Publisher's Synopsis
In the last decade of the 18th century Britain, like every other country in the western world, was fascinated and appalled by the French Revolution and its aftermath. The great fear was of the spread of the "contagion" of revolution. Conspiracies were uncovered, or invented, by the government of the day: links between Irish, Scots and English freethinkers, rebels and revolutionaries were uncovered or imagined. The greatest apparent conspiracy against the King was investigated and tried in 1794.;These trials were a watershed in English legal history. The distinction between dissent and treason was defined, and the definition of treason hammered out in the heat of a capital trial at the High Court has stood for two hundred years.;This is the first full account of one the central events in the modern political history of England and the legal history of the English-speaking countries. In includes a detailed biography of the major participants - judge, lawyers, defendants and witnesses - and provides a distinguished lawyer's appraisal of the procedures and verdicts.
