7 Revolutionary jitters
In 1794, the government – spooked by turmoil in France –
embarked on an ill-fated attempt to prosecute a political radical
10 treason trials
T
he 1700s saw relatively few treason
trials in Britain. Yet all that
changed in dramatic style at the
end of the century – thanks to events on the
other side of the English Channel. The
outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789
made the British government increasingly
anxious that revolutionary ideas would take
hold. When, in 1793, French king Louis XVI
was executed for treason and Britain found
itself embroiled in war with France, those
fears went into overdrive – as a shoemaker
named Thomas Hardy (pictured above
right) would discover to his cost.
Hardy’s trial in 1794 served as a test case
of Britain’s archaic 1351 Treason Act. Hardy
was the founder of the London Correspond-ing Society, which campaigned for radical
political reform. When he planned a public
assembly to demand reform of the House of
Commons, he was arrested as a revolution-
ary and charged with treason.
At Hardy’s trial at the Old Bailey, the
prosecution accused him of plotting to kill
the king because he was challenging parlia-
ment: in other words, an attack on one was
taken as an attack on the other. Hardy,
however, was defended by Thomas Erskine,
one of the most skilful defence lawyers of
the era, and his tactics reveal well the impact
of the 1696 trial reforms on court proceed-
ings. Erskine ridiculed the idea that de-
manding political reform was equivalent to
“imagining the death” of King George III.The jury agreed, and Hardy was acquitted on
5 November (Guy Fawkes Day). His support-
ers triumphantly carried him around London
and struck a medal in his honour.
After this failure to exploit the 1351 Act,
William Pitt’s government in 1795 passed the
Treasonable and Seditious Practices Act to
modernise the definition of treason. It was
now treason “to intimidate both Houses of
Parliament” – plotting to overthrow the state,
not just the king. The 1795 law was used
repeatedly over the next few decades, notably
in 1820 after the “Cato Street Conspiracy”: an
ambitious plot by radicals to murder the
entire British cabinet.