Note 190 — Chapter X

Though so notorious at the time, we have been able to find only one pamphlet on the subject in the British Museum, and the papers seem to have been very reluctant to give the names of the parties. July 10, 1762, William Parsons, Elizabeth his wife, Mary Fraser, the Ghost’s interpreter, a clergyman, and a respectable tradesman, were tried at Guildhall, and convicted of a conspiracy to defame a Mr. Kent. In the Annual Register it is said, “The Court chusing that Mr. Kent, who had been so much injured on the occasion, should receive some reparation by punishment of the offenders, deferred giving judgment for seven or eight months, in hopes that the parties might make it up in the meantime. Accordingly, the clergyman and tradesman agreed to pay Mr. Kent a round sum—some say between 500l. and 600l.—to purchase their pardon, and were, therefore, dismissed with a severe reprimand. The father was ordered to be set in the pillory three times in one month—once at the end of Cock Lane; Elizabeth his wife to be imprisoned one year; and Mary Fraser six months in Bridewell, with hard labour. The father appearing to be out of his mind at the time he was first to stand in the pillory, the execution of that part of his sentence was deferred to another day, when, as well as the other day of his standing there, the populace took so much compassion on him, that instead of using him ill, they made a handsome subscription for him.”—v. Annual Register, vol. cxlii. and Gentleman’s Magazine, 1762, pp. 43 and 339. The liberty to speak to the prosecutor, described above as sanctioned by Lord Mansfield, would not now be so openly permitted, even by a bench of Middlesex Magistrates. Churchill’s poem mentions “the Ghost,” only as a peg to hang a satire upon. It has much vigour, but a key is wanted, and probably nobody can supply one to the allusions, or even the regularly drawn characters of the greater part: Johnson, Warburton, Mansfield, and one or two more are apparent. “The Ghost” has also furnished the very clever scene of the trial of Fanny the Phantom, in Foote’s farce of “The Orators.”—E.