GRAND ASSIZE SENTENCING SPEECH _ HOLDAWAY and COOK

Robert Holdaway James Annalls and Henry Cook, who had all been capitally convicted, were then placed in the dock; and after the usual questions had been asked them by the Clerk of the Arraigns and no answer had been returned, the Judges all put on their black caps, and Mr Baron Vaughn proceeded to sentence them in the following terms:

–—

You, Robert Holdaway, you James Annallls, and you Henry Cook. Severally stand convicted bv a dispassionate jury of your country of the atrocious offences which have been severally imputed to you. As to you, Robert Holdaway, you have been convicted of having riotously and tumultuously assembled together with other persons and of having, when so assembled, proceeded with force to demolish, pull down, and destrov the Poor House belonging to the Guardians and Visitors of the poor for the united parishes of Bramshot. Headley, and Kingsley. You James Annals, stand convicted of a robbery committed on William Courtney at Barton Stacey, and of another robbery committed on Thomas Dowden near the same place under circumstances of considerable violence. It is impossible to look at your offences without being impressed by the imperative necessity of making a fatal example of you both.

As to you Henry Cook, the circumstances of your case are of a magnitude most atrocious for it is not to be forgotten that in the progress of our inquiry we have learned what had been your course during the previous day.

Robert Holdaway, you were concerned in that riotous and tumultuous assembly which selected as the object of its attack the Poor House at Seborne and which visited with outrage the house of the Revd. Mr Cobbold. On the following day , you and your associates made an attack on the Poor House at Headley, under circumstances capable of melting even the hardest hearts. The commission ot this outrage. by means of a riotous and tumultuous assembly forms the darkest part of your conduct. You collected a mob, most formidable from its numbers, for they varied from 1400 to l,700 persons, you went with this mob armed with various offensive weapons, to Mr. Shoesmtih, the overseer, a person against whom you could have conceived no personal resentment for it is clear that he discharged all the duties of his painful office in these times of distress with a kindness, patience and an a forbearance which entitles him to high credit.

I will suppose for the sake of argument, that you had gone to challenge inquiry into his proceedings, and to exact punishment for his misconduct, measures which I must tell you would have been illegal had you taken them. and would have exposed you to severe punishment ; but even if you had gone there for that purposed you ought to have recollected the condition of the poor children who were sick in bed, aid without any other roof lo shelter them from the inclement weather of November than that which you were determined to pull down. You had those circumstances before you. You knew the numbers that your outrageous violence would render roofless , and yet, deaf to all the remonstrances which were made on their behalf, you determined lo execute your desperate design with a deliberation which rendered it, if possible still more atrocious. You retired for a while from the Poor House. You gave the over seer time to remove his property ; and one might have expected you would also have given yourself time for sober reflection, for you were asked by Mr Shoesmith if you knew what you were going to do, and the consequence to which you and your associates were exposing yourselves. You then said that you did.

You then went to reinforce your numbers upon Headley Green and having so reinforced them you returned with a mob under your command. Therefore it is that YOU are selected as the ringleader in the transaction for It is only fitting that those who are most prominent in guilt should be most prominent in punishment. I have made this statement to show that whatever your general character might previously have been – however well you might have conducted yourself in the common dealings of life – it is not possible or politic to allow you to gain a transient triumph over the civil authorities of the country with impunity.

With respect to you, Henry Cook your case and your conduct in these proceedings is too fresh in the recollection of us all to make it questionable whether we shall act justly to the public and to yourself ln selecting you for the execution of criminal justice. Your first conviction for a capital offence was your conviction for the robbery on Mr Dowden. The evidence against you in that case was most clear and satisfactory, and for that offence your life was justly forfeited to the state. There was a question, however, in that case whether we ought not to interpose between you and the insulted majesty of the laws, and we were therefore considering what were your claims to the extension of mercy. It was my misfortune to try you only last night for an assault upon Mr Bingham Baring with an intent to murder that gentleman .and I soon foresaw that in the course of that assault you had again made vourself amenable to the vengeance of the law.

To the delicacy ot Mr Bingham Baring, you owe much. And I should not be doing justice to the admirable delicacy which that gentleman displayed did I not state thus publicly, that he did everything in his power, consistent with the oath which he had taken to speak the truth to make the offence which you had committed against him as slight as possible in consequence.

Yet when the circumstances came to be looked into, and to be sifted with that cautious minuteness which is necessary in courts ol justice, it was impossible for any man to find fault, with the verdict to which the jury came in your case. If I had been on that jury I should have felt it to be my bounded duty to return the same verdict which they gave. It appeared that Mr Bingham Baring, having seen a riotous and tumultuous assembly at Northington, armed with crowbars, sledge hammers, and other offensive weapons, and evidently proceeding in a course which, sooner or later must produce a breach of the peace, had the kindness to call tor leader of that assembly, in order to remonstrate with him as to the outrages which he and his band were committing.

The mob however was deaf to his remonstrances. They had that day broken a great many threshing machines, under the direction ot a man by the name of Silcock. I recollect that it appeared upon his trial that you, Henry Cook had yourself been actively engaged in breaking 12 machines at least, and under these circumstances, when Mr Baring, wishing to protect the property ot his neighbourhood, attempted to seize Silcock, then in the commission of another act ot felony, on a cry being raised from your comrades of ” Go to work,’ you, with a sledgehammer in your hand, of which the head weighed six pounds and of which the handle was two feet Iong, called out for the way to be cleared before you, and then were seen lo raise It deliberately with both bands, and to strike at the head of Mr Baring. That blow, lighting on his hat and the collar of his coat, was too far weakened in its effect as to prevent it from being fatal, but it still was sufficient to bring him senseless to the ground. Even when he was in that prostrate and senseless condition you were not satisfied, but were making a second effort to complete your purpose. I am satisfied, and completely satisfied, with the verdict that declares that it was your intent to murder Mr Bingham Baring. Your motives can be known only to yourself, but they have been evidenced by your acts your declarations, and your conduct and can any man doubt that with such an instrument as you used, if it had fallen where it was intended to you would not have occasioned his death and have rendered yourself guilty of the crime of murder.

Aye, and not only rendered yourself, but all who surrounded you at that time guilty of the same crime. All people therefore ought to be careful, how they mix themselves up with illegal assemblies, when there are all to be
made responsible for a guilty act, committed by one of their number. Can we, then, permit you to escape the severe
punishment of the law you who have all the moral guilt of murder on your head, though you happily did not succeed in accomplishing that fatal purpose, owing to a person in Mr Baring’s suite having struck you down before you could repeat your meditated blow? The stigma of assaulting Mr Baring with intent to murder him has
been fixed upon you by one of the most Impartial and discriminating juries which I ever saw in the whole course of my
professional career.

Therefore it is that I must now apprise you Robert Holdaway and you, Henry Cook, that you must prepare forthwith for that great change which now suddenly awaits you. All interest in the cares and pursuits of life must vanish, and though you now appear at the bar of an earthly Judge clothed with all the infirmitles of man’s frail nature, you will soon have to appear at the bar of that heavenly Judge, before whom all hearts are open, and from whom no secrets are hid, there to render an account, which we must all one day render of the transactions in which we have been participators in this world of sin and sorrow.

Let me therefore, as your time is short, affectionately entreat you to Iose not an instant in soliciting for his
peace and for his pardon. All hope of mercy is excluded for you, and in lives so properly forfeited to the stale as yours are, the heavy penalty of the law will be rigidly exacted, You heard the observations which I ventured to make to the other prisoners who ventured to stand in the same awful situation with your selves and therefore I will spare you the pain of listening to a repetition of them. I have now only to pass upon you the dreadful sentence of the law. I hope that you will earnestly repent of your sins that you will make a full confession of your transgressions, and do all that you now can to procure reconciliation from above.