‘JEMMY DAWSON.’
Lieutenant-Colonel Deacon, Captain Berwick, and Captain James Dawson stood successively at the bar, on the 17th July. Deacon was the son of a Manchester physician, and long before the Jacobites entered Manchester, he had proclaimed his intention of joining them. This he did with two brothers; one, a mere boy, was captured, detained, and ultimately released. The other was slain. Berwick (who was familiarly dignified with the titular honour of ‘Duke’) was a gay young fellow who had dealt in ‘chequered linens,’ but had not been ‘prudent’ in trade; and had joined the rebels to escape his creditors. The third rebel, ‘Jemmy Dawson,’ has become better known to us than either ‘brave Berwick,’ or ‘gallant Deacon.’ He was a ‘Lancashire lad,’ of good family. He was so fond of what is also called ‘good company,’ when he was at St. John’s, Cambridge, that he withdrew from his college, in order to escape expulsion. He returned to Manchester, where he lived ‘on his fortune and his friends.’—‘He was always a mighty gay gentleman,’ it was said at his trial, ‘and frequented much the company of ladies, and was well respected by all his acquaintances of either sex, for his genteel deportment.’
The usual testimony was given against the three Jacobites. Maddox added, of Deacon, that he had seen him sitting at the ‘Bull’s Head,’ Manchester, taking the names of the recruits, and also making up blue and white ribbons into bows, to decorate the recruits with. On the march, he seems to have indulged in making long speeches, praising ‘Charles, Prince Regent,’ and inducing many to join, on assurance of good treatment when they got to London, or five guineas wherewith to get home again. He was very conspicuous in his plaid suit, with laced loops, broad sword, and pistols.
THE JACOBITE PRESS.
There was some variety on the 18th at the trial of a Welsh barrister named David Morgan. ‘I waited on him at Preston,’ said one Tew, ‘when he and Lord Elcho dined together. They talked on the Pretender’s affairs. Morgan asked of what religion the prince might be, and Lord Elcho replied that his religion was yet to seek.’ Other witnesses deposed to Morgan’s active participation in the rebellion, the consideration with which he was treated by other officers, and his close attendance upon the Pretender, by whose side he rode out of Derby on a bay horse. Captain Vere, who had received his surrender, said, ‘He called me a great scoundrel, as I prevented gentlemen getting commissions under Sir Daniel O’Carrol.’ Another witness deposed that he had gone the night before out of curiosity to see Morgan in Newgate, and that this Pretender’s counsellor had actually exclaimed, ‘We shall soon be in Derby again, in spite of King George or anybody else!’ Morgan’s defence was that he had repented, and had tried to escape, but was arrested. The Solicitor-General remarked that the attempt was not made till the cause was desperate, and Morgan was pronounced ‘Guilty!’
The trials and sentences impressed the writers of the London newspapers in various ways. The ‘happy establishment’ supporters thirsted for rebel blood. The Jacobite journals were ‘cowed.’ They seemed even afraid to express a hope that mercy might be extended to the condemned officers. The utmost they ventured to do was to suggest mercy, or keep a thought of it alive in the breast of princes and people, by selecting Shakespeare for their advocate; and in these journals might be read again and again the lines from ‘Measure for Measure’:—
No ceremony that to great ones ‘longs,
Not the king’s crown nor the deputed sword,
The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace