he wind."

The jury found the prisoners Not guilty; and the report carried back to
London by persons who had been present at the trial was that everybody
applauded the verdict, and that even the Stouts seemed to be convinced
of their error. It is certain, however, that the malevolence of the
defeated party soon revived in all its energy. The lives of the four
men who had just been absolved were again attacked by means of the most
absurd and odious proceeding known to our old law, the appeal of
murder. This attack too failed. Every artifice of chicane was at
length exhausted; and nothing was left to the disappointed sect and the
disappointed faction except to calumniate those whom it had been found
impossible to murder. In a succession of libels Spencer Cowper was held
up to the execration of the public. But the public did him justice. He
rose to high eminence in his profession; he at length took his seat,
with general applause, on the judicial bench, and there distinguished
himself by the humanity which he never failed to show to unhappy men
who stood, as he had once stood, at the bar. Many who seldom trouble
themselves about pedigrees may be interested by learning that he was
the grandfather of that excellent man and excellent poet William Cowper,
whose writings have long been peculiarly loved and prized by the members
of the religious community which, under a strong delusion, sought to
slay his innocent progenitor. [19]

Though Spencer Cowper had escaped with life and honour, the Tories had
carried their point. They had secured against the next election the
support of the Quakers of Hertford; and the consequence was that
the borough was lost to the family and to the party which had lately
predominated there.

In the very week in which the great trial took place at Hertford, a
feud arising out of the late election for Buckinghamshire very nearly
produced fatal effects. Wharton, the chief of the Buckinghamshire Whigs,
had with difficulty succeeded in bringing in his brother as one of
the knights of the shire. Graham Viscount Cheyney, of the kingdom of
Scotland, had been returned at the head of the poll by the Tories. The
two noblemen met at the quarter sessions. In England Cheyney was before
the Union merely an Esquire. Wharton was undoubtedly entitled to take
place of him, and had repeatedly taken place of him without any dispute.
But angry passions now ran so high that a decent pretext for indulging
them was hardly