Patent are addressed to the Earl of Shrewsbury and four others, and they recite the sentence, the approval thereof by Parliament, and the reasons why execution should be done upon the Queen of Scots. They then order that execution should be done on her, and they further declare that the Letters Patent shall be "a full sufficient Warrant and Discharge for ever" for what was done under them. The conclusion is as follows:—
"In witness whereof we have caused these our letters to be made patent. Yeoven at our manor of Greenwich the 1st day of February in the 29th year of our reign."
This is signed "Elizabeth," and has, as all Letters Patent must have, the Great Seal attached. This is really not a document which derives its authority solely from the signature of the Queen, but is a State document approved of by her ministers. It has been suggested that the Lord Chancellor was got by a trick to attach the Great Seal, and that he did not know that he was authorizing the execution; but this is clearly not the fact. Froude gives Davison as his authority for his account of the signing of the warrant by Queen Elizabeth, but on reading such account carefully I do not think that it can be strictly relied upon. This is, however, not the place to give my reasons for my opinion.
In 1757 a court martial found Admiral Byng guilty for that "he did not do his utmost to take, seize, and destroy the ships of the French King," &c., and he was sentenced "to be shot to death." The King having consented that the sentence should be carried into execution, the Lords of the Admiralty sent a warrant to the Admiral (the Commander-in- Chief at Portsmouth) to carry it into execution, and they signed the warrant, and not the King.
Moore's description of the Prince Regent at breakfast is amusing:—
The table spread with tea and toast.
Death warrants, and The Morning Post.
The King clearly did not sign the " Recorder's Report." What Mr. Horace Bleackley refers to as the "Report" on the case of Henry Fauntleroy the forger should be called the Recorder's warrant to the Sheriffs and the Governor of Newgate directing them to do execution. The form taken from Bell's Weekly Messenger is not correct. The true form of such a warrant is in the appendix to vol. iv. of Blackstone.
Inner Temple.
Years ago some one told me of a most unsavoury crime for which the death penalty was awarded (I entirely forget the particulars), and that the sentence could not be carried out until the case and judgment had been (as usual) submitted to the Queen. But the Queen, who had only just come to the throne, was a young girl, and it was unthinkable that such a case should be submitted to her. So an Act was hurried through Parliament to spare her such an outrage. Sir Harry Poland cites the Act 7 Wm. IV. and 1 Vict. c. 77, which seems to fit in with what was told me. He quotes Stephen as writing that one reason for altering the practice was "because it would have been indecent and practically impossible to discuss with a woman the details of many crimes then capital." Probably Sir Harry Poland knows the facts, but as he does not mention the foregoing, and your other correspondents also make no reference to it, I may perhaps be excused for this addition to his instructive reply. D. O.
I have in my possession an original death warrant, dated 1773, for a soldier "to be shot to death" for desertion. He belonged to the East India Company's forces, and was tried and sentenced by a court martial presided over by the Governor of Bengal. The document is addressed to Lieut.-Col. Hugh Grant, is signed by each(?) member of the court martial, and sealed with the seal of the Company. J. T. T.
Warren Hastings (12 S. i. 148).—Castings landed at Plymouth on June 13, 1785, and the following day went to London, where for a while he settled in a house in St. James's Place, which he hired ready furnished. Afterwards he went into another, similarly fitted up, in Wimpole Street. Wishing for a more suitable residence, he purchased Beaumont Lodge, on the skirts of Windsor Forest, whither he went as soon as it was ready. Here he spent the next two or three years. Further information on his life may be obtained from that excellent work by Gleig, 'Memoirs of the Life of Barren Hastings,' London, 1841, 3 vols.
Apparently during the years 1786-7 he lived at Windsor, with a town house in Wimpole Street. In 1788 he purchased the old manor house of his family and 650 acres of land at Daylesford in Worcestershire.
