Fraudsters and Charlatans (10 page)

Pedigree provided by Alexander Alexander to prove his title to the Earldom of Stirling. The earls and countesses are denoted by coronets with Alexander at the bottom described as the ‘9th and present Earl'.
(The British Library)

A crucial step in the development of Alexander's case was the initiation of a correspondence in 1823 with Thomas Christopher Banks. Born in 1765, Banks was a member of the Inner Temple and a genealogist of some years experience, but what must have attracted him to Alexander's notice was his authorship of
Dormant and Extinct Baronage of England
. The Edinburgh advocate William Turnbull wrote of Banks in 1839: ‘This is one of those busy, meddling, troublesome, and officious individuals, professing themselves “Genealogists”, who tend so much to perpetuate blunders and misrepresentations in matters of general and family history, if indeed they do not
wittingly
aid and abet in the fabrication of impostures like the present.'
⁴
An anonymous pamphlet published in 1839 described Banks as ‘a person of very low extraction, but of considerable ready talent and powerful memory'.
⁵

Alexander had by now advanced substantial sums of money to counsel and an attorney to make searches for him, and while he had no more funds to pay Banks to act as his agent, he did have one bargaining counter, the immense wealth that would accrue to him when he established his right to the peerage; and he promised that, when this right was established, Banks would receive payment. Persuaded by Alexander's dynamic self-confidence, Banks agreed to act for him on this basis. First, however, there was a minor difficulty to be dealt with. The earldom could be vested only in someone of the surname Alexander, and so on 8 March 1824 Alexander Humphrys obtained a royal license to change his name to Alexander Humphrys Alexander, stating as his grounds that he was anxious to perpetuate the family surname of his maternal grandfather out of respect for his memory and at the wishes of his mother. No mention was made of his real motives. Alexander now assumed the title Earl of Stirling and Dovan, referring to his late mother as Countess, his grandfather as the 6th Earl, and conferring appropriate titles upon other members of his family. His next move was bold and controversial.

The death of the 6th Earl of Balcarres in 1825 had been followed by a proclamation calling upon the peers of Scotland to assemble at Holyrood House on 2 June to elect a peer to take his place as a representative in parliament. This was a chance for Alexander to demonstrate his position in public and before the men he regarded as his equals. Voting on such occasions was always preceded by the reading-out of names from the Roll of Peers for Scotland, which included the extinct peerages, and those gentlemen present answered when their names were called. When ‘Earl of Stirling' was read out, Alexander answered. Surprised officials were in no position to challenge him, and both recorded his presence and registered his vote. He and Fortunata then proceeded to Stirling, where, prompted by his solicitor there, James Wright, the arrival of the ‘Earl and Countess' was greeted by the ringing of the bells, and magistrates came to wait upon their noble visitors at the hotel and offer their congratulations. The couple made a visit to Stirling Castle and also to Argyll Lodge, the former residence of the Earls of Stirling. Before they departed, the town council met and elected the ‘Earl' a burgess of the town.

Alexander's next act was to seek legal title to the earldom and its lands. In the 1820s the means by which entitlement to honours was established was in some disrepute, since it was recognised as being open to fraud and imposture. Evidence of any kind was admissible in court, and, if there was no counter-claim, the action would automatically succeed. The result of such a hearing remained open to challenge for twenty years, after which it could not be overturned. As a first step, on 7 February 1826 Alexander took his case to the court of Canongate, Edinburgh, where he proved himself heir to Hannah Alexander, presenting a pedigree that claimed his maternal grandfather was the great-grandson of the 1st Earl. The claim was duly ratified by a jury.

Returning to Worcester, Alexander plunged into an extensive correspondence, with the aim of finding evidence to support his claims and raising loans on the security of his assumed possessions. He remained in a state of buoyant, almost intoxicated optimism. In November 1826 he wrote to a friend that he had high hopes of his wishes being accomplished almost immediately. He anticipated being granted ‘a location of
five millions of acres
, which is found to be not one
twentieth part
of the lands originally granted, all convertible at once, at common market price, into cash, and will be more than one million sterling'.
⁶
In July 1827 he wrote excitedly: ‘By degrees, all the valuable papers of which my grandmother was robbed, about the time the General preferred his claims to the Earldom, are finding their way back to me.'
⁷
These letters, written with the intention of raising money, were either the outpourings of a man losing touch with reality or a deliberate attempt at deception, and possibly something of both. Mlle Lenormand gave the ‘Earl' considerable encouragement. Having acquired a fortune during her heyday, she provided Alexander with loans amounting to 400,000 francs or £16,000 (about £1 million today) and was no doubt anxious to see her money and the interest thereon returned to her. In 1827 Banks was dispatched to America to find papers that, he was told, had been stolen by agents of the American claimant. While Banks was away, Alexander continued to incur vast expenses and tried to raise loans to pay them off; but all his attempts failed, probably for lack of security. Matters were not eased when Banks returned empty-handed. In April 1828 Alexander engaged the Edinburgh solicitor Ephraim Lockhart as his legal adviser, while Banks was sent to Ireland to trace the elusive novodamus. Banks wrote to Lockhart for advice on the style of a novodamus – he said he wanted to sure of what he was searching for – and Lockhart obligingly sent him a draft. Banks also obtained some copies of genuine charters from the period. By 1829 it seemed that Banks's efforts had been crowned with success: from Carlow he wrote that on his return to Dublin he found a parcel had arrived from an unknown sender containing an old document – not the hoped-for charter but a contemporary excerpt, witnessed by John Spottiswoode, Archbishop of St Andrews and Chancellor of Scotland in the 1630s.

Alexander was by now Headmaster of Netherton House, but, probably because of his legal expenses, the family were reduced to extreme financial distress and he was unable to pay the rent of his lodgings. The excerpt was just what he needed, a tangible document he could use to raise money. When Lockhart was shown the excerpt, he was surprised to find that it was identical word for word with the draft he had sent Banks; nevertheless, he did not raise any queries and, as instructed, commenced legal proceedings to prove the validity of the document. He also took action against John Watts of New York and William Duer of Albany, the grandsons of the American claimant, alleging that the excerpt had been stolen from the claimant's grandmother at the general's instigation. Neither Watts nor Duer was able to take the charge seriously, and, as there was no proof of the allegation, the action was dismissed on 4 March 1830. Another action attempting to use the excerpt to prove the existence of the novodamus of 1639 also failed.

In October 1829, abandoning his school and indeed his butcher to whom he owed money, Alexander moved his family to London, taking apartments at the corner of Regent Street and Jermyn Street. He was introduced to the financial agent John Tyrrell, to whom he described his 11 million acres in Maine. Part of the land was occupied, and the occupiers were to give him a quarter of a dollar an acre to be confirmed in their titles, while his title to the unoccupied part was, he said, beyond doubt. He needed only to raise money for the legal expenses and the cost of sending someone out to Maine to take possession of the estates. If he could also raise money to prosecute his claims in Scotland, he added, he would then obtain possession of the estates of Gartmore, Tullybody, Tillicoultry and Menstry. Tyrrell took Alexander at his word and negotiated a number of loans, one of which was from Admiral Sir Henry Digby. Before long the sum of £13,000 was lodged in Alexander's bank account, in return for which he signed a promissory note for £50,000. Moving to 20 Baker Street, he kept a carriage and lived in style. Despite the close professional relationship between Alexander and Banks, Tyrrell was instructed to say nothing to Banks about the loans he was raising. Alexander was considerably indebted to Banks, and probably wanted him to know as little about his current solvency as possible.

Alexander did not personally attend the next peers' election on 2 September 1830 but applied for, and was granted, permission to submit a signed list of the candidates for whom he wished to vote. When the name of Earl of Stirling was read out at the election, the Earl of Rosebery registered a protest, expressing the opinion that ‘it would be far more consistent with regularity and propriety, were those individuals who conceived they were entitled to dormant peerages, to make good their claims to them before the House of Lords, previous to taking the titles and exercising the privileges attached to them'.
⁸

Two days later Alexander launched an action in the Supreme Court of Scotland against Mr Graham of Gartmore, claiming the Gartmore lands for himself on the basis of the marriage of John of Gartmore. This was not to be resolved for two and half years, but while it was proceeding his efforts to establish himself as nearest heir to the titles of William, 1st Earl of Stirling, remained unchallenged and thus met with the approval of the courts on 11 October 1830 and 30 May 1831. Once again, the proofs he supplied were not subjected to enquiry. Among the documents he produced was a deposition said to have been made in 1722 by Sara Lyner, an 84-year-old widow, stating that her mother had seen John of Gartmore together with his only son, the alleged John of Antrim. The Lyner document also attested that the widow had been present at John of Antrim's marriage and had looked after his son. Another affidavit, dated 16 July 1723, had been sworn by a Henry Hovenden, declaring that the Reverend John Alexander of Londonderry was the grandson of John of Gartmore and that he had personally seen the novodamus which had granted the earldom to William Alexander ‘and the heirs male of his bodye, which failing, to the eldest heirs female'.
⁹
Why these people should have felt it necessary to make such affidavits was not clear at the time, and was only recognised as important with the hindsight of over a century.

In January 1831 Alexander addressed a memorial to King William IV asking for a royal audience. This was refused: the Lord Chancellor replied that Alexander's pretensions were untenable. The ‘Earl' attended Holyrood to vote in the peers' election on 3 June 1831, and this time the Duke of Buccleuch and the Earl of Lauderdale registered a formal protest at his vote being accepted, stating that ‘we have great reason to suspect the authenticity of the documents, such as they are, on which the claimant is said to rest his assumption of that title'.
¹⁰

On 2 July 1831 a final court action under the same uncritical system as before established Alexander's rights to the 1st Earl's inheritance. Lockhart was instructed to issue a proclamation titled
Notice to the Baronets of Nova Scotia
, addressed to the heirs of the original baronets created by the 1st Earl, advising them of their rights.

An office was opened at 53 Parliament Street for the sale of land and debentures on the American possessions, and on 12 July 1831, describing himself as ‘Lord Proprietor of the Province of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the adjacent Islands',
¹¹
Alexander issued a prospectus to proposed investors, with details of the court actions that had ratified him as heir to the 1st Earl: ‘He is now desirous that the waste lands within his said territories should be settled and appropriated . . . . Either for absolute purchase or lease for a term of years,'
¹²
estimating the value of the land at between 2
s
and 20
s
per acre depending on the quality of the soil and local advantages. As to the original grants made by Sir William, he declared that the crown was obliged to confirm these free of all expense, but large tracts of land remained unallotted. ‘At this time there is a particularly fine district of 1,000,000 acres of most excellent land in New Brunswick, comprehending every attribute of climate and soil to render settlements in entirety or in subdivisions according to the inclinations or capabilities of persons to take the whole or only proportions.'
¹³
He also encouraged those who might wish to form a company, in which case he would take a tenth of the shares, the company having the exclusive rights of working any such mines that might be found. His prospectuses and advertisements were widely circulated in Britain, the United States and Canada. How many people were duped into investing and how much money he made from them has never been quantified.

On 14 July 1831 Alexander decided to reward the efforts of Mr Banks, not with the money he undoubtedly owed him, but by granting 16,000 acres of land in Nova Scotia and creating him a baronet. A Mr Philippart (probably the historian John Philippart with whom the Alexanders are known to have corresponded) received a similar honour. In August 1831 Alexander wrote to the King once more, asking to be permitted to render homage at the forthcoming coronation. He was ignored.

For the previous eighteen months John Tyrrell had been successfully raising money for Alexander on the basis of the charter, but in 1831, during a conversation with Banks, he received a considerable shock: the document that he had been led to believe was an original charter was in fact only an excerpt, and, moreover, had not been ratified as genuine. Despite Alexander's confident assertions that the charter existed, it could not be produced. There was an abrupt termination of the business relationship. Tyrrell was later reticent in giving the reasons, perhaps concerned that he might be liable for prosecution, stating only that it happened because Alexander had said that others might do better for him. Banks alleged that it was because of the way Tyrrell conducted himself in business. The most likely reason was Tyrrell's discovery that he had been induced to obtain loans under false pretences.