ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the period 1789-94 and three trials in particular Parslow-Sykes of 1789, Duberly-Gunning of 1792 and Howard-Bingham from 1794. A crucial figure in considering the relationship between adultery and radical politics in the 1790s is Thomas Erskine, the barrister, Whig MP and later Lord Chancellor, best known for his defence of Hardy and Horne Tooke in the Treason Trials of 1794. Another significant dimension of Erskine's legal career was his work as a barrister in trials for criminal conversation or crim. con. The Parslow-Sykes case highlights how much of Erskine's impact relied on the theatricality and also literariness of his court-room behaviour. As in the Parslow-Sykes case, Erskine tried to melodramatise the affair for sentimental effect. The problem of early 1790's theatricality, as refracted in Burke's Reflections and in the Treason Trials, is therefore not that of false show or inauthenticity but the problem of unleashing the power of sympathetic feeling as a mode of political communication.
