At York, the trial turned not merely upon a slip of parchment, but upon all that a sheet of paper possessed the power to make binding in law. The indenture of Thomas Taylor was intended to secure a loan of one hundred and eighty pounds upon his land from the Clothiers’ Society. His mortgage deed duly displayed the King’s arms; yet the words “Two Pounds,” which denoted the duty paid, lacked the raised impression produced by the press of the Stamp Office. The court was called upon to determine whether this circumstance, superadded to an otherwise genuine instrument, rendered the deed a forgery.
The man at the bar knew the instruments of the law by trade. Joseph Blackburn had long practised as an attorney in Leeds. Mr. Park, counsel for the Crown, had himself pleaded in causes conducted by Blackburn, at times upon his instruction, at others on behalf of the opposing party. He observed to the court that this professional acquaintance rendered the prosecution painful; yet he would not shrink from his duty. If the jury credited the evidence adduced, he explained, such forgery threatened not merely the public revenue, but the very titles of those subjects who placed their reliance upon registered deeds.
Taylor’s instrument bore the date of September 1812 and had been registered at Wakefield on the twelfth of February following. The steward of the society, Thompson, had deposited it among the association’s archives. When suspicion first attached to the stamp, the investigators compared the parchment with the established practices of the London office. The clerks explained that the duty was struck directly into the skin by a press of such force that the impression was discernible upon the reverse. Upon Taylor’s deed, no such indentation could be discovered. The royal arms and the emblem were those of a genuine stamp; the denomination alone appeared to have been substituted.
This discrepancy directed the testimony toward the mechanical instruments of the trade. Blackburn was under no obligation to purchase his skins directly from the Stamp Office. He had caused two plates to be engraved with the heading “This Indenture,” in characters closely resembling those of the official forms. Park maintained that the attorney had likewise caused thirteen or fourteen dies to be manufactured, capable of striking the numerals and words that denoted the several rates of duty. The searchers had discovered these dies in a box upon a table, within a locked chamber of his dwelling-house. They had likewise found ancient deeds from which the stamped portions had been cut away. These objects lent the prosecution a tangible form; yet their mere presence did not dispose of every objection raised by the defence.
The prosecution characterized these instruments as the means whereby stamps stripped from old deeds were altered and made to pass as having satisfied the duty upon new transactions. Counsel for the Crown set forth the putative profit: the attorney, it was alleged, charged his clients the full price of a stamp he had never purchased. Yet at the trial, the immediate issue remained far narrower. It was necessary to fix upon Blackburn the disputed impression upon Taylor’s deed, and to establish that he had struck it, or caused it to be struck, with guilty knowledge.
Witnesses from the Stamp Office described at length the official presses, the papers, and the authorized lettering. The engraver Topham admitted having performed work for Blackburn, yet he could not identify with certainty any one of the seized dies as that which had produced the impression in question. The defence seized upon this doubt, as well as upon the manner in which the attorney’s house had been searched. The dies, it was argued, did not in themselves prove that Taylor’s deed had issued from any one of them; the question whether they conformed to an authorized device was likewise of legal moment. The Crown, for its part, insisted upon the exact correspondence between the words printed upon the parchment and the characters of the tools produced.
The argument recalled the court to a principle of law. Mr. Justice Le Blanc held that the prosecution was not bound to establish that the entirety of the stamp was counterfeit. The words denoting its value formed an essential constituent of the official mark; should the jury conclude that they had been forged, they were entitled to find the prisoner guilty of the capital charge. The judge did not usurp the province of the jurors regarding the facts before them; he expounded what the law permitted them to deduce from the deed, the custom of the Stamp Office, and the tools described by the witnesses.
Blackburn denied having committed any forgery. He declared that the deed had borne a regular stamp at the time of its execution. He then called twenty-four witnesses to his character. Each expressed his firm conviction that the prisoner was incapable of the crime laid to his charge. This weight of public esteem was conspicuous throughout the proceedings, yet it could not efface the material proofs that the jury had heard.
The courtroom was thronged, chiefly with inhabitants of Leeds who had travelled to witness the trial. Blackburn was attired in mourning and maintained his composure throughout the arguments; upon the delivery of the verdict, however, the chronicler observed that his fortitude gave way. Thereafter he paid no heed to the arraignment of Wainewright, who had been brought back to the bar to stand beside him.
The verdict drew a precise distinction between the indictments. The jurors found Blackburn guilty of the capital forgery touching the two-pound stamp. Upon the other count, which joined him with Thomas Wainewright in the unlawful removal of stamps, they acquitted him, deeming the evidence upon that head insufficient to support a conviction. A single sitting thus concluded with both a condemnation and an acquittal, without the latter in any degree mitigating the fatal effect of the former.
The judge pronounced sentence of death. On Friday, the twenty-fourth of March, Le Blanc departed York; the execution was appointed for Saturday, the eighth of April. The intelligence opened another scene beyond the walls of the courtroom. The inhabitants of the district subscribed to a petition addressed to the Prince Regent. Mr. Elliot Carrett, an attorney, set out for London on the twenty-sixth of March to lay it before the authorities. Mrs. Blackburn, the condemned man’s wife, presently arrived in the capital in her turn. Her husband’s friends sought interest in high places and assembled affidavits regarding the true date of Taylor’s deed and the course of business in the office. They urged, in particular, that the instrument had been executed on the thirtieth of September 1812, a date at which, they asserted, the incriminating dies were not yet in existence.
The reply conveyed by Lord Sidmouth, the Secretary of State, admitted of no appeal: the Prince Regent declined to interfere.
On Thursday, the sixth of April, the Reverend John Hamilton came to pray with Blackburn. The prisoner’s wife had travelled to York, yet she was not admitted to see him: Hamilton feared lest an interview at such an hour should overwhelm her husband’s composure in his final moments. Pelham records that Blackburn spoke to the clergyman of his past transgressions and expressed his reliance upon the divine mercy. The chronicler makes no mention of any confession regarding the forgery itself; the language of religious devotion within the condemned cell must not be construed as a judicial admission of guilt.
On Saturday morning, Blackburn walked to the scaffold with a firm step. He knelt upon a stool, his face turned away from the assembled multitude. Hamilton approached and inquired whether he wished to join in prayer. Blackburn replied that he should take it kindly if the clergyman could master his feelings. They prayed together. When the cord had been adjusted, Blackburn uttered a final petition, beseeching the Almighty to have mercy upon him and to receive his soul. The body was delivered to his friends and subsequently interred at Rothwell, near Leeds.