Richard Worsam Meade I
Sometimes controversially outspoken, he lost favor and was imprisoned by political enemies after the Spanish government incurred large debts to him during the Peninsular War.
[2] As supercargo on board his father's ships he traveled to the West Indies, and in 1795 to Europe, returning the next year after touring England and France.
[9][3] He did feud with the U.S. consulate, writing to Secretary of State James Madison to call Vice-Consul Richard Hackley without "Capacity or Respectability".
[10] During the siege of Cadiz in the Peninsular War, Meade provided the Spanish monarchy with "supplies of all kinds" against the French invasion; in 1810 his ships brought 250,000 barrels of flour into the city.
In 1812 he published a pamphlet accusing Treasurer-General Victor Soret of misappropriation: Scandalous Attempt by the Regency of Spain to Ruin Richard W. Meade.
According to his own account he published in warm and manly language a Pamphlet ... in consequence of said publication, he was seized at midnight by an armed force, and imprisoned in the common jail of the city[.
The Consulado of Cadiz (a tribunal of commerce) had appointed him to manage the bankrupt estate of James W. Glass, a broker for Hunter, Rainey & Company of London.
On appeal the Spanish Council of War involved itself,[8] and on a pretext to avoid paying the government's huge debt, caused him to be imprisoned in the Castle of Santa Catalina on May 2, 1816.
[22] The anti-Spanish faction seized the political opportunity:[23] Speaker Henry Clay led the House of Representatives in resolving that "the imprisonment of Richard W. Meade is an act of cruel and unjustifiable oppression",[24] and was joined by the Senate.
[30] Meade spent the rest of his life lobbying the government for payment, employing such famous attorneys as Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and Rufus Choate.
[31] The political situation however was against him: John Quincy Adams rose to the presidency in 1824 while the Meades had supported Clay, and their sympathy in Congress quickly waned.
[3] Sometimes accepting paintings to satisfy debts, he acquired works by Titian, Correggio, Veronese, Rubens, Van Dyck, Velázquez and Murillo.
[39] After returning from Spain, Meade became a trustee of St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church just as its priest William Hogan was in a dispute with Bishop Henry Conwell.
Meade believed that in a republic, where the people are sovereign, the trustees of a parish should have the right to appoint priests—in the same way that the Pope had granted European monarchs this right.
[40] A pamphlet defending the trustees was published by exiled priest John Rico, whom Meade had helped escape from Spain to the United States.
[41] Meade became close friends with another parishioner, diplomat Manuel Torres, through whom he met the radical priest Servando Teresa de Mier.
[49] Meade was on the board of examiners of the American Classical and Military Lyceum, a Mount Airy school which George attended for two years.
[50] The family's diminished finances due to the failed claim may be the reason that the younger Richard and George sought a free education as military officers.
