Lancelot Cooper

[2] He then asserts that he embarked on a Royal Navy ship from Plymouth carrying dispatches to Admiral Sir John Gore, who was blockading Venice, then under French rule.

Notwithstanding this true version of events, Cooper did indeed manage to convince the Austrians that he was the newly appointed Consul and evidence for this is provided by a letter written by John FitzGibbon, 2nd Earl of Clare (1792-1851) to an unknown recipient from Whitehall on 25 April (1827): "My Dear Lord, Will you meet me for a few minutes today or tomorrow.

In November 1825, a notice appeared in The Times newspaper inserted by a John Powell[6] asking for help to locate a Captain Thomas Cole RN, who had been living at a hotel in Dublin for six months, having married a daughter of "a respectable family".

The notice states that after promising his wife and sister-in-law that they were going to his home in Yorkshire, he had crossed the Irish Sea and travelled by "post with four horses" to Birkenhead, where he had left them and was never seen again.

Cooper was tried at the Old Bailey on 5 April 1827 before Lord Chief Justice Abbott[4] on one count of fraud perpetrated on 26 March of that year (although other alleged offences were described) and being found guilty he was sentenced to death.

Incarcerated in Newgate Prison, Cooper, as custom allowed, wrote a petition accompanied by references from people in authority to the Home Secretary William Sturges Bourne pleading for mercy.

[7] After a period of incarceration in the prison hulks on the Thames, Cooper was transported aboard the Asia V to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) on 17 August that year.

On Arrival at Van Diemen's Land in December 1827 he was required, as was the custom, to initially assist with the building of roads and other public works but at the end of 1833 he was given the opportunity to establish an independent life through a conditional pardon.

Collaboration for his account of the beginning of his naval career include the good-conduct certificates written by Sir John Gore and letters of recommendation accompanying the petition from captains of other ships in which he served.

[7] In it the reporter states that "amongst his papers was found a letter written in French and addressed to the Princess Charlotte of Wales in the handwriting of the late...Queen Caroline.

[4] However, his manner must have convinced as William Powell wrote that[2] "the world could not produce a more religious, charitable and humane man, nor one on whom I could with more safety bestow the hand of my child"