EXAMPLES MADE OF PIRATES.
Certain privateers continuing their excesses at sea, and rifling neutral ships without distinction or authority, the government resolved to vindicate the honour of the nation, by making examples of those pirates, who, as fast as they could be detected and secured, were brought to trial, and upon conviction sacrificed to justice. While these steps were taken to rescue the nation from the reproach of violence and rapacity, which her neighbours had urged with such eagerness, equal spirit was exerted in convincing neutral powers that they should not with impunity contravene the law of nations, in favouring the enemies of Great Britain. A great number of causes were tried relating to disputed captures, and many Dutch vessels, with their cargoes, were condemned, after a fair hearing, notwithstanding the loud clamours of that people, and the repeated remonstrances of the states-general.
The reputation of the English was not so much affected by the irregularities of her privateers, armed for rapine, as by the neglect of internal police, and an ingredient of savage ferocity mingled in the national character; an ingredient that appeared but too conspicuous in the particulars of several shocking murders brought to light about this period.—One Halsey, who commanded a merchant ship in the voyage from Jamaica to England, having conceived some personal dislike to a poor sailor, insulted him with such abuse, exposed him to such hardships, and punished him with such wantonness of barbarity, that the poor wretch leaped overboard in despair. His inhuman tyrant envying him that death, which would have rescued a miserable object from his brutality, plunged into the sea after him, and brought him on board, declaring, he should not escape so while there were any torments left to inflict. Accordingly, he exercised his tyranny upon him with redoubled rigour, until the poor creature expired, in consequence of the inhuman treatment he had sustained. This savage ruffian was likewise indicted for the murder of another mariner, but being convicted on the first trial, the second was found unnecessary, and the criminal suffered death according to the law, which is perhaps too mild to malefactors convicted of such aggravated cruelty.—Another barbarous murder was perpetrated in the country, near Birmingham, upon a sheriff’s officer, by the sons of one Darby, whose effects the bailiff had seized, on a distress for rent. The two young assassins, encouraged by the father, attacked the unhappy wretch with clubs, and mangled him in a terrible manner, so that he hardly retained any signs of life. Not contented with this cruel execution, they stripped him naked, and dragging him out of the house, scourged him with a waggoner’s whip, until the flesh was cut from the bones. In this miserable condition he was found weltering in his blood, and conveyed to a neighbouring house, where he immediately expired. The three barbarians were apprehended, after having made a desperate resistance. They were tried, convicted, and executed; the sons were hung in chains, and the body of the father dissected.—The widow of a timber-merchant in Rotherhithe being cruelly murdered in her own house, Mary Edmonson, a young woman, her niece, ran out into the street with her arms cut across, and gave the alarm, declaring her aunt had been assassinated by four men, who forced their way into the house, and that she (the niece) had received those wounds in attempting to defend her relation. According to the circumstances that appeared, this unnatural wretch had cut the throat of her aunt and benefactress with a case-knife, then dragged the body from the wash-house to the parlour; that she had stolen a watch and some silver spoons, and concealed them, together with the knife and her own apron, which was soaked with the blood of her parent. After having acted this horrid tragedy, the bare recital of which the humane reader will not peruse without horror, she put on another apron, and wounded her own flesh, the better to conceal her guilt. Notwithstanding these precautions she was suspected, and committed to prison. Being brought to trial, she was convicted and condemned upon circumstantial evidence, and finally executed on Kennington-common, though she denied the fact to the last moment of her life. At the place of execution she behaved with great composure, and, after having spent some minutes in devotion, protested she was innocent of the crime laid to her charge. What seemed to corroborate this protestation, was the condition and character of the young woman, who had been educated in a sphere above the vulgar, and maintained a reputation without reproach in the country, where she was actually betrothed to a clergyman. On the other hand, the circumstances that appeared against her almost amounted to a certainty; though nothing weaker than proof positive ought to determine a jury in capital cases to give a verdict against the person accused. After all, this is one of those problematic events which elude the force of all evidence, and serve to confound the pride of Iranian reason.—A miscreant, whose name was Haines, having espoused the daughter of a farmer in the neighbourhood of Gloucester, who possessed a small estate, which he intended to divide among seven children, was so abandoned as to form the design of poisoning the whole family, that by virtue of his wife he might enjoy the whole inheritance. For the execution of this infernal scheme, he employed his own father to purchase a quantity of arsenic; part of which he administered to three of the children, who were immediately seized with the dreadful symptoms produced by this mineral, and the eldest expired. He afterwards mixed it with three apple-cakes, which he bought for the purpose, and presented to the three other children, who underwent the same violence of operation which had proved fatal to the eldest brother. The instantaneous effects of the poison created a suspicion of Haines, who, being examined, the whole scene of villany stood disclosed. Nevertheless, the villain found means to escape.—The uncommon spirit of assassination which raged at this period, seemed to communicate itself even to foreigners who breathed English air. Five French prisoners confined on board the king’s ship the Royal Oak, were convicted of having murdered one Jean de Manaux, their countryman and fellow-prisoner, in revenge for his having discovered that they had forged passes to facilitate their escape. Exasperated at this detection, they seized this unfortunate informer in the place of their confinement, gagged his mouth, stripped him naked, tied him with a strong cord to a ring-bolt, and scourged his body with the most brutal perseverance. By dint of struggling, the poor wretch disengaged himself from the cord with which he had been tied: then they finished the tragedy, by leaping and stamping on his breast, till the chest was broke, and he expired. They afterwards severed the body into small pieces, and these they conveyed at different times into the sea, through the funnel of a convenience to which they had access: but one of the other prisoners gave information of the murder; in consequence of which they were secured, brought to trial, condemned, and punished with death.—Nor were the instances of cruel assassination which prevailed at this juncture confined to Great Britain. At the latter end of the foregoing year, an atrocious massacre was perpetrated by two Genoese mariners upon the master and crew of an English vessel, among whom they were enrolled. These monsters of cruelty were in different watches, a circumstance that favoured the execution of the horrid plan they had concerted. When one of them retired to rest with his fellows of the watch, consisting of the mate and two seamen, he waited till they were fast asleep, and then butchered them all with a knife. Having so far succeeded without discovery, he returned to the deck, and communicated the exploit to his associate: then they suddenly attacked the master of the vessel, and cleft his head with a hatchet, which they likewise used in murdering the man that stood at the helm; a third was likewise despatched, and no Englishman remained alive but the master’s son, a boy, who lamented his father’s death with incessant tears and cries for three days, at the expiration of which he was likewise sacrificed, because the assassins were disturbed by his clamour. This barbarous scene was acted within sixty leagues of the rock of Lisbon; but the vessel was taken within the capes Ortugal and Finisterre, by the captain of the French privateer called La Favourite, who seeing the deck stained with blood, and finding all the papers of the ship destroyed, began to suspect that the master and crew had been murdered. He accordingly taxed them with the murder, and they confessed the particulars. The privateer touched at Vigo, where the captain imparted this detail to the English consul; but the prize, with the two villains on board, was sent to Bayonne in France, where they were brought to condign punishment.
MURDER OF DANIEL CLARKE.
We shall close this register of blood with the account of a murder remarkable in all its circumstances, for which a person, called Eugene Aram, suffered at York, in the course of this year. This man, who exercised the profession of a schoolmaster at Knaresborough, had, as far back as the year one thousand seven hundred and forty-five, been concerned with one Houseman, in robbing and murdering Daniel Clarke, whom they had previously persuaded to borrow a considerable quantity of valuable effects from different persons in the neighbourhood, on false pretences, that he might retire with the booty. He had accordingly filled a sack with these particulars, and began his retreat with his two perfidious associates, who suddenly fell upon him, deprived him of life, and, having buried the body in a cave, took possession of the plunder. Though Clarke disappeared at once in such a mysterious manner, no suspicion fell on the assassins; and Aram, who was the chief contriver and agent in the murder, moved his habitation to another part of the country. In the summer of the present year, Houseman being employed, among other labourers, in repairing the public highway, they, in digging for gravel by the road side, discovered the skeleton of a human creature, which the majority supposed to be the bones of Daniel Clarke. This opinion was no sooner broached, than Houseman, as it were by some supernatural impulse which he could not resist, declared that it was not the skeleton of Clarke, inasmuch as his body had been interred at a place called St. Robert’s Cave, where they would find it, with the head turned to a certain corner. He was immediately apprehended, examined, admitted as evidence for the crown, and discovered the particulars of the murder. The skeleton of Clarke being found exactly in the place and manner he had described, Eugene Aram, who now acted as usher to a grammar-school in the county of Norfolk, was secured, and brought to trial at the York assizes. There, his own wife corroborating the testimony of Houseman, he was found guilty, and received sentence of death; notwithstanding a very artful and learned defence, in which he proved, from argument and example, the danger of convicting a man upon circumstantial evidence. Finding all his remonstrances ineffectual, he recommended himself in pathetic terms to the king’s mercy; and if ever murder was entitled to indulgence, perhaps it might have been extended not improperly to this man, whose genius, in itself prodigious, might have exerted itself in works of general utility. He had, in spite of all the disadvantages attending low birth and straitened circumstances, by the dint of his own capacity and inclination, made considerable progress in mathematics and philosophy, acquired all the languages ancient and modern, and executed part of a Celtic dictionary, which, had he lived to finish it, might have thrown some essential light upon the origin and obscurities of the European history. Convinced, at last, that he had nothing to hope from the clemency of the government, he wrote a short poem in defence of suicide; and, on the day fixed for his execution, opened the veins of his left arm with a razor, which he had concealed for that purpose. Though he was much weakened by the effusion of blood, before this attempt was discovered, yet, as the instrument had missed the artery, he did not expire until he was carried to the gibbet, and underwent the sentence of the law. His body was conveyed to Knaresborough-forest, and hung in chains, near the place where the murder was perpetrated.—These are some of the most remarkable that appeared amongst many other instances of homicide: a crime that prevails to a degree alike deplorable and surprising, even in a nation renowned for compassion and placability. But this will generally be the case among people whose passions, naturally impetuous, are ill restrained by laws, and the regulations of civil society; which the licentious do not fear, and the wicked hope to evade.
MAJORITY OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.
The prince of Wales having, in the beginning of June, entered the two-and-twentieth year of his age, the anniversary of his birth was celebrated with great rejoicings at court, and the king received compliments of congratulation on the majority of a prince, who seemed born to fulfil the hopes, and complete the happiness, of Great Britain. The city of London presented an address to the king on this occasion, replete with expressions of loyalty and affection, assuring his majesty, that no hostile threats could intimidate a people animated by the love of liberty, who, confiding in the Divine Providence, and in his majesty’s experienced wisdom and vigorous councils, were resolved to exert their utmost efforts towards enabling their sovereign to repel the insults and defeat the attempts made by the ancient enemies of his crown and kingdom. Congratulations of the same kind were offered by other cities, towns, corporations, and communities, who vied with each other in professions of attachment; and, indeed, there was not the least trace of disaffection perceivable at this juncture in any part of the island.