A young man sat at the bar, surrounded on all sides by the titled nobility of Great Britain. “What is your name?” the lord in charge of the proceedings asked the man.

“My name is John Temple,” he replied.

“Do you have any title?” the questioner, Viscount Montgomery, asked.

“My father was a baronet, but I don’t know that he had a courtesy title at all, no,” John replied.

“Where is your father?” Viscount Montgomery queried.

“He is unable to come,” John answered.

“He was the one who we summoned to talk to us, as he has served as the Lieutenant Governor of the Bahamas for years,” Montgomery stated.

“I am aware of that,” John replied.

“And yet we have a young man here who no one happens to know who is supposed to be the figure that we ask about affairs in the Bahamas,” Montgomery commented. “How has this come to be?”

“My father deputized me to speak on his behalf whenever he was not around, and I have served in that position for a few years now,” John answered.

“You have served as an official for years without ever having sent anything under your own name to anyone?” Montgomery asked rhetorically.

“I was given leave by my father to write under his byline, and I continued to report to the governor, so he was aware I was working on my father’s behalf. There was no secrecy about it. I lived in a house in Freeport and was available to all who visited me,” John answered.

“But you have not told this body where your father is located,” Montgomery answered. “And that is what we demand.”

There was, briefly, silence from the young man while there was angry murmuring from the unhappy lords. Finally, John softly replied. “My father is dead, and has been dead for a while now.”

“Why did you not tell us that at the beginning? And why did you not inform us so that he could have been replaced?” Montgomery asked angrily.

“I did not want to be replaced,” John said.

“It was not for you to decide,” Montgomery said.

“I suppose it’s all over now,” John said.

“Indeed it is,” Montgomery said. “I must say, you seem to have performed your duties ably, even if without permission. We know that your father was a loyal servant of the crown and hope that you will be able to be a loyal servant of the crown with our permission and knowledge.”

“I hope that would be the case as well,” John said. With that the angry muttering changed to a satisfied one, and John realized that he was not going to have a terrible experience here in this court, at least.

“I do not see that we have any reason to accuse this young man of any crime,” Montgomery said. “If he was not entirely forthcoming with us, at least, about the death of his father, at least he does not appear to have been acting out of any evil interests. Still, it is a wrong that we must correct. When the Bahamas is returned to us, we will need to name someone else to the positions of leadership, but I think that your record will not be held against you.”

“I am glad to hear that my service, if irregular, is still appreciated,” John answered.

“You mentioned earlier that your home was open to all who were guests at Freetown, correct?” Montgomery asked.

“Yes, that is correct,” John answered.

“This court has heard a fair amount of discussion and complaint about the fate of one Robert Woods, grandson of Viscount Lipton. Do you know him at all?” Montgomery asked.

“In fact, I did make his acquaintance,” John said.

“You did?” Montgomery asked. “Could you describe how it happened?”

“Some months ago, Mr. Woods sailed to Freetown with a group of refugee freedmen from South Carolina, and he came to my house and asked if he could spend the evening,” John said. “I let him in the house and we talked and then he stayed in my house in the guest room and then left Freetown the next morning after breakfast. I found him to be an interesting person to talk to, and asked him about his background, and he told me about his connection to Viscount Lipton and his own history of service to His Majesty.”

“So you found Mr. Woods to be an open man when it came to his identity, and that he was not someone who made it hard for people to figure out who he is?” Montgomery asked.

“He was a discreet man, but he was certainly not a dishonest or secretive one,” John said.

“Have you thought of him since you met him?” Montgomery asked.

“When those of us from the Bahamas were sent as paroled prisoners to East Florida, I was told that he had been left in prison in Nassau for a disagreement he had with Vice Admiral Maxwell, and I looked up a copy of the peerage and saw him to be listed as the heir to the position of Viscount Lipton on account of the death of his uncle recently,” John answered.

“That is correct, and that is why this case is of interest to the House of Lords,” Montgomery said. “You had no role in his imprisonment?”

“None at all,” John answered. “At least to my knowledge, it was strictly the decision of Vice Admiral Maxwell. If this house wishes to find out more, it would probably need to find out more information from him.”

“We intend to do that,” Montgomery said.

“Very well then,” John answered.

“We have no further questions for you, so you are free to leave the stand now, Mr. Temple,” Montgomery said.

“Very well then,” John said and got up and, making a bow to the Lords, exited the house.

It is unclear what else John Temple could have expected other than a bit of anger from the House of Lords that the government did not know that one of their royal servants had died while his son continued to do his job without them being the wiser. This is not something that any government body is going to tolerate very well. That said, he cannot be too unhappy about how things turned out, given that he was able to give them good information about another royal servant that the House needed to know about. John hoped that he would be able to serve in a position of responsibility in the future, under his own name, and could be confident that if Robert Woods suffered no harm from his imprisonment, it is likely that he would have at least one friend among the House of Lords who could help him with patronage concerns, at least.

Now that the House of Lords had some information about Robert Woods and his location as well as the way that he conducted himself in the King’s service, they wanted even more to ensure his safety and well-being. How do this in an active war zone was by no means an obvious or easy thing to accomplish. They had yet to receive any information from the Spanish themselves, and so they were long unaware that the Spanish knew who it was that they had imprisoned in the dungeon. By the time that John Temple spoke to them, they were still unaware of the safety and security of an heir to a noble line. This was not a place that the House of Lords desired to be in, and they would make sure to let the responsible party know their displeasure.

The main part of the matter of the House of Lords that was not to everyone’s satisfaction was the realization that the behavior of the House of Lords was rather private. While the speaking that took place in the House of Commons was easily heard by the masses, and people could develop a reputation for oratory that would help their political record by giving powerful speeches, the fact that the members of the House of Lords inherited their seats rather than winning elections for them encouraged a more collegial and less obviously competent attitude and less obvious speeches. If one wanted to engage in eloquent speaking and political discourse, the House of Commons would provide you with a Pitt, a Burke, or a Wilberforce, or someone of that stature. None of the House of Lords could match that eloquence, except among those members of the Commons that had been promoted to the House of Lords and thus been kicked upstairs and removed from the commons.

It remained, though, that while the name of Robert Woods was somewhat familiar to the people of London and those who followed speeches about how a British citizen had been imprisoned in Spanish hands, which whipped up the fear of the populace that could understand how it would be a terrifying experience for a good and decent British person who was loyally serving the crown and dependent on the respect that people had for the rights of Englishmen to find himself imprisoned at the hands of the barbarous people who were responsible for the horrors of cutting off the ears of good English merchants or torturing people in the courts of the Inquisition. This was perhaps an unfair view of the Spaniards, who vented their frustration on smugglers and privateers, or those they viewed as such, and had been no more violent against Protestants and Jews than King James had been against recusant Catholics. People are seldom just when it comes to examining the merits and demerits of those who were often in opposition with them, and who were mighty and formidable foes.

It is true that Robert Woods’ name was somewhat known, because his fate was a cause celebre within English society, but little was known about the man himself. This was regrettable but perhaps not too surprising. Robert was by no means someone who had served in high office, and he was a person of considerable privacy and mildness in his behavior. Those people whom he had served were aware of his conspicuous virtues as well as his considerable kindness and noble character as a person, but few people were acquainted with him. He had not been in England for nearly two decades at this point, more than half of his life, and there were few people in England who had ever seen him, for even when he lived in England he was a fairly ordinary young person among the notables of a small market town. He was certainly from a privileged family background, but he was by no means someone who had been expected to be the heir of the family, so he did not receive all of the advantages that would normally have come with his background. As it was, he had been able to educate himself through his possession of an able mind and a fondness for reading and elegant conversation, but most young men of his class would have gone to university as well as elite “public” schools, and this opportunity was denied to him, which certainly set back his social development. It can be easily understood that residing for months in a dungeon also did not help one’s social life, except perhaps with the resident rodent population and the occasional interaction with a jailer.