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State Trials, Whig Lawyers and the Press in Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland

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Political Trials in an Age of Revolutions

Part of the book series: Palgrave Histories of Policing, Punishment and Justice ((PHPPJ))

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Abstract

A series of high-profile trials during an important period of radical insurgency in Scotland (1816–1820) has received little historical attention. These trials have been overshadowed by both the more celebrated confrontations of the 1790s in Scotland and by the radical self-defences in English courts after 1816. This essay argues that, because they have seemed less useful as lenses onto radical culture and language, the later Scottish trials have been unduly neglected. The essay explores alternate uses, employing the trials as windows onto Whig politics and as moments that highlight important issues surrounding the relationship between state trials and the press.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See, especially, James Epstein, Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual, and Symbol in England, 1790–1850 (Oxford, 1994), 29–69; idem, “‘Our Real Constitution’: Trial Defence and Radical Memory in the Age of Revolution”, in Re-reading the Constitution: New Narratives in the Political History of England’s Long Nineteenth Century, ed. James Vernon (Cambridge, 1996), 22–51; John Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide (Oxford, 2000).

  2. 2.

    Alex Tyrell and Michael T. Davis, “Bearding the Tories: The Commemoration of the Scottish Political Martyrs of 1793–94”, in Contested Sites: Commemoration, Memorials and Popular Politics in Nineteenth-Century Britain, ed. P. A. Pickering and A. Tyrell (Aldershot, 2004), 25–56; Michael T. Davis, “Prosecution and Radical Discourse during the 1790s: The Case of the Scottish Sedition Trials”, International Journal of the Sociology of Law, 33 (2005), 148–58; David S. Karr, “‘The Embers of Expiring Sedition’: Maurice Margarot, the Scottish Martyrs Monument and the Production of Radical Memory across the British South Pacific”, Historical Research, 86 (2013), 638–60; Gordon Pentland, “The Posthumous Lives of Thomas Muir”, in Liberty, Property and Popular Politics: England and Scotland, 1688–1815. Essays in Honour of H. T. Dickinson, ed. Gordon Pentland and Michael T. Davis (Edinburgh, 2015), 207–23.

  3. 3.

    Sunday Herald, 1 August 2015.

  4. 4.

    William Cobbett, The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, 36 vols (London, 1806–20), XXX: 1300, 1563.

  5. 5.

    Parliamentary Register, 10 March 1794 [appendix], XXVIII: 492.

  6. 6.

    Henry Cockburn, Examination of the Trials for Sedition which have hitherto occurred in Scotland, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1888), I: 76–7.

  7. 7.

    Cockburn, Examination, II: 220–1. For a more nuanced analysis of the Whigs in 1790s Scotland see E. V. Macleod, “The Scottish Opposition Whigs and the French Revolution”, in Scotland in the Age of the French Revolution, ed. Bob Harris (Edinburgh, 2005), 79–98.

  8. 8.

    Kevin Gilmartin, Print Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1994), 124.

  9. 9.

    Michael Lobban, “From Seditious Libel to Unlawful Assembly: Peterloo and the Changing Face of Political Crime, 1770–1820”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 10 (1990), 307–52; Philip Harling, “The Law of Libel and the Limits of Repression, 1790–1832”, Historical Journal, 44 (2001), 107–34.

  10. 10.

    Gordon Pentland, Spirit of the Union: Popular Politics in Scotland, 1815–1820 (London, 2011), 39–44.

  11. 11.

    C. J. Green, Trials for High Treason, in Scotland, under a Special Commission, held at Stirling, Glasgow, Dumbarton, Paisley, and Ayr, in the year 1820, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1825) [hereafter Trials for High Treason], III:. 490–1; Pentland, Spirit, 110–15.

  12. 12.

    The Crown remitted the part of the sentence that dictated the body be quartered, National Archives [hereafter TNA], Home Office (Scotland) Criminal Entry Books, HO 104/5, Lord Sidmouth to Sheriff Deputies of Lanarkshire and Stirlingshire and Lord Provosts and Magistrates of Glasgow and Stirling, 23 and 25 August 1820, ff. 341–2, 353–4.

  13. 13.

    John Clive, Scotch Reviewers: The Edinburgh Review, 1802–1815 (London, 1957).

  14. 14.

    William A. Hay, The Whig Revival 1808–1830 (Basingstoke, 2005); T. E. Orme, “The Scottish Whig Party, c. 1801–1820” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 2013).

  15. 15.

    For the political and intellectual contribution of the Review, see especially B. Fontana, Rethinking the Politics of Commercial Society: The Edinburgh Review 1802–1832 (Cambridge, 1985).

  16. 16.

    British Library [hereafter BL], Holland House Papers, Add MS 52181, Francis Jeffrey to John Allen, 22 December 1809, f. 12. The occasion of the letter and the cause of much controversy was Jeffrey’s review of a pamphlet Short Remarks on the State of the Parties at the close of the year 1809 in Edinburgh Review, 15 (1810), 504–21.

  17. 17.

    Hay, Whig Revival, 54–62; Pentland, Spirit, 9–12.

  18. 18.

    Henry Cockburn, Memorials of his Time (Edinburgh, 1856), 301–2.

  19. 19.

    [John Allen], “Parliamentary Reform”, Edinburgh Review, 28 (1817), 126.

  20. 20.

    TNA, Home Office Correspondence (Scotland), HO 102/28, Alexander Maconochie to Lord Sidmouth, 21 May 1817, f. 135.

  21. 21.

    Trial of Alexander McLaren and Thomas Baird, before the High Court of Justiciary, at Edinburgh, on the 5th and 7th March 1817, for Sedition (Edinburgh, 1817), 94.

  22. 22.

    BL, Mackintosh Papers, Add MS 78767, Francis Jeffrey to James Mackintosh, 22 January 1820, f. 102.

  23. 23.

    Trials for High Treason, I:. 241–2, see also I: 455–7.

  24. 24.

    Robert Saunders, “Chartism from Above: British Elites and the Interpretation of Chartism”, Historical Research, 81 (2008), 463–84.

  25. 25.

    Cockburn, Memorials, 325.

  26. 26.

    State Trials, XXXIII: 74.

  27. 27.

    BL, Holland House Papers, Add MS 52181, Francis Jeffrey to John Allen, 9 April 1817, f. 94.

  28. 28.

    State Trials, XXXIII: 93.

  29. 29.

    State Trials, XXXIII: 285.

  30. 30.

    For an excellent analysis of the relationships between written and spoken language and politics for this period see Olivia Smith, The Politics of Language, 1791–1819 (Oxford, 1984).

  31. 31.

    State Trials, XXXIII: 6–14.

  32. 32.

    Ibid., XXXIII: 41, 84–6.

  33. 33.

    Trial of Alexander McLaren and Thomas Baird, 100–3.

  34. 34.

    State Trials, XXXIII: 71–4, 96.

  35. 35.

    Cockburn, Examination, II: 186.

  36. 36.

    State Trials, XXXIII: 100; [Allen], “Parliamentary Reform”, 126–50.

  37. 37.

    State Trials, XXXIII: 83, 105. For an illuminating discussion linking petitioning and contract theory see Steve Poole, Politics of Regicide in England, 1760–1850 (Manchester, 2000), 7–17.

  38. 38.

    Trials for High Treason, II: 264.

  39. 39.

    Gordon Pentland, Radicalism, Reform and National Identity in Scotland, 1820–1833 (Woodbridge, 2008), 7–25.

  40. 40.

    Michael Fry, “The Whig Interpretation of Scottish History”, in The Manufacture of Scottish History, ed. Ian Donnachie and Christopher Whatley (Edinburgh, 1992), 72–89.

  41. 41.

    N. T. Phillipson, The Scottish Whigs and the Reform of the Court of Session, 1785–1830 (Edinburgh, 1990).

  42. 42.

    Parliamentary Debates, 22 June 1804, II: 787–817; G. W. T. Omond, The Lord Advocates of Scotland, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1883), II: 209–12.

  43. 43.

    State Trials, XXIII: 571.

  44. 44.

    Parliamentary Debates, 20 June 1817, XXXVI: 1078–81.

  45. 45.

    For the Lord Advocate’s defence see Parliamentary Debates, 27 June 1817, XXXVI: 1250–2.

  46. 46.

    Parliamentary Debates, 10 February 1818, XXXVII: 268–83.

  47. 47.

    TNA, Court of King’s Bench: Notes concerning Searches in the Baga de Secretis for Treason Cases, KB 33/8/5, B. Gibson to P. Dealtry, 2 June 1820.

  48. 48.

    Trials for High Treason, I: 92.

  49. 49.

    Fry, “Whig Interpretation”, 72–89.

  50. 50.

    Cockburn, Examination, II: 221–2.

  51. 51.

    Gordon Pentland, “The Debate on Scottish Parliamentary Reform, 1830–32”, Scottish Historical Review, 85 (2006), 102–32.

  52. 52.

    Peter Mackenzie, Old Reminiscences of Glasgow and the West of Scotland, 2 vols, 3rd edn (Glasgow, 1890), I: 155.

  53. 53.

    TNA, Home Office Correspondence (Scotland), HO 102/34, Charles Hope to William Rae, 23 January 1821, f. 32.

  54. 54.

    See, for example, the leading article “On the Late Trials”, Scotsman, 26 July 1817.

  55. 55.

    Gilmartin, Print Politics, 11–64; Black Dwarf, 10 March 1819.

  56. 56.

    Gilmartin, Print Politics, 115.

  57. 57.

    Niel Douglas, An Address to the Judges and Jury, in a Case of Alleged Sedition, on 26th May, 1817, which was Intended to be Delivered before Passing Sentence (Glasgow, 1817).

  58. 58.

    See, for example, Morning Chronicle, 28 July 1817.

  59. 59.

    “Triumphs of the People”, Hone’s Reformists’ Register, 9 August 1817.

  60. 60.

    “Ministerial Artifices Defeated in Scotland”, Black Dwarf, 30 July 1817.

  61. 61.

    Cited in Gilmartin, Print Politics, 123.

  62. 62.

    TNA, Home Office Correspondence (Scotland), HO 102/28, Alexander Maconochie to Lord Sidmouth, 20 July 1817, f. 268.

  63. 63.

    Harling, “Law of Libel”, 107–34.

  64. 64.

    Parliamentary Debates, 26 February 1817, XXXV: 709–10, 728–30.

  65. 65.

    State Trials, XXXIII: 622.

  66. 66.

    Devon Record Office, Addington Papers, 152 M/C1819/OH86, Lord Eldon to Lord Sidmouth, 20 September 1819.

  67. 67.

    Trials for High Treason, I: 376–84.

  68. 68.

    Ibid., I: 121.

  69. 69.

    TNA, Home Office Correspondence (Scotland), HO 102/33, William Rae to Henry Hobhouse, 23 June 1820, f. 138 and HO 102/34, Charles Hope to William Rae, 23 January 1821, ff. 32–3.

  70. 70.

    Trials for High Treason, III: 483.

  71. 71.

    “Trial of James Affleck, for Blasphemous Publications”, Edinburgh Annual Register, 19 vols (Edinburgh, 1810–28), XVII: 127–9.

  72. 72.

    Gareth Stedman Jones, “The Language of Chartism” in The Chartist Experience: Studies in Working-Class Radicalism and Culture 1830–1860, ed. James Epstein and Dorothy Thompson (London, 1982), 13.

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  1. School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Gordon Pentland

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  1. School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, Griffith University, Southport, QLD, Australia

    Michael T. Davis

  2. Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK

    Emma Macleod

  3. School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Gordon Pentland

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Pentland, G. (2019). State Trials, Whig Lawyers and the Press in Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland. In: Davis, M., Macleod, E., Pentland, G. (eds) Political Trials in an Age of Revolutions. Palgrave Histories of Policing, Punishment and Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98959-4_9

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