MADAM,
WHEN I sent you an account of the trial and condemnation of Lawrence, late earl Ferrers, I did not imagine that I should have been enabled to add to it an account of his execution; but my curiosity having conquered all other sensations, I was present at the catastrophe of that nobleman.
The particulars of his lordship’s behaviour from the Tower to the place of execution, are published by order or permission of the sheriffs. To repeat those particulars would be needless; but give me leave, madam, by way of postscript to my last letter, to animadvert upon some passages of the earl’s appearance and demeanour, which, except in one instance, drew pity and compassion from all the spectators. The instance I hint at, was his lordship’s dress, of which he himself took notice to Mr. sheriff Vaillant. You may perhaps, Sir, said the earl, think it strange to see me in this dress, but I have my particular reasons for it Mr. Vaillant prest not to know those particular reasons, and they seemingly died with the noble criminal.
But the people, ever busy and inquisitive to fathom the deepest secrets, and to expose to light the most inward recesses of the soul, have loudly and unanimously declared, that the clothes which the earl wore, light cloth embroidered with silver, was the suit in which he was married, and that his lordship dated the source of his misfortunes from the day of his marriage. Unhappy wretched man! filled with whim, error, suspicions, malevolence, and a kind of insult, by no means to be excused, except as proceeding from a depraved imagination. At his trial, he had brought in his plea of lunacy. By his dress, he appeared to continue on that plea at the gallows. He forgave the executioner, he forgave all the world, but as he seems to have been a kind of fatalist, he forgave not his fate, which, according to his own wild imagination, led him by a suit of clothes to his ruin.
How erroneously do the thoughts stray, and how irregular and tempestuous are the passions, when the seat of sense and judgment is ever so little dislocated? or when the cool calm dictates of the christian religion are thrown aside or trampled upon?
The printed account continues to say, that his lordship asked the sheriff, if he had ever seen so great a concourse of people before? and upon his answering that he had not; I suppose, said his lordship, it is because they never saw a lord hanged before It is certain that no lord within the memory of the present age, had undergone the same catastrophe as was allotted to earl Ferrers. The executions of noblemen, during a great length of time, had been always performed by beheading, sometimes within the Tower gates, sometimes upon Tower-hill. In the reign of queen Mary the first, a lord was hanged at Salisbury. One peer only had ever preceded lord Ferrers at Tyburn, and as he was executed above four hundred years ago, his lordship was almost forgotten, although very particularly mentioned by most, if not all of our English historians. They inform us, that Roger Mortimer, earl of March, was treated with the utmost rigour; his impeachment, says Rapin, was brought before the parliament. By the expression, brought before the parliament, I presume the author means, that the commons had brought up an impeachment against him to the bar of the house of lords. The earl of March’s crimes had long been so notorious and arbitrary, that he was condemned to die without any evidence being called to witness against him. It must have appeared therefore that the articles of his impeachment were universally known and acknowledged to be true, and the weight of them supplied every other evidence that could be wanted. How different were those times from these? Now, the meanest subject in the kingdom knows that when he is tried for his life, he cannot be tried but by the strictest, the fairest, and the minutest rules of equity, law, and justice. Then, the highest peer in the realm might be hurried and persecuted to his death, without any other legal authority than the outcry of the people, and the violence of an enraged parliament. Roger Mortimer, earl of March, was hanged on the common gallows at Tyburn, November 29, 1330, in the reign of Edward the third. The place of execution was then called Elms, his body continued hanging two days and two nights; a spectacle probably intended for the populace, who had justly held him in the utmost degree of abhorrence.
As the unfortunate earl Ferrers has not only paid the debt of nature, but of the law, humanity ought to dispose us to believe his lordship’s asseveration, that he had not entertained the least malice against Mr. Johnson, whom he murdered. The reasons which he gave, support his lordship’s assertion. I was, said the earl, under particular circumstances, I had met with so many crosses and vexations that I scarce knew what I did Where vexations and disappointments, joined to a lunatic disposition, affect the mind they often pervert the temper from chearfulness to melancholy, from freedom to suspicions, from calmness to rage, acrimony, and revenge. The blood becomes black and bilious, strange thoughts arise, continual uneasiness succeeds, rash actions follow, cruelties, murders, and suicide. Ah! wretched human kind! more wretched than the beasts of the field, more despicable than the reptiles of the earth; if deprived of reason, subject to lunacy, and visited by returning fits of madness.
Here let me close the scene, and only add that earl Ferrers died a christian without knowing that he was such. He devoutly repeated the Lord’s Prayer, and his last words to the executioner were, I freely forgive you as I do all mankind, and hope myself to be forgiven He would have died an hero, had he expired in a virtuous cause; for, according to the sheriff’s paper, From the time of his lordship’s ascending the scaffold until his execution, his countenance did not change nor his tongue faulter. The prospect of death did not at all shake the composure of his mind.
I am, Madam, Your most humble servant, A. B.