Here is a portion of a Grub Street ballad on the tragedy:—
A Sandwich favourite was this fair,
And her he dearly loved:
By whom six children had, we hear:
This story fatal proved.
A clergyman, O wicked one,
In Covent Garden shot her:
No time to cry upon her God,
Its hop’d he’s not forgot her.
Martha Ray bore several children to the Earl. One of them, Basil Montagu, is in our days remembered, if at all, by a savage snarl of Carlyle at the man and his parentage (“Reminiscences,” i. 224), “considerably a humbug if you probed too strictly.” Basil has already been mentioned in this book as the founder of the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge upon the Punishment of Death. By his numerous writings on this subject he did perhaps more than any other man to bring home to the public the frightful cruelty of our criminal law. He may at least be credited with sincerity in this matter. On one occasion, in 1801, he posted through the night to Huntingdon, arriving with a respite just in time to save the lives of two men.