Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History and Guide Arranged Alphabetically by Thomas T. Harman;Walter Showell
page 28 of 741 (03%)
page 28 of 741 (03%)
|
granted to the appellee until Monday, 16th November.--It must have been
a strange and startling scene, on the morning of that Monday, 16th November, 1817, when Abraham Thornton stood at the bar of the Court of King's Bench in Westminster Hall; a scene which that ancient Hall had not witnessed within the memory of any living man, but which must have then roused the attention of even its drowsiest haunter. "The appellee being brought into Court and placed at the bar" (I am quoting the original dry technical record of the transaction), "and the appellant being also in court, the count [charge] was again read over to him, and he [Thornton] was called upon to plead. He pleaded as follows;--'Not Guilty; and I am ready to defend the same by my body.' And thereupon, taking his glove off, he threw it on the floor of the Court." That is to say, Ashford having "appealed" Thornton of the murder, Thornton claimed the right to maintain his own innocence by "Trial of Battel;" and so his answer to the charge was a "Wager of Battel." And now the din of fight seemed near, with the Court of King's Bench at Westminster for the arena, and the grave Judges of that Court for the umpires. But the case was destined to add but another illustration to what Cicero tells us of how, oftentimes, arms yield to argument, and the swordsman's looked-for laurel vanishes before the pleader's tongue. William Ashford, of course, acting under the advice of those who really promoted the appeal, declined to accept Thornton's wager of battel. Instead of accepting it, his counsel disputed the right of Thornton to wage his battel in this case; alleging, in a very long plea, that there were presumptions of guilt so strong as to deprive him of that right. Thornton answered this plea by another, in which all the facts that had been proved on the trial at Warwick were set forth at great length. And then the case was very elaborately argued, for three days, by two eminent and able counsel, one of whom will be well remembered by most readers as the late Chief-Justice Tindal. Tindal was Thornton's counsel. Of course I cannot |
|