JAMES O’COIGLEY, alias FAVEY.
EXECUTED FOR HIGH TREASON.
JAMES O’COIGLEY was indicted at Maidstone, on the 21st of May 1798, for high treason. The indictment was read by Mr. Knapp, who afterwards stated the charges it contained in a summary manner. He said there were three distinct species of treason charged in the indictment and seven overt acts. The first treason was compassing and imagining the death of the king; the second, adhering to his enemies; the third, compassing and imagining, inventing, devising and intending, to move and stir certain foreigners and strangers, that is to say, the persons exercising the powers of government in France, to invade this kingdom. The first overt act was sending intelligence to the enemy; the other overt acts were attempts to hire vessels, and to leave the kingdom.
At the trial, which lasted during the whole of two days, an immense body of evidence was produced in support of the charges preferred against the prisoner. A pocket-book, however, which had been found in his great-coat, and in which was a letter addressed to the Executive Directory of France, afforded conclusive evidence of his guilt.
Upon his being called upon for his defence, he addressed the jury in the following terms:—
“It is impossible for me to prove a negative; but it is a duty I owe to you, and to myself, solemnly to declare that I never was the bearer of any message or paper of this kind to France in the course of my life. That paper is not mine: it never belonged to me. It states that it was to be carried by the bearer of the last: this is something which might have been proved, but it is impossible for me to prove a negative. There is also in this paper an allusion to secret committees and political societies. I declare that I never attended any political society whatever. With these considerations I consign my life to your justice; not doubting but that you will conduct yourselves as English jurymen ever do, and that your verdict will be such as shall receive the approbation of your own conscience, your country, and your God.”
The jury, after about half-an-hour’s consideration, found O’Coigley Guilty.
Mr. Justice Buller, in an address to the prisoner, which he read from a written paper previously to his passing the sentence, observed that he had been clearly convicted of the most atrocious crime which could be committed in any country—that of meditating the destruction of a sovereign, who was one of the best, the most just, upright, and amiable of princes that ever graced a throne; and he could not conceive what were the motives which could actuate any man even to wish for the death of one who had ever been the father of his people.
The prisoner was also found guilty of conspiring to overturn the constitution of these kingdoms—a constitution which, from the experiment of years, had been found to be the best calculated of any that ever existed in the world to ensure the liberty, security, and happiness of the people who lived under it.
These atrocious crimes became still greater from the manner in which they were intended to be perpetrated—that of inviting a foreign enemy to come and invade and conquer these countries.