HASTINGS, Warren.

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Engraved entrance ticket for the trial of Warren Hastings. An engraved ticket to attend the trial of Warren Hastings, in a sitting for the ninety-seventh day, with official wax seal and the signature of the ticket holder William Henry. The trial, among the most important political trials in British history, was also a significant moment in the imperial project, instigating a very public debate about British India, the morality of British rule, and the country's imperial future.From 1774 to 1785, Warren Hastings was the head of the Supreme Council of Bengal and consequently the de facto Governor-General of British India. In 1787 he was accused of corruption and embezzlement, in an impeachment trial under the House of Lords in Westminster Hall that would last from 1788 to 1795, with Richard Sheridan and Edmund Burke leading the prosecution.The trial of Hastings, at least in its early stages, was a major social event, with most of London high society turning out in attendance; Edward Gibbon and Joshua Reynolds watched alongside the Queen and the Prince of Wales. As Hastings's biographer records, "there was an enormous demand for tickets of admission to the Hall, and it is said that as much as 50 pounds was offered for a single ticket" (Lawrence, p. 104). The tickets became such well-known objects that James Gillray produced two caricatures of them. However, as the trial dragged on over multiple years and endless sittings, public interest diminished. At last, in 1795, in somewhat

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