they looked like so many people removing from their lodgings and houses on quarter-day.” On July 4th a member of Parliament came to assure Mr. Grierson that the Act of Indemnity would surely pass in a few days. This occasioned great joy. A fortnight later the pardon was promulgated, and all the prisoners remaining were taken to Westminster to plead the Act, “where many were so very ungrateful that they refused to kneel or speak out in asking the king’s pardon till they were forced to it.”[101]
According to this last-quoted writer, the rebels in Newgate were not of exemplary character. “Their daily practice in prison was profane swearing, drunkenness, gluttony, gaming, and lasciviousness.” That such was permitted speaks volumes as to the shameful negligence of prison rule in those unsettled times.
There were other rebel prisoners, who do not seem to have benefited by this act of grace, and who remained much longer in prison. It is recorded in the ‘Weekly Journal’ of January 24th, 1727, that the King (George I.) had pardoned another batch of Jacobites, who had been capitally convicted in the first year of his reign for levying war against him. The pardoned traitors were Robert Stuart, of Appin; Alexander Macdonald, of Glencoe; Grant, of Glenmorrison; Maclimmin, of that Ilk; Mackenzie, of Fairburn; Mackenzie, of Dachmalnack; Chisholm, of Shatglass; Mackenzie, of Ballumakie; MacDougal, of Lorne; and two others, more notable than all the rest, “James, commonly called Lord, Ogilvie,” and “Robert Campbell, alias Macgregor, commonly called Rob Roy.” They had been under durance in London, for it is added that “on Tuesday last they were carried from Newgate to Gravesend, to be put on ship-board for transportation to Barbadoes.” Rob Roy marching handcuffed to Lord Ogilvie through the London streets from Newgate to the prison barge at Blackfriars, and thence to Gravesend, is an incident that has escaped the notice of Walter Scott, and all of Rob’s biographers. The barge-load of Highland chiefs, and of some thieves, seems, however, to have been pardoned, and allowed to return home.
Before leaving the press-yard some reference must be made to certain political “suspects” who were lodged therein for terms varying from nineteen to forty years. Their case is remarkable, as being the last instance of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in England, with the full knowledge and sanction of Parliament, and in spite of repeated strongly-urged petitions from the prisoners for release. Their names were John Bernardi, Robert Cassilis, Robert Meldrum, Robert Blackburne, and James Chambers. Of these, the first-named, Major Bernardi, is the old officer referred to by the writer of the ‘History of the Press-Yard.’[102] Bernardi has told his own story in a volume penned in Newgate, and “printed by J. Newcomb, in the Strand, for the benefit of the author, 1729.” Macaulay is disposed to discredit the version given by Bernardi, although there is a certain air of truthfulness in the prisoner’s narrative. Bernardi begins at the beginning. He was of Italian extraction, he tells us. His ancestors had been in the diplomatic service. Count Philip de Bernardi, his great-grandfather, came to England with a Genoese embassy. Francis Bernardi, son of the former, and father of Major John, was also accredited to Charles II. on the restoration, but when replaced as resident, being English born, he preferred to live and die in the land of his birth. According to his son, he was a stern parent, ready to award him penal treatment, with imprisonment for trifles, “in a little dark room or dungeon allowing him only bread and small beer when so confined.” By-and-by John ran away from home, and through the favour of Lady Fisher was employed as a “listed soldier” in a company at Portsmouth when barely fifteen years of age. A year or two later his god-father, Colonel Anselme, took him to the Low Countries, where by gallant conduct in the wars he gained an ensigncy from the Prince of Orange. At the siege of Maestrict he lost an eye, and was badly wounded in the arm. When scarcely twenty he was promoted to a lieutenancy, and eight years later obtained a company in Colonel Monk’s regiment. He was now, by his own account, arrived “at a high pitch of fortune.” He was a captain at twenty-seven in an established service, was personally well known to the Prince of Orange (afterwards William III.), had married well, and was, with his wife’s fortune, in the receipt of “a considerable income.”
James II., on coming to the throne, summoned home all English officers in the service of the States. Among the few who obeyed was Major Bernardi, and he then gave up, as he says, a certainty for an uncertainty. Very soon his former chief, the Prince of Orange, replaced James upon the throne, and Bernardi, unfortunately for himself, thereafter espoused the wrong side. He refused to sign the “association put about by General Kirk,” under which all officers bound themselves to stand by William “against all persons whomsoever,” and proceeded to France to throw in his lot with the exiled king. When James embarked for Ireland, Bernardi followed in command of a party of newly-organized adherents. He was at several of the engagements in that island, and was presently commissioned Major. After that he went to the Highlands with Seaforth Mackenzie on a special mission, and on his return had the honour of dining at the same table with the king. A second mission to Scotland followed, after which Bernardi made his way south, and escaping great perils by the way, reached London, meaning, when he had disposed of horses and effect, to cross over to Flanders. At Colchester, however, from which he hoped to reach easily a port of embarkation, he was seized and committed on suspicion, first to the town gaol, then to that of Chelmsford. After being much harassed he at length obtained his release, only to be soon involved in still greater trouble.
To his great misfortune he now fell in with one Captain Rookwood. It was about the time of the discovery of the assassination plot, of which Major Bernardi declares that he was in absolute ignorance till he heard of it like the rest of the world. He was by chance in the company of Captain Rookwood at a tavern, and was with him arrested on suspicion of being “evil-minded men.” While in the Compter Rookwood incautiously revealed his own identity, and was lost. Rookwood seems at the same time to have unintentionally betrayed Bernardi, whose name had, it appears, and in spite of his protestations of perfect innocence, been included in a proclamation. The inference is that the Government was in the possession of certain information that Bernardi was mixed up in the plot.[103] Both men were carried before the Council, and committed close prisoners to Newgate, “loaded with heavy irons, and put into separate dismal, dark, and stinking apartments.” Rookwood was speedily condemned and executed at Tyburn. Bernardi remained in prison without trial, until after Sir John Fenwick had suffered. Then with his fellow-prisoners he was taken to the Old Bailey to be bailed out, but at the instance of the Treasury solicitor, who “whispered the Judges upon the Bench,” they were relegated to Newgate, and a special Act passed rapidly through the House to keep them for another twelve-month on the plea of waiting for further evidence against them. A second Act was passed prolonging the imprisonment for another year; then a third, to confine them during the king’s pleasure. On the death of the king (William III.), a fresh Act extended the imprisonment during the reign of Queen Anne. During this long lapse of time repeated applications were made to Judges, but the release of the prisoners was always bitterly opposed by the law officers. Bernardi’s doctors certified that imprisonment was killing him; he suffered from fits and the constant trouble of an old wound. Nevertheless he lived on; and when in his sixty-eighth year he married, in Newgate, a second, virtuous, kind, and loving wife, who proved “a true help-meet,” supporting him by her good management, and keeping his heart from breaking in the “English Bastille.” Bernardi had ten children born in Newgate of this second wife. The imprisonment continued through the reigns of George I. and II. Frequent petitions were unheeded, and finally Bernardi died in Newgate in 1736, the last survivor, after forty years’ incarceration, and aged eighty-two.
CHAPTER VI.
EXECUTIONS.
Reasons for legal punishments—Early forms: branding, mutilation, whipping, the pillory, and stocks—Penalties for females: the ducking-stool, branks, and scourge—Capital punishment universal—Methods of inflicting death—Awful cruelties—The English custom—Pressing to death—Major Strangways—Spiggot and Burnworth—Abolition of this punishment—Decapitation and strangulation—The
