_The portraits of_ SIR WALTER RALEIGH _and_ LORD RUSSELL _are taken from
photographs of pictures in the National Portrait Gallery, by permission
of_ Messrs. WALKER and BOUTALL.
To G. DE L'E. D.
DEAR GERALD,--As you suggested the idea of this book to me, and as I
know that whether it succeeds or fails I can count confidently on your
sympathy, I will throw into the form of a letter to you the few remarks
which I might otherwise put into a preface. For as I have confessions to
make which amount almost to an apology, I had rather address them to one
who is pledged to express the most favourable possible view of my
literary efforts, such as they are, than to that hypothetical reader, of
whose tastes I feel most shamefully ignorant, though I am ready to
assume everything in his favour.
Far abler writers than I have frequently dilated on the charms attending
a study of the reports of State Trials, as they are best known to the
world; namely, in one-and-twenty stately volumes compiled by the
industrious Howells, father and son, and published, a year after the
battle of Waterloo, by the combined efforts of on a few of my
contemporaries the idea that persons long since dead on the block or the
gallows were Englishmen very much like ourselves, my object is secured.
My task has been confined to a selection of passages to be transferred
bodily from Howell's pages; to providing in an abbreviated form the
connecting-links between them; and to the supply of sufficient notes to
enable the ordinary reader to understand the main outlines of the
stories of which the trial generally constitutes the catastrophe. As to
my takings from Howell, I need say but little. I have indicated their
existence by a change of type. I have carefully preserved those
departures from conventional grammar, and that involved and uncouth,
but, for that very reason, life-like style of narration which he and his
predecessors inherited from the original but unknown authorities. As to
my abbreviations, I am fully aware that they do not represent any very
high literary effort. It is, I suppose, impossible that mere
condensation of another man's narrative should be done very well; but it
can certainly be done very ill. My aim, therefore, has been rather to
escape disaster than to achieve any brilliant success. The charm of
State Trials lies largely in matters of detail:--that Hale allowed two
old women to be executed for witchcraft; that Lord Russell was obviously
a traitor; that an eminent judge did not murder a woman in the early
part of his career; and that a sea-captain did murder his brother in
order to inherit his wealth, are in themselves facts of varying
importance. What the trials in these cases tell us, however, as nothing
else can, is what were the popular beliefs as to witchcraft shared by
such a man as Hale; how revolutions were planned while such things were
still an important factor in practical politics; and what was the state
of the second city in the kingdom when a man could be kidnapped in its
busiest streets by a gang of sailors and privateers-men. And this effect
can only be reproduced by considering a mass of detail, picturesque
enough in itself, but not always strictly relevant to the matter in
hand. Again, to a lawyer at all events, it is impossible to omit those
matters which show that the process which goes on at regular intervals
in all the criminal courts in the country is essentially the same that
it always has been since the Reformation; and accordingly I have not
hesitated to indicate as fully as my original made possible the
procedure, in the narrower sense of the word, followed at the various
trials reported. In the matter of notes I have done my best, in a very
narrow compass, to indicate how the trials were connected with
contemporary history. I have also reminded the reader (to use the
conventional phrase) of the fate of the various characters who are to be
met with in each trial. In particular, I have aimed at bringing to the
fore what must, after all, be the main point of interest in any trial;
namely, who were the counsel briefed, and how they came to be briefed;
who were the judges that tried it, how they came to be judges, and what
position they held in the opinion of the junior bar at the time. For
this part of my work I have taken care to have recourse to the best and
most modern authority, and have stated hardly any facts which are not
vouched for by the editor of the _Dictionary of National Biography_.
In my selection of cases to be reported I have been guided by a variety
of considerations. Personally, I admit that I like the political cases
best. There is a squalor about private crime, which, though I like it
myself, is inferior to politics as a staple. Besides, one has heard of
the heroes of the political trials before; and to read Raleigh's little
retort when Coke complains of a want of words adequately to express his
opinion of Raleigh; to be reminded how the worst of kings proved himself
an admirable lawyer, and the possessor of manners which, in a humbler
station, would assuredly have made the man; to hear the jokes as to
Essex's responsibility for the financial prospects of the proposed
revolution which amused the company of desperate men in the
wine-merchant's upper room; to come across the ghost of the conversation
in lonely St. Martin's Lane between the revellers at the Greyhound
Tavern, and its interruption by the hostile band hurrying to the duel in
Leicester Fields, creates, in my mind at least, the fantastic illusion
that Raleigh, Charles I., Russell, Mohun, and the rest of them were all
once actually alive.
I feel that I have unduly neglected the claims of what, at the period I
have had to do with, was the sister kingdom of Scotland. The Scotch were
not then, taking the difference of the population of the two countries
into consideration, at all behind the English in the production of
treason, murder, and other interesting forms of crime; and their
misdeeds were in many respects the more picturesque of the two. I had
hoped to place before my readers the true account, or what passes for
such, of that murder of Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure which, as we now
know, produced such romantic consequences for David Balfour. The
'Forty-five should have been represented, and Lord Lovat's adventures
ought to have served my purpose to a turn. But, alas! the lawyers on
these occasions have been hopelessly beaten by the professed
story-tellers; and the reports of the trials of Lord Lovat and James
Stewart are as dull as the romances of _Waverley_ and _Catriona_ are
entrancing. Why this should be so I do not know. I can ascribe it only
to the inferiority of the Scots criminal procedure to our own; and
ignorance prevents me from proving that inferiority by any other fact
than the one which I am anxious to account for.
After diligent and minute inquiry, I am pleased, though not surprised,
to find that Ireland was perfectly free from serious crime during the
whole of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Since making my selection of trials I have become aware that Mr. Leslie
Stephen, in his _Hours in a Library_, has chosen for notice precisely
those trials which I have reported. I must disclaim any merit in having
made the same selection as such an eminent critic; but at the same time
I can confidently affirm that my choice was made before I had read the
essay in question. Whether I have been guilty of the crime of plagiarism
in this particular I cannot say; neither, as far as that goes, do I
care. My readers at least have no reason to complain, and I can count on
you, Gerald, to join with me in deprecating the wrath of the outraged
author.
Trusting confidently in your co-operation to secure for this little
collection as favourable a reception as may be from that public for
whose taste we both have so much respect,--I remain, yours to command,