It will be seen from this elaborate defence that it must have been written long before his trial, and before his hopes of acquittal were crushed by the appearance of Houseman in the witness-box to give evidence against him; for he did not attempt to discredit his evidence, nor did he attempt to shake his testimony by cross-examination, and he must have anticipated the result. The judge summed up carefully; he recapitulated the evidence, and showed how Houseman’s testimony was confirmed by the other witnesses; and, taking Aram’s defence, he pointed out that he had alleged nothing that could invalidate the positive evidence against him. The jury, without leaving the court, returned a verdict of ‘Guilty,’ and the judge pronounced the awful sentence of the law. Aram had behaved with great firmness and dignity during the whole of his trial, and he heard his conviction, and his doom, with profound composure, leaving the bar with a smile upon his countenance.
In those days the law allowed but little time for appeal. Aram was tried, convicted, and sentenced on Friday, the 3rd of August, 1759, and he had to die on the following Monday--only two whole days of life being allowed him. Those days must have been days of exquisite torture to him, when he thought of the upturned faces of the mob, all fixing their gaze upon him, yelling at, and execrating him, and we can scarcely wonder at his attempting to commit suicide. On the Monday morning, when the clergyman came to visit him, and at his request to administer the Sacrament to him, he was astonished to find Aram stretched on the floor of his cell in a pool of blood. He had managed to secrete a razor, and had cut the veins of his arms in two places. Surgeons were sent for, and they brought him back to life, when he was put into the cart and led to execution. Arrived at the gallows, he was asked if he had any speech to make, and he replied in the negative. He was then hanged, and, when dead, his body was cut down, put in a cart, taken to Knaresborough, and there suspended in chains, on a gibbet which was erected on Knaresborough forest, south or south-east of the Low Bridge, on the right hand side going thence to Plumpton. It was taken down in 1778, when the forest was enclosed.