William Stone

William Stone was a London merchant, Unitarian, and radical reformer. He was accused by the Pitt administration in 1795 of collaborating with the French. He was acquitted and the following year Martha Gurney printed and sold The trial of William Stone for high treason at the bar of the court of King's Bench, on Thursday the twenty-eighth, and Friday the twenty-ninth of January, 1796, taken from the shorthand transcript by Joseph Gurney. Benjaminn Flower commented in the Cambridge Intelligencer about the trial on 6 February 1796: “The trial and the acquittal of Mr. Stone, affords us another reason for exulting, that we have not yet been deprived of that invaluable privilege, trail by jury.  Let us, amidst all the abuses of our government, not be insensible of its excellencies.  Let us rejoice, that our lives are not at the mercy of British Cabinets, or of French Directories.”  On 19 March 1796 Flower added: “Six Terms and Twelve Sessions occurred during the time of [Stone’s] imprisonment.  These opportunities of bringing him to trial were studiously overlooked.  He was at length arraigned, acquitted, and on regaining his liberty found that he was ruined.”