What South Carolina’s governor, Lord William Campbell, knew was that Brown had been given a lieutenant’s commission despite not having any military training, and that the young man had been dispatched to America with a shipload of covenant servants. These families were bound to work for three years to pay for the cost of their transportation and would then be allotted enough land to start a small farming operation. The governor had heard, and believed, that this special treatment was designed to remove Brown from England: either a rich family was making a major financial investment in the future of a son, or Brown was a potential source of embarrassment to the most influential politician in the kingdom.

The young man seemed to be ambitious and had offered his services to the governors of Georgia and South Carolina, just to “promote loyalty to the crown.” Like Governor Wright, Campbell was willing to allot a few minutes of his time every month or so to have this small addition to the intelligence gathering he desired from around his colony.

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Thomas Brown was actually a native of Yorkshire, born in 1750, and the eldest son of Jonas Brown, a prosperous shipowner. The grandfather of Thomas’s mother was Sir Isaac Newton. Taking full advantage of his father’s wealth and influence, Thomas combined a good education with a life of debauchery with his friends. His father was an ambitious man, who soon realized that some of Thomas’s escapades were bringing discredit on the family. The young man was sent on an extended sea voyage in the Caribbean on one of his father’s ships and then, through an arrangement that he never fully understood, Thomas had been placed in charge of a group of indentured servants on the Marlborough, a three-hundred-ton round-bottomed ship in which his father owned an interest. For this trip, from Whitby around the Orkneys and then to Savannah, he was promised a portion of land and the services of any six of the men whom he might choose, each of them obligated for three years of service on the farm.

On the same ship was a man named Michael Herring, who paid his own passage and was looking for employment in the new country. He was an Irish farmer who had left home because his older brothers had priority as heirs of the family land. He and Brown met early in the voyage, and knowing that he was almost completely ignorant about agriculture, Brown arranged for Herring to be the overseer of his new farm, with a place to live, an annual salary of £25, and the promise of one hundred acres of land. Herring’s first task was to select the six men who would be working for Brown, and by the time they reached America he had made his choices.