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Updated: June 24, 2025
But he was just a fraction of a second too late; "crack" came Stokoe's cudgel and the pistol flew out of his hand, exploding harmlessly as it fell, and before he could draw another he was at Stokoe's mercy. There was no choice for the man; Stokoe took away all his arms, and then compelled him to set to and put back everything as he had found it.
In another part of this volume mention has already been made of Frank Stokoe, who, after being "out" in the '15 with Lord Derwentwater, died in great poverty.
His family never again rose to anything like affluence, nor even to a status much above that of the ordinary labouring classes, but his descendants were always big, powerful men, perhaps slow of brain, but ready with their hands, and there was at least one of them who was afterwards well known in Northumberland. This was Jack Stokoe, a noted and very daring smuggler.
There was nothing to be gained by obstinately refusing. Stokoe was a man of sixteen or seventeen stone, a giant in every way, and as brave as he was big a combination that is not always found. He could, literally, have broken every bone in the gauger's body, and the chances in this case were strongly in favour of his doing it if his adversary chose to turn rusty.
Then: "Sit doon!" commanded Stokoe, an order that the poor man obeyed with alacrity and thankfulness. Stokoe slipped behind the box-bed, was absent a few minutes, and then returned, bringing with him a keg of brandy. Setting that upon the table, he was not long in drawing from it in a "rummer" a quantity of spirit that four fingers would never half conceal.
As for Hall, henceforward an angel of light could not have been more highly regarded, and his fate, a very few years later, brought grief on the county almost as universal as that felt for the Earl of Derwentwater himself. Hall was at Preston with Derwentwater, but he did not, like Frank Stokoe, ride for it when Forster surrendered.
In 1819 Stokoe resigned his position on the Conqueror, and sailed for England. Lowe sent a report addressed to the Lords of the Admiralty by the same vessel, and Stokoe had scarcely landed when he was bundled back to St. Helena. He rejoined the Conqueror under the impression that his conduct had been approved, but was disillusioned by being forthwith put under arrest.
In those days people were not very squeamish, and Stokoe seems to have gone quietly back to bed without greatly troubling himself about the slain robber; but the man's friends must have stolen back during the night, for in a copse near by, in a shallow grave hastily scooped out of the frozen earth, the dead body was found next day.
But the foot of the hectoring little foreigner slipped, or he stumbled owing to some slight inequality of the ground. For a single instant the man was overbalanced and off his guard, and before he could recover, Frank Stokoe's sword passed through his body, sending out of this world one who whilst in it had wrought much evil. "Well done, Stokoe!
Times consequently became hard for poor Stokoe; his affairs went from bad to worse, and though his name was included in the general pardon which Government issued some time later, he never got back his land nor any of his possessions.
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