the trial. Culpability of Lord Cochrane Though convicted of the fraud, Lord Cochrane continued to assert his innocence. In 1816, he brought an (unsuccessful) charge of "partiality, misrepresentation, injustice and oppression" against Lord Ellenborough, the presiding judge in his case. Popular opinion certainly backed Cochrane; his sentencing was followed by his re-election unopposed to the House of Commons for Westminster. The pillory portion of his sentence was dropped, for fear of public reaction. Due to public outcry over his treatment, the punishment of the pillory was limited to those found guilty of perjury in England and Wales in 1816. Its use was completely discontinued in 1837 in England and Wales (though the stocks, a similar device, were used over the rest of the nineteenth century). Lord Cochrane continued to petition the government for redress; in 1832, he was granted a free pardon, including reinstatement to his rank of Rear Admiral. Restoration of the Order of the Bath and other honours followed in the subsequent decades, and, in 1877, a Select committee found that his treatment since 1832 constituted "nothing less than a public recognition by those Governments of his innocence." Lord Cochrane's culpability has been a subject of continued debate. In 1965, the judge Henry Cecil set out an argument that supported Lord Cochrane's guilt in A Matter of Speculation: The Case of Lord Cochrane; Brian Vale's 2004 book The Audacious Admiral Cochrane also argues for his guilt. In his 1981 PhD thesis, John Sugden argued that "the question of his guilt cannot satisfactorily be resolved." Two other historians, Christopher Lloyd in 1947, and David Cordingly in 2007, concluded that Lord Cochrane was innocent. Literary references Security speculation based on allegedly accurate news delivered by semaphore telegraph forms a plot event in the novel The Count of Monte Cristo (published 1844). The Great Stock Exchange Fraud forms the basis for the 11th novel in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series, The Reverse of the Medal (published 1986). The Great Stock Exchange Fraud is a key plot element in Katherine Cowley's The True Confessions of a London Spy (published 2022). Note In the terminology of 1814, stocks refer to interest-bearing securities of the type that are today called bonds. The fraud particularly involved government bearer bond instruments called 'Omniums', which were partly-paid government bonds, where the purchaser initially only had to pay 10% or 15% of the face value and later made further