Henry Redhead Yorke, Colonial Radical by Amanda Goodrich

Author:Amanda Goodrich [Goodrich, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Modern, 18th Century
ISBN: 9780429618833
Google: y_6GDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-02-07T02:59:52+00:00

IV – Publicity

Amid the turmoil of arrests and potential for several treason trials, during the summer and autumn of 1794 much loyalist material was published as pamphlets and in the press that condemned those arrested for treason. As Barrell suggests, this prejudiced the legal process. Such publications, some of which were supported by the government, assumed, or even asserted, the guilt of the treasonous ‘Jacobins’ and named leaders such as Hardy, Thelwall, Tooke and Yorke. One government organ claimed that it could be assumed that all those interrogated by the Privy Council and still retained on a charge of high treason were guilty and it expressed the somewhat bloodthirsty hope (in view of the punishment for treason) that ‘all who are guilty will be convicted and executed.’98 The Times, 6 September 1794, published a squib that imagined Britain in the ‘First Year of the Republic’ and entitled ‘BRITISH NATIONAL CONVENTION, sitting on the 9th June. President, Citizen Telwell.’ It began, ‘It is my duty, Citizen Legislators, to lay before you some letters of importance, which I have received this day.’ One such letter was from Sheffield dated 9 June and was signed ‘YORKE, General of the armed citizens of Sheffield.’ It commenced, ‘Liberty! Equality! Sans-culotism for ever!’ and described war between republican and Royalist armies. Yorke declared, ‘Treason surrounds us and terror must be the order of the day. In pursuance of the orders of the Secret Committee, we have let loose the instruments of national vengeance,’ and invoked ‘the glory and terror of the national arms’ to destroy the royalists and set fire to their property.99 It is notable that Yorke is the revolutionary leader here, the violent man of action.100

The Hampshire Chronicle, 6 October, reported,

A person of the name Restiaux, was lately under the alien bill, ordered to quit this country. He had professed himself a dentist at York … but had, under hand, carried on the trade of Jacobinism, and latterly was an intimate with Mr. Yorke, now in York gaol. Some matters however being discovered among his papers, of a treasonable nature, instead of quitting the kingdom, he quitted life, by the assistance of a pistol, in this metropolis a few days ago.101

Again, Yorke is linked with French espionage. Many rumours had spread through London from mid-1792 about French Jacobins, spies, and foreign soldiers being spotted on the streets rather as Yorke had been identified in Newport Pagnell in 1793.102

Details of Yorke’s arrest and the progress of his case were printed in many newspapers. The Kentish Gazette reported that ‘his Majesty’s Messengers took into custody the celebrated Mr. Henry Yorke Esq., alias Redhead. He is a Creolian by birth, and a man of some property in the West Indies.’ He was ‘examined before the Privy Council at the Grand Council Chamber.’ It noted that Yorke ‘received his education at Cambridge, and is a gentleman of uncommon abilities, and professes a commanding eloquence and address.’103 The Stamford Mercury reported,

Henry York, alias Redhead, was committed, by virtue of a warrant from the privy council, to the castle at York, for high treason… .

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