UMBRA SUMUS

Edward Mustard was born 1738 in Bawtry near Doncaster. His father, a local squire and a widower was Master of the Bawtry Hunt and a well-known figure at Doncaster Race Meetings. Thus young Ned Mustard grows up around horses and hounds, and is well-versed in manly physical pursuits – perhaps somewhat less so in academia, though he can read and write and parse a Latin sentence as befits a gentleman. In 1753, thanks to an uncle with a little influence in a regiment of Dragoons, Ned obtains a commission as an ensign with his uncle’s old regiment, based in Hastings.

A traditional, unglamorous dragoon outfit, with none of the pretensions of those erstwhile cavalry units recently consigned by the government to the role of “Dragoon Guards”, their mission is to scour the coast for smugglers and wreckers and of course stand guard against encroachment by the French. There he obtains the favour of the Colonel who is obsessed with hunting and is devoted to establishing the new-fangled fox-hunting with hounds in the South Downs. Ned’s skills and his experience with the Bawtry Hunt are of great use to the Colonel in this regard.

In two years as the Colonel’s protege young Mustard obtains enough preferment to progress in rank to Lieutenant. In the process he discovers much about the murky world of smuggling, wrecking and law enforcement in those parts – though he never sees a Frenchman in all that time. He also makes acquaintance with many riding gentlemen around the country, including the young Hugo Meynell – widely acknowledged as the “father of modern fox-hunting”. The colonel, a man much given to laughing at his own wit, takes to calling him Keen Ned and the epithet sticks.

This comfortable existence comes to an end in the early months of 1755 when Mustard’s regiment is posted to Virginia at the beginning of the Seven Years War. The Colonel declines to join them and the Lieutenant Colonel simply does not have the status or force of command to keep his lads together as a regiment. On arrival they are split up and allocated at troop level to a variety of support roles – reconnaissance, pioneering, logistics (i.e. guarding the baggage). Although this is hardly glorious employment, it offers Mustard the chance of relatively independent command and a few opportunities to distinguish himself, leading his company of dragoons to secure and hold advanced positions, and since the war in North America is not going well at this point, as often mounting rear-guard actions to cover retreats.

His early impressions of Virginia are much coloured by his experience of the ill-fated Braddock Expedition. He comes to despise and distrust the truculent and seditious attitudes of many of the Virginia militia. He does however, make a good friend of George Croghan, the Indian agent who commands a small group of Indian Scouts, and makes the passing acquaintance of Daniel Boone, a wagoner at the time in the baggage train (which Mustard to his disgust was relegated to guarding during the battle itself). He manages to distinguish himself during the retreat and obtains the good opinion of George Washington, commander of the Virginia militia, who in effect takes command as Braddock lies dying of his wounds.

In 1756 Groghan obtains Lieutenant Mustard’s services as a support and bodyguard on trading/exploration/diplomatic expeditions mounted from Fort Shirley in the Ohio country. There he meets a variety of Indian tribes and makes friends and some enemies amongst them. Mustard is also able to make a decent amount of money out of the fur trade on own his account, sufficient to buy preferment to Captain. In 1757 he is back on active service with the army and takes part in the successful capture by the British of Fort Duquesne, commanding a force of dragoons and Cherokee scouts.

The following year Mustard is travelling with dispatches through Western Virginia Territory when he witnesses a group of Virginian irregulars claiming bounties on what they claim to be three dozen Shawnee scalps in a British military outpost. Mustard immediately identifies them as Cherokee, and indeed recognises a couple from their decoration as belonging to British scouts from the previous year’s action. After failing to persuade the garrison commander to arrest the men, Mustard sets about challenging them individually to duels. It is only after he has killed two and maimed another that the garrison commander intervenes and has Mustard taken into protective custody.

For two weeks Mustard cools his heels in the stockade while the garrison commander sends East for instruction and thwarts several lynching attempts by the Virginians. In the meantime other atrocities are committed by the colonists against Britain’s erstwhile native allies and the Cherokee Uprising gets under way in response. The influence of George Groghan, amongst others, sees Mustard released. However, Virginia is deemed too hot for him and he is posted to Carolina as commander of Fort Ninety-Six at the southern end of Cherokee Lands.

His heroic defence of Fort Ninety Six against the Cherokee earns him promotion to Major and the gratitude of Carolinans, particularly those in the environs of the Fort, which was notable for its large population of settlers sponsored by the London Sephardic Jewish community. However, he remained a controversial figure in Virginia. At the end of the war in 1761 he became closely involved in the peace negotiations with the Cherokee and was selected to command the honour guard of the three Cherokee chiefs who were sent to England to seal the renewed alliance and friendship with His Britannic Majesty.

The voyage back to London took six weeks and was hard on those without the strongest of constitutions. In the fourth week Rev. William Shorey, the Cherokee interpreter took a fever, and in the fifth he died. Mustard was no linguist, but he knew a few words in several American native languages, including Cherokee and could use their trade talk (a melange of several languages, some hand gestures and some French). In the land of the blind the one-eyed-man is king and he became guard, guide and interpreter to the Cherokee chiefs.

The Cherokee Chiefs were a huge social success — the toast of London. Mustard found himself and his charges much in demand in all the most fashionable salons in London, and he made the most of it both for himself and his charges. The apogee of the visit was an audience with the King himself at the Tower. King George was in a capital mood and was generous to a fault with the exotic defeated chieftains. As to Mustard himself, the King had heard of his exploits and was damned impressed with the way he’d learnt the lingo and gained the respect and friendship of men with whom he’d been fighting to keep his hair just six months ago.

“Are you keen, Mustard? Eh! What, what!” He pauses to allow the court to laugh at his little joke. They oblige. Mustard smiles.

“Good. Good. And you’re a dragoon? Eh! what, what!” Says the King.

“My generals are always telling me that we need more dragoons.”

He winks, broadly, “You, there,” he points to a flunky, “Go have this man made out a commission as a Colonel — yes, yes — a full Colonel. And give him a draft on the Treasury for £500, I’m sure we’re good for it.

“Now Mustard you are to go and recruit me a Regiment of Dragoons — and make them hot — heh, heh!”

Another pause for laughter.

“And when you’ve done it you can go and singe the Frenchies, what, what!”

Soon afterwards Mustard found himself standing on the St Catherine’s Dock, wearing his new dress uniform with its Colonel’s epaulettes, embracing his Cherokee friends, Otenaco, Standing Turkey and Wood Pigeon in farewell, his mind afire with plans for his new regiment. His first move would be to take a coach up to Leicestershire and look up his old friend Hugo Meynell whose ideas about hunting foxes with hounds were really taking hold around the country. Mustard was not so interested in Meynell’s hounds, what he wanted were introductions to hunts up and down the land, for where better to seek recruits for a dragoon regiment than around the hunting communities of the British Isles — men who sought excitement, adventure and above all who could ride.

So Mustard returns to a life of horse and hounds, visiting Hunts and recruiting likely lads to his new regiments. He meets with immediate success in his recruitment drive. He was his own best recruiting sergeant since all could see how he had gained his fortune through war and soldiering. Young gentlemen, the younger sons of older gentlemen and their country retainers, most of whom at least knew one end of a horse from another, flocked to his pennant. At one hunt he encounters a retired East India Company major with experience as a lancer in the company’s Indian campaigns. They find they have much in common — not least a shared experience of name-baiting, since this fellow was called Pepper. Mustard offers Pepper the role of Lieutenant Colonel and he accepts, immediately giving rise to a whole host of “hot” epithets for the new regiment (officially simply Mustard’s Dragoons).

Late in the year 1762 the regiment is posted to Portugal. It is not yet at full strength but is beginning to shape up. Unfortunately, it sees disappointingly little action before the outbreak of peace, though it does allow Mustard to acquaint himself with the English and Portuguese gentlemen engaged in the port trade — and their products.

In 1763 Mustard leaves Pepper in charge of the regiment and returns to England to continue his recruitment activities. However, it does not take long for Mustard to begin to get thoroughly bored with life as an absentee colonel and even hunting begins to pall. He takes himself off to London for a season. An ill-considered remark at the expense of a Dragoon Guards officer sees him challenged to a duel. Though Mustard offers an apology, it is refused. The duel takes place with swords in Hyde Park at dawn on a misty morning. En route to the Park, he bumps into a man, an old sailor carrying a bundle of hand bills. As Ned begs his pardon the man simply presses one of the bills into his hand. He stuffs it into his pocket and walks on.

It was never Mustard’s intention to kill the Horse Guards officer but he makes such a clumsy and frenzied attack that he ends impaled on Ned’s blade. Duels have always been illegal in England, and at the time were being actively discouraged by London magistrates. Moreover the man was connected, and his regiment — like most of the “guards” regiments — were stationed in town. Ned’s friends advise him to leave the city as soon as possible. His obvious move would be to rejoin his regiment. However, once word got out, ships headed for Portugal would likely be watched. Perhaps Ned needed just to disappear for a while. As he considers his options, Mustard’s fingers close around the handbill in his pocket and he draws it forth…