Cochrane (39 page)

Because the rooms in which he was confined were so high, there were no bars at the windows. There hardly seemed any necessity, since even if a man could negotiate the sheer drop, he would still be within the prison walls. Indeed, the high outer wall, topped with spikes, rose up opposite the windows of the rooms. It stood higher than the windows but not more than a dozen feet away. Cochrane's servant had managed to smuggle him in some small lengths of rope, hardly thicker than stout cord, and with this he proposed to make his escape.

He waited until after midnight and until he judged that the watchman would be on his rounds in one of the most distant parts of the prison. Then he coiled the rope and climbed out of the window, scaling upward to the roof of the State House building. From there he could look down on to the top of the outer wall in the darkness. To one who was so accustomed to ropes and climbing, it was not too difficult, even by night, to throw a running noose over the spikes which topped the outer wall. Far more dangerous was the journey, hand over hand, hanging from the thin rope between the State House roof and the wall, with the dark and lethal drop below him. But the rope held, Cochrane reached the outer wall and spent an uncomfortable moment or two perched on the iron spikes while he paid out another length of rope down the outside of the wall and made it fast at the top. He began his descent, but he was still
20
feet above the ground when the thin rope snapped in his hands and he fell heavily on his back, knocking himself unconscious. He lay there, first unconscious and then stunned, for a considerable time. Though there were no bones broken, he was badly bruised and sprained, managing only to crawl to the house of a former servant of the family before daybreak.
⁶⁷

From London, he made his way to Holly Hill, a house he had taken in Hampshire, and wrote to the Speaker of the Commons that he proposed shortly to exercise his right as a member to assume his place on the opposition benches. Meanwhile a rash of official posters began to appear all over Westminster,

Escaped from the King's Bench Prison, on Monday the 6th day of March, instant, Lord Cochrane. He is about five feet eleven inches in height, thin and narrow chested, with sandy hair and full eyes, red whiskers and eyebrows. Whoever will apprehend and secure Lord Cochrane in any of His Majesty's gaols in the kingdom shall have a reward of three hundred guineas from William Jones, Marshal of the King's Bench.
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Like most literary productions of its kind, the "wanted" notice was curiously inaccurate. Cochrane was six feet two inches tall and impressively broad. He was reported to have been sighted in London, Hastings, Jersey, and France. He was also said to have gone mad and hidden himself somewhere in the prison. In fact, he appeared in the House of Commons on
21
March, dressed in his usual grey pantaloons and frogged greatcoat, and duly took his place on the benches.

He demanded the right to speak, but was told that he could not do so until he had taken the oath as a new member, and that he could not take the oath until the writ for the election had been fetched from the Crown Office in Chancery Lane.

Shortly before four o'clock in the afternoon, it was not the writ but a Bow Street runner and tipstaves who entered the House. The runner tapped Cochrane on the shoulder and invited him to return to the King's Bench prison. Cochrane turned on him angrily, demanding by what right he presumed to arrest a member of the Commons in the palace of Westminster itself.

"My Lord," said the runner, "my authority is the public proclamation of the Marshal of the King's Bench Prison, offering a reward for your apprehension."

"I neither acknowledge, nor will yield to, any such authority," Cochrane announced grandly. "I am here to resume my seat as one of the representatives of the City of Westminster, and any who dares to touch me will do so at their peril."

Two of the tipstaves seized his arm but, evidently using his height and strength, Cochrane shook them off and repeated his warning. When the runner reiterated that he had "better go quietly", Cochrane assured him he had no intention of going at all. The other members of the House were then treated to the unusual sight of a spirited brawl as tipstaves and constables fell upon Cochrane and at length hoisted him, struggling, on to their shoulders to carry him horizontally from the House as though they had been pall-bearers. The Bow Street runner was convinced that Cochrane might have a gun hidden in his clothing, so he was first taken to a committee room and searched. He had no gun, but there was another "weapon" in his pocket in the form of a box of snuff. When asked why he carried it, Cochrane said sourly, "If I had thought of that before, you should have had it in your eyes!"

Accordingly he was credited by the ministry with carrying substances to blind and disfigure those who crossed his path, the snuff soon being reported as a bottle of vitriol.
⁶⁹

For the next three weeks, Cochrane was confined in the so-called Strong Room of the Kin
g's Bench, a windowless and unf
urnished cell of the sort which had been the death of one of the victims of the
1729
murder trials. It was subterranean and the dampness of its bare walls was in no way palliated by either heating or ventilation. After twenty-six days of confinement he was examined by a doctor who reported that Cochrane was experiencing severe chest pains. "His pulse is low, his hands cold, and he has many symptoms of a person about to have typhus or putrid fever. These symptoms are, in my opinion, produced by the stagnant air of the Strong Room."
⁷⁰

Cochrane was removed from the Strong Room, though still closely guarded. Apart from other considerations, he was hardly in any condition to attempt another escape so that the practical advantage of keeping him in the windowless cell was minimal. On
20
June
1815,
as the first news of Waterloo and of England's final deliverance from Napoleon spread through London, the term of imprisonment expired. Cochrane would be freed on payment of his fine of
£1000.
As a token of his innocence he at first refused to pay. But after a fortnight's defiance, the advice of his friends prevailed and he handed his note for the amount to the Marshal of the King's Bench. The note, which still remains in the possession of the Bank of England, bore a remarkable endorsement.

My health having suffered by long and close confinement, and my oppressors being resolved t
o deprive me of property or lif
e, I submit to robbery to protect myself from murder, in the hope that I shall live to bring the delinquents to justice.
⁷¹

As a matter of fact, the authorities had not finished with him. He was in due course tried at Surrey Assizes, at Guildford, for escaping from prison in March
1815.
The trial was considerably delayed and took place on
17
August
1816.
Accompanied by Burdett and other Westminster Radicals, Cochrane drove int
o Guildford in a post-chaise at
8
a.m. He found the court crowded with spectators of every class. So far as the law was concerned, the defence, which he presented himself, was no defence. He used the occasion to denounce the "crimes" of the Marshal of the King's Bench and accused him of doing nothing whatever to earn the
£3590
a year which the state paid him. In his address to the jury, Cochrane swore, "The Marshal himself has repeatedly been accessory to more glaring violations of the sentence of the Court than that for which he now prosecutes me." The Marshal had taken bribes from prisoners for allowing them out of the gaol, while ill-treating those who would not acquiesce. But such a man, "instead of being punished for his violence and brutality, imprudently calls upon a Jury of his country to heap fresh oppressions on the head of his persecuted victim". It was spirited stuff, though har
dly rele
vant to the charge. The jury returned the inevitable verdict, though with a qualification. "We take the liberty of saying, the punishment he has already received is quite adequate to the offence of which he was guilty." There was applause in the court at this but the jurors received no thanks from Cochrane. He rose angrily in his place and reiterated his now familiar words: "I want justice, not mercy!"

As it happened, the jury's recommendation was ignored and a fine of
£100
was imposed. Cochrane flatly refused to pay it and was taken into custody. Almost at once, the electors of Westminster held a meeting and organised a subscription to raise the money. This was quickly accomplished and, despite himself, Cochrane was free once more.
⁷²

His popularity among his constituents and his Scottish friends, who had long maintained his innocence, was never greater. While he fought his own battle, Cochrane remembered his obligations to them as well, though the two interests often coincided. On the very evening of his release from the King's Bench,
3
July
1815,
Cochrane took his seat in the House of Commons, which was debating an additional pension of
£6000
a year to be given to the Prince Regent's brother, the Duke of Cumberland, on his marriage to Princess Frederica, daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Of all the Regent's brothers, Cumberland was regarded as the most loathsome. According to Creevey, he had fathered a child, "Captain Garth", on his own sister, the Princess Sophia. He was also rumoured to have murdered his valet, and said to have indecently assaulted the wife of the Lord Chancellor. However unjust such accusations may have been, they reflect the estimate of many of his contemporaries. It was the birth of the Princess Victoria which was to save England from having Cumberland as King in
1837.

Lord Castlereagh had urged the Commons that the extra
£6000
was a well-merited addition to the
£20,000
income which the Duke already enjoyed. The bill had passed its first reading by a majority of seventeen, and its second reading by twelve votes. At the third and final reading, the thought of voting the extra money to Cumberland was too much for several of the ministry's supporters to stomach. There was to be a tied vote, but still the Speaker's casting vote would have to go in favour of the bill and that would see it through. It was at this point that Cochrane, in the familiar grey pantaloons and frogged greatcoat, appeared and demanded to be sworn in as member for Westminster. To the dismay of Castlereagh, it was now in Cochrane's power to decide the outcome, which he proceeded to do, voting with the Radicals and Whigs to deny Cumberland his marriage allowance.
⁷³

This spirited return to politics was greeted with anger by the ministry and delight by the opposition. But Cochrane had a more elaborate plan in mind, which he worked out during the parliamentary recess with the aid of Cobbett. His chance came on
5
March
1816
when he moved in the Commons the impeachment of Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough on charges of "partiality, misrepresentation, injustice, and oppression". He had already published an open
Letter to Lord Ellenborough,
condemning his conduct of the Stock Exchange trial. Now the protests took the form of a parliamentary accusation.

Cochrane, seconded by Burdett, had not the smallest hope of bringing the impeachment about. For all that, the defence of Ellenborough by the Solicitor-General and his colleagues was of the feeblest. They spoke of the necessity of maintaining "public confidence in the purity of the administration of justice", and the desirability that "the course of that administration may continue the admiration of the world". The alternative, as the Solicitor-General explained, was unthinkable. "The public opinion of the excellence of our laws will be inevitably weakened - and to weaken public opinion is to weaken justice herself."

Burdett, rising in Cochrane's defence, remarked that, "Such language would operate against the investigation of any charges whatever against any judge." But when the vote was taken, eighty-nine members of the House voted against the investigation and impeachment. Only Cochrane and Burdett were in favour. Cochrane himself was undismayed, and indeed hardly surprised, but he had won an important point.

It gives me great satisfaction to think that the vote which has been come to has been come to without any of my charges being disproved. Whatever may be done with them now, they will find their way to posterity, and posterity will form a different judgment concerning them than that which has been adopted by this House.
⁷⁴

He was to be vindicated, at least insofar as Victorian jurists, including Lord Campbell in his
Lives
of
the Chief Justices,
deplored Ellenborough's conduct.

The trial coming on before Lord Ellenborough, the noble and learned Judge, being himself persuaded of the guilt of all the defendants, used his best endeavours that they should all be convicted. . . . The following day, in summing up, prompted no doubt by the conclusion of his own mind, he laid special emphasis on every circumstance which might raise a suspicion against Lord Cochrane, and elaborately explained away whatever at first sight appeared favourable to the gallant officer. In consequence the Jury found a verdict of GUILTY against all the defendants.
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