“The crime works amazement in all English hearts,” Sir Francis Winnington declared in opening his indictment; and long before the hour appointed the streets about the Old Bailey, what with the rabble, the barrows of food, the performances of tumblers and such like itinerant mountebanks, had the look of a country fair, whilst the little Sessions House itself was as gay with fine clothes as a bed of flowers. From a bench in the part reserved by the City Lands, Anthony Craston looked down upon the well of the Court where Philip Königsmark sat at a table, a lonely figure amongst attorneys and interpreters. Anthony saw the Duke of Monmouth, jewelled and beribboned, swing in with Thynne’s kinsmen all in deepest black behind him, all set to intimidate Judges and jury into a verdict of guilty. The Counsel for the Crown took their seats and spread out their papers on the desk in front of them; and a sudden hush quieted the buzzing voices, as one by one the prisoners filed up the staircase from the cells into the dock, first of all Vratz the giant, debonair, unabashed, conscious of duty worthily done for the family which had befriended him, then the Polander, a brutish fellow with the face of a pig, next Lieutenant Stern, nervous, a trifle agitated, insignificant, and last, after a small interval, he for whom all eyes looked, Karl John, Count Königsmark — and the hush was broken up by little stifled cries of disappointment. Anthony Craston heard himself quoting:
“Is this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?”
Very probably all legendary heroes would lose a good deal of their gilt if we came face to face with them. Karl John Königsmark was twenty-four years old and he had behind him eight crowded years of triumphant gallantry in love and war. But he didn’t look his history. He had one natural ornament which was the envy probably of every woman in that Sessions House — a head of thick golden hair which swung down in heavy curls to his waist and should have turned all the black perukes to white in sheer despair. But for the rest he was short, too broad for his stature and too sharp in the nose. He had indeed nothing of the beauty or the elegance of his young brother; but he made up for his shortcomings by an assurance which the young brother could never have made his own in a hundred years. His eyes swept the benches with an easy composure. The glittering Monmouth held them no longer than a haberdasher might have done and the three fellow-prisoners who so incongruously rubbed shoulders with him in the dock caused him neither discomfort nor humiliation. He was simply unaware of them. There occurred to Anthony Craston’s mind a question he had asked and an answer he had received from Philip in other days before this trouble had fallen like a dark shadow between them.
“He is a great lover of women?” Anthony had asked curiously and with a spark of envy.
Philip had shrugged his shoulders.
“Between campaigns,” he had answered; and looking at Karl John now, watchful, yet master of every nerve and every expression, he began to understand something of that phrase. He could see Philip torn and tormented to madness by some luckless passion, reproaching himself one moment for his jealousy and his mistress the next for her levity, living on a sharp edge between Paradise and Hell, his tight-strung nerves for a few seconds a divine harp, for many hours the martyred victims of a rack. But for Karl John affairs of the heart would be amorous interludes between two battles, and out of both he would swing triumphantly without a doubt that in either he could have failed.
“They’re the world’s opposites!” Anthony cried to himself as his eyes went from the man in the dock to the boy at the table. But he was to take note of one curious resemblance between them before the trial was through. The officer who arrested Karl John at Gravesend bore witness that his prisoner, when told that Boroski had confessed to the crime, was mightily altered in his countenance and bit his clothes with his teeth. Anthony could not but remember the Sunday evening when Philip, back betimes from His Grace of Richmond’s party, had lain stretched out in his modish dress before the common-room fire and had gnawed his lace handkerchief into shreds. But the trial was still to come; and Anthony was still obsessed by the utter unlikeness of the brothers when the usher struck three blows with his staff and spectators and lawyers and interpreters rose in one movement of respect to their feet.
The three great Judges of the land, formidable in their scarlet gowns, marched in behind the sheriffs and took their seats at the three tribunals; Lord Chief Justice Pemberton of the King’s Bench in the centre, Sir Francis North, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas upon his right, Sir William Montagu, Chief Baron of the Exchequer upon his left.
“Charles Boroski, hold up thy hand,” cried the Clerk of the Court and the famous trial had begun.
But there were still preliminaries. The jury was to be half English, half foreign, and interpreters must be sworn in. Königsmark, though he knew both English and French in the current idiom, was to use his own natural language of High Dutch; Vratz, who had some little knowledge of English but was not ready to admit it, was to speak in German; and as the Polander, the Court must do the best it could for him.
“My Lord,” said Sir Nathaniel Johnson, the chief interpreter, “he is a very dull kind of man. He knows not how to answer, nor what to say, nor won’t say anything: that is the truth of it.”
Once the interpreters were chosen, Königsmark put in a special plea.
“He desires that he may be tried distinctly from the others,” Sir Nathaniel explained. “He desires to recollect himself and he does not understand the law, my Lord, nor has had time to have any Counsel to inform him.”
To Anthony, in his ignorance, the plea sounded not unreasonable nor irregular and he was unprepared for the severity with which the Judges rejected it. He had as his neighbour in the sort of pew he occupied, an elderly man of the middle class with a cheery red face. This man leaned forward suddenly, and followed the debate as though life and death hung suspended upon the decision. Königsmark insisted, the Judges one after the other refused, and the elderly neighbour’s eyes darted brightly from face to face whilst a smile of intense enjoyment broadened his face.
“Look you,” said Sir Francis North of the Common Pleas, to Sir Nathaniel, “pray will you tell him, he is charged with matter of fact which none can instruct him in but himself. Counsel can do him no good in such a case as this. He knows what he is accused of and has known it a good while and has had time to recollect himself.”
And Chief Justice Pemberton was even testier than his colleague.
“Here is but one indictment against the principals and himself,” he cried, glaring at the interpreter, “and we cannot try this by piecemeals.”
“They are for hanging the Count out of hand,” thought Anthony, but the man at his side let out a great chuckle of delight and thumped the floor with his stick, noisily enough to turn all eyes upon him.
Anthony himself under his breath rebuked his neighbour indignantly.
“You come here, sir, as to a theatre, though men’s lives are on the issue.”
The man shook his head.
“No, young gentleman,” he replied. “Were it a theatre, I shouldn’t come at all. At the theatre there’s a Lady Townley, a girl from the country who loves her husband, but thinks it old- fashioned to confess it, and a Sir Brilliant Fashion who tries to seduce her, and a Mr Manly who, fine fellow, sets all right in the end, a Mr Cutpurse a highway man and you have only to look at the names to read the whole tedious intrigue before the curtain goes up. But, look you, here are surprises, here’s nature at its best and worst, and here are passages of comedy, like that now ended, which our playwrights, God mend ’em, would give a year of their dull lives to compass.”
“What?” replied Anthony hotly. “You call this prisoner’s prayer for a separate trial a piece of comedy?”
“No, young gentleman, be not so quick. I call their Lordships’ ‘hoity-toity’ rejection of it the comedy,” and very good- humouredly he explained the true meaning of the scene.
“’Tis known that His Majesty wants Mr Towhead there to go free. ’Tis
known too that yon pig-faced fellow and the Lieutenant have confessed that Towhead set ’em on to the murder. Now so long as they’re all tried together, nothing that any of ’em confess can be used against any other. But let one of ’em be tried afterwards, and all can be used. So Mr Towhead was knotting the rope about his neck so tight that not even his gracious Majesty could have stopped him from kicking in the air. But His Majesty’s Judges know the law better than Towhead, and so with a pretty show of anger at his insistence, they are cheating the executioner. Watch now how tenderly they rig a jury for him. Oh, there are no players on the stage who can tread a measure with ’em.”
Anthony was horrified at such familiar irreverent talk. Those red-robed portentous figures montebanks of a special subtlety? Never would he believe it. But he watched, nevertheless, and could not but note how strictly was any challenge by the Crown examined and how widely Königsmark was allowed to range. Amongst the English he would not have a certain knight on no better grounds than that he only desired “indifferent persons.” Another, he had heard, was a friend of Mr Thynne’s; and the names of those whom he accepted were written on a short paper which he held in his hand. Amongst the foreigners there must be no Danes, since his father fought against the Danes and burned their towns; and no papists since he and his father were Protestants; and no Walloons because they had always served against the Swedes; and in all these details he was allowed his way.
“He is a stranger,” said the Lord Chief Justice with a shrug of the shoulders as if here indeed were much ado about very little. “Satisfy him in what we can.”
Königsmark in the end got pretty much the jury which he wanted and at his request a chair was set for him.
Young Craston turned to his neighbour with a greater respect than he had shown before.
“You have no doubt followed the law, sir,” he said in an undertone.
“No, young gentleman,” the elderly merchant answered. “I have spent the good years of my life between a counting-house and a warehouse. Invoices, Bills of Lading, Bills of Exchange on the one hand, and bales of silk and spices and strange ivories and delicate figures of translucent jade on the other.” The old fellow’s face lighted up as he spoke and his fingers caressed old jewels long since bartered, “glimpses of the East and sweet faded odours from far countries, but never a step from a ship onto a beach, never the drench of the sun in one’s bones, and when I was free I was too old for such adventures.”
The old boy drooped, looking back upon the lost colours of his life.
“But I strayed into the Sessions House one idle hour — I have a right to a seat in the City Lands,” he continued “and I found here my anodyne. A violent and pungent life, outlandish men, swift passions, sordid villainies and loyalties to the death all in a jumble and worked out in this little Court into the pattern of the law. But whisht, my boy! Here are the depositions of the prisoners. Watch now how the prosecution will strive to get all in and the Judges will keep all that might hang Mr Towhead out.”
And indeed it was prettier than any play to see how Sir John Reresby or Mr Bridgeman the Magistrates, would strive to read the confessions and one or other of the Judges would stop him.
“I will read the examination,” said Mr Bridgeman.
“As to that, let it alone,” said the Lord Chief Justice. “… look upon it to refresh your memory and then tell us.”
“What the Polander confessed, first,” said Mr Bridgeman.
“Speak only as to himself, for it is evidence only against himself,” Sir Francis Montagu reminded him.
“My Lord, his confession is entire.”
“But we must direct what is just and fitting,” said the Lord Chief Justice; and all that was allowed to reach the jury amounted to no more than that Boroski fired the musquetoon through the carriage window, that Stern loaded it, and that Vratz bought it.
Vratz, indeed, when questioned took the whole blame upon his shoulders. He had heard that Squire Thynne had spoken lightly of his master, Count Königsmark, calling him Hector and sneering at his horsemanship. Vratz had written a letter challenging Thynne to a duel, but having no gentleman of quality to send it by, had sent it by the post. He had received no answer. Determined to have one, he summoned his servant Boroski and a friend, Lieutenant Stern. They stopped Mr Thynne’s coach in Pall Mall, and Boroski misunderstood his orders and fired his musquetoon with its charge of four bullets into the body of Thomas Thynne.
“Now, Captain Vratz,” said his Lordship, “You hear what is said against you by this gentleman.” He referred to the Solicitor-General. “It puts you in such danger as no man can stand in greater.”
But Captain Vratz owed his life and his advancement to the family of Königsmark.
“My Lord,” he said with a simplicity which caught at the hearts of those who listened. “If it be so, so be it! I think God will treat me like a gentleman.”
But all these questions and answers, as the Solicitor-General described them, amounted to no more than the killing of dead men. The only one of the four of whose conviction there could be a doubt was Karl John Königsmark, and at him the Solicitor-General and his Juniors now directed their arrows. They set Mr Hanson in the witness-box and Anthony’s heart sank into his shoes as he remembered the tutor’s agitation on his return from the Privy Council. But Mr Hanson made a better case of it this time. He had admitted before that Königsmark had sent him to the Swedish Minister, Monsieur Lienburg, to discover whether if he meddled with Thomas Thynne Esquire, the laws of England would be contrary to him in any pretensions he might have to Lady Ogle. But he recanted that story now.
“I say there was no direct message from Count Königsmark,” he declared. “I, being obliged to pay my respects to the Swedish Envoy who had treated the young Count Philip and myself very civilly, I spoke with the said Envoy in a familiar discourse.
He was pressed by the Solicitor-General and his Junior, Mr Williams. They did not wish for one moment to entangle him, but surely Count Königsmark had spoken of killing or duelling Mr Thynne.
“As I am before God Almighty I cannot say I heard such expressions,” he swore.
“But in another place,” said the Solicitor-General, looking down at Mr Hanson’s examination, “You made a statement and signed it.”
It was high time for the Lord Chief Justice Pemberton to come to the rescue; which thing he did.
“Speak not what is in the paper,” said he, “but what discourse, as near as you can, you had with Count Königsmark.”
But Mr Hanson was not going to commit himself. He had the most ingenious explanation.
“Count Königsmark spoke to me in the English language,” he said. “I spoke to the Swedish Agent in French; and when I was before the King and Council I spoke in English. Therefore,” said he, “if I should be upon the Gospel, I am sure I cannot tell what was the expression.”
It was the only satisfaction the Solicitor-General could get from Mr Hanson, and he thought very little of it. “You mince your words mightily,” he said at one time and, at the end of the examination: “Well, I see you will give no reasonable answer,” and to the jury: “He shifts.”
But the Lord Chief Justice would not accept the statement. “I do not see it,” he said. “Nor do I believe any see he shifts in anything you ask him.”
And the good merchant dug Anthony Craston in the ribs with his elbow.
“The old fox!”
The advantage swung to this side and the other. The crowded little Court grew hot; and now and then a turbulent murmur rose from Monmouth and his friends when an answer by Königsmark was translated with a closer concern for his profit than the words warranted. But Königsmark was making a case for himself which it was easy no doubt to disbelieve, but impossible to disprove. Why did he lie hidden in poor lodgings in London? He had contracted a malady of the skin when he was fighting for England, “thinking to do the King and nation service.” He could not drink wine nor keep company. He had tried the Strasburg doctors and he h
ad no good of them. Dr. Harder bore him out in every particular. Königsmark must keep to his room and take physic. Certainly, Königsmark had brought Vratz into England with him. He had been dismounted in a sortie from Tangier. He was surrounded by the Moors. In another minute he would have been dead or a prisoner. But Vratz, whom he had not seen for years, suddenly appeared at his side and brought him out.
Williams, the Solicitor-General’s Junior, in an unhappy moment made a joke of Königsmark’s malady.
“And, of course, Vratz gave you physic,” he said to Königsmark, and the sneer was welcomed with a burst of laughter and applause from Monmouth’s contingent.
“No!” the Chief Justice interposed sharply. “The doctor gave it.”
The Solicitor-General, in his turn, was unwise.
“Mr Williams only asks a merry question,” he said with a smile.
But the Chief Justice was impatient of such levity.
“We are now upon the life and death of a man,” he said severely. “Pray let us have those questions asked which are serious, not such light things as are permitted in ordinary cases.”
And the rebuke as followed by a little stir of approval.
Königsmark was questioned about his flight in disguise. He, an innocent and a sick man who had been keeping his room, had risen early in the morning after the murder, twisted up his fair hair about his head like a woman, covered it with a black peruke, despatched his luggage to Windsor and, changing his clothes in the house of a fellow-countryman at Rotherhithe, had zig-zagged across the Thames in a sculling-boat disguised as a riverside waterman. How did such conduct consort with his plea of innocence?
Königsmark had his answer pat. There was a great hubbub over this murder. Passions were aroused. The crowd was dangerous. He was a foreigner and he was warned that the common people do commonly fall upon strangers. He would have been torn to pieces, without a chance of re-establishing his good name by a fair trial according to the English laws. In all that he said Königsmark was adroit and of an admirable good temper; so that opinion wavered, and like those councils of the Gods which Homer celebrates, was now for Argos and now for Troy.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 703