manner with Violence and Arms and Terrifying His Majesty’s innocent Sub-
jects’. Sells was not pardoned.^85
Those were London cases. Thomson showed the same disposition as a judge
on circuit after his appointment to the exchequer bench in 1729. In his report on
a petition from the members of the grand jury to spare the life ofThomas Aston,
convicted before him at the Essex assizes, Thomson told the Duke of Newcastle
that the defendant was ‘a young man, and had a good character as to his be-
haviour in life before this fact’. This promising beginning did not, however, con-
clude as the secretary might have expected. The recommendation for mercy
made by the grand jury—a jury made up of some of the notable men of the
county, including several justices of the peace—almost certainly carried weight
with a man as politically sensitive as Newcastle. But that apparently had little ef-
fect on Mr Baron Thomson, for his letter continues:
The Gentlemen of ye Grandjury who sign’d ye petition on ye behalf of this young man
Applyed also to me on ye behalf of another young man who was convicted of robbery on
ye highway on ye same Forrest [Epping Forest]. But as I think offenses of this nature ought
to be discouraged, I could not think it proper to showe any favour to these offenders, and
therefore left them to ye Law as an example to deterr others, and I feare that mercy shown
to persons guilty of such offenses may have an ill influence to encourage others.^86
Aston was not pardoned. But the other young man Thomson mentioned,
Andrew Simpson, was in the end saved and transported—despite Thomson’s
further advice ten days after writing the Aston report. Simpson mounted an
even more powerful case than Aston. Not only did he get the support of the
county grand jury but his father, a clergyman, was able to enlist the support of
Edmund Gibson, the Bishop of London, dispenser of ecclesiastical patronage,
and a crucial ally of the Walpole government. This was formidable weight, and
Thomson clearly felt it. The young man’s father ‘has a good character’, he told
Secretary Newcastle in his report on the case, but ‘I cannot say that for his son’.
He also repeated that he ‘did not think it proper to comply with [the grand
jury’s] request to save Highwaymen.. .’. But he relented in the end in a way he
had not in the case of Aston. He had concluded his Aston report by saying ‘All
which is humbly submitted’, revealing no inclination to leave the matter to the
king. In the case of Simpson he said ‘My Humble Sentiments are Submitted to
His Majesty’s wisdom.’ The king’s wisdom turned out to favour sparing Simp-
son’s life and sending him to America for fourteen years.^87 Thomson had stood
out against the political imperatives in this case more tenaciously than most
judges would have thought prudent, but in the end had to give in to them. The
views he expressed in these reports on petitions for pardon almost certainly
shaped the recommendations he brought regularly to the cabinet and the lords
justices, recommendations that seem likely to have played as important a role in
456 William Thomson and Transportation
(^85) SP 35 / 61 / 11 – 12 , 16. (^86) SP 36 / 22 / 186 – 7.
(^87) SP 36 / 26 / 152 ; SP 36 / 29 / 124 ; SP 36 / 26 / 180 ; Coldham, Emigrants in Bondage, 723.