In consequence of advertisements in the newspapers, offering a reward of fifty pounds for apprehending him, he was secured at Odiham, and on the 17th of February the prisoner was examined at Sir John Fielding’s office, Bow-street, where John Baldwin, who exercised the trade of a painter in different parts of America, attended, by the direction of Lord Temple. The prisoner’s conversations with Baldwin operated very materially to secure his conviction.
He had said he had taken a view of most of the dock-yards and fortifications about England, the number of ships in the navy, and had observed their weight of metal and their number of men, and had been to France two or three times to inform Silas Deane, the American envoy, of his discoveries; that Deane gave him bills to the amount of three hundred pounds, and letters of recommendation to a merchant in the city, which he had burned, lest they should lead to a discovery. He informed Baldwin further, that he had instructed a tinman’s apprentice at Canterbury to make him a tin canister, which he carried to Portsmouth, where he hired a lodging at one Mrs. Boxall’s, and tried his preparations for setting fire to the dock-yard. After recounting the manner of preparing matches and combustibles, he said that, on the 6th of the preceding December, he got into the hemp-house, and having placed a candle in a wooden box, and a tin canister over it, and sprinkled turpentine over some of the hemp, he proceeded to the rope-house, where he placed a bottle of turpentine among the loose hemp, which he sprinkled also with turpentine; and having laid matches, made of paper daubed over with powdered charcoal and gun powder diluted with water, and other combustibles, about the place, he returned to his lodgings. These matches were so contrived as to continue burning for twenty-four hours, so that by cutting them into proper lengths he might provide for his escape, knowing the precise time when the fire would reach the combustibles. He had hired lodgings in two other houses to which he also intended to set fire, that the engines might not be all employed together in quenching the conflagration at the dock. On the 7th he again went to the hemp-house, intending to set it on fire; but he was unable to effect his object, owing to a halfpenny-worth of common house matches that he had bought not being sufficiently dry. This disappointment, he said, rendered him exceedingly uneasy, and he went from the hemp-house to the rope-house, and set fire to the matches he had placed there. His uneasiness was increased because he could not return to his lodging, where he had left a bundle containing an “Ovid’s Metamorphoses,” a “Treatise on War and making Fireworks,” a “Justin,” a pistol, and a French passport, in which his real name was inserted; and also because he could not fire them too, in accordance with his original plan.
When he had set fire to the rope-house he proceeded towards London, deeply regretting his failure in attempting to fire the other building, and was strongly inclined to discharge a pistol into the windows of the women who had sold him the bad matches. He jumped into a cart, and gave the woman who drove it sixpence to induce her to drive quick; and when he had passed the sentinels, he observed that the fire had made so rapid a progress that the elements seemed in a blaze. At about ten o’clock the next morning he arrived at Kingston, and having remained there until dusk, at that time he proceeded on towards London in the stage. Soon after his arrival, he went to the house of the gentleman on whom the bills had been drawn, but having related his story, he was received with distrust, and therefore went away. On his reaching Hammersmith he wrote back to the merchant, saying that he was going to Bristol; and he added, that “the handy works he meant to perform there would soon be known to the public.” Soon after his arrival in Bristol, he set fire to several houses, which were all burning at one time and the flames were not extinguished until damage to the amount of 15,000l. had been caused. He also set fire to some combustibles which he had placed among the oil-barrels on the quay; but in this instance without the effect which he desired.
His trial commenced on the 6th of March, 1777, at Winchester Castle, when witnesses were produced from different parts of the country, who proved the whole of his confession to Baldwin to be true, and gave other evidence of his guilt.
When called upon for his defence, he complained of the reports circulated to his prejudice; and observed, that it was easy for such a man as Baldwin to feign the story he had told, and for a number of witnesses to be collected to give it support. He declared that God alone knew whether he was, or was not, the person who set fire to the dock-yard; and begged it might be attended to how far Baldwin ought to be credited: that if he had art enough, by lies, to insinuate anything out of him, his giving it to the knowledge of others was a breach of confidence; and if he would speak falsely to deceive him, he might also impose upon a jury.
The learned judge having delivered his charge to the jury, after a moment’s consideration, they returned a verdict of Guilty. The sentence of death was immediately passed upon the prisoner, and he was ordered for execution on the 10th of March following, when he was hanged within sight of the ruins which he had occasioned.
His body for several years hung in chains on Blockhouse Point, on the opposite side of the harbour to the town.
To these particulars we shall add his confession. On the morning after his condemnation he informed the turnkey, of his own accord, that he felt an earnest desire to confess his crime, and to lay the history of his life before the public; and that by discovering the whole of his unaccountable plots and treasonable practices, he might make some atonement to his injured country for the wrongs he had done it, of which he was now truly sensible.
This request being made known to the Earl of Sandwich, then first lord of the admiralty, that nobleman directed Sir John Fielding to send down proper persons to take and attest his confession.
He said that the diabolical scheme of setting fire to the dock-yards and the shipping originated in his own wicked mind, on the very breaking out of the rebellion in America; and he had no peace until he proceeded to put it in practice. The more he thought of it, the more practicable it appeared; and with this wicked intent he crossed the Atlantic. He had no sooner landed than he proceeded to take surveys of the different dock-yards; and he then went to Paris, and had several conferences with Silas Deane, the rebel minister to the court of France. Deane was astonished at Hill’s proposals, which embraced the destruction of the English dock-yards and the shipping; but finding the projector an enthusiast in the cause of America, and a man of daring spirit, he gradually listened to his schemes, and supplied him with money to enable him to carry them into execution, procured him a French passport, and gave him a letter of credit on a merchant in London. He then confirmed the evidence given against him, and in particular that of the witness Baldwin; and he added, that had he been successful in his attempt upon Portsmouth and Plymouth dock-yards, he should have been rewarded with a commission in the American navy.
FRANCIS MERCIER, alias LOUIS DE BUTTE. EXECUTED FOR MURDER.
THE case of this criminal was attended by circumstances of very great atrocity. The malefactor and his unfortunate victim were natives of France.
The unfortunate Jacques Mondroyte was a jeweller and watchmaker of Paris, and had made a journey to London, in order to find a market for different articles of his manufacture. His stock consisted of curious and costly trinkets, worth, as was computed, a few thousand pounds. He took lodgings in Prince’s-street, and engaged Mercier, who had resided some time in London, as his interpreter, on a liberal gratuity, and treated him as a friend.
It appeared that the ungrateful villain had long determined upon murdering his employer, in order to possess himself of the whole of his valuable property. To this diabolical end, he gave orders for an instrument to be made of a singular construction, which was a principal means of leading to his discovery as the murderer. It was shaped somewhat like an Indian tomahawk; and this instrument of death he concealed until an opportunity offered to effect his detestable purpose.
One day, his employer, Monsieur Mondroyte, invited him to spend the evening: they played at cards, sang some French songs, and took a cheerful glass, but with that moderation peculiarly observable among Frenchmen; and a late hour having arrived, the kind heart of the host forbade his dismissing his friend without