of the prisoners as in mournful cadence they sang the psalms appropriate to their sad condition.
A touching memorial of that solemn night of prayer and praise is preserved amongst the Dutch national archives at the State Record Office at the Hague. It is a small black-covered volume containing, bound together, "The Psalms of David in Meeter," and "The Catechisme," both bearing the imprint, " Edinburgh, printed by Andro Hart, 1611," It is the identical book used on the occasion by Samuel Coulson. Convincing evidence of this is supplied by certain writings, bearing Coulson's signature, which appear in the blank pages of the volume. These include an earnest declaration of the writer's innocence. It was one of several declarations to the same effect which were inscribed in different books by the prisoners. One of the fullest, which was written on March 5 by Coulson "aboard the Rotterdam lying in irons," is to this effect:—
"Understand that I, Samuel Coulson, late factor of Hitto, was apprehended for suspicion of conspiracy; and for anything I know must die for it: wherefore having no meanes to make my innocency knowne, have writ in this book, hoping some good Englishman will see it. I doe hereupon my salvation, as I hope by His death and passion to have redemption for my sinnes, that I am cleere of all such conspiracy: neither do I know any Englishman guilty thereof, nor other creature in the world. As this is true, God bless me—Samuel Coulson."
Towerson figures little in these moving narratives of the Amboina prisoners, doubtless because of his isolation. But that he suffered with the rest is clear from an account of a visit paid by Beomont to him on the morning of execution. Beomont "found him sitting in a chamber all alone in a most miserable condition, the wounds of his torture bound up. . . . He took Beomont by the hand and prayed him when he came into England to do his duty to the Honble. Company, his master, to Mr. Robinson, and to his brother Billingsley, and to certify them of his innocence, 'which,' said he, 'you yourself know well enough.' "
At length the dread hour of execution arrived. The beat of drum and the tramp of soldiers re-echoing through the streets from early morning had sent throughout the town an irresistible summons to witness the deed of horror about to be perpetrated. All about the execution ground, outside the line kept by the military, was a vast crowd of Amboinese, silent and awed, and yet not devoid of that brilliancy of colouring which is so characteristic of the Oriental popular gathering. There must have been amongst them many islanders from without, men who had known and fought with Courthope and with whose pity mingled a fierce feeling of anger and bitter disappointment at the era of hopeless subjection which the approaching execution seemed so inexorably to usher in.
Meanwhile, in the great hall of the castle all the prisoners were assembled for the grim pageantry which was to precede the final awful rites. At the door of the chamber were " the quit and pardoned," to whom with streaming eyes and broken voices the prisoners tendered their last farewells. Standing now on the threshold of the other world the condemned once more affirmed their innocence, and solemnly charged their more fortunate colleagues "to bear witnesse to their friends in England . . . that they died not traitors, but so many innocents merely murdered by the Hollanders, whome they prayed God to forgive their blood-thirstinesse and to have mercy upon their own soules."
On one side of the hall, curious spectators of this farewell scene, were the Japanese prisoners, who with the stolidity of their race [stood quietly awaiting their doom. When the English prisoners were brought near to them the Japanese in terms of mingled surprise and reproach said —
"'O you Englishmen, where did wee ever in our lives eat with you, talk with you, or (to our remembrance) see you?'
"The Englishmen replied: 'Why, then, have you accused us?'"
Then, says the record, " The poore men, perceiving they were made believe each had accused others before they had so done, indeed, showed them their tortured bodies and said— "'If a stone were thus burnt, would it not change his nature? How much more we that are flesh and blood?'"
To such reasoning there could be no reply. The English prisoners had tasted too deeply the bitter pangs of the torture chamber, had themselves offended too much against truth under the infernal stimulus applied, to be able to raise their voices in censure. So with friendly words of farewell they passed on.
Outside the hall was an open space, overlooked by the windows of the castle, and a kind of gallery communicating with the official quarters. When all the prisoners had been collected at this point an official appeared in the gallery and read out in due form the sentence which had been passed by the Council. Thereafter a procession was formed to conduct the prisoners to the scaffold. From motives of policy, doubtless, the route taken was a long and circuitous one which led through the town. Escorted by a strong military guard the melancholy cortège slowly made its way through lines of soldiery to the execution ground.
In their last moments the condemned Englishmen showed themselves worthy of their race. Armed with the consciousness of innocence and strengthened spiritually by their night of devotion, they looked composedly outwards towards the unseen. Coulson, now, as ever, a leader, drew from his breast a paper on which he had written a prayer suitable to the occasion with, at its conclusion, a strong declaration of innocence. In a loud, firm voice which penetrated far in the still morning air he read the simple sentences in which, on behalf of himself and his fellow-prisoners, he invoked the favour of the Deity in this awful crisis. When the final words of supplication had died away he cast the paper into the air, it fluttered for a moment overhead and then was taken possession of by an official at whose feet it fell.
In a pause which followed the prayer, Emanuel Thomson, speaking so as to be heard some distance, solemnly declared that he was sure that God would show some sign of their innocence.
The executioner now began his bloody work. As each man stepped forward unflinchingly to the block, he affirmed in language which varied little that he was utterly guiltless in the matter for which he was to die. "And so, one by one, with great cheerfulness, they suffered the fatal stroke."
A strange distinction was made in Towerson's case. Prior to his execution there was placed about the block a large piece of black velvet. Presumably this was done in deference to his superior rank, but it is one of the curiosities of a remarkable episode that the English East India Company was afterwards, in a bill of charges, debited with the value of this material on the ground that the bloodstains upon it had rendered it unserviceable.
In keeping with this fastidious deference to rank, Towerson was buried in a special grave. A common tomb sheltered the remains of the nine other unfortunate Englishmen. Before the work of interment was completed, indeed, before the execution was barely over, a great darkness came on and a storm swept over Amboina, driving the shipping ashore and doing immense damage to property. The next day, a wretched Englishman who had testified against his fellows falsely was found on the condemned men's grave weeping and behaving strangely. He was led away and died two days later raving mad. Almost simultaneously there broke out on the island a terrible pestilence which carried off hundreds of victims before it was stayed. The surviving Englishmen, recalling Thomson's dying words, saw in these visitations signs of the Divine wrath at the doing to death of their innocent fellow-countrymen. Even the superstitious natives traced a connexion between the misfortunes which overwhelmed them and the ruthless act which had practically extirpated the English. Their sense of justice, dulled though it was by ages of oppression, was sufficiently strong to see in the procedure which had encompassed the deaths of Towerson and his associates a degree of turpitude which called aloud to heaven for vengeance. Hence it was that the days following the execution were a period of gloom in Amboina for the islanders, and maybe for Van Speult and his associates a time of dark communings and remorse.
When in due course the news of the tragedy reached Batavia the little English colony there were fired with righteous indignation. The president of the factory immediately drew up a protest against Van Speult's "presumptuous proceedings" in "imprisoning, torturing, condemning and bloodily executing his Majesty's subjects," and "in confiscating their goods in direct violation of the Treaty, whereby the King was disgraced and dishonoured and the English nation scandalized."
Carpentier, the Dutch Governor-General, treated the protest somewhat coolly, but in his despatches home he showed a full appreciation of the gravity of the issue that had been raised. While he expressed belief in the existence of a conspiracy, he condemned strongly the methods of the trial. De Bniyne was selected for special censure. He "called himself a lawyer and had been taken into the Company's service as such," but he "should have shown better judgment in the affair." The Council had left too much to him and apparently had not dared to add anything to the documents that he had prepared. "We think," Carpentier went on to say in some significant sentences, "the rigour of justice should have been mitigated somewhat with Dutch clemency (with consideration to a nation who is our neighbour), especially if such could be done without prejudice to the state and the dignity of justice, as we think could have been done here." "It is," the Governor -General concluded impressively, "a bad war where all remain."
Months afterwards, when the facts of "the Massacre" were known in England, the country was stirred to its depths. The Lords of the Privy Council were moved to tears at the relation of the sufferings of the unhappy Englishmen. The King, though not usually given to emotion, "took it very much to heart." Even those who wished well to the Dutch "could not hear or speak of it without indignation," while the facts were so damning that "none in the Assembly of the States General (in Holland) approved the cruel tortures of the bloody executions." "For my part," wrote Chamberlain, the London historian, to Carleton, the English ambassador at the Hague, "if there were no wiser than I, we should stay or arrest the first Indian ship that comes in our way and hang up upon Dover cliffs as many as we should find faulty or actors in this business and then dispute the matter afterwards: for there is no other course to be held with such manner of men, as neither regard law nor justice, nor any other respect of equity or humanity, but only make gain their God."
The directors of the East India Company took, naturally, a very grave view of the situation. They held that it would be impossible for them to continue their trade "except the Dutch make real restitution for damages, execute justice upon those who had in so great fury and tyranny tortured and slain the English, and give security for the future." These views were in due course laid formally before the King, who promised to secure redress, and, meanwhile, strongly advised the Company in no circumstances to abandon its trade.
James's pledge to the Company came to little. He may have honestly intended to uphold the righteous demands for the wiping out of a foul stain upon the country's honour, but when the first fever of indignation had worn out he allowed the question to drop into a diplomatic groove which led it ultimately into a morass of fruitless negotiations. It was suspected at the time, probably with good reason, that the Duke of Buckingham, the King's favourite minister, was bought over to the Dutch interest by enormous bribes, which the Dutch Company was well able to pay. Whether that was t he case or not, the years slipped by without any satisfaction being given for the heinous act of the government of Amboina. Not until the days of the Commonwealth was the long outstanding account adjusted. Then, with the aid of Cromwell's strong arm, the Dutch East Company was forced to make amends by the Treaty of Westminster, concluded in 1658, for the bitter wrongs perpetrated thirty-five years previously. Meanwhile, most of the chief actors in the tragedy had passed to their rest. Van Speult died at Surat a few years after the occurrences at Amboina, and his remains were interred in the Dutch graveyard there in what, strange irony of fate, is to-day British soil.
What was the Tragedy of Amboina? Was it, as the English of the time asserted, a massacre, under judicial forms, of innocent trade rivals for sordid motives? Or was it, as the Dutch contended, an act of justice perpetrated upon a body of unscrupulous conspirators? It is not difficult to answer the questions. Time has unlocked many of the official secrets of that period and with the •documentary evidence available much is made clear which two or three centuries ago was involved in obscurity. The truth would appear to lie between the two extremes. The Dutch were not bloodthirsty murderers venting their private vengeance on unoffending men: nor were they patterns of justice meting out punishment to proved -criminals. They were simply men inspired by unholy zeal for a bad cause. They sincerely believed that a conspiracy was afoot against them and that the Englishmen were implicated in it. Having this fixed idea in their mind they worked upon it with the unscrupulous energy of the type of police official who makes his evidence fit the theory he has formed of a crime. When, however, we have said this much in their favour we have said all. Nothing can extenuate the horrible brutality with which the so-called evidence was got together, or the ruthless—and even from the extreme standpoint of Dutch policy—unnecessary severity with which the course of justice was directed. The whole business was a judicial crime of the blackest and most infamous type—one which even after three centuries cannot be regarded without a feeling of indignation.
This sombre episode of Amboina, besides putting a period to the lives of Towerson and his associates, set a decisive limit to the ambitions of the English to play a leading part in the trade of the Eastern islands. From this time forward the history of the English factories in the Archipelago is one long series of disappointments. Driven from one spot after another by their remorseless rivals, the English sunk lower and lower in the scale of influence until they were ousted entirely from the region. There was a flicker of hope for them in 1658 when, under the Treaty of Westminster, Poolo Roon, the island which Courthope had defended so gallantly, was retroceded, but at the end of 1665 the Dutch re-occupied the position and gave the final blow to English claims in that quarter. At last in 1667 the sole remaining English factory in Bantam was closed by Dutch action, and with this culminating blow ended a phase of the East India Company's activities from which so much was once expected.