When Bigge and Colebrooke presented the secretary of state with their investigations into Edwards's background in July 1824, they did so in the knowledge that the notary's recent accusations against the governor's ‘private character’ carried serious political implications for the progress of their Commission of Inquiry. In particular, they wrote to Bathurst, ‘we are apprehensive, that they may become the subject of public observation in England, before we shall be able to notice the connexion in which they stand with some of the most important objects of our public inquiry’. The care they took into investigating such a seemingly unimportant personage underlines how ostensibly marginal figures like Edwards could do real damage to entrenched political interests when their causes were joined to opposition voices in the British Parliament. As their report acknowledged, the secretary of state needed to be armed against the public debate that was looming by ‘a very brief & early notice of the sources from whence these violent attacks have proceeded’. To do so, Bigge and Colebrooke deliberately made use of unofficial conduits of information. Marking their letter ‘private’ kept it outside the view of Parliament, where attacks on Somerset's Cape administration (and by implication on the Tory government in Britain with which he was allied) were becoming increasingly heated.

Somerset's period at the Cape during his second term as governor (1821–1826) was more than usually vexatious. In part this was unavoidable, a function of the problems described in the previous chapter. Frontier conflict, debates over unfree labour and tension between British and Dutch settlers were a volatile mix. The context would undoubtedly have proved a challenge to any colonial administration. In this instance, however, interpersonal frictions seriously hampered the government's ability to deal with the situation facing it. Following his return to the colony in November 1821, Somerset and the acting governor, Sir Rufane Donkin, embarked upon a bitter and long-standing feud in which the colonial secretary, Colonel Christopher Bird, became embroiled. Somerset was convinced that Bird had gathered around him a set of conspirators (‘the Aviary’ as he called them in letters to Bigge) who were devoted to undermining the governor at every point. The inability of the governor and his colonial secretary to work together seriously compromised both the unity and effectiveness of the administration.