The wound that carried off Edward Perry was situated near the ribs, on the right side of the breast, and measured, according to the indictment, twelve inches in depth. Robert Haynes, a private soldier in the Foot Guards, was condemned for having inflicted it. He maintained until his death that the encounter had begun with an assault upon his own person, and that he had drawn his sword merely to defend his life. The chronicle preserves his declaration, but records as well that a jury found him guilty upon three separate indictments. It does not furnish the full depositions taken at the trial; we must therefore distinguish the legal verdict from the circumstances as Haynes related them.
He was born in Ireland, of parents who, despite their narrow means, had bestowed upon him a liberal education. He had acquired Latin and Greek, languages in which the chronicler allows him still to have possessed a competent knowledge toward the close of his days. His father, wanting the means to establish him when he reached manhood, saw his son cross the sea to enlist in the Foot Guards. His officers described him as quiet and inoffensive, free from the vices commonly imputed by the chronicler to the military calling. He read much, and preserved, by their account, a decent demeanour notwithstanding his chagrin at leading an existence he deemed unworthy of his breeding.
The encounter took place on a Sunday evening in St. James’s Park. According to the introductory narrative, Haynes was walking in company with two fellow soldiers when they met two men and two women. Haynes kissed one of the women; one of the men turned upon him and wounded him in the head. Haynes maintained to his dying hour that both he and his antagonist drew their weapons. Haynes then ran his adversary through the breast. This act led directly to his arrest and commitment to Newgate.
At the ensuing sessions of the Old Bailey, he stood indicted for the wilful murder of Edward Perry by giving him a mortal wound on the right side of the breast, near the ribs. He was charged a second time under the Statute of Stabbing, and a third time upon the coroner’s inquisition for wilful murder. The record states that he was found guilty upon all three indictments, notwithstanding his defence and the witnesses he called to his character. Persons of quality subsequently endeavoured to obtain his pardon or a reprieve, but their intercessions proved unavailing. The chronicle specifies neither the identity of these patrons nor the arguments they advanced.
Under sentence of death, Haynes demeaned himself at first like a man who looked for no earthly deliverance. He attended divine service in the chapel and prayed in private. A charitable minister visited him on several occasions, exhorting him to make an unreserved confession and not to leave the world with a lie in his mouth. Haynes, however, persisted in the relation he had delivered from the outset. He was subsequently seized by the distemper of the gaol, and grew so enfeebled that he could scarcely speak. When his health somewhat mended, two or three days before his end, he resumed his attendance at prayers in the chapel.
As the hour of execution drew near, he appeared serene and even cheerful, according to the narrator. He received the sacrament and conducted himself with great devotion. At Tyburn, he wished to address the multitude, but wanted the physical strength to deliver a speech. He therefore delivered into the hands of Applebee, the printer, a paper containing the words he had intended to utter. The chronicler affirms that he transcribed this document verbatim, thus presenting the reader with Haynes’s voice in his own defence, though without supplying alongside it the full testimony for the Crown.
Haynes recalled in this letter that more than a twelvemonth had elapsed since his enlistment, and that gentlemen of repute had borne witness to his character at the bar. He declared his abhorrence of the crime of murder and denied any premeditated intent to slay Perry. In his eyes, the fatal stroke was accidental and unavoidable in his own defence. He described an evening during which two comrades of his regiment had invited him to drink. Returning through the park, heated with liquor, he had offered to kiss a woman. The other woman, whom he described as a married wife, had thereupon called out to her husband, Edward Perry, and to a companion named Toms, who was walking ahead of them.
According to this statement, Toms came up using abusive language and struck him over the head and shoulders with a staff, which stunned him. Haynes asserted that Toms likewise incited Perry to quarrel with him. Perry, whom the letter characterises as deceitful, swore he would not let him pass, striking him with his sword while it was yet in the scabbard. He then drew his blade and made several passes at him, while Haynes gave ground. The soldier affirmed that he drew his own sword only when he saw his life in imminent danger.
He added that he had received a cut across the thumb of his right hand and that a thrust had pierced his coat. The combat, he observed, had taken place in the dark. He accused Toms and Perry’s wife of having sworn falsely against him, whilst praying that God would forgive them, as well as pardon his own transgressions. He prayed also for his colonel, whose generous intercession on his behalf he praised, beseeching the Almighty to reward his endeavours, grant him length of days, and prosper his undertakings. He noted that he had been baptized and bred in the Church of England, through whose pale he hoped for salvation. He affirmed that, to his knowledge, he had never wronged man, woman, or child, nor sought out brawls, though he confessed to having kissed a strange woman without her leave. These statements remain the words of a condemned man, presented by the source as his posthumous defence; they cannot be transformed into independently verified findings of fact.
Haynes died at Tyburn alongside another convict, in the twenty-first year of his age. The date of Sunday, 12 February 1726, subscribed to the paper, denotes the composition of his declaration, not the execution itself, which the chronicler leaves undated. To the gathered crowd, he had been unable to deliver his spoken farewell. He left them only this written sheet and, unto the final moment, the unyielding maintenance of his version.