The jury found the prisoners Not guilty; and the report carried back to London by persons who had been present at the trial was that everybody applauded the verdict, and that even the Stouts seemed to be convinced of their error.  It is certain, however, that the malevolence of the defeated party soon revived in all its energy.  The lives of the four men who had just been absolved were again attacked by means of the most absurd and odious proceeding known to our old law, the appeal of murder.  This attack too failed.  Every artifice of chicane was at length exhausted; and nothing was left to the disappointed sect and the disappointed faction except to calumniate those whom it had been found impossible to murder.  In a succession of libels Spencer Cowper was held up to the execration of the public.  But the public did him justice.  He rose to high eminence in his profession; he at length took his seat, with general applause, on the judicial bench, and there distinguished himself by the humanity which he never failed to show to unhappy men who stood, as he had once stood, at the bar.  Many who seldom trouble themselves about pedigrees may be interested by learning that he was the grandfather of that excellent man and excellent poet William Cowper, whose writings have long been peculiarly loved and prized by the members of the religious community which, under a strong delusion, sought to slay his innocent progenitor.19

Though Spencer Cowper had escaped with life and honour, the Tories had carried their point.  They had secured against the next election the support of the Quakers of Hertford; and the consequence was that the borough was lost to the family and to the party which had lately predominated there.

In the very week in which the great trial took place at Hertford, a feud arising out of the late election for Buckinghamshire very nearly produced fatal effects.  Wharton, the chief of the Buckinghamshire Whigs, had with difficulty succeeded in bringing in his brother as one of the knights of the shire.  Graham Viscount Cheyney, of the kingdom of Scotland, had been returned at the head of the poll by the Tories.  The two noblemen met at the quarter sessions.  In England Cheyney was before the Union merely an Esquire.  Wharton was undoubtedly entitled to take place of him, and had repeatedly taken place of him without any dispute.  But angry passions now ran so high that a decent pretext for indulging them was hardly thought necessary.  Cheyney fastened a quarrel on Wharton.  They drew.  Wharton, whose cool good humoured courage and skill in fence were the envy of all the swordsmen of that age, closed with his quarrelsome neighbour, disarmed him, and gave him his life.