The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane - Earl of Dundonald Thomas Barnes Cochrane (guided reading books TXT) 📗

first, and dictated the view to be taken by all loyal members of the House. "From the nature of the arrest and the circumstances attending it, I do not think, sir," he said, "that the House is called upon to interfere. I am not aware, as the House was not actually sitting, with the mace on the table and the Speaker in the chair, when the arrest took place, that any breach of privilege has been committed. It must be quite obvious to every man that the marshal has not acted wilfully in violation of the privileges of the House. No blame can attach to him, since he has submitted himself to the judgment of the House of Commons after having done that which he considered his duty as a civil officer. Having had Lord Cochrane in his custody, from which he escaped, the marshal was bound not to pass over any justifiable means of putting him under arrest whenever a fair opportunity occurred."

Most of the members thought, with Lord Castlereagh, that this was a "fair opportunity." Only one, Mr. Tierney—and he very feebly—ventured to express an opposite opinion. "I consider this," he said, "to be the case of a member regularly elected to serve in Parliament, and coming down to take his seat. Now, sir, the House is regularly adjourned until ten o'clock in the morning; and I recollect occasions when the Speaker did take the chair at that hour. Suppose, then, a member, about to take his seat, came down here at an early hour, with the proper documents in his hand, and desired to be instructed in the mode of proceeding, and, while waiting, an officer entered, arrested him, and took his person away, would not this be a case to call for the interference of the House?" Mr. Tierney admitted that he approved of Lord Cochrane's arrest, but feared it might become a precedent and be put to the "improper purpose" of sanctioning the arrest of members more deserving of consideration.

To please him, and to satisfy the formalities, therefore, the question was referred to a committee of privileges. This committee reported, on the 23rd of March, "that, under the particular circumstances, it did not appear that the privileges of Parliament had been violated, so as to call for the interposition of the House;" and the House of Commons being satisfied with that opinion, no further attention was paid to the subject.

In the meanwhile Lord Cochrane was being punished, with inexcusable severity, for his contempt of the authority of Lord Ellenborough and Mr. Jones. A member of the House, during the discussion of the 21st of March, had said that he had just come from the King's Bench Prison. "I found Lord Cochrane," he had averred, "confined there in a strong room, fourteen feet square, without windows, fireplace, table, or bed. I do not think it can be necessary for the purpose of security to confine him in this manner. According to my own feelings, it is a place unfit for the noble lord, or for any other person whatsoever."

In this Strong Room, however, Lord Cochrane was detained for more than three weeks. It was partly underground, devoid of ventilation or necessary warmth, and, according to the testimony of Dr. Buchan, one of the physicians who visited him in it, "rendered extremely damp and unpleasant by the exudations coming through the wall."

On being taken to this den immediately after his capture, Lord Cochrane was informed by Mr. Jones that he would be detained in it for a short time only, until the apartments over the lobby of the prison were prepared for his reception. That was done in a few days; but no intimation of a change was made until the 1st of April, when a message to that effect was sent to the prisoner. On the following day he received a letter from Mr. Jones informing him that, if he would anticipate the payment of the fine of 1000_l._ levied against him, and would also pledge himself, and give security for the keeping of the promise, to make no further effort to escape, he might be allowed to occupy the more comfortable quarters. "It is no new thing," said Lord Cochrane, "for a prisoner to escape or to be retaken; but to require of any prisoner a bond and securities not to repeat such escape was, I think, a proposition without precedent, and such as the marshal knew could not be complied with by me without humiliation, and therefore could not be proposed by him without insult. Besides, he had my assurance that if I were again to quit his custody (which I gave him no reason to believe I should attempt, and which, as I observed and believe, it was as easy for me to effect from that room as from any other part of the prison), I should proceed no further than to the House of Commons, and that where he found me before he might find me again; I having had no other object in view than that of expressing, by some peculiar act, the keen sense which I entertained of peculiar injustice, and of endeavouring to bring such additional proofs of that injustice before the House as were not in my possession when I was heard in my defence." Mr. Jones, however, resolved to keep his captive in the Strong Room, unless he would promise to resign himself to captivity in a less obnoxious part of the prison.

Even for that negative favour the marshal took great credit to himself in a document which he issued at the time. "If a humane and kind concern for this unfortunate nobleman," he there averred, "had not softened the solicitude which I naturally felt for my own security, I could have committed him, on my own warrant for the escape, to the new gaol in Horsemonger Lane, for the space of a month; and that power is still within my jurisdiction. Had I thought proper to exercise it, Lord Cochrane would then have been confined in a solitary cell with a stone floor, with windows impenetrably barred and without glass; nor would it have proved half the size of the Strong Room in the King's Bench, which has a boarded floor and glazed lights." That statement reasonably stirred the anger of Lord Cochrane. "Though the solitary cell in Horsemonger Lane," he answered, "may be half the size of the Strong Room, it could not, I apprehend, have been more gloomy, damp, filthy, or injurious to health than the last-mentioned dungeon. And since Mr. Jones could only have confined me in the former place for a month, and did confine me in the latter for twenty-six days, I can scarcely see that degree of difference which should entitle him to those 'grateful sentiments for his mode of acting on the occasion' which, he submits to the public, it is my duty to entertain. The 'glazed lights' mentioned by Mr. Jones were not put up till I had been thirty hours in the place, and I have always understood that I was indebted for them to the good offices of Mr. Bennet and Mr. Lambton, who happened [as part of a Parliamentary Committee] to be prosecuting their inquiry into the state of the prison at the time of my return. For these and all other mercies of the said marshal, my gratitude is due to their friendship and sense of duty, and to his dread of their discoveries and proceedings."

It is clear that nothing but fear of the consequences induced Mr. Jones to remove Lord Cochrane from the Strong Room, after twenty-six days of confinement therein. On the 12th of April the prisoner issued an address to the electors of Westminster, detailing some of the hardships to which he was being subjected; and its publication immediately roused so much popular interest that the authorities of King's Bench Prison deemed it necessary to make at any rate a show of amelioration in his treatment. On the 13th, his physician, Dr. Buchan, was allowed to visit him, and his report was such that another medical man of eminence, Mr. Saumarez, was sent to examine into the state of the prisoner's health. Part of Dr. Buchan's certificate has already been quoted. The rest was as follows: "This is to certify that I have this day visited Lord Cochrane, who is affected with severe pain of the breast. 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 in which he is now confined." "I hereby certify," wrote Mr. Saumarez, "that I have visited Lord Cochrane, and am of opinion, from the state of his health at this time, that it is essentially necessary that he should be removed from the room which he now inhabits to one which is better ventilated, and in which there is a fireplace. His lordship complains of pain in the chest, with difficulty of respiration, accompanied with great coldness of the hands; and, from the general state of his health, there is great reason to fear that a low typhus may come on."

The only result of those medical opinions was a renewal of the offer to remove Lord Cochrane to the rooms prepared for him, on the conditions previously specified by Mr. Jones. Lord Cochrane answered that he would rather die than submit to such an insulting arrangement. He published the doctors' certificates, however, on the 15th of April, and their effect upon the public was so great that the authorities were forced on the following day to take him out of his dungeon. Mr. Jones's account of this step is worth quoting. "I again tried," he reported, "to induce Lord Cochrane's friends and relations to give me any kind of undertaking against another escape. On their refusal, I determined myself to become his friend, and, at my own risk, to remove him to the rooms which have been already mentioned, and where, I am confident, he can have no cause of complaint. These rooms not being altogether safe against such a person as Lord Cochrane, should he determine to risk another escape, I must look to the laws of my country as a safeguard, in the hope that the terrors of them will discourage him from attempting a repetition of his offence, and prevent him from incurring the penalties of another indictment."

Lord Cochrane never really intended to attempt a second escape. Had it been otherwise, the illness induced by his confinement in the Strong Room would have restrained him. Being placed in healthier apartments on the 16th of April, he quietly remained there for the remainder of his term of imprisonment. On the 20th of June he was informed that, the term being now at an end, he was at liberty to depart on payment of the fine of 1000_l._ levied against him. This he at first refused to do, and accordingly he was detained in prison for a fortnight more; but at length the entreaties of his friends prevailed. On the 3rd of July he tendered to the Marshal of the King's Bench a 1000_l._ note, with this memorable 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." Upon that the prison doors were opened for him, and he was able once more to fight for the justice so cruelly withheld from him, and to make his innocence entirely clear to all whose selfish interests did not force them to be blind to the truth.

CHAPTER IV. LORD COCHRANE'S RETURN TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.—HIS SHARE IN THE REFUSAL OF THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND'S MARRIAGE PENSION.—HIS CHARGES AGAINST LORD ELLENBOROUGH, AND THEIR REJECTION BY THE HOUSE.—HIS POPULARITY.—THE PART TAKEN BY HIM IN PUBLIC MEETINGS FOR THE RELIEF OF THE PEOPLE.—THE LONDON TAVERN MEETING.—HIS FURTHER PROSECUTION, TRIAL AT GUILDFORD, AND SUBSEQUENT IMPRISONMENT.—THE PAYMENT OF HIS FINES BY A PENNY SUBSCRIPTION.—THE CONGRATULATIONS OF HIS WESTMINSTER CONSTITUENTS.

[1815-1816.]

Released from imprisonment on Monday, the 3rd of July, Lord Cochrane resumed his seat in the House of Commons on the evening of the same day, just in time to secure the defeat of a measure which was especially obnoxious to his Radical friends. The Duke of Cumberland having lately married a daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, it was proposed to augment his income of about 20,000_l._ a year by a further pension of 6000_l._ A bill to that effect was brought in by Lord Castlereagh, and, after much sullen opposition from independent members, allowed a first reading by a majority of seventeen. On the second division the majority was reduced to twelve. The bill was brought