The 1700s saw relatively few treason trials in Britain. Yet all that changed in dramatic style at the end of the century – thanks to events on the other side of the English Channel. The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 made the British government increasingly anxious that revolutionary ideas would take hold. When, in 1793, French king Louis XVI was executed for treason and Britain found itself embroiled in war with France, those fears went into overdrive – as a shoemaker named Thomas Hardy (pictured above right) would discover to his cost.
Hardy’s trial in 1794 served as a test case of Britain’s archaic 1351 Treason Act. Hardy was the founder of the London Corresponding Society, which campaigned for radical political reform. When he planned a public assembly to demand reform of the House of Commons, he was arrested as a revolutionary and charged with treason.