In spite of their comeliness and complaisant manners, the lightness of their wit and the prestige of their success, Hertford heard murmurs that the young Cowpers were too lucky by half, and that the Cowper interest was dangerously powerful in the borough. It was averred that the Cowpers were making unfair capital out of liberal professions: and when the Hertford Whigs sent the father and son to the House of Commons, the vanquished party cursed in a breath the Dutch usurper and his obsequious followers.
It was resolved to damage the Cowpers:—by fair means or foul, to render them odious in their native town.
Ere long the malcontents found a good cry.
Scarcely less odious to the Hertford Tories than the Cowpers themselves was an influential Quaker of the town, named Stout, who actively supported the Cowper interest. A man of wealth and good repute, this follower of George Fox exerted himself enthusiastically in the election contest of 1695: and in acknowledgment of his services the Cowpers honored him with their personal friendship. Sir William Cowper asked him to dine at Hertford Castle—the baronet's country residence; Sir William's sons made calls on his wife and daughter. Of course these attentions from Cowpers to 'the Shaker' were offensive to the Tory magnates of the place: and they vented their indignation in whispers, that the young men never entered Stout's house without kissing his pretty daughter.
While these rumors were still young, Mr. Stout died leaving considerable property to his widow, and to his only child—the beauteous Sarah; and after his death the intercourse between the two families became yet more close and cordial. The lawyers advised the two ladies about the management of their property: and the baronet gave them invitations to his London House in Hatton Garden, as well as to Hertford Castle. The friendship had disastrous consequences. Both the brothers were very fascinating men—men, moreover, who not only excelled in the art of pleasing, but who also habitually exercised it. From custom, inclination, policy, they were very kind to the mother and daughter; probably paying the latter many compliments which they would never have uttered had they been single men. Coming from an unmarried man the speech is often significant of love, which on the lips of a husband is but the language of courtesy. But, unfortunately, Miss ('Mistress' is her style in the report of a famous trial) Sarah Stout fell madly in love with Spencer Cowper notwithstanding the impossibility of marriage.
Not only did she conceive a dangerous fondness for him, but she openly expressed it—by speech and letters. She visited him in the Temple, and persecuted him with her embarrassing devotion whenever he came to Hertford. It was a trying position for a young man not thirty years of age, with a wife to whom he was devotedly attached, and a family whose political influence in his native town might be hurt by publication of the girl's folly. Taking his elder brother into his confidence, he asked what course he ought to pursue. To withdraw totally and abruptly from the two ladies, would be cruel to the daughter, insulting to the mother; moreover, it would give rise to unpleasant suspicions and prejudicial gossip in the borough. It was decided that Spencer must repress the girl's advances—must see her loss frequently—and, by a reserved and frigid manner, must compel her to assume an appearance of womanly discretion. But the plan failed.
At the opening of the year 1699 she invited him to take up his quarters in her mother's house, when he came to Hertford at the next Spring Assizes. This invitation he declined, saying that he had arranged to take his brother's customary lodgings in the house of Mr. Barefoot, in the Market Place, but with manly consideration he promised to call upon her. "I am glad," Sarah wrote to him on March 5, 1699, "you have not quite forgot there is such a person as I in being: but I am willing to shut my eyes and not see anything that looks like unkindness in you, and rather content myself with what excuses you are pleased to make, than be inquisitive into what I must not know: I am sure the winter has been too unpleasant for me to desire the continuance of it: and I wish you were to endure the sharpness of it but for one short hour, as I have done for many long nights and days, and then I believe it would move that rocky heart of yours that can be so thoughtless of me as you are."
On Monday, March 13, following the date of the words just quoted, Spencer Cowper rode into Hertford, alighted at Mrs. Stout's house, and dined with the ladies. Having left the house after dinner, in order that he might attend to some business, he returned in the evening and supped with the two women. Supper over, Mrs. Stout retired for the night, leaving her daughter and the young barrister together. No sooner had the mother left the room, than a distressing scene ensued.
Unable to control or soothe her, Spencer gently divided the clasp of her hands, and having freed himself from her embrace, hastened from the room and abruptly left the house. He slept at his lodgings; and the next morning he was horror-struck on hearing that Sarah Stout's body had been found drowned in the mill-stream behind her old home. That catastrophe had actually occurred. Scarcely had the young barrister reached the Market Place, when the miserable girl threw herself into the stream from which her lifeless body was picked on the following morning. At the coroner's inquest which ensued, Spencer Cowper gave his evidence with extreme caution, withholding every fact that could be injurious to Sarah's reputation; and the jury returned a verdict that the deceased gentlewoman had killed herself whilst in a state of insanity.
In deep dejection Spencer Cowper continued the journey of the circuit.
But the excitement of the public was not allayed by the inquest and subsequent funeral. It was rumored that it was no case of self-murder, but a case of murder by the barrister, who had strangled his dishonored victim, and had then thrown her into the river. Anxious to save their sect from the stigma of suicide the Quakers concurred with the Tories in charging the young man with a hideous complication of crimes. The case against Spencer was laid before Chief Justice Holt, who at first dismissed the accusation as absurd, but was afterwards induced to commit the suspected man for trial; and in the July of 1699 the charge actually came before a jury at the Hertford Assizes. Four prisoners—Spencer Cowper, two attorneys, and a law-writer—were placed in the dock on the charge of murdering Sarah Stout.
On the present occasion there is no need to recapitulate the ridiculous evidence and absurd misconduct of the prosecution in this trial; though criminal lawyers who wish to know what unfairness and irregularities were permitted in such inquiries in the seventeenth century cannot do better than to peruse the full report of the proceedings, which may be found in every comprehensive legal library. In this place it is enough to say that though the accusation was not sustained by a shadow of legal testimony, the prejudice against the prisoners, both on the part of a certain section of the Hertford residents and the presiding judge, Mr. Baron Hatsel, was such that the verdict for acquittal was a disappointment to many who heard it proclaimed by the foreman of the jury. Narcissus Luttrell, indeed, says that the verdict was "to the satisfaction of the auditors;" but in this statement the diarist was unquestionably wrong, so far as the promoters of the prosecution were concerned. Instead of accepting the decision without demur, they attempted to put the prisoners again on their trial by the obsolete process of "appeal of murder;" but this endeavor proving abortive, the case was disposed of, and the prisoners' minds set at rest.
The barrister who was thus tried on a capital charge, and narrowly escaped a sentence that would have consigned him to an ignominious death, resumed his practice in the law courts, sat in the House of Commons and rose to be a judge in the Court of Common Pleas. It is said that he "presided on many trials for murder; ever cautious and mercifully inclined—remembering the great peril which he himself had undergone."
The same writer who aspersed Somers with her unchaste thoughts, and reiterated the charge of bigamy against Lord Chancellor Cowper, did not omit to give a false and malicious version to the incidents which had acutely wounded the fine sensibilities of the younger Cowper. But enough notice has been taken of the 'New Atalantis' in this chapter. To that repulsive book we refer those readers who may wish to peruse Mrs. Manley's account of Sarah Stout's death.
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