Decorated bannerCHAPTERVIII.(1746.)
Decorated banner
incontrast with the triumph and the deification came the torture and the slaughter of the victims. The trials of the prisoners taken at Carlisle and in Scotland next monopolised the public mind. When the precept was issued by the judges, to the High Sheriff of Surrey, to summon a jury for the trial of the prisoners, at the Court House, in Southwark, a very equivocal compliment was paid to Richmond. The grand jury were selected from among the inhabitants of Addiscombe, Bermondsey, Camberwell, Clapham, Croydon, Kennington, Lambeth, Putney, Rotherhithe, Southwark,—but not from Richmond, or its immediate neighbourhood. The inhabitants of that courtly locality were spared. They were supposed to be thoroughly Hanoverian, and therefore to a certain degree biassed! The trials of those called ‘the Manchester officers’ divided the attention of London with those of the Jacobite peers. The former were brought to the Court House, St. Margaret’s Hill, Southwark, on July 3rd, for arraignment. The judges in commission were Chief JusticeLee, Justices Wright, Dennison, Foster, and Abney; Barons Clive and Reynolds, with two magistrates, Sir Thomas De Viel and Peter Theobald, Esqs. Eighteen prisoners were brought to the Court through an excited and insulting mob. Of these eighteen, five pleaded ‘guilty.’ The trials of the remaining thirteen were deferred to the 13th July. Of these, one was acquitted.COLONEL TOWNELEY.The first prisoner placed at the bar was Francis Towneley, Colonel of the Manchester regiment, and nephew of the Towneley who had such a narrow escape of the gallows for his share in the earlier outbreak. The trials so nearly resembled each other, that to narrate a few will afford a sample of the whole. The Attorney-General (Ryder), the Solicitor-General (Murray), Sir John Strange, Sir Richard Lloyd, and the Hon. Mr. Yorke were the prosecuting counsel. Towneley was defended by Sergeant Wynne and Mr. Clayton. The addresses of the king’s counsel altogether would make but a short speech, in the present day. One briefly explained the charge; and the others, among them, expressed their horror at the rebel idea of overturning so glorious a throne and so gracious a king. They laughed at the motto on the rebel flag:Liberty, Property, and King. Liberty was interpreted as meaning slavery; property meant plunder; and king, an usurper who was to sit in the place of a murdered and rightful monarch. Seven witnesses deposed against Towneley. The first two were ‘rebels’ who, to save their necks, turned traitors. The first, Macdonald, swore to his having seen Towneley acting as colonel ofthe Manchester regiment with a white cockade in his hat, a Highland dress, a plaid sash, sword and pistols. The cross-examination was as brief as that in chief. Out of it came that Macdonald expected his pardon for his testimony; that he was only a servant; was brought by sea and came ashore from the Thames in a destitute condition, and had nothing to subsist on.
KING’S EVIDENCE.
Macdonald’s fellow in iniquity, Maddox, succeeded. He was nominally an ensign, but he held no commission, and Towneley was his colonel. In the retreat, northward, Maddox stated that he had expressed a desire to get back to his master at Manchester, and that Towneley replied that, if he attempted to withdraw, he would have his brains knocked out. At Carlisle, he added, the Pretender, on leaving, appointed Towneley Commandant, under Hamilton, the Governor of the town. That, in the above capacity, Towneley fortified the city, sent out foraging parties, to whom he made signals by firing a pistol as he stood on the wall, to warn them against surprises by the enemy. When Governor Hamilton spoke of surrendering the citadel, Towneley, according to Maddox, flew into violent rage, and protested that ‘it would be better to die by the sword than to fall into the hands of the damned Hanoverians.’ In his cross-examination, Maddox accounted for his being an approver, by saying: ‘My brother came to me in the New Prison, and advised me to do my best to save my own life, and serve my country.’ He had followed the fraternal counsel, and was then living, at Government cost, in a messenger’shouse.TOWNELEY’S TRIAL.The third approver, Coleman, gave similar evidence. A Carlisle grocer, Davidson, deposed that he heard Colonel Towneley give orders to set fire to a house near the city, from which ‘the Elector of Hanover’s troops’ had fired on some Jacobite soldiery. Two captains, Nevet and Vere, stated, that on entering Carlisle, they had found Towneley acting as Commandant; and Captain Carey said, that the Duke of Cumberland having ordered him, through Lord Beauclerc, to take the rebel officers under his guard, he found on Towneley some guineas and a watch, ‘which I did not take from him,’ the captain added; ‘for His Royal Highness’s orders were, not to take any money out of the pockets of any of the officers, as it might be of service in their confinement.’
The process of accusation was not long; the defence was briefer still. Towneley’s counsel could not save him by stating that he was a gentleman by birth and education; that motives which weighed upon him forced him to go abroad in 1722; that he held a commission from the King of France; and that he was at the side of Borwick, when that marshal was slain at Phillipsburgh; that he had come over to England, some time before, while in the service of the French king; and that, as a French officer, he had ‘a right to the cartel.’ Captain Carpenter, whose evidence was to the same effect, served the colonel as little by his deposition; and two Manchester men, Hayward and Dickinson, who swore that Maddox was a cheating apprentice to a Manchester apothecary, not to bebelieved on his oath, might as well have remained at home.
CONVICTION.
The summing-up was brief, but to the purpose. The jury, consisting of three gentlemen, one yeoman, three brewers, a baker, brazier, starch-maker, gardener, and cloth-worker, promptly replied to it, by finding Towneley ‘guilty.’ The colonel heard the word and the sentence which followed, so horrible in its details of strangling and burning, without being much moved. His dignity never failed him; and the crowd through which he returned to his dungeon was less savage, in its expletives, than the loyal press in its comments. ‘The commission from the French king,’ said the ‘Penny Post,’ ‘was treated with the contempt it deserved, and must convince the Jacobites that such foolish and wicked contrivances can have no effect on men of understanding.’ ‘Hear! hear!’ cried the Whig papers; ‘so much for the nominal Colonel!’
While these trials were in progress, a curious enquiry was attracting not a few of ‘the mobile’ to another part of the town. A goodly number of King George’s soldiers were made prisoners by the Jacobites, at the battle of Preston Pans. These had been recovered, but they did not return to the ranks unquestioned. They were compelled to appear, in batches, at Hicks’s Hall, Clerkenwell, to clear themselves from the imputation of cowardice and desertion; and to undergo the rough wit of the populace as they went to and fro. Other soldiers, against whom the above imputation could not be laid, offended in another way. For actsof murderous violence and robbery in the London streets, six soldiers were hung on the same day, at Tyburn. As long as such spectacles were provided, the mob little cared to which side the victims belonged.
CAPTAIN FLETCHER.
Three prisoners were tried on the following day, July 16th, Fletcher, Chadwick, and Battragh. Maddox, the approver, stated, as in Towneley’s case, that he had expressed a wish to withdraw, but that Fletcher had said: ‘That it would be a scandalous shame to retreat;’ and, added the witness, ‘putting his hand in his pocket, he pulled out a great purse of gold, and told me I should not want while that lasted! I have seen him in the assembly with ladies, he was a chapman and dealt in linen before this affair.’ Bradbury, another witness, said, ‘When the recruiting sergeant had finished his speech, at Manchester, with “God save King James and Prince Charles!” Captain Fletcher pulled off his hat and hallooed.’ For the defence, Anne Aston, an old servant of seven and twenty years’ standing, stated that Fletcher carefully managed his mother’s business at Salford; that he was always loyal, but that the Jacobites had carried him off by force, from the house, and that he went away weeping. It was, however, said that he gave 50l.for his captain’s commission. He was foundguilty, was again put in fetters, and was taken back to prison. ‘I would do it again!’ was his bold remark, as he turned away from the bar.
THE MANCHESTER OFFICERS.
Lieutenant Chadwick and Ensign Battragh were then put forward. They belonged to Captain James Dawson’s company. The ensign had been an attorney’sclerk. The lieutenant was the son of a Manchester tallow-chandler and soap-boiler, but he was too proud to follow his sire’s calling. He was a handsome fellow, with a sweet voice for singing, and was no mean proficient on the organ. ‘He kept,’ it was said, ‘some of the most polite company in the place, and never followed any trade.’ One of the witnesses stated that when the lieutenant was with the Jacobite army at Lancaster, he went into the organ-loft of one of the churches and played ‘the King shall have his own again!’ In addition to the old witnesses, a Jacobite drummer-boy, twelve years old, was called. ‘Child,’ said the judge, ‘do you know the nature of an oath?’ The child readily answered in the affirmative, adding: ‘I know I am sworn to speak the truth, and I shall never be happy if I don’t.’ Upon this, he was sworn, and he deposed to being a servant to Captain Lowther, and to being taken prisoner at Carlisle, where, said he, ‘I begged my life on my knees, of His Royal Highness, which he readily granted, and God bless him for it!’ The active presence of both prisoners in the rebel army having been duly proved, they held their peace, and were duly found guilty, were ironed, and carried back to their dungeons.
‘JEMMY DAWSON.’
Lieutenant-Colonel Deacon, Captain Berwick, and Captain James Dawson stood successively at the bar, on the 17th July. Deacon was the son of a Manchester physician, and long before the Jacobites entered Manchester, he had proclaimed his intention of joining them. This he did with two brothers; one, a mereboy, was captured, detained, and ultimately released. The other was slain. Berwick (who was familiarly dignified with the titular honour of ‘Duke’) was a gay young fellow who had dealt in ‘chequered linens,’ but had not been ‘prudent’ in trade; and had joined the rebels to escape his creditors. The third rebel, ‘Jemmy Dawson,’ has become better known to us than either ‘brave Berwick,’ or ‘gallant Deacon.’ He was a ‘Lancashire lad,’ of good family. He was so fond of what is also called ‘good company,’ when he was at St. John’s, Cambridge, that he withdrew from his college, in order to escape expulsion. He returned to Manchester, where he lived ‘on his fortune and his friends.’—‘He was always a mighty gay gentleman,’ it was said at his trial, ‘and frequented much the company of ladies, and was well respected by all his acquaintances of either sex, for his genteel deportment.’
The usual testimony was given against the three Jacobites. Maddox added, of Deacon, that he had seen him sitting at the ‘Bull’s Head,’ Manchester, taking the names of the recruits, and also making up blue and white ribbons into bows, to decorate the recruits with. On the march, he seems to have indulged in making long speeches, praising ‘Charles, Prince Regent,’ and inducing many to join, on assurance of good treatment when they got to London, or five guineas wherewith to get home again. He was very conspicuous in his plaid suit, with laced loops, broad sword, and pistols.
THE JACOBITE PRESS.
There was some variety on the 18th at the trial of a Welsh barrister named David Morgan. ‘I waitedon him at Preston,’ said one Tew, ‘when he and Lord Elcho dined together. They talked on the Pretender’s affairs. Morgan asked of what religion the prince might be, and Lord Elcho replied that his religion was yet to seek.’ Other witnesses deposed to Morgan’s active participation in the rebellion, the consideration with which he was treated by other officers, and his close attendance upon the Pretender, by whose side he rode out of Derby on a bay horse. Captain Vere, who had received his surrender, said, ‘He called me a great scoundrel, as I prevented gentlemen getting commissions under Sir Daniel O’Carrol.’ Another witness deposed that he had gone the night before out of curiosity to see Morgan in Newgate, and that this Pretender’s counsellor had actually exclaimed, ‘We shall soon be in Derby again, in spite of King George or anybody else!’ Morgan’s defence was that he had repented, and had tried to escape, but was arrested. The Solicitor-General remarked that the attempt was not made till the cause was desperate, and Morgan was pronounced ‘Guilty!’
The trials and sentences impressed the writers of the London newspapers in various ways. The ‘happy establishment’ supporters thirsted for rebel blood. The Jacobite journals were ‘cowed.’ They seemed even afraid to express a hope that mercy might be extended to the condemned officers. The utmost they ventured to do was to suggest mercy, or keep a thought of it alive in the breast of princes and people, by selecting Shakespeare for their advocate;and in these journals might be read again and again the lines from ‘Measure forMeasure’:—
No ceremony that to great ones ‘longs,Not the king’s crown nor the deputed sword,The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe,Become them with one half so good a graceAs Mercy does.
No ceremony that to great ones ‘longs,Not the king’s crown nor the deputed sword,The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe,Become them with one half so good a graceAs Mercy does.
No ceremony that to great ones ‘longs,
Not the king’s crown nor the deputed sword,
The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As Mercy does.
But Shakespeare pleaded and suggested in vain.
THE CONDEMNED JACOBITES.
After sentence the Jacobite officers were heavily ironed, even by day. At night they were fastened to the floor by a staple. Colonel Towneley was speedily interviewed by a ‘good-natured friend,’ who, in the spirit of one of Job’s comforters, remarked: ‘I believe, Sir, you deceived yourself in imagining you should be able to clear up your innocence; ... and that you was not quite right in supposing that you could invalidate the credit of the king’s witnesses.’ Tears for the first and last time came into the colonel’s eyes. Towneley said simply, ‘I never thought it could have come to this.’ The remark may have referred to his weakness rather than to his fate. In the disorderly prison, when hopes of reprieve caused some to sing hysterically, and to drink in much the same spirit, Towneley never lost his grave and becoming dignity. His reserve when he, for an hour, came from his room into the yard was looked upon by the hilarious and untried Jacobite prisoners as insolent contempt. This did not affect the colonel, who communed only with himself, and passed on without remark.PAINFUL PARTINGS.In order, however, that he might die like a gentleman as well asa Christian, a tailor measured him for a suit of black velvet, in which he might appear with dignity on the day of his execution. Young Fletcher never lost his cheerfulness, except, perhaps, when he alluded to his ‘poor mother’ having offered him 1,000l.not to join the rebel army. ‘Here I am,’ said the young fellow, ‘for which I have nobody to thank but myself.’ Blood refused to trust, as his friends did, in a reprieve. ‘I can die but once,’ he replied to their remarks; ‘as well now as at any other time. I am ready.’ ‘My father,’ said the valiant barber, Syddal, ‘was put to death for joining the Stuarts in ’15. I am about to follow him for joining them in ’45. I have five children; may none of them fall in a worse cause!’ Two fathers had interviews on the eve of the execution, with their sons. ‘Jemmy Dawson’ and Chadwick had displayed the utmost unobtrusive fortitude. ‘You may put tons of iron on me,’ said the former young captain, when he was being heavily fettered after judgment: ‘it will not in the least damp my resolution.’ Chadwick had manifested a similar spirit; but when the two lads were held for the last time each in his weeping father’s arms, resolution temporarily gave way. The parting scene was of a most painful nature. Poor Syddal, the Jacobite barber, behaved with as much propriety as any of higher rank. Morgan, the lawyer, was irritable, and on the very eve of being hanged quarrelled with the charges made by the prison cook for indifferent fare.
WITHIN PRISON-WALLS.
Among the untried prisoners there was one Bradshaw,in whom there seems to have been a touch of the insanity which was afterwards pleaded in his defence. This gay, thoughtless fellow hated Towneley, with whom he had quarrelled at Carlisle, ‘on account,’ say the newspapers, ‘of a young lady whom they had severally addressed at a ball which was kept at the Bull’s Head Inn, Manchester, for the neighbouring gentry.’ This trifle seems to show what feather-brained gallants some of theJacobite officers were. The quarrel about a pretty girl was never made up. On the day before the sentence was carried out, Bradshaw shuffled up in his fetters to Colonel Towneley in the yard, and saluted his former superior officer with, ‘I find, sir, you must shortly march into other quarters.’ Towneley looked at him in silent surprise, but Berwick, who was at the colonel’s side, spiritedly remarked: ‘Jemmy, you should not triumph at our misfortunes. You may depend upon it, mocking is catching;’ and turning to Chadwick, who had not yet been summoned to meet his fate, Berwick rejoined: ‘Bradshaw has no pity in him.’ Chadwick looked at the pitiless scoffer, who had been drinking freely (prison rules set no limit to tippling), and said: ‘What could be expected of such a fellow? He is a disgrace to our army.’ At length on their last evening came the hour for locking up. As the doomed Jacobites were being stapled to the floor, some of them ordered that they should be called at six in the morning, and that coffee should be ready for them when they descended to the yard. They were wide awake, however,at that hour; but when the fastidious Morgan heard that the coffee was ready before he was released from the staple, he flew into a furious passion, and, within an hour or two of being hanged, drawn, and quartered, this irascible Jacobite made a heavy grievance of having to drink his coffee half cold!
THE LAST MORNING.
Before they descended to the yard the three sledges were drawn up there, in which the nine Jacobites were to be drawn, by threes, to the gallows, the quartering block, and the fire, at the place of sacrifice. Prisoners whose hour had not yet come were curiously inspecting these gloomy vehicles. Bradshaw, with his morning brandy in his brains, affected much curiosity in the matter, and his doings were watched, like the performance of a mime, by idle gentlemen who had walked in, without let or hindrance, to the spectacle. It was raining heavily, but that was no obstacle to the acting. Bradshaw inspected the sledges, and pronounced them very proper for the purposes for which they were designed. Then he raked about the straw, declared there was too little of it, and bade the warders to procure more, or ‘the lads’ would get their feet wet.
The ‘lads’ took their last coffee in a room off the yard, generally in silence. Chadwick alone made a remark to Berwick: ‘Ah, Duke,’ he said, ‘our time draws near, but I feel in good heart.’ ‘I, too,’ answered Berwick; ‘death does not shock me in the least. My friends forgive me, and have done their best to save me. May God be merciful to us all!’And then appeared the governor with, ‘Now, gentlemen, if you please!’
VIA DOLOROSA.
The gentlemen were ready at the call. Their irons were knocked off before they entered the sledges, and each was slightly pinioned—so slightly that Syddal took advantage of it to take snuff, whereby to cover a little natural nervousness. Behind the sledges followed a coach, in which, under the guard of a warder, the younger Deacon lay rather than sat. His youth had saved his life. The parting of the two brothers was most touching, and the younger one implored that he might suffer too. He suffered more, for he was condemned to witness the sufferings of his brother. The mob between the prison and Kennington Common was enormous, in spite of the pitiless rain. At the period of the trials, when the Jacobite prisoners passed to and fro, the mob treated them in the most ruffianly manner; but now, on their way to death, not even a word of offence was flung at them. The crowd gazed at the doomed men and the heavy escort of horse and foot in sympathising silence.
AT KENNINGTON COMMON.
At the gallows tree there was neither priest, nor minister, nor prison ordinary, to give spiritual aid. Singular incidents ensued. The captives could scarcely have been pinioned at all. Morgan took out a book of devotion, and read it full half an hour to his fellows in misery, who stood around him, gravely listening. Syddal and Deacon read speeches, which were word for word identical. They were, in fact,addresses said to be written by a nonjuring minister, one Creake, and printed for circulation in the crowd. The purport was, that the two culprits professed to belong to neither the Church of England nor of Rome, but to a poor episcopal church that had cured the errors of all other modern churches. They were further made to say that one universal church was the only perfect principle; and they recommended a perusal of a work called ‘A Complete Collection of Devotion,A.D.1734,’ which was believed to be by Dr. Deacon, the father of one of the condemned. Morgan appears to have really spoken. He abused the Church of Rome, which was rather ungracious at such a moment, in Towneley’s presence, who, however, never uttered a word in reply. Morgan declared he was a Church of England man (the anti-Jacobite journals denounced him as an unmitigated miscreant), and that his faith was set forth in two works: ‘The Christian Test,’ and, he added, ‘in a work to be hereafter published by my most dutiful daughter, Miss Mary Morgan.’ The other sufferers observed silence, but all, before they died, manfully declared that they died willingly in a just cause, and that their deaths would be avenged. One or two threw papers into the crowd; one or two their gold-laced hats—which must have disgusted the hangmen, who were thus deprived of part of their perquisites. Others, it is said, flung to the mob their prayer-books, which were found to be turned down at the 89th Psalm, from the 21st verse to the end, which passages will be found, not, indeed, altogether inapplicable, butneeding some little violence to make the application suit the circumstances.
EXECUTION.
Next followed the unutterable barbarity of the execution; where, however, the strangling rendered the sufferers above all consciousness of the butcher’s knife, and the flames. The mob had time to notice that the twist of the halters were alternately white and red. The rope-maker, much urged to explain, gave no other answer than that it was his fancy. The crowd, at the close, had to make way for a coach which had been drawn up by the side of the scaffold. It contained the poor lad, Deacon, condemned to see his elder brother die. Thence, probably, has arisen the romance, which tells us that the coach contained a lady who had died of her love, and of her horror at the sufferings of her sweetheart, Dawson, and which afforded an opportunity to Shenstone to write his well-known ballad,—‘Jemmy Dawson.’
The Whig Press observed a certain decency in its comments on the sufferers. Exception, however, was made in the case of Morgan. ‘What his virtues and better qualities were,’ said the loyal ‘Penny Post,’—‘if he had any, have not yet come to our knowledge; if they had, we should gladly have mentioned them, that the world might not run away with the opinion that Mr. Morgan was the only man who ever lived half a century without doing one good action, and that he died unlamented by friend, neighbour, or domestic.’ There is a charming affectation of delicacy in another paragraph, which runs thus: ‘What his treatment of hiswife has been, we have no business with. He parted from her with a good deal of seeming affection.’ One of the journals paid the sufferers as much compliment as the writer could afford to give under the circumstances: ‘They all behaved,’ he says, ‘with a kind of fixt resolution of putting the best face they could upon a Bad Cause, and therefore behaved with Decency and seeming Resolution.’
At the ‘clearing up,’ it was discovered that the papers the poor fellows had flung among the crowd, before they were hanged, were of a highly treasonable nature. There was eager snatching of them from one another, and a still hotter eagerness on the part of the Government to discover the ‘rascal printer.’ He had audaciously set in type the last expression of the sufferers,—that they died willingly for their king and the cause; regretted the brave attempt had failed;—and, had they the opportunity, they would make the same attempt, for their king, again. A mob rather than a group had collected about Temple Bar to see their heads spiked. Deacon’s and Syddal’s had been sent to Manchester. When the hangman and his assistant tripped up the ladder at the bar, each with a head under his arm, the sympathising spectators were in doubt as to whose shoulders they had originally come from. Bets were laid on one, as being certainly Colonel Towneley’s. There were counter-bets that Towneley’s had gone to Carlisle. Assertions were made upon oath—very strong oaths, too,—that Towneley’s head was then lying with his body at an undertaker’sup at Pancras, and was to be buried with it. The hangman was a reserved man, and his comrade was taciturn. They left the gaping crowd uncertain. One of the heads was truly Fletcher’s. Was the other Morgan’s? Information was not supplied by the officials; but, after consideration, the spectators decided that the colonel’s head was set up with the captain’s; and this judgment was never shaken from the popular mind. A correspondent of ‘Notes and Queries’ (Dec.7, 1872, p. 456), says of the Jacobite colonel: ‘His head is now in a box, in the library at 12, Charles Street, Berkeley Square, the residence of the present Colonel Charles Towneley.’
HEADS AND BODIES.
The bodies of the Jacobites executed on Kennington Common were buried in the parish of St. Pancras. The headless trunk of Towneley was deposited in a grave in the old churchyard. Those of Fletcher, Deacon, Chadwick, Berwick, Syddal, Dawson, Blood, and Morgan, lie in the burial-ground of the parish, near the Foundling Hospital. The heads of the last three were given up to their friends. Syddal’s and Deacon’s were exposed on the market-cross at Manchester. Chadwick’s and Berwick’s were sent to Carlisle.
Towneley’s ghost was appeased by a ballad-writer who brought the spirit to the Duke of Cumberland’s bed, where the ghost scared him from sleep, charged him with crimes which he could hardly have committed in a life time, and so horrified him with a recital of the retributive pains the victor at Culloden would suffer in hell, that William rushed, for safety,to his usurping father, who bade him be of goodcheer,—adding:—
If we on Scotland’s throne can dwell,And reign securely here,Your uncle Satan’s King in Hell,And he’ll secure us there.
If we on Scotland’s throne can dwell,And reign securely here,Your uncle Satan’s King in Hell,And he’ll secure us there.
If we on Scotland’s throne can dwell,
And reign securely here,
Your uncle Satan’s King in Hell,
And he’ll secure us there.
OTHER TRIALS.
One of the most cruel illustrations of the period has reference to the father of young Captain Deacon. The captain’s head was sent down to be ‘spiked’ at Manchester. The father, a nonjuring minister in the town, always avoided the spot. One day, he involuntarily came within view of what was to him a holy relic. He reverently raised his hat on passing it. For this testimony of respect and affection, he was charged with sedition, and was fined.
Several of the so-called Jacobite captains and lieutenants who were subsequently tried, were allowed their lives (to be passed beyond the Atlantic) on condition of pleading guilty. Others who stood their trial, similarly escaped. Alexander Margrowther, a lieutenant, a well-dressed, active, joyous, hopeful fellow, protested that he did not join the army of Prince Charles Edward till after Lord Perth had three times threatened to lay waste his property and burn his house; and even then he was carried off against his will. Chief Justice Lee acknowledged that constraint had been put upon him, but that his remaining and fighting on the rebel side was voluntary. The verdict was ‘guilty,’ but execution did not follow.
A MAD JACOBITE.
The brothers of Sir James Kinloch, Charles and Alexander, were equally fortunate. Mr. Justice Wright differed with his judicial brother on a point of law, and was of opinion that judgment should be arrested. This saved the dashing pair of brothers from the gallows. Bradshaw, who came up for trial, October 27th, appeared at the bar in a gay suit of green; he looked as confident as his suit looked gay. His presence and activity in the Pretender’s array at Manchester, Carlisle, and Culloden, were amply proved; but a plea of insanity was set up to excuse it. This amounted to little more than that he was a sleep-walker, was eccentric, had always been so, and that eccentricity was almost developed into madness at the death of his wife who was described as ‘a fine lady whom he had accompanied to all the gay places of diversion in London.’ He was certainly out of his senses when he left a flourishing business at Manchester, in order to wear a pair of epaulettes and a plaid scarf among the Jacobites. That he quitted Carlisle, instead of surrendering, and took his chance with the Scots, till the decisive day at Culloden, was held by the prosecuting lawyers as a proof that Bradshaw had his senses about him. His courage failed him when he was adjudged to be hanged on the 28th of November. Some of his friends among the London Jacobites tried, but in vain, to get him off. The Whig papers were quite scandalised that even certain ‘city ald—rm—n’ had petitioned for a pardon for this once defiant, insolent, and impetuous rebel.
SIR JOHN WEDDERBURN.
If Bradshaw excited some interest in the City aldermen,there was a Sir John Wedderburn, Bart., who found sympathy in men of both parties. His father, a stout Whig, had been at the head of the excise, in the Port of Dundee. Old Sir John had an ample estate, but being of a liberal and generous spirit, as the contemporary press remarks, his liberality and generosity utterly ruined his family. At his death there was no estate for his heirs to inherit. The new baronet, with his wife and family, took up his residence near Perth, in a thatched hut, with a clay floor, and no light except what came through the doorway. It was placed on a very small bit of land from which Sir John could not be ousted. He tilled his half acre with ceaseless industry, and he made what was described as ‘a laborious but starving shift’ to support his wife and nine children. They all went about barefoot. To the head of this family, a proposal was made, when the Jacobites occupied Perth, that he should collect all dues and imposts for Prince Charles Edward. Sir John’s poverty consented. He collected the taxes, but he never joined the Jacobite army. Nevertheless, when the army under the Duke of Cumberland came that way, Sir John was seized and sent south. Put upon his trial, he pleaded his poverty, his starving family, and his light offence. He was however condemned, though more guilty offenders had unaccountably escaped. He bore himself with a calm dignity till the adverse verdict was pronounced, and then he could not completely control an emotion which sprung rather from thoughts of his family, than for himself. The lowest and loyalest ofthe Londoners acknowledged that Sir John Wedderburn was a gentleman and deserving of pity. After his death, the king afforded pecuniary relief to his wife and family.
‘BISHOP’ COPPOCK.
Some of these unfortunate Jacobites manifested a dauntless bravery which almost amounted to absence of proper feeling. Coppock was one of them. Charles Edward had nominated this reverend gentleman to the bishopric of Carlisle. Leaving the bar, after sentence of death, with a doomed and somewhat terrified fellow prisoner,—‘What the devil are you afraid of?’ said the prelate; ‘we sha’n’t be tried by a Cumberland Jury in the next world.’
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