When George III. came to the throne duels could no longer be entered into lightly, and became much more formal affairs, being arranged in detail beforehand, with various points of etiquette. In many cases the combatants tossed for first fire. Dr. Millingen states that there were one hundred and seventy-two encounters fought during this reign; sixty-nine individuals killed and ninety-six wounded—forty-eight desperately so, and forty-eight slightly.
One hundred and seventy-two known encounters,—but of course by far the greater number remained unrecorded.
The following instances, culled from records of the eighteenth century, and all connected with Hyde Park, give some idea of the variety of pleas and the personality of the combatants figuring in duels of the period.
So many writers of renown—including Defoe, Swift, Thackeray, Martin Hume, and others—have described the circumstances of the great and fatal duel between the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun, which was fought early in the eighteenth century in Hyde Park, that we need merely allude to it.
A lawsuit had been raging between these two nobles, and it is alleged that this was used as a shield for a political scheme to get rid of the Duke of Hamilton, who had just been appointed Ambassador to the Court of Versailles, where the Old Pretender was a refugee.
The Duke most unwillingly took Mohun’s challenge, as he was well known to be a man of bad character; but the second, Macartney, arranged a meeting. Seconds as well as the principals fought at that period, and Macartney having wounded Colonel Hamilton, the Duke’s second, disarmed. The struggle between the Duke and Mohun, however, was prolonged, although both were wounded in several places. At last the Duke ran Mohun through the body, and while thus fixed the latter shortened his sword, and pierced Hamilton through the lungs. Mohun expired on the spot. The Duke was carried to the Cheesecake House, but died on the way. Macartney fled, and Colonel Hamilton accused him of having stabbed the Duke when he was trying to raise him. The trial came off the next year, and “Manslaughter” was the verdict; upon which Macartney then charged Colonel Hamilton with perjury.
Three years after the accession of George III. the noted Wilkes, who had already been one of the principals in a duel with Lord Talbot at Bagshot, was involved in another quarrel, both being on the subject of his writings in the Northern Briton. In this paper he had given some character sketches which evidently alluded to Mr. Samuel Martin, M.P. for Camelford, and late Secretary to the Treasury (he figured as the hero in Churchill’s Duellist). The passage which gave offence to Martin was:
“The Secretary of a certain Board, and a very apt tool of a Ministerial persecution, who, with a snout worthy of a Portuguese inquisitor, is hourly looking out for carrion in office, to feed the maw of the insatiable vulture, imo, etiam in senatum venit, notat et designat unumquemque nostrum,[5] he marks us, and all our innocent families, for beggary and ruin. Neither the tenderness of age nor the sacredness of sex is spared by the cruel Scot.”
Martin denounced Wilkes in the House of Commons in an angry oration, which was as insulting as he could make it.
Wilkes retorted by a violent letter, saying he had written every word of the articles, to which Martin wrote an indignant reply, concluding his communication with the following words: