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11 Guilty or Innocent? The Buckingham vs. Bankes Libel Trial of 1826 Don Boyer The early 19th-century English traveller and adventurer William John Bankes spent almost five years visiting and recording ancient sites in the Levant. He was in Egypt and Nubia for much of this time, but he also visited Palestine and Syria. While in Palestine, in early 1816, he made a short sideAccess trip to Jerash (Jarash) and Umm Qais (Gadara) east of the Jordan, in the company of James Silk Buckingham. The trip proved to be historically interesting but was otherwise unremarkable in the context of his other travels; however, there were unexpected ramifications. These surfaced three years later followingOpen the publication of a prospectus of a book on Buckingham’s travels in the Middle East that included a lengthy section on the trip to Jarash and Umm Qais.1 This triggered an angry response from Bankes, then in Egypt, who distributed a letter accusing Buckingham of, among other things, using Bankes’ notes and plan of Jarash, and culminated in Buckingham bringing a libel case against Bankes four years later. After a three-year delay, the libel case came to trial in October 1826, ten years after the Jarash–Umm Qais trip, and resulted in Buckingham being awarded £400 in damages. The trial preparations and its aftermath attracted considerable press attention atArchaeopress the time, but there has been little modern commentary.2 Buckingham’s subsequent publications and actions implied that he considered his win at the libel trial had largely disproved Bankes’ accusations. Briggs & Co. had paid the costs of his return trip from Egypt to India, but separate allegations that lengthy delays on this 12-month long trip constituted a breach of trust with Briggs & Co were never satisfactorily resolved. A review of the available evidence has identified unpublished documents in the Bankes archive at the Dorset History Centre at Dorchester (DRC) that casts new light on the attribution of guilt and innocence in the libel case and on the veracity of Buckingham’s justifications in connection with the alleged breach of trust with Briggs & Co. © Archaeopress and the authors, 2017. 184 Don Boyer Brief background on Bankes and Buckingham William John Bankes (1786–1855) came from a privileged background: born into a leading, wealthy Dorset family, he was affluent in his own right and heir to a fortune. He read Classics at Cambridge and was travelling in the Near East for pleasure and adventure. He had been the Tory MP for Truro in 1810 and, following his return from the Near East, was MP for Cambridge from 1822. He displayed the typical impatience and arrogance of his class, but despite confessing later to being indolent,3 he did not fritter his time away. He travelled extensively throughout the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East between 1815 and 1820, and he became respected for his knowledge of Egypt and Nubia and his accurate drawings and watercolours. However, he published none of his travels, and consequently most of what we know of his accomplishments comes from his co-travellers.4 His modern fame as an Egyptologist, artist and epigraphist comes from the research of largely unpublished archive material by authors such as Bowsher,5 Lewis,6 Sartre-Fauriat,7 Sebba8 and Usick.9 The background of James Silk Buckingham (1786–1855) was very different and his remarkable life repays a closer inspection. TheAccess following summary of his formative years comes from a biography by Turner.10 The youngest son of a Cornish, seafaring family, he had a basic education and went to sea at the age of nine in a ship captained by his sister’s husband.11 The following years were full of adventures, including a spell in prison at Corunna. He brieflyOpen attended a naval academy, where he mastered nautical instruments, and while still in his teens became a Methodist and preacher. He married a neighbour’s daughter at the age of 20 and attained command of his first merchant vessel the following year. Then he sailed in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean for the next six years. However, he was ambitious: leaving his wife and young family with relatives he departed England with debts of £500 to establish a trading business in Smyrna. The business failed, so he travelled to Egypt in 1813–14, visiting many ancient sites and ‘hatching’ financial schemes at every opportunity. But he did not leave Smyrna empty handed: while there he had met John Lee, the ArchaeopressBritish Consul, who gave him an introduction to his brother, Peter Lee, the Consul in Alexandria.12 There were many other ambitious young men in the Near East at this time seeking their fortune, but Buckingham was a quick learner, well-driven and – more importantly – had realized the importance of good connections. He was charming and made many friends in his travels.13 His befriending of the famous Swiss explorer John Ludwig Burckhardt (1784–1817) is typical. His introduction to Peter Lee had brought him into contact with other influential members of the expatriate community in Egypt at that time, and he exploited these connections to further his ambitions. This ultimately led to the souring of some friendships; his friendship with Burckhardt being just one example. Largely self-taught, he lacked the university education that marked the leading explorers in the region such as Burckhardt and Bankes, but he made up for this with resourcefulness and was driven to find opportunities to clear © Archaeopress and the authors, 2017. 11. Guilty or Innocent? The Buckingham vs. Bankes Libel Trial of 1826 185 his debts and to re-invent himself as an explorer and author. An opportunity came in 1815, following the successful negotiation of a trading treaty with Mohammed Ali Pasha in Egypt on behalf of the merchant house of Briggs & Co. and himself, when an agreement was entered into with Lee, whereby Buckingham was to carry the treaty back to Bombay.14 Thinking that the return to India by sea would involve a long delay, due to contrary winds, Briggs & Co. agreed to provide an unlimited letter of credit to cover costs of Buckingham’s return trip to Bombay via Aleppo.15 Buckingham published four books between 1821 and 1829, based on his adventures on this trip.16 In the absence of a detailed, published critique of Buckingham’s version of events on the trip, we have to rely on the version of events set out in his four travel books and his autobiography published immediately before his death. Turner’s sympathetic biography mostly parrots Buckingham’s published travelogue and is silent on contentious issues such as the arrangements made between Lee and Buckingham before the start of the return trip to India.17 Background to the court case Bankes arrived in Egypt from Greece in 1815 and spent muchAccess of that year exploring Egypt and Nubia18 before deciding to turn his attention to Syria.19 While in Egypt, Bankes met traveller John Ludwig Burckhardt and the two became firm friends. Burckhardt had visited sites in Syria and the Decapolis in 1812 and had drawn maps of the places visited. Bankes was interested inOpen seeing the same area and Burckhardt gave him a list of sites to visit. Bankes left Cairo in late 1815 and arrived in Jerusalem on 2 January 1816, where he established himself at the Terra Sancta convent and set about making preparations for a trip to the Decapolis region, particularly Jarash (Jerash) and Umm Qais. Buckingham arrived in Jerusalem on 20 January 1816 and immediately sought a meeting with Bankes. The two men ended up sharing the same room at the convent. They visited several sites around Jerusalem together and Buckingham joined Bankes’ planned expedition to Jarash and Umm Qais. The party of six set off on 28 January 1816,Archaeopress and reached Nazareth on 4 February. Disagreement over the precise nature of the arrangement made between the two men before departure, and the events that subsequently took place on the trip, were to be key points in the subsequent libel case that Buckingham brought against Bankes. What triggered the libel trial? On 2 October 1818, Buckingham included a lengthy prospectus of his forthcoming book Travels in Palestine in the first edition of his newly established Calcutta Journal. A copy of the published prospectus reached Egypt nine months later and came to Bankes’ attention. Bankes was enraged when he saw the references to plans and descriptions relating to the eight-day trip from Jerusalem to Nazareth in 1816. On 12 June 1819, while in Thebes, Bankes wrote a scathing letter to Buckingham © Archaeopress and the authors, 2017. 186 Don Boyer based on what he had seen in the prospectus (hereafter ‘Letter’), accusing him of having copied and stolen material from Bankes while they had travelled together. He demanded retraction of the section in the book relating to the Jerusalem– Nazareth trip and return ‘all that portion of the work advertised, that treats of a journey made at my expense and compiled from my notes’. The same day Bankes wrote to his father, enclosing a copy of the Letter. Around six months later, in late 1819,20 an open copy of the Letter was sent with Mr Hobhouse to India. Bankes gave instructions for it to be shown to the British consuls in Aleppo and Bagdad, and to anyone Hobhouse wished to in India, with the intention of ruining Buckingham’s reputation. The Letter took almost 12 months to reach Buckingham in India, arriving in Calcutta in June 1820. Buckingham delayed nearly three weeks before replying with a brief letter of rebuttal.21 Buckingham did not comply with Bankes’ demands regarding the book – apart from anything else the Jarash–Umm Qais trip with Bankes constituted about 30 per cent of the book22 – and published it the following year.