On the 15th, 16th, and 17th, the Cabinet Council sat long and late, but with much secrecy, inquiring into this affair. The first night Lord Ravensworth was heard for four hours. The purport of his accusation was, that some few weeks before at Durham, one Fawcett, an Attorney, reading the newspaper which mentioned the promotion of Dr. Johnson to the Bishopric of Gloucester, said “He has good luck!” Being asked what he meant by that expression, he had replied, “Why, Johnson has drunk the Pretender’s health twenty times with me and Mr. Stone and Mr. Murray.” Dr. Cowper, Dean of Durham, who had been present at this dialogue, was called, and in a short and sensible manner confirmed Lord Ravensworth’s account. The conversation made no noise at the time; only Dr. Chapman, master of Magdalen College in Cambridge, gave private intelligence of it to Harry Vane, a creature of the accused triumvirate, and he, by Mr. Pelham’s order, wrote to Fawcett to know the meaning of this imputation. Fawcett denied what he had said, and acquitted the Bishop of the charge. The clamours against Stone, on his quarrel with the Bishop of Norwich and Lord Harcourt, and the Memorial reaching Lord Ravensworth soon after this conversation happened, he determined to signalize his zeal, and hastened to London, Fawcett having confirmed to him what he had denied to Vane, but begging not to be produced as an accuser.
16th, Fawcett was examined: never was such an instance of terror and confusion! yet with reluctance and uncertainty he owned that what he had uttered at Durham was true. The substance of his evidence was, “that, about twenty years ago, Murray, then a young Lawyer, Stone, then in indigence, and himself, had used to sup frequently at one Vernon’s, a rich Mercer, a noted Jacobite, and a lover of ingenious young men. The conversation was wont to be partly literature, partly treason; the customary healths, The Chevalier and Lord Dunbar.”
Had the greater part of the Council not wished well to the accused, it must have shocked them to hear a charge of such consequence brought after an interval of twenty years, brought on memory, the transactions of a private company, most of them very young men, at worst flattering an old rich bachelor of no importance, and, in their most unguarded moments, never rising beyond a foolish libation to the healths of their imaginary Monarch and his Minister. Considering the lengths to which party had been carried for the last twenty years; considering how many men had been educated at Oxford about that period, or had been in league with every considerable Jacobite in the kingdom, if such a charge might be brought after so long a term, who almost would not be guilty? Who almost would be so innocent as not to have gone beyond a treasonable toast? It was necessary to be very Whig to see Lord Ravensworth’s accusation in an honourable light.
17th, Lord Ravensworth and Fawcett were called to sign their Affidavits: the latter asked if he might alter his? The Chancellor told him he might add for explanation, but not make two Affidavits. He said, “My lords, I am fitter to die than to make an Affidavit.” He contradicted many things that he had told Lord Ravensworth, and behaved so tragically, yet so naturally, that the Council were too much moved to proceed, and adjourned.
The accused were warm and earnest in denying the charge: Stone in particular affirming, that he would allow the truth of all that had been alleged against him for the last six months, if he had so much as once drunk the Pretender’s health in the most envenomed companies, even when a student at Oxford; adding many menaces of prosecuting Fawcett for calumny. Such minute assurances from one so suspected, or such strains of prudence in his very youth, did not much contribute to invalidate Fawcett’s testimony in the eyes of the world.
19th, the House of Commons went on the supply for Nova Scotia, as opened by Lord Duplin. Colonel Cornwallis, just returned from that Government, gave a short and sensible account of the colony, where, he said, the trade and improvements had been carried to as great a height as could be expected in the time. Beckford spoke strongly in behalf of the colony, and for attending to the West Indies, where all our wars must begin and end; that till we attended to our Navy, we had done nothing in the last war; how preferable this, to flinging our money into the gulf of Germany! He commended Cornwallis, and the Board of Trade. Sir Cordel Firebrace inquired into the state of the civil government; Cornwallis gave it. Gray spoke for improving it. Mr. Pelham desired to have it remembered, that the support of the colony was the sense of the House; and he told Beckford, that if he would praise oftener where it was deserved, his reproofs would be more regarded.
The Council sat late again that night: Fawcett collected more resolution; said, that Lord Ravensworth had been in the right to call upon him; that it was fact that he had been with the three accused when the treasonable healths were drunk; that at such a distance of time, he could not swear positively that they drank them; but he would endeavour with time to recollect particular circumstances.
21st and 22nd, the Council continued sitting, and heard Mr. Stone purge himself, who, with other articles of defence, called Bishop Hay Drummond to the character of his principles.
On the 23rd, Mr. Murray appeared before them, but rejected impetuously the reading of the Depositions: he said, he was positive to their falsehood, be they what they might: as he was aware that suspicions might arise from the connexions of his family, he had lived a life of caution beyond even what his principles would have dictated.
Lord Ravensworth grew unquiet. Fawcett’s various and uncertain behaviour distressed him: though the world was willing to believe the accused Jacobites, the evidence did not tend to corroborate the opinion: was drinking a treasonable health all the treason committed by men from whom so much danger was apprehended? Were no proofs of disloyalty more recent than of twenty years to be found against men who were supposed involved in the most pernicious measures? If no acts of a treacherous dye could be produced against them since they came into the King’s service, might it not well be supposed, that their views and establishment under the present Government had washed out any stains contracted by education or former adulation? and it did appear that Vernon the Mercer had actually made Murray the heir of his fortunes. Lord Ravensworth consulted the Speaker, who advised him to establish his own truth, in having received the advertisement from Fawcett—but neither was that denied, nor the drinking the healths disbelieved, though both Stone and Murray at the last session of the Council on the 26th, when the latter made an incomparable oration, took each a solemn oath, that the charge was absolutely false.