STATE TRIALS: POLITICAL AND SOCIAL.* THE third and fourth volumes
of Slate Trials have greatly increased our obligation to Mr. Stephen. The author has again exercised his choice of materials with the utmost dis- cretion and care, and deserves the greatest credit for his publication of the hitherto unpublished MS. describing the "arraignment, conviction, and condemnation of Robert, Earl of Essex, and of the Earl of Southampton," in which Sir E. Coke, "Mr. Attorney," and "Mr. Solicitor Mr. Bacon" played so prominent a part. The " Helmingham MS." appears to be the account of an intelligent eye-witness of the trial. It came into the possession of the Tollemache family, whose present representative the public have to thank for his generous loan of the document to the author. Its historical interest is considerable, "since it arranges the wit- nesses in a different order from that followed in the usual account, and increases the importance of the part in the trial played by Bacon." Coke's violent temper seems to have led him into a maze of side-issues; at one point he broke out into abuse of this sort :—" For your hypocrisie in religion, and your Dissem- blinge countenancinge all sortes of Religion anon you are one of the puritans, thus have we proved almost all thinges in the Inditement." Bacon's coolness and clearness of vision twice at least saved the point at issue from being hidden by a mass of irrelevances on this "day of digressions."
The other trials are of equal interest. We have the Annesley case, which inspired Smollett and Charles Reade, and portrays the seamy side of eighteenth-century Anglo- Irish life with such uncomfortable realism that it might well be bracketed with Froude's story of the Crosbies and the stolen treasure of the 'Golden Lion.' The trial of Robert Green and others for the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey brings us back to the "Popish Plot," and its strange history of credulity, imposture, and fanaticism, only paralleled in recent history by the campaign, as mendacieus, but happily less successful, which MM. Drumont and Rochefort waged against the Jews of France. Then there is the trial of the smuggler, W. Jackson, and a number of accomplices for the fiendishly brutal murder of two Revenue officers, a story which is a good set-off to all the thrilling romances that are centred around the picturesque and gallant free-trader of fiction. From such a mass of materials it is difficult indeed to select the most interesting case; the most perplexing, in the reviewer's humble opinion, is the trial of William Barnard in 1759 for blackmailing the Duke of
• Slate Trials: Political and Social. Vols. M. and IV. Edited by H. L. stephen, Esq., Basrister.at-Law, one of B.M. Judges of the High Court of Calcutta. London : Duckworth and Co. fee. per vola
Marlborough. This nobleman on November 29th, _1758, received a letter in "imitation print," passages of which deserve quotation:—
" My Lord," began the elegant-blaekmailer, "as ceremony is an idle thing upon most occasions, more especially to persons in my state of mind, I shall proceed immediately to acquaint you -with the motive and end of addressing this epistle to you, which is equally interesting to us both. You are to know then that my present situation in life is such, that I should prefer annihilation to a continuance in it; desperate diseases require desperate -reme- dies ; you are the man I have pitched upon either to make me,-or to unmake yourself. As I never had the honour to live among the great, the tenor of my proposals will not be very courtly ; but let that be an argument to enforce the belief of what I am now going to write. It has employed my invention for some time to find out a method to destroy another without endangering my own life ; that I have accomplished, and defy the law. Now for the applica- tion of it. I am desperate, and must be provided for; you have it in your power, it is my business to make it your inclination to serve me ; which you must determine to comply with, by procuring me a genteel support for my life, or your own will be at a period before this Session of Parliament is over."
The writer further bade the Duke meet him at a named tree in Hyde Park on the following Sunday, and warned him to
come alone. He obeyed, and appeared at the appointed time, leaving a servant to watch at a distance. After a time a person appeared, with a " disconsolate " air, whom the Duke accosted and asked if he had anything to say to him. The man replied that he had not, and the Duke rode away. A few days later he received a letter reproving him for coming armed and with an attendant, and bidding him appear alone in the west aisle of Westminster Abbey. The Duke obeyed, posted two attendants in coigns of vantage, and waited.. The. same person appeared, accompanied by a substantial-looking trades- man; he stared at the Duke, and exactly the same scene was enacted as in the Park. A third letter followed, in which the
circumstances of the Abbey meeting were mentioned, and the blackmailer, after suggesting a private interview, ended his
letter in true melodramatic fashion by the alarming statement, "The family of the BLOODS is not extinct" l—a reference this, in all probability, to the officer who stole the crown from the Tower of London. Nothing further happened till April 14th, when the Duke received an anonymous letter stating that one Barnard, son of a surveyor, was acquainted with secrets which concerned the Duke, and, owing to his father's absence from town, might easily be questioned in private. The Duke sent for the person indicated, and recognised his acquaintance of Hyde Park. Barnard declared he had nothing to say, but afterwards made some rather suspicious replies to the Duke's questions,—e.g., when the Duke mentioned the surprise of the writer of the second letter at having seen him armed, Barnard exclaimed : "Indeed, I was surprised to see your Grace armed." The Duke then pointed out that if he had not written the letters, it nearly concerned him to find out who did write them, whereat Barnard smiled and departed. He was, of course arrested, and tried on a capital charge. His defence was remarkably strong; a host of witnesses testified to his
unblemished character; no documents of a compromising character were found in his possession; there was no reason to suppose he wanted money; and as to his meetings with the Duke, it appeared that he had spoken of the Duke's accosting him with considerable surprise and amusement. His uncle, who was with him in the Abbey, pointed out that his nephew's short-sightedness explained his staring at the Duke, and remarked that he had found the Duke's behaviour very peculiar. A friend, Thomas Calcut, testified to Barnard's amused description of the "odd accident" that befell him in the Park, and stated that the prisoner was not a little pleased
at the notice taken of him by a nobleman. Barnard was acquitted, and no more is heard of his case. The reader must form his own opinion of the guilt or innocence of the accused. Was he the victim of a series of extraordinary coincidences, or was he the unconscious tool of some clever knave who hoped to frighten the Duke into paying blackmail, or can he have led a double life and required money for purposes of profligacy or to satisfy some past mistress who threatened him with ex- posure? Our own suggestion is that Barnard was playing a desperately dangerous practical joke, for which he waa rewarded by being able to tell his acquaintance that the Duke of Marlborough had noticed him. Mark Twain's story of the boy who played at being a spy in the American Civil War will occur to the reader, whose interest and curiosity cannot
fail to be roused by a perusal of Mr. Stephen's two volumes.
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