Page:The Annual Register 1758.djvu/112

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98
ANNUAL REGISTER, 1758.

sion; he received however no more than one monthly payment, and they gave for reason, that his intelligence was nothing but extracts from the news-papers.

The plan for carrying on this correspondence was the following: The doctor wrote a common letter with ink, and between each line the secrets of England in lemon juice. This was inclosed under three or four different covers, directed to different persons, in the secret, who conveyed them from one hand to another, till the first inclosed came to the principal for whom it was designed. He has a brother who is a jesuit, and was chaplain and secretary to the Spanish ambassador at the Hague, from whom our resident at that court gained a knowledge of some secrets relating to England, even before he had received any account thereof from his own court. This put him upon enquiry, and he soon learnt that the secretary had a brother, a physician in London, from whom possibly he might get intelligence; suspicion being thus raised, the doctor was watched, and twenty-nine of his letters stopt.

From these letters it appeared, that he gave the French the first account of Admiral Boscawen's sailing to North America, and of the taking the Alcide and Lys, with every minute circumstance relating to it; and from that time, of the sailing of every fleet, and its destination; and was so minute as to give an account even of the launching of a man of war; he also gave an account of all difficulties relating to raising money: and particularly described the secret expedition in 1757, assuring them it was intended against Rochfort or Brest, but gave his opinion for the former. And in one of his letters he particularly advised a descent of the French upon our coast, as the most certain method of distressing the government by affecting the public credit, and mentioned the time when, and the place where it would be most proper.

The trial began at half an hour after ten in the morning, and ended at half an hour after eight in the evening; when the jury, after staying out about half an hour, brought him in guilty. He is a native of Ireland, aged about 44, and has a diploma from the university of Leyden to practife physic.

There were 131 gentlemen from different places in the county of Middlesex summoned on the jury, and near 100 answered to their names. The doctor objected against fifteen, and the council for the crown against three.

14th. This day Florence Hensey, M. D. was brought to the bar of the court of King's-bench to receive sentence, when Lord Mansfield, after a very moving speech, pronounced sentence in the usual form, to be hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, on Wednesday the 5th of July next.

Mr. Lee, a wealthy farmer, at Wroxeter in Northamptonshire, being complained to by his neighbours for keeping a vicious bull, insisted upon it that he was not vicious, and went to him himself to convince them of it, when the bull immediately ran at him, and killed him upon the spot.

16th. The honourable house of commons resolved, that an humble address should be presented to his majesty (by such members of that house as are of the privy council) to represent, that the sa-laries