Real People in The Counterfeit Guest

Sir John Scott (1751-1838) served as solicitor general and then attorney general from 1788 to 1799, and was later appointed lord chancellor. His tenure of that office (approximately 25 years in total) is the longest in history. As the Crown’s senior law officer, he drafted much of the anti-Republican legislation introduced in during the 1790s and undertook several high profile prosecutions for treason and seditious libel. He was certainly aware of government spies, although whether he had particular knowledge of the individuals and their activities is unclear. Politically conservative, he was also known for his extreme caution in legal matters. The latter tendency may have weakened him as a prosecutor, and undoubtedly contributed to the problem of ‘delays in Chancery’ that was satirised by Charles Dickens in Bleak House.

William Congreve (d.1814) was the newly appointed commandant of the Woolwich arsenal in May 1797, having previously held the posts of superintendent of military machines and comptroller of the Woolwich laboratory. Congreve is credited with various improvements to gunpowder production and gun carriage design. He was an early advocate of government manufacture of powder, and urged William Pitt to purchase the Waltham Abbey mills in 1787. Congreve’s son, also named William, invented the Congreve rocket, whose ‘red glare’ is mentioned in the American national anthem.

Charles Cornwallis (1738-1805) was the Master of the Ordinance at the time of the Woolwich mutiny. He is perhaps best known as the general commanding the British forces at Yorktown in 1781, whose surrender signalled the end of the American Revolution. Defeat, however, was rare for him. From 1785-1793 he was governor-general of India, during which time he introduced civil and military reforms and defeated Tippo Sultan in the Third Anglo-Mysore war. He almost returned to India in 1797, but instead was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland the following year. There he oversaw the defeat of the rebellion of 1798 and helped to guide the Act of Union through the Irish parliament. In 1801, in the capacity of minister plenipotentiary in the Addington government, he signed the Peace of Amiens that ended, temporarily, the war with France.

John MacLeod (d. 1834) was deputy adjutant-general in the Royal Artillery in 1797, and was well known for his administrative efficiency, his kindly regard for the men under his command, and his tactful dealings with the often frustrating Ordinance Board. In 1809 he commanded the artillery in the Walcheren expedition, and in 1814 he was appointed colonel-commandant of the regiment and director-general at Woolwich. His son, Lt Col Charles MacLeod of the 43rd Foot, was killed leading the assault on the breach at Badajoz in April 1812.