THE first King’s Bench Prison stood on the east side of the High Street Borough, Southwark, near the Marshalsea and dated from 1377, the time of Richard II. It is memorable as the prison to which Chief Justice Gascoigne committed Prince Hal, the heir apparent of the English throne, and later King Henry V, the hero of Agincourt. The royal offender, Prince Hal, had been guilty of contempt of court in taking one of his suite from the custody of the court and offering violence to the judge on his bench. The story is held by some to be apocryphal, but the Prince’s prison chamber was still shown in the time of Oldys,[5] the historian. The prison was moved to the southwest corner of Blackman’s Street and the entrance of the Borough Road, and was standing there when burned down by the Lord George Gordon rioters in 1780, but was rebuilt on the lines described by Mr. Allen in his history of Surrey, and survived until a quite recent date. According to the account there given, it occupied an extensive area of ground and consisted of one large pile of buildings about 120 yards long. The south or principal front had a pediment under which was the chapel. There were four pumps of spring and river water in the interior. It contained 224 rooms or apartments, eight of which being much larger than the others were called staterooms. A coffee-house and two public houses were to be found within the walls, with shops and stalls for the sale of meat, vegetables and necessaries like any public market. “The number of people walking about,” says Allen, “or engaged in various amusements are little calculated to impress the stranger with an idea of distress or even of confinement.” The walls surrounding the prison were thirty feet high and were crowned with a chevaux de frise to prevent escape. The “Rules” were extensive and included all St. George’s Fields, one side of Blackman Street, and part of the Borough High Street, enclosing altogether an area of three miles in circumference. These “Rules” were purchasable by prisoners at various rates; when the debt was considerable the price was eight guineas for the first hundred, and half that sum for every hundred in addition. Day rates cost 4s 2d for the first day and 3s 10d for the days following. The exact limits of the Rules were never strictly defined and Lord Ellenborough, when Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, being asked to extend them, said he saw no necessity, as to his certain knowledge they already included the East Indies, implying that fugitives had fled there. Of course in such a case the marshal was held responsible for the debt of the one who had run away. The practice of permitting prisoners to live beyond the prison originated, it was said, in the days of the Plague.

Among the earliest records of the King’s Bench prison of Southwark was a petition from the prisoners to the Privy Council for its enlargement and the erection of a chapel. It was pleaded that at this time, through over-crowding, there was “much sickness in the house.” In later days under the Commonwealth it was called the “Upper Bench Prison.” Among the early inmates of any note was Dr. Robert Recorde, said to have been physician to King Edward VI and Queen Mary; he was a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, and died in the King’s Bench in 1558, when confined there for debt. John Rushworth, author of the “Historical Collections” of facts, 1618-1648, was a prisoner in the Bench for six years, and the notorious Judge Jeffreys committed Richard Baxter, the non-conformist advocate, to it for eighteen months. An inmate of title who had fallen sadly away from his high estate was Sir William Reresby, the son and heir of Sir John, whose “Memoirs and Travels,” with anecdotes and secret history of the courts of Charles II and James II are full of interest. Sir William was the third baronet, a reckless spendthrift and gamester who wasted large sums at the tables and in cock-fighting. He lost his fine estate of Dennaby at a single throw of the dice and was afterward tried and imprisoned for cheating in 1711. He eventually became a tapster in the King’s Bench.

Chatterton, the youthful poet, who forged the apocryphal poems of Thomas Rowley, the supposititious monk of the fifteenth century, was at one time a prisoner in the King’s Bench, whence he dated a letter, May 14th, 1770, saying that a gentleman had recommended him as the travelling companion for the young Duke of Northumberland, but that alas! he spoke no language but his own. Chatterton’s fraud was one of the most curious crimes in literary history. He was a native of Bristol and an attorney’s clerk, when he pretended to have discovered an ancient manuscript, which he put forward as authentic, but which was soon pronounced a forgery by Mason and Gray and other contemporary poets. Nothing daunted, Chatterton came to London to seek his fortune in literature; he produced great numbers of satirical poems, political essays and critical letters which found their way into print, but without remuneration. When threatened with penury, he committed suicide at his lodgings in Brook St., Holborn. He was undoubtedly a genius and he has been called the greatest prodigy in literature, for he was no more than eighteen when he died and he had already produced some fine, vigorous work.

A good picture of the King’s Bench is given by Smollett about this date (1750) in his “Roderick Random:” “The prison is situated in St. George’s Fields, about a mile from the end of Westminster Bridge, and it appears like a neat little regular town, consisting of one street, surrounded by a very high wall, including an open piece of ground which may be termed a garden, where the prisoners take the air, and amuse themselves with a variety of diversions. Except the entrance, where the turnkeys keep watch and ward, there is nothing in the place that looks like a gaol, or bears the least colour of restraint. The street is crowded with passengers; tradesmen of all kinds here exercise their different professions; hawkers of all sorts are admitted to call and vend their wares as in any open street in London. There are butchers’ stands, chandlers’ shops, a surgery, a tap-house well frequented, and a public kitchen, in which provisions are dressed for all the prisoners gratis, at the expense of the publican. Here the voice of misery never complains; and indeed little else is to be heard but the sounds of mirth and jollity. At the further end of the street, on the right hand, is a little paved court leading to a separate building, consisting of twelve large apartments called ‘State rooms,’ well furnished, and fitted up for the reception of the better sort of Crown prisoners; and on the other side of the street, facing a separate piece of ground, is the Common Side, a range of rooms occupied by prisoners of the lowest order, who share the profits of the begging-box, and are maintained by this practice and some established funds of charity. We ought also to observe that the gaol is provided with a neat chapel, in which a clergyman in consideration of a certain salary, performs divine service every Sunday.”

Artists shared with men of letters the honours of the King’s Bench. One whose work is perhaps more highly appreciated to-day than in his own time was George Morland, the painter, who was born in London on the 26th June, 1763, and was the son of Henry Robert Morland and grandson of George Henry Morland. He is said by Cunningham to have been lineally descended from Sir Samuel Morland, while other biographers go so far as to assert that he had only to claim the baronetcy in order to get it. He began to draw at three years old and at the age of ten (1773) his name appears as an honorary exhibitor at the Royal Academy. Although the publishers reaped the principal profit from the sale of his works, Morland’s credit and resources enabled him for some years to lead the rollicking life he loved without much pressure of monetary care. At one period he kept eight saddle horses at the White Lion Inn. But as time passed he became crippled with debts and a prey to creditors who gave him no peace. He lived a hunted life and was only able to escape from the bailiffs by his knowledge of London and the assistance of friends and interested picture dealers. He fled from one house to another, residing now in Lambeth, now in East Sheen, now Queen Anne Street, the Minories, Kensington or Hackney. At this last place his strict seclusion aroused a suspicion that he was a forger of bank notes and his premises were searched at the instance of the bank directors, who afterward made him a present of £40 for the inconvenience caused by their mistake.

In November, 1799, Morland was at last arrested for debt, and he was allowed to take lodgings “within the Rules” of the King’s Bench to which his most discreditable friends constantly flocked. During this mitigated imprisonment he sank lower and lower. According to the “Dictionary of National Biography” he was often drunk for days together and generally slept on the floor in a helpless condition. It is probable that these stories are exaggerated, for he still produced an enormous quantity of good work. “For his brother alone,” says Redgrave, “he painted 192 pictures between 1800 and 1804, and he probably painted as many more for other dealers during the same period, his terms being four guineas a day and his drink.” Another account says that during his last eight years he painted 490 pictures for his brother and probably 300 more for others, besides making hundreds of drawings. His total production is estimated at no less than four thousand pictures. In 1802 he was released under the Insolvent Debtors’ Act but his health was ruined and his habits irremediable. About this time he was seized with palsy and lost the use of his left hand so that he could not hold his palette. Notwithstanding this, he seems to have gone on painting to the last, when he was arrested again for a publican’s score and died in a sponging house in Eyre Street, Cold Bath Fields, on 27th October, 1804. His much wronged wife was so afflicted at the news of his death that she died three days afterward and both were buried together in the burial ground attached to St. James’ Chapel in the Hampstead Road.

Morland’s epitaph on himself was, “Here lies a drunken dog.” His propensities to drink and low pleasure appear to have been unusually strong. He had opportunities of indulging them at an unusually early age and throughout life, except for a short interval of courtship and domesticity, he was surrounded by associates who encouraged his debauchery. “But though he was vain and dissolute he was generous, good natured and industrious and appears to have been free from the meaner and more malicious forms of vice. It should also be placed to his credit that however degraded his mode of life, he did not degrade his art to the same level.”

It would be difficult to define the exact place of John Wilkes in the history of this time, but he figures largely in that of the King’s Bench prison, both as an inmate and the cause of much loss of life in the disturbances to which his committal gave rise. To-day he is rightly judged as an insolent demagogue who misled the ignorant public by his intemperate attacks upon the government and his offensive writings in the North Briton, which cost him several duels and an embittered prosecution. He gained immense popularity with the mob as his long trial proceeded, which culminated in serious riots when the case at last went against him, and he was sent to the King’s Bench. The carriage in which he was conveyed was seized by the crowd, the horses removed, and the vehicle was dragged to a public house in Spital Fields north of the present Liverpool Street Railway Station. Here he was allowed to alight and at eleven o’clock at night to escape from his over zealous friends, taking immediate advantage of his liberty to surrender himself at the King’s Bench prison. The next day a vast mob collected outside the prison, and some hostile demonstration was feared. Nothing worse occurred than the tearing down of the fences surrounding the prison and burning them in a bonfire, while the residents in the neighbourhood were compelled to illuminate their windows. Legal proceedings were resumed in the days following and Wilkes’ counsel pleaded for arrest in judgment on the ground of illegal action, but the Crown would not yield, and a day was fixed for the final discussion whether or not the sentence of outlawry passed on him should be maintained.

The malcontents held their ground about the prison in threatening numbers, and resisted all efforts of the civil authority to disperse them, and the troops were called out. The riot act was read and after the warning the order given to fire, which was promptly obeyed with fatal results. A number of persons were killed and wounded, the shots aimed high after taking effect upon those at a distance. Further violent outrages were not committed. Later a mob attacked the house of Lord Bute, hated Prime Minister of that day, and the Mansion House and private apartments of the Lady Mayoress were invaded and wrecked. People were everywhere forced to illuminate their windows and the street echoed with cries of “Wilkes and Liberty.” The rioters were guilty of many outrages. Several quiet folk were killed, numbers wounded, windows were broken, furniture destroyed, royal residences even were threatened. The tumults extended to the provinces, the working classes were disaffected and demanded higher wages, and when denied went out on strikes, the earliest instances of them known. The disturbances were taken up by the seamen in the Pool, and a body of thousands of sailors marched in procession to the St. James Palace with drums beating and colours flying to present a petition to the King, praying for a relief of grievances. The following day they assembled in a great multitude in Palace Yard, boisterously clamouring for an increase of wages, but dispersed on an assurance from two M. P.’s that their requests should receive attention. A fresh tumult arose at Limehouse where several outward bound vessels were boarded and prevented from going to sea. All workers in London—sawyers, hatters, watermen and the Spital Fields weavers—combined in demanding an increase of wages, and confusion and unrest were general throughout London. The commotion gradually subsided and the principal rioters were brought to justice, while Wilkes still remained in the King’s Bench prison. The sympathy shown him took a very practical form. Some £20,000 were subscribed for the payment of his fines and debts, many valuable gifts were presented to him: plate, jewels, wine, furniture and purses embroidered in gold and containing specie.

A word or two about John Wilkes will illuminate the foregoing recital. He was born in 1727, the son of a brewer or distiller at Clerkenwell, and had been well educated at the University of Leyden. On his return to England at the early age of twenty-two he married an heiress, Miss Mead, ten years his senior. Although he was without personal attraction, his ready wit and charming manner gave him such an advantage with the fair sex that he was fond of saying that he was only ten minutes behind the handsomest man in a room. He kept a good table and soon won a large circle of friends, but his extravagant ways and love of dissipation involved him in difficulties. He quarrelled with his wife, they separated, and in the lawsuit his character and reputation were much damaged. When in 1757 he entered the House of Commons as a member for Aylesbury, he joined the agitation against that already most unpopular minister, Lord Bute, and founding the notorious North Briton, succeeded by persistent attacks in the paper in driving him from office. The next minister was no less fiercely assailed and Wilkes so far forgot himself as to charge the King (George III) with telling a lie. For this his house was entered and his papers seized and he himself committed to the Tower, but released on his claiming privilege as a member of Parliament. The North Briton was publicly burned by order of the House of Commons; Wilkes retaliated by an action against the Government for the improper seizure of his papers, and he was awarded £1,000 damages with a dictum from the Lord Chief Justice that general warrants were illegal.

Wilkes then was expelled from the House of Commons and went over to France. In his absence the Government proceeded to blacken his character by publishing an obscene poem of which he was the joint author, but it was shown that a printed copy had been obtained by underhand methods, the ministers incurring so much odium that they were driven from office. When the new Government was formed Wilkes returned to England and was now elected member for Middlesex. It was at this time that the riots described above occurred. Wilkes impugned the conduct of ministers and accused them of responsibility for the “massacre in St. George in the Field.” This was held in the House of Commons to be a seditious libel and Wilkes was again expelled from the House. The electors of Middlesex protested by returning him again and again, defying the House of Commons and glorifying Wilkes—who was still imprisoned in the King’s Bench—as the champion of national liberty. Wilkes was now the most popular man in England. Soon afterward he won a suit against Lord Halifax with £4,000 damages and in the following year was released on giving a bond for seven years’ good behaviour. Three years after he was made Lord Mayor of London and once again elected as member for Middlesex, which he now represented for several years. Wilkes in his last days sank into comparative obscurity and died an “extinct volcano” in 1792. Wilkes was not the immediate cause of the confinement in the King’s Bench prison of William Hone, but this well-known writer owed his protracted trials directly to the famous demagogue. He was arraigned at the Guildhall in 1817, charged with having printed and published the profane but curious “Wilkes’ Catechism,” which purported “to have been from the original manuscript in Mr. Wilkes’ handwriting and never before printed.” It was described as a catechism or “Instructions to be learned of every person before he be brought to be confirmed a placeman or pensioner by the minister.” The first questions and answers indicate its character. “Q. What is your name? A. Lickspittle. Q. Who gave you this name? A. My sureties to the ministry in my political change wherein I was made a member of the majority, the child of corruption and a locust to devour the good things of the kingdom.” Then follows the “belief,” which is too blasphemous for quotation, and the commandments, one of which ran, “Honour the Regent and the helmets of the Lifeguards, that thy stay may be long in the place which the Lord thy ministry giveth thee.” The general tenor of this catechism will be seen in the question “What is thy duty towards thyself?” and the answer, “My duty towards myself is to love nobody but myself and to do unto most men what I would not that they should do unto me; to sacrifice unto my own interest even my father and mother; to pay little reverence to the King, but to compensate that omission by my servility to all that are out in authority under him,” and so on.

The prosecution was no doubt inspired by the fierce party spirit prevailing at the time and caused great excitement; the Court, that of the King’s Bench in Guildhall, was densely crowded by an audience by no means in sympathy with the Attorney General when he unsparingly denounced the publication, and the violent coughing and other marks of disapprobation during his address roused the judge, Mr. Justice Abbott, to declare that he would clear the court. Mr. Hone defended himself ably, pleading that the whole publication was intended as a parody, but that he had stopped its sale directly he found it was looked upon as profane. A verdict of “not guilty” was speedily brought in by the jury, which was received with loud demonstrations of approval. Mr. Hone was again put on his trial, first for publishing a parody entitled “The Political Litany,” and again for publishing a parody on the “Athanasian Creed” styled the “Sinecurist Creed.” His defence, which he again conducted personally with such great boldness that the sitting judge, Lord Ellenborough, designated it as outraging decency and propriety, resulted in another verdict of “not guilty,” a decision greeted with loud cheers extending far beyond the limits of the court. These matters would have no permanent interest nor would William Hone call for reference here, but that he was afterward arrested by a creditor and lodged in the King’s Bench when he was engaged upon the production of his “Everyday Book,” a work full of curious and useful information, completed within the walls of the prison. He also began and finished there his “Table Book” and his “Year Book,” productions that have long survived the personality of their author.

An interesting character, the hero of many striking adventures and who passed through some strange vicissitudes and misfortunes, found himself more than once in the King’s Bench at the latter end of the eighteenth century. This was Colonel Hanger, commonly known as George Hanger, for although he eventually succeeded to his father’s title of Lord Coleraine, he steadfastly objected to assume it. He was a man of substance in his time, having property in his own right, and he early entered the army as an officer in the 1st regiment of Guards, from which he passed during the war with the American Colonies into the service of the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel. He was a prominent dandy in his time, lived fashionably, spent large sums on his clothes, and although he played little at cards, he gambled continually and for large sums on the turf. It was the rule for well-born youths in his time to dress extravagantly; young Hanger tells us in his memoirs that one set of winter dress clothes cost him £900 and he adds, “This should not so much astonish the reader as the fact that I actually paid the tailor.” The expense of appearing properly on the King’s birthday was enormous, an officer of the Guards being obliged to have two suits, and he says: “My morning vestments cost me nearly £80 and those for the state ball above £180. It was a satin coat and the first that had made its appearance in this country; shortly after, satin dress clothes became common among well-dressed men.... I had no office of emolument, advantage or trust about his Majesty’s person, except an ensigncy, the pay of which did not amount to four shillings per day, a sum insufficient to meet the tailor’s charges for one single button and button-hole to my gala suit; the very stitching of a button-hole in those days cost me more, and the embroidered gold clocks on my stockings in which I never failed to appear at a ball were very expensive.” Hanger became one of the chosen companions of the Prince of Wales (George IV) and lived at the same pace. He kept race-horses, backed them for considerable sums and once stood to win or lose 3,000 guineas on one race. “I can with truth say the turf had done me justice,” he writes, “but the extravagance of the times, the delightful pleasure of that age and the frailty of my own nature were my ruin.” He lived in fact far above his income which never exceeded eleven hundred pounds a year, and presently he became seriously involved. He had recourse to a mortgage on his estate for £13,000, and as he became more and more indebted was obliged in due course to sell it when it fetched rather less than half the sum at which it had been originally valued. He accompanied his regiment to America, took part in the war of Independence, but made the mistake of leaving the British Guards for the Hessian service. He found friends in Sir Harry Clinton and Colonel Tarleton, by whom he was appointed to the British Legion, and distinguished himself in the field.

When the war ended and Major Hanger was due to return to England, his affairs were so straitened that he took refuge in Calais, leaving friends to act for him at home and arrange with his creditors. But for the generous assistance of Mr. Richard Tattersal he could not have landed in England, for he was now completely beggared, and when directly he reappeared in the world, was arrested by his creditors. It was at this time that his estate was forcibly sold at such a loss. He now surrendered himself at the King’s Bench, where he was detained for some months but by the help of friends was admitted to take the “Rules.” His detention was brief, but his experiences as told in his “Life and Adventures” throw a strong light upon the iniquitous system still in force with regard to debtors as described later.

A distinguished naval officer, Lord Cochrane, afterward Earl of Dundonald, was committed a prisoner to the King’s Bench in 1815, on conviction of seeking to influence the stock markets by the dissemination of false news. His eminent services in the late war with France were forgotten and he was denied a fair, unprejudiced trial. It was clear that he was the victim of a dastardly plot and was sacrificed to the treachery of the villainous author of it. Lord Cochrane had recently been given the command of a King’s ship, and was on the point of sailing for the North American station. One day a visitor named de Berenger called at his house, pretending to be an officer and prisoner for debt, within the Rules of the King’s Bench. He said he had come to Lord Cochrane to implore him to release him from his difficulties and give him a passage across the Atlantic. His application was refused,—it was forbidden indeed according to naval rules,—and de Berenger was sent away. But before he left the house he pleaded piteously that to return to the King’s Bench prison in full uniform would attract suspicion. It was not stated how he had evaded its jurisdiction, but he no doubt implied that he had escaped and changed into uniform somewhere. Why he did not go back to the same place to resume his plain clothes did not appear. Lord Cochrane only knew that in answer to his urgent entreaty he lent him some clothes (the room was at that moment littered with clothes, which were to be sent on board the Tonnant). He unguardedly gave de Berenger a “civilian’s hat and coat.” This was a capital part of the charge against Lord Cochrane.

De Berenger had altogether lied about himself. He had not come from within the Rules of the King’s Bench but from Dover, where he had been seen the previous night at the Ship Hotel. He was then in uniform and pretended to be an aide-de-camp to Lord Cathcart, who was the bearer of important despatches. He made no secret of the transcendent news he brought. Bonaparte had been killed by the Cossacks, Louis XVIII proclaimed and the allied armies were on the point of occupying Paris. To give greater publicity to the intelligence he sent it by letter to the port-admiral at Deal, to be forwarded to the Government in London by means of the semaphore telegraph. The effect of this startling news was to send up stocks ten per cent., and many speculators who sold on the rise realised enormous sums.

De Berenger, still in uniform, followed in a post-chaise, but on reaching London he dismissed it, took a hackney coach and drove straight to Lord Cochrane’s. He had some slight acquaintance with his lordship and had already petitioned him for a passage to America but the application had been refused. There was nothing extraordinary, then, in de Berenger’s visit. His lordship, again, claimed that de Berenger in calling on him, instead of going straight to the Stock Exchange to commence operations, indicated that he had weakened in his plot and did not see how to carry it through. “Had I been his confederate,” says Lord Cochrane in his affidavit, “it is not within the bounds of credibility that he would have come in the first instance to my house and waited two hours for my return home in place of carrying out the plot he had undertaken, or that I should have been occupied in perfecting my lamp invention for the use of the convoy of which I was in a few days to take charge, instead of being on the only spot where any advantage to be derived from the Stock Exchange hoax could be realised had I been a participator in it. Such advantage must have been immediate, before the truth came out; and to have reaped it, had I been guilty, it was necessary that I should not lose a moment. It is still more improbable that being aware of the hoax, I should not have speculated largely for the special risk of that day.”

We may take Lord Cochrane’s word, as an officer and a gentleman, that he had no guilty knowledge of de Berenger’s scheme; but here again the luck was against him, for it came out in evidence that his brokers had sold stock for him on the day of the fraud. Yet the operation was not an isolated one, made on that occasion only. Lord Cochrane declared that he had for some time past anticipated a favourable conclusion to the war. “I had held shares for the rise,” he said, “and had made money by sales. The stock I held on the day of the fraud was less than I usually had, and it was sold under an old order given to my brokers to sell at a certain price. It had necessarily to be sold.” It was clear to Lord Cochrane’s friends—who, indeed, and rightly, held him to be incapable of stooping to fraud—that had he contemplated it he would have been a larger holder of stock on the day in question when, actually, he held less than usual. On these grounds alone they were of opinion that he should have been absolved from the charge.

The part taken by the late Lord Playfair in the rehabilitation of Lord Cochrane has been told by Sir Wemyss Reid in his admirable “Memoirs” of Playfair. The Earl of Dundonald died in October, 1860. To his grandson, the present gallant earl, whose brilliant achievements as a cavalry leader in the great Boer War have shown him to be a worthy scion of a warrior stock, his last will bequeathed as follows: “All sums due to me by the British Government for my important services, as well as the sums of pay stopped under perjured evidence for the commission of a fraud upon the Stock Exchange. Given under my trembling hand this 21st day of February, the anniversary of my ruin.”

Lord Playfair was an intimate friend of the much-worried admiral, and while he was a member of the House of Commons he made a strenuous effort to carry out the terms of the above will by recovering the sums mentioned in it. What followed shall be told in Playfair’s own words. “In 1814 Lord Dundonald and Lady X were in love and though they did not marry, always held each other in great esteem for the rest of their lives. Old Lady X was still alive in 1877, and she sent me a letter through young Cochrane, the grandson, authorising me to use it as I thought best. The letter was yellow with age, but had been carefully preserved. It was written by Lord Dundonald and was dated from the prison on the night of the committal. It tried to console the lady by the fact that the guilt of a near relative of hers was not suspected, while the innocence of the writer was his support and consolation.

“The old lady must have had a terrible trial. It was hard to sacrifice the reputation of her relative; it was harder still to see injustice still resting upon her former lover. Lord Dundonald had loved her and received much kindness from her relative, so he suffered calumny and the injustice of nearly two generations rather than tell the true story of his wrong.

“I had long suspected the truth, but I never heard it from Lord Dundonald. The brave old lady tendered this letter as evidence to the Committee, but I declined to give it in, knowing that had my friend been alive he would not have allowed me to do so. At the same time I showed the letter to the members of the Committee individually and it had a great effect upon their minds and no doubt helped to secure the report recommending that the Treasury should pay the grandson the back salary of the admiral.

“The interesting letter itself I recommended should be put in the archives of the Dundonald family and this I believe has been done.”

Lord Cochrane’s incarceration in the King’s Bench was the cause of considerable trouble. He had been committed there in default of a payment of the fine of a thousand pounds and with a sentence of one year’s imprisonment during which, in company with his alleged confederates, he was to stand once on the pillory in the open space before the Royal Exchange. Lord Cochrane was at that time a member of the House of Commons and it was moved in the House that he should be expelled, which was carried by a large majority. He found many warm friends, however, and chief among them Sir Francis Burdett, who, when the seat of Westminster was declared vacant, proposed Lord Cochrane for re-election, and his lordship was unanimously returned. He continued, however, to reside in the King’s Bench until the time of the next session approached, and he was resolved to break prison in order to appear in his place when the House met. He did, in effect, but in none of the ways reported at the time. One report was that he went out concealed in a sofa bedstead; another that he was sewn up inside a mattress with the feathers; a third that he passed the gates in disguise, but not unknown to the authorities, whom he had bribed to wink at his departure. The real truth was that having arranged for the visit of three or four Life guardsmen, he exchanged clothes with one of the troopers and walked out unmolested wearing the soldier’s uniform.

Lord Cochrane remained at large for a fortnight and evaded pursuit until he presumed to enter the House of Commons where he found a seat upon the Treasury bench. While he was addressing the House and reading the documents connected with his own case, the marshal of the King’s Bench, who had been notified, accompanied by several officers, walked into the House and proceeded to arrest his lordship, who immediately demanded the authority. He was told that it was the public proclamation offering a reward for his apprehension. Lord Cochrane demurred, violently resisted his capture, and something like a free fight occurred upon the floor of the House; eventually his lordship was overpowered and reconducted to the King’s Bench. Mr. Jones, the marshal, no doubt a little unhappy at his temerity, humbly submitted himself to the Speaker, hoping he had not been guilty of disrespect, for if he was wrong it was from an error of judgment and due to no wish to offend the House. The matter was made the subject of some debate, but when referred to the Committee of Privilege, they considered that the case was quite novel and it did not appear to them that the privileges of the House had been violated or that there was any call for interference. The time remaining for the completion of the term of imprisonment Lord Cochrane spent in a conflict with the marshal as to his accommodation and general treatment in the prison, in which Mr. Jones was ultimately exonerated and Lord Cochrane admitted that he had no complaint to make of the marshal, or of any of the officers of the prison.

Lord Dundonald’s later career is in a sense outside of my subject, but it was distinguished by many brave exploits and his capacity as a naval leader was usefully exercised in the service of another country than his own; his merits were recognised by the Emperor of Brazil, who gave him the command of the Brazilian fleet and created him a marquis. Through his able leadership the South American colonies of Spain gained their freedom and he assisted largely in the Greek war of independence. At length in 1830, tardy justice was done him and Earl Grey, now in office, believing him to have been the victim of a cruel and unjust persecution, restored him to his rank in the British navy. He was granted the Grand Cross of the Bath and appointed to a command, as an admiral. He was a man of strong character, remarkable for his inventive genius, a skilled and adventurous seaman, who won renown afloat although constantly opposed to forces superior to his own in numbers and metal. At the end of his life he enjoyed the sympathetic esteem of his fellow countrymen. His heirs were eventually granted compensation for the pay and allowances as a naval officer so long withheld from him, while under a cloud.