Assassination of Spencer Perceval

Background

Biography

Spencer Perceval was born on 1 November 1762, the second son from the second marriage of

Perceval's politics were highly conservative, and he acquired a reputation for his attacks on radicalism. As a junior prosecuting counsel in the trials of Thomas Paine and John Horne Tooke, he was noticed by senior politicians in the ruling Pitt ministry. In 1796, having refused the post of Chief Secretary for Ireland,^[5] Perceval was elected to Parliament as the Tory member for Northampton, and won acclaim in 1798 with a speech defending William Pitt's government against attacks by the radicals Charles James Fox and Francis Burdett. He was generally seen as a rising star in his party; his short stature and slight build earned him the nickname "Little P".^[2]

Following Pitt's resignation in 1801, Perceval served as

When Pitt died in 1806 his government was succeeded by the cross-party "Ministry of All the Talents", under Lord Grenville.^[8] Perceval remained in opposition during this short-lived ministry,^[5] but when the Duke of Portland formed a new Tory administration in March 1807, Perceval took office as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.^[9] Portland was elderly and ailing, and on his resignation in October 1809, Perceval succeeded him as First Lord of the Treasury—the formal title by which prime ministers were then known—after a wounding internecine leadership struggle.^[2] In addition to his duties as head of the government he retained the Chancellorship, largely because he could find no minister of appropriate stature who would accept the office.^[10]

Troubled times

Perceval's government was weakened by the refusals to serve of former ministers such as

Early in 1812 agitation for repeal of the Orders in Council increased. After riots in Manchester in April, Perceval consented to a House of Commons enquiry into the operation of the Orders; hearings began in May.^[27] Perceval was expected to attend the session on 11 May 1812; among the crowd in the lobby awaiting his arrival was a Liverpool merchant named John Bellingham.^[28]

John Bellingham

Early life

John Bellingham was born in about 1770, in the county of Huntingdonshire. His father, also named John, was a land agent and painted miniature portraits. His mother Elizabeth was from a well-to-do Huntingdonshire family. In 1779, John senior became mentally ill, and, after confinement in an asylum, died in 1780 or 1781. The family were then provided for by William Daw, Elizabeth's brother-in-law, a prosperous lawyer who arranged Bellingham's appointment as an officer cadet on board the East India Company's ship Hartwell. En route to India the ship mutinied, and was wrecked off the coast of the Cape Verde islands; Bellingham survived and returned home.^[29] Daw then helped him to set up in business as a tin plate manufacturer in London, but after a few years the business failed and Bellingham was declared bankrupt in 1794.^[30] Bellingham appears to have escaped debtors' prison, perhaps through the further intervention of Daw. Chastened by this experience, he decided to settle down and obtained a post as a book-keeper with a firm engaged in trade with Russia.^[29] Bellingham worked hard, and was sufficiently regarded by his employers to be appointed in 1800 as the firm's resident representative in Arkhangelsk, Russia. On his return home, he set up his own trading business and moved to Liverpool. In 1803, he married Mary Neville from Dublin.^[31]

In Russia

In 1804 Bellingham returned to Archangel to supervise a major commercial venture, accompanied by Mary and their infant son.

Bellingham's presence in the House of Commons lobby on 11 May caused no particular suspicion; he had made several recent visits, sometimes asking journalists to confirm specific ministers' identities.^[50][51] Bellingham's activities earlier that day did not overtly indicate a man preparing desperate measures.^[52] He had spent the morning writing letters and visiting his wife's business partner, Mary Stevens, who was in London at the time. In the afternoon he had accompanied his landlady and her son on a visit to the European Museum, in the St James's district of London. From there he made his way alone to the Palace of Westminster, arriving in the lobby shortly before five o'clock.^[53][54]

In the House, as the session began at 4:30 pm, the Whig MP Henry Brougham, a leading opponent of the Orders, drew attention to Perceval's absence and remarked that he ought to be there. A messenger was sent to fetch Perceval from Downing Street, but met him in Parliament Street (Perceval having decided to walk and dispense with his usual carriage) on his way to the House, where he arrived at about 5:15.^[55] As Perceval entered the lobby, he was confronted by Bellingham who, drawing a pistol, shot the prime minister in the chest. Perceval staggered forward a few steps and exclaimed, "I am murdered!" before falling face down at the feet of William Smith, the MP for Norwich. (It was also variously reported Perceval had said, "Murder" or, "Oh my God".) Smith only realised that the victim was Perceval when he turned the body face upwards,^[56][57] having initially thought it was his friend William Wilberforce, an MP for Yorkshire, who had been shot.^[58] By the time he had been carried into the adjoining Speaker's quarters and propped up on a table with his feet on two chairs, Perceval was senseless, although there was still a faint pulse. When a surgeon arrived a few minutes later, the pulse had stopped, and Perceval was declared dead.^[59]

In the pandemonium that followed, Bellingham sat quietly on a bench as Perceval was carried into the Speaker's quarters. In the lobby, such was the confusion that, according to a witness, had Bellingham "walked quietly out into the street, he would have escaped, and the committer of the murder would never have been known".^[60] As it was, an official who had seen the shooting identified Bellingham, who was seized, disarmed, manhandled and searched. He remained calm, submitting to his captors without a struggle.^[61] When asked to explain his actions, Bellingham replied that he was rectifying a denial of justice on the part of the government.^[62]

The Speaker ordered that Bellingham be transferred to the

Reports of the assassination spread quickly; in his history of the times, Arthur Bryant records the crude delight with which the news was received by hungry workers who had received nothing but woe from Perceval's government.^[66] In his prison cell, Cobbett understood their feelings; the shooting had "ridded them of one whom they looked upon as the leader among those whom they thought totally bent on the destruction of their liberties".^[67] The scenes outside the Palace of Westminster as Bellingham was taken out for transfer to Newgate were consistent with this mood; Samuel Romilly, the law reformer and MP for Wareham,^[68] heard from the assembled crowd "the most savage expressions of joy and exultation ... accompanied with regret that others, and particularly the attorney general, had not shared the same fate".^[69] The throng surged around the hackney coach carrying Bellingham; many tried to shake his hand, others mounted the coach-box and had to be beaten off with whips.^[70] Bellingham was hustled back into the building and kept there until the disorder had died down sufficiently for him to be moved, with a full military escort.^[70]

Among the governing classes there were initial fears that the assassination might be part of a general

The regard in which Perceval was held by his peers was made evident in an anonymous 1812 poem, "Universal Sympathy, or, The Martyr'd Statesman":[74]

Such was his private, such his public life,
That all who differ'd in polemic strife,
Or varied in opinion with his plan,
Agreed with one accord to love the man.

Proceedings

Preliminaries

An

When Bellingham received news of his forthcoming trial he asked Harmer to arrange for him to be represented in court by Brougham and Peter Alley, the latter an Irish lawyer with a reputation for flamboyance. Confident of his acquittal, Bellingham refused to discuss the case further with Harmer, and spent the afternoon and evening making notes. After drinking a glass of porter, he went to bed and slept soundly.^[83]

Trial

Bellingham's trial began at the Old Bailey on Friday 15 May 1812, under the presiding judge

After Bellingham had entered a not guilty plea, Alley asked for a postponement to allow him time to locate witnesses who could attest to the prisoner's insanity. This was opposed by Gibbs as a mere ploy to delay justice; Mansfield concurred, and the trial proceeded.[88] Gibbs then summarised the prisoner's business activities before meeting misfortune in Russia—"whether through his own misconduct or by the justice or injustice of that country, I know not".^[89] He recounted Bellingham's unsuccessful efforts to obtain redress and the consequent growth of a desire for revenge.^[90]

Having described the shooting, Gibbs dismissed the possibility of insanity, maintaining that Bellingham was, at the time of the deed, fully in control of his actions.^[91] Numerous eyewitnesses testified to what they had seen in the Commons lobby. The court also heard from a tailor who, shortly before the attack had, on Bellingham's instructions, modified the latter's coat by adding a special inside pocket, in which Bellingham had concealed his pistols.^[92][93]

When Bellingham rose, he thanked the attorney general for rejecting the "insanity" strategy: "I think it is far more fortunate that such a plea ... should have been unfounded, than it should have existed in fact".^[94] He began his defence by asserting that "all the miseries which it is possible for human nature to endure" had fallen on him.^[95] He then read the petition that he had sent to the Prince Regent, and recalled his fruitless dealings with various government agencies. In his view the principal blame lay not with "that truly amiable and highly lamented individual, Mr Perceval", but with Leveson-Gower, the ambassador in St Petersburg who he felt had originally denied him justice, and who he said deserved the shot rather than the eventual victim.^[96]

Bellingham's main witnesses were Ann Billett and her friend, Mary Clarke, both of whom testified to his history of derangement, and Catherine Figgins, a servant in Bellingham's lodgings. She had found him recently confused, but otherwise an honest and admirable lodger.^[97] As she stood down, Alley informed the court that two more witnesses had arrived from Liverpool. However, when they saw Bellingham, they realised that he was not the man to whose derangement they had come to attest and withdrew.^[98] Mansfield then began his summing up, during the course of which he clarified the law: "The single question is whether at the time this act was committed, he possessed a sufficient degree of understanding to distinguish good from evil, right from wrong".^[99] The judge advised the jury before they retired that the evidence showed Bellingham to be "in every respect a full and competent judge of all his actions".^[100]

Verdict and sentence

The jury retired, and within fifteen minutes returned with a guilty verdict. Bellingham appeared surprised but, from Thomas Hodgson's contemporary trial account, was calm, "with[out] any demonstrations of that concern which the awfulness of his situation was calculate to produce".^[101] Asked by the court clerk if he had anything to say, he remained silent.^[102]

The judge then read the sentence, Hodgson records, "in a most solemn and affecting manner, which bathed many of the auditors in tears".^[101] First, he damned the crime "as odious and abominable in the eyes of God as it is hateful and abhorrent to the feelings of man".^[101] He reminded the prisoner of the short time, "a very short time",^[103] that remained for him to seek for mercy in another world, and then pronounced the sentence of death itself: "You shall be hanged by the neck until you be dead, your body to be dissected and anatomized".^[104] The entire trial had lasted less than eight hours.^[104]

Execution

Bellingham's execution was fixed for the morning of Monday 18 May.

Large crowds gathered outside Newgate Prison on 18 May; a force of troops stood by, since warnings had been received of a "Rescue Bellingham" movement.[109] The crowd was calm and restrained, as was Bellingham when he appeared at the scaffold shortly before 8 o'clock. Hodgson records that Bellingham mounted the steps "with the utmost celerity ... his tread was bold and firm ... no indication of trembling, faltering, or irresolution appeared".^[110] Bellingham was then blindfolded, the rope fastened, and a final prayer was said by the chaplain. As the clock struck eight the trap door was released, and Bellingham dropped to his death. Cobbett, still incarcerated in Newgate, observed the crowd's reactions: "anxious looks ... half-horrified countenances ... mournful tears ... unanimous blessings".^[111] In accordance with the court's sentence, the body was cut down and sent to St Bartholomew's Hospital for dissection.^[112] In what the press described as "morbid sensationalism", Bellingham's clothes were sold for high prices to members of the public.^[113]

Aftermath

On 15 May, the House of Commons voted for the erection of a monument to the assassinated prime minister in Westminster Abbey. Later, memorials were placed in Lincoln's Inn and within Perceval's Northampton constituency.^[114] There is also a memorial to Perceval in St Luke's Church, Charlton, where he was buried, in the form of a bust and his brother's hatchment with the Perceval's coat of arms.^[115]

On 8 June, the Regent appointed Lord Liverpool to head a new Tory administration.

Linklater cites Perceval's greatest achievement as his insistence on keeping Wellington's army in the field, a policy which helped to turn the tide in the Napoleonic Wars decisively in Britain's favour.[119] Despite this, with the passage of time Perceval's reputation faded; Charles Dickens considered him "a third-rate politician scarcely fit to carry Lord Chatham's crutch".^[120] In due course, little but the fact of his assassination lingered in public memory. As the bicentenary of the shooting approached, Perceval was described in newspapers as "the prime minister that history forgot".^[121][122]

The justice of Bellingham's conviction was first questioned by Brougham, who condemned the trial as "the greatest disgrace to English justice".

In 1828, The Times reported that Cornish industrialist landowner John Williams the Third (1753–1841) received a dream warning of Perceval's assassination on 2 or 3 May 1812, nearly ten days before the event, "correct in every detail".^[129] Perceval himself had a series of dreams culminating on 10 May with one of his own death, which he had while spending the night at the house of the Earl of Harrowby. He told the Earl of his dream, and the Earl tried to persuade Perceval not to attend Parliament that day, but Perceval refused to be scared off by "a mere dream" and headed for Westminster on the afternoon of 11 May.^[130]

A distant kinsman of the assassin,

The greater part of the Palace of Westminster (Westminster Hall apart) that stood at the time of the assassination was destroyed by an accidental fire in 1834, following which the Houses were comprehensively rebuilt and expanded. In July 2014, a brass memorial plaque was unveiled in St Stephen's Hall, Houses of Parliament, close to the place where Perceval was killed. Michael Ellis, Conservative MP for Northampton North (part of Perceval's old Northampton constituency) had campaigned for the plaque after four patterned floor tiles that were said to mark the spot had been removed by workmen in a recent renovation.^[134]

References

Citations

Sources

Books and news articles