"Cousin Turvill, give Mr. Akerman, for the turnkey below stairs, half a guinea, and Jack Hooper, who waits in my room, five shillings. The poor devils have had a great deal of trouble with me since I have been here." After this he begged to be left to sleep; but a friend called about seven: the major cried feebly to his servant, "Philip, who is that?" and it was found that he was bleeding to death from a deep gash in his wrist. He was dead before a surgeon could be called in.
In these disastrous affrays both antagonists were armed. But reckless roisterers and swaggering bobadils were easily provoked, and they did not hesitate, in a moment of mad passion, to use their
swords upon defenceless men. Bailiffs and the lesser officers of justice were especially obnoxious to these high-tempered bloods. I read in "Luttrell," under date February, 1698, "Captain Dancy of the Guards killed a bailiff in Exeter Street, and is committed to Newgate." Again, in 1705, "Captain Carlton, formerly a justice of the peace for Middlesex, is committed to Newgate for running a marshal's man through the body who endeavoured to arrest him on the parade by the Horse Guards in St. James's Park, of which wound it is thought the man will die." I can find no mention of the fate which overtook these murderers; but the "Calendars" contain a detailed account of another murder of much the same kind; that perpetrated by the Marquis de Paleoti upon his servant, John Niccolo, otherwise John the Italian, in 1718. The marquis had come to England to visit his sister, who had married the Duke of Shrewsbury in Rome, and had launched out into a career of wild extravagance. The duchess had paid his debts several times, but at length declined to assist him further. He was arrested and imprisoned, but his sister privately procured his discharge. After his enlargement, being without funds, the marquis sent Niccolo to borrow what he could. But "the servant, having met with frequent denials, declined going, at which the marquis drew his sword and killed him on the spot." The marquis seems to have hoped to have found sanctuary at the Bishop of Salisbury's, to whose
house he repaired as soon as Niccolo's body was found. But he was arrested there after having behaved so rudely, that his sword, all bloody with gore, had to be taken from him, and he was conveyed to Newgate. His defence was weak, his guilt clear, and much to his surprise, he was sentenced to be hanged. He declared that it was disgraceful "to put a nobleman to death like a common malefactor for killing a servant;" but his plea availed little, and he suffered at Tyburn five weeks after the murder.
Forty years later an English nobleman, Earl Ferrers, paid the same extreme penalty for murdering his steward. His lordship was tried by his peers, and after sentence until his execution was lodged in the Tower, and not in Newgate. His case is sufficiently well known, and has already been briefly referred to.
Another aristocratic miscreant, whose crimes only fell short of murder, was Colonel Francis Charteris. Well born, well educated, well introduced into life, he joined the army under Marlborough in the Low Countries as a cornet of horse, and soon became noted as a bold and dexterous gambler. His greed and rapacity were unbounded; he lent money at usurious rates to those whom he had already despoiled of large sums by foul play, and having thus ruined many of his brother officers, he was brought to trial, found guilty of disgraceful conduct, and sentenced by court martial to be
cashiered. On his way back to Scotland, by falsely swearing he had been robbed at an inn, he swindled the landlord out of a large sum of money as an indemnity, and does not seem to have been called to account for his fraud. In spite of his antecedents, Charteris obtained a new commission through powerful friends, and was soon advanced to the grade of colonel. Moving in the best society, he extended his gambling operations, and nearly robbed the Duchess of Queensbury of £3,000 by placing her near a mirror, so that he could see all her cards. Escaping punishment for this, he continued his depredations till he acquired a considerable fortune and several landed estates. Fate overtook him at last, and he became the victim of his own profligacy. Long notorious as an unprincipled and systematic seducer, he effected the ruin of numbers, by means of stratagems and bribes, but was at length arrested on a charge of criminal assault. He lay in Newgate on the State side, lightly ironed, and enjoying the best of the prison until the trial at the Old Bailey in February, 1730. He was convicted and sentenced to die, but through the strenuous exertions of his son-in-law, the Earl of Wemyss, obtained the king's pardon. He died two years later, miserably, in Edinburgh, whither he had retired after his release. He was long remembered with obloquy. Doctor Arbuthnot, who wrote his epitaph, has best depicted his detestable character, as a villain, "who with an inflexible
constancy and inimitable impunity of life persisted, in spite of age and infirmity, in the practice of every human vice except prodigality and hypocrisy, his insatiable avarice exempting him from the first, and his matchless impudence from the latter, . . . and who, having done every day of his life something worthy of a gibbet, was once condemned to one for what he had not done." Doctor Arbuthnot appears from this to have dissented from the verdict of the jury by which Charteris was tried.
In times of such general corruption it was not strange that a deplorable laxity of morals should prevail as regards trusts, whether public or private. Even a Lord Chancellor was found guilty of venal practices—the sale of offices, and the misappropriation of funds lodged in the Chancery Court. This was the twelfth Earl of Macclesfield,[273:1] who sought thus dishonestly to mend his fortunes, impaired, it was said, by the South Sea Bubble speculations. He was tried before his peers, found guilty, and declared for ever incapable of sitting in Parliament, or of holding any office under the Crown; and further sentenced to a fine of £30,000 with imprisonment in the Tower until it was paid.
Lord Macclesfield promptly paid his fine, which was but a small part of the money he had amassed by his speculations, and was discharged. "To the disgrace of the times in which he lived," says the