THE PROCEEDINGS

AGAINST

SACKVILLE, EARL OF THANET,

AND OTHERS,

FOR

A Misdemeanor;

Tried at the Bar of the Court of King's Bench, April 25, 1799.

THE following Proceedings against the Earl of Thanet and others, as taken in short-hand by Mr. William Ramsay, an eminent short-hand writer, and published after the Trial by Robert Fergusson, Esq. one of the Defendants, require no Preface. Lord Erskine's Speech for that Nobleman, and for Mr. Fergusson and Mr. O'Brien, would have lost all its force and interest if any part of the Trial had been abridged, because it is entirely a Speech upon viva voce evidence, and upon a subject, too, which was a constant appeal to a variety of facts and minute circumstances related by a great number of witnesses; a species of forensic eloquence, as was most justly observed in the brilliant and interesting criticism of the former volumes in the Edinburgh

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Review, of which we have no examples in the ancient world; but of which every day, or, rather, every hour, in the British Courts of Justice might furnish instances worthy of preservation and admiration.

To relieve the reader from attending to the precise form of the Indictment, which is prefixed to the Proceedings, we cannot better or more correctly state the substance of it than in Lord Erskine's own words, in the prefatory part of his Address to the Jury.

"In adverting to what the charge is, I need not "have recourse to the abstract I have made of this "Information.-The substance and common sense of "it is this:-that Mr. Arthur O'Connor had been brought by legal process into the custody of the sheriff of Kent; that a special commission had "assembled at Maidstone to try him and others for

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high treason; that upon the opening of the com"mission he had been again committed by the Court "to the same custody; that he was afterwards again

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brought up to the bar, and found not guilty; and "that after he was so acquitted, but before he was "in strict form discharged by the order of the "Court, the Defendants conspired together to rescue "him. This is the essence of the charge. The dis"turbance of the Court, and the assaults stated in "the different counts of the Information, are only "the overt acts charged to have been done in pur"suance of the purpose to rescue the Prisoner."

This Trial was at the time a great subject of political animosity; but, faithful to the plan of this

work, we refrain from all observations. We present the proceedings to the Public, leaving the result to every man's own opinion, assisted, as we have already said, in our original preface, by the public voice and judgment.

PROCEEDINGS,

&c.

THE Information was opened by Mr. Abbott, and is as follows:

Kent, to wit. Be it remembered, that Sir John Scott, Knight, Attorney General of our present Sovereign Lord the King, who for our said Lord the King in this behalf prosecuteth, in his proper person cometh here into the Court of our said Lord the King, before the King himself at Westminster, on Wednesday next after three weeks of the Holy Trinity in this same term; and for our said Lord the King giveth the Court here to understand and be inforned, that heretofore, to wit, on Monday, the twenty-first day of May, in the thirty-eighth year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord George the Third, now King of Great Britain, and so forth, a special session of oyer and terminer and gaol delivery was holden by adjournment in and for the county of Kent, at Maidstone, in the said county, before Sir Francis Buller, Baronet, one of the Justices of our said Lord the King of his Court of Common Pleas, John Heath, Esquire, one other of the Justices of our said Lord the King of his Court of Common Pleas,

Sir Soulden Lawrence, Knight, one of the Justices of our said Lord the King assigned to hold pleas before the King himself, Samuel Shepherd, Esquire, one of the Serjeants of our said Lord the King learned in the law, and others their fellows, Justices and Commissioners of our said Lord the King, assigned by letters patent of our said Lord the King under the great seal of Great Britain, to inquire, by the oath of good and lawful men of the said county of Kent, of all high treasons, and misprisions of high treason, other than such as relate to the coin of our said Lord the King, within the county aforesaid done, committed, or perpetrated; and the said treasons, and misprisions of treason, according to the laws and customs of England, for that time to hear and determine; and also assigned and constituted, by the letters patent of our said Lord the King, under the great seal of Great Britain, to deliver the gaol of our said Lord the King of the said. county of Kent of the prisoners therein being and detained on the nineteenth day of March, in the thirty-eighth year aforesaid, or who should be therein detained before the tenth day of April in the same year, for or on account of any high treasons, or misprisions of high treason, other than such as relate to the coin of our said Lord the King. At which said session so then and there holden as aforesaid, before the Justices and Commissioners above named, and others their fellows aforesaid, came Arthur O'Connor, Esquire, in the custody of John