On the 23rd of June 1807, a minor point of parade discipline turned into a fatal encounter. At the mess of the 21st Regiment of Foot, then quartered near Newry in the County of Armagh, Brevet-Major Alexander Campbell related that General Kerr had corrected him during the day’s inspection. Captain Alexander Boyd observed that neither Campbell’s version nor that of the general conformed to His Majesty’s regulations as set forth in Dundas’s manual. Towards eight in the evening, the company having withdrawn, there remained in the room only the two officers, Lieutenant Hall, and George Adams, an assistant surgeon. The latter overheard the exchange: there were neither shouts nor threats, but merely a professional dispute that grew bitter when Boyd insisted he knew the regulations far better than Campbell.
“Then, Captain Boyd, do you say I am wrong?” asked the Major. “I do; I know I am right according to the King’s order,” Boyd replied. Campbell thereupon quitted the room. Boyd lingered for a few moments, then departed in his turn. Nothing in Adams’s testimony yet foreboded an altercation that must end in blood.
Later that same evening, the two men met again upon the stairs. The mess waiter, John Uvey, observed them enter the small room allotted to the staff, where they remained for some ten or fifteen minutes. They then parted. Some twenty minutes thereafter, Campbell bid Uvey go seek Boyd upon the parade ground, saying a gentleman desired to speak with him. Uvey ushered the Captain back to the mess, then went down into the kitchen. He heard a pistol shot, quickly followed by a second.
When he hurried back, Boyd was seated upon a chair, spitting blood. Campbell had already left the room. Presently the Major returned to call for candles, and pointed out to Uvey the places where each had stood: seven paces divided the opposite corners. Surgeon Adams was summoned in haste. The ball had struck the extremities of the four lower ribs and lodged within the abdominal cavity. Boyd languished in agony through the night, succumbing eighteen hours after the shot was fired.
Lieutenant McPherson, of the same regiment, arrived while Boyd still breathed. He heard Campbell ask Boyd whether all had been conducted fairly. Boyd replied that he had been hurried, that he had wished to wait and have friends present, and denounced Campbell as a bad man. He seemed presently to concede that he had been ready to fight, before reiterating his reproach. The wounded officer was assisted into an adjoining room. Campbell followed him, overwhelmed with grief according to McPherson. He declared to Boyd that he was the happier man of the two, that he himself was wretched, though he trusted he was not a bad man, and implored his forgiveness. Boyd extended his hand: “I forgive you; I feel for you, and I know you feel for me.”
Campbell subsequently fled Ireland. He lived with his family at Chelsea under an assumed name. Borrow relates that the torment of his conscience at last determined him to surrender. In the summer of 1808, he stood his trial at the Armagh Assizes, indicted for the wilful murder of Boyd by a pistol shot fired in the county on the 23rd of June 1807. This surrender brought the mess dispute before a jury: the prosecution contended that the words exchanged could in no way excuse the resort to firearms, while the defence rested upon the custom of the duel and the officer’s code of honour.
The chronology of that evening became the hinge of the trial. John Greenhill testified that after the altercation Campbell had gone home, taken tea with his family, and delivered to him a box to be given to Lieutenant Hall prior to the meeting. He described no sudden transport of fury directly preceding the fatal shot. The judge accordingly directed the jury to consider whether this interval had allowed Campbell sufficient time for his blood to cool, and whether Boyd’s words constituted provocation grave enough to reduce the crime from murder to manslaughter.
The learned judge carefully set forth the distinction between the two charges: manslaughter might admit of sudden provocation and immediate heat of passion, whereas murder remained wherever such extenuating circumstances were wanting. A death caused under the immediate impulse of passion roused by adequate provocation might indeed be mitigated to manslaughter; but passion could never justify an excess beyond the provocation received, nor an act committed after the mind had had leisure to regain its composure. The jurors were bound to determine whether Campbell had acted upon the instant, or only after having retired to his home and resumed the ordinary business of life.
He addressed likewise the alleged point of honour. He characterized it as a false principle, recognized neither by the law of the land nor by morality, though admitting that juries had on occasion regarded certain circumstances with indulgence. For such leniency to apply, he explained, the provocation must have been grievous, the consent of both parties entirely mutual, and no honourable reconciliation possible. If the jury believed Boyd’s dying words, that he had wished to wait and have friends present, they must conclude that the contest was an unequal one. He observed further that Boyd’s remark, dropped in the heat of argument, might well have admitted of an amicable explanation.
After deliberating for half an hour, the jury returned a verdict finding Campbell guilty of murder, but strongly recommended him to mercy. The judge passed sentence of death, yet respited the execution in consequence of the jury’s recommendation. Campbell’s wife set out instantly for Dublin; finding the regular packet had already sailed, she crossed the Irish Sea in an open boat, landed at Holyhead, and reached London in twenty-eight hours. Thence she hastened to Windsor and laid before the Queen a memorial setting forth the circumstances of the duel and her husband’s military services.
She next solicited the intercession of the royal princesses, and travelled to Brighton to petition the Prince of Wales. The Prince wrote to the Duke of Portland, but the Duke held out no hope of clemency. Petitions were likewise addressed to the Lord Lieutenant by both the petty jury and the grand jury of the county. These desperate appeals could overturn neither the verdict nor the sentence; they bore witness only to the fact that the royal prerogative of mercy was the family’s sole remaining hope.
The respite expired on the 23rd of August. The warrant for Campbell’s execution on the morrow was dispatched from Dublin Castle to Armagh. During his final hours, the condemned officer petitioned to be shot by a firing squad, but the course of the common law admitted of no such privilege. On the 24th of August, he was led out to the scaffold while his wife was still far distant. Borrow describes the tears and lamentations of the assembled throng, giving way to a hushed silence as the executioner approached with the cord. Campbell lifted his eyes to heaven. A little more than a year before, a dying man had clasped his hand in forgiveness. But Boyd’s pardon had not sufficed to purchase that of the law.