OWNED BY FRANKLIN’S NEPHEW AND GREAT-NEPHEW
ENGLISH PRECEDENTS FOR AMERICAN TREASON TRIALS?
[TREASON TRIALS.]
The Tryals of Robert Charnock, Edward King, and Thomas Keyes, for the horrid and execrable Conspiracy to assassinate his sacred Majesty, K. William, in order to facilitate a French Invasion of this Kingdom. Who upon full Evidence were found Guilty of High-Treason, at the Sessions-house in the Old-Baily, March 11.
London, Printed for Samuel Heyrick … and Isaac Cleave … 1696.
[bound with:]
The Arraignment, Tryal and Condemnation of Sir John Friend, Knight, for High Treason … on Monday March 23. 1695/6 … London, Printed for Samuel Heyrick … and Isaac Cleve. 1696.
[and with:]
The Arraignment, Tryal and Condemnation of Sir William Parkins Knt … who was found guilty of high-Treaons, March 24. 1695/6 … London, Printed for Samuel Heyrick … and Isaac Cleve. 1696.
[and:]
The Arraignment, Tryal and Condemnation of Ambrose Rookwood … who upon full Evidence was found Guilty of High Treason … on Tuesday the 21st of April, 1696 … London, Printed for Samuel Heyrick … and Isaac Cleve. 1696.
[and:]
The Arraignments, Tryals and Condemnations of Charles Cranburne, and Robert Lowick … London, Printed for Samuel Heyrick … and Isaac Cleve. 1696.
[and:]
The Arraignment, Confession and Condemnation of Alexander Knightley …. London, Printed for Samuel Heyrick … and Isaac Cleve. 1696.
[and:]
The Arraignment, Tryal and Condemnation of Peter Cooke, Gent. For High-Treason … London: Printed for Benjamin Tooke … 1696.
Seven works in one vol., folio, pp. Charnock: [2], 76 (wanting the imprimatur leaf), Friend: [2], 44 (wanting the imprimatur leaf), Parkins: [2], 48 (wanting the imprimatur leaf), Rookwood: [4], 75, [1], Cranburne: [4], 72, Knightley: [4], 8 (with an initial blank), Cooke: [2], 71, [1] (wanting the imprimatur leaf); first named work frayed at the front, some browning, else good copies; bound together, spine very dry and worn, covers wanting; contemporary manuscript collective title-page laid in loose (torn); ownership inscriptions to first title-page ‘J.F. Davenport 1778’ and ‘Franklin Davenport 1780’ (see below).
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The Tryals of Robert Charnock, Edward King, and Thomas Keyes, for the horrid and execrable Conspiracy to assassinate his sacred Majesty, K. William, in order to facilitate a French Invasion of this Kingdom. Who upon full Evidence were found Guilty of High-Treason, at the Sessions-house in the Old-Baily, March 11.
First editions of the trials of the Jacobite conspirators convicted in March and April 1696 in connection with a plot to assassinate William III near Turnham Green in February that year, and to encourage French invasion to restore James II to the throne. The main prosecution witness was George Porter, a violent former highway-robber fatally recruited to the cause, who betrayed his co-conspirators immediately after his arrest on 27 February 1696.
The first three trials were rushed through just days before the Treason Trials Act (which allowed defendants counsel) came into force on 25 March 1696. ‘The accused assassins Charnock and Sir William Parkyns defended themselves ably [though fruitlessly], but Friend, being ill-educated, unintelligent, and partly deaf, was helpless’ (ODNB). Charnock, King, and Keyes were hanged, drawn, and quartered on 18 March, Charnock leaving a last paper that admitted his guilt, and so harmed his fellow conspirators tried later. Friend and Parkyns were hanged at Tyburn on 3 April 1696. Ambrose Rookwood, namesake and great-grandson of the Gunpowder plotter, was tried on 21 April, and was the first conspirator to be allowed legal representation under the new Treason Trials Act; the account of the trial includes much procedural on the new legislation. He was executed along with Cranburn and Lowick on 29 April 1696. Alexander Knightley and Peter Cook were both found guilty but later pardoned after giving information.
Provenance:
1. Josiah Franklin Davenport (b. 1727) was the nephew of Benjamin Franklin (his mother was Franklin’s older sister Sarah), and received much support from the Founding Father. Franklin’s will of 1757 made Davenport contingent beneficiary of the income of his printing house and also made provision for Davenport’s children. Franklin helped him set up a bakery in Philadelphia in 1749, but by 1759 he was secretary to the Pennsylvania Indian Commissioners, and then managed the trading post at Pittsburgh from 1761 to ’65; he moved to New Jersey in around 1770 where his cousin, Governor William Franklin, helped him to the posts of justice of the peace and county clerk of Burlington and then Gloucester; he appears to have died in the same year as he signed this volume, as his wife opened a school in their house that year.
2. Franklin Davenport (1755–1832), the eldest son by Davenport’s second marriage, was at Princeton, then trained as a lawyer and was admitted to the New Jersey state bar in 1776 with a practice in Gloucester City, and was appointed prosecutor of the pleas in 1777. Active in the New Jersey militia during the Revolutionary War, rising from private to captain by 1779 (and later a major general in 1823), he resumed the practice of law after the end of the war; served in the New Jersey general assembly; and was successively a Federalist party senator (1798-9) and then representative (1799-1801).
It is not coincidental that the years of the Revolution saw a flurry of American treason trials, against those accused of collusion with the British – in Davenport’s home county of Gloucester alone eighteen men were convicted of high treason during the war, presumably under his watch as the county prosecutor.
Wing T2255, A3759, A3760, A3755, A3767, A3748A, and A3757.
