Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/208

 202

NOTES AND QUERIES, m s. vm. SEPT. is, ms.

no public affairs had it not been for the outrages committed on the negroes in the island. These, being so flagrant, stirred his blood, and on 17 Aug., 1810, he wrote a letter to the Governor, which was published seven days later in The St. Christopher Gazette. This referred to the scandalous acquittal of a certain Edward Huggins, an opulent planter in Nevis, who had been indicted for inhuman whipping of slaves, one of whom had been done to death. Another letter to Governor Elliot followed on 7 Sept., in which Tobin asserted that the late Attorney-General had once assured his father that this same Mr. Huggins had not scrupled to acknowledge to a friend that he had shot a negro. To the first of these letters Huggins replied in The St. Christopher Advertiser of 4 Sept., assuming a patroniz- ing air towards Tobin, and saying he was glad to find, amidst the malice with which his opponent's letter abounded, "terms of some respect of the government at home."

" I shall even hope from this," he adds, " that he has abandoned his early opinions and pursuits ; that he really wishes for the duration of the British Constitution, and has become a convert to those sentiments of affection, esteem and admiration, with which wise and good men regard it."

Huggins escaped hanging ! But on 8 May of the following year (1811) " the Honourable Arthur William Hodge, Esq.," an estate- owner and member of His Majesty's Council in the island, ivas hanged at Tortola for the murder of his negro slave Prosper, by whip- ping him to death for letting a mango fall from a tree which he had been set to watch.

Hodge seems to have been original in his barbarity. At his trial one of the witnesses swore that the accused had murdered his cook by pouring boiling water down her throat.

I cannot find Tobin's name in connexion with the trial and punishment of Hodge ; but, as the escape from justice by Huggins some months before had been brought most forcibly to public notice, both in the West Indies and in England, by Tobin, and had aroused considerable indignation, it is prob- able that the authorities feared to repeat the course they had pursued towards Huggins in the case of Hodge, and that Tobin was, there- fore, indirectly " the benevolent instrument of bringing him to the gallows." Hodge's story was also told in The Morning Chronicle of 8 July, 1811, but this I have not seen.

The paragraph quoted from the Christ's Hospital essay, beginning "There was one H ," illustrates Lamb's reliance on his memory. In his mind were confused Huggins

and Hodge, Nevis and St. Kitts ; and he apparently took no pains towards accu- racy, which he deemed unnecessary. What mattered it, forsooth ! The punishment had taken place some nine years since, Tobin had been in his grave for six years, and " H ' r would stand equally well for either culprit. In conversation with friends Lamb probably used Huggins or Hodge indiscriminately, as memory or mood prompted ; for in the British Museum copy of a first edition of ' Elia ' the name " Huggins " has been written by some one who might have had it from Lamb. But in the key to the charac- ters in ' Elia,' in Lamb's own autograph, now before me, the word " Hodges " is perfectly clear ; and for Lamb the petty Nero of his schooldays, who " actually branded a boy, who had offended him, with a red-hot iron, and nearly starved forty of us r with exacting contributions, to the one half of our bread, to pamper a young ass," either grew up, or should have grown up, into the slave-owning Hodge (the whilom Gentleman Commoner of Oriel College, Ox- ford), who " scarcely had a friend or an associate," having made enemies of his West Indian neighbours " by his satirical verses, his lampoons, his paroxysms of anger and passion," and who, when about to suffer death by hanging, acknowledged in a fit of contrition that he " had been a crue master." J. ROGERS REES.

THE FORGED * SPEECHES AND

PRAYERS' OF THE REGICIDES.

(See 11 S. vii. 301, 341, 383, 442, 502 ;

viii. 22, 81, 122, 164.)

XII. THE FATE OF THE PRINTERS AND BOOKSELLERS.

A TRACT (of which the British Museum pos- sesses no copy) was published after the trial of Twyn's co-conspirators in Yorkshire, and entitled :

" An Exact account of the daily proceedings of the Commissioners of Oyer and Terminer at York. Against the late horrid and bloody con- spirators. With the Particulars of what hath lately occurred in England." Much of this can be found in The Intelli- gencer and The Newes for January and February, 1 664, and it is certain that Twyn could have saved his life by disclosing the names of the " Secret Committee " in London (or " Committee of Six ") alluded to in these documents, and in other trials, who instructed him through the Calverts to print his book. It is perfectly clear that Twyn