dated June 18, 1846, “begged to acquaint his agent most distinctly that I will have nothing to do with such a lawsuit in any way whatever, nor will I authorize you to act for or make use of my name for such a pro- posal under any pretence.” The utter finality of this pronouncement gave Stewart no encouragement to persevere, and the matter was dropped.

Another contentious issue arose over the disposal of the plate and furniture of Mount Stewart House. According to the provisions of John Stewart’s will, these were bequeathed to his granddaughter, Helen Olympia Littler. An auction sale was held in 1836 and, somewhat later, Peter Mac- Gowan was dismayed to learn that the auctioneer, William Cullen, had kept the proceeds! A lawsuit was instituted, and MacGowan succeeded in getting from Cullen an account in which he admitted owing £288. The next move was to take out a judgement for this amount on a freehold property which Cullen possessed on Pownal Street, Charlottetown. Mr. Cullen died before the sale of his property took place, and MacGowan then found himself in the position of forwarding proceedings which would dis- possess the Widow Cullen, “a most amiable person, verging towards the decline of life,” of her home. To MacGowan’s plea that he found his situa- tion distasteful, James Brembridge, Littler’s London agent, replied that “although we may commiserate with Mrs. Cullen, we must be just before We are generous and not sacrifice the rights of creditors.” The sale took

place as scheduled.

A final controversy, and one that, perhaps, was never brought to a successful solution, involved the disposition of £298, which H. D. Morpeth, John Stewart’s agent, paid over to William Stewart when the latter, along with Peter MacGowan, assumed the agency for Mount Stewart Estate. At the time MacGowan was led to understand that the funds had been remitted for General Littler’s account in London; however, he later learned that they had been used to make repairs to Stewart’s mother’s dwelling and that there was no security for the amount to General Littler. All the representations which MacGowan made to the family fell on deaf ears. Finally, feeling uneasy over being mixed up in such a delicate matter involving two families on intimate and friendly terms, MacGowan applied to Mr. Brown Roberts, Major Littler’s new London agent, for advice. None was given and no further reference to the matter is made in the corres- pondence of the Estate. It seems likely that a private arrangement was concluded between the parties concerned without recourse to the services of an intermediary.

And so the turbulence that had accompanied John Stewart through his life and beyond finally ceased. Ann Callbeck, one of his contemporaries, Judged him harshly. She declared him to be “a compound of sophistica— tion masked by extensive plausibility with a head to contrive, a heart to conceive and a hand to execute only mischief.” One cannot refrain, how— ever, from regretting that much of the surviving record pertaining to this remarkable man consists of violent diatribes such as this, written, often, to advance designs even murkier than those with which Stewart stood accused. Street brawler he was upon occasion and, perhaps, in common with many of his social class and generation, land grabber as well. Yet, the same record, biased as it is, reveals one who had a genuine love for his homeland, and one who was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths, when the need arose, to rid it of an unpopular administration. He was not, as he once said of himself, “a good natured man by no means addicted to quarrelling.” Neither, surely, was he one whose sole mission in life was the “execution of mischief.”

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