Atrocious Judges : Lives of Judges Infamous as Tools of Tyrants and Instruments of Oppression

We may judge of the councillor’s general style of treating witnesses by his remark on the trial of Lord Grey de Werke for carrying off the Lady Henrietta Berkeley; when his objection was overruled to the competency of the young lady as a witness for the defendant, although she was not only of high rank and uncommon beauty, but undoubted veracity, he observed, “Truly, my lord, we would prevent perjury if we could.”

We now come to transactions which strikingly prove the innate baseness of his nature in the midst of his pretended openness and jolly good humor. He owed every thing in life to the corporation of the city of London. The freemen, in the exercise of their ancient privileges, had raised him from the ground by electing him common serjeant and recorder, and to the influence he was supposed to have in the Court of Common Council and in the Court of Aldermen must be ascribed his introduction to Whitehall and all his political advancement. But when, upon the failure of the prosecution against Lord Shaftesbury, the free municipal constitution of the city became so odious to the government, he heartily entered into the conspiracy to destroy it. It is said that he actually suggested the scheme of having a sheriff nominated by the lord mayor, and he certainly took a very active part in carrying it into execution. On Midsummer day, having planted Lord Chief Justice North in his house in Aldermanbury, that he might be backed by his authority, he himself appeared on the hustings in Guildhall; and when the poll was going against the court candidates, illegally advised the lord mayor to dissolve the hall, and afterwards to declare them duly elected. He did every thing in his power to push on and to assist the great quo warranto, by which the city was to be entirely disfranchised.¹¹⁷

When success had crowned these efforts, and Pilkington and Shute, the former sheriffs, with Alderman Cornish and others, were to be tried before a packed jury for a riot at the election, finding that he had the game in his hand, his insolence knew no bounds. The defendants having challenged the array, on the ground that the sheriffs who returned the panel were not lawfully appointed,¹¹⁸ as soon as the challenge was read, he exclaimed, “Here’s a tale of a tub indeed!” The counsel for the defendants insisted that the challenge was good in law, and at great length argued for its validity.

Jeffreys.– “Robin Hood

Upon Greendale stood.”

Thompson, Counsel for the Defendants.– “If the challenge be not good, there must be a defect in it either in point of law or in point of fact. I pray that the crown may either demur or traverse.” Jeffreys.– “This discourse is only for discourse sake. I pray the jury may be sworn.” Lord Chief Justice Saunders.– “Ay, ay, swear the jury.” The defendants were, of course, all found guilty; and as there were among them the most eminent of Jeffreys’s old city friends, he exerted himself to the utmost not only in gaining a conviction, but in aggravating the sentence.

But this was only a case of misdemeanor, in which he could ask for nothing beyond fine and imprisonment. He was soon to be engaged in prosecutions for high treason against the noblest of the land, in which his savage taste for blood might be gratified. The Ryehouse plot broke out, for which there was some foundation; and after the conviction of those who had planned it, Lord Russell was brought to trial at the Old Bailey, on the ground that he had consented to it.

Jeffreys, in the late state trials, had gradually been encroaching on the attorney and solicitor general, Sir Robert Sawyer and Sir Heneage Finch, and in Lord Russell’s case, to which the government attached such infinite importance, he almost entirely superseded them. To account for his unexampled zeal, we must remember that the office of chief justice of the King’s Bench was still vacant, Saunders having died a few months before, and Lord Keeper North having strongly opposed the appointment of Jeffreys as his successor.

These trials took place before a commission, at the head of which was placed Pemberton, chief justice of the Common Pleas, to whom a chance was thus afforded of earning a reappointment to the chief justiceship of the King’s Bench, in which he had been superseded by Saunders.

The case of Colonel Walcot was taken first; and here there was no difficulty, for he had not only joined in planning an insurrection against the government, but was privy to the design of assassinating the king and the Duke of York, and in a letter to the secretary of state he had confessed his complicity, and offered to become a witness for the crown. This trial was meant to prepare the public mind for that of Lord Russell, the great ornament of the Whig party, who had carried the exclusion bill through the House of Commons, and, attended by a great following of Whig members, had delivered it with his own hand to the lord chancellor at the bar of the House of Lords. In proportion to his virtues was the desire to wreak vengeance upon him. But the object was no less difficult than desirable, for he had been kept profoundly ignorant of the intention to offer violence to the royal brothers, from the certainty that he would have rejected it with abhorrence; and although he had been present when there were deliberations respecting the right and the expediency of resistance by force to the government after the system had been established of ruling without Parliaments, he had never concurred in the opinion that there were no longer constitutional means of redress; much less had he concerted an armed insurrection. Notwithstanding all the efforts made to return a prejudiced jury, there were serious apprehensions of an acquittal.

Pemberton, the presiding judge, seems to have been convinced that the evidence against him was insufficient; and although he did not interpose with becoming vigor, by repressing the unfair arts of Jeffreys, who was leading counsel for the crown, and although he did not stop the prosecution, as an independent judge would do in modern times, he cannot be accused of any perversion of law; and, instead of treating the prisoner with brutality, as was wished and expected, he behaved to him with courtesy and seeming kindness.

Lord Russell, on his arraignment at the sitting of the court in the morning, having prayed that the trial should be postponed till the afternoon, as a witness for him was absent, and it had been usual in such case to allow an interval between the arraignment and the trial, Pemberton said, “Why may not this trial be respited till the afternoon?” and the only answer being the insolent exclamation, “Pray call the jury,” he mildly added, “My lord, the king’s counsel think it not reasonable to put off the trial longer, and we cannot put it off without their consent in this case.”

The following dialogue then took place, which introduced the touching display of female tenderness and heroism of the celebrated Rachel, Lady Russell, assisting her martyred husband during his trial – a subject often illustrated both by the pen and the pencil.

Lord Russell.– “My lord, may I not have the use of pen, ink, and paper?” Pemberton.– “Yes, my lord.” Lord Russell.– “My lord, may I not make use of any papers I have?” Pemberton.– “Yes, by all means.” Lord Russell.– “May I have somebody write to help my memory?” Attorney General.– “Yes, a servant.” Lord Russell.– “My wife is here, my lord, to do it.” Pemberton.– “If my lady please to give herself the trouble.”

The chief justice admitted Dr. Burnet, Dr. Tillotson, and other witnesses, to speak to the good character and loyal conversation of the prisoner, and gave weight to their testimony, notwithstanding the observation of Jeffreys that “it was easy to express a regard for the king while conspiring to murder him.”

Lord Russell had certainly been present at a meeting of the conspirators, when there was a consultation about seizing the king’s guards; but he insisted that he came in accidentally, that he had taken no part in the conversation, and that he was not acquainted with their plans. The aspirant chief justice saw clearly where was the pinch of the case, and the attorney general, who was examining Colonel Rumsey, being contented with asking – “Was the prisoner at the debate?” and receiving the answer “Yes,” Jeffreys started up, took the witness into his own hands, and calling upon him to draw the inference which was for the jury, pinned the basket by this leading and highly irregular question – “Did you find him averse to it or agreeing to it?” Having got the echoing answer which he suggested, “Agreeing to it,” he looked round with exultation, and said, “If my Lord Russell now pleases to ask any questions, he may!”

Jeffreys addressed the jury in reply after the solicitor general had finished, and much outdid him in pressing the case against the prisoner, while he disclaimed with horror the endeavor to take away the life of the innocent.

The jury retired, and the courtiers present were in a state of the greatest alarm; for against Algernon Sydney, who was to be tried next, the case was still weaker; and if the two whig chiefs, who were considered already cut off, should recover their liberty, and should renew their agitation, a national cry might be got up for the summoning of Parliament, and a new effort might be made to rescue the country from a Popish successor. These fears were vain. The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and Lord Russell expiated on the scaffold the crime of trying to preserve the religion and liberties of his country.

Jeffreys had all the glory of the verdict of guilty, and as the Lord Chief Justice Pemberton had rather flinched during this trial, and the attorney and solicitor general were thought men who would cry CRAVEN, and as the next case was not less important and still more ticklish, all objections to the proposed elevation of the favorite vanished, and he became chief justice of England, as the only man fit to condemn Algernon Sydney.¹¹⁹

The new chief justice was sworn in on the 29th of September, 1683, and took his seat in the Court of King’s Bench on the first day of the following Michaelmas term.

Sydney’s case was immediately brought on before him in this court, the indictment being removed by certiorari from the Old Bailey, that it might be under his peculiar care. The prisoner wishing to plead some collateral matter, was told by the chief justice that, if overruled, sentence of death would immediately be passed upon him. Though there can be no doubt of the illegality of the conviction, the charge against Jeffreys is unfounded, that he admitted the MS. treatise on government to be read without any evidence of its having been written by the prisoner, beyond “similitude of hands.” Two witnesses, who were acquainted with his handwriting from having seen him indorse bills of exchange, swore that they believed it to be his handwriting, and they were corroborated by a third, who, with his privity, had paid notes purporting to be indorsed by him without any complaint ever being made. But the undeniable and ineffaceable atrocity of the case was the lord chief justice’s doctrine, that “scribere est agere,” and that therefore this MS. containing some abstract speculations on different forms of government written many years before, never shown to any human being, and containing nothing beyond the constitutional principles of Locke and Paley, was tantamount to the evidence of a witness to prove an overt act of high treason. “If you believe that this was Colonel Sydney’s book, writ by him, no man can doubt that it is a sufficient evidence that he is guilty of compassing and imagining the death of the king. It fixes the whole power in the Parliament and the people. The king, it says, is responsible to them; the king is but their trustee. Gentlemen, I must tell you I think I ought more than ordinarily to press this upon you, because I know the misfortune of the late unhappy rebellion, and the bringing of the late blessed king to the scaffold, was first begun with such kind of principles. They cried he had betrayed the trust that was delegated to him by the people, so that the case rests not upon two but upon greater evidence than twenty-two witnesses, if you believe this book was writ by him.”

The chief justice having had the satisfaction of pronouncing with his own lips the sentence upon Sydney, of death and mutilation, instead of leaving the task as usual to the senior puisne judge, a scene followed which is familiar to every one. Sydney.– “Then, O God! O God! I beseech thee to sanctify these sufferings unto me, and impute not my blood to the country; let no inquisition be made for it, but if any, and the shedding of blood that is innocent must be revenged, let the weight of it fall only upon those that maliciously persecute me for righteousness sake.” Lord C. J. Jeffreys.– “I pray God work in you a temper fit to go unto the other world, for I see you are not fit for this.” Sydney.– “My lord, feel my pulse [holding out his hand,] and see if I am disordered. I bless God I never was in better temper than I now am.” By order of the chief justice, the lieutenant of the tower immediately removed the prisoner.

A very few days after, and while this illustrious patriot was still lying under sentence of death, the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys and Mr. Justice Withins, who sat as his brother judge on the trial, went to a gay city wedding, where the lord mayor and other grandees were present. Evelyn, who was of the party, tells us that the chief and the puisne both “danced with the bride and were exceeding merry.” He adds, “These great men spent the rest of the afternoon until eleven at night in drinking healths, taking tobacco, and talking much beneath the gravity of judges, who had but a day or two before condemned Mr. Algernon Sydney.”

The next exhibition in the court of King’s Bench which particularly pleased Jeffreys and horrified the public, was the condemnation of Sir Thomas Armstrong. This gentleman was outlawed while beyond the seas, and being sent from Holland within the year, sought, according to his clear right in law, to reverse the outlawry.¹²⁰ I have had occasion to reprobate the conduct of Lord Keeper North in refusing him his writ of error, and suffering his execution; but Jeffreys may be considered the executioner. When brought up to the King’s Bench bar, Armstrong was attended by his daughter, a most beautiful and interesting young woman, who, when the chief justice had illegally overruled the plea, and pronounced judgment of death under the outlawry, exclaimed, “My lord, I hope you will not murder my father.” Chief Justice Jeffreys.– “Who is this woman? Marshal, take her into custody. Why, how now? Because your relative is attainted for high treason, must you take upon you to tax the courts of justice for murder when we grant execution according to law? Take her away.” Daughter.– “God Almighty’s judgments light upon you.” Chief Justice Jeffreys.– “God Almighty’s judgments will light upon those that are guilty of high treason.” Daughter.– “Amen. I pray God.” Chief Justice Jeffreys.– “So say I. I thank God I am clamor proof.” [The daughter is committed to prison, and carried off in custody.] Sir Thomas Armstrong.– “I ought to have the benefit of the law, and I demand no more.” Chief Justice Jeffreys.– “That you shall have, by the grace of God. See that execution be done on Friday next, according to law. You shall have the full benefit of the law!” Armstrong was hanged, embowelled, beheaded, and quartered accordingly.

When Jeffreys came to the king at Windsor soon after this trial, “the king took a ring of good value from his finger and gave it to him for these services. The ring upon that was called his blood stone.”¹²¹ In the reign of William and Mary, Armstrong’s attainder was reversed. Jeffreys was then out of reach of process, but for the share which Sir Robert Sawyer had in it as attorney general, he was expelled the House of Commons.

Jeffreys had now the satisfaction of causing an information to be filed against Sir William Williams for having, as Speaker of the House of Commons, under the orders of the House, directed the printing of “Dangerfield’s Narrative,”¹²² the vengeful tyrant thus dealing a blow at once to an old enemy who had reprimanded him on his knees, and to the privileges of the House, equally the object of his detestation. He was in hopes of deciding the case himself, but he left it as a legacy to his successor, Chief Justice Herbert, who, under his auspices, at once overruled the plea, and fined the defendant ten thousand pounds.

Not only was Jeffreys a privy councillor, but he had become a member of the cabinet, where, from his superior boldness and energy, as well as his more agreeable manners, he had gained a complete victory over Lord Keeper North, whom he denounced as a “trimmer,” and the great seal seemed almost within his grasp.¹²³ To secure it, he still strove to do every thing he could devise to please the court, as if hitherto nothing base had been done by him. When, to his great joy, final judgment was entered up against the city of London on the quo warranto, he undertook to get all the considerable towns in England to surrender their charters on the threat of similar proceedings; and with this view, in the autumn of 1684, he made a “campaign in the north,” which was almost as fatal to corporations as that “in the West,” the following year, proved to the lives of men. To show to the public the special credit he enjoyed at court, the London Gazette, just before he set out, in reference to the gift bestowed upon him for the judgment against Sir Thomas Armstrong, announced “that his majesty, as a mark of his royal favor, had taken a ring from his own finger and placed it on that of Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys.” In consequence, although when on the circuit he forgot the caution against hard drinking, with which the gift had been accompanied, he carried every thing before him, “charters fell like the walls of Jericho,” and he returned laden with his hyperborean spoils.

I have already related the clutch at the great seal which he then made, and his temporary disappointment.¹²⁴ He was contented to “bide his time.” There were only two other occasions when he had it in his power to pervert the law, for the purpose of pleasing the court, during the present reign. The first was on the trial of Hampden, the grandson of the great Hampden, for a trifling misdemeanor. Although this young gentleman was only heir apparent to a moderate estate, and not in possession of any property, he was sentenced to pay a fine of forty thousand pounds – Jeffreys saying that the clause in Magna Charta, “Liber homo non amercietur pro magno delicto nisi salvo contenemento suo,” does not apply to fines imposed by the king’s judges. The other was the inquisition in the action of scan. mag. brought by the Duke of York against Titus Oates, in which the jury, under his direction, awarded one hundred thousand pounds damages.

Ever since the disfranchisement of the city of London, the ex-recorder had ruled it with a rod of iron. He set up a nominal lord mayor and nominal aldermen; but, as they were entirely dependent upon him, he treated them with continual insolence.

On the sudden death of Charles II., Jeffreys no doubt thought the period was arrived when he must be rewarded for the peculiar zeal with which he had abandoned himself to the service of the successor; but he was at first disappointed, and he had still to “wade through slaughter” to the seat he so much coveted.

Not dismayed, he resolved to act on two principles: 1st, If possible, to outdo himself in pleasing his master, whose arbitrary and cruel disposition became more apparent from the hour that he mounted the throne. 2dly, To leave no effort untried to discredit, disgrace, disgust, and break the heart of the man who stood between him and his object.

Being confirmed in the office of chief justice of the King’s Bench, he began with the trial for perjury of Titus Oates, whose veracity he had often maintained, but with whom he had a personal quarrel, and whom he now held up to reprobation – depriving him of all chance of acquittal. The defendant was found guilty on two indictments, and the verdict on both was probably correct; but what is to be said for the sentence – “To pay on each indictment a fine of one thousand marks; to be stript of all his canonical habits; to be imprisoned for life; to stand in the pillory on the following Monday, with a paper over his head, declaring his crime; next day to stand in the pillory at the Royal Exchange, with the same inscription; on the Wednesday to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate; on the Friday to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn; upon the 25th of April in every year, during life, to stand in the pillory at Tyburn, opposite the gallows; on the 9th of August in every year to stand in the pillory opposite Westminster Hall gate; on the 10th of August in every year to stand in the pillory at Charing Cross; and the like on the following day at Temple Bar; and the like on the 2d of September, every year, at the Royal Exchange;” – the court expressing deep regret that they could not do more, as they would “not have been unwilling to have given judgment of death upon him.”¹²⁵

Next came the trial of Richard Baxter, the pious and learned Presbyterian divine, who had actually said, and adhered to the saying, “Nolo episcopari,” and who was now prosecuted for a libel, because in a book on church government he had reflected on the church of Rome in words which might possibly be applied to the bishops of the church of England. No such reference was intended by him; and he was known not only to be of exemplary private character, but to be warmly attached to monarchy, and always inclined to moderate measures in the differences between the established church and those of his own persuasion.¹²⁶ Yet, when he pleaded not guilty, and prayed on account of ill health that his trial might be postponed, Jeffreys exclaimed, “Not a minute more to save his life. We have had to do with other sort of persons, but now we have a saint to deal with; and I know how to deal with saints as well as sinners. Yonder stands Oates in the pillory, [Oates was at that moment suffering part of his sentence in Palace Yard, outside the great gate of Westminster Hall,] and he says he suffers for the truth; and so says Baxter; but if Baxter did but stand on the outside of the pillory with him, I would say two of the greatest rogues and rascals in the kingdom stood there together.” Having silenced the defendant’s counsel by almost incredible rudeness, the defendant himself wished to speak, when the chief justice burst out, “Richard, Richard, thou art an old fellow and an old knave; thou hast written books enough to load a cart; every one is as full of sedition, I might say treason, as an egg is full of meat; hadst thou been whipt out of thy writing trade forty years ago, it had been happy. Thou pretendest to be a preacher of the gospel of peace, and thou hast one foot in the grave; it is time for thee to begin to think what account thou intendest to give; but leave thee to thyself, and I see thou wilt go on as thou hast begun; but, by the grace of God, I’ll look after thee. Gentlemen of the jury, he is now modest enough; but time was when no man was so ready at bind your kings in chains and your nobles in fetters of iron, crying, To your tents, O Israel! Gentlemen, for God’s sake do not let us be gulled twice in an age.” The defendant was, of course, found guilty, and thought himself lucky to escape with a fine of five hundred pounds, and giving security for his good behavior for seven years.¹²⁷

The lord chief justice, for his own demerits, and to thrust a thorn into the side of Lord Keeper Guilford, was now raised to the peerage by the title of “Baron Jeffreys of Wem” – the preamble of his patent narrating his former promotions – averring that they were the reward of virtue, and after the statement of his being appointed to preside in the Court of King’s Bench, adding, “Where at this very time he is faithfully and boldly doing justice and affording protection to our subjects, according to law, in consequence of which virtues we have thought him fit to be raised to the peerage of this realm.”¹²⁸

He took his seat in the House of Lords on the first day of the meeting of James’s only Parliament, along with nineteen others either raised in the peerage or newly created since the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament – the junior being John Lord Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough. The journals show that Lord Jeffreys was very regular in his attendance during the session, and as the house sat daily and still met at the same early hour as the courts of law, he must generally have left the business of the King’s Bench to be transacted by the other judges. He was now occupied day and night with plans for pushing the already disgraced lord keeper from the woolsack.

I have already, in the life of Lord Guilford, related how these plans were conducted in the cabinet, in the royal circle at Whitehall, and in the House of Lords – particularly the savage treatment which the “staggering statesman” received on the reversal of his decree in Howard v. Duke of Norfolk, after which he never held up his head more.¹²⁹ The probability is, that although he clung to office so pusillanimously in the midst of all sorts of slights and indignities, he would now have been forcibly ejected if his death had not appeared to be near at hand, and if there had not been a demand for the services of “Judge Jeffreys” in a scene very different from the drowsy tranquillity of the Court of Chancery.

By the month of July, Monmouth’s rebellion had been put down, and he himself had been executed upon his parliamentary attainder without the trouble of a trial: but all the jails in the West of England were crowded with his adherents, and, instead of Colonel Kirke doing military execution on more of them than had already suffered from his “lambs,” it was resolved that they should all perish by the flaming sword of justice – which, on such an occasion, there was only one man fit to wield.

No assizes had been held this summer on the western circuit; but for all the counties upon it a special commission to try criminals was now appointed, at the head of which Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys was put; and by a second commission, he, singly, was invested with the authority of commander-in-chief over all his majesty’s forces within the same limits.

On entering Hampshire he was met by a brigade of soldiers, by whom he was guarded to Winchester. During the rest of his progress he never moved without a military escort; he daily gave the word; orders for going the rounds, and for the general disposal of the troops, were dictated by him – sentinels mounting guard at his lodgings, and the officers on duty sending him their reports.

I desire at once to save my readers from the apprehension that I am about to shock their humane feelings by a detailed statement of the atrocities of this bloody campaign in the west, the character of which is familiar to every Englishman. But, as a specimen of it, I must present a short account of the treatment experienced by Lady Lisle, with whose murder it commenced.

She was the widow of Major Lisle, who had sat in judgment on Charles I., had been a lord commissioner of the great seal under Cromwell, and, flying on the restoration, had been assassinated at Lausanne. She remained in England, and was remarkable for her loyalty as well as piety. Jeffreys’s malignant spite against her is wholly inexplicable; for he had never had any personal quarrel with her, she did not stand in the way of his promotion, and the circumstance of her being the widow of a regicide cannot account for his vindictiveness. Perhaps without any personal dislike to the individual, he merely wished to strike terror into the west by his first operation.

The charge against her, which was laid capitally, was that after the battle of Sedgemoor she had harbored in her house one Hickes, who had been in arms with the Duke of Monmouth —she knowing of his treason. In truth she had received him into her house, thinking merely that he was persecuted as a non-conformist minister, and the moment she knew whence he came, she (conveying to him a hint that he should escape) sent her servant to a justice of peace to give information concerning him. There was the greatest difficulty even to show that Hickes had been in the rebellion, and the judge was worked up to a pitch of fury by being obliged himself to cross-examine a Presbyterian witness, who had showed a leaning against the prosecution. But the principal traitor had not been convicted, and there was not a particle of evidence to show the scienter, i. e., that the supposed accomplice, at the time of the harboring was acquainted with the treason. Not allowed the benefit of counsel, she herself, prompted by natural good sense, took the legal objection that the principal traitor ought first to have been convicted, “because, peradventure, he might afterwards be acquitted as innocent after she had been condemned for harboring him;” and she urged with great force to the jury, “that at the time of the alleged offence she had been entirely ignorant of any suspicion of Hickes having participated in the rebellion; that she had strongly disapproved of it, and that she had sent her only son into the field to fight under the royal banner to suppress it.”

It is said by almost all the contemporary authorities, that thrice did the jury refuse to find a verdict of guilty, and thrice did Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys send them back to reconsider their verdict. In the account of the proceeding in the State Trials, which has the appearance of having been taken in short hand, and of being authentic, the repeated sending back of the jury is not mentioned; but enough appears to stamp eternal infamy on Jeffreys, if there were nothing more extant against him. After a most furious summing up, “the jury withdrew, and staying out a while, the Lord Jeffreys expressed a great deal of impatience, and said he wondered that in so plain a case they would go from the bar, and would have sent for them, with an intimation that, if they did not come quickly, he would adjourn, and let them lie by it all night; but, after about half an hour’s stay, the jury returned, and the foreman addressed himself to the court thus: ‘My lord, we have one thing to beg of your lordship some directions in before we can give our verdict: we have some doubt whether there be sufficient evidence that she knew Hickes to have been in the army.’ L. C. J.– ‘There is as full proof as proof can be; but you are judges of the proof; for my part, I thought there was no difficulty in it.’ Foreman.– ‘My lord, we are in some doubt of it.’ L. C. J.– ‘I cannot help your doubts; was there not proved a discourse of the battle and the army at supper time?’ Foreman.– ‘But, my lord, we are not satisfied that she had notice that Hickes was in the army.’ L. C. J.– ‘I cannot tell what would satisfy you. Did she not inquire of Dunne whether Hickes had been in the army? and when he told her he did not know, she did not say she would refuse him if he had been there, but ordered him to come by night, by which it is evident she suspected it… But if there was no such proof, the circumstances and management of the thing is as full a proof as can be. I wonder what it is you doubt of.’ Lady Lisle.– ‘My lord, I hope – .’ L. C. J.– ‘You must not speak now.’ The jury laid their heads together near a quarter of an hour, and then pronounced a verdict of guilty. L. C. J.– ‘Gentlemen, I did not think I should have had any occasion to speak after your verdict; but finding some hesitancy and doubt among you, I cannot but say I wonder it should come about; for I think in my conscience the evidence was as full and plain as could be, and if I had been among you, and she had been my own mother, I should have found her guilty.’”