"KESWICK, _October the 1st, 1802_.
JOHN CRUMPT, Esq., Liverpool.
Free, A. HOPE."
This letter, it was proved, passed free of postage. Another letter was
also produced from his wife at Tiverton, and a certificate of his
marriage with Mary of Buttermere. His trial came on August 15th, 1803,
at the Assizes for Cumberland, before the Honourable Alexander Thompson,
Knt. He stood charged upon the three following indictments:--
1. With having assumed the name and title of the Honourable Alexander
Augustus Hope, and pretending to be a member of parliament of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; and with having, about the month
of October last, under such false and fictitious name and character,
drawn a draft or bill of exchange, in the name of Alexander Hope, upon
John Crumpt, Esq., for the sum of £20, payable to George Wood, of
Keswick, Cumberland, innkeeper, or order, at the end of fourteen days
from the date of the said draft or bill of exchange.
2. With making, uttering, and publishing as true, a certain false,
forged, and counterfeit bill of exchange, with the name of Alexander
Augustus Hope thereunto falsely set and subscribed, drawn upon John
Crumpt, Esq., dated the 1st of October, 1802, and payable to Nathaniel
Montgomery More, or order, ten days after date, for £30 sterling.
3. With having assumed the name of Alexander Hope, and pretending to be
a member of parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland, the brother of the right Hon. Lord Hopetoun, and a colonel in
the army; and under such false and fictitious name and character, at
various times in the month of October, 1802, having forged and
counterfeited the hand-writing of the said Alexander Hope, in the
superscription of certain letters or packets, in order to avoid the
payment of the duty on postage.
The prisoner pleaded not guilty to the charge.
The three several indictments having been read, Mr. Scarlett opened the
case in an address to the jury; and gave an ample detail of the
prisoner's guilt.
In support of what he had advanced, he called Mr. Quick, who was clerk
in the house at Tiverton, where Hatfield was partner, who swore to his
hand-writing. The Rev. Mr. Nicholson swore that when the prisoner was
asked his name, he said it was a comfortable one--Hope.
The evidence for the prosecution having closed, the prisoner addressed
himself to the jury. He said he felt some degree of satisfaction in
being able to have his sufferings terminated, as they must of course be
by their verdict. For the space of nine months he had been dragged from
prison to prison, and torn from place to place, subject to all the
misrepresentations of calumny.
"Whatever will be my fate," said he, "I am content; it is the award of
justice, impartially and virtuously administered. But I will solemnly
declare that in all my transactions, I never intended to defraud or
injure the persons whose names have appeared in the prosecution. This I
will maintain to the last of my life."
After the evidence was gone through, his lordship, Sir A. Thompson,
summed up the whole of the evidence and commented upon such parts as
peculiarly affected the fate of the prisoner. "Nothing," said his
lordship, "could be more clearly proved, than that the prisoner did make
the bill or bills in question under the assumed name of Alexander
Augustus Hope, with an intention to defraud. That the prisoner used the
additional name of Augustus was of no consequence in this question. The
evidence proved clearly that the prisoner meant to represent himself to
be another character; and under that assumed character, he drew the
bills in question. If anything should appear in mitigation of the
offences with which the prisoner was charged, they must give them a full
consideration; and though his character had been long shaded with
obloquy, yet they must not let this in the least influence the verdict
they were sworn to give."
The jury consulted about ten minutes, and then returned a
verdict--Guilty of Forgery.
During the whole of the trial the court was excessively crowded. The
prisoner's behaviour was proper and dignified; and he supported his
situation from first to last with unshaken fortitude. He employed
himself, during the greatest part of his trial, in writing notes on the
evidence given, and in conversing with his counsel.
When the verdict of the jury was given, he manifested no relaxation of
his accustomed demeanour. After the court adjourned, he retired from the
bar, and was ordered to attend the next morning to receive the sentence
of the law. The crowd was immense; and he was allowed a post-chaise from
the town-hall to the jail.[16]
At eight o'clock the next morning, the court met again, when the
prisoner appeared at the bar to receive his sentence. Numbers of people
gathered together to witness this painful duty of the law passed upon
one whose appearance, manners, and actions, had excited a most uncommon
degree of interest. After proceeding in the usual form, the judge
addressed the prisoner in the following impressive terms:--
"John Hatfield, after the long and serious investigation of the charges
which have been preferred against you, you have been found guilty by a
jury of your country.
"You have been distinguished for crimes of such magnitude, as have
seldom, if ever, received any mitigation of capital punishment; and in
your case, it is impossible it can be limited. Assuming the person,
name, and character, of a worthy and respectable officer of a noble
family in this country, you have perpetrated and committed the most
enormous crimes. The long imprisonment you have undergone has afforded
time for your serious reflection, and an opportunity for your being
deeply impressed with a sense of the enormity of your crimes, and the
justness of that sentence which must be inflicted upon you; and I wish
you to be seriously impressed with the awfulness of your situation. I
conjure you to reflect with anxious care and deep concern on your
approaching end, concerning which much remains to be done. Lay aside now
your delusions and impositions, and employ properly the short space you
have to live. I beseech you to employ the remaining part of your time
in preparing for eternity, so that you may find mercy at the hour of
death, and in the day of judgment. Hear, now, the sentence of the
law:--That you be carried from hence to the place from whence you came,
and from thence to the place of execution, and there to be hung by the
neck till you are dead; and may the Lord have mercy on your soul!"
A notion very generally prevailed that he would not be brought to
justice; and the arrival of the mail was daily expected with the
greatest impatience. No pardon arriving, Saturday, September 3, 1803,
was at last fixed upon for the execution.
The gallows was erected the preceding night, between twelve and three,
on an island formed by the river Eden, on the north side of the town,
between the two bridges. From the hour when the jury found him guilty,
he behaved with the utmost serenity and cheerfulness. He talked upon the
topics of the day with the greatest interest or indifference. He could
scarcely ever be brought to speak of his own case. He neither blamed the
verdict, nor made any confession of his guilt. He said he had no
intention to defraud those whose names he forged; but was never heard to
say that he was to die unjustly. None of his relations ever visited him
during his confinement.
The alarming nature of the crime of forgery, in a commercial country,
had taught him, from the beginning, to entertain no hope of mercy. By
ten in the morning of September 3, his irons were struck off; he
appeared as usual, and no one observed any alteration or increased
agitation whatever.
Soon after ten o'clock he sent for the _Carlisle Journal_, and perused
it for some time. A little after he had laid aside the paper, two
clergymen (Mr. Pattison of Carlisle and Mr. Mark of Burgh-on-Sands),
attended and prayed with him for about two hours, and drank coffee with
him. After they left him, about twelve, he wrote some letters, and in
one he enclosed his penknife; it was addressed to London. About this
time he also shaved himself; though intrusted with a razor, he never
seems to have meditated an attempt upon his life; but it was generally
reported on Friday night that he had poisoned himself, though without
foundation. To all who spoke with him, he pretended that what he had to
suffer was a matter of little consequence. He preferred talking on
indifferent subjects. At three, he dined with the jailer, and ate
heartily. Having taken a glass or two of wine, he ordered coffee. He
took a cup a few minutes before he set out for the place of execution.
The last thing he did was to read a chapter from the 2d Corinthians. He
had previously marked out this passage for his lesson before he was to
mount the scaffold.
The sheriffs, the bailiffs, and the Carlisle volunteer cavalry, attended
at the jail door about half-past three, together with a post-chaise and
hearse. He was then ordered into the turnkey's lodge, for the purpose of
being pinioned, where he inquired of the jailer, who were going in the
chaise with him? He was told the executioner and the jailer. He
immediately said, "Pray, where is the executioner? I should wish much to
see him." The executioner was sent for. Hatfield asked him how he was,
and made him a present of some silver in a paper. During the time of his
being pinioned, he stood with resolution, and requested he might not be
pinioned tight, as he wished to use his handkerchief on the platform;
which was complied with. A prodigious crowd had assembled; this was the
market day, and people had come from the distance of many miles out of
mere curiosity. Hatfield, when he left the prison, wished all his
fellow-prisoners might be happy; he then took farewell of the clergyman,
who attended him to the door of the chaise, and mounted the steps with
much steadiness and composure. The jailer and executioner went in along
with him. The latter had been brought from Dumfries upon a retaining
fee of ten guineas.
It was exactly four o'clock when the procession moved from the jail.
Passing through the Scotch gate, in about twelve minutes it arrived at
the Sands. Half the yeomanry went before the carriage, and the other
half behind. Upon arriving on the ground, they formed a ring round the
scaffold. It is said that he wished to have the blinds drawn up, but
that such an indulgence was held inconsistent with the interest of
public justice. When he came in sight of the tree, he said to the
jailer, he imagined that was the tree (pointing at it) that he was to
die on. On being told yes, he exclaimed, "O! a happy sight--I see it
with pleasure!"
As soon as the carriage-door had been opened by the under-sheriff, he
alighted with his two companions. A small-cart, boarded over, had been
placed under the gibbet, and a ladder was placed against it, which he
instantly ascended. He was dressed in a black jacket, black silk
waistcoat, fustian pantaloons, shoes, and white cotton stockings. He was
perfectly cool and collected. At the same time, his conduct displayed
nothing of levity, of insensibility, or of hardihood. He was more
anxious to give proof of resignation than of heroism. His countenance
was extremely pale, but his hand never trembled. He immediately untied
his neckerchief, and placed a bandage over his eyes. Then he desired the
hangman, who was extremely awkward, to be as expert as possible about
it, and that he would wave a handkerchief when he was ready. The
hangman, not having fixed the rope in its proper place, he put up his
hand and turned it himself. He also tied his cap, took his handkerchief
from his own neck, and tied it about his head also. Then he requested
the jailer would step on the platform and pinion his arms a little
harder, saying, that when he had lost his senses he might attempt to
lift them to his neck. The rope was completely fixed about five minutes
before five o'clock; it was slack, and he merely said, "May the Almighty
bless you all." Nor did he falter in the least, when he tied the cap,
shifted the rope, and took his handkerchief from his neck.
He several times put on a languid and piteous smile. He at last seemed
rather exhausted and faint. Having been near three weeks under sentence
of death, he must have suffered much, notwithstanding his external
bearing; and a reflection of the misery he had occasioned must have
given him many an agonizing throb.
Having taken leave of the jailer and sheriff, he prepared himself for
his fate. He was at this time heard to exclaim, "My spirit is strong,
though my body is weak."
Great apprehensions were entertained that it would be necessary to tie
him up a second time. The noose slipped twice, and he fell down about
eighteen inches. His feet at last were almost touching the ground; but
his excessive weight, which occasioned this accident, speedily relieved
him from pain. He expired in a moment, and without any struggle. The
ceremony of his hands being tied behind his back, was satisfied by a
piece of white tape passed loosely from one to the other; but he never
made the smallest effort to relieve himself. He had calculated so well,
that his money lasted exactly to the scaffold. As they were setting out,
the hangman was going to search him. He threw him half-a-crown, saying,
"This is all my pockets contain."
He had been in considerable distress before he received a supply from
his father. He afterwards lived in great style, frequently making
presents to his fellow felons. He was considered in the jail as a kind
of emperor; he was allowed to do whatever he pleased, and no one took
offence at the air of superiority which he assumed.
He was cut down after he had hung about an hour. On the preceding
Wednesday he had applied to one of the clergymen who attended him, to
recommend him a tradesman to make his coffin. Mr. Bushby, of Carlisle,
took measure of him. He did not appear at all agitated while Mr. Bushby
was so employed; but told him that he wished the coffin to be a strong
oak one, plain and neat.
"I request, Sir," he added, "that after I am taken down, I may be put
into the coffin immediately, with the apparel I may have on, and
afterwards closely screwed down, put into the hearse which will be in
waiting, carried to the churchyard, and be interred in the evening."
A spot was fixed upon in a distant corner of the churchyard, far from
the other tombs. No priest attended, and the coffin was lowered without
any religious service. Notwithstanding Hatfield's various and
complicated enormities, his untimely end excited considerable
commiseration. His manners were extremely polished and insinuating, and
he was possessed of qualities which might have rendered him an ornament
to society.
The unfortunate Mary of Buttermere went from home to avoid the
impertinent visits of unfeeling curiosity. She was much affected; and,
indeed, without supposing that any part of her former attachment
remained, it is impossible that she could view his tragical fate with
indifference. When her father and mother heard that Hatfield had
certainly been hanged, they both exclaimed, "God be thanked!"
On the day of his condemnation, Wordsworth and Coleridge passed through
Carlisle, and endeavoured to obtain an interview with him. Wordsworth
succeeded; but, for some unknown reason, the prisoner steadily refused
to see Coleridge; a caprice which could not be penetrated. It was true
that he had, during his whole residence at Keswick, avoided Coleridge
with a solicitude which had revived the original suspicions against him
in some quarters, after they had generally subsided. However, if not
him, Coleridge saw and examined his very interesting papers. These were
chiefly letters from women whom he had injured, pretty much in the same
way, and by the same impostures, as he had recently practised in
Cumberland. Great was the emotion of Coleridge when he afterwards
recurred to these letters, and bitter--almost vindictive--was the
indignation with which he spoke of Hatfield. One set of letters appeared
to have been written under too certain a knowledge of his villany
towards the individual to whom they were addressed; though still relying
on some possible remains of humanity, or perhaps (the poor writer might
think) on some lingering relics of affection for herself.
The other set was even more distressing; they were written under the
first conflicts of suspicions, alternately repelling with warmth the
gloomy doubts which were fast arising, and then yielding to their
afflicting evidence; raving in one page under the misery of alarm, in
another courting the delusions of hope, and luring back the perfidious
deserter--here resigning herself to despair, and there again labouring
to show that all might yet be well. Coleridge said often, in looking
back upon that frightful exposure of human guilt and misery, that the
man who, when pursued by these heart-rending apostrophes, and with this
litany of anguish sounding in his ears, from despairing women, and from
famishing children, could yet find it possible to enjoy the calm
pleasures of a lake tourist, and deliberately to hunt for the
picturesque, must have been a fiend of that order which, fortunately,
does not often emerge amongst men.
It is painful to remember that, in those days, amongst the multitudes
who ended their career in the same ignominious way, and the majority for
offences connected with the forgery of bank notes, there must have been
a considerable number who perished from the very opposite cause; namely,
because they felt, too passionately and profoundly for prudence, the
claims of those who looked up to them for support. One common scaffold
confounds the most flinty hearts and the tenderest. However, in this
instance, it was in some measure the heartless part of Hatfield's
conduct which drew upon him his ruin; for the Cumberland jury, it has
been asserted, declared their unwillingness to hang him for having
forged a frank; and both they, and those who refused to aid his escape,
when first apprehended, were reconciled to this harshness entirely by
what they had heard of his conduct to their injured young
fellow-countrywoman.
She, meantime, under the name of the Beauty of Buttermore, became an
object of interest to all England. Dramas and melo-dramas were produced
in the London theatres upon her story; and for many a year afterwards,
shoals of tourists crowded to the secluded lake and the little homely
cabaret, which had been the scene of her brief romance. It was fortunate
for a person in her distressing situation, that her home was not in a
town; the few and simple who had witnessed her imaginary elevation,
having little knowledge of worldly feelings, never for an instant
connected with her disappointment any sense of the ludicrous, or spoke
of it as a calamity to which her vanity might have co-operated. They
treated it as unmixed injury, reflecting shame upon nobody but the
wicked perpetrator. Hence, without much trial to her womanly
sensibilities, she found herself able to resume her situation in the
little inn; and this she continued to hold for many years. In that
place, and in that capacity, she was seen repeatedly. She was greatly
admired, and became the subject of the poet's song; but "sorrow," to use
the beautiful language of Ossian, "sorrow, like a cloud on the sun,
shaded her soul."
[16] The jail and court-house were at that period divided by the
street. The jail, etc., has been rebuilt, and there is now a
passage from one to the other.