In the scene related by Borrow, Christopher Layer, a barrister committed to the Stuart cause, met with demobilized soldiers at an Essex inn in Stratford and delivered his instructions. They were to seize the King upon his return from the palace; the very day of the undertaking had purportedly been fixed. Bystanders overheard this discourse. Presently, the report spread through the neighborhood, while further suspicions accumulated. A King’s messenger apprehended Layer under a warrant issued by the Secretary of State.
An extract from a government report preserved at the National Archives under shelfmark T 64/306 situates the affair within a wider inquiry into Jacobite designs. It recounts several successive strategies: first soliciting foreign troops, then endeavoring to suborn officers and soldiers of the royal army after the earlier designs had miscarried. This report does not constitute an eyewitness deposition taken at the inn, nor does it corroborate every particular of the scheme imputed to Layer by Borrow; it merely reveals the political milieu in which his colloquies with military men were construed.
Borrow casts the affair within the prevailing climate of Jacobite conspiracies. He recounts that Layer had journeyed to Rome, obtained audience with the Pretender, and pledged to him a clandestine revolution. Under the design described, an assassin was to dispatch King George upon his return to Kensington. The conspirators were then to secure the guards, subsequently seize the Prince of Wales, his children, and the principal officers of state, thereby turning the ensuing confusion to their advantage.
Upon his return to England, Layer is alleged to have forged ties with Roman Catholics, non-jurors, and other adversaries of the government. He enlisted a modest band of veteran soldiers, whom he regarded as the primary instruments of the plot. The chapter depicts no vast concourse: the scene is rather that of a covert design entrusted to a handful of men, convened in a public place where their words were ultimately overheard.
On October 31, 1722, Layer was brought before the Court of King’s Bench to answer the charge of high treason. He vehemently protested against the chains and irons upon him. He declared that he had been dragged through the streets by his keepers and exposed as a spectacle, “more like an Algier captive than a free-born Englishman.” The Solicitor General answered that the prisoner had already attempted an escape and had indeed succeeded in clambering through a window two stories high, subsequently making good his crossing over the water into Southwark. Such was the prosecution’s version, as recorded by Borrow, to justify the irons.
Layer’s counsel, Hungerford, urged their debilitating effects upon the court. In the Tower, he explained, the irons precluded his client from sleeping save flat upon his back; the fortress did not even possess such apparatus, which had been fetched expressly from Newgate. The judge conceded that a prisoner ought properly to stand at the bar unbound, yet observed that the court met that day merely to receive his plea: the irons would be struck off for a minute, only to be replaced immediately thereafter. The application was refused.
On the day of trial, November 21, the Lieutenant of the Tower brought Layer to the bar. On this occasion, the judge directed that his irons be removed. Hungerford contended that his client had been unable to prepare his brief of defense in due time owing to his shackles; he had received it only late the preceding night, and it extended to ten folio sheets. The Attorney General replied that the allotted time had been ample. Hungerford specified the hour: eleven o’clock at night. It was the irons alone, he maintained, that had impeded the drafting of the brief. The judge admitted that the irons ought to have been taken off sooner, yet declined to stay the proceedings.
Borrow names three witnesses: Stephen Lynch, Matthew Plunket, and Elizabeth Mason, with whom Layer resided and in whose lodgings incriminating papers were reportedly found. He relates that Lynch and Plunket had been solicited by Layer and had subsequently betrayed him. Mason’s involvement tethered the prosecution to the domestic sphere: at issue were not merely conversations held within an inn, but also documents secreted within his dwelling. The extract does not reveal what she knew of each respective paper, nor does it afford sufficient detail to reconstruct the entirety of the depositions.
The extraordinary duration of the trial conveys the gravity of the case as Borrow presents it: sixteen hours of hearing, followed by an hour of deliberation. The judge summarized the evidence before the jury retired and pronounced Layer guilty. That lapse of time did not efface the dispute concerning the shackles nor the impeded preparation of the defense; yet the chapter does not record that it altered the verdict. The man who had pleaded to defend himself unfettered emerged from those sixteen hours condemned to die.
The sentence did not lead straightway to the scaffold. Layer, according to Borrow, had pressing professional concerns to discharge in his capacity as an attorney. The court deferred the execution for over two months; the King subsequently granted several reprieves, to the end that the prisoner’s clients might not suffer from the disarray occasioned by his sudden demise. The law thus accommodated his professional obligations, though it mitigated nothing of the ultimate judgment.
When the death warrant was finally delivered, the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex conveyed him to Tyburn upon a hurdle. Borrow depicts him clad in a suit of black cloth, richly trimmed, wearing a tie-wig. Having concluded his devotions, Layer addressed the assembled multitude. He proclaimed James, the Pretender, to be his lawful sovereign; he denounced George as an usurper and exhorted the bystanders to take up arms for the restoration of the rightful dynasty. He declared himself ready to die for that cause and professed his hope that it would one day triumph, even though he had proved an unsuccessful instrument in its service.
Layer was hanged at Tyburn on May 17, 1723. This date appears in the titles of two contemporary broadsides preserved in the Wellcome and Folger collections; it corrects the date of March 15 supplied by Borrow. His body was quartered, and his head was fixed atop Temple Bar. Borrow adds that this head remained long on view before being at last carried away by the wind. The final act of the conspiracy was not the overthrow of the regime he had pledged to the Pretender, but this public exposure, before the eyes of the very people he had exhorted to insurrection.