The report had scarcely echoed through the stone hall when a man staggered across the lobby. William Smith, Member of Parliament for Norwich, saw him lurching forward; his first thought was that the gentleman sought refuge from the tumult. The man took a few unsteady paces, fell forward upon his face, and moved no more. Only upon turning him over, with the aid of a bystander, did Smith recognize Spencer Perceval. The Prime Minister of Great Britain had entered the Commons to attend to the business of the realm. He was carried into the Secretary to the Speaker’s chamber, the men supporting him feeling the last warmth of life slip through their hands.
Near the fireplace, John Bellingham had remained upon a bench. He had made no move to profit by the confusion and slip into the street. One pistol had just been discharged; a second, fully primed, would presently be taken from his person. When the attorney Henry Burgess pressed him for the motive of so desperate a deed, Bellingham’s answer reduced the murder to that grievance he had vainly laid before the departments of state for years: justice had been denied him. It was May 11, 1812. For those surrounding Perceval, a statesman had perished. Bellingham believed he had finally secured an audience.
An Account Left Open
The genesis of the affair lay far from Westminster, in the Baltic trade with Russia. Bellingham had journeyed to Archangel, where monetary disputes had pitted him against his trading partners. Imprisonment had followed; he had petitioned the British diplomatic representatives and contested the judgments rendered against him. Returning to England in 1809, he had refused to leave the matter behind. It had hardened into a formal claim against his own government, which he accused of having abandoned him to his ruin.
Historical accuracy requires that this dispute remain framed as the protagonists themselves articulated it. Bellingham deemed himself the victim of relentless persecution. The former ambassador, Lord Granville Leveson Gower, insisted on the contrary that arbiters had found the merchant indebted in the sum of two thousand rubles, and that His Majesty’s mission possessed no lawful authority to snatch him from Russian custody. In a letter dated May 17, laid before Parliament three days later, the peer cited diverse intercessions made on the merchant’s behalf, petty monetary doles, and even a night’s shelter granted under his own roof.
This correspondence was likewise an interested defense of an embattled diplomat. Taken alone, it does not exhaustively close the Russian ledger; yet it forbids accepting Bellingham’s indictment as undisputed fact. Two irreconcilable narratives confronted one another. Bellingham claimed to settle the balance by an act of violence that could establish neither the reality of his losses nor the guilt of those he accused.
In England, he wrote, appeared in person, and petitioned anew. The judicial record portrays him passing from one authority to the next, from the Privy Council to the Treasury, seeking the patronage of a Member of Parliament, and soliciting the Prince Regent. Every refusal merely threw him back upon his initial memorials. He held fast to a narrative of his misfortunes; those to whom he submitted it recognized no public debt arising from it. Between his certainty and their indifference, the chasm grew ever wider.
A Pocket in a Coat
An episode related during his trial lent this fixation an almost domestic pathos. Anne Billet, who had known Bellingham since his youth, testified that she had accompanied him and his wife to a government department. He wished to prove to them that his petition stood upon the verge of success. The official, however, merely reiterated that he had nothing to hope for. Once outside, Bellingham took his wife by the hand, presenting the interview as an auspicious sign of impending vindication. The witness discerned in this conduct the marks of a disordered mind; the historical narrative, however, does not permit us to transmute her impression into a modern diagnosis.
On March 23, 1812, Bellingham dispatched a menacing letter to the magistrates of Bow Street. In it, he gave notice that should redress continue to be withheld, he would take the law into his own hands and stand ready to justify his conduct before any tribunal. In his defense, he went so far as to interpret an official reply—which merely left him at liberty to pursue his remedies as he saw fit—as a sanction to commit murder. It was his own reading, not a license to shed blood.
During these weeks, he haunted the precincts of the Commons. Vincent George Dowling, who helped seize him after the shot was fired, had observed him in the gallery and overheard him inquiring after the names of the speakers, most especially the members of the Ministry. These visits were thus observed. They brought together in a single sequence the statesmen he sought to identify and the petitions he could not bring them to entertain.
Another witness knew him only through his attire. James Taylor, a tailor, had received instructions to fashion a deep lateral pocket inside an overcoat, made to a precise length dictated by the client. The tradesman completed the work and delivered the garment. At the bar of the Old Bailey, this trifling act of needlework assumed a sinister prominence among the preparations: what had been an ordinary order for the artisan became a material exhibit of premeditated murder. Nothing suggests that the tailor had any inkling of its intended purpose.
The Lobby
On May 11, toward five in the afternoon, John Morris observed Bellingham lingering near the leaf of the double doors that was customarily kept shut. He appeared to be lying in wait. Morris proceeded toward the gallery; almost instantly, the detonation cracked through the hall. The assassination did not take place amid the heat of a parliamentary debate. It struck down its victim in that threshold where men entered, brushed past one another, and lingered before the business began.
Smith and his companion bore Perceval away. Blood rose to his lips; within minutes, all animation ceased. The surgeon William Lynn, summoned in haste, could do nothing to preserve him. Meanwhile, Burgess had closed with Bellingham and wrested away the discharged weapon. Dowling discovered the second firearm upon the prisoner’s person. This second pistol remained unfired: to ascribe to it an intended second victim would be to extend the crime beyond the verified testimony of the witnesses.
Bellingham submitted to questions, then underwent formal interrogation within the building. He took care to distinguish Perceval the private gentleman from Perceval the minister against whom his grievance lay. Such a distinction might serve his rhetoric; it could not restore life to the corpse in the adjoining chamber. Jane Perceval lost her husband, twelve children their father. The Crown could appoint another First Minister; the household could find no replacement.
Four Days to Plead
The trial opened at the Old Bailey on May 15. Bellingham had hoped to force the authorities to examine his grievances; he found himself before a jury assembled to try a capital felony. His counsel petitioned for a postponement to collect evidence regarding his mental capacity. The proceedings record their motions and the prisoner’s objections regarding his papers, part of which were retained by the prosecution. The court nonetheless proceeded. The seized documents were returned to him prior to his defense, once their preservation had been established; the record notes that his counsel already held copies.
Bellingham himself refused to be delivered by a plea that would, in his eyes, have diminished the legitimacy of his claim. He thanked the Attorney General for rejecting the defense of insanity, then delivered a lengthy vindication of his wrongs. He acknowledged striking the fatal blow, but denied the criminal culpability imputed to it by the law. He added that he would have preferred to meet with the former ambassador. This declaration reveals the true focus of his malice; it does not absolve him of having slain the minister he chose to target.
The defense witnesses delivered their observations. Anne Billet described his unwavering conviction of impending fortune, maintained in the face of penury, and his absolute refusal to admit the failure of his petitions. The jury rejected the defense. Bellingham was found guilty and condemned to the gallows. His belief in his own justification found no echo among the men sworn to judge him.
The Week Closes
On May 18, he was hanged before Newgate. A single week separated the crime from its retribution. Contemporary chronicles record that at the foot of the scaffold his thoughts returned once more to Russia and to his family. One may perceive in this tenacity the consuming nature of his obsession; it offers neither fresh clinical evidence nor the legal justification which the court had denied him.
He, too, left behind a widow and children. No reparation could ever flow to them from that fatal pistol shot. As for the Perceval family, Parliament made substantial provision: fifty thousand pounds were voted, together with an annuity of two thousand pounds to Jane Perceval. The treasury now disbursed funds for a very different purpose—the aftermath of a murder, rather than the unsettled balance of a merchant.
Bellingham had sought to summon the British Government into his private tragedy. He had shot a man, only to discover that the trial concerned that fallen body and his own hand. His petitions did not vanish; they survived, with their demands, their official refusals, and their contradictions. But the statesman from whom he sought to exact payment could no longer answer.