Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Sidor ...
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
doctor on one of the East India Company’s boats, adding
that he trusted in the Court’s promise to intercede for him.
He waited in vain. The only thing he was allowed to
do was to write to his wife in England. Even his wish to
have a clergyman of his own Calvinistic persuasion, of the
name of Dartis, near him, met with opposition, and he had
to be content with a Lutheran priest. Until the last
moments the fear that Blackwell might divulge something
possessed Tessin. He gave strict orders that the priest
was not to speak to the prisoner alone, and if the latter
should make any attempts to speak from the scaffold the
drums were to be beaten.
On the 5th of August, 1747, Blackwell’s head fell.
We cannot but admit the truth of Arfvidsson’s words in
“Frey” when he says: “This judicial murder must be
lamented, for the chief instigators of the conspiracy were
to be found elsewhere. A Venetian policy must be
detested which desired to obliterate the traces of party
intrigues by means of it, and tried—in vain—to seal a
reconciliation of the parties, which at best could only be
of short duration, through the cruel and abominable
sacrifice of a submissive tool.”
All the acts of the trial were put into one bundle, sealed
by Tessin, and handed to the Royal Archives, to be kept
in their secret department. There they lay for fifteen
years; the seals were then broken by order of the king,
and access was at last gained to the proceedings.
In the meantime Blackwell’s person had not slipped
out of the memory of men. Numerous were the legends
told about him. Grisly facts of his having been an
atheist, of his having poisoned two women, of a skeleton
found in Tessin’s house, which was somehow made to have
something to do with the mysterious bearer of the letter,
were hawked about in a book professing to be a biography,
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
