Between Heroism and Acquittal: Henry Redhead Yorke and the Inherent Instability ofPolitical Trials in Britain during the 1790sAuthor(s): Amnon YuvalSource: Journal of British Studies, Vol. 50, No. 3 (July 2011), pp. 612-638Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The North American Conference on BritishStudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/659768 .Accessed: 30/07/2011 08:46

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress. .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The University of Chicago Press and The North American Conference on British Studies are collaborating withJSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of British Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

612

Journal of British Studies 50 (July 2011): 612–638� 2011 by The North American Conference on British Studies.All rights reserved. 0021-9371/2011/5003-0004$10.00

Between Heroism and Acquittal: HenryRedhead Yorke and the Inherent Instability ofPolitical Trials in Britain during the 1790s

Amnon Yuval

C ourts, and political trials in particular, are deceptive frameworks thathave often been difficult for historians to decipher. The problem stemsfrom the fact that virtually all legal proceedings are characterized by

the coexistence of major restrictions and extraordinary freedom. On the one hand,courts are places with a clear preference for authorized spokespeople (to use PierreBourdieu’s concept), in which language (in the words of James Epstein) “is rou-tinely narrowed or compromised.” On the other hand, courts also constitute socialsites in which ceremonial rules provide litigating parties with the freedom to speakunhindered by constraints of time and that, at least in 1790s England, frequentlyfunctioned as what Michael Davis describes as a “de facto parliament where radicalscould question and confront authority.”1 Another expression of this duality in

Amnon Yuval teaches modern European history at Hakibbutzim College of Education, Technology,and Arts, and at Tel Aviv University. He edits the new refereed Israeli journal Gilui Daat: An Inter-disciplinary Journal of Education, Society and Culture. The research and writing of this article weremade possible by fellowships and grants awarded by the Dan David Prize, the Hanadiv Foundation,and Hakibbutzim College. The author would like to thank Jacques Revel, Antoine de Baecque, GeremyForman, Alan Forrest, Patrice Gueniffey, Jean-Clement Martin, Amir Minsky, Havi Vinitza, and theanonymous readers for the Journal of British Studies for their helpful comments on earlier versions ofthis article. He is also grateful to Elizabeth Elbourne and Brian Cowan for their contribution to theimprovement of the article. This article is dedicated to the memory of Helga Caro, his beloved grand-mother, who managed to remain calm and stable in the face of the worst of storms.

1 Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson(Oxford, 1991), 107–16; James Epstein, Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual, and Symbolin England, 1790–1850 (New York and Oxford, 1994), quote on vii; James Epstein, “‘Equality andNo King’: Sociability and Sedition: The Case of John Frost,” in Romantic Sociability, ed. Gillian Russelland Clara Tuite (Cambridge, 2002), 51; James Epstein, In Practice: Studies in the Language andCulture of Popular Politics in Modern Britain (Stanford, CA, 2003), 111; Michael Davis, “Prosecutionand Radical Discourse during the 1790s: The Case of the Scottish Sedition Trials,” International Journalof the Sociology of Law 33, no. 3 (September 2005): 155–56. In this context see also Mona Ozouf’s

YORKE AND POLITICAL TRIALS IN 1790s BRITAIN � 613

courts is the fact that the accused are always in structurally inferior positions byvirtue of their classification as “defendants,” while there is symmetry—at least intheory—between the opportunities enjoyed by both the prosecution and the de-fense to persuade judges and jury of the justness of their claims.2

Moreover, in England in the 1790s, both the court and the prosecution weremore limited than the defense in their ability to maneuver. The court’s need toemphasize its commitment to the rule of law and to the preservation of thetraditional freedoms entitled to every Englishman often limited its realm of actionand provided the defense with the legitimacy to present its case freely and atlength. As E. P. Thompson argues, to be effective in the eyes of the public towhich it applies, law must appear just and fair. Maintaining this appearance requiresgreat effort and comes at a price. As expressed succinctly by Henry Addington,speaker of the House of Commons, following the acquittal of Thomas Hardy: “Itis of more consequence to maintain the credit of a mild and unprejudiced ad-ministration of justice than ever to convict a Jacobin.”3

That being the case, the need to maintain an unbiased appearance during timesof crisis such as the 1790s could transform law into an arena in which the rulingregime, as a “prisoner of the rhetoric of law” (in the words of Clive Emsley), hadmore to lose than it had to gain.4 In 1790s Britain, defendants who knew howto make effective use of the verbal, cultural, and symbolic capital at their disposalcould potentially turn the tables on the establishment by destabilizing its offensivestance and putting it on the defensive. The establishment, and the court as itsagent, endeavored, in their turn, to portray the accused as dangerous figures whowere attempting to undermine state security. It was therefore important for de-fendants to acquire legitimacy from different, extra-establishment sources, such asthe crowd that accompanied them to and from the trial, the spectators at the trialitself, the independent press, and, of course, members of the jury, who were alsoundoubtedly influenced by the abovementioned sources, as the loyalists bitterlyargued after the acquittals in the treason trials of 1794.5 The ability of defendantsto acquire legitimacy from these sources depended not only on the type of ar-guments they chose to adopt but also on the form in which they articulated thembefore the court, the historical references they made, and the balance betweenoffensive and defensive sentiments they conveyed in their statements.

On the one hand, defendants wished to maintain conditions that provided them

critique of the historiographical analysis of Louis XVI’s trial, “King’s Trial,” in A Critical Dictionaryof the French Revolution, ed. Francois Furet and Mona Ozouf (Cambridge, MA, 1989), 95.

2 This ambivalence is clearly demonstrated in Clive Emsley’s analysis of the 1790s sedition trials inEngland, in which he argues that the prosecuted English Jacobins were “underdogs,” on the one hand,but enjoyed the defense guaranteed by the traditional “rule of law,” on the other hand. See CliveEmsley, “An Aspect of Pitt’s ‘Terror’: Prosecutions for Sedition during the 1790s,” Social History 6,no. 2 (May 1981): esp. 174–75.

3 Epstein, Radical Expression, 31; Edward P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters (New York, 1975),258–69; Addington quoted in Emsley, “Pitt’s ‘Terror,’” 175. (For the original source, see HenryAddington to Hiley Addington, 8 November 1795, Sidmouth MSS 1794/OZ 43, Devon RecordOffice.)

4 Clive Emsley, “Repression, ‘Terror’ and the Rule of Law in England during the Decade of theFrench Revolution,” English Historical Review 100, no. 397 (October 1985): 823–24.

5 John Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide 1793–1796(Oxford, 2000), 426.

614 � YUVAL

with discursive legitimacy in order to ensure that their words be taken seriouslyand to maintain their ability to influence the jury and the spectators (as well asreaders of the trial protocol after the fact). This, they believed, would improvetheir chances of acquittal. On the other hand, defendants interested not only inbeing acquitted but also in glorifying their radical ideology at the expense of theideology of the state were obligated to transform the symbolic power of the judge,and the state he represented, from obvious to problematic, from shrouded tovisible, and from within the consensus to disputed. Such defendants aspired toundermine the status quo by revealing “the fictitious restoration of the doxa,” asPierre Bourdieu puts it. Doing so required them to use harsh and sometimesviolent language that frequently threatened their legitimacy in the eyes of the verypeople they were addressing.6 This essential built-in duality is why, of the numerousarenas of battle between loyalists and reformers in 1790s Britain, I regard politicaltrials as a particularly revealing institution.

We can assume that virtually all the defendants in the political trials that tookplace in Britain in the tumultuous 1790s were forced to deal with the dilemmacreated by their position. Should they play down their radical character to pleasethe establishment and retain a realistic chance of achieving acquittal? Or, primarilybecause the outcome of trials so often seemed to be predetermined, should theyadopt the reverse strategy and present themselves as untarnished heroes who couldsimply not be prevented from articulating their views? As we have seen, this di-lemma was to a large extent intrinsic to the judicial situation. Although manydefendants made a decisive choice between the two options, others remainedambivalent during their trials.

� � �

English radical activist Henry Redhead Yorke (1772–1813) is an excellent ex-ample of such an ambivalent defendant. Yorke—whose dramatic, temperamental,and somewhat enigmatic life story has “the full attraction of a novel of adven-tures,”7 as one historian put it—was tried on charges of conspiracy in 1795.Through an exploration of this trial, which was arguably the key moment of Yorke’spolitical career, this article examines the range of strategies available to defendantsin the political trials of radicals in Britain during the tumultuous 1790s and thepossible consequences of their choices in this context. It depicts the English court-room of the 1790s as a site in which political power relations of the period wereembedded, but that at the same time was also administered according to its ownspecific set of rules. As such, and as we have already seen, it provided radicaldefendants with unique opportunities, as well as high risks.

Based on a close reading of the protocol of Yorke’s trial in general and hisdefense statement in particular, I maintain that the trial illustrates the profoundinstability that characterized the political and legal atmosphere in Britain during

6 Bourdieu, Language, 163–70, quote on 277, n. 8; emphasis in original. See also Epstein, RadicalExpression, 35.

7 “Tout l’attrait d’un roman d’aventures.” See Teodor de Wyzewa, “Preface,” in Henry RedheadYorke, Paris et la France sous le Consulat (Paris, 1921), v.

YORKE AND POLITICAL TRIALS IN 1790s BRITAIN � 615

the 1790s, both in terms of the interaction between radicals and the establishmentand their relative positions, and in terms of the radicals’ own identity and ideology.The inherent volatility of the public arena in Britain in the 1790s led to varied ifnot contradictory outcomes and to a combination of hard-to-predict gains andlosses for the historical agents involved. We can therefore posit that while thesynthetic and eclectic nature of Yorke’s arguments endowed his early writings withimportant political leverage, its impact in the context of the political trials of themid-1790s was quite damaging. More specifically, Yorke’s unwillingness and/orinability to adhere to one specific mode of defense during his trial, in conjunctionwith his tendency to employ incompatible discursive and rhetorical elements, helpsus to better understand not only why he was convicted but also why he failed toemerge as a radical hero. Before delving into the details of the trial, however, Iwould like to explain why I focus specifically on Yorke’s case instead of on thebetter-known cases of the period, such as the dramatic acquittals of Thomas Hardy,John Horne Tooke, and John Thelwall in November 1794, or the harsh convictionsof the five “Scottish martyrs” earlier the same year.

I. THE TRIAL AS A TURNING POINT IN YORKE’S LIFE

From one perspective, the personal story of Henry Redhead Yorke is extremelyidiosyncratic. Yorke was most likely born in the Caribbean Islands and may havebeen of mixed “black” and “white” origin, although references to his ancestryappear only in political writings directed against him during the 1790s and 1800s.8

In the course of just one decade, between 1792 and the first years of the nineteenthcentury, he went from being a young radical Englishman and an enthusiasticsupporter of the French Revolution to a sober “ultraloyalist” and what historianEmma Vincent MacLeod has termed a “crusader,” or a supporter of all-out waragainst France as long as the French government continued operating in accor-

8 See the descriptions of Yorke by the “Anti-Jacobin” (attacking the younger Yorke as a radical) andby journalist Lewis Goldsmith (attacking the older Yorke as a loyalist): “OLAUDAH EQUIANO, theAfrican, and HENRY YORKE, the Mulatto, insisted upon being heard” (capital letters in original),George Canning, Selections from the Anti-Jacobin (London, 1904), 13; “Mr. Henry Redhead Yorke,a Mulatto, by birth, and equally tropical, and verging to extremes, in disposition” (italicized in original),Lewis Goldsmith’s article in Argus or London Review’d in Paris 9 (15 November 1802): 35. We haveonly scattered and extremely partial information on Yorke’s childhood, some of which appears exclusivelyin Yorke’s own writings. The credibility of this information is often unclear. See Thomas Dutton, TheLiterary Census: A Satirical Poem (London, 1798), 15; Josephine Seaton, William Winston Seaton ofthe “National Intelligencer”: A Biographical Sketch (Boston, 1871), 53; Henry Redhead Yorke,“Thoughts on Civil Government: Addressed to the Disfranchised Citizens of Sheffield” (1794), inPolitical Writings of the 1790s: French Revolution Debate in Britain, ed. Gregory Claeys, 8 vols. (London,1995), 4:255; Henry Yorke, “Introduction,” in The Trial of Henry Yorke for a Conspiracy, &c. beforethe Hon. Mr. Justice Rooke, at the Assizes, held for the County of York, on Saturday, July 10, 1795 (Yorkand Sheffield, 1795), xiv; H. Tyler Blethen, “Yorke, Henry Redhead (1772–1813),” in BiographicalDictionary of Modern British Radicals, ed. Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Gossman (Sussex, 1979),561.

616 � YUVAL

dance with its democratic-revolutionary ethos.9 As a result of this dramatic trans-formation and Yorke’s overall excessive behavior, the relatively few historians whohave studied him have tended to regard him as an anomaly. E. P. Thompson, forexample, describes Yorke as “a very young, eloquent and unstable gentleman fromDerby,” while James J. Sack labels him “peculiar” and “eccentric.”10

But from a different perspective, it appears that Yorke was not as great ananomaly as he might seem at the outset. Melvin Lasky, who regarded Yorke as anexceptional pioneer in future revolutionary thought, describes him as a part of “ageneration of English ideologists for whom ideology was exclusively the politicsof experience—erratic, instructive and avoidable.”11 As Mark Philp has argued, theideological positions of reformers and loyalists in the 1790s were not predeter-mined but rather changed frequently “in response to the arguments and eventsof the decade.”12 For this reason, not only did individuals from both camps fre-quently change positions during the debate on the French Revolution in England,but some also moved from one camp to the other. While it is true that Yorkeoffers an extreme example of the “fragmentary character of the ideological terrain,”it is precisely because of its extreme nature that his case sheds light on some ofthe deep, hidden processes under way during the period.13

Until at least late-1795, when he first began to incorporate sentiments of regretabout his past into his writings, Yorke was associated with the most radical wingof the reform movement. His early essays, which he wrote when he was in hisearly twenties, combined harsh criticism leveled directly at Britain with more gen-eral and amorphous criticism of “Europe,” “absolutism,” and “tyranny.” Accordingto Yorke, a just and worthy society in England could only be achieved throughthe abolition of slavery and, most important, overall parliamentary reform aimedat facilitating “a universal, free and annual representation of the people.” Like

9 “Ultraloyalist” is the expression employed by S. Semmel in order to describe older Yorke. SeeStuart Semmel, Napoleon and the British (New Haven, CT, 2004), 10, 32. On the crusaders, see EmmaVincent Macleod, A War of Ideas: British Attitudes to the War against Revolutionary France, 1792–1802 (Brookefield, 1998), 65–89; Harry T. Dickinson, “Britain and the Ideological Crusade againstthe French Revolution,” in Apres 89. La Revolution—modele ou repoussoir, ed. L. Domergue and G.Lamoine (Toulouse, 1991), 171–74.

10 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1966), 131; James J. Sack,From Jacobite to Conservative: Reaction and Orthodoxy in Britain, c. 1760–1832 (Cambridge, 1993),18, 67. See also James J. Sack, “The Memory of Burke and the Memory of Pitt: English ConservatismConfronts its Past, 1806–1829,” The Historical Journal 30, no. 3 (September 1987): 629–30. For areview of the scholarly literature on Yorke, see Amnon Yuval, “Une politique de l’emotion: HenryRedhead Yorke et le desenchantement de la Revolution francaise en Grande-Bretagne, 1789–1827”(PhD diss., Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, 2008), 37–48. In addition to this recent work,Yorke has been the main subject of only two other studies: Edward Fearn, “Henry RedheadYorke—Radical Traitor,” Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 42 (1968): 187–92; Melvin J. Lasky, “TheRecantation of Henry Redhead Yorke: A Forgotten English Ideologist,” Encounter 41, no. 4 (October1973): 67–85. Lasky’s article also appears in his Utopia and Revolution (Chicago and London, 1976):549–65.

11 Ibid., 556, 565, quote on 565.12 Mark Philp, “The Fragmented Ideology of Reform,” in The French Revolution and British Popular

Politics, ed. Mark Philp (Cambridge, 1991), 53.13 Mark Philp, “Disconcerting Ideas: Explaining Popular Radicalism and Popular Loyalism in the

1790s,” in English Radicalism, 1550–1850, ed. Glenn Burgess and Matthew Festenstein (Cambridge,2005), 161. See also Gregory Claeys, The French Revolution Debate in Britain: The Origins of ModernPolitics (New York, 2007), 3; Gregory Claeys, “Introduction,” in Political Writings of the 1790s, 1:xix.

YORKE AND POLITICAL TRIALS IN 1790s BRITAIN � 617

almost all other members of the reform movement, Yorke believed that parlia-mentary change that served to decentralize the power of government and preventprivileged circles from accumulating excessive political power would graduallysolve all other major problems, including widespread poverty and other socialinequalities.14

In his earliest writings, Yorke praised the French Revolution, which transformedthe French populace into a “brave and heroic” people and bitterly attacked En-gland’s war against “our brethren the Franks.” In his 1793 essay These Are theTimes that Try Men’s Souls, which he dedicated to John Frost, a self-declaredRepublican who had been convicted of seditious libel, Yorke described the war as“a war of twenty-eight millions of human beings, contending for everything thatis dear to man, against a few kings vainly attempting to subjugate them.”15 Thiswas one of many examples of Yorke’s decisive, harsh, and aggressive use of politicallanguage, which tended to incorporate unequivocal dichotomies. Like many othertexts of the period—written by loyalists and reformers alike16—Yorke’s early textswere constructed on a foundation of constant opposition between “good” and“bad” values. In opposition to values such as precedent, mysticism, privilege,oppression, violence, and plunder, Yorke consistently posed the values of nature,virtue, truth, knowledge, general will, and equality. In Thoughts on Civil Govern-ment, his 1794 essay, which turned out to be his most impressive and significantessay as a radical, Yorke integrated a new message: a fierce attack on establishedreligion in England and the world over. In this spirit, he charged the Church ofcolluding with the state against humanity. The clergy, Yorke argued, had dissem-inated and was continuing to disseminate superstitions and perpetuate a funda-mental lack of knowledge in an effort to keep believers poor, frightened, andignorant. Yorke maintained that “the Supreme Being” existed but that, contraryto the image created by the Church, he was an entity who endowed man withintelligence, a sense of justice, and the trait of perfectibility, and who regardedprivilege as an abomination.17

Yorke’s position on the political map was also reflected in his personal andinstitutional connections. Daniel Eaton, his regular publisher, was himself knownas an aggressive radical and was tried a number of times for the publication ofseditious literature in the course of 1793 and 1794.18 Moreover, the Sheffield

14 Henry Yorke, “Reason Urged against Precedent, in a Letter to the People of Derby” (1793), inClaeys, Political Writings, 67–84, quote on 73. Note that Yorke’s first essay actually supported thecontinuation of slavery, although he very quickly reversed his position. See Henry Redhead Yorke, ALetter to Bache Heathcote, Esq. on the Fatal Consequences of Abolishing the Slave Trade, both to England,and her American Colonies (London, 1792). On the central importance of the issue of parliamentaryreform among the reformers of the 1790s, see Harry T. Dickinson, British Radicalism and the FrenchRevolution (Oxford, 1985), 4, 16–17.

15 Henry Yorke, These Are the Times that Try Men’s Souls! A Letter Addressed to John Frost, a Prisonerin Newgate (London, 1793), 6, 41–44. On Frost and his trial, see Epstein, “Equality”; John Barrelland Jon Mee, “Introduction,” in Trials for Treason and Sedition, 1792–1794, ed. John Barrell and JonMee, 8 vols. (Cambridge, 2006), 1:xviii–xx.

16 The paradigmatic example of this phenomenon is the caricature entitled “The Contrast,” whichwas drawn by Thomas Rowlandson in 1793.

17 Yorke, “Thoughts on Civil Government,” 231, 239, 244–48, 254, 257, quote on 239.18 On Eaton and his trials, see Michael Davis, “‘I Can Bear Punishment’: Daniel Isaac Eaton, Radical

Culture and the Rule of Law, 1793–1812,” Criminal Justice History 18 (2003), 89–106; Barrell andMee, “Introduction,” xxi–xxii; Alan Wharam, The Treason Trials, 1794 (London, 1992), 71–72.

618 � YUVAL

Society for Constitutional Information, which was established in late-1791 and ofwhich Yorke became a prominent leader in 1793, appears to have been the largestradical organization in existence outside of London. Whereas its program wasfundamentally similar to that of other radical societies throughout En-gland—demanding reform of the corrupt system of representation, relief fromhigh taxes, and an end to the war against France—the Sheffield Society had auniquely militant approach that stemmed from Sheffield’s “particularly indepen-dent plebeian culture,” and that found expression in the “democratic” gesturesadopted by its members, such as refraining from using the titles “Mr.” and“Esquire.”

This militant mood was expressed in the radical newspaper the Sheffield Register.It was also reflected at political events organized by the Sheffield Society, such asa celebration of the victory of the French republican army at Valmy in September1792 that included roasting an entire bull and distributing the meat to imprisoneddebtors and the poor, and a mass rally in April 1793 during which 10,000 peoplesigned a petition in support of universal suffrage. However, soon after Yorke joinedthe organization, the oppressive loyalist mood that became dominant during thewar against the French, and the government’s increasing pressure on the radicalopposition, created a deepening crisis among its members. Some fled to the UnitedStates, while others lost their jobs.19 This situation, however, did not dissuadeYorke from working vigorously to incite the masses. Indeed, he continued workingin this direction until June 1794, when he was arrested with other leaders of themovement during the major wave of arrests of radicals across England that beganthe previous month. The arrests were based on the real or engineered fear withinthe government that the radicals were trying to topple the regime. This fear wassparked by informants’ reports regarding efforts by radical organizations to or-ganize a convention in London and to arm themselves.20 Yorke himself was chargedwith treason and with planning an armed insurrection. He was interrogated atlength by the Privy Council, whose members reported the seizure of letters inwhich York stated that he was going to France to build an army that would returnto fight the British army.21 Gradually, two more specific charges were leveled againsthim: involvement in creating a cache of bayonets out of a desire to overthrow thegovernment and an effort to advance this cause with his speech at the 7 April

19 On Sheffield and its constitutional society during the 1790s, see John Stevenson, Artisans andDemocrats: Sheffield and the French Revolution, 1789–1797 (Sheffield, 1989); John Stevenson, “Sheffieldand the French Revolution,” in 1789: The Long and the Short of It, ed. David Williams (Sheffield,1991), 159–86, quote on 163; A. W. L. Seaman, “Reform Politics in Sheffield, 1791–1797,” Trans-actions of the Hunter Archaeological Society 7 (1957): 215–28; G. P. Jones, “The Political ReformMovement in Sheffield,” Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society 4 (1937): 57–68; Thompson,Making, 150–51; Fearn, “Henry Redhead Yorke,” 188; Jenny Graham, The Nation, the Law and theKing: Reform Politics in England, 1789–1799 (Lanham, MD, 2000), 270, 557, 969–70. On the SheffieldRegister, see W. H. G. Armytage, “The Editorial Experience of Joseph Gales, 1786–1794,” NorthCarolina Historical Review 27 (1951): 334–61.

20 Barrell, Imagining, 190; Michael Lobban, “Treason, Sedition and the Radical Movement in theAge of the French Revolution,” Liverpool Law Review 22, no. 2–3 (May 2000): 213; Stevenson,“Sheffield,” 174.

21 T. M. Parssinen, “Association, Convention and Anti-Parliamentary in British Radical Politics, 1771–1848,” English Historical Review 88, no. 348 (1973): 514 n. 7; Wharam, Treason Trials, 230; Lobban,“Treason,” 220–21.

YORKE AND POLITICAL TRIALS IN 1790s BRITAIN � 619

1794 mass rally at Castle Hill, Sheffield, which was attended by between 10,000and 12,000 supporters of reform.

During this tempestuous speech, which lasted for more than an hour, Yorkecalled for the abolition of the slave trade, the institution of universal suffrage, andthe release of the five radicals—Muir, Skirving, Palmer, Margarot, and Ger-rald—who, during the preceding months, had been sentenced in Edinburgh tolong periods of exile in Australia. Under his direction, it was decided to submittwo separate petitions to the king regarding the abolition of slavery and the releaseof the radicals. However, with regard to the issue of parliamentary reform, themeeting judged that there was no reason to submit a petition to parliament sinceparliament had “disdainfully” rejected a previous petition and there was further-more no reason to ask “a corrupt agent to remove itself.”22

This appears to have been Yorke’s high point as a radical leader, for at theconclusion of the rally he was carried in a carriage by the crowd through the streetsof Sheffield, and one week later he was praised at an assembly of the LondonCorresponding Society (LCS).23 The rally speech, however, also signified the be-ginning of Yorke’s decline. Even within the reform movement itself, some regardedthis moment as crossing a red line. For example, on 19 April, Cambridge Intel-ligencer editor Benjamin Flower wrote that Yorke would “make a much moresuitable President for the Jacobin Club, or the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris,than for a respectable society of English reformers.”24 If this was the impressionof a liberal like Flower, it is not difficult to imagine why government officialsascribed to Yorke a major role in what it believed to be a conspiracy of the radicalorganizations to topple the regime. In the course of June, magistrates were calledon in Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sunderland, Shields, Hull, Carlisle, andof course Sheffield, to look for him, in an effort to prevent him from leaving thecountry. Yorke, who was moving from one hiding place to another at the time,was eventually apprehended under unclear circumstances. According to one ver-sion, his capture was the result of his haughtiness and his success with women,which were themes that emerged on a regular basis during his trial, as well as thatof Hardy.25

Despite his considerable personal charisma and impressive oratory and writingskills, Yorke as a thinker was neither consistent nor original. Rather, he tended to

22 Proceedings of the Public Meeting, Held at Sheffield, in the Open Air, on the 7th of April, 1794, andAlso an Address to the British Nation Being an Exposition of the Motives Which Have Determined thePeople of Sheffield to Petition the House of Commons No More on the Subject of Parliamentary Reform(Sheffield, 1794). On the number of people who attended the rally, see ibid., 3; Thomas Bayly Howelland Thomas Jones Howell, ed., A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treasonand other Crimes and Misdemeanors, 34 vols. (London, 1816–28), 24:606, 611, 667. On the fiveradicals and their trials in Edinburgh, see Barrell, Imagining, 142–69; Barrell and Mee, “Introduction,”xxiv–xxv; Wharam, Treason Trials, 59–67.

23 Public Meeting at Sheffield, 26; Resolutions of Sheffield Society for Constitutional Information inDefence of the Meeting of April 7, and of Henry Yorke, 30 April 1794 (Sheffield, 1794); Stevenson,“Sheffield,” 174.

24 Quoted in Graham, Nation, 595.25 On Yorke’s time in hiding, see Yorke, “Introduction” (1795), xxii; Fearn, “Henry Redhead Yorke,”

189. On the search for Yorke, see Lobban, “Treason,” 220. On Yorke’s capture, see Seaton, WilliamWinston Seaton, 55. For testimonies to Yorke’s success with women, see Howell, State Trials, 25:1053;24:665; Wharam, Treason Trials, 76.

620 � YUVAL

use his extensive knowledge of authors on the subjects of politics, philosophy, andhistory—which, considering his young age, was extremely developed—in order tomake wise and effective use of a variety of sources. Even if we limit our examinationto the period during which Yorke was active in the radical camp, the ideologyappearing in Yorke’s early writings combined arguments, keywords, and modes ofthinking from a variety of traditions: classic republicanism as well as bourgeoisliberalism; revolutionary discourse as well as reformist discourse; reliance on bothnatural law and historical myths; civic humanism as employed by Algernon Sidneyand the meritocracy and individualism of John Locke; pluralistic tolerance towarddifferent beliefs as employed by Voltaire and Kant, as well as uncompromisingRousseauist language directed against ideological rivals; and, finally, a tendencytoward pragmatism, as well as the use of purely abstract theories.26 Yorke’s the-oretical stew, however, was not an idiosyncratic phenomenon; such melanges canbe found in the writings of other reform movement members in the 1790s, albeitnot always to the same extent. Like many other radicals, Yorke was an opportunistwho made alternating use of a variety of political vocabularies to achieve his chang-ing goals.27

In this way, as strange and exceptional as he may have been, Yorke was in constantdialogue with the political culture of his era and the logic on which it was based.His actions were imbued with meaning by the specific social reality and its manycontexts and constraints to which he responded and simultaneously attempted totransform. In the lengthy defense statement he delivered during his trial in 1795,which is the focus of the latter part of this article, Yorke was compelled to justifyand explain his choices and to respond to the charges against him. His statementtherefore elucidates not only his own ideas but many different aspects of the societyin which he lived. While Yorke was in no way a representative figure, the socialand legal strategies he employed during his political and journalistic career andduring his trial both reflected and helped shape (and perhaps also to limit) thespectrum of personal and political possibilities during the years in question. In thisway, he can be regarded as someone who functioned as “exceptional normal,” inthe words of Italian historian Edoardo Grendi.28 Precisely because of its great

26 For Yorke’s ideological variety in his early years, see his “Reason Urged,” These Are the Times,“Thoughts on Civil Government,” and “Introduction,” in The Spirit of John Locke on Civil Government,Revived by the Constitutional Society of Sheffield, ed. Henry Redhead Yorke (Sheffield, 1794). For adiscussion of “Young Yorke’s” eclecticism, see Yuval, “Une politique de l’emotion,” chap. 3.

27 For discussions of the discursive eclecticism and opportunism of British radicals during the 1790s(and later), see Iain McCalman, Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornogrphers inLondon, 1795–1840 (Cambridge, 1988); Jon Mee, Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Cul-ture of Radicalism in the 1790s (Oxford, 1992), esp. the introduction; Iain Hampsher-Monk, “On NotInventing the English Revolution: The Radical Failure of the 1790s as Linguistic Non-Performance,”in Burgess and Festenstein, English Radicalism, 138; James Epstein, “‘Our Real Constitution’: TrialDefence and Radical Memory in the Age of Revolution,” in Re-reading the Constitution, ed. JamesVernon (Cambridge, 1996), 50; Epstein, Radical Expression, 6. These studies tend to disprove earlierarguments advanced by historians Isaac Kramnick and John Pocock. See Isaac Kramnick, “RepublicanRevisionism Revisited,” American Historical Review 87, no. 3 (June 1982): 629–64; Pocock, Virtue,Commerce and History, 274–94.

28 Edoardo Grendi, “Micro-analisi e storia sociale,” Quaderni Storici 35 (August 1977): 506–20;Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973), 43.

YORKE AND POLITICAL TRIALS IN 1790s BRITAIN � 621

distinctiveness, Yorke’s case teaches us a great deal about both the collective andthe “center” of English society in the 1790s.29

The trial in which Yorke was convicted marked a major turning point in his ownpolitical development.30 The beginning of this transformation was reflected in hisintroduction to the protocol of his trial, which he composed toward the end of1795. At this early stage, he already declared that he had learned “that moderationis the best policy.”31 Yorke’s process of being “born again” accelerated while he wasin prison, as reflected in his book The Means of Saving Our Country, which waspublished in 1797 while he was still incarcerated.32 Upon his release from prisonin 1798, he published A Letter to the Reformers, a book in which he disavowedhis old political positions and attempted to persuade his former colleagues to followsuit.33

Yorke’s move from blunt radicalism to ultraloyalism by the first years of the newcentury was clearly linked to the overall loyalist political mood that was prevalentin Britain beginning in 1792, with the French Revolution’s turn toward massiveviolence and the subsequent outbreak of war between France and England. Thisatmosphere continually tried the spirit of radicals, many of whom—includingYorke—eventually surrendered to the general public pressure, the fear of bearingthe brunt of “Pitt’s Terror,” and the desire to start over as legitimate patriots ina time of war.34 Nonetheless, it is evident that Yorke’s extreme transformationstemmed not only from the prevailing atmosphere but also from his actual judicialconviction and imprisonment, as he himself noted in his writings.35

In the sections that follow, I will suggest that Yorke’s conviction was not nec-essarily predetermined but rather was greatly influenced by the manner in whichhe handled his trial. As in other trials of the period, the prosecution’s successstemmed not only from the way it handled the case but, to an equal extent, fromthe strategy adopted by the defendant as well.

29 On this subject, see Jacques Revel, “Micro-analyse et construction du social,” in Jeux d’echelles,ed. Jacques Revel (Paris, 1996), 15–36; Giovanni Levi, “On Microhistory,” in New Perspectives onHistorical Writing, ed. Peter Burke (Cambridge, 1991), 93–113.

30 For a detailed description and analysis of this development, see the second part of Yuval, “Unepolitique de l’emotion.”

31 Yorke, “Introduction,” xxiii–xxiv; emphasis in original.32 Henry Redhead Yorke, On the Means of Saving Our Country (Dorchester, 1797).33 Henry Redhead Yorke, A Letter to the Reformers (Dorchester, 1798).34 Of the many studies on the strength of loyalism in Britain at the turn of the eighteenth century,

the following two are regarded as classics: Robert R. Dozier, For King, Constitution and Country: TheEnglish Loyalists and the French Revolution (Lexington, KY, 1983); E. P. Thompson, “Hunting theJacobin Fox,” Past and Present 142, no. 1 (February 1994), 94–140. On Yorke as an ultraloyalist, seeYuval, “Une politique de l’emotion,” chap. 5. On cases of political conversions in Britain during thisperiod, see, among others, Yuval, “Une politique de l’emotion,” 129–56; E. P. Thompson, “Disen-chantment or Default? A Lay Sermon,” in The Romantics: England in a Revolutionary Age (New York,1997), 33–74; David M. Craig, Robert Southey and Romantic Apostasy: Political Argument in Britain,1780–1840 (Wiltshire, 2007); Henry L. Fulton, “Disillusionment with the French Revolution. TheCase of the Scottish Physician John Moore,” Studies in Scottish Literature 23 (1988): 46–63.

35 Yorke, “Introduction,” xix–xx, xxiii–xxiv; Yorke, On the Means, 4, 10, 88, 116n., 138, 163, 164;Yorke, A Letter to the Reformers, 24. On the connection between Yorke’s incarceration and his politicalchange of heart, see Yuval, “Une politique de l’emotion,” 247–51.

622 � YUVAL

II. THE EVOLUTION OF YORKE’S INDICTMENT

If the dubious testimony of police informant Henry Alexander in the renownedtrial of Thomas Hardy is to be believed, Yorke’s trial was originally planned totake place immediately following the conclusion of the treason trials, which beganin London in late October 1794.36 It appears that the government hoped thatconvictions in the London trials would encourage convictions in the trials takingplace in other parts of England, like that of Yorke, and, more specifically, that thetrials would reveal additional concrete evidence to be used against Yorke. Yorke,who had been in custody under suspicions of high treason since June 1794, wasa major topic of discussion during the Hardy trial (and subsequently, but to alesser extent, during the trial of John Horne Tooke). During this trial, the pros-ecution attempted to prove that Yorke was a revolutionary extremist who hadplanned a violent rebellion and that, as a private individual and the head of theSheffield Constitutional Society, he maintained extensive contacts with the LCS,of which Hardy was the secretary and dominant leader.37

As we know, the London treason trials were a complete failure for the Crown.Hardy, Horne Tooke. and Thelwall were acquitted one after another in November1794. By clarifying that membership in the LCS and the Society for ConstitutionalInformation (SCI) did not constitute sufficient grounds for conviction under theserious charge of high treason, these acquittals forced the Crown to withdraw itsindictments of the remaining London defendants. Yorke’s case was also no greatsuccess for the Crown; although two witnesses for the prosecution (Alexander andformer Sheffield Society secretary William Broomhead, who became a state’s wit-ness) depicted Yorke as an extremist with violent intentions, the Crown’s theoryof a planned bayonet attack that Yorke was supposed to lead sustained a mortalblow.38

As a result, it was decided to postpone Yorke’s trial. It was also subsequentlydecided (apparently in May 1795) to reduce the charges against him (and againsttwo of his colleagues, Joseph Gales and Richard Davison, who managed to evadearrest by escaping to the United States)39 from high treason to “a conspiracy totraduce and vilify the Commons House of Parliament, to excite disaffection to-wards the king and his government in the minds of his subjects, to excite riotsand tumults and commotions in the realm.”40 This action was taken based on the

36 Howell, State Trials, 24:646–47.37 Ibid., 25:589–668 and 25:231–43.38 On the treason trials in London, see Barrell, Imagining, 318–401; Wharam, Treason Trials, 143–

229.39 On the flight of Gales and Davison and the general phenomenon of emigration to the United

States as a result of Pitt’s repressive policies, see Graham, Nation, 612, 636. The date on which Yorke’scharges were reduced and the fact that he was not released on bail are consistent with Yorke’s intro-duction to the protocol of his trial. In contrast, Michael Lobban argues (it is not specified on whatbasis) that the charges were reduced in March and that Yorke was released on bail in May. From hispart, David Cressy shows that it was in March that the council in London advised that charges bereduced. See Yorke, “Introduction,” ix, xvii; Lobban, “Treason,” 224; David Cressy, Dangerous Talk:Scandalous, Seditious and Treasonable Speech in Pre-modern England (Oxford, 2010), 249.

40 Howell, State Trials, 25:1014.

YORKE AND POLITICAL TRIALS IN 1790s BRITAIN � 623

belief, which was subsequently justified, that it would increase the chances ofachieving a conviction in the trial.41

However, neither the prosecution nor the defense could have understood thefull significance of the change in charges against Yorke, as the charge of “con-spiracy” had hardly been used during the political trials in England during the1790s. Rather, most indictments fell under one of two categories: sedition, forwhich the longest prison sentence during the years 1793–1801 was three years,42

and high treason, which, in the case of conviction, was punishable by quarteringand death. Due to the substantive legal distinction between treason and the otheroffenses, which were classified as misdemeanors, the accusations against Yorke werecloser to sedition than to treason. However, due to the lack of precedents, it wasundoubtedly difficult to guess what his sentence would be. The one trial that hadbeen conducted in England under charges of conspiracy during the period pre-ceding Yorke’s trial was that of Thomas Walker of the Manchester ConstitutionalSociety. The trial was held in Lancaster Assizes in April 1794 under the charge of“a conspiracy to overthrow the constitution and government, and to aid and assistthe French . . . in case they should invade this kingdom,” and the indictment wasalso directed at some of Walker’s associates, including Yorke himself (althoughthere is no indication that he was arrested). The trial did not, however, providemuch information, because the “conspiracy” in question was much more seriousthan that subsequently attributed to Yorke, and, more significantly, because itended in acquittal due to the perjury of the prosecution’s main witness.43

Although the state’s counsels did not completely forgo the chances of incrim-inating Yorke for the planned bayonet attack, they decided to place the emphasison the statements he made at the Sheffield reform rally in Castle Hill in April1794. In particular, the prosecution highlighted three excerpts from Yorke’sspeech, which it regarded as indicating intention to incite listeners against theking, the government, and the parliament. The first two excerpts were very seriousin content but were nonetheless extremely abstract and general in nature. In one,Yorke held that he was convinced that his countrymen would not be satisfied with“a melioration” alone but rather would demand “the annihilation of corruptionand abuses” and would do so “in an imperious tone which will take no denial.”The second excerpt had to do with the way in which the “suffering nations” mustprepare “their combustible ingredients . . . so as to produce with effect that grandpolitical explosion which, at the same time that it buries despotism . . . may raiseup the people to the dignity and sublime grandeur of freedom.” The third excerpt,by contrast, was much more moderate overall, but its last lines included the explicit,concrete statement that the prosecution so badly needed in order to convince thejury that Yorke was in fact working to undermine the foundation of the currentorder: “then, the commanding voice of the whole people shall recommend the

41 This was part of a general policy enforced by the law officers in the 1790s to prosecute only in“watertight case[s],” in the words of Clive Emsley, in order to minimize the possibility of acquittal.See Emsley, “Pitt’s ‘Terror,’” 162, 166.

42 Ibid., 159, 182.43 Howell, State Trials, 23:1055–1166. For an enlightening analysis of this trial, see Barrell, Imag-

ining, 170–81.

624 � YUVAL

Five Hundred and Fifty-eight Gentlemen in St. Stephen’s Chapel, to go abouttheir business.”44

However, the prosecution’s major difficulty had less to do with its efforts toconvince the jury of the criminal nature of Yorke’s statements and more to dowith the need to prove that the words were in fact spoken by Yorke. This wasbecause the text of the speech from which the excerpts were taken appeared in apublication that had been published by the Sheffield Society and that had beensold at an inexpensive price during the weeks following the rally.45 For its part,the defense did not take the trouble to deny the seriousness of the three excerptsduring the trial. Instead, it argued that the printed version of the speech was verydifferent from the speech that Yorke actually delivered at the rally, and that thethree excerpts in question had not been part of the speech itself. As a result, andin light of the fact that the prosecution’s thesis regarding the bayonet attack wasnot convincing, the manner in which Yorke was perceived by the members of thejury, and the degree to which they could believe that the defendant might havesaid the things attributed to him, carried a great deal of weight.

III. TWO DEFENSE MODELS

As was not uncommon among defendants in the 1790s, Yorke sat in custody formore than one year, due, among other reasons, to the suspension of Habeas Corpusin May 1794.46 This left him with ample time to deliberate over his trial strategy.The fact that his trial was preceded by many other political trials in both Scotlandand England enabled him to consider the effectiveness of the different lines ofdefense employed by other defendants. It is plausible to assume that, like them,Yorke drew on well-known state trials from the recent and more distant past forpractical ideas and for inspiration.47

Historian James Epstein argues that the British radicals of the period underdiscussion adopted one of two legal defense models.48 The first model involvedretaining an experienced counsel who was responsible for deciding on a line ofdefense. This counsel usually decided that it was preferable for the accused to beheard as little as possible during the trial. Hardy’s trial was paradigmatic in thisway. The main argument in this line of defense was usually that the accused hadworked for reform but had always respected law and order and that if, from timeto time, he had expressed himself in a manner that appeared extreme, he did sounintentionally and not as the result of malicious intent.

44 Public Meeting at Sheffield, 9, 14–15, 18; emphasis in original.45 Ibid., 5–26.46 On Yorke’s lengthy incarceration, see the words of the prosecutor in his trial: Howell, State Trials,

25:114. See also Wharam, Treason Trials, 230; J. Taylor, “The Sheffield Constitutional Society (1791–1795),” Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society 5 (1943): 140. On lengthy incarcerations asstandard practice in England in the 1790s, see Emsley, “Repression,” 824; Emsley, “Pitt’s ‘Terror,’”168. William Stone, for example, who was arrested approximately one month prior to Yorke and wastried and acquitted, was released only in January 1796. See Graham, Nation, 611 n. 26.

47 For example, John Binns read volume after volume of state trials in 1798, as he waited to be triedfor high treason. See Epstein, Radical Expression, 179 n. 23.

48 Epstein, “Constitution,” 33.

YORKE AND POLITICAL TRIALS IN 1790s BRITAIN � 625

According to the second model, in contrast, the defendant played a central andactive role in his own trial, in some cases as a witness and in other cases as hisown counsel. Although usually assisted by other attorneys, it was the accusedhimself who defined and led the main line of defense. This arrangement enableddefendants to transform proceedings into trials that were political and ideologicalin nature and to highlight the principles in which they believed. It was extremelytempting for radical activists to adopt such an approach, as fiery speeches deliveredinside courtrooms were often published and sold for a symbolic price, popularized,and glorified, transforming the defendant into a tortured saint in the service ofthe reform movement.49 Indeed, in some such cases, it is clear that this is howthe accused wanted to be remembered. The pragmatic line of defense of an ex-perienced counsel, who tended to display an exaggerated degree of respect for thejudge and the prosecuting counsels, could only hinder the achievement of such agoal.50

In contrast to the ambitious daring of the second model, the first model wasdefensive and apologetic. However, from the perspective of the outcome of thetrials, the first model was undoubtedly much more effective. True, rulings in somecases were apparently based on particular circumstances more than on the line ofdefense adopted. For example, it is doubtful whether the five defendants tried inEdinburgh in 1793–94 and sentenced to long periods of deportation to BotanyBay had a realistic chance of being acquitted from the outset, in light of the clearbias of the judges and the strict nature of Scottish law in the matter. It is clear,on the other hand, that it was Thomas Erskine’s phenomenal skill in examiningwitnesses rather than any general defense model that played the critical role in theacquittal of Hardy, Thelwall, and Horne Tooke (who, contrary to the other two,took part in his own defense, but who, like them, refrained from making statementsduring the trial itself). Even Erskine, successful and committed to the abovemen-tioned apologetic model as he was, finished a significant number of cases in failure,the best known of which was the November 1792 decision that convicted ThomasPaine in absentia for seditious libel.51 Nonetheless, most jury members—not tomention judges—probably found it easier to accept an argument that held thatthe defendant had overall good intentions and just went a bit too far, than anargument that held that the regime was functioning in a tyrannical and arbitrarymanner and that it—and not the defendant—should actually be on trial.

Which model did Yorke adopt? The answer to this question can be divided intotwo parts: one relating to his legal representation and the other relating to hisstrategy of defense. In terms of representation, Yorke clearly adopted the secondmodel, choosing to play a major and active role in his own defense and to make

49 See the opinion of John Quincy Adams, who was in England at the time, on this subject, as quotedin Graham, Nation, 634.

50 Epstein, “Constitution,” 33, 37, Radical Expression, 32, and “Equality,” 52; Davis, “Prosecution,”154.

51 On Scottish law in the eighteenth century, see David M. Walker, A Legal History of Scotland, vol.5, The Eighteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1998). On the bias of the Scottish judges see M. Davis, “Pros-ecution,” 151. For the protocol of Paine’s trial, see Howell, State Trials, 22:357–472. For a usefulsummary of the trial, see Barrell and Mee, “Introduction,” xviii–xix. On Erskine, see John Hostettler,Thomas Erskine and Trial by Jury (Chichester, 1996). On other trials in which Erskine lost, see Barrelland Mee, “Introduction,” xix–xx; Graham, Nation, 504.

626 � YUVAL

only partial use of the assistance of an unknown counsel named John Hotham.While Hotham examined most of the witnesses, Yorke himself delivered his lengthy,weighty defense statement after the prosecution examined its witnesses.

Yorke’s actions as they related to defense strategy reflected greater ambivalence.If at the beginning of his long statement it appeared that Yorke had adopted anapologetic tone in order to create an impression of a gentler, less extreme character,the remainder of his statement was very different in content and tone and, to acertain extent, served to undermine his initial direction. Ultimately, this inconsis-tency appears to have been to Yorke’s detriment in both realms; not only was heconvicted, but he also failed to emerge as a champion of the radical camp.

IV. YORKE’S DEFENSE STATEMENT

Yorke’s trial, which was typical in that it took place over the course of one longday in July 1795 (the treason trials of 1794 were exceptional in that they deviatedfrom this procedure),52 proceeded in the following order: prosecution’s presen-tation of the indictment; testimony of the prosecution witnesses; defense statement;testimony of the defense witnesses; “reply” of the prosecution; and the judge’s“summing up.” This order provided the Crown’s counsels with an advantage fromthe outset, particularly when we keep in mind that the judges (in this case, JudgeSir Giles Rooke) tended to be biased in their favor, and that their leading commentsand directions had a certain degree of influence over the jury.53 This meant thatthe defense statement, which was delivered more or less in the middle of the trial,was the defense’s primary opportunity to persuade the jury members of the justiceof their case.

This observation, of course, is valid only if we believe that the jury attributedsignificance to the defense statement or even bothered to listen to it carefully.Unfortunately, in the case of Yorke, as in many others, we do not have access tomaterial testifying to jury members’ actual attitude toward the defense statementor toward the trial as a whole. We are therefore left with the content of Yorke’sdiscourse, the judge’s and prosecution’s reactions to it, and the jury’s final verdict.Furthermore, the credibility of the trial protocol itself must also be regarded asquestionable, as it was shorthanded by LCS member William Ramsay, who wascertainly not a neutral stenographer.54 However, the distinction between discourseand the reception of discourse, as essential as it might be on a theoretical level,

52 The trial most likely took place on 23 July, despite the fact that the protocol of the trial publishedby Yorke dates it at July 10. See Howell, State Trials, 25:1003–4; The Annual Register, or GeneralRepository of History, Politics and Literature, for the Year 1795 (London, 1796), 50; Yorke, Trial ofHenry Yorke, book cover.

53 John H. Langbein, “Criminal Trial before the Lawyers,” University of Chicago Law Review 45,no. 2 (Winter 1978), 284–87; Thomas Andrew Green, Verdict according to Conscience: Perspectives onthe English Criminal Trial Jury, 1200–1800 (Chicago and London, 1985), 271, 278–79. However, itshould be noted that the bias of Judge Rooke was less pronounced than that of other British judges,the best known of which was Judge Braxfield, who presided over the Edinburgh trials of 1793–94.On Rooke, see David Lemmings, “Rooke, Sir Giles (1743–1808),” Oxford Dictionary of NationalBiography (Oxford, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com.rproxy.tau.ac.il/view/article/24060.

54 On Ramsay, see Davis, “Prosecution,” 154–55.

YORKE AND POLITICAL TRIALS IN 1790s BRITAIN � 627

is not as dichotomous as it may appear at first glance, particularly when consideredin the context of the English political trials of the 1790s. Even if the jurors werenot interested in Yorke’s speech per se, they were surely aware of the fact theywere being closely examined (by the trial audience, newspaper readers, reformers,etc.) and were expected to take defense arguments into consideration. This wasone manifestation of the government’s need to maintain the image of a fair andlegal institution and the long English tradition of a just and fearless jury mentionedearlier. It is also reasonable to conclude that Yorke believed that his speech hadthe potential to make a difference; had he not believed so, he would not havetried so eagerly to defend himself and to adopt apologetic language in its openingsection. Thus, even if neither Yorke nor the jurors took his defense statement atface value, it still most likely influenced the jury’s deliberations regarding sen-tencing. Finally, although Ramsay’s protocol must have contained some errors,the tradition of trial “prints” that began in the seventeenth century and combinedprivate initiatives with official judicial control ensured its relative accuracy andfairness. This tradition developed as a system of checks and balances of sorts, basedon mutual reliance and long-term relationships between the imprimatur-grantingjudge, the stenographer, and the publisher. The need of all three to maintain theirprofessional reputation as pursuers of the truth, as well as the explosive politicalatmosphere, which paradoxically “created a standoff or stalemate that can be de-scribed . . . as a culture of fact,” guaranteed to a great extent the relative precisionof Ramsay’s protocol. This assessment is also implied by the protocol’s inclusionin the prestigious volumes of State Trials.55

Yorke’s two-hour statement56 began with a series of apologetic declarations: henever attacked the parliament, “the strongest palladium of our liberties,” as aninstitution, rather only the manner in which it was functioning at the time; histrip to Sheffield was meant to promote not riots but rather “that which is universallyacknowledged to be indispensably necessary to the safety of the state . . . a Par-liamentary Reform”; those who were convicted in Scotland and deported actedin good faith, and even if they had been mistaken they should have nonethelessbeen pardoned.57 This defensive rhetoric differed markedly from the aggressiverhetoric he had employed in the past. It was even more conspicuous in two otherdeclarations that appeared in the beginning of his statement, which undoubtedlyamused all who had read Yorke’s angry writings or listened to his belligerentspeeches from the period 1793–94. First, Yorke argued that in each of his speecheshe had emphasized that the English constitution was “the noblest that ever wasrecorded on the annals of human kind,” and he continued by claiming that inmost of them, “I took essential pains in controverting the doctrines of ThomasPaine, who denied the existence of our constitution.”58 Yet, not only had Yorke

55 Michael Mendle, “The ‘Prints’ of the Trials: The Nexus of News, Politics, Law and Informationin the World of Roger Morrice,” in Fear, Exclusion and Revolution: Roger Morrice and his Worlds,1675–1700, ed. Jason McElligott (Aldershot, 2006), 123–37, quote on 131.

56 Annual Register for 1795, 50.57 Howell, State Trials, 25:1065–66, 1068–69, 1074, quote on 1065, 1066.58 Christopher Hill seems to uncritically adopt Yorke’s own arguments from his trial and uses his

defense statement as evidence of his being a “moderate radical” and a reformist who opposed Paine’srevolutionary approach. See Christopher Hill, Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in Interpretation ofthe English Revolution of the Seventeenth-Century (London, 1962), 103–4.

628 � YUVAL

never before made statements against Paine, but the title of one of his early writings,These Are the Times that Try Men’s Souls! had actually referenced the openingsentence of the first paper in Thomas Paine’s publication American Crisis.59 Al-though in contrast to Paine and like most of his comrades in the struggle, Yorkechose not to disengage completely from “accepted constitutional language” evenin his most radical years, Paine was clearly one of his main sources of inspiration.60

Here, however, Yorke was employing a tactic of reconciliation and therefore hadto distance himself from Paine, who at the time in England was regarded by mostpeople, and certainly by the establishment, as a dangerous revolutionary and athreat to the integrity of society.61 For this reason, Yorke repeatedly told the jurorsthat the Crown was trying to convince them that he was a revolutionary like Paine,when actually he was only “a reformer.”62 The credibility of Yorke’s words werebolstered by the “historical” line of argument he advanced: as he continued, heexplained that he intended to prove that general annual elections “were partly notonly the spirit but [also] the practice of the British constitution” in the past, andthat his protests were aimed only against violations against the kingdom’s originalconstitution.63 At this point, it appeared that despite his decision to deliver hisown defense statement (and not to leave this task to an experienced counsel),Yorke chose to adopt a line of defense characteristic of Erskine, based primarilyon the argument that his sole aim had been to achieve reform through peacefulmeans.

The moderate reformist approach adopted by Yorke was reinforced by threeadditional types of arguments employed throughout his statement: the rhetoric of“enlightenment,” his proposal of a particular interpretation of the French Revo-lution, and the rhetoric of “patriotism.” The central components of the first typeof argument were harsh criticism of the religious persecution and “barbarian ig-norance”64 of the Middle Ages and an emphasis on the importance of the inventionof printing, which, he argued, enabled the gradual emergence of free debate. Someof his claims appear to have been taken directly out of prominent manifestospromulgated by Enlightenment circles: “without knowledge there can be no lib-erty”; people should be encouraged to find the truth “by the exercise of their ownfaculties”; and whoever prevents them from doing so is “an enemy to the bestinterests of mankind!”65 The similarity of these arguments to those appearing inKant’s essay “What Is Enlightenment?”—whether intentional or not—is partic-

59 Yorke, These Are the Times. For the sentence in question, see Thomas Paine, “The American Crisis,”in The Thomas Paine Reader, ed. Michael Foot and Isaac Kramnick (London, 1987), 116.

60 The claim that British radicals made sure to use “accepted constitutional language” appears inGunther Lottes, “Radicalism, Revolution and Political Culture: An Anglo-French Comparison,” inPhilp, The French Revolution, 83–84. In a slightly different manner, James Epstein notes the radicals’ongoing ambivalence between Paine’s language of natural rights and reliance on the ancient and “pure”constitution of Britain. See Epstein, “Constitution,” 22–51, esp. 31–32. See the more detailed discussionon this point later in the article.

61 Barrell and Mee, “Introduction,” xviii–xxi; Claeys, “Introduction,” xxxiii–xxxvi; Wharam, TreasonTrials, 26, 35; Barrell, Imagining, 195–98. See also the clearly negative reference to Paine during awitness investigation in Yorke’s trial: Howell, State Trials, 25:1121.

62 Ibid., 1083.63 Ibid., 1067–68, quote on 1068.64 Ibid., 1087.65 Ibid., 1086, 1088–89.

YORKE AND POLITICAL TRIALS IN 1790s BRITAIN � 629

ularly striking. As Kant, like many other Enlightenment philosophers on variousoccasions, maintained that revolution could never bring about “a true reform inways of thinking,” this resemblance, to the extent that it was identified by itslisteners, may very well have served Yorke’s efforts to portray himself as a moderatesupporter of reform. True, Kant, who was a philosopher of high standing through-out continental Europe and Britain in 1795, supported the French Revolution inits early phases. However, his later call for perpetual peace prevented any possibilityof associating him with the subsequent Jacobin Terror, which now came to beincreasingly understood in English collective imagery as analogical to the very ideaof revolution itself.66

This attempt to be identified with a cautious, enlightened spirit acquired furthervalidity when Yorke turned to his analysis of the French Revolution. Here, Yorkedid not praise the revolutionaries en bloc as he had in past writings but ratherdivided the revolution into three chronological periods that were completely dif-ferent from one another: the period of a promising beginning, the destruction ofall that had been achieved as a result of Robespierre’s unbridled despotism, andthe present Thermidorian state of affairs, which aroused cautious optimism dueto the “moderation” of the legislators whose aim was the defense of liberty andproperty.67 This interpretation of the Revolution was consistent with the mood ofsome of the liberal elite of Britain (and of Europe in general) at the time, as wellas with the anti-Montagnard Thermidorian discourse that portrayed terror as ashameful perversion of the correct development of the Revolution, and Robespierreand his colleagues (and them alone) as “sanguinary monsters.”68

Another way that Yorke attempted to establish legitimacy among members ofthe jury for his radical activities was to portray them as activities undertaken forthe sake of the state and state security. Not only did the struggle for parliamentaryreform during this difficult hour not threaten the national effort, argued Yorke,but it was actually critical for the future existence of the nation. For this reason,Yorke held that it was the persecution of supporters of reform that constituted aserious national threat, and that his trial was in fact “a question of first nationalimportance.”69 As in his earlier writings, here too the struggle between the es-tablishment and the radical opposition to appropriate “true” patriotism for itselfreverberated in the background.70

66 Immanuel Kant, “What Is Enlightenment?” in The Enlightenment: A Sourcebook and Reader, ed.Paul Hyland (New York, 2003), 53–58, quote on 55. On Kant’s complex image and influence inEngland during those years, see Giuseppe Micheli, “The Early Reception of Kant’s Thought in England,1785–1805,” in Kant and His Influence, ed. George Macdonald Ross and Tony McWalter (Londonand New York, 2005), 202–314. One year earlier in England, Whig scholar Samuel Parr wrote in aletter to Hardy as follows: “I wish to see the people enlightened, but not inflamed.” See Charles KeganPaul, William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries (1876; London, 2005), 1:137.

67 Howell, State Trials, 25:1090–91.68 Hedva Ben Israel, English Historians on the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1968), 17–18; Bron-

islaw Baczko, “‘Monstres sanguinaires’ et ‘circonstances fatales’: Les discours thermidoriens sur laTerreur,” in The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, vol. 3, The Trans-formation of Political Culture, 1789–1848, ed. Francois Furet and Mona Ozouf (Oxford, 1989), 131–57.

69 Howell, State Trials, 25:1087, 1108, quote on 1108.70 On the meaning of the terms “patriot” and “patriotism” in Britain during the eighteenth century,

see Hugh Canningham, “The Language of Patriotism, 1750–1914,” History Workshop Journal 12, no.

630 � YUVAL

V. THE UNFORTUNATE VICTIM AND THE POLITICAL MARTYR

In this way, the opening of Yorke’s defense statement created the impression thathe had decided on a defense strategy based on rhetoric portraying him as a mod-erate, enlightened, and responsible man—in other words, the apologetic modelthat Erskine had employed so skillfully one year earlier. As we read on, however,it becomes clear that this impression is mistaken and that as the statement con-tinued, Yorke made increasing use of other types of arguments that obscured whatappears to have been his original line of defense, resulting in a statement that waseclectic and inconsistent. First, he employed the language of “victimization” similarto the language used in some of his earlier writings but completely different fromthe semi-apologetic language of the beginning of his statement. In contrast to thebeginning of the statement, he now played on human emotions and made noeffort directly to address the charges of the prosecution. As far as he was concerned,the major issue now was the suffering he had experienced, especially while he wasin prison. “How dreadful a deed it is to sacrifice unprotected innocence,” exclaimedYorke at one point, later adding, in a melodramatic tone: “Could even guilt attachitself to me my sufferings have been greater than my offence.” In this way, it issafe to assume that members of the jury questioned his sincerity when he toldthem with great emotion: “I am not asking you for mercy—I demand onlyjustice.”71

However, toward the end of his statement, as he made effective use of the“charisma” of the victim and pled for the mercy of the jurors cloaked as a batteredand unfortunate figure,72 Yorke assumed an image that was similar in its sufferingbut quite contrary in its meaning: the image of a martyr. In this persona, Yorkepresented himself as someone who would never agree to abandon his mission,who was completely at peace with the bitter fate stemming from this choice, andwho regarded the outcome as a sign of the justness of his path. In this way, Yorketold the jury, if they convicted him for his struggle for the liberty of man, notonly would he view it as a great honor but it would certainly not cause him todeviate from his principles. He concluded his statement with the following words:“if I must yet be doomed to languish out the most precious moments of my lifein a prison, fatal as it must be to my interest, blasting every where my hopes, andsinking me down completely into ruin, my mind shall be equal to the task—itshall bear with calmness and serenity the worst of ills, in support of a cause whose

1 (1981): 8–33; Linda Colley, “Radical Patriotism in Eighteenth-Century England,” in Patriotism: TheMaking and Unmaking of British National Identity, ed. Raphael Samuel, 3 vols. (London and NewYork, 1989), 1:169–87; Derek Jarrett, The Begetters of Revolution: England’s Involvement with France,1759–1789 (London, 1973), esp. 78–79, 111–12, 115–16; Otto Dann, “Introduction,” in Nationalismin the Age of the French Revolution, ed. Otto Dann and John Dinwiddy (London, 1988), 3, 7–11;John Dinwiddy, “England,” ibid., 55–57.

71 Howell, State Trials, 25:1106–7, 1111. During his trial the previous year, Danton, too, made apoint to not request the mercy of the jury. See Frederic Bluche, Danton (Paris, 1984), 472.

72 Todor Kuljic, “On the Conversion and Self-Consciousness of the Yugoslav Social Science Intel-ligentsia,” in R/Evolution and Order: Serbia after October 2000, ed. Ivana Spasic and Milan Subotic(Belgrade, 2001), 373–75.

YORKE AND POLITICAL TRIALS IN 1790s BRITAIN � 631

basis is truth, and whose object is the liberty of my country.”73 These were notwords spoken without thought but rather the deliberate adoption of a rhetoricalmodel based on what Marcus Wood has called “the tradition of protestant mar-tyrdom.” This trope was consciously deployed by defendants in religious andpolitical trials, at least from the period of the Civil War onward, and during the1790s was evident in trials such as that of Scottish radical Thomas Fyshe Palmer.74

Contrary to the unfortunate victim’s asking for the mercy of society, the martyrchallenges society, preaching to the people the truth they do not want to hear,just like the outcast prophet. As a political (or secular) martyr,75 Yorke’s messageto the jury was unequivocal: even if you decide to convict me, justice will still beon my side. Moreover, he also argued that more than being in his interest it wasin their own interest to acquit him, as “if I fall for having avowed the wholesomenotions of our forefathers, and for having held up their institutions for imitation,you yourselves may be the next victim.”76 At this point, Yorke appeared to bespeaking as if he were still standing on the podium at Castle Hill, ignoring thevery different “spatial economy” dictated by each location.77 This threatening andsubversive language was already visible slightly earlier in his statement, when hecharacterized those who were responsible for placing him on trial as conspirators“who have formed a league . . . against the best friends of the constitution,” andeven more so when he told the jurors to use their ruling to “teach those whohave nothing but power on their side to be silent when reason speaks, and notto attempt to drown the voice of the people amid the din of corruption.”78

If at the beginning of his statement Yorke attempted to gain the support of thejurors without challenging the existing order, he now attempted to line the jurorsup with him on one side of the barricade, with the establishment on the otherside. York thus transformed himself from an apologetic defendant into an uncom-promising accuser and put the holders of power on the defendant’s bench in hisplace. In this way, he abandoned the apologetic model and looked toward theromantic, glorified model. He may have believed that at this point he possessedthe symbolic power necessary to make this dramatic change and to maintain hischances of achieving an acquittal. On the basis of the decision of the jurors at theend of the trial, however, he appears to have been mistaken.

73 Howell, State Trials, 25:1112–13. Ironically, the jurors were forewarned of Yorke’s tendency toportray himself as a martyr at the outset of the trial, when state’s witness William George Frith claimedthat in his speech at Castle Hill, Yorke had said that it would be an honor to sit in prison for the causeof liberty and that he was even willing to be executed “as a martyr of liberty.” See ibid., 1046.

74 Marcus Wood, Radical Satire and Print Culture, 1790–1832 (Oxford, 1994), 121–54, quote on130. On Palmer’s martyrology, see the conclusion of his defense statement, in Howell, State Trials,25:376. On earlier uses of “martyrdom” in politico-religious contexts, see James Sharpe, “Last DyingSpeeches: Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in Seventeenth-Century England,” Past and Present107, no. 1 (May 1985): 144–67; David Nicholls, “The Theatre of Martyrdom in the French Refor-mation,” Past and Present 121, no. 1 (November 1988): 49–73.

75 These terms are used by Wood to describe William Hone’s persona during his trials in 1817.Wood, Radical Satire, 141–42.

76 Howell, State Trials, 25:1108. On the “self-dramatization” and the “dramatized martyrdom” ofthe English radicals, see also Thompson, Making, 123, 157; Emsley, “Pitt’s ‘Terror,’” 173–74.

77 Epstein, “Equality,” 55.78 Howell, State Trials, 25:1102–3, quote on 1103.

632 � YUVAL

VI. HISTORICAL RIGHTS AND NATURAL RIGHTS

It can be assumed that Yorke’s chances of achieving acquittal were also reducedby his unwillingness to limit himself to “historical” arguments when attemptingto establish the legitimacy of his opinions, as well as his decision to weave inarguments taken from the discourse of natural rights. Indeed, there is no doubtthat in contrast to his earlier writings and speeches, which frequently drew onnatural rights as a basis for the legitimacy of taking action for the sake of change,here he chose to emphasize the “primitive purity” of the English constitution. Tothis end, like many other radical defendants in the trials that preceded him, Yorkequoted a large number of respected authorities from the past and present, includingLord Chatham and Edmund Burke, and showed that their ideas regarding par-liament were consistent with his own.79 In this light, he promoted the conclusionthat he was being tried for views that in the past were considered completelylegitimate.

The quotes read by Yorke were, of course, very selective. In the case of Burke,for example, they were taken from his 1770 Thoughts on the Cause of the PresentDiscontents, which addressed the conflict under way in the American colonies.80

In this way, Yorke was able to use the worst enemy of 1790s English radicalsagainst himself, so to speak. Some of the other quotes deployed by Yorke, likethose taken from the writings of the well-renowned judge and constitutional analystWilliam Blackstone,81 were chosen in a particularly sophisticated manner, as theycontained a double “historical” argument: not only were they the words of anauthoritative figure from the past, but they also contained criticism of the deviationfrom the “original” British constitution. Yorke expressed the advantage gained bythis tactic in words that no juror could fail to understand: “I cannot then beconsidered as an innovator, nor can I boast of being the original of such principles;but I follow the immortal Mr. Locke . . . I follow the late lord Chatham . . . Ifollow lord Camden . . . and, lastly, judge Blackstone.”82 Yorke’s turn to consti-tutional discourse was a wise move, as it constituted the imagined shared spaceof the British nation, a supernarrative that could be used, subject to its constraints,to wage an effective political struggle. As radical groups such as the Levellersunderstood well before Yorke,83 the symbolic borders of the English constitutionprovided defense and legitimacy for strong and even subversive expressions thatwould be unacceptable in any other context. Even the claim of the existence ofnatural rights, which at that point was firmly associated with Paine and with theFrench Revolution, could be recognized as long as it was based on an imaginedmythological past, that is to say, as long as it was portrayed as part of England’sancient constitution.

Nonetheless, Yorke understood that the constitutional discursive field also pre-sented considerable problems, which, incidentally, are what caused him to refrain

79 This tactic was particularly noticeable in Tooke’s trial, in which the defense called both Pitt andRichmond to the witness stand. See Howell, State Trials, 25:375–86.

80 Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (London, 1770).81 Howell, State Trials, 25:1101.82 Ibid., 1099–1100.83 Epstein, Radical Expression, vii, 26–27; Hill, Puritanism and Revolution, 78, 115–16.

YORKE AND POLITICAL TRIALS IN 1790s BRITAIN � 633

almost completely from entering it during the years of his radical activity thatpreceded his trial. Even if there is a degree of justice in John Pocock’s claim thatit is problematic automatically to link claims of natural rights with radicalism andconstitutional claims with conservatism,84 this connection was undoubtedly notcompletely mistaken, certainly in the case of formative images of the people ofthe era. If Yorke’s aim was not only to be acquitted but also to be rememberedin the pages of history as a courageous radical speaker, he could not remain withinthe safe confines of the ancient English constitution.85

Indeed, the farther York progressed into his statement, the more he stressednatural rights as a meaningful basis of legitimacy. If at the beginning of the state-ment he alluded to them here and there in an almost incidental manner, towardits conclusion he overemphasized their importance. Even though equal represen-tation and short parliaments should be considered as “the basis of our ancientconstitution,” he declared, “I would never provoke their adoption from the de-rivative claim of precedent; for neither the concessions nor the prejudices of an-cestors—neither their unruly temper nor their servility, nor the encroachments ofancient kings, can constitute any precedents against the natural rights of man-kind.”86 This declaration was dramatic relative to the content of the defense state-ment until that point; it was not simply the introduction of one additional pointto the many points that had already been advanced but rather it had the abilitycompletely to transform the foundation on which all the other arguments hadbeen based. Furthermore, this declaration strongly reverberated with the much-criticized arguments made by revolutionary Thomas Paine in Rights of Man, whichheld that rights trump precedent and that the present generation cannot be boundby previous ones.87 If earlier in his statement Yorke tried to distance himself fromPaine and to associate himself with Burke, the effect was now completely opposite.

Thus, in at least two ways—in the language he used and the persona he pre-sented—the Yorke who concluded his defense statement was markedly differentfrom the Yorke who had opened it. Of course, these two aspects of his statementwere connected by a Gordian knot. In the first part of his statement, Yorke pre-sented himself both as a moderate and responsible person and as a person indistress, requesting the mercy of the jurors. His reliance on acceptable and “le-gitimate” historical-constitutional arguments in the early sections of his statementcontributed to the successful construction of this image, which did not threatenthe symbolic power relations between the accused and the state. However, as thestatement progressed, Yorke’s self-representation underwent marked symbolicchange. The repeated blows he had sustained at the hands of “those who havenothing but power on their side,”88 he now claimed, were not coincidental butrather the result of his uncompromising struggle for truth and the liberty of theEnglish people. Despite its many examples throughout the history of the Englishpeople, this liberty, he continued, had a foundation that was more ethical and

84 J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History (Cambridge, 1985), 226.85 Iain Hampsher-Monk argues that the British Radicals were inclined to stay within the limits of

the traditional constitutional language, and that this “linguistic nonperformance” contributed signifi-cantly to their failure to create a revolution in Britain. See Hampsher-Monk, “On Not Inventing.”

86 Howell, State Trials, 25:1102.87 Thomas Paine, “Rights of Man” (1791–92), in Foot and Cramnick, Paine Reader, 201–364.88 Howell, State Trials, 25:1103.

634 � YUVAL

rational than mythological or historical. Regardless, Yorke held that the “author-ized cruelty” that had been directed at him was the result of the threat that hisefforts for “the resettlement” of a corrupt public affairs and government posedfor the privileged, who lived “at the expense of the public, without serving it.”89

If during the first part of the statement Yorke appeared to be trying to persuadethe jurors to reintegrate him into the existing order, as he got closer to the endit became increasingly clear that he was actually interested in having the jurorsjoin him in challenging the status quo. It is very likely that, in common with otherEnglish radicals, Yorke too believed in the independence and courage of the mem-bers of the jury, as reflected in the acquittal of the defendants in the treason trialsof 1794. However, refraining from conviction when the punishment was cruelexecution was one thing,90 and endorsing explicitly oppositional messages like thoseYorke presented toward the end of his statement was another story entirely. Inthe context of the hysterical atmosphere prevalent in Britain in the mid-1790s, itwas unrealistic to expect jurors to adopt Thomas Paine’s language of natural rights.

The problem was not only content-related but also one of integrity, or lackthereof. Even the jurors, who were not necessarily aware of or interested in theideological nuances of the language deployed by Yorke, could not miss his tendencytoward political and performative fluctuation. In their eyes, Yorke had the ap-pearance of an enlightened reformer one moment and an angry revolutionary thenext; a misunderstood apologetic figure one moment and an uncompromising,preaching radical activist the next; a man begging for his life in a touching mannerone moment and a man shunning all anticipated punishment and suffering thenext. In this way, Yorke did damage to his case twice over: not only by revealinghis threatening and revolutionary side but also by displaying an incoherency thatcaused him to lose one of the most important resources of any defendant standingtrial—his credibility.

VII. GERRALD’S TRIAL AND YORKE’S SENTENCE

In typical form, and as we have already seen, Yorke referred both explicitly andimplicitly to numerous different sources while building his defense statement. Still,it is difficult to escape the impression that Yorke received considerable inspirationfrom the defense statements of the five “Scottish martyrs,” who were tried inEdinburgh in 1793–94, and particularly from that delivered by Joseph Gerrald,the LCS representative to the “British Convention” who was sentenced in March1794, three months before Yorke’s arrest, to fourteen years of exile in BotanyBay.91 Indication of Yorke’s great respect for Gerrald had already appeared shortlyafter Gerrald’s trial.92

In his own statement, Gerrald made use of virtually all the motifs and argument

89 Quotations at ibid., 1108, 1102, 1103, respectively.90 F. K. Prochaska, “English State Trials in the 1790s: A Case Study,” Journal of British Studies 13,

no. 1 (November 1973), esp. 67; Emsley, “Pitt’s ‘Terror,’” 171–72.91 For an analysis of Gerrald’s trial, see Barrell, Imagining, 157–69. A brilliant analysis of Gerrald’s

defense statement and its ideological context appears in Epstein, “Constitution,” 36–51.92 Yorke, “Thoughts on Civil Government,” 263.

YORKE AND POLITICAL TRIALS IN 1790s BRITAIN � 635

types that Yorke employed later. First, he stressed his loyalty to Britain’s ancientconstitution but gave clear precedence to the “eternal” principles of wisdom, truth,and justice.93 Second, he cast an image of himself as a tortured saint by talkingabout the chronic illness from which he suffered and by invoking a series ofmythological figures from the past (topped by Algernon Sidney) who sacrificedthemselves for a great cause.94 Third, as Yorke did later, Gerrald moved from atone of justification, emphasizing good intentions and innocence, to a sharp andangry political indictment. Both defendants appear to have hoped gradually topersuade the jurors not only to support their acquittal but also to support theirradical views, or at least view them as legitimate. Yorke also may have thoughtthat what had completely failed in the particularly hostile atmosphere that prevailedin the Scottish courtroom could succeed before an English jury. After all, thetraditional independence and integrity of English juries were often praised by theradicals in the 1790s (including Yorke himself, in 1793), especially after the ac-quittals in the London treason trials of 1794.95 In addition, one can argue thatin view of the major differences between Scottish and English law, Yorke’s risk inemploying Gerrald’s rhetoric was apparently smaller than that taken by Gerraldhimself, as their eventual sentences clearly illustrate: while Gerrald was sentencedto fourteen years in exile, Yorke was sentenced to only two years in prison, despitethe fact that he was found guilty of the serious charge of “conspiracy . . . to exciteriots and tumults and commotions in the realm.”96

This, however, is a case of retrospective wisdom that was not necessarily pos-sessed by Yorke at the time, inasmuch as the charge “conspiracy” was hardly usedin the political trials in England during the period.97 In the end, it appears thatYorke’s relatively lenient sentence was not necessarily a predetermined outcomebut rather was the result of concrete factors, the most important of which wasYorke’s decision to retain the services of Thomas Erskine to defend him at hissentencing hearing in November 1795. Erskine reduced the damage suffered byYorke during his trial by adopting an apologetic and patriotic line of argumentsomewhat similar to Yorke’s rhetoric at the beginning of his trial. Erskine stressedto Judge Rooke that Yorke was an extremely young and unfortunate man andthat, due to his talents and intelligence, he had the potential to contribute a great

93 For Gerrald’s statement of defense, see Howell, State Trials, 23:947–97, quote on 974. Theabovementioned duality is succinctly expressed ibid., 991.

94 For Gerrald’s statements regarding his fragile health, see ibid., 948, 991, 995–96. For his referencesto martyrs, including Jesus, see ibid., 23, 949, 993.

95 On this general tendency among radicals in the 1790s, see Epstein, Radical Expression, 63, andBarrell, Imagining, 428–29, as well as Horne Tooke’s words in his trial: Howell, State Trials, 25:23.For Yorke’s own opinion on the subject, see Yorke, These Are the Times, 10. On the general belief inthe autonomy and integrity of the jury and its importance to legal justice and constitutional liberty inseventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, see Wood, Radical Satire, 123; Green, Verdict, 310,315–16, 332–34. One of the main reasons that the Sheffield Society published an inexpensive editionof the protocol of the dramatic trial of William Mead and William Penn (with the addition of a prefacethat appears to have been written by Yorke) in January 1794 was to remind the public of the traditionalindependence of jurors vis-a-vis the leanings of the judge. See The People’s Ancient and Just LibertiesAsserted in the Trial of William Penn and William Mead (Sheffield, 1794); Taylor, “Sheffield,” 143.

96 Together with a fine of £200 and the necessity to give sureties for his good behavior for sevenyears. See Howell, State Trials, 25:1154.

97 See sec. II above.

636 � YUVAL

deal to his country in the future.98 The fact that Rooke—at least according to onehistorian—was “a mild and merciful judge” also most likely helped Yorke to somedegree.99 Finally, it should be noted that Yorke was convicted for his behavior atthe rally and not for the bayonet episode, as reported in the Annual Register.100

As a result of these factors, Yorke’s sentence was similar to the sentences given atthe Assizes of York in 1793–94 for the offenses of “seditious words” and “seditiouslibel.”101

It is also possible that Yorke’s desire for acquittal was secondary to his desireto be glorified in the way Gerrald had been. It is important to remember thatGerrald’s model included not only his dramatic statement before the court buthis behavior surrounding the trial in its entirety. Gerrald had been released fromprison in Edinburgh in early 1794 in order to travel to England to arrange hisaffairs before his trial, and this had provided him with a golden opportunity toescape, as many others had done before him. However, although he suffered fromtuberculosis, and despite the pressure his colleagues exerted on him to flee andhis own expectation that the Scottish court would sentence him to exile, Gerraldpreferred to appear for trial and endow the radical struggle (and himself) withimportant symbolic capital.102 In July 1795, when Yorke was finally put on trial,Gerrald, who was now dying and on his way to Botany Bay, was already a myth-ological hero of the reform movement. The temptation of attaining even a fractionof the respect and veneration enjoyed by Gerrald might have been too great forYorke—so great that he was perhaps unable to withstand it, even at the risk ofconviction.

VIII. CONCLUSION

The instability of Yorke’s defense statement was the product of his own personalpolitical and intellectual leanings and opinions, but it must also be understood asa product of the legal setting in which he operated. The significant limitationsand restrictions imposed on the ruling regime and its representatives throughoutthe legal proceedings, which stemmed from the need to safeguard a fair appearanceand the traditional rights of the accused, enticed Yorke to try to achieve goals thatwere separated by significant tension, and in some cases total contradiction: theacquisition of discursive authority as a speaker in the courtroom versus the abilitysimultaneously to level serious criticism at the hegemonic discourse that enabledhim to be placed on the defense bench in the first place; the cultivation of empathyamong the jurors for past suffering versus an attempt to reshape their worldview;achievement of acquittal versus achievement of the status of hero and torturedsaint. Yorke’s desire to achieve these diverse goals was simultaneously shaped and

98 Graham, Nation, 630–31; The Times, 19 November 1795 and 30 November 1795.99 Edward Foss, The Judges of England with Sketches of Their Lives, 9 vols. (London, 1864), 8:365.100 Annual Register for 1795, 50.101 See Emsley, “Pitt’s ‘Terror,’” 181.102 On Gerrald’s decision to appear for trial, see Wharam, Treason Trials, 62. On Gerrald’s belief

that he would receive a heavy sentence, see Davis, “Prosecution,” 154–55.

YORKE AND POLITICAL TRIALS IN 1790s BRITAIN � 637

reinforced by the ambivalence that was an integral part of the political trials of1790s England.

Ultimately, Yorke ended up with the worst of both worlds: not only was heconvicted and sentenced to two years in prison but he also failed to emerge as aradical hero. His conviction stemmed not only from the fickleness of his defensestatement but also from many other factors that were unrelated to his handlingof the case. The final ruling was almost certainly significantly influenced by theoppressive social and political atmosphere prevalent in England in 1795 due tothe state of the war, the bias of the judge, and jurors’ tendency to convict the vastmajority of radical defendants brought before them during the 1790s.

In contrast, Yorke’s failure to become a radical hero appears to have been moreof a result of Yorke’s conduct both during the trial itself and in the years thatfollowed. He certainly appears to have had the potential to become a hero. Muchevidence indicates that in his younger years, Yorke aroused enthusiasm to the pointof veneration among many of those around him, as well as the staunch oppositionof political rivals. For instance, a passage from his first radical essay was includedin a collection of biting political morceaux published in 1793, along with well-known texts by Locke, Godwin, and William Paley, while Arthur Young chose toclose his successful antirevolutionary essay The Example of France a Warning toBritain with an attack against Yorke.103 Joseph Gales, the influential editor andpublisher of The Sheffield Register, wrote that at the conclusion of the rally atCastle Hill, he “had the honour to be drawn along with Yorke amidst thethousands.” During the same period, shortly before his arrest, a boy named afterYorke was christened in Sheffield. Even during his time in prison, at least untilthe emergence of signs of his political conversion, he received many visitors, andapparently also the financial support of the LCS, which he denied having receivedin retrospect for understandable reasons.104 It was Yorke’s trial that in many wayssignified the onset of the process through which he bid farewell to the personaof the mythological martyr. The possibility that Yorke might emerge as a formativemyth—or at least a radical one—appears to have been thwarted by the unsuccessfulcombination of the defense strategies he employed during his trial; by the factthat he was only sentenced to two years in prison; by his service in an infantryregiment as a lieutenant colonel soon after his release; by his marriage to thewarden’s daughter in 1800; and, of course, by the gradual ideological turn manifestin his writings.105

After turning his back on the reform movement, Yorke attempted to earn po-litical capital within the opposing camp in his new role as a “nationalist” convert.

103 The Budget of the People, Collected by Old Hubert, pt. 1 (London, 1793?), 5–6; Arthur Young,“The Example of France a Warning to Britain,” in Claeys, Political Writings, 159.

104 Joseph Gales quoted in Stevenson, Artisans, 25. On the baby named after Yorke, see Wharam,Treason Trials, 287 n. 11. On Yorke’s visitors while in jail, see Fearn, “Radical Traitor,” 190. On thefinancial assistance he received, see John Thelwall, “Henry Yorke’s Subscription,” in The Tribune, aPeriodical Publication, Consisting Chiefly of the Political Lectures of J. Thelwall, from the Commencmentof the Second Course in February, 1795, to the Introduction of Mr. Pitt’s Convention Act (London, 1796),126; Yuval, “Une politique de l’emotion,” 216.

105 Fearn, “Radical Traitor,” 191; John Alger [revised by Peter Spence], “Yorke, Henry Redhead (1772–1813),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com.rproxy.tau.ac.il/view/article/30241.

638 � YUVAL

His penitence for his sins of the past, his melodramatic declaration of willingnessto sacrifice himself in the name of England, his appealing pathos-filled antirevo-lutionary letters from his 1802 journey to France, and his extremist newspapercolumns against Napoleon transformed him into a prominent figure among theloyalists.106 But here, too, his success was not complete, and he was always suspectedof being two-faced.107 Even the obituaries written about him after his death inJanuary 1813 fluctuated between admiration and condemnation. Despite its overallhostility, the Edinburgh Annual Register’s short description did a commendablejob summing up Yorke’s life work and explaining why he remained such an en-igmatic and not particularly heroic figure in British collective memory: “HenryRedhead Yorke, one of the most violent of all politicians, first on the side of liberty,and afterwards against it.”108 In many ways, this description sums up England’spolitical culture as a whole during the 1790s.

106 Yuval, “Une politique de l’emotion,” chaps. 5, 6. For his impressions from Paris, see HenryRedhead Yorke, Letters from France, in 1802, 2 vols. (London, 1804). For his journalistic writings, seeHenry Redhead Yorke, The Anti-Corsican; or, War of Liberty: A Series of Letters Addressed to the Peopleof the United Empire, First Published in The Star, Under the Signature of Galgacus: Revised and Correctedby the Author (London, 1804); Mr. Redhead Yorke’s Weekly Political Review (also published as WeeklyPolitical Review of Henry Redhead Yorke). The journal appeared between December 1805 and December1811.

107 Yuval, “Une politique de l’emotion,” 283–300.108 The Edinburgh Annual Register, for 1813 (Edinburgh, 1815), pts. 1 and 2, ccclvii.