Cochrane the Dauntless

by David Cordingly

  A postboy was despatched with the letter to Deal, and De Berenger summoned a post chaise and horses to take him to London. Fog shrouding the southern counties prevented Admiral Foley from using the visual telegraph system to communicate with the Admiralty but De Berenger made sure that he spread the news wherever he changed horses and he lavishly tipped grooms and coachmen with gold napoleons. On reaching the outskirts of London he transferred to a hackney carriage and drove to Lord Cochrane’s house in Green Street. Cochrane was not there. He had breakfasted with Andrew Cochrane-Johnstone and Richard Butt, his stockbroker, and then gone on to Mr King’s factory in Cock Lane, near the old Smithfield Market, to check on the progress of his convoy lamp. He had been there a short while when his footman, Thomas Dewman, arrived and told him that an army officer was at his house and wanted to see him urgently. Cochrane presumed the officer must have news of his brother, Major William Cochrane, who was serving with Wellington’s army in Spain and so hurried back to Green Street where he was surprised to find De Berenger waiting for him. De Berenger told him that he was in serious financial difficulties and was currently a debtor in the King’s Bench Prison. He begged for a passage to America on the Tonnant so that he could escape from his creditors. Cochrane said that he could not take him as a passenger on the warship without the Admiralty’s permission. De Berenger then announced that he must change out of his military uniform and asked for the loan of a civilian hat and overcoat. He explained that if he returned to the King’s Bench Prison in uniform the warden or his servants would suspect that he was planning to abscond and the privilege which allowed debtors some liberty of movement would be withdrawn. Cochrane lent him a black coat and an old hat, and De Berenger left the house with his uniform rolled up in a towel.

  The rumours of Napoleon’s death were already circulating in London and were causing considerable excitement on the Stock Exchange. The price of shares, particularly the government stock known as Omnium, began to rise sharply from 27½ to 30.11 By midday the Lord Mayor had still received no official news to confirm the rumours but any doubts which people might have had were dispelled when a coach and horses was driven across London Bridge and down Cheapside. The coach was decorated with laurel leaves and was carrying three French officers wearing white cockades in their hats and scattering papers inscribed with the words ‘Vive le Roi! Vivent les Bourbons!’. By the afternoon the price of Omnium had risen from 30 to 32½. By the morning of the next day, 22 February, there was still no official confirmation of Napoleon’s death and the Omnium share price dropped down to 27½ again.

  As soon as it became clear that the news of Napoleon’s death was a hoax, the Stock Exchange appointed a committee to carry out an investigation. They soon discovered that six people had made large sums of money by selling Omnium shares at the height of the boom on the 21st. Andrew Cochrane-Johnstone had sold Consols and Omnium shares to the value of £510,000; Richard Butt had sold Consols and Omnium to the value of £392,000; Cochrane had sold his entire holding of Omnium shares valued at £139,000; the other speculators were Stock Exchange gamblers named Holloway, Sandom and McRae and they were identified as the three men dressed as French officers who had driven the coach through the City. On 4 March the Stock Exchange committee offered a reward of £250 for the arrest of the man called Colonel Du Bourg. A few days later an anonymous informant told the committee that the foreign colonel was really De Berenger and that he had been seen entering Lord Cochrane’s house in Green Street on the day of the hoax. On learning of this Cochrane immediately drew up a sworn affidavit setting out his movements on 21 February. He described De Berenger’s visit to his house and the story which De Berenger had told him about needing to change his uniform, and he explained why he had been prepared to lend him a hat and coat. A warrant was issued for De Berenger’s arrest on 17 March and on 8 April he was arrested at the port of Leith near Edinburgh.

  In addition to De Berenger’s presence in his house on the day of the hoax, Cochrane’s sale of his Omnium shares inevitably invited suspicion that he was closely involved with the plot. The argument usually made in his defence is that he had been investing his prize money in stocks and shares for several weeks before the hoax and in the case of his Omnium shares he had given standing instructions to his stockbroker, Richard Butt, to sell if the price rose by 1 per cent. His Omnium shares had been bought at 28¼ and were sold when the price rose to 29½. He would have made double the profit if he had waited and sold when the price reached its peak of 32½. Cochrane had known Butt for several years and always maintained that he was an innocent party in the fraud. Butt had been a pay clerk in Portsmouth dockyard before becoming a speculator on the Stock Exchange. Unlike Andrew Cochrane-Johnstone, he was not in debt at the time of the hoax but was fairly prosperous. However, the very large sum which he had made by his sale of Omnium shares on 21 February was deeply suspicious and, as with Cochrane, his involvement in the scandal ruined him.

  The evidence against Cochrane continued to accumulate. When he was arrested in Scotland, De Berenger was found to have in his possession some bank notes drawn in Cochrane’s name. At around the same time a waterman called George Odell, who had been dredging for coals in the Thames near Old Swan Stairs, fished up a weighted bundle tied up with window line. The bundle contained a red uniform coat, which had been cut to pieces, together with some embroidery, a star and a silver coat of arms. This was identified by Mr Solomon, a tailor, who confirmed that it had been sold to De Berenger three days before he had masqueraded as Colonel Du Bourg. The Admiralty were watching developments closely and when the Stock Exchange committee expressed its suspicions about Cochrane’s involvement in the fraud, John Wilson Croker, the Secretary to the Admiralty, wrote to him demanding an explanation. On 22 March Cochrane replied with a letter defending his position and enclosing affidavits from his servants. The Admiralty had already appointed an acting captain to replace him as commander of the Tonnant, and on 7 April the ship set sail for Bermuda under the command of Captain Alexander Skene.12

  To add to Cochrane’s worries, his wife Kate became seriously ill during the final weeks of her pregnancy. She later recalled, ‘I was all but dead; I had a most awful confinement; I had the puerperal fever and the measles, and my child was extremely delicate.’13 She gave birth to a boy on 18 April. He was baptised Thomas Barnes Cochrane in the nearby church, St George’s, Hanover Square. Kate was too ill to attend the christening but was well looked after by their nurse, Mrs Tait, whom she described as ‘an excellent good old Scotch body’.14 Two days after the birth the newspapers announced that De Berenger, Lord Cochrane, Richard Butt, Andrew Cochrane-Johnstone, Ralph Sandom, Alexander McRae, Peter Holloway and Henry Lyte were charged with unlawfully conspiring by false news to induce the subjects of the King to believe that Napoleon Bonaparte was dead, ‘and thereby to occasion a rise in the prices of the public Government Funds’.15 They were to be tried in the Guildhall on 8 June before Lord Ellenborough, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of the King’s Bench.

  As with the court martial of Lord Gambier, the odds seemed to be weighted against Cochrane from the moment the trial began. The legal team for the defence was impressive and included William Best (later Chief Justice of the Common Pleas), James Park (later Baron Park, Chief Justice of the Court of the Exchequer) and Henry Brougham (later Lord Chancellor). There is evidence that they considered anxiously whether or not Cochrane should be separately represented so that he could in his own defence, if necessary, disassociate himself from his co-defendants. In the event this was not done, with the inevitable result that the mounting evidence pointing to the guilt of De Berenger and his uncle reflected adversely on Cochrane also. The fact that Lord Ellenborough was to judge the case was also unfortunate. He was a formidable lawyer with an impressive background. The son of a bishop, he had been educated at Charterhouse and Cambridge. He had read for the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn and as a young King’s Counsel had defended Warren Hastings. He been an MP, Attorney General and Speaker of the Hou
se of Lords. But he was also a High Tory and a notable enemy of the radicals – he had sent Cobbett and Henry Hunt to jail following trials that were politically motivated. Equally ominous for Cochrane was the fact that the Admiralty Solicitor at the trial was Germain Lavie who had acted for Lord Gambier at his court martial. Cochrane later maintained that his appointment was the result of ‘collusion between a high official at the Admiralty and the Committee of the Stock Exchange’16 although there is no evidence to prove that this was the case.

  The trial began at 9.00 a.m. at the Court of the King’s Bench at the Guildhall and such was the public interest in the case that the courtroom was crowded with spectators. Lord Ellenborough’s appearance as he made his way to his appointed place was disconcerting and somewhat alarming. He had an awkward and ungainly walk. ‘When he entered the court he was in the habit of swelling out his cheeks by blowing and compressing his lips, and you would have supposed that he was going to snort like a warhorse preparing for battle.’17 Richard Gurney opened the case for the prosecution. He began by outlining the events of 21 February: the share dealings of the defendants; the part played by the bogus French officers; and the movements of De Berenger from his arrival at Dover until his appearance at Cochrane’s house. He called as witnesses the innkeeper at Dover, the postboys, the Thames waterman who had found the uniform and the tailor who had sold it. He then turned to the case against Cochrane. He pointed out that Cochrane had borrowed money from Richard Butt and that he had gained from the sale of Omnium shares. But he concentrated on the matter of the colour of the military uniform worn by De Berenger. In his affidavit Cochrane had sworn that when De Berenger arrived at his house he was wearing a green sharpshooter’s uniform under his military greatcoat, and his servants had confirmed that this was the case. But a key prosecution witness, the hackney carriage driver William Crane, swore that De Berenger was wearing a scarlet uniform when he delivered him to the door of Cochrane’s house. If his evidence was correct then not only had Cochrane perjured himself in his sworn statement but he must be complicit in the plot because otherwise he would have been suspicious of the man masquerading in the scarlet uniform of a staff officer.

  The evidence for the prosecution was finally concluded at 10.00 p.m. After a session lasting for thirteen hours it seemed reasonable to expect that the judge would defer the hearing of the case for the defence till the next day. However, Lord Ellenborough insisted that Serjeant Best proceed because, he said, ‘there are several gentlemen attending as witnesses who, I find, cannot, without the greatest inconvenience, attend tomorrow’.18 The men in question were Lord Yarmouth, Colonel Torrens and the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Melville.19

  Mr James Park, for the defence, mildly objected to this. ‘The difficulty we feel, I am sure your Lordship will feel as strong as we do, is the fatigue owing to the length of our attendance here.’20 When Ellenborough repeated his objection to a postponement, Mr Park, was more forceful: ‘I have undergone very great fatigue, which I am able to bear; but I would submit to your Lordship the hardships upon parties who are charged with so very serious an offence as this if their case is heard at this late hour.’21 However, Lord Ellenborough insisted that they must proceed with the defence. Serjeant Best got to his feet and addressed the court. He pointed out that the charge was a grave one: ‘Upon the issue of this question depends whether the accused are to hold that situation in society which they have hitherto held, or whether they are to be completely degraded and ruined.’22 He reminded them of Lord Cochrane’s illustrious past and his services to his country and asked the jury whether such a man was likely to commit so sordid a crime. He made the point that if Cochrane was really complicit in the plot he would not have been so foolish as to meet the chief conspirator so openly at his own house; he convincingly explained away the matter of the bank notes found on De Berenger; and he showed that Cochrane had been selling stock as far back as November, and that his instructions to Butt to sell when the Omnium shares rose by 1 per cent had been given a long time before. He was less convincing on the matter of the uniform and suggested that Cochrane might have been mistaken about the colour. Cochrane was used to seeing De Berenger in his green sharpshooter’s uniform and when he wrote his affidavit three weeks later he assumed he was wearing green, ‘there being nothing to fix on his Lordship’s mind the colour of the uniform’.23

  Best was still speaking at midnight and it was 1.00 a.m. before Serjeant Park addressed the court on behalf of De Berenger. He was followed by Serjeant Pell, the defence counsel for the other defendants. The first session of the trial eventually finished at 3.00 a.m. How many of the jurors were still awake in the candle-lit gloom of the medieval hall is not recorded.

  The trial resumed at 10.00 a.m. Lord Melville and others were called to prove that it was Cochrane’s uncle Alexander who was De Berenger’s patron and that Cochrane’s only connection was in offering to ferry De Berenger across the Atlantic in the Tonnant. But the main point at issue was still whether De Berenger had arrived at Cochrane’s house in the red uniform of a staff officer or in his own green uniform of the sharpshooters. The cross-examination of a score of witnesses was followed by another long speech by Gurney pressing home his attack on the point of colour.

  Lord Ellenborough began his summing up on the afternoon of the second day. He summarised all the evidence, commenting as he proceeded, and then drew attention to the matter of De Berenger’s uniform which he clearly regarded as damning evidence:

  De Berenger stripped himself at Lord Cochrane’s. He pulled off his scarlet uniform there, and if the circumstances of its not being green did not excite Lord Cochrane’s suspicion, what did he think of the star and the medal? It became him, on discovering these, as an officer and a gentleman, to communicate his suspicions of these circumstances. Did he not ask De Berenger where he had been in this masquerade dress? It was for the jury to say whether Lord Cochrane did not know where he had been. This was not the dress of a sharpshooter, but of a mountebank. He came before Lord Cochrane fully blazoned in the costume of his crime.’24

  At 6.10 p.m. the jury retired and at 8.40 they returned with a verdict of guilty on all the defendants. At this period it was usual for there to be an interval of several days between the verdict of the jury and the delivery of the sentence which gave the defendants an opportunity to lodge an appeal. Cochrane had not been present at the trial but had spent most of his time at Mr King’s tin factory working on his convoy lamp. Considerably shaken by the verdict, he wrote to his uncle Basil, ‘All my fortitude is required to bear up against this unexpected and unmerited stroke.’25 Belatedly aware of the seriousness of the situation and realising the crucial importance of De Berenger’s uniform in the prosecution’s case, he and his defence team found a number of new witnesses in Lambeth including a butcher and a fishmonger who were able to supply sworn affidavits that De Berenger had arrived at his door wearing his green sharpshooter’s uniform. (It later emerged that Crane, the hackney coach driver, was an unreliable witness who was prepared to perjure himself for money.) However, when Cochrane presented his new evidence to Lord Ellenborough on 14 June he was informed that it was inadmissible because two of the conspirators, Andrew Cochrane-Johnstone and McRae, were not present at the hearing – they had both fled the country on hearing the verdict.

  On 20 June, Cochrane, De Berenger and the remaining defendants appeared before a panel of four judges consisting of Lord Ellenborough and Justices Le Blanc, Bailey and Dampier. Before the sentence was passed Cochrane was allowed to put his case. This he did eloquently and with considerably more restraint than his subsequent speech in the House of Commons:

  It has been my very great misfortune to be apparently implicated in the guilt of others with whom I never had any connexion, except in transactions, so far as I was apprised of them, entirely blameless. I had met Mr De Berenger in public company, but was on no terms of intimacy with him. With Mr Cochrane Johnstone I had the intercourse natural between such near relatives. Mr Butt
had voluntarily offered, without any reward, to carry on stock transactions in which thousands, as well as myself, were engaged in the face of day, without the smallest imputation of anything incorrect. The other four defendants were wholly unknown to me.’26

  He blamed De Berenger for having involved him by coming to his house but he made no comment on the part played by his uncle. He concluded, ‘I cannot feel disgraced while I know that I am guiltless. Under the influence of this sentiment I persist in the defence of my character. I have often been in situations where I had an opportunity of showing it. This is the first time, thank God, that I was ever called upon to defend it.’27

  The next day Mr Justice Le Blanc sentenced all the defendants to twelve months’ imprisonment. Cochrane and Butt were also fined £1,000, and in addition to this Cochrane and De Berenger were to stand in the pillory opposite the Royal Exchange for an hour. Cochrane was devastated. According to one eyewitness, ‘His appearance today was certainly pitiable. When the sentence was passed he stood without colour in his face, his eyes staring and without expression and it was with difficulty he left the court like a man stupefied.’28

  He was taken across London Bridge to Southwark and confined in the King’s Bench Prison which was situated on the corner of Borough Road and Borough High Street, near the more famous Marshalsea Prison. Surrounded by a very high wall topped with a line of spikes, the King’s Bench Prison was for debtors and those convicted of libel. John Wilkes, Tobias Smollett and the artist George Moreland had been inmates there, and Charles Dickens has the recklessly improvident Mr Micawber confined there for some weeks in David Copperfield. The prisoners’ rooms were on four floors of a large Georgian building which overlooked a central courtyard. Cochrane had two rooms on the top floor. He was allowed visitors but he was expected to pay for his food and his lodging. The conditions were comparatively easy for a man who had spent years enduring the rigours of life at sea and initially he seems to have been buoyed up by his belief that he was innocent and the victim of injustice. A few days after he had been committed to prison he wrote to Elizabeth Cochrane-Johnstone, the eighteen-year-old daughter of his uncle who was now a fugitive on the Continent;