This evidence, which was concluded at the end of the fifth day of the trial, completed the case for the prosecution.
Sir F. Pollock, on the following Monday morning, proceeded to open the case for the defence. The learned gentleman occupied more than five hours and a half in addressing the jury; commenting in the most able manner upon the whole of the vast mass of evidence which had been adduced, and contending that there was nothing in the conduct of the prisoner, or of his associates, which could in the slightest degree warrant a presumption that they had assembled for the purpose of committing any offence which could be supposed to amount to high-treason. He urged that the probability was, that the assemblage took place with a view (on the part of the Chartists), to exhibit their power, and, by making a general movement, to procure the release of Vincent, their partisan, at that time undergoing an imprisonment, on a charge of sedition, in Monmouth jail; and that some prisoners having been made from amongst them, they had gone to demand their liberation, and had become exasperated by the harsh measures adopted against them by the authorities.
Several witnesses were called with a view to support these suggestions, and to show that the first act of aggression was on the part of the soldiers; and many persons gave the prisoner an excellent character for humanity and general mildness of disposition.
Mr. Kelly then proceeded to sum up the whole of the evidence, on the part of the prisoner, in a most able speech, and he was followed by the Solicitor-General in reply.
Towards the conclusion of the eighth day’s proceedings, the Lord Chief Justice addressed the jury upon the whole case. At six o’clock the jury retired to consider their verdict, and in about half an hour returned into court, and declared that the prisoner was “Guilty” of the offence imputed to him, but recommended him, generally, to the merciful consideration of the crown.
On the following morning, the 9th of January, Zephaniah Williams was put upon his trial. As we have already entered so fully into the facts proved against the prisoner Frost, it would be useless to repeat the evidence adduced in any of the subsequent cases, which was merely a repetition of that already given. On Monday the 12th of January, this prisoner was called upon for his defence, when he appeared dreadfully affected. His counsel had already addressed the jury at great length in his behalf, and he contented himself with denying that he ever entertained any notion of the kind imputed to him, and solemnly protested that he never had the least design of revolting against the Queen. He was found “Guilty,” but, as in the case of Frost, was recommended to mercy.
William Jones was then put on his trial, and on Wednesday he was also pronounced “Guilty,” with a similar recommendation to mercy.
It now became the duty of the learned judges to proceed to the consideration of the indictments preferred against the other prisoners, in custody for minor offences alleged against them. Charles Walters, Jenkins Morgan, John Rees, Richard Benfield, and John Lovell, confessed themselves guilty of the charges laid against them; and the Attorney-General withdrew the prosecutions against Edmund Edmunds, James Aust, George Turner, and Solomon Britton, in reference to the propriety of whose indictment great doubts existed. On the same day several other prisoners pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy, riot, pike-making, burglary, &c.; and on Thursday, the business of the special commission was terminated by the learned judges passing sentence on the prisoners.
Frost, Williams, and Jones, were first brought up; and their lordships having gone through the usual forms put on the black caps, and—
Chief Justice Tindal addressed the prisoners in the following words:—“John Frost, Zephaniah Williams, and William Jones, after the most anxious and careful investigation of your respective cases before juries of great intelligence and almost unexampled patience, you stand at the bar of this court to receive the last sentence of the law, for the commission of a crime which, beyond all others, is the most pernicious in its example, and the most injurious in its consequences, to the peace and happiness of human society—that of high-treason against your sovereign. You can have no just ground of complaint that your several cases have not met with the most full consideration, both from the jury and the court; but as that jury have, in each of them, pronounced you guilty of the crime with which you have been charged, I should be wanting in justice to them if I did not openly declare that the verdicts which they have found meet with the entire concurrence of my learned brethren and myself. In the case of all ordinary breaches of the law, the mischief of the offence does, for the most part, terminate with the immediate injury sustained by the individual against whom it is levelled. The man who plunders the property, or lifts his hand against the life of his neighbour, does by his guilty act inflict, in that particular instance, and to that intent, a loss or injury on the sufferer or his surviving friends; but they who, by armed numbers, or violence, or terror, endeavour to put down established institutions, and to introduce in their stead a new order of things, open wide the flood-gates of rapine and bloodshed, destroy all security of property and life, and do their utmost to involve a whole nation in anarchy and ruin. It has been proved in your case, that you combined together to lead from the hills, at the dead hour of night, into the town of Newport, many thousands of men, armed in many instances with weapons of a dangerous description, in order that they might take possession of the town, and supersede the lawful authority of the Queen therein, as a preliminary step to a more general insurrection throughout the kingdom. It is owing to the interposition of Providence alone, that your wicked designs were frustrated. Your followers arrive by daylight, and, after firing upon the civil power and the Queen’s troops, are, by the firmness of the magistrates, and the cool and determined bravery of a small band of soldiers, defeated and dispersed. What would have been the fate of the peaceable and unoffending inhabitants, if success had attended your rebellious designs, it is useless to conjecture. The invasion of a foreign foe would, in all probability, have been less destructive to property and life. It is for the crime of treason, committed under these circumstances, that you are now called upon yourselves to answer; and by the penalty which you are about to suffer, you hold out a warning to all your fellow-subjects, that the law of your country is strong enough to repress and to punish all attempts to alter the established order of things, by insurrection and armed force, and that those who are found guilty of such treasonable attempts must expiate their crime by an ignominious death. I do, therefore, most earnestly exhort you, to employ the little time that remains to you, in preparing for the great change that doth await you, by sincere penitence and fervent prayer; for although we shall not fail to forward to the proper quarter that recommendation which the jury intrusted to us, we cannot hold out to you any hope of mercy on this side the grave. And now doth nothing more remain than that the Court pronounces (to all of us a most painful duty) the last sentence of the law, which is, ‘That each of you, John Frost, Zephaniah Williams, and William Jones, be taken hence to the place from whence you came, and be thence drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, and that each of you be there hanged by the neck until you be dead, and that afterwards the head of each of you shall be severed from his body, and the body of each, divided into four quarters, shall be disposed of as her Majesty shall think fit; and may the Lord have mercy upon your souls.’ ”