On 15 May 1800, the shot was fired the instant George III appeared at his box in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. In the orchestra pit, Joseph Calkin caught sight of a man standing taller than the rest, a pistol levelled directly at the sovereign. The report shattered the air. Those nearest threw themselves upon the assailant and dragged him bodily over the balustrade. He was hurried down into the music room beneath the stage. There, seeing the Duke of York enter, he saluted him as an old comrade of the campaigns. Then he said to him: “That is not the worst yet.”
The pistol had been charged with slugs. Two projectiles were recovered, one in Lady Milner’s box beneath that of the King, the other in the orchestra. The Duke of York affirmed that a slug had struck a pilaster some fourteen inches above the monarch’s head. James Hadfield was henceforth in the hands of justice, yet these initial moments did little to illuminate the motive behind his deed. He had fired toward the royal box; in the music room, he recognised the prince under whom he had served, and addressed him as a soldier would his commander.
Six weeks later, he was arraigned before the Court of King’s Bench on an indictment of high treason. The charge accused him of having compassed and imagined the death of the King, setting forth the overt acts by which this design had supposedly been manifested: procuring arms and gunpowder, proceeding armed to the playhouse, and discharging the weapon. The Crown did not dispute that the piece had gone off. It fell to the prosecution to persuade the jury that the act was the deliberate expression of a criminal will, whilst Thomas Erskine, appointed to Hadfield’s defence, contended that his client’s reason was profoundly deranged.
The witnesses first retraced the events of that evening. John Holroyd had taken his seat beside Hadfield in the pit three-quarters of an hour before the King entered. He had perceived no agitation in him, nor heard him speak of any design. He had merely observed upon his countenance the deep scars of wounds received in the wars. Upon the sovereign’s arrival, Holroyd saw a pistol directed toward the box; he had not distinguished the face of the man who held it. Jeremiah Parkinson, a musician in the orchestra, beheld Hadfield standing upon a bench with his arm outstretched, and then saw the shot fired. In his estimation, he could not have chosen a more advantageous position from which to take aim.
Wright, seated in the front row hard by the orchestra, heard the detonation and seized Hadfield by the collar. A young woman subsequently pointed out to him the weapon lying on the floor. Elizabeth Ormeston, who had witnessed the occurrence, could not say whether the shot had been discharged at the King’s first or second bow. Terror had clouded her recollection of the precise instant; yet she recalled that Hadfield had flung down the pistol immediately after the discharge. The depositions agreed as to the act and the direction of the barrel, but they diverged when recalling the minute particulars of the second in which the piece was fired.
In the chamber beneath the stage, the Duke of York recognised a former trooper of his forces, a man who had served as his orderly or within his personal guard, notably at Famars. Hadfield told him that he knew his life was forfeited. He was weary of life, he added, and regretted only the fate of his wife, who must soon become a widow. He spoke once more of the “worst” that was yet to come. Yet Joseph Richardson, who was present during the examination, recounted another declaration: Hadfield had allegedly denied any intention of taking the King’s life. He was said to have declared that he sought his own death by other hands, well knowing that an attempt upon the monarch’s person would suffice to bring him to the scaffold. In court, the portrait of a composed man or a mind unhinged shifted according to the witness describing him and the moment that had fallen under observation.
The preparations of that day might well have appeared methodical. William Harman testified that Hadfield had shown him two pistols, purchased for his “young master,” pretending he would turn a profit upon them once they were cleaned. He had left one of them at the workshop, he said, so as not to alarm his wife. The other remained in his keeping. Mr Dick, who employed Harman, confirmed the purchase and found him calm, albeit of a lower cast of spirits than was his habit. George Webb remembered having sold him an ounce of superfine gunpowder. His companions Punter and Bagenall saw him take a glass of brandy and water before parting upon some private business; they too found him master of himself. To some, this appeared a train of deliberate contrivances; to others, nothing more than the ordinary demeanour of an acquaintance.
Erskine shifted the pivot of the proceedings back to the preceding years. Hadfield had received several sabre cuts to the head in an action near Lille in 1794, after which he had been left for dead upon the field, his counsel maintained. The defence directly connected these head wounds to the bouts of frenzy reported by his former comrades-in-arms. Charles Price, who had endeavoured to succour him in battle, related that in 1796, at Croydon, Hadfield had nearly run him through with a bayonet in a paroxysm of madness. At Brussels, in a military hospital, John Laine had heard him claim that he was King George, feeling about his temples for his crown.
Counsel unfolded, moreover, a terrible inner logic: Hadfield, persuaded that his own death was necessary for the salvation of the world, had sought a manner of perishing that would not incur the guilt of self-murder. It was Erskine who disclosed that he had attempted to kill his eight-month-old infant, driven by a frantic delusion that he must not leave the child behind him. He tendered this circumstance as proof of disease, and not as an imputation of cruelty. He maintained, likewise, that Hadfield was fiercely loyal to his King; firing toward the royal box was intended to compass his own destruction, not to gratify any political rancour. Other witnesses for the defence testified to his wounds, his past aberrations, and his extravagant delusions. Borrow’s account notes that several physicians were summoned to examine his state, yet breaks off without transcribing their findings.
Elizabeth Roberts gave one of the most vivid accounts of his spectral visions. She had heard Hadfield discourse at times like a prince, at times as Jesus Christ or the Almighty Himself. On the morning of the outrage, he stated that he had seen God during the night; his carriage was waiting, and he had dined with the King. He spoke of returning to fight the French and praised the sovereign, to whose bounty he ascribed his pension. He intended to take tea and repair to a lodge of Odd Fellows. His wife had encouraged the design, believing the company might occupy his mind and divert his wandering thoughts. These reported utterances did not efface the deliberate precision of the deed at the playhouse; they merely offered the jury another interpretation of the “worst” announced to the Duke of York.
Lord Kenyon interrupted the proceedings, inquiring of the Crown whether the inquiry ought to be pursued further. In his lordship’s view, the evidence left no room for doubt as to Hadfield’s derangement at the moment of the shot. Yet he refused to regard that conclusion as a warrant for his release into the world. Garrow requested that a formal verdict be entered upon the record for posterity. Without quitting their box, the jurors pronounced Hadfield not guilty by reason of his mental state. But the acquittal did not throw open the prison gates. Borrow records him as immediately remanded to Newgate, and subsequently transferred to Bethlem. The notice of the Royal College of Psychiatrists provides the sequel: following an escape, he spent a period at Newgate before being returned to the hospital, where he died in 1841. The man who, by his own admission at the theatre, had sought to bring about his execution survived his pistol-shot by more than forty years. The King had escaped the ball; his former soldier escaped the doom he had courted, yet never regained his liberty.