Between one and two o’clock in the morning, on the night of November 20 to 21, 1727, the patrons at Robinson’s Coffee House, near Charing Cross, were preparing to depart. James Sinclair, Mr. Lemery, the latter’s brother, and Mr. Nuttal had shared two bowls of punch. According to their depositions, Richard Savage, James Gregory, and William Merchant entered the house, already heated with drink. The mistress of the house, Mrs. Edersby, had initially shown them into another room. They refused to remain there.
Savage related that he had returned to London from Richmond to settle the rent of another lodging, which he could no longer afford to maintain alongside his country quarters. Having met Gregory and Merchant, he consented to spend the night in their company before returning to Richmond on the morrow. They went about seeking some place wherein to wait out the night; at Robinson’s, Savage maintained that he had been entirely ignorant of the character of the house, having never set foot in it before. He desired only to pass the intervening hours with his companions; the light shining from Robinson’s offered them a momentary refuge.
The company forced their way into the room where the other gentlemen were concluding their evening. Merchant, so several witnesses averred, kicked down the folding table without provocation. Mrs. Edersby cried out in protest; Mary Rock, her servant-maid, testified that she had first endeavoured to persuade the newcomers to be patient, promising them the room as soon as the gentlemen had finished. They would brook no delay. According to Mary Rock, Merchant had already raised a chair against the mistress of the house. By now, the seated guests were retreating toward the far end of the room, whilst Savage and Gregory drew their swords.
The several testimonies failed to agree upon every motion. Nuttal did not see Savage strike Sinclair. He beheld Gregory seize Sinclair’s sword, then engage him; he related further that he heard Sinclair cry out, “I am a dead man!” The candles were extinguished shortly thereafter. Lemery, on the contrary, swore that he saw Savage deliver the thrust at the very moment Sinclair was stooping down. He said the young man turned pale, stood an instant in mute bewilderment, and then attempted to flee. Lemery held him fast until the lights were put out.
Nuttal testified that Gregory had demanded Sinclair yield his sword. After some scuffle, Gregory found himself in possession of the dying man’s weapon as well as a broken piece of his own, and thereupon demanded Nuttal’s as well. The two men grappled. Nuttal at length wrenched Sinclair’s sword away and could not say whether Gregory fell of his own accord or was thrown down. He had seen no weapon in Merchant’s hand, nor did he see him again in the room after the fray commenced. His gaze had caught only a fragment of the encounter, whereas Lemery laid entirely upon Savage the fatal stroke that Sinclair described upon his deathbed.
In the darkness, the struggle raged on. Lemery affirmed that Mary Rock clung to Savage, tearing away his hat and periwig, and received a cut to the head as he struggled to shake her off. He at last gained a back court, where soldiers overtook him together with Merchant. The other patrons remained at Sinclair’s side. Jane Leader, who was present in the room, declared she had seen him struck; she unbuttoned his coat and bade Mary suck the wound. The maid knelt down, but no blood would come.
Sinclair did not die upon the spot. On November 21, a clergyman, Mr. Taylor, was summoned to pray with him. Nuttal inquired of the wounded man who had struck him. Taylor did not interrogate Sinclair himself, but remained in the room whilst the question was put. He distinctly heard the reply: the shorter man, dressed in black, had struck the blow; the taller had seized his sword. To Leader’s mind, this description pointed unerringly to Savage and Gregory. The victim expired shortly after naming his assailants.
The words thus reported were by no means consistent. A watchman, who entered the room immediately after the blow was struck, heard Sinclair say that he had been run through before he could even draw his sword; a second watchman heard him denounce it as a “cowardly” blow. The counsel for the prisoners argued that these statements contradicted the witnesses who swore Sinclair had been armed. Leader asserted that the dying man had never opened his lips to the prisoners; Nuttal, however, recalled an exchange of words with Gregory. Thus, at the bar, the narrative of that final night was constructed from memories snatched amidst uproar, and from a solitary question whispered at the pillow of a dying man.
Mr. Wilkey, the surgeon, examined the wound, situated on the left side of the belly, near the navel. The blade had grazed the kidney; in his judgment, the wound was the proximate cause of death. Questioned by the court, he opined that Sinclair could scarce have received such a hurt whilst standing in a posture of defence, unless he were left-handed. This professional assessment was added to the accounts of those who had witnessed the fray, yet it did not resolve their discrepancies.
At the trial, Gregory maintained that they had entered the room solely to warm themselves by the fire, and that the table had been overturned by mere accident. Counsel for the defence vigorously assailed the character of the witnesses and the reputation of the house. Other witnesses deposed that Nuttal had uttered threats against the prisoners after the catastrophe. Nuttal admitted that, in the heat of his grief, he might well have vowed to do himself justice in the open fields, beyond the reach of the law. Yet gentlemen of station were called to his character, testifying that he was a person of unblemished honour and courteous demeanor.
The credit of Jane Leader was likewise impugned. John Pearse deposed that she had told him she quitted the room the moment the swords were drawn, and had seen no blow struck. He described her as a woman of ill fame. Leader, however, stood to her testimony, swearing she had seen Savage thrust at Sinclair and had attended his bedside before he died. The defence also called Mary Stanley, who had seen Sinclair embroiled in an earlier quarrel, though without naming Nuttal as his antagonist. These depositions did not alter the reality of what had transpired at Robinson’s; they merely invited the jury to weigh the veracity and moral character of those who had recounted it.
The prisoners, too, were not without their advocates. Several persons of distinction spoke to their character, depicting them as peaceable gentlemen, little given to brawls. Their defence rested upon the suddenness of the combat and the total absence of malice aforethought. The presiding judge then distinguished two hypotheses of law: a fray wherein both parties fall upon each other after provocation, which might amount only to manslaughter, an offence less heinous than murder; and an unprovoked assault, wherein a man begins the quarrel without cause, pursues his antagonist, and slays him. In the latter instance, he instructed the jury, the law would imply malice, though the dispute had flared up in an instant.
The trial lasted eight hours. The jury brought in Savage and Gregory guilty of murder; Merchant was convicted of manslaughter only. The Crown had indicted all three for the identical crime. The jury drew a distinction in their respective guilt, though Borrow’s record preserves no statement of the precise legal grounds upon which this difference rested.
On December 11, Savage and Gregory were brought to the bar to receive sentence of death. Savage addressed the bench. He made no attempt to reopen his defence; he entreated the court to distinguish between a premeditated design and an act springing from a sudden, blind impulse, reminding the judges that Merchant, who had already been spared a conviction for murder, had drawn his companions into this calamity. He added that he neither sought to lay blame upon Merchant nor repined at the clemency extended to him. On the contrary, he declared that nothing could afford him greater solace than to suffer alone, having no companion in so terrible a ruin.
Merchant was burnt in the hand. Some weeks later, Savage and Gregory were admitted to bail, that they might sue for royal clemency. On March 5, 1728, they pleaded the King’s pardon, and their recognizances were discharged. It was not the jury that had retracted its verdict; it was an act of sovereign grace, granted after both condemned men had already heard the dread sentence of death pronounced against them in open court. At Robinson’s, the deponents had seen only a table overturned, swords bared, and the lights extinguished. The aftermath of that darkness severed the fates of three men: two condemned as murderers and ultimately pardoned, and a third branded in the hand.