De Berenger stripped himself at Lord Cochrane's. He pulled off his scarlet uniform there, and if the circumstance of its not being green did not excite Lord Cochrane's suspicion, what did he think of the star and medal? It became him, on discovering these, as an officer and a gentleman, to communicate his suspicions of these circumstances. Did he not ask De Berenger where he had been in this masquerade dress ? It was for the jury to say whether Lord Cochrane did not know where he had been. This was not the dress of a sharpshooter, but of a mountebank. He came before Lord Cochrane fully blazoned in the costume of his crime.
Those who read the press reports were in many cases uneasy over Ellenborough's summing-up. Then, a month later, appeared the report of the trial, in which he spoke in far more reasonable and judicious terms. It was this report which was unhesitatingly accepted by the Admiralty and the ministry, the Attorney-General praising it in the Commons as an account which would "do away the effect of those imperfect statements which misled the public mind".56
So far as the special jurors were concerned, the effect of Ellenborough's summing-up was never in doubt. It was just after 8.30 p.m. when they brought in a verdict of guilty on Cochrane and all other defendants. In the case of lower criminal courts sentence would have been pronounced at once, but in King's Bench a separate sitting was required for that. In the days before this happened, Cochrane-Johnstone absconded from justice, Butt set to work on some spirited libels on EUenborough, and Cochrane now began to repair some of the damage resulting from his own casualness. On 5 July, he faced the motion for his expulsion from the House of Commons. He attacked Ellenborough in language so bitter that Hansard's printers filled the report with asterisks, fearing prosecution for libel. Denouncing the Lord Chief Justice, however, Cochrane swore, "I solemnly assure this House, my constituents, and my country, that I would rather stand in my own name in the pillory every day of my life, under such a sentence, than I would sit upon the bench in his name, and with his real character for one single hour." The speech was much criticised for such improprieties, but the historian Sir Archibald Alison, having heard Cochrane on this occasion, "never entertained a doubt of his innocence".57
One of the minor conspirators, M'Rae, informed the Commons that Cochrane had no part whatever in the fraud. M'Rae had told the Stock Exchange investigators this before the trial. Their answer was to indict him as well. Since defendants could not give evidence in a trial, they thereby silenced him in the matter. The Commons chose to ignore this, as they ignored the post-trial affidavits in proof of Cochrane's innocence and the truth about such prosecution witnesses as William Crane. The ministry won the expulsion vote by 140 votes to 44, a result which was surprising only in the size of the minority. Here, as elsewhere, was the evidence that many contemporaries felt strongly that justice had not been done.
The Admiralty lost no time in dismissing Cochrane from the Royal Navy. Most important of all, however, had been his motion in King's Bench, on 14 June before Lord Ellenborough, for a new trial. He publicly admitted his mistake in agreeing to a joint defence with Cochrane-Johnstone and Butt. "Well had it been for me if I had made this distinction sooner." Since the evidence of witnesses not brought forward at the trial might now establish his innocence beyond question, Cochrane applied for a new trial. To his dismay Ellenborough refused this, on the grounds that all defendants must be present before he considered granting a new trial. Since M'Rae and Cochrane-Johnstone had fled abroad, the condition was impossible to fulfil, as Ellenborough could see. On 20 June, Cochrane and the other defendants who had not absconded appeared for sentence. In his own defence, Cochrane offered the first affidavits sworn after the trial. Ellenborough refused them, saying that such evidence was only admissible at trial. By Ellenborough's own rule, however, a new trial was the very thing which Cochrane was denied, through no fault of his own. The snare of the law now held him fast.58
The court then proceeded to deal with the defendants who had appeared for sentence. All of them, including Cochrane, were sentenced to imprisonment for twelve months. Cochrane and Butt were also fined £1000 and the others £500. Cochrane, Butt, and Berenger were to be put in the pillory opposite the Royal Exchange for an hour. The indignity of the pillory, the culprit with his head and hands through its holes, helpless before the derision and missiles of the mob, might seem something of an anachronism in the early nineteenth century, but it had survived none the less.
Ellenborough felt that the pillory could well be the means of reducing the reputation of the hero of the Basque Roads, the Gamo, and Fort Trinidad to more agreeable proportions. Napoleon in exile on Elba thought otherwise: "Such a man should not be made to suffer so degrading a punishment' The government too had its doubts. Without wishing to save Cochrane humiliation, they knew that public feeling over the trial was increasingly sympathetic to him. There might well be a riot outside the Royal Exchange, a possibility made more likely by Burdett's announcement that if Cochrane were put in the pillory he, and no doubt others, would stand beside him. It was announced that the sentence of the pillory on the three offenders was to be remitted.59
What remained by way of disgrace was quite sufficient. Sir Thomas Byam Martin and other senior officers dined with the Prince Regent at the old Government House on the Parade at Portsmouth soon after the trial. When the meal was over and the officers were still seated around him, the Prince began to express "his indignation at the conduct of Lord Cochrane, and went on to state in strong and impressive terms, his determination to order his degradation". The Prince promised to give his personal command for Cochrane's name to be struck out of the list of the navy.
"I will never permit a service, hitherto of unblemished honour, to be disgraced by the continuance of Lord Cochrane as a member of it," said the Regent hotly. "I shall also strip him of the Order of the Bath."60
This had been anticipated by Cochrane's friends, including Mary Russell Mitford and her father. Miss Mitford's correspondence on the topic also revealed the extent of Cochrane's private grief in the days following the trial.
Did papa tell you that he had seen poor, poor Lord Cochrane, that victim to his uncle's villainy, almost every day ? He wept like a child to papa. And they say that the last dreadful degradation, the hacking off the spurs of knighthood, is actually meant to be put in force upon him.61
From the King's Bench prison, where he was now confined, Cochrane learnt that the Prince's instructions had been carried out, and that his honours had been stripped from him. He was not present to witness the bizarre midnight ritual of his own dishonouring. His banner, as Knight Commander of the Bath, was taken down from its place in King Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster. Banner and insignia were ceremonially kicked out of the chapel and down the steps. A nameless man stood proxy for him while the spurs of knighthood were hacked from the boot-heels with a butcher's cleaver. For years he had challenged, insulted, and attempted to undermine the established order. Now that order would break him.62
Two sources of strength remained to him. Kitty, at eighteen years old, was already prepared to fight his battles to the end. Secondly, there were his constituents. After his Commons expulsion, a writ was moved for a by-election at Westminster. On n July 1814, a mass meeting of 5000 constituents resolved unanimously that Cochrane was innocent of fraud and was a fit and proper person to represent them. Indeed, the support for him was evident beyond the Radicals themselves. When Sheridan was urged to grasp the opportunity of election, his reply was uncompromising. He would fight any other opponent but, 'I absolutely decline to put in Nomination in opposition to Lord Cochrane." At the hustings, on 16 July 1814, Cochrane was proposed and elected by a roar of acclamation.63
Even those who were not necessarily convinced of his innocence began to have doubts as to the wisdom of a government treating Cochrane with quite such vindictive relish. Lord Ebrington was one of those who deplored the proposal to put him in the pillory. "If I am guilty," Cochrane replied, "I richly merit the whole of the sentence which has been passed upo
n me. If innocent, one penalty cannot be inflicted with more justice than another,"64
Cochrane was accommodated in two rooms of the King's Bench State House, as that part of the prison was known. If this sounds like a generous allowance, it has to be remembered that he was obliged to pay for his board and lodging in gaol. Wardens of such prisons had customarily bought their jobs as an investment, recouping the outlay with interest by charging the prisoners for rooms, food, and in some cases water. In 1729 the Warden of the Fleet and the Keeper of the Marshalsea were tried for murdering their prisoners when the inmates could not afford to pay their demands.65
The King's Bench had improved since then but a man was still expected to pay his way. It was intimated to Cochrane that if he would put up the money, and petition humbly, he might even be allowed to walk for half a mile round the buildings. He refused to ask for anything. Instead, he spent his time perfecting his new oil-lamp, which soon began to replace the cruder type used for lighting the Westminster streets, but was replaced itself by gas before it could make him much money. He began a pamphlet war against Ellenborough and those who had convicted him, while outside the prison his supporters continued to show their feelings for him. Addresses of sympathy and belief in his innocence reached him from Westminster, Culross and Paisley.
No less remarkable was the reaction of the Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince Regent and his estranged wife, the Princess Caroline. The day before Cochrane's re-election for Westminster, the young Princess escaped from her father's custody and sought refuge in her mother's house in Connaught Place. The Regent's brothers and the law officers of the crown followed her and tried to persuade her to return. Before long, there were two mobs in the street outside, one shouting support for Charlotte and the other for Cochrane in the Westminster election. It was the Duke of Sussex who showed the young Princess the scene and warned her of the public unrest which threatened. There would be "a popular outbreak, which it was to be feared would end in bloodshed, and perhaps in the destruction of Carlton House itself". The Princess relented tearfully, observing of Cochrane and the ministers, "Poor Lord Cochrane! I heard that he had been very ill used by them. Should it ever be in my power, I will undo the wrong." Had the Princess lived, it would certainly have been in her power, since she would have succeeded her father and become Queen in her own right in 1830.66
For Cochrane himself, there appeared no course but to endure imprisonment. Yet as time went by, he became convinced that his detention in the King's Bench was not only unjust, it was illegal. He was a Member of Parliament and, as such, not amenable to imprisonment for the offence of which he had been convicted. Technically he was wrong. He had been expelled from parliament after his conviction. The fact that he had been re-elected subsequently did not invalidate the sentence on him. As the months of captivity passed, however, he planned his escape from prison and by 6 March 1815 he had made everything ready for it.
Because the rooms in which he was confined were so high, there were no bars at the windows. There hardly seemed any necessity, since even if a man could negotiate the sheer drop, he would still be within the prison walls. Indeed, the high outer wall, topped with spikes, rose up opposite the windows of the rooms. It stood higher than the windows but not more than a dozen feet away. Cochrane's servant had managed to smuggle him in some small lengths of rope, hardly thicker than stout cord, and with this he proposed to make his escape.
He waited until after midnight and until he judged that the watchman would be on his rounds in one of the most distant parts of the prison. Then he coiled the rope and climbed out of the window, scaling upward to the roof of the State House building. From there he could look down on to the top of the outer wall in the darkness. To one who was so accustomed to ropes and climbing, it was not too difficult, even by night, to throw a running noose over the spikes which topped the outer wall. Far more dangerous was the journey, hand over hand, hanging from the thin rope between the State House roof and the wall, with the dark and lethal drop below him. But the rope held, Cochrane reached the outer wall and spent an uncomfortable moment or two perched on the iron spikes while he paid out another length of rope down the outside of the wall and made it fast at the top. He began his descent, but he was still 20 feet above the ground when the thin rope snapped in his hands and he fell heavily on his back, knocking himself unconscious. He lay there, first unconscious and then stunned, for a considerable time. Though there were no bones broken, he was badly bruised and sprained, managing only to crawl to the house of a former servant of the family before daybreak.67
From London, he made his way to Holly Hill, a house he had taken in Hampshire, and wrote to the Speaker of the Commons that he proposed shortly to exercise his right as a member to assume his place on the opposition benches. Meanwhile a rash of official posters began to appear all over Westminster,
Escaped from the King's Bench Prison, on Monday the 6th day of March, instant, Lord Cochrane. He is about five feet eleven inches in height, thin and narrow chested, with sandy hair and full eyes, red whiskers and eyebrows. Whoever will apprehend and secure Lord Cochrane in any of His Majesty's gaols in the kingdom shall have a reward of three hundred guineas from William Jones, Marshal of the King's Bench.68
Like most literary productions of its kind, the "wanted" notice was curiously inaccurate. Cochrane was six feet two inches tall and impressively broad. He was reported to have been sighted in London, Hastings, Jersey, and France. He was also said to have gone mad and hidden himself somewhere in the prison. In fact, he appeared in the House of Commons on 21 March, dressed in his usual grey pantaloons and frogged greatcoat, and duly took his place on the benches.
He demanded the right to speak, but was told that he could not do so until he had taken the oath as a new member, and that he could not take the oath until the writ for the election had been fetched from the Crown Office in Chancery Lane.
Shortly before four o'clock in the afternoon, it was not the writ but a Bow Street runner and tipstaves who entered the House. The runner tapped Cochrane on the shoulder and invited him to return to the King's Bench prison. Cochrane turned on him angrily, demanding by what right he presumed to arrest a member of the Commons in the palace of Westminster itself.
"My Lord," said the runner, "my authority is the public proclamation of the Marshal of the King's Bench Prison, offering a reward for your apprehension."
"I neither acknowledge, nor will yield to, any such authority," Cochrane announced grandly. "I am here to resume my seat as one of the representatives of the City of Westminster, and any who dares to touch me will do so at their peril."
Two of the tipstaves seized his arm but, evidently using his height and strength, Cochrane shook them off and repeated his warning. When the runner reiterated that he had "better go quietly", Cochrane assured him he had no intention of going at all. The other members of the House were then treated to the unusual sight of a spirited brawl as tipstaves and constables fell upon Cochrane and at length hoisted him, struggling, on to their shoulders to carry him horizontally from the House as though they had been pall-bearers. The Bow Street runner was convinced that Cochrane might have a gun hidden in his clothing, so he was first taken to a committee room and searched. He had no gun, but there was another "weapon" in his pocket in the form of a box of snuff. When asked why he carried it, Cochrane said sourly, "If I had thought of that before, you should have had it in your eyes!"
Accordingly he was credited by the ministry with carrying substances to blind and disfigure those who crossed his path, the snuff soon being reported as a bottle of vitriol.69
For the next three weeks, Cochrane was confined in the so-called Strong Room of the King's Bench, a windowless and unfurnished cell of the sort which had been the death of one of the victims of the 1729 murder trials. It was subterranean and the dampness of its bare walls was in no way palliated by either heating or ventilation. After twenty-six days of confinement he was examined by a doctor who reported that Cochrane was experie
ncing severe chest pains. "His pulse is low, his hands cold, and he has many symptoms of a person about to have typhus or putrid fever. These symptoms are, in my opinion, produced by the stagnant air of the Strong Room."70
Cochrane was removed from the Strong Room, though still closely guarded. Apart from other considerations, he was hardly in any condition to attempt another escape so that the practical advantage of keeping him in the windowless cell was minimal. On 20 June 1815, as the first news of Waterloo and of England's final deliverance from Napoleon spread through London, the term of imprisonment expired. Cochrane would be freed on payment of his fine of £1000. As a token of his innocence he at first refused to pay. But after a fortnight's defiance, the advice of his friends prevailed and he handed his note for the amount to the Marshal of the King's Bench. The note, which still remains in the possession of the Bank of England, bore a remarkable endorsement.
My health having suffered by long and close confinement, and my oppressors being resolved to deprive me of property or life, I submit to robbery to protect myself from murder, in the hope that I shall live to bring the delinquents to justice.71
As a matter of fact, the authorities had not finished with him. He was in due course tried at Surrey Assizes, at Guildford, for escaping from prison in March 1815. The trial was considerably delayed and took place on 17 August 1816. Accompanied by Burdett and other Westminster Radicals, Cochrane drove into Guildford in a post-chaise at 8 a.m. He found the court crowded with spectators of every class. So far as the law was concerned, the defence, which he presented himself, was no defence. He used the occasion to denounce the "crimes" of the Marshal of the King's Bench and accused him of doing nothing whatever to earn the £3590 a year which the state paid him. In his address to the jury, Cochrane swore, "The Marshal himself has repeatedly been accessory to more glaring violations of the sentence of the Court than that for which he now prosecutes me." The Marshal had taken bribes from prisoners for allowing them out of the gaol, while ill-treating those who would not acquiesce. But such a man, "instead of being punished for his violence and brutality, imprudently calls upon a Jury of his country to heap fresh oppressions on the head of his persecuted victim". It was spirited stuff, though hardly relevant to the charge. The jury returned the inevitable verdict, though with a qualification. "We take the liberty of saying, the punishment he has already received is quite adequate to the offence of which he was guilty." There was applause in the court at this but the jurors received no thanks from Cochrane. He rose angrily in his place and reiterated his now familiar words: "I want justice, not mercy!"
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