TO-DAY IN HISTORY

Southland Times, Issue 20771, 11 May 1929, Page 8

TO-DAY IN HISTORY

MAY II ’ Born: Cardinal Pole, Stoverton Castle, 1500; Peter Camper, anatomist, Leyden, 1722. Died: David 1., King of Scots, Carlisle, 1153; Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Templars, burned at Paris, 1310; Jules Hardouin Mansard, architect, of Versailles, 1708; Catherine Cockburn, poetess, 1749; William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Hayes, 1778; Spencer Percival, English minister, assassinated, London, 1812; Madame Recamicr, 1849. ASSASSINATION OF MR SPENCER PERCIVAL. A weak ministry, under a premier of moderate abilities, Mr Spencer Percival, was broken up on May 11, 1812, by the assassination of its chief. On the evening of that date Mr Percival had just entered the lobby of the House of Commons, on his way into the House, when a man concealed behind the door shot him with a pistol. He staggered forward with an exclamation and fell dead. The incident was so sudden that the assassin was at first disregarded by the bystanders. He was at length seized and examined, when another loaded pistol was found upon him. He remained quite passive in the hands of his captors, and when someone asked him how he could destroy so good a man and make a family of twelve children orphans, he murmured in a mournful tone, “I am sorry for it.” His name was John Bellingham and had a morbid sense of some wrongs of his own which had led to the deed. He was an English merchant in Russia; ,for some mercantile injuries there sustained he had sought redress from the British Government, but he had received no satisfaction. Exasperated beyond Just, control he deliberately formed the resoltfnon of shooting the premier, not from any animosity to him, against which he loudly protested, but “for the purpose of ascertaining through a criminal court, whether his Majesty’s ministers have the power to refuse justice to a wellauthenticated and irrefutable act of oppression committed by their consul and ambassador abroad.” His conduct at his trial was marked by great calmness and he gave a long and perfectly rational address on the wrongs he had suffered and his views regarding them. There was no trace of excitable mania in his demeanour, and he refused to plead insanity. He met his fate a week after the murder with the same tranquillity. Probably he felt death to be a kind relief from past distresses, for it was his own remark on his trial, “Sooner than suffer what I have suffered for the last eight years, I w’ould consider five hundred deaths, if it were possible for human nature to endure them, far more to be preferred.”