Next came the serio-comic incidents. Influential men in London were applied to with more or less earnestness, to intercede for the lives of some of the doomed men. These applications had their grimly-grotesque aspects. Lady Cowper gives in her Diary a remarkable instance, which admirably illustrates this fact. A Mr. Collingwood, taken in the North, lay in a Liverpool dungeon, under sentence to be hanged. ‘Mrs. Collingwood,’ writes Lady Cowper, ‘wrote to a friend in town to try to get her husband’s life granted to her. The friend’s answer was as follows: “I think you are mad when you talk of saving your husband’s life. Don’t you know you will have £500 a year jointure if he’s hanged, and that you won’t have a groat if he’s saved? Consider, and let me have your answer, for I shall do nothing in it till then.” The answer did not come time enough,’ adds the diarist, ‘and so he was hanged!’
TO THE PLANTATIONS.
It was impossible to kill all the captives. Accordingly, persons remaining in London or in country gaols were induced to petition for banishment. They were then made over as presents to trading courtiers. The courtiers might sell to them their pardons. Such prisoners as could purchase them might be seen viewing the Lions of London before they returned home. Others came up from country prisons to look at the capital whither they had hoped to carry and there to crown their king. Prisoners who were unable to buy their pardons of courtiers who had them to sell, and that, at very high rates, were simply sent off to the Plantations. The veriest Whigs who saw a group of these unfortunates on their way to the river, must have covered their eyes for shame.
CHAPTER IX.
(1716.)
n March 15, 1716, the wily Earl of Wintoun, after repeated attempts to defer his plea, may be said to have been brought to bay. The Lords would allow of no further postponements; and, ready or not ready, they now brought him to trial. He had all due honours paid him. There was a long processional entry, which opened with the Lord High Steward’s Gentlemen Attendants, in pairs, and ended with that great dignitary walking alone, and a supplementary group of pages bearing his train. Between the two extremes of the procession walked Clerks and Masters in Chancery, Serjeants at Law, the Judges, the elder sons of Peers, Heralds, with Garter King-at-Arms in the midst of them, and the Peers who were the judges in this solemn issue.
STATE-TRIAL CEREMONIES.