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By Root 925 0

1762, the cessation of war meant a period of slowing advancement and frustration and involvement in debt leading to a strange and decisive episode in his life. For the moment, on his return to England after the Peace of Paris, his fortunes progressed quietly, if penuriously, while on half pay, the common fate of all officers and crew of a ship when it was paid off. In recognition of his addition of three valuable islands to the British Empire, he was made a Baronet in January, 1764. In the next year, after being a widower for seven years, he remarried—a lady named Henrietta Clies, about whom very little is told except that in due course she bore him his second son and three daughters. A land post was offered him in November, 1765, as Governor of Greenwich Hospital, a shelter for disabled and indigent seamen and a place affording many openings for jobbery (the contemporary term for bureaucratic graft). Rodney’s tenure was marked by a notable rebuke to his Vice-Governor for refusing to grant greatcoats to the pensioners in winter, especially as the Vice-Governor wore one himself when sitting by a good fire. His own rule, Rodney said, should be “to render the old men’s lives so comfortable” that younger visitors would say: “ ‘Who would not be a sailor, to live as happy as a prince in his old age!’ ” Greatcoats were accordingly ordered.

Without a ship and in proximity to London and the fashionable man’s life, the lures of gambling enveloped Rodney again, although it was less these than the lures of Parliament that were to be his undoing. He had held three seats in the gift of political patrons, but in 1768 Northampton, which he represented, was suddenly contested by an outsider and an election campaign had to be waged in order for Rodney to retain it. Even without television and modern expenses, the cost of a contested election for entertainment, drinks and direct payment for votes was ruinous. The mystique of Parliament was so powerful that Rodney was willing to spend £30,000 for an illusion of power where he exercised no influence and from which he obtained no benefit and which plunged him even more deeply in debt. In 1771, he was named to the honorary position of Rear Admiral of Great Britain and appointed Commander-in-Chief of Jamaica. Since half his designated salary as Rear Admiral was withheld until he had accounted to the Navy Board for expenditures of public money in Jamaica and to other claims upon his salary, he asked to retain his Greenwich Hospital post, as, he pointed out, three predecessors had been allowed to do before him. Lord Sandwich, showing signs of some unexplained grudge, refused to allow this and when, after his service in Jamaica, Rodney asked to be appointed Governor of that island, this too was refused. Embittered and resentful, he faced coming to the end of his three-year commission with the prospect of returning to England on half pay unless he was given another post. Advised upon his return in September, 1774, that he should leave the country rather than face a possibility of debtor’s prison, he fled to Paris. Here the pleasures of elegant life and sociable companions who admired the handsome English Admiral overcame him once more, until the burden of new debts he had incurred imprisoned him in the French capital, if not within stone walls. The French police made it plain that he would not be allowed to leave the city until his Parisian creditors were paid.

At this moment the shots at Lexington and Concord announced the American rebellion and put Rodney in a frenzy of impatience to take his part in action at sea. He was held immobile, however, for in spite of urgent letters to Lord Sandwich offering his service for active duty and his readiness “to go on any enterprise … at a moment’s warning,” no recall came from the Admiralty and nothing more than a formal and official reply from the First Lord, who in his fulsome correspondence had always professed himself Rodney’s true friend.

Rebellion against England of her primary colony was now a fact, bringing a foreboding of international conflict.