Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [26]
Law was tired of being on the run. After nearly ten years oftraveling he saw that unless he wanted to spend the rest of his life as a fugitive, a royal pardon was essential. The Wilson family’s animosity might be defused if he compensated them generously for their loss—and he now had the money to do so. Royal assent, the other criterion for a pardon, depended on the new monarch, Queen Anne, who had succeeded to the throne after William’s death. A flicker of hope grew that if he could convince her of the benefit his ideas could bring to her country, she might spare him the gallows and give him the longed-for reprieve.
On arrival in Edinburgh, Law was reunited with his mother, whom he had not seen since he left the city as a young man. What did the redoubtable Jean make of the equally determined Katherine? Did her son hide from her the true nature of the liaison? Whatever their feelings, it seems that within this settled domestic background, Law was able to work with new purpose.
He decided to tender his knowledge to the queen in the traditional way, by writing a proposal. His first work, only recently identified by scholars, was entitled “Essay on a Land Bank.” In it he proposed a bank issuing paper money based on the value of land. This was a more stable basis for credit than silver, he contended, since history had shown that precious metals could fluctuate in value according to their scarcity, whereas land’s value was less volatile. The idea was not entirely original: since the mid-seventeenth century numerous writers had put forward similar schemes—even Defoe felt “land is the best bottom for banks.” The same idea still flourishes today in the form of savings-and-loan associations.
Queen Anne was not impressed. Law’s arguments might be ingenious and succinctly expressed, but he could not erase his past. As a convicted felon and a notorious gambler, he was a far-from-obvious candidate to trust with the nation’s purse. After cursory consideration, the idea was therefore quickly rejected. The list of petitions and memorials to the queen in August 1704 recorded that Law, presently residing in Scotland, “by the intercession of friends” had managed to secure the Wilson family’s agreement to annul the appeal. It continues circumspectly, “yet your petitioner is debarred from serving your majesty (as he is most desirous) in the just war wherein your majesty is now engaged,” requesting royal pardon, “not only for the death of the said John [sic: it should be Edward] Wilson, but also for his breach of the said prison that he may be able to serve the queen for the rest of his life.” The application is marked with the single word “rejected.” In the eyes of the queen and her government, Law’s financial genius would never be acknowledged.
Faced with this setback, Law did not waver in his determination. Certain that the scheme’s soundness was not in question, he decided to adapt it for Scotland. Here he was confident that his influential friends, including the Duke of Argyll, who was the queen’s commissioner in Scotland, would ensure a fair hearing.
Scotland desperately needed someone to cure her economic ills. At the turn of the eighteenth century the country languished in an economic nadir, with currency in short supply, trade in the doldrums, unemployment and poverty widespread. The situation was exacerbated by a financial fiasco called the Darien scheme. The brainchild of William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England, the idea had been to found a colony in Panama, which would provide a base from which cargoes would be carried across the isthmus from the Pacific to the