Shortly after, it was early in 1718, a quiet-looking young man left a letter at the City dwelling of a Nonjuring minister, named Leake. He would call for an answer, he said, in a day or two. The minister was nearly lost in fear and horror when he read this monstrous epistle from a stranger. The writer spoke of the ‘discontents’ of the nation; and suggested that they might be remedied by removing Prince George, and putting ‘our king’ in his place. This could be done, said the writer, without much bloodshed! The young maniac then stated that if Leake would pay Sheppard’s journey to Italy, and furnish him with a letter to King James, he would undertake to bring the king secretly into the country, and to smite the usurper in his palace. It was, he said, ‘easy to cut the thread of human life.’ If he succeeded, King James could publicly appear. If he failed, the king might still lie safely hiding. Sheppard promised that, if he himself were taken, no amount of torture should extract from him a single word damaging to the sacred cause. He was ready to suffer the cruelest death, the best preparation for which, he thought, would be the reception of the Sacrament daily from the hands of a Priest, ignorant of his design.
A FIGHT IN NEWGATE.
To be found in possession of such a letter was a hanging matter. Leake dropped it at once into the flames, and then hurried to Sir John Fryer, a magistrate, who severely reprimanded him for destroying such an important document, and ordered the arrest of the enthusiast. Before the magistrate, in presence of the Secretary of State, and at his trial, at the Old Bailey, the speech and general carriage of young Sheppard were most becoming. When Leake tried to repeat the contents of the fatal letter, Sheppard calmly prompted or corrected him. The latter wrote it out from memory, and it agreed, literally, with a draft discovered among the prisoner’s papers. He was, of course, found Guilty; and when the Recorder urged him to ask mercy of the king, Sheppard replied, ‘I cannot hope for mercy from a King whom I cannot own!’
Between judgment and execution, this brave but erring boy of seventeen, lay in Newgate. Paul Lorraine, the Ordinary, and a Nonjuring minister, one Orme, fought for spiritual possession of him. ‘He is of my flock!’ said the Newgate chaplain. ‘He is not of your communion,’ retorted the Nonjuror. ‘You are a rebel rascal!’ rejoined Paul. ‘You are a canting hypocrite!’ cried the other reverend gentleman. At which words, they flew at each other and were in the midst of a furious stand-up fight, when discreet turnkeys rushed in, and separated the combatants.
UP THE HILL TO TYBURN.
On the day of execution, six persons suffered at Tyburn. In the morning, Ferdinando, Marquis of Paleotti, had the honour of hanging alone, out of compliment to his rank. He was the brother of the Duchess of Shrewsbury, and the murderer of his valet, whom he had slain, in a fit of passion, on some trivial provocation. The Duchess tried hard to get her brother beheaded, and the Prince and Princess of Wales called on her to express their regret that they could not turn the king from his determination that the Marquis should be hanged—an infamous way of death for a Marquis, as it would degrade every relative he had at foreign courts. Paleotti was hanged accordingly, and he died becomingly, as a gentleman should. Had he only lived as decently, he would never have gone to Tyburn at all.
SCENE AT TYBURN.
Later in the day, St. Patrick’s Day, 1718, two carts went up Holborn Hill, to Tyburn. In one sat young Sheppard, in calm, unostentatious bearing, as much of a gentleman as Paleotti. Four companions, doomed to die at the same tree, rode, pale and silent, hustled together, in the other cart. One of them was a burglar; the second, a highwayman; the third was a young lad who had taken to thieving as a profession; and the fourth was a younger girl who had stolen some finery to the value of one pound sterling! These, however, attracted only a passing attention. All eyes were turned more intently towards Sheppard. All Jacobite hearts sympathised with him on his dolorous way to death. Women looked down upon him from the windows, tenderly and tearfully, that one so young, and handsome, and well-endowed, should die so early, and in such dreadful manner. The Whig ‘mobile’ assailed him with insulting shouts. But Sheppard was not moved by it. His dignity was not even ruffled by the renewed contest in the cart of the Newgate chaplain and the Nonjuror. Each sought to comfort or confound the culprit, according to his way of thinking. Once more, the messengers of peace got to fisticuffs, but as they neared Tyburn, the Nonjuror kicked Paul out of the cart, and kept by the side of Sheppard till the rope was adjusted. Then he boldly, as those Jacobite Nonjurors were wont, gave the passive lad absolution for the crime for which he was about to pay the penalty; after which he jumped down to have a better view of the sorry spectacle, from the foremost rank of spectators.
The general belief was that Sheppard was perfectly sane; but there was a general conviction that the boy’s assertion of the hopelessness of expecting mercy at the hands of a king whom he could not own, afforded a sublime opportunity (for showing that mercy) which the sovereign had thrown away. As nobody was the worse for the young Jacobite’s design, his pardon would have shown that King George knew how to triumph over his own passions; ‘but,’ says an audacious Jacobite contemporary, ‘the Great seldom forgive offences committed against themselves.’
Sheppard left a letter and a ‘speech,’ written, it was said, by Orme, which were printed privately, and circulated, in spite of the Government. The boy’s portrait was as secretly and extensively sold, equally in spite of the authorities; and the ministry, having nothing better to do, settled an annuity of 200l. a year on the Nonjuror, Leake, for discovering the treason, and clapped the other Nonjuror, Orme, into Newgate, for absolving the traitor. Orme’s chief offence lay in his being the author of the ‘last dying speech,’ in which the crime was justified. ‘Mr. Orme’s friends,’ said the sarcastic Whig papers, ‘are very apprehensive that he will shortly have to prepare a speech for himself!’