On the 17th Richard Gascogne was put to the bar. He had travelled over England, plotting, planning, collecting material and storing it away, with a view of dethroning King George. Gascogne’s spirit, astuteness, courage, restless activity, and unselfishness, made him almost the head and front of the rebellion. The king’s counsel curiously remarked that ‘there were some evidences (witnesses) of his, under their own hands, as would put the matter out of all doubt, but that there were some reasons which rendered it not so proper yet to divulge those evidences, but which would, however, be produced when time served.’
Patten then appeared to further merit the mercy which had been extended to him, by aiding in the taking away of another man’s life. His testimony was of the usual quality: he had seen Gascogne busily and hotly engaged, a fierce Jacobite partisan. Patten’s fellow knave, Calderwood, also appeared. When the ex-quartermaster stepped into the box, Dick Gascogne probably felt a ray of hope beginning to beam upon him; for Calderwood had called upon his old comrade in Newgate a day or two before, and told him that he, Calderwood, could depose nothing of importance against him. The prisoner was struck with amazement, therefore, when the pardoned Jacobite now swore that, at Preston, Gascogne sat as a member of the Council of War. The latter protested down to his dying hour that he did not even know the house in which the council assembled.
THE DUCHESS OF ORMOND.
Great interest was given to this trial by the appearance in court of the Duchess of Ormond and Lady Emily Butler, the duke’s sister. There was a great gathering outside to see the wife of the ‘once illustrious’ Ormond pass into Westminster Hall to give evidence in behalf of the Jacobite prisoner. Chairs were placed for them in court. They were both sworn, and their testimony was given in order to weaken that of a gentleman named Wye, who seems to have been a secret agent in the pay of the Government. Wye deposed that he once saw the prisoner in a room at the Duchess of Ormond’s when the duchess was present, and also ‘a gentleman dressed very fine, in laced scarlet clothes,’ whom he afterwards knew as Mr. Charles Cotton,—one of the criminated Jacobites. Wye must have been in the duchess’s closet in the character of a Jacobite himself. He deposed that on Gascogne being introduced, he stated that he had just come from France, that he had seen the duke six days previously at Bayonne, in good health, and that King James and his grace would soon be in England. The duchess called for a map to note the locality; and then asked Gascogne if the report was true that there had been found on Sir William Wyndham ‘letters of dangerous consequences?’ Gascogne did not know, but he said that, if Sir William carried such letters, he deserved to be whipped like a school-boy; and that if he were really in custody, the whole design was ruined, and that above a hundred gentlemen would be compromised, as they waited for his signal to bring forward eight or nine thousand men, of whom he was to be the leader.
GASCOGNE’S DEFENCE.
Gascogne vehemently denied what Wye had sworn to, and ‘to which he stuck close in general with great assurance.’ The duchess supported Gascogne with calm dignity. The hostile counsel could neither break down her self-possession, nor get the better of her woman’s wit. Sir William’s name, she said, was doubtless mentioned when Mr. Gascogne and the other gentleman were in her closet. Bayonne? ‘Well, that place might also have been referred to.’ As to the raising of an insurrectionary force, and as to other particulars, she could remember nothing of them,—nay, on being hard-pressed, her grace affirmed that she ‘could almost be positive there were no such things said.’ Lady Emily Butler deposed, generally, that what the duchess had said, was true, and that her own knowledge went no further. ‘It seemed possible,’ says ‘Mercurius,’ ‘that some affairs of a very great consequence might at that time employ her grace’s thoughts, so that she might not exactly remember or observe all that passed.’
Gascogne, against whom a warrant had been issued, on Wye’s information, as long ago as the 2nd of November, tried to damage that worthy’s reputation. Wye rejoined that he could have deposed to many particulars that would have damaged Gascogne’s reputation, but ‘he chose to omit them because he would not aggravate things against him.’ Things, indeed, were grave enough. Gascogne struggled against them as long as he could. In vain he endeavoured to show that he had gone from Bath northward without any intention of joining the Jacobite army, and that he was ultimately arrested by some of its soldiers and carried to head-quarters. Once there, however, he could not deny that he was well received, well entertained, and actively employed by General Forster. The usual result followed. Found guilty, he had to listen to all the horrible details of the sentence of death in cases of high treason. He suffered with becoming dignity. In a paper, handed to the sheriff, he gently complained of—and he heartily forgave—the witnesses who had brought him to death by false testimony. In modest terms he expressed an uncommon ardour or zeal in his duty to his ‘most injured and royal sovereign, King James III.’ Gascogne added, ‘My loyalty descended to me from my ancestors, my father and grandfather having had the honour to be sacrificed in doing their duties to their kings, Charles I. and James II.’ Gascogne gloried in being a Roman Catholic. The paper ended by an expression of thankfulness to God ‘for enabling me to resist the many temptations I have had frequently in relation to a Gentleman, upon whose account, I presume, they have taken my life, because I would not concur to take his life.’
CHRISTIAN FEELING.
The ‘Weekly Journal,’ referring to this paper, charitably remarked that Roman Catholics who died on the gallows generally died with a lie in their mouths! Living Jacobites and Tories, the public were informed, lied as impudently as their dying partisans. It was a Tory lie to say that Gascogne might have saved his life, and have had 1,000l. and a commission, by telling all he knew and betraying his cause. The ‘Weekly’ did not think such information was wanting. ‘We know enough,’ says the good Christian, ‘to hang him and others of his stamp.’
FRACAS IN A COFFEE-HOUSE.