Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [14]
History does not record what happened next. We can surmise, however, that as in any metropolis a crowd gathered, and that among the cluster of ghoulish spectators and concerned passersby was a sheriff ’s officer. John Law seems to have made no attempt to escape. Answering the officer’s questions, he declared himself to be twenty-three years of age, a resident of the nearby parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, where he had settled several years ago after having moved from Edinburgh. The constable’s attention turned next to the victim and his companion, who introduced himself as Captain Wightman. The dead man, noted the constable, was of similar age to his assailant and grandly dressed. Examining the corpse more closely, or asking Wightman to identify it, he must have flinched with surprise: the body was that of Edward Wilson, one of London’s most enigmatic, flamboyant, and talked-about dandies. His death, the stalwart constable might have reflected, could only serve to fuel the blaze of gossip already surrounding him.
While Law settled into London, he had not only pondered mathematical and financial conundrums. In his idle hours he had continued to gamble and philander. Practice had increased his winnings in both spheres, but along with the fashionable friends, enticing amours, and triumphant gains had come enemies too. At some stage Law crossed the path of Edward Wilson, the fifth son of an impoverished gentleman from Keythorpe in Leicester, whose estate was heavily mortgaged. In his youth Wilson is believed to have served as a humble ensign in Flanders, but recently in London he had led such a flamboyant life that he had caught the eye of London society. John Evelyn described him living in “the garb and equipage of the richest nobleman for house, furniture, coaches, saddle horses.” Another eighteenth-century writer recalled that Wilson “took a great house, furnished it richly, kept his coach and six, had abundance of horses in body clothes, kept abundance of servants, no man entertained nobler, nor paid better.” But where had the money come from? Even in the gossipy circles that both he and Law frequented no one could discover its source, though many hours were wasted talking about it.
Wilson paid off his father’s debts and took care of his sisters by introducing them to polite society in the hope that they would make good marriages. One Miss Wilson moved into the same lodgings where John Law and his mistress Mrs. Lawrence were living. At some point Wilson and Law clashed. Angry letters were exchanged over the impropriety of Law’s living arrangements. Tempers ignited further when Miss Wilson, doubtless with her brother’s encouragement, flounced out of the lodgings and took rooms elsewhere. Law was roundly scolded by his landlady, who, egged on by Wilson, fussed that Law’s libertine lifestyle might damage the reputation of her hitherto respectable establishment. She did not want scandal. Law retaliated by writing more angry letters to Wilson, and when these did not improve matters, paid a visit to his mansion. Over a glass of sack he warned him, unequivocally, to stop spreading rumors.
But animosity continued to brew. Events came to a climax on the morning of April 9, 1694, the day of the duel, when Law entered the Fountain tavern in the Strand and found himself face to face with Wilson and his friend Captain Wightman. Significantly, Wightman never divulged precisely what was said in the crucial exchange leading to the fatal duel. He commented only that “after they had staid a little while there, Mr. Lawe* went away, after which Mr. Wilson and Captain Wightman took coach, and were drove towards Bloomsbury,” which implies that Wilson was the aggressor. If not, as a friend of Wilson, Wightman would have said so.
* Law’s name is variously spelled in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts—Lawe and Lawes often appear in England, and in France Lass is a common alternative.