Chapter XIII: Part 13

The proceedings having closed, _Sir Robert Wilson_ rose, and with dignified confidence delivered an address in French. Having acknowledged that he had been interested in the fate of Lavallette, on political grounds, he declared that such considerations had a very inferior influence on his determination.

“The appeal” (said he) “made to our humanity, to our personal character, and to our national generosity; the responsibility thrown upon us of instantly deciding on the life or death of an unfortunate man, and, above all, of an unfortunate foreigner—this appeal was imperative and did not permit us to calculate his other claims to our good will. At this cry of humanity we should have done as much for an obscure, unknown individual, or even for an enemy who had fallen into misfortune. Perhaps we were imprudent, but we would rather incur that reproach, than the one we should have merited by basely abandoning him, who, full of confidence, threw himself into our arms: and these very men who have calumniated us, without knowing either the motives or the details of our conduct—these very men, I say, would have been the first to stigmatize us as heartless cowards, if, by our refusal to save M. Lavallette, we had abandoned him to certain death. We resign ourselves with security to the decision of the jury; and if you should condemn us for having contravened your positive laws, we shall not at least have to reproach ourselves for having violated the eternal laws of morality and humanity.”

_Mr. Bruce_ delivered, in French, a speech of the same general tenor; his language was animated, and his tone firm and manly.

“Gentlemen (he concluded) I have confessed to you, with all frankness and honour, the whole truth with regard to the part which I took in the escape of M. Lavallette; and notwithstanding the respect which I entertain for the majesty of the laws, notwithstanding the respect I owe to this tribunal, I cannot be wanting in the respect I owe to myself so far as to affirm, that I feel not the least compunction for what I have done. I leave you, gentlemen, to decide upon my fate and I implore nothing but justice.”

The President concisely summed up the evidence, and gave his charge with great impartiality and much eloquence. The jury retired to deliberate, and in about two hours returned with a verdict of guilty against Messrs. Wilson, Bruce, and Hutchinson, and not guilty as to the other prisoners, except Eberle the gaoler, whom they convicted of the minor offence of negligence.

The President then read the article of the penal code applicable to the charge proved against the three British subjects, in which the punishment prescribed was imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, nor less than three months; and without hesitation he pronounced for the shortest allowable term.

Each of the three British subjects was accordingly sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and the costs of the trial. Eberle, the gaoler, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, and after that, to be ten years under the surveillance of the police. The President announced to the convicted that they had three days allowed to appeal to the Court of Cassation. Bruce, Hutchinson, and Wilson, would make no appeal against the judgment and passed their three months of imprisonment at the Conciergerie. It was intimated that Louis XVIII. would willingly have respited them, had they asked his pardon, but this they respectfully declined to do. On their return to England, all parties, Tory, Whig and Radical, received them with enthusiasm. The nobility and fashionable world fêted them, and the public lavished praises on them. The Prince Regent, wishing to act with official strictness, deprived Hutchinson of his appointment as Captain in the Guards, but on his fellow officers exclaiming against such harshness, he restored him to his regiment and rank.

Mr. Bruce was entertained by the Countess of Bessborough at a _déjeuner_ where he met the Duke of Wellington, and received his Grace’s congratulations. The electors of Southwark, to mark their sense of Sir Robert Wilson’s noble conduct, returned him as their representative to Parliament. Sir Robert, who was a clever writer, as well as a good soldier and an active politician, died in 1849, after a chequered but honourable public career. Captain Hutchinson, who for many years after the trial was known by the _sobriquet_ of “Lavallette Hutchinson,” died in 1851, third Earl of Donoughmore, which title he inherited from his uncle, the eminent General Lord Hutchinson, second Earl of Donoughmore, who took the command at the close of the victory of Alexandria, after Sir Ralph Abercromby had been borne, mortally wounded, from the field.

The Lavalette name is at this day of important note in France, the Marquis of Lavalette being the present able and popular Minister of the Interior there. It appears, however, that he is no relative of the Count of the escape, and has had naught in common with him but the name, and hardly even that, for it would seem, the count spelt its second syllable with the double _ll_, where the Marquis has but one. In here acknowledging the communication I have had the honour to receive from M. le Marquis, whose obliging amiability fully tallies with that ready and cordial attention one is ever sure to receive from high officials in France, as well as in England,—I must add that I should be very glad indeed, if I, or rather some one more competent than myself, could take advantage of the Marquis’s courtesy, and, by thoroughly searching all French archives relating to the subject, bring out the full details and the whole truth of this most mysterious and most interesting affair—the escape of Lavallette.

LEWIS AND SON, Printers, Swan Buildings, Moorgate Street.

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Footnote 1:

Dibdin uses his name freely: here is a specimen from his “Peter
Pullhauls Medley.”

“When grown a man I soon began
To quit each boyish notion;
With old Benbow I swore to go,
And tempt the waving ocean.

“Ten years I served with him, or nigh,
And saw the gallant hero die;
Yet ’scaped each shot myself, for why?

“‘There’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack.’”

Footnote 2:

In Owen and Blakeway’s History of Shrewsbury, the ancient descent and
parentage of the admiral, as above given, are, on very good argument,
altogether denied. They (and what T. Phillips says in his History of
Shrewsbury bears them out) state the admiral to have been the son of
William Benbow, of Cotton Hill, tanner and burgess of Shrewsbury, and
to have had no uncle, Colonel Thomas Benbow, and only an uncle,
Captain John Benbow, who was actually (and no doubt pursuant to the
sentence recorded in the State Trials) shot in the Bowling Green of
Shrewsbury on the 15th of October, 1651, and was buried the following
day in St. Chad’s churchyard in that town; and a stone erected over
him, which was renewed in 1740, and which gave his name and the date
of his interment. St. Chad’s register has further this entry: “1651,
October 16; John Benbowe, captain, who was shott at the Castle. B.”
All this being so, what becomes of the story of the Colonel Benbow of
the Tower? It may be true, but must refer to some other member of the
family.

Footnote 3:

Admiral Benbow was born at Cotton Hill, near Shrewsbury, in 1650. In a
bedroom belonging to the house of his birth appear the following
lines, written with a diamond on the window:—

“Then only breathe one prayer for me,
That far away, where’er I go,
The heart that would have bled for thee
May feel through life no other woe.

“I shall look back, when on the main,
Back to my native isle;
And almost think I hear again
That voice, and view that smile.”

Underneath has been added the following:—

“You go, and round that head, like banners in the air,
Shall float full many a loving hope and many a tender prayer.”

Footnote 4:

This story of the Moors’ heads derives considerable countenance from
the following circumstance related in Owen and Blakeway’s “History of
Shrewsbury.” It appears that a Mr. Richard Ridley married Elizabeth
Benbow, a sister of the admiral. Their daughter, Sarah Ridley, married
Richard Briscoe, and Helen Briscoe, great granddaughter of this
marriage, married John Powell, of the Castle Foregate, Shrewsbury; and
in his possession might be seen a curious kind of cup or punch-bowl
edged with silver, on which was engraved “The First Adventure of
Captain John Benbo, and Gift to Richard Ridley, 1687.” On close
inspection this cup was found to consist of cane very closely matted
together, and coated on both sides with varnish. The vessel was
evidently such a covering for the head as is in use among the Moors,
so that it might have been worn by one of the thirteen pirates who
boarded the _Benbow_ frigate.

Footnote 5:

My friend, Albert W. Woods, Esq., Lancaster Herald, informs me that no
registry or entry of these augmented arms is to be found in the
Heralds’ College. The only Benbow arms there are those of the Benbows
of Newport, viz., “Sa. two string-bows endorsed in pale or garnished
gu., between two bundles of arrows in fesse, three in each bundle,
gold, barbed and headed arg., and tied up proper. _Crest_—A harpy
close, or, face proper, wreathed round the head with a chaplet of
roses gu.” Mr. Woods also kindly furnishes me with a pedigree of the
Benbows of Newport from Vincent’s “Collection for the County of
Salop,” which nowhere shows connection with the family of the admiral,
but in it I find a “Thomas Benbow, ætatis 20, 1623.” May not this have
been (though no uncle of the admiral) the Colonel Thomas Benbow of the
Civil War, who, as nothing proves that he was shot after the Battle of
Worcester, may have lived to be the old cavalier whom Charles II.
discovered in poverty in the Tower?

Footnote 6:

The following is the exact list of Benbow’s naval force:—

The Breda, Admiral Benbow and Captain Fogg 70 guns.
The Defiance, Captain Richard Kirby 64 „
The Greenwich, Captain Cooper Wade 54 „
The Ruby, Captain George Walton 48 „
The Pendennis, Captain Thomas Hudson 48 „
The Windsor, Captain John Constable 48 „
The Falmouth, Captain Samuel Vincent 48 „

Footnote 7:

Like most of the admiral’s domestic history, this destruction of his
tomb is doubtful; unless, indeed, his body was afterwards removed
within the church; for a recent correspondent of that useful and able
periodical, “Notes and Queries,” gives the following epitaph of
Admiral Benbow, from an article in the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” on
Monumental Inscriptions in the West Indies:—

“Here lyeth interred the body of JOHN BENBOW, Esq., Admiral of the
White. A true pattern of English courage. Who lost his life in defence
of his Queen and Country, November ye 4th, 1702, in the 62nd year of
his age, by a wound in his leg received in an engagement with Monsr.
Du Casse. Being much lamented.”

[A slab on the pavement.]

The correspondent of “Notes and Queries” goes on to state that “the
admiral lies interred on the right as you approach the altar, and
within the railing, of the parish church of Kingston, Jamaica.”

Footnote 8:

There was no evidence to show that to be so. Kidd was, in fact, taken
when landing from a sloop at Boston.

Footnote 9:

The 19 George III., _v._ 17, sec. 3, amended very properly the above
article by adding to the end of it “or such other punishment as the
offence may deserve.”

Footnote 10:

This lady, the only daughter to survive him, of George, first Viscount
Torrington, was Sarah, wife of John Osborn, Esq., and mother of Sir
Danvers Osborn, third Baronet of Chicksands Priory, Bedfordshire, the
direct ancestor of the present Sir George Robert Osborn, Bart.

Footnote 11:

The prisoner interrupted and said, “I do not look for it, my lord.”

Footnote 12:

When his lordship mentioned the word “painful,” the prisoner said
“joyful.”

Footnote 13:

Dr. Dodd.

Footnote 14:

Queen Anne had stood for this peer, in person, as his godmother, and
hence his second Christian name of Anne.

Footnote 15:

It should be here in fairness mentioned, that Mr. Yonge somewhat errs
as to the Duke of Chartres, who, bad as he was in other respects, (he
was the citizen Egalité of the Revolution), had not the character of a
coward: he, at any rate, behaved with marked courage on this occasion.

Footnote 16:

M. F. Feuillet de Conches, in his recently published correspondence of
Louis XVI., Marie-Antoinette and the Princess Elizabeth,—a very
interesting work—gives a curious letter on the subject of Keppel’s
engagement from the pen of the Princess Elizabeth, who was Louis
XVI.’s sister, and the admirable lady whose martyrdom was decidedly
the foulest act among the foul acts of the Reign of Terror. The
princess is writing in or near August, 1778, to her devoted friend
Madame de Bombelles, and the letter is as follows:—“Je n’ai que le
temps, mon ange, de vous dire qu’il y a eu une affaire entre les deux
flottes; que le premier choc a été très-vif, qu’ensuite elles se sont
séparées, et que la nôtre s’est avancée pour un second, mais que les
Anglais se sont retirés. On dit que l’on a remarqué que le vaisseau de
l’Amiral Keppel se battait fort bien, mais que tout d’un coup il y a
eu une grande évolution, qu’il a cessé de se défendre et s’est retiré.
Huit ou dix bâtiments l’ont accompagné, ce qui fait croire que
l’amiral est ou très-blessé ou tué. Il y a dix vaisseaux fort
endommagés, et nous, nous n’en avons que deux qui seront en état de
repartir dans huit jours. Le Duc de Chartres revient passer deux à
trois jours ici. M. Du Chaffault est très-dangereusement blessé. Je
m’affermis encore plus dans ce que je vous ai dit la dernière fois.
J’attends votre réponse avec impatience pour me décider sur ce que je
dois faire. Ne dites point la nouvelle de l’Amiral Keppel, parce
qu’elle n’est pas sûre. Je vous embrasse de tout mon cœur.

ELIZABETH MARIE.”

Footnote 17:

Byron, with wonderful poetic accuracy, recounts the actual mutiny:—

“Awake, bold Bligh! the foe is at the gate!
Awake! awake!—alas! it is too late!
Fiercely beside thy cot the mutineer
Stands, and proclaims the reign of rage and fear,
Thy limbs are bound, the bayonet at thy breast;

· · · · ·

Full in thine eyes is waved the glittering blade,
Close to thy throat the pointed bayonet laid;
The levell’d muskets circle round thy breast,
In hands as steel’d to do the deadly rest.
Thou dar’st them to their worst, exclaiming—‘Fire!’
But they who pitied not could yet admire,
Some lurking remnant of their former awe
Restrained them longer than their broken law;
They would not dip their souls at once in blood,
But left thee to the mercies of the flood.
‘Hoist out the boat!’ was now the leader’s cry;
And who dare answer ‘No!’ to mutiny,
In the first dawning of the drunken hour,
The Saturnalia of unhoped-for power?
The boat is lower’d with all the haste of hate,
With its slight plank between thee and thy fate;
Her only cargo such a scant supply
As promises the death their hands deny;
And just enough of water and of bread,
To keep, some days, the dying from the dead:
Some cordage, canvas, sails, and lines, and twine,
But treasures all to hermits of the brine,
Were added after, to the earnest prayer
Of those who saw no hope save sea and air;
And last, that trembling vassal of the Pole—
The feeling compass—Navigation’s soul.”

Footnote 18:

The ordinary pound then, as now, consisted of sixteen ounces, but a
sailor’s pound was fixed at fourteen.

Footnote 19:

A melancholy circumstance occurred with regard to one witness coming
to speak to Wall’s character—Major Winter, R.A. The major, who arrived
for the purpose from Woolwich, on getting out of the stage coach,
dropped down and instantly expired.

Footnote 20:

Mr. Timbs, F.S.A., in his interesting work, “A Century of Anecdote”
thus refers to Colonel Despard:—“This gallant but unfortunate officer
appears to have fallen into a sea of troubles through his devoted
loyalty. In the course of his service he was the companion and friend
of Lord Nelson, during his co-operation with whom, at the Siege of
Honduras in his zeal for the public cause, he advanced large sums of
money from his own resources, for the promotion of the operation of
the war. For this, as well as for his gallantry and ability, he was
thanked by Parliament, but _not repaid_. On his arrival in England, he
pressed his claims for repayment upon the Ministry; and irritated by
the delays and difficulties thrown in his way by officials, he became
enraged beyond control. He appealed to the House of Commons, but in
vain. He then fell into pecuniary difficulties, grew excited to
desperation, wrote violent letters to ministers, and having joined the
London Corresponding Society, was taken up under the Act for
suspending the writ of Habeas Corpus, and confined to Coldbath Fields
Prison. There the eminent Lord Cloncurry (then the Hon. Valentine
Browne Lawless, who himself was imprisoned in a similar way on
suspicion in the Tower in 1798) found Despard, who had served many
years in tropical climates, imprisoned in a stone cell, six feet by
eight feet furnished with a truckle-bed and a small table; there was
no chair, fire-place, or window, light being only admitted through a
barred but unglazed aperture over the door opening into a paved yard,
at the time covered with snow. Despard was confined, we believe, in
the winter of 1797, and during his incarceration he had grown worn and
wan, and of unsound mind. In talking over the condition of Ireland
with Mr. Lawless, the colonel said, ‘he had not seen his country for
thirty years, he had never ceased thinking of it and of its
misfortunes, and the main object of his seeing Mr. Lawless was to
disclose his discovery of an infallible remedy for the latter—viz., a
voluntary separation of the sexes, so as to leave no future generation
obnoxious to oppression.’ This plan of cure would, he said, defy the
machination of the enemies of Ireland to interrupt its complete
success.

“In a few years after this conversation, this poor madman, at the
Oakley Arms public-house, in Lambeth, was apprehended.”

In the “Life and Times of Lord Cloncurry,” by Mr. W. J. Fitzpatrick, I
find the following additional particulars:—“Some months after the Hon.
Valentine Lawless’s visit to Despard, during the debates in the House
of Commons on the propriety of continuing the suspension of Habeas
Corpus, Mr. Courtney read a letter aloud from Mrs. Catherine Despard.

“‘I think it necessary to state,’ she writes, ‘that he was confined
near seven months in a dark cell without fire or candle, chair, table,
knife, fork, a glazed window, or even a book. I made several
applications in person to Mr. Wickham, and by letter to the Duke of
Portland, all to no purpose. The 20th of last month he was removed
into a room with a fire, but not until his feet were ulcerated by the
frost. For the truth of this statement I appeal to the Hon. Mr.
Lawless and John Reeves, Esq., who visited him in prison, and at whose
intercession he was removed. The jailor will bear witness that he
never made any complaint of his treatment, however severe.’

“The sympathies of Valentine Lawless were, as usual, awakened. He
expressed the greatest commiseration for Despard’s sufferings, and
resolved to provide for his wife and family at Lyons (his family seat,
in the County of Kildare), whenever circumstances suggested the
propriety of doing so, and certain other circumstances permitted it.
We trust it is not unpardonably anticipating to observe that Lawless
(who had succeeded as second Lord Cloncurry in 1799) did afford the
widowed Mrs. Despard a comfortable asylum within the bosom of his own
family at Lyons.

Footnote 21:

The French and Spanish fleet (commanded by Villeneuve and Gravina)
consisted of one of 90 guns, two of 84, four of 80, eleven of 74, and
two of 64. The English, of three of 98 guns, two of 84, eight of 74,
and two of 64.

Footnote 22:

This was Mr. Gaselee, an eminent advocate and lawyer, who became
eventually Sir Stephen Gaselee, and a Judge of the Court of Common
Pleas. He was father of the present Serjeant Gaselee, M.P. for
Portsmouth. Mr. Gaselee was virtually counsel for Sir Robert Calder,
but no counsel to speak for the accused are openly allowed at a court
martial.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. ● Enclosed blackletter font in =equals=. ● The caret (^) serves as a superscript indicator, applicable to individual characters (like 2^d) and even entire phrases (like 1^{st}).