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 A 
 
 SPEECH AT DUBLIN, 
 
 IN BEHALF OF 
 
 THE QUEEN. 
 
 BY JOHN 7 FINLAY, ESQ. 
 
 BARRISTER AT LAW. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOR WILLIAM HONK 
 45, LUDGATE-HILL. 
 
 1821. 
 Sixpence.
 
 J. M'Cieery, Tooks Court, 
 
 Cluiiictry Laue, London.
 
 Rt 
 
 Am-cx 
 
 119 
 
 A SPEECH, 
 
 AT a public dinner in Dublin, Mr. Finlay's health 
 being given, after returning thanks, and referring to 
 the present situation of her Majesty, as engrossing 
 public attention to the exclusion of every other sub- 
 ject, he continued as follows : 
 
 The late proceeding against the Queen abounds 
 \vith anomalies it confounds the relations of our con- 
 stitutional jurisprudence, and is repugnant to many 
 of those principles essential to guard the subject 
 against wrong. 
 
 In criminal accusations before the highest tribu- 
 nal, the grand and simple arrangement of our consti- 
 tution is this the Commons may accuse, but shall 
 not judge; the Lords may judge, but shall not ac- 
 cuse; the King shall neither judge nor accuse but 
 his high station, wisely protected against the invidious- 
 ness of the one character, or the responsibility of the 
 other; it becomes his duty to punish or to pardon. 
 He is the executive he is one-third of the legisla- 
 ture; but he is not judicial. In all judicial proceed- 
 ings, every thing is done in his name, but nothing is 
 done by him. The King might sit on the King's 
 Bench, but his Chief Justice would tell him that he 
 must not interfere. It is for him a glorious a pro-
 
 tecting disability: but the proceedings against the 
 Queen makes the Legislature a court. 
 
 Thus the King becomes judicial, who, in judicial 
 proceedings, should only be executive. Thus the 
 peers become accusers, who should only be judges ; 
 and thus the Commons become judges, who should 
 only be accusers. 
 
 The equipoise of the three estates is their inde- 
 pendence on each other ; and therefore it was the 
 boast and wise privilege of the Lords, that the mem- 
 bers of the Upper House were not amenable to the 
 Lower; but according to this proceeding, a measure 
 of this kind, against any peer, may be originated in 
 the Commons, and thus the members of the Lower 
 House become not only the accusers, but, subse- 
 quently, the judges over the members of the Upper 
 House. 
 
 The peers are no longer the Supreme Tribunal, as 
 they ought to be. An appeal is given from them to 
 a court consisting of six hundred judges, of which the 
 counsel for one party happen to be members. Nor 
 does the absurdity stop here, for there is another 
 appeal from the court of six hundred to a court of 
 one> which, in the present case, happens to be the 
 other party. Thus, the Commons are made judicial, 
 and placed over the Lords, and the King is made 
 judicial, and placed over both. 
 
 Under such circumstances the Queen is brought 
 before a tribunal consisting of three divisions, King, 
 Lords, and Commons. The first division of this 
 tribunal is constitutionally the maker of the second, 
 and the first and second might, by possibility, have 
 some influence on the third. The first is the party 
 in person, the second the accusers in person, and the 
 third the House of Commons !
 
 Principle says, that the subject cannot be crimi- 
 nally amenable, unless, the court proceeds on sworn 
 testimony, given under the penalty of being punished 
 as a perjurer. Here the highest subject in the land 
 is made in the highest degree criminally liable, before 
 a court of six hundred judges where no judge is sworn, 
 where no witness could be sworn, and no false wit- 
 ness could be punished as a perjurer, nor confined 
 longer than that prorogation, so likely to occur soon 
 after this trial ! 
 
 Principle forbids the union of the judicial and le- 
 gislative authorities here they are united. Principle 
 forbids the mixture of the executive and judicial 
 here they are confounded. Principle forbids the 
 King, the Commons, the accuser, or the party to be 
 judicial here the King, Commons, accusers, and 
 party, are judges. Principle says, that even the 
 lowest subject shall be only punishable by the law, 
 here the highest subject is made punishable, where 
 her accusers declared that there was no law to punish. 
 Principle makes the law prospective here it is re- 
 trospective. Principle makes the law for the public 
 here it would be made for an individual and all this 
 inversion of principle, for what? To punish a wo- 
 man and that woman a Queen a wife a discarded 
 wife on the charge of infidelity alleged to have oc- 
 curred seventeen years after she had been discarded, 
 without cause; when father, mother, daughter, bro- 
 ther, uncle, and king, and all her natural protectors, 
 except her husband, were in their grave. 
 
 When all foreknowledge of the time, place, or 
 witnesses, respecting these allegations, were refused ; 
 although bjf the generality of the charge, thus spread 
 over many years, and many countries, the accused 
 was, in a great measure, disabled from resorting to an
 
 6 
 
 alibi, that species of defence best calculated to detect 
 the falsehood in such a case, as was confessedly proved 
 in respect to the offences alleged to have happened 
 at Trieste. Although the witnesses \VQYQ foreigners in 
 humble life, respecting whom some foreknowledge 
 was the more necessary, because they did not come 
 forth like witnesses in an ordinary case, surrounded 
 by that halo of character which throws a light on the 
 value of human testimony : although for these rea- 
 sons the Queen should have had a specification of her 
 charges, and a foreknowledge of her witnesses, even 
 if such information to the accused was not rightful or 
 usual, and although every military man within or 
 without the House of Peers must have well known, 
 that even in military law, no man is ever brought to 
 trial before a Court Martial, without a specification 
 of the charges, as to time, as near as possible, but as 
 to place, most strictly, together with a list of the 
 witnesses to be produced against him. 
 
 Such was the case, on the external view of it, for 
 which so many of the best principles of the Consti- 
 tution were violated. 
 
 It is true that precedents have been cited in 
 sanction of this proceeding; but what is there for 
 which precedents may not be cited. The precedents 
 here referred to are of two classes: the first class 
 happened about the time of the Reformation, and 
 the second class not long after the Revolution. 
 Stormy periods, pregnant with agitation, when so- 
 ciety was convulsed and authority unsteady. The 
 cases of Atterbury, Fenwick, and others, at that time, 
 were, like the case of Marshal Ney, the sacrifices to 
 the terror of the times and the apprehensions of a new 
 and threatened dynasty. But this class of cases in no 
 wise apply, except as ex post facto laws - } and in search-
 
 ing for a precedent for dethroning and divorcing a 
 Queen by ex post facto laws, we are turned round to 
 the former class, to the reign of Henry VIII. In this 
 reign certainly there are precedents for such a pro- 
 ceeding, and such a punishment. Four Queens were 
 dethroned and divorced, at the instance of one King, 
 by the consent and enactments of Parliament, in the 
 short space of eight years. 
 
 But let us examine whether these precedents are 
 calculated by their example to sanction or dissuade 
 they prove nothing, for they prove too much ; 
 they not only prove that a Queen may be divorced 
 and dethroned by ex post facto parliamentary enact- 
 ment for imputed incontinence but where no impro- 
 priety could be imputed. Two of these Queens be- 
 fore marriage were Princesses, Catharine of Arragon 
 and Anne of Cleves. No impropriety had been im- 
 puted to either, yet both were dethroned and divorced 
 \>y Parliament but both these illustrious ladies had 
 powerful protectors. The first had the protection of 
 the Emperor Charles and the Catholic league ; the 
 second of the Elector of Saxony and the Protestant 
 league. No impropriety is imputed to either of those 
 princely-born Queens but in respect to the other 
 two, Anne Boleyn and Catharine Howard, the first 
 only the daughter of a Baronet, and the second the 
 niece of a Duke, these powerless ladies escaped no 
 imputation. 
 
 After being married for twenty three years, the 
 heads of the Church and Parliament of England 
 dethroned and divorced Catharine of Arragon, and 
 bastardized her daughter, who was afterwards Queen 
 of England, without the slightest imputation of in- 
 decorurn in the mother - 3 and on a ground which the
 
 8 
 
 Church, the Parliament, and King, w^ere well ac- 
 quainted with, before the marriage of Catharine. 
 
 Immediately after, the King married her maid of 
 honor, Anne Boleyn. Cranmer was present at this 
 marriage, and subsequently stood godfather for her 
 daughter Elizabeth. About two years after, the at- 
 tractions of Jane Seymour determined the King to 
 get rid of his Consort. On the 1st of May, 1536, 
 whilst holding with the Queen a tournament at 
 Greenwich, he thought proper to conceive displea- 
 sure at seeing her let her handkerchief fall to a sup- 
 posed favorite, who wiped his face with it. He 
 suddenly returned from Greenwich to Whitehall, and 
 immediately ordered her to be confined to her cham- 
 ber. Her brother, Lord Rochester, two gentlemen 
 of the court, and two menials, were immediately 
 committed to the Tower j she was committed on the 
 following day. On her passage up the river, some 
 Privy Councillors were sent to examine her she 
 protested her innocence, and on landing at the Tower, 
 fell down on her knees and prayed to Heaven to assist 
 her, as she was free from the crimes laid to her charge. 
 Burnet and Lord Herbert tell us, that the poor victim 
 alternately laughed and wept excessively ; and was 
 devout and light by turns that her uncle, the Duke 
 of Norfolk, and the Privy Councillors, falsely told her 
 that the menials had made confessions against her. 
 Burnet says, that Smeton, the musician, afterwards 
 made confession of her guilt ; but Cromwell's letter 
 to the King and Lord Herbert, both contemporary 
 authorities, lead us to a conclusion, that no such con- 
 fession occurred ; Smeton and the other three were, 
 however, found guilty, and executed on the 17th of 
 May; one of them, Norris, in his dying moments
 
 9 
 
 avowing his conviction of the Queen's entire inno- 
 cence. She and her brother were tried by their peers, 
 and found guilty on the 15th. She was sentenced to 
 be beheaded, or burned, at the pleasure of his Majesty. 
 The King was resolved on her divorce, as well as her 
 death, in order to bastardize her daughter, Elizabeth. 
 The pretence of a pre-contract with Lord Percy was 
 then resorted to for annulling the marriage. Lord 
 Percy took the sacrament, and by his oath, on his 
 knees, before the Privy Council, denied any such 
 pre-contract : but the Queen, terrified at the sen- 
 tence of being burned, confessed confessed some- 
 thing that was construed by Cranmer into a pre- 
 contract, upon which he pronounced a divorce, which 
 was confirmed by the whole Convocation. Thus, 
 the Spiritual Lords bastardized the daughter, on the 
 ground that the mother had never been a wife, and 
 the Temporal Lords sent her to the scaffold, on the 
 ground that she had committed adultery; and not- 
 withstanding the absurd inconsistency of the con- 
 viction for adultery and the divorce, both were sub- 
 sequently confirmed by the parliament. On the 
 19th, the Queen perished on the scaffold, and on 
 the following morning the King married Lady Jane 
 Seymour. 
 
 The divorces of Henry VIII. from four of his 
 wives, in the short space of eight years, are the only 
 precedents which can be referred to in respect to the 
 late proceedings against our Queen. It has not been 
 sufficiently remarked that these divorces were all 
 Parliamentary for although these, as unworthy pre- 
 cedents, may fail to show what Parliaments should 
 do, yet they may show what Parliaments have done. 
 
 Neither can these Parliamentary enormities be 
 excused or explained as the products of a credulous 
 
 B
 
 10 
 
 or barbarous age it was in the age of the Reforma- 
 tion those things were done when public opinion 
 was in action and in considerable force when it was 
 able to war with the thunders of the Vatican, and 
 divide the empire of the ancient Church when the 
 press, in the energies of its youth and novelty, poured 
 its rich treasures on the public mind; when the 
 thrones of Europe were filled by men of gallantry, 
 knowledge, erudition, and genius; when, in the 
 mighty conflict of opinion, great characters in great 
 numbers displayed first-rate examples of the powers 
 of intellect and the heroism of principle ; an age 
 which abounded with such men as Fisher and More 
 on the one side, Ridley and Latimer on the other; 
 when the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of England 
 included names of the highest order, and the highly- 
 gifted Surrey, the Bayard and the scholar of the age, 
 was evidence of the taste for chivalry and literature 
 which then pervaded the nobility of England. 
 
 No doubt the peers who voted these statutable enor- 
 mities were all " honorable men" in their day, and so 
 considered, and perhaps justly so considered in the 
 ordinary transactions of life, or as between man and 
 man; but it requires a mind of no ordinary cast a 
 certain grandeur of sentiment a loftiness of character 
 a moral courage a disregard for self acontemptfor 
 personal expectations or consequences, to look in the 
 face of angry authority, to check its arm in the very 
 tempest of its passion, and snatch the victim from its 
 fearful wrath. In such a difficulty a man may be good, 
 and very good, and good for nothing; such men were 
 these Plantagenet peers, all honorable men ; solemnly 
 and on their honor they divorced Catharine of Arra- 
 gon, sent Anne Boleyn to the scaffold, and bastardized 
 their two future queens.
 
 11 
 
 The next compliment paid by them to the Crown 
 was in the case of Anne of Cleves. Having brought 
 this Princess to England as his affianced bride, Henry 
 was pleased to conceive an immediate aversion for her. 
 The grounds of his dislike, as stated by his contempo- 
 raries, were ff the unpoliteness of her person that she 
 had no skill in music, and spoke no language but 
 Dutch." The marriage, however, was publicly solem- 
 nized with great pomp at Greenwich, on the 1st of 
 January, 1540. The next day they ceased to cohabit 
 with each other, and on the 24th June following, the 
 King sent the Queen to Richmond, on the pretence 
 of the air being better for her health. 
 
 The hint was not lost on the House of Lords; and 
 on the 6th of July following, they addressed the King, 
 praying that he would consent to have the validity of 
 his marriage examined into. Cranmer, the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, and others, went 
 down to desire the concurrence of the Commons, who 
 immediately assented, and commissioned twenty of 
 their house, to go with the peers in a body to the 
 King. These men, about two years before, had passed 
 a statute, making it high treason to question the title 
 of the Queen. 
 
 His Majesty was pleased to consent to the united 
 wish of the House of Lords and his faithful Commons j 
 a committee was appointed for the examination of 
 witnesses, the substance of the evidence amounted to 
 this, " that the King had married the Queen without 
 any inward consent." The whole body of the clergy 
 in convocation assembled, with Archbishop Cranmer 
 at their head, as they did in the case of Anne Boleyn, 
 immediately pronounced the marriage void and the 
 parties free. The judgment of the convocation, with 
 the foundation and reason for it, namely, the want of
 
 12 
 
 inward consent, being reported to Parliament on the 
 10th of July following, the Parliament concurred with 
 the convocation: on the next morning some peers 
 were sent to the Queen at Richmond, to inform her 
 that the King would, by his letters patent, declare her 
 his adopted sister, with an annuity of three thousand 
 pounds a year; she had further the choice to live in. 
 England or return to her brother ; she peremptorily 
 refused to leave the country, and never did ; but she 
 was prevailed on to write to her brother that the 
 King had used her like a father that all that had 
 happened was with her free will, and to express a hope 
 that no misunderstanding on her account would be 
 
 o 
 
 excited among his German allies. The king imme- 
 diately married Catharine Howard. The mischievous 
 implicitness of the Church and Hereditary Counsellors 
 of the Crown fanned all his wayward passions. With- 
 in the first six months of the year 1540 he was pub- 
 licly married TWICE. 
 
 On All Saints Day in the following year, he re- 
 ceived the sacrament; and gave a public thanksgiving 
 to God, for his domestic happiness with his . new 
 Queen, Lady Catharine Howard. On the next day 
 he received an accusation against her of infidelity 
 with domestics, and that she had presented the favo- 
 rite of these menial paramours with a gold chain. It 
 was said, as in the case of Anne Boleyn, that the pa- 
 ramours confessed : at all events they were executed. 
 The Church and Parliament, as before, passed their 
 Statutes of Degradation, Divorce, and Death ; and 
 this young woman also, about seventeen months after 
 her splendid regal nuptials, laid down her dignities 
 with her life on the scaffold. These are the PRECE- 
 DENTS ! and what do they show ? but the greatest 
 injuries perhaps ever inflicted in any age or nation on
 
 13 
 
 the character of womanhood, and the greatest stain on 
 the page of British, and I may add, Parliamentary 
 history. 
 
 The adversaries of the present Queen in the House 
 of Peers must admit that her estate, reputation, and 
 life, was placed in much peril on a former occasion by 
 a conspiracy, admitted on all sides to have been 
 founded in manifest perjury. That single fact should 
 have secured her from similar accusations during the 
 residue of her natural life. How have these worst of 
 enemies been punished ? 
 
 Let any man make this case his own. What has 
 happened to the highest may happen to the humblest 
 subject. If the highest subject in the land can be so 
 attacked with impunity, how can the lowest be se- 
 cure ? There is a common interest between the Queen 
 and the public. 
 
 The late accusation against her has died in its own 
 weakness. I scarcely ever knew a charge against any 
 person in which the witnesses happened to be of so 
 low a description. Much perjury is admitted by her 
 adversaries. The world does, and posterity will acquit. 
 
 I make no apology for detaining you on a subject 
 which appears by the universal press of Europe and 
 America, to engross exclusively the attention of all 
 nations. In the isolated situation, which is the con- 
 dition of royalty, the opinions of the people are often 
 intercepted from the King. His Majesty was greatly 
 misinformed, if he understood that his Irish subjects 
 were not deeply interested in the question which in- 
 volved the reputation of his Consort any insensibility 
 on such a subject would ill accord with the character 
 of this nation. Our national character has always 
 stood high : the dramatic writers of every age have 
 clothed it in the attributes of manliness and genero-
 
 14 
 
 sity and described it as unmixed with selfishness or 
 calculation. Character is a nation's dearest treasure 
 almost the only treasure of unfortunate Ireland. 
 There is much political evil peculiar to Ireland, which 
 none but Irishmen can well understand : but though 
 the public expression in this country is weak, the 
 public feeling is not torpid nor wrongly biassed. I 
 know that I but adopt the general sentiment, when 
 I express my contempt of any mean barter of public 
 opinion for political advantage. What sort of liberty 
 would that be which could be required by resigning 
 the right to speak and think on a subject so deeply 
 interesting to us as citizens and as men ? I am not 
 acquainted with the nature of the barter between the 
 mind of a freeman, and the manacles of a slave. I 
 am ignorant of such a discount. I am no dealer in 
 that market. Would it serve the interests of Ireland 
 in any way to put at risk the estimation of the 
 British nation, by affecting an insensibility contrary 
 to the truth, at a time when England is triumphantly 
 employed in one of the most glorious contests that 
 any nation ever was engaged in? But I will not, and 
 I am sure this country does not, enter at all into any 
 such calculation. Trading politicians may flatter 
 ministers, and attempt to trade on an apparent na- 
 tional apathy j but such apathy, if apparent, was 
 unreal; a nation, as an individual, may feel acutely 
 though in silence. Our late general illumination suf- 
 ficiently evinced the interest which the people take in 
 the cause of this illustrious and most persecuted lady. 
 To select one out of many instances, was it possible 
 for a man to affect insensibility, or repress indigna- 
 tion, when some judges of*the Queen declared that 
 they had been absent during the defence, and yet 
 proceeded to vote for conviction ; when they said in
 
 excuse that they read the defence, although the rule 
 of law which requires oral testimony, results from the 
 value of actually observing the witness; (which not 
 only puts his expressions but his countenance in evU 
 dence;) when everyone knew how the journals, most 
 likely to be read by those Lords, reported this trial 
 when every one that ever witnessed a Court of Justice 
 in these countries must have observed, that if a juror 
 retired but for a moment the whole trial must stop 
 during his absence, and that, if he did not return, 
 that trial could not go on, nor could any valid verdict 
 result from the proceedings ; and when not only such 
 judges voted to degrade the Queen from her title, 
 dignity, and estates; but recorded in a protest the 
 baffled charge, after the prosecution was abandoned, 
 and the party out of court. 
 
 The Queen has been saved by the spirit of the 
 nation, but she is not in safety. Much has been 
 done much remains to be done. Having failed to 
 degrade her by a bill, the ministers now attempt to 
 degrade her without a bill. They have closed the 
 doors of Parliament against her for two months, in 
 exclusion of her fair claim to that income which, by 
 the law and the constitution of these countries, is as 
 much her estate as the demesnes of the Percies, or the 
 castle of Hotspur is the property of the Smithsons. 
 They hope that the fervor of public opinion, which 
 now protects her Majesty, may subside. They are 
 much mistaken it will rapidly increase, and not cease 
 till it bring the authors of this conspiracy to account. 
 She may in confidence and security reply to any re- 
 newed attack from her ministerial defamers : " There 
 was a time when you were the humblest of my flat- 
 terers, and told me I was the most injured of women. 
 The clientship of my cause elevated you to importance
 
 to- 
 
 you have shewn your gratitude by an attempt to 
 destroy that reputation which once you defended 
 when it was your interest to do so you have treated 
 me with unmanliness, cruelty, and injustice. I had 
 a father, the first soldier of Germany, who led the 
 armies of Emperors and Kings were he alive, the 
 veteran would have taught you the prudence of re- 
 specting a Princess of Brunswick the dread peril of 
 defaming a soldier's daughter he is gone, but he fell 
 in the field of honor, fighting for his country, and 
 guarding his capital !" 
 
 " I had a princely brother, who, at the head of 
 his little band, rushed like Protesilaus, the first victim 
 of the war ; arrested the fierce onset of Napoleon and 
 his power, preserved the British army from the dis- 
 honor of surprise, and bravely fell, the Leonidas of 
 Europe in the Thermopylae of Waterloo. Were he 
 spared to me, the bravest of you might think it dan- 
 gerous to insult the sister of a soldier; but he is 
 gone, and his laurels are worn by others !" 
 
 se I had a sovereign, to me a father, who in his 
 characteristic mildness and good feeling, would have 
 reproved your calumnies, by reminding you * how 
 innocent you thought her when she was similarly 
 accused.' ' 
 
 " 1 had a daughter ! she would have protected me 
 she is in heaven; but if her pure spirit be sensible of 
 the wrongs and miseries poured on the head of her 
 desolate mother, she must be consoled in seeing me 
 effectually protected by the generous hearts of the 
 people that she loved." 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 J. M'Creery, Tooks-Court, 
 Chancery-Lanf, Lotutou.
 
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