A Forgotten Tragedy.

Manawatu Standard, Volume X, Issue 74, 26 August 1885, Page 2

A Forgotten Tragedy.

[Bxchaiige]:.

In the great fire which, consumed the Town. Hall at PaluVer^on North last week, and m which the Public Library,. there vperi^hed a valuable and interesting relic.' ~: It was a copy of "Guthrie.'s History^fcEngland m three volumes, presented by a brother of Mr Snelson, the Mayor of P'alinerston, and supposed to rte the Only copy of this scarce work m the Southern; Hemisphere. But I that did not constitute tile whole of its value or interest. It formerly belonged, -so the local 'press informs us, to Earl Ferrers, who was hung at Tyburn, on the sth 'of.; , May; -1760;^ for the murder, not of his; coachman, -as the local paper states, bu!s of bis steward, a man named Johnson, at the family ieat, Staunton Harcout, m LeitSestershire. The book, together, with a pistol and sword, were presented to an ancestor of Mr Shelson's m payment of a debt, and it is a curious coincidence that ihe pistol. and sword also perished m a Palmerston . fire some years ago. It was m the last year of the reign of George the Second that this barbarous and deliberate murder took place, and it is described by Horace Walpole m his letters. Earl Ferrers had been separated by Act of Parliament from his Countess; a very pretty woman, whom he treated with indescrible cruelty. The steward, unfortunately, ;gaye .cvi. derice about the matter before the House of Lords, and the Earl was incensed against the poor fellow for doing what it appears he could not avoid. On a day m January, 1760, Earl Ferrers sent away all the. servants -but Johnson, and bidding the man kneel down, shot him. " Mad as the action was from the consequences"—they steward ? died twelve hours after 'being pistolled^-*' there was no frenzy m his behaviour, he got drunk and at intervals talked o£ it coolly, but did not attempt to escape till the colliers bsset his house, and were determined? :$o take him alive or dead." The: Earl" >was arrested, sent to London, tried by his Peersin Westminster Biall, found guilty, and, to the mortificatioti of his •British ! aristocracy, condemned to be hanged and anatomised afterwards. On the day ['of his execution, he dressed himself "m i his wedding clothes, grimly remarking I " this is as least as good an occasion for putting them on as on that for which they were first made!" and was driven m his own landau, attended by thousands of people and ir squadron <of Horse Guards, from the Tower to the gallows at Tyburn, a spot a few yards westward of iwhere now stands the Marble Arch at Hyde Park. The crush along the route was so great that several people were hurt, and the Earl feelingly remarked, "I hope there will he no death to-day but me." In accordance with the custom of the time, he gave his watch .to one of 'the sheriffs, five guineas to ;th« chaplain — though he refused to accept his religious consolations— the same amount to the hangman, and a pocketbook to his mistress. The scaffold- " was hung with black at the expense of the family," and the execution was clumsily bungled, though the Jack Ketch of 1760 was apparently little inferior to the Calcraft or Manyopd of the present century. Walpole says that >• the crowd behaved with decency, and admiration, .as well they miahV'for sure' no exit, was ever made with more sensible resolution, and witli less ostentation." But the decency ended with the Earl and the crowd, for the Sheriff fell to eating and drinking on the scaffold, 'and helped up one of their friends to drink with them, for. about an. hour /: while the body was hanging. George the Second .refused the Earl's petition that he might be beheaded' instead of hanged,, but allowed him the luxury of a silken rope. The criminal seems to have been a- man of culture. The night before his death he had Hamlet read over to him, and the very morning of the fatal day he corrected some Latin verses he had written m the Tower. The Countess married a brother of -the Duke of Argyle some- years afterwards, a id, strange to say, was burned to death m 1807. Nor was this the only' remarkable fire m r the series connected with Lord Ferrers, which culminated with the conflagration at Palmerston North. On the day of the Earl's trial, seven dwelling houses and a number of warehouses m Thames-street were burned through the upsetting of some oil, the damage being estimated at i-40,000. The servant who had been left m charge of the oil had gone away to see the Earl's procession, leaving the premises unattended. There is no moral to be derived from this old world story, except that we manage pur. murderers and excutions a little better now-a-days and that our sheriffs and chaplains— if not our executioners and mobs—are a rather better sort of people .than they used to be. Whether we have improved our criminal procedure with regard to titled offenders is. quite another lifting. An Earl who committed a murder m the present year of grace might not, perhaps, be tried . m Westminister Hall, or hung with a silken rope ; but there would be the fear that the whole affair would: be hushed up, and that judges would lead! themselves, at the instigation of ariftocratic influence, to devices to screen the; prisoner. There are seme matters which they do not manage m England better than they used to do, and the supposed equality of all men befora the law is one* of them.