John Deane of Nottingham: Historic Adventures by Land and SeaKingston, William Henry Giles
General
John Deane of Nottingham: Historic Adventures by Land and Sea
Kingston, William Henry Giles
Dean, John, 1679-1761
and as Captain Deane stooped to lift him up, to his horror, he found
that he was dead! Rumour, with her hundred tongues, forthwith spread
the report that the fire-eating captain had killed his brother. The
verdict however of the jury who sat to decide the case was, that Dr
Jasper Deane had died by the visitation of God. Still Captain Deane was
conscious of the angry feelings which had excited his bosom at the
moment, and he felt that the mark of Cain was upon his forehead. He
could no longer remain at home, and though those who loved him best knew
of his innocence, and did their utmost to console him, he determined to
leave the country. He accordingly wrote to Captain Bertrand, accepting
his offer of a naval command under the Czar of Russia; and in a short
time he and Elizabeth sailed for the Baltic. He rendered great
assistance in organising the navy of that wonderful man Peter the Great,
and after serving with much credit for a few years, he returned to
England.
Captain Deane had during this time found a number of friends, and by
their means he was soon afterwards appointed English consul at Ostend,
where he lived with his wife Elizabeth till they were both advanced in
life. As an elderly couple they came back to Nottingham once more, and
went to live in the sweet village of Wilford, on the opposite side of
the silvery Trent. It was the peaceful green retreat that had beckoned
him back to England from many a scene of foreign grandeur, and smiled
across many a time of tumult and of battle. He and his wife both loved
the Dutch home where they had so long lived, and when he built a house
for himself in a thorough English village, he constructed it in the
Dutch style, which indeed in his early youth had been the very height of
fashion. Next to his own, behind the same trim garden and row of
silvery poplars, he built one also for his sister Polly, who was then a
widow. Alethea, after the death of her husband, had returned to Harwood
Grange with her children, and devoted herself to them, endeavouring so
to bring them up that they might love and serve God. She by this time
had also gone to her rest; so also had most of those who have been
mentioned in the previous history. Mistress Pearson did not live long
after her return to England, and she was saved the misery of hearing the
tragical death of her husband, who, with all his faults, had at all
events loved her. In a desperate action with a Queen's ship, he with
all his crew had been blown up, shortly after Deane had encountered him
at the mouth of the Delaware.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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