Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [18]
Somehow Warriston made contact with one of Law’s money dealers, who confirmed that “a little before” the duel Law had received “£400 from Scotland by Bill, which the Banker’s book could show.” Law, therefore, had plenty of money and no reason to resort to extortion. Shrewsbury was convinced by this testimony and passed the information to the king with the confident assurance “that there was nothing of money in the case.” But to the king the dilemma still seemed insoluble. Now that his original objection was disproven, Warriston and Shrewsbury were pestering him to release Law; yet he had promised the Wilsons he would never pardon Law without their consent, and he could not risk upsetting them. Eventually he took the middle ground: Law was reprieved from the death sentence but not released, pending the Wilsons’ reaction.
They retaliated dramatically, issuing an “Appeal of Murder,” an ancient legal procedure that allowed the heir to a murder victim to oppose a royal pardon. If they succeeded, the king could have no further jurisdiction over the outcome. They would be able to demand Law’s death, and not even a royal pardon would save him.
The case was now a civil one and came under the jurisdiction of the Court of the King’s Bench at Westminster Hall. Without tasting freedom, Law was transferred from Newgate to the King’s Bench prison in Southwark—from one grim hellhole to another—to await this second trial. Opinion had swung markedly in Wilson’s favor. Even Warriston privately admitted the worst: “Mr. Law’s case is very doubtful, all indifferent men are against him; and I never had so many reproaches for any business since I knew England, as for concerning myself for him: my Lord Chief Justice is earnest to have his life, the Archbishop owns to me that he himself pressed the King not to pardon him, as being a thing of an odious nature, and which would give great offence,” he wrote gloomily.
On June 22, almost two months after the first trial, Law came before the King’s Bench. To his relief, he found Chief Justice Sir John Holt officiating. Unlike Lovell, Holt is remembered for his fair-mindedness, his humanity—he ended the practice of bringing defendants to the dock in irons—and for the exceptionally profligate and debauched friends he made while at Oxford. Years later one of them came before him on a charge of felony. Holt inquired after the rest of the circle, only to be told, “Ah, my lord, they are all hanged but myself and your lordship.”
Since this was a civil action, Law was now entitled to his own defense and enlisted some of the most eminent lawyers of the day: Sir William Thompson and Sir Creswell Levinz with Thomas Carthew as junior. As soon as the case opened it became apparent that even with this support, his prospects were even worse than everyone had feared. Wilson’s legal team had prepared a damning case, claiming that Law had committed murder “violently, feloniously, wilfully, and of his malice aforethought,” and furthermore that he had cowardly attempted to evade arrest. Robert Wilson said he had been forced to give chase “from vill to vill into the four nearest vills and further.” If we bear in mind that this is the only mention of Law’s attempt to evade justice, Wilson’s version of events rings hollow and was probably just another malicious attempt to manipulate the court and make the case against Law even blacker.
Law’s defense team opted to use technical quibbles to demolish the Wilson case. There were serious discrepancies in the writ against their client, they complained: the time and place of the incident had not been precisely given; the charge against Law was indirect and thus there was “no necessity, nor is he [Law] bound by the law of the land to answer” the Wilson appeal. Clearly the argument carried weight, because Holt and his learned colleagues needed time to consider the complexities raised and deferred judgment for a week. But by late June, Trinity