This was followed, in the same year, by an Act, c. 19 “to incourage the bringing Plate into the Mint to be coined and for the further remedying the ill State of the Coine of the Kingdome.” The next year saw another Act 8 and 9 William III. c. 2, “for the further remedying the ill State of the Coin of the Kingdome,” an Act, c. 8, for “Incouraging the bringing in wrought Plate to be coined”; c. 26, “for the better preventing the counterfeiting the current Coine of the Kingdome.” Other Acts of the same kind were 9 William III. c. 2; c. 21; these are in addition to numerous Proclamations. Nothing can better show the state of the coinage than the record of petitions of seamen and shipwrights in the King’s yards who had been paid in clipped and counterfeit half-crowns.
In February, 1696, came to a head “the Assassination Plot,” the most dangerous of all the Plots formed against William III. The King was, according to custom, to go to hunt in Richmond Park on February 15. Advantage was to be taken of this to assassinate him. For some reason he did not go, and the execution of the scheme was deferred. But meanwhile one of the conspirators gave information to the Government. Numerous arrests were made, followed by trials and executions. On March 18 Robert Charnock, Edward King, and Thomas Keys were executed at Tyburn. They were followed on April 3 by Sir John Friend and Sir William Perkins. The populace of London flocked to Tyburn in numbers exceeding all precedent to witness the execution of Friend, found guilty by the Court of high treason, and by the people of a crime that touched them more nearly—the brewing of execrable beer. Three non-juring divines attended the condemned men to the scaffold, Jeremy Collier, and two of less note, Shadrach Cook and William Snatt, who absolved the criminals “in a manner more than ordinarily practised in the Church of England.” For this Cook and Snatt were committed to Newgate. Macaulay says that they were not brought to trial. It appears, however, that they were actually indicted, and found guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours (Luttrell, iv. 80) and imprisoned for a short time. Collier kept out of the way, and was in consequence outlawed, remaining under the sentence to the end of his days. Numerous tracts were written on the subject.
On April 29 Brigadier Rookwood, Charles Cranburne, and Major Lowick were executed at Tyburn, they also having been condemned for the Plot.
This completes the story of the executions at Tyburn for the Assassination Plot, but it is impossible to refrain from mentioning a case dismissed by Macaulay in a sentence referring to “Major John Bernardi, an adventurer of Genoese extraction, whose name has derived a melancholy celebrity from a punishment so strangely prolonged that it at length shocked a generation which could not remember his crime.” It is hardly fair to call Bernardi an adventurer. Apart from this, the reader would certainly not gather from Macaulay’s remark that no crime was ever proved against Bernardi. In writing of a shocked generation the historian probably referred to some very mild remarks of Dr. Johnson, in his “Life of Pope.” Pope wrote an epitaph on Secretary Trumball, who, from his official position, took a leading part in persuading Parliament to consent to the imprisonment of Bernardi. The concluding lines of Pope’s epitaph are:—
Such this man was, who, now from earth remov’d
At length enjoys the liberty he lov’d.
On this Johnson wrote: “The thought in the last line is impertinent, having no connection with the foregoing character, nor with the condition of the man described. Had the epitaph been written on the poor conspirator who lately died in prison, after a confinement of more than forty years, without any crime proved against him, the sentiment had been just and pathetical; but why should Trumball be congratulated upon his liberty, who had never known restraint?”
Major Bernardi was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the Assassination Plot; he was in the company of Rookwood when the latter, afterwards condemned and executed, was arrested. Against Bernardi there was but one witness, an informer. Even taking this informer’s testimony without abatement the case against Bernardi did not reach higher than suspicion. But the resources of civilisation were equal to the occasion. A clause in an Act, 8 & 9 William III. (1696-7) c. 5, gave power to keep in Newgate Bernardi and five others named, till January 1, 1697-8. An Act, 9 William III. (1697-8) c. 4. gave power to prolong the imprisonment for a second year. A third Act, 10 William III. (1698) c. 19, enacted that the same six persons should be kept in custody during his Majesty’s pleasure.
The rest of the story would be incredible if it were not supported by Acts of Parliament. The Act last mentioned necessarily expired on William’s death, but on the accession of Anne another Act was passed, 1 Anne (1701) st. 1, c. 29. for continuing the imprisonment of these men during the Queen’s pleasure. Anne, however, released one. This Act lapsed on the Queen’s death. On the accession of George I. a similar Act was passed, 1 George I. (1714) st. 2, c. 7. During this reign two of the prisoners died in Newgate. Once more the death of the sovereign put the prisoners in a position to move to be brought to trial or admitted to bail. But an Act of the same tenor as the preceding Acts was passed, 1 Geo. II. (1727) st. 1, c. 4, once more continuing the imprisonment during the sovereign’s pleasure. In vain was the king petitioned; in vain did Bernardi’s doctors depose to his lamentable state, “his miserable lameness, and swelling in his arms, by humours flowing to an old wound”; in vain did his wife pray for her husband’s liberation. Finally, in 1736, after an imprisonment of 40 years, Bernardi, then in his eighty-second year, was set free, not by the clemency of the King, but as he had himself foreseen, “by the great and merciful God himself above, the King of Kings and only Ruler of Princes.”[201] Thus ended the imprisonment of this sick and aged man, the longest imprisonment recorded in the law-books, an imprisonment awarded and continued through several reigns on mere suspicion of one never brought to trial. The case is instructive, as showing how with strict observance of constitutional forms, it is possible to emulate the dark deeds of uncontrolled despotism.