A HIRED SANGUINARY ASSASSIN, EXETER, 1842

The Western Times of  8th October 1842 tells at some length a story of the Landlord of the Ship Inn, John Roberts,  and a  Recruiting Corporal of Marines, Corporal Thomas Apley, who had been handing out the Queen's shilling to Exeter lads for some nine months.  The corporal was a remarkably powerful man standing about six foot high.  The Plaintiff was very much the lesser man.

At one point in the trial the attorney for the plaintiff said:  "the service which he followed, and the clothes which he wore, the allegience he owed the queen, and the gratitude which he owed to the people who paid for the various trappings which adorned his person, and for the rations which kept his body up - these all should have bound the corporal over to a knowledge of the Queen's peace and his duty to preserve it."

But the Bench heard how Corporal Apley had been mightily provoked  the plaintiff had called him a  " .... hired sanguinary assassin, to which he added a  "foul and loathsome epithet.  If you call me that name again John (said defendant) I will knock you down.  He repeated the name the corporal kept his word, and and floored him - he admitted it.  The corporal seemed to be labouring under a mistake.  He apparently imagined that being sworn to maintain the Queen's honour and dignity, and the national weal by deeds of arms - that he was entitled to excercise his gallant calling in defenceof his own honour and dignity - and that he could declare war on his own account but the Bench did not encourage him to hold this belief , for although Sergeant Herbert took his corporal oath in support of the corporal's statement yet the Bench decreed that no provocation would justify the assault.  They admitted, however, that the disgusting and abusive language of the plaintiff must come in mitigation and administered the lowest fine - one shilling and costs."

I was impressed by the idea that there was in 1842, apparently, something like a contract between the public and its servants which is expressed here.  We have lost all trace of it.  There was a time, that I remember, when soldiers felt their 'service' was to the nation.  Now we have no nation, and soldiers, and policemen think and act ever more like the servants of a sometimes tyrannical government.  On the other hand 'society' expresses little or no gratitude to its 'servants'.  I can recall, for a trivial example, as a young soldier in uniform, being ushered into the best seats at the local cinema free of charge.  Nowadays soldiers in uniform just get stabbed.

The Ship Inn, I assume, is the same one in Martin's Lane which Drake is said to have visited and where 'royals' still visit.   They were already 'royal' in Corporal Apley's day. 

These days those who abuse have a strikingly degenerate and limited vocabulary. -   Discuss!

But I think perhaps the witty writer of the column is paraphrasing!

Corporal Oath is a pun worthy of The Times.  A corporal  (corporax), as in the legal term corporal oath, being sacred cloth such as covers the host or indeed , who now believes?, the binding of the Holy Bible.