Captains French, Dockwra, and James were tried at the Old Bailey and found guilty of manslaughter, but allowed their clergy, and so let off with their lives.

Lord Warwick's case gave rise to a grave legal argument whether Captain French, who had been convicted of felony, but not burnt in the hand nor pardoned, could legally be a witness. It was held he could not. Lord Warwick also raised the question, whether a second in a duel could be chargeable with the death of his principal ? Lord Somers ruled that the fact of acting as second was not proved, and therefore the question did not arise. But there can be no doubt, according to recent cases, as to the liability of all concerned in a duel on both sides to the charge of murder. The conduct of Lord Warwick, in leaving Coote dead on the ground, and looking after Captain French, is certainly hard to explain; but, on the whole, it seems clear that he was Coote's not French's second, and that the justice of the case was satisfied by the sentence of guilty of Manslaughter, passed unanimously.

There is no evidence that Lord Mohun

M

was present at all during the fatal encounter, and his Lordship at the trial declared that all his efforts were directed to prevent the duel. His character was against him, but no one swore to his presence on the field after the fighting began, so that he was unanimously pronounced not guilty. Before leaving the bar, he assured the Court he would endeavour to avoid giving their Lordships any trouble of this nature in future. Considering that he had once already been tried for his life at the same bar, he might have been expected to take the experience to heart. But the duel, in which he and the Duke of Hamilton, his brother-in-law, both fell, was a deed far more atrocious than either of those for which he had been indicted of murder. This is, as far as I know, the most memorable duel recorded in Leicester Fields.

1

When Lord Mohun was killed, he was living in Gerard House, Gerard Street, Soho, so called from Gerard, Lord Macclesfield, with whose family he and the Duke of Hamilton had both intermarried. A dispute about this Gerard Street property was the cause of their fatal quarrel.

CHAPTER VIII.

DISTINGUISHED LODGERS AND VISITORS. —

PETER THE GREAT, SWIFT, AND

PRINCE EUGENE.

MMEDIATELY to the west of Lei

cester House stood a house belonging to the Marquis of Ailesbury, but in 1698 occupied by the Marquis of Caermarthen, the eccentric son of Thomas Osborne, Duke of Leeds, who, when Lord Danby, was go-between in the infamous money-dealings between the French King and Charles II., and for his part in that treason had lain five years a prisoner in the Tower, till 1684. After sagaciously keeping aloof during the brief and troubled reign of James, Danby had thrown himself zealously into the cause of William. He had been rewarded in 1689

with the Lord Presidentship of the Council, and the marquisate of Caermarthen, and in 1694 with the dukedom of Leeds. He was never trusted in Parliament or out.

But just when he had sunk to his lowest point of unpopularity, his credit had been suddenly restored by his services in detecting the Jacobite plot of 1690, and in taking Lord Preston, its most active agent, with his papers, while making the best of his way down the Thames to St. Germain's. In this exploit he had been materially assisted by his son Peregrine, who had had a passion for the sea, and whose yacht, on his own rig and model, called after himself the "Peregrine," was the fastest craft afloat in that day. It was thanks to her sailing qualities that Preston and his confederates had been overtaken and captured. The Duke had now retired from public life, but his wild son still served the King. With the rank of Rear-Admiral, he had accompanied the expedition of the allied English and Dutch fleets to the ill-managed attack on Brest (in 1694), when the plans of the Allies were betrayed to the enemy, through the treachery of Marlborough, and the attempt to land under Talmash was

repulsed with heavy loss. The "Peregrine" and her commander, with whom were serving Lord Cutts, the fiercest of Irish soldiers, and mad Lord Mohun, who was then trying to wipe out the stain left on his name by the murder of Mountford, sailed boldly into the bay under the enemies' batteries to reconnoitre the defences, drew the fire of the French guns, and only by a miracle came out afloat. When at the beginning of 1698 Peter the First, Czar of Muscovy, announced himself as a visitor to England, the King, a good judge of character, chose the very best man in Court for his cicerone, guide, and master of the ceremonies, in the Marquis of Caermarthen, as keen a sailor, as enthusiastic a ship-builder, almost as hard a drinker, and as bluff, blunt, and impatient of ceremony, as Peter himself.

The Czar came hither-a magnificent young despot of six-and-twenty, untamed, untaught, a unique combination of practical sagacity, profound purpose and comprehensive intelligence, with the habits of a sot, and the manners of a savage—not, as has sometimes been represented, to learn the handling of shipwright's tools and the