In April 1784, George Nevill, 17th Baron Abergavenny, was approached to ask whether he would accept promotion to an earldom. In the wake of Pitt the Younger’s success in the general election, it was time for debts to be repaid and right at the front of the queue was John Robinson. Robinson had formerly worked for Lord North as a political agent but had chosen to switch his allegiance to Pitt and put all of his energy into securing Pitt a handsome victory. Robinson’s daughter was married to Abergavenny’s heir, Henry, so the new peerage would ensure that Robinson would ultimately be grandfather to an earl.

Abergavenny had also made a political journey. Married back in the 1750s to a member of the Pelham clan, he had naturally found himself within the orbit of the Old Corps Whigs and then of the Rockinghams. A consistent opponent of North and his handling of the American crisis, he had distanced himself from the former Rockinghamites who had entered the coalition with North and ultimately helped to bring the Fox-North administration down. So, the earldom was a double reward.

It might all have been very different, as exactly 37 years previously, while a student at Christ Church, Oxford, Abergavenny had narrowly avoided being tried for murder.

The story, as told in the press and in private correspondence, was that one of the Christ Church scouts (servants) named John or William Franklin (the papers could not agree which) had been found early in the morning of 4 April 1747 in one of the college quadrangles, badly bruised and with a fractured skull. His hair had been shaved and his eyebrows burnt off. There were also tell-tale indications of him having been very drunk.

What appeared to have happened was that a group of students, one of them Claudius Amyand, had been holding one of their regular shared suppers in their rooms, but had decided to entertain themselves by making Franklin, who seemed to have had a reputation as being somewhat eccentric, extremely drunk. The regular attendees had taken the prank (as they viewed it) so far, but things had become more extreme when they were joined by others, who had not been part of the original group. The newcomers were Abergavenny, Lord Charles Scott, a younger son of the duke of Buccleuch, Francis Blake Delaval and Sackville Spencer Bale (later a clergyman and domestic chaplain to the 2nd duke of Dorset). They appear to have handled Franklin very roughly – making fun of him by shaving his head – and to have left him so drunk that he was utterly incapable. According to Frederick Campbell, Abergavenny and Scott retreated to their own rooms at this point, leaving it to the remainder of the party to drag Franklin ‘out to snore upon the stair-case’. [Hothams, 42]

It was unclear what happened next, but it was assumed that after being abandoned on the stairs, Franklin had fallen down, fracturing his skull. On being discovered in the morning, Abergavenny’s valet took Franklin home, where he was examined by a surgeon, but nothing could be done for him. That there may have been a more sinister explanation for his injuries was, however, indicated early on by the news that most of those believed to have taken part in the drinking session had fled, and it was gossiped that the two most responsible for his injuries had been Abergavenny and Scott. [Ward, 169]

Certainly, the coroner’s jury considered that there had been foul play and brought in a verdict of ‘wilful murder by persons unknown’. Some observers took a different view. Frederick Campbell reckoned that it had been a joke that had been carried too far and he was certain that none of those in the frame would ever be convicted. He also added that ‘there was not three of the jury but was drunk’. [Hothams, 42] Horace Walpole’s sympathies, unsurprisingly, were also with the students, commenting: ‘One pities the poor boys, who undoubtedly did not foresee the melancholy event of their sport’. He had nothing to say about the unfortunate Franklin, who had lost his life. [Walpole Corresp, xix. 387] The only one of the group who seemed to have played no role in what had happened to Franklin was Amyand, who had quit the supper party early.

Had Abergavenny been charged with murder, he would have been able to apply to the House of Lords to be tried before them, in the same way that had happened to Lord Mohun in the 1690s and was to happen again soon afterwards to Lord Ferrers and Lord Byron.

In the event, there was no need for Abergavenny to face the prospect of a trial in Westminster Hall. While the coroner’s jury had concluded that Franklin’s death had been murder, the grand jury that sat on the case during the summer assizes refused to bring in the bill triggering a trial. The grand jury was said to have been made up of some of the principal gentlemen of the county and to have deliberated for several hours before reaching their decision. No doubt they were reluctant to agree to a trial of students from gentry (or noble) backgrounds, but they may also have been swayed by the convenient death of Lord Charles Scott just a few weeks before the assizes, which left the proceedings lacking a key witness (or a likely defendant).

Whatever his role had been, Abergavenny walked away unscathed. In 1761 he applied to be recognized as Chief Larderer at the coronation of George III and Queen Charlotte, and in 1784 he had his status enhanced with promotion to the earldom. Blake Delaval was also able to cast off whatever opprobrium had attached to him, and just two years after Franklin’s death stood for Parliament for the first time (unsuccessfully). He later represented Hindon and Andover and in 1761 was made a knight of the Bath. What happened, truly, on that night in April 1747 was never discovered and justice for Franklin – or at least a full explanation of what had happened to him – was never achieved.

RDEE

Further reading:

The Hothams: being the chronicles of the Hothams of Scorborough and South Dalton…, ed. A.M.W. Stirling (2 vols, 1918)

Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (Yale edition)

W.R. Ward, Georgian Oxford: University Politics in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1958)

General Advertiser

Whitehall Evening Post

Robert Harley, Speaker of the Commons, secretary of state, earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer and, ultimately, lord treasurer and de facto leader of the government died on 24 May 1724. Just weeks later, on 5 June, Dr Henry Sacheverell died, infamous for his High Church diatribes against Nonconformists and the ‘false brethren’ in government who protected them.

Harley and Sacheverell’s careers were closely intertwined in the year 1710, but they were almost polar opposites. Sacheverell was High Church and ultra Tory; Harley of a Dissenting background and a moderate ‘Country’ Whig. Sacheverell was an outspoken, impetuous firebrand; Harley a subtle, political operator, who gained his moniker ‘Robin the Trickster’ because of his tendency always to hold his cards very close to his chest and to keep his opponents guessing.

By the beginning of 1710, however, both men were facing crises. Harley had been dismissed from his post in February 1708 as the government under Sidney Godolphin, earl of Godolphin, turned increasingly to the ‘Junto’ Whigs for support. From the last years of William III there had developed a strong enmity between the Junto and Harley, who thus found himself at odds with his erstwhile colleague Godolphin. Conflicts between them increased until the queen was persuaded to dismiss Harley. He was still out of office at the beginning of 1710 but looking for a way to strike back against his former colleague.

Matters were worse for Sacheverell, for on 9 Jan. 1710 he was impeached by the Commons for high crimes and misdemeanours, as he had finally gone too far in his anti-Dissenter vitriol. Back in 1702 he had already exhorted his listeners to ‘hang out the bloody flag and banner of defiance’ against those who refused to conform to the Church of England. Now, in a sermon of 5 November 1709 commemorating deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot, Sacheverell lumped Catholics and Protestant Dissenters together as equal threats to the constitution and the Church of England. He insisted that at the ‘Glorious Revolution’, the English people had not resisted against James II legitimately, as John Locke would have it, but had followed the Church’s teachings on non-resistance and passive obedience. Thus, the consequences of the Revolution pushed through by the Whigs, particularly the 1689 Toleration Act, were illegitimate and ought to be rescinded.

To Sacheverell, toleration had allowed the growth of ‘such monsters and vipers in our bosom, that scatter their pestilence at noon-day’. All this invective was disturbing enough for the Whigs in government, who relied heavily on nonconformist support. But it went further, for the sermon’s title, The Perils of False Brethren, made clear that Sacheverell was accusing the ministers who countenanced Dissent of insidiously betraying the Church of England from the very heart of government.

To the ministry’s horror, the sermon was a runaway best-seller when published in winter 1709, selling over 100,000 copies. They decided impeachment was the best way to silence Sacheverell, and charges were presented to the House of Lords on 12 January 1710. The subsequent state trial in Westminster Hall became the main focus of attention in the capital between 27 February and 10 March. It did not go to plan for the prosecution, as Sacheverell, playing the persecuted martyr, became a popular hero, and for two days from 28 February London was convulsed by riots in his favour. Despite the disturbances ‘beyond doors’, on 20 March the Lords voted him guilty by 69 votes to 52. However, while the government wanted him imprisoned and incapacitated from preaching, through the queen’s intervention the House resolved only to ban him from preaching for three years.

Sacheverell’s unexpected popularity was a harbinger of the Tory support the Whigs would face at the next general election, which by statute would take place in 1711. Further indications were not promising, for on 21 March, a motion in the Lords to prohibit Sacheverell from receiving any clerical promotion during his ban was lost by a majority of nine. That preferment came quickly enough, for in May he was presented to a living in Shropshire. He made a slow, triumphal progress through eight counties and twelve parliamentary boroughs on his way to his new rectory, feted enthusiastically throughout.

Harley saw his moment and encouraged the queen’s long-held dislike of the Junto. Throughout the summer of 1710 she rid herself of her Whig ministers, culminating in Godolphin’s dismissal on 8 August. On 21 September she capped off her campaign by dissolving Parliament and calling for an early general election. In the October elections the Tories won an overwhelming majority, inflicting a crushing defeat on the Whigs. Tory numbers were far more than Harley would have wished, and there would always be tension between him and the ultra Tories who had come into Parliament in Sacheverell’s wake.

As soon as they returned to power in 1715 the Whigs impeached Oxford and his associates. This did not go according to plan either and, after spending two years incarcerated in the Tower, Oxford was acquitted on 1 July 1717. Weakened from his confinement, he only lasted a few more years after his release, predeceasing by only a few weeks Sacheverell, the man whose own impeachment had contributed to Oxford’s rise to the premiership.

CGDL

Suggested Readings
Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Dr Sacheverell (1973)
Brian Cowan, ed., The State Trial of Doctor Henry Sacheverell (Parliamentary History: Text and Studies 6) (2012)
Brian Hill, Robert Harley: Speaker, Secretary of State and Premier Minister (1988)

Charles Edward Stuart had raised his standard at Glenfinnan on 19 August 1745, marking the formal beginning of his attempt to take the throne for his father. His initial successes took the government by surprise. Ill-prepared and under-motivated troops proved no match for the Highland charge. Buoyed by this, in the winter of 1745-6 Charles Edward marched his army south, making it as far as Derby. They got no further, disappointed by the failure of any major landowners to turn out for them.

In April 1746 it all came to a close at Culloden, where the by now depleted Jacobite army was crushed by a reinvigorated government force commanded by the duke of Cumberland. Charles Edward fled and began his soon to be romanticized period of hiding in the heather. Many of his followers were rounded up, tried and either executed or transported.

Far away from the fighting, Westminster found itself busy dealing with the rebellion’s aftermath. Legislation was rushed through, including the notorious Act for Disarming the Highlands. Most dramatic of all, though, was the joint trial of three Scots peers, who had been arrested for taking part in the rebellion: William Boyd, 4th earl of Kilmarnock, George Mackenzie, 3rd earl of Cromartie, and Arthur Elphinstone, 6th (and last) Lord Balmerino.

Balmerino was the oldest of the three, having been born in the year of Revolution, 1688. He had only succeeded to the title in January 1746, following the death of his older brother. Their father had served as a representative peer at Westminster under Queen Anne, and although the 5th lord had been sympathetic to the Jacobites, he had remained largely inactive. Arthur, on the other hand, had been ‘out’ in 1715. He was back in Scotland in time to declare for Charles Edward in 1745, only to be captured at Culloden.

Kilmarnock’s family had been government loyalists. Indeed, Kilmarnock himself had joined his father countering the 1715 rebellion. Subsequently, he converted to Jacobitism after marrying into the Livingston family, well known for their adherence to the Stuarts. Lack of funds was another factor. Walpole had awarded him a pension to ensure his vote for Court candidates. Following Walpole’s fall the money was stopped. Hard up by the time Charles Edward appeared on the scene, he chose to risk all by joining the rebellion. At Derby, he was aggrieved to be lodged at the Nag’s Head, while other commanders got better quarters. His valet saw to it that he was relocated. He had worse luck at Culloden after mistaking a party of government dragoons for a Jacobite regiment and was captured.

Cromartie’s loyalties were also mixed. He may have believed, as Kilmarnock did, that the Jacobites’ chances in Scotland were solid and it was well worth the bet. Unlike the other two, he was not taken at Culloden, but in Sutherland, following the battle of Littleferry, fought the day before. After his men were routed, he fled to nearby Dunrobin House, where he was found hiding under the countess of Sutherland’s bed.

These were the three men, whose positions granted them the right to trial before the House of Lords.

On Monday 28 July, the Lords adjourned to Westminster Hall. The previous week had seen screeds of them arriving to qualify themselves to sit by taking the oaths. The trials of three peers for treason was an extraordinary occurrence and loyal members wanted their commitment to the regime made apparent.

Proceedings began with the findings of the various grand juries being read out. The prisoners were then brought to the bar and addressed by the Lord High Steward, who informed them:

The Law is the solid Basis and Support of the King’s Throne. It is the great Bulwark of the Property, the Liberty, and Life, of every Subject; and it is the Security of the Privileges and Honours of the Peerage: By this Measure, which is uniform and equal to every Member of the Community, your Actions, which are now called in Question, are this Day to be examined and judged.

Cromartie and Kilmarnock made things easy by pleading guilty. Only Balmerino chose to contest the charge. Having gone to this trouble, he then failed to offer any defence after the case for the prosecution had been heard. This prompted the command for the Lords to adjourn to consider their verdicts and a protestation from the bishops not to attend when sentence was delivered. After a period of deliberation, the Lords returned to Westminster Hall, where they declared Balmerino guilty along with the other two. The three men were then remanded to the Tower to await sentencing. On his way back, Balmerino was said to have stopped his coach at Charing Cross to buy ‘honey-blobs’ (gooseberries).

On Friday 1 August, they were back in the Hall to hear their fate. Each of them was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, though this was later commuted to simple beheading. Job done, the Lord High Steward rose and broke his staff, indicating the close of proceedings. For the Lords, the conclusion of the trial was not quite the end of their business and it was not until 12 August that the king made his way to Parliament to grant the royal assent to a clutch of bills and order Parliament prorogued to the following September.

For Balmerino, Cromartie and Kilmarnock, all was not over either. The last two brought what interest they had into play in the hopes of avoiding their fate. They can only have been too aware of the 17 poor devils, whose grisly executions on Kennington Common had overlapped with their own process. [London Evening Post, 26-29 July 1746]. Horace Walpole reported that Balmerino, who throughout showed remarkable sang-froid, had marked time in the cells by demonstrating to Cromartie how he should lay his head on the block. He also tried to keep his spirits up by mocking the gaoler carrying the axe before them to and from the trial, telling him:

take care, or you will break my shins with this damned axe

According to one newspaper ‘very great interest’ was made both for Cromartie and Kilmarnock, on the grounds that each had pleaded guilty. [Penny London Post or the Morning Advertiser, 30 July-1 August 1746]. In addition, both Ladies Cromartie and Kilmarnock braved the Court to hand in petitions seeking mercy for their husbands. [General Advertiser, 4 August 1746]. In the end, though, it was Cromartie alone who was selected for mercy. Lady Cromartie was pregnant, which gained him some sympathy, but he also benefited from the Prince of Wales exerting his influence on his behalf.

For Balmerino and Kilmarnock, though, there was to be no reprieve. On 18 August, six days after most Members of Parliament had left for a well-earned summer break, the two condemned men climbed the scaffold that had been erected on Tower Hill. Kilmarnock went first and although the first stroke of the axe killed him, it needed a second to remove the head. Balmerino, elegantly turned out in his regimentals, showed none of Kilmarnock’s anxiety and, unlike his partner, made no apology for rebelling. He gave the headsman three guineas and one of the warders his peruke. He then tested the axe before he settled on the block. Three blows were required to sever the head.

Kilmarnock’s death was not the end of the story for his family in Parliament. His heir, James, had also been at Culloden, but in his case, serving in the government army. Although the earldom of Kilmarnock was extinguished by his father’s treason, he later inherited the earldom of Erroll from an aunt, changed his surname to Hay, officiated at George III’s coronation as High Constable of Scotland, and went on to become a Tory peer in the House of Lords. Cromartie’s son, Lord MacLeod, who had served alongside his father, was pardoned and later created a Swedish count. He finally secured election to Parliament as MP for Ross-shire in 1780.

RDEE

Further Reading:

Christopher Duffy, The ’45: Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Untold Story of the Jacobite Rising (2003)

Frances Vivian, A Life of Frederick, Prince of Wales, 1707-1751: A Connoisseur of the Arts (2006)

Letters to Henry Fox, Lord Holland…, ed. earl of Ilchester (1915)

Two hundred years ago the Prince Regent succeeded to the throne as George IV. His wife Caroline had been living abroad since their separation in 1814 and the new king wanted the Tory government to pass legislation giving him a divorce. Caroline’s unexpected return to England on 5 June to claim her place as Queen Consort, and the government’s failed attempt to prosecute her for adultery in the House of Lords, triggered one of the most significant political crises of the early 19th century. The unprecedented nationwide popular movement that emerged in her support, and the government’s inability to prevent public protests, had important consequences for the development of British politics.

Only the previous year a large public rally in Manchester calling for parliamentary reform had been violently suppressed by the military. The Peterloo massacre resulted in at least 18 deaths. Fearing similar mass protests the government had imposed one of the biggest clamp-downs in British political history. The Six Acts of 1819 banned all ‘unofficial’ large public meetings and outdoor processions or demonstrations. It became illegal to criticise the state in print and punitive taxes were imposed on newspapers. The public execution in May 1820 of the Cato Street conspirators, for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government, reinforced this hard-line message. To preserve Britain from the threat of revolution and radically-inspired insurrection, the Tory Prime Minister Lord Liverpool and his Home Secretary Lord Sidmouth would take whatever action was necessary.

Within a few months, however, this hard-line policy seemed to be in tatters. Large public meetings and processions in support of the Queen had begun to sweep the nation. The issue ‘took possession of every house or cottage in the kingdom’, recalled one observer. ‘Every man, woman and child took part in it …nothing was thought of but the fate of the Queen’s trial’. Lord Sidmouth, along with many others who failed to display pro-Caroline ‘illuminations’ at their properties, had all his windows smashed. By September 50,000 protesters carrying anti-government banners were parading on a weekly basis through central London. By October the numbers meeting at Piccadilly had reached 100,000. The Times took the lead in fuelling press outrage at the Queen’s treatment, running brazen attacks on a ‘debauched’ king. The popular petitioning campaign in her support eventually attracted over a million signatures. The satirists and cartoonists had a field day.

All this public protest attracted remarkably little reaction from the authorities. The lack of a response was extraordinary. The Whig diarist Thomas Creevey MP noted with astonishment how ‘every Wednesday the same scene which caused so much alarm at Manchester is repeated under the very nose of Parliament and all the constituted authorities’. Part of the problem for the government was that the military were often involved. On one occasion 5,000 sailors marched to pay their own respects to the Queen, who was then staying with her main supporter in the Commons, the radical MP and former lord mayor of London, Matthew Wood.

Another difficulty was the constitutional and moral context. Although the Queen had separated from the king and was known to have had sexual affairs whilst living abroad, her constitutional status had not changed. Loyalty to the Queen, and demands for her name to be included in the Church of England’s official prayers, for example, could hardly be deemed ‘seditious’ or ‘libellous’. Obtaining ‘official’ sanction from a sympathetic magistrate for a meeting in her support, in these circumstances, was not difficult. George IV’s own notorious promiscuity added a moral dimension too. Fuelled by sympathy for the Queen and indignation about double standards, women marched, spoke and signed addresses in unprecedented numbers. With religious leaders and some members of the Cabinet, including the key minister George Canning, also deeply divided over her claims and treatment, the political and legal situation was far from straight forward.

Perhaps the most significant factor inhibiting the government’s response, however, was the constitutional language and respect for historic institutions widely adopted by so many of the Queen’s supporters, especially in their formal addresses and petitions. When the City of London Corporation petitioned the Commons, for instance, they denounced the Queen’s trial as ‘repugnant to the constitution’ and ‘dangerous’ to the ‘honour and dignity of the Crown’.  Many leading reformers and radicals who rallied behind the Queen’s cause used similar language, distancing themselves from the sort of demagoguery and association with the mob that had helped to trigger the government’s repressive measures. The ‘loyal’ and ‘respectable’ nature of their assemblies, and an emerging alliance between non-violent radicals, middle-class reformers and local Whig leaders in support of the Queen, was widely remarked on.

The History of Parliament volumes on constituency politics in this period suggest that in many towns and cities those who took the lead in organising support for the Queen went on to play an important role in local campaigns for municipal and parliamentary reform. In Taunton, for example, the same people responsible for the meetings and petitions of 1820 helped to establish a growing local reform movement. They eventually founded the ‘Loyal Political Union’ a decade later, with its declared aim of furthering ‘by every constitutional means the great measure of parliamentary reform’ while using ‘every exertion for the maintenance of order’. Put simply, at the local level the Queen Caroline affair seems to have taught reformers and radicals important lessons about how to organise and manage political agitation in ways that were considered legitimate and constitutional. As Thomas Creevey remarked:

The people have learned a great lesson from this wicked proceeding: they have learnt how to marshal and organise themselves … The arrangements made in every parish … are perfectly miraculous – quite new in their nature – and … will be of eternal application in all our public affairs.

Leading Whig politicians, whose campaigns for parliamentary reform had always been hampered by the outdoor activities of the more extreme radicals, also welcomed the shift in politics resulting from the Queen Caroline affair. ‘The Queen’s business’, observed Lord John Russell MP, ‘has done a great deal in renewing the old and natural alliance between the Whigs and the people, and weakening the influence of the violent radicals’.

When the government abandoned the Queen’s trial in November 1820, realising they would never secure the parliamentary votes they needed, the whole nation celebrated. Church bells were rung and ‘illuminations’ were held everywhere. The government’s highly controversial decision to prorogue Parliament to prevent any further discussion was one of the first political prorogations of the 19th century. Whigs and radicals hoped the beleaguered Tory government would collapse, but popular support for the Queen quickly evaporated. By February 1821 the political climate had cooled enough for the government to successfully see off radical and Whig calls in the Commons for a public inquiry. The affair, to all intents and purposes, seemed over. Lord Liverpool’s ministry had weathered the storm and survived. On the surface little had changed. At the local level, however, politics would never be quite the same.

PS

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For more on the proceedings in the House of Lords, check out our video: