Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/112

 in Westminster Hall, in January 1692-3, was the sensation of the hour. The king is said to have been constant in his attendance. After a protracted and impartial trial, the accused was on 4 Feb. acquitted by sixty-nine votes to fourteen. Mohun was consequently released from the Tower; he was but seventeen years of age at the time (a circumstance omitted by Macaulay), and a relative is stated to have suggested during the trial that he should ' be taken away and whipt ' (Henry North to Archbishop Sancroft in Tanner MSS. xxv. 7, where there are other curious particulars ; cf. State Trials, xii. 950-1050 ;, Hist. of England, 1858, iv. 310-11). In October of this year Mohun was lying dangerously ill at Bath. His recovery was followed by a resumption of his riotous life in London. In October 1694 he was engaged in a duel with Francis Scobell, M.P. for Grampound, who had remonstrated with him in Pall Mall concerning a murderous assault which he was making upon an offending coachman. In this year also he volunteered for the Brest expedition, and was made a captain of horse in Lord Macclesfield's regiment. Be served with distinction in Flanders during the next two years, but returned to England early in 1697 in as aggressive and turbulent a mood as ever. No later than April 1697 he was involved in a duel with Captain Bingham, in St. James's Park, but the combatants were separated by the sentinels before any serious damage was done. On 14 Sept. however, he was in at the death of Captain Hill, which occurred in a confused and discreditable brawl at the Rummer Tavern, and in November 1698 he was engaged with his old associates, Warwick and Docwra, in deep potations at Lockets', which were followed by an affray in Leicester Square, and a mortal wound inflicted upon a Captain Richard Coote. True bills of murder were brought in against both Warwick and Mohun, but the latter was not tried by his peers until 29 March 1699, when he was acquitted. It appeared in evidence that he had not fomented the quarrel, but rather the reverse ; and before leaving the bar he uttered some expression of contrition for his past life, which seems to have been for the time sincere.

Thenceforward Mohun occasionally took a prominent part in the debates in the House of Lords, and was a staunch supporter of the whigs. On 13 March 1703 he stood proxy for the elector of Hanover when the latter was installed knight of the Garter. In the debate on the Occasional Conformity Bill he remarked bluntly that if the Bill passed they might as well tack the Pretender to it. When in the debate on the Act of Security (1704) Nottingham appeared to cast a slur upon William III, Mohun was with difficulty restrained from proposing to send him to the Tower. Finally, when in a debate in the House of Lords the Duke of Marlborough was grossly insulted by Earl Powlett, it was Mohun who was commissioned to bear Marlborough's invitation to the earl ' to take the air in the country.'

Meanwhile in June 1701 Mohun had been appointed to attend Charles Gerard, earl of Macclesfield [q. v.], who was sent as envoy-extraordinary to present the electress-dowager Sophia with a copy of the Act of Succession. Macclesfield died on 5 Nov. 1701, and by his will Mohun came in for the personal estate valued at 20,0007. With regard to the real property he entered upon a long, complicated, and fluctuating lawsuit both with the crown and James Douglas, fourth duke of Hamilton [q. v.] Mohun claimed through his first wife, Macclesfield's niece Charlotte, daughter of Thomas Manwaring ; Hamilton through his second wife, also a niece of Macclesfield's, while the crown claimed the reversion on the ground that the reversal of Macclesfield's attainder had never been legally recorded. In the course of the proceedings the duke and Mohun met in the chambers of Mr. Oillabar, a master in chancery, on 13 Nov. 1712. On the duke remarking of a witness named Whitworth, ' There is no truth or justice in him,' Mohun rejoined, 'I know Mr. Whitworth, he is an honest man, and has as much truth as your grace.' A challenge ensued, not from the duke, but from Mohun. The duel took place in Hyde Park, between 6 and 7 A.M. on Sunday 15 Nov. Mohun spent the previous night at the Bagnio in Long Acre. On the parties arriving on the ground, Mohun said the seconds should have no share, but his friend, Colonel George Maccartney [q. v.], demurred, and the duke, turning to Colonel Andrew Hamilton, remarked, 'There is my friend, he will take a share in my dance.' They fought until their principals fell, when Maccartney went to Mohun and turned him on his face 'that he might die the more easily.' Neither Mohun nor his adversary attempted to parry, but thrust without intermission, 'fighting,' says a contemporary, 'like enraged lyons,' Mohun was riddled with dreadful wounds (see the account of Le Sage, the surgeon), but it is said that he only inflicted the duke's death-wound with a shortened sword as Hamilton was bending over him. The duel was at once interpreted by the dominant party as a whig conspiracy, Swift in the 'Post Boy' (for 18 and 20 Nov.), and in the 'Examiner' (20 Nov.), suggesting that 'the