Shooting Victoria by Paul Thomas Murphy Page B

eight yards away from the royal carriage when he shot the second time, another that he was thirty yards away. Allowed to make a final statement, Oxford reiterated these discrepancies, and couldn’t resist impugning Albert’s reported courage, claiming that he jumped up at the sound of the first pistol and shrank back at the sight of the second. “Then,” Oxford said, “I fired the second pistol. This is all I shall say at present.”
    Nothing Oxford did or said affected the cabinet’s decision, and he was bound over for trial on the charge of High Treason. HomeSecretary Normanby drew up a warrant for Governor William Wadham Cope of Newgate Prison to take in Oxford as soon as he could be transferred from the Home Office. Oxford was removed, still apparently in good spirits. If he had considered the government’s line of questioning more closely, however, he might have been more concerned. Although Inspector Hughes did tell the Cabinet about Oxford’s box of secrets, that was as far as any reference to Young England went. The police still took the conspiracy theory very seriously: they had gotten it into their heads that the handwriting on all of Oxford’s documents was not actually Oxford’s, and considered it possible, at the very least, that another person might have encouraged Oxford to shoot the Queen—a Truelock to Oxford’s Hadfield. But the government was not interested in establishing Oxford as a conspirator. Already, the image that Oxford had worked so hard to create—the myth of the valiant Bravo—was on the decline. The caricature of the foolish potboy was on the ascent.
    Outside of the examination room, Oxford once again saw his family: Susannah, flanked by her husband William and uncle Edward. This time, Oxford was able to embrace his sister. Her distress was palpable and infectious, and Oxford began to cry. The police separated the two forcibly. Oxford did however manage to recover his highwayman’s mien for one act of gallantry before leaving for Newgate, laughing and flourishing his hat to some girls in the building’s lobby. At a few minutes before six, Hughes and Pearce clapped a cap on Oxford’s head to disguise him, and put him in a coach for the journey up the Strand, Fleet Street, and Ludgate Hill, up Old Bailey to the door of Newgate Prison, where he was taken into custody by Governor Cope.
    With the shooter safely shut away in the decaying bowels of Newgate Prison, Oxford’s motive became the focus of discussion, and rumors connecting others with the crime began to fly. One of these held that the letters E R were stamped on Oxford’s pistols or his pistol case—suggesting Oxford was acting on the orders of Ernestus Rex , the King of Hanover. And while many (Baron Stockmar and Albert’s personal secretary George Anson among them) could not believe that Hanover was directly involved, many took seriously the possibility that “Young England” was real: a reactionary, ultra-Tory movement bent on destroying the British constitution (as Uncle Ernest had abolished the Hanoverian one) and bringing absolutist government to Britain. Daniel O’Connell, the defender of Irish Catholics, was not alone in holding this view, but was its strongest articulator, seeing in the threat of Victoria’s death a particular danger to her Irish subjects. Ten days after the shooting, in a letter addressed to the people of Ireland, O’Connell railed against the “underlings of that Orange-Tory faction which naturally detests the virtues of our beloved Queen.” If Victoria had died, O’Connell thundered,
    I shudder even to think of the scenes that would have followed. I have no doubt that the Tory party in England would submit to be converted into another Hanover. They would sacrifice to the last remnant all constitutional liberty for the sake of enjoying irresponsible power. The gratification of trampling upon