Letter of William Throckmorton, Secretary, Royal Lodge, No. 210, London to William...

AR/573/13

Letter of William Throckmorton, Secretary, Royal Lodge, No. 210, London to William White, Grand Secretary

5 June 1800

Letter of William Throckmorton, Secretary, Royal Lodge, No. 210, London in reply to William White, Grand Secretary, Moderns' Grand Lodge expressing congratulations to King George III on escaping an assassination attempt in May 1800.

SN 573

1 document

Royal Lodge was granted a warrant by the Moderns' Grand Lodge on 4 April 1764 and met at the Horn Tavern, Westminster, London. The Lodge met initially as The New Lodge but it was renamed as Royal Lodge in 1767, when it met at the Thatched House Tavern, St James's Street, London, where meetings remained until 1824. The Lodge united that year with Alpha Lodge, No. 16 [SN 37] to become Royal Alpha Lodge, which meets at Freemasons' Hall, Great Queen Street, London.

James Hadfield or Hatfield (1771/1772 ? 23 January 1841) attempted to assassinate King George III on 15 May 1800 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London but was acquitted of attempted murder by reason of insanity. During the national anthem, Hadfield fired a pistol at the King standing in the royal box but missed. Hadfield was injured at the Battle of Tourcoing in 1794 but before being captured by the French, he was struck eight times on the head with a sabre, the wounds being prominent for the rest of his life. After returning to England, Hadfield was involved in a millennialist movement and came to believe that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ would be advanced if he was killed by the British government. He therefore resolved, in conspiracy with Bannister Truelock, to attempt the assassination of the King and expedite his own execution. Hadfield, tried for high treason, was defended by Thomas Erskine, a leading barrister. Hadfield pleaded insanity but the defendant had to be "lost to all sense ? incapable of forming a judgement upon the consequences of the act which he is about to do" and therefore Hadfield's advance planning appeared to contradict such a claim. Erskine chose to challenge the insanity test, instead contending that elusion "unaccompanied by frenzy or raving madness [was] the true character of insanity". Two surgeons and a physician testified that the delusions were the consequence of his earlier head injuries. The judge halted the trial declaring that the verdict "was clearly an acquittal" but "the prisoner, for his own sake, and for the sake of society at large, must not be discharged".

Hadfield was detained in Bethlem Royal Hospital for the rest of his life, save for a short period when he escaped. He was recaptured at Dover attempting to flee to France and was briefly held at Newgate Prison before being transferred to the new insane asylum Bethlehem Hospital (or Bedlam, as it was known) where he died of tuberculosis in 1841.