TRIAL BY BATTLE.

In the year 1818 an appeal was made to the Court of King's Bench to award this ancient mode of trial in a case of murder. The body of one Mary Ashford was found drowned, with marks of dreadful ill-treatment upon it, and Abraham Thornton was committed to take his trial for the murder. The grand jury found a true bill, but, after a long and patient trial, the petty jury returned a verdict of "not guilty." The country were much divided on the subject; and the evidence was very contradictory on the trial, especially as to time and distance. Mr. Justice Holroyd, who tried the case, was satisfied with the verdict. The poor murdered girl's relations preferred an appeal, which involved a solemn tender of trial by battle. It would be useless to dwell on the arguments used by the counsel on either side: the court divided in favour of the prisoner's claim to trial by wager of battle, and the challenge was formally given by throwing down a glove upon the floor of the court; but the combat did not take place, and the prisoner escaped from the punishment which, even on his own admission of guilt, he had so fully incurred. A wretched outcast, shunned and dreaded by all who knew him, a few months after his liberation, Thornton attempted to proceed to America: the sailors of the vessel in which he was about to take his passage refused to proceed to sea with such a character

on board; but, disguising himself, he succeeded in a subsequent attempt to procure a passage, and thus relieved this country of his presence. In consequence of the above revival of this barbarous practice, a Bill was brought in by the then Attorney-general, and was passed into a law, by which Wager of Battle and all similar proceedings were abolished altogether.

Mr. Hewitt, in his able work on Ancient Arms and Armour, says: "In the thirteenth century we first obtain a pictorial representation of the legal duel or wager of battle-rude it is true, but curiously confirming the testimony that has come down to us of the arms and apparel of the champions,”—on one of the miscellaneous rolls in the Tower, of the time of Henry III. The combatants are Walter Blowberne and Haman le Stare, the latter being the vanquished champion, and figuring a second time undergoing the punishment incident to his defeat—that is, hanging. Both are armed with the quadrangular-bowed shield and a baton headed with a double beak; and are bareheaded, with cropped hair in conformity with an ordinance of the camp-fight. An example agreeing with this description, with the exception of the square shields appearing to be flat instead of bowed, occurs on a tile-pavement found, in 1856, within the precincts of Chertsey Abbey, Surrey.

The legal antiquaries were disappointed of the rare spectacle of a judicial duel, by the voluntary abandonment of the prosecution. A writer of the time observed: "Should the duel take place, it will be indeed a singular sight to behold the present venerable and learned judges of the Court of King's Bench clothed in their full costume, sitting all day long in the open

air in Tothill Fields, as the umpires of a match at single stick. Nor will a less surprising spectacle be furnished by the learned persons who are to appear as the counsel of the combatants, and who, as soon as the ring is formed, will have to accompany their clients within the lists, and to stand, like so many seconds and bottle-holders, beside a pair of bare-legged, barearmed, and bare-headed cudgellists."

The subject, ludicrous as it seemed, was one of considerable seriousness and importance. The reflection that in the nineteenth century a human life might be sacrificed to a practice which might have been conceived too absurd, impious, and cruel, to have outlived the dark ages, could not be entertained without pain. In the following year, however, this barbarous absurdity was nullified by an Act (59 Geo. III. c. 46) abolishing all criminal appeals and trial by battle in all cases, both civil and criminal, and thus purifying the law of England from a blot which time and civilisation had strangely failed to wear away.

Dr. Luke Booker, of Dudley, wrote a kind of moral drama on this occasion, which he entitled The Mysterious Murder.

THE FIELD OF FORTY FOOTSTEPS.

IN the rear of Montague House, Bloomsbury, until the present generation, the ground lay waste, and being on the edge of the great town, presented a ready arena for its idle and lawless dangerous classes. It appears to have been originally called Long Fields, and afterwards Southampton Fields. They were the

resort of depraved persons, chiefly for fighting pitched battles, especially on the Sabbath-day; such was the state of the place up to 1800.

Montague House and Gardens occupied seven acres. In the latter were encamped, in 1780, the troops stationed to quell the Gordon Riots; and a print of the period shows the ground in the rear of the mansion laid out in grass-terraces, flower-borders, lawns, and gravel-walks, where the gay world resorted on a summer's evening. The back being open to the fields extending to Lisson Grove and Paddington; north, to Primrose Hill, Chalk Farm, Hampstead, and Highgate; and east, to Battle Bridge, Islington, St. Pancras, &c.: the north side of Queen Square was left open, that it might not impede the prospect. Dr. Stukeley, many years rector of St. George's Church, in his MS. diary, 1749, describes the then rural character of Queen Square, and its neighbourhood. On the side of Montague Gardens, next Bedford Square, was a fine grove of lime-trees; and the gardens of Bedford House, which occupied the north side of the present Bloomsbury Square, reached those of Montague House. We can, therefore, understand how, a century and a half since, coachmen were regaled with the perfume of the flower-beds of the gardens belonging to the houses in Great Russell Street, which then enjoyed "wholesome and pleasant air." Russell Square was not built until 1804, although Baltimore House was erected in 1763; and it appears to have been the only erection since Strype's Survey to this period, with the exception of a chimney-sweeper's cottage, still further north, and part of which is still to be seen in Rhodes's Mews, Little Guildford-street. "In 1800, Bedford

House was demolished entirely; which, with its offices and gardens, had been the site where the noble family of the Southamptons, and the illustrious Russells, had resided during more than 200 years, almost isolated." (Dr. Rimbault.)

The Long Fields would seem to have been early associated with superstitious notions; for Aubrey tells us that on St. John Baptist's Day, 1694, he saw, at midnight, twenty-three young women in the parterre behind Montague House, looking for a coal, under the root of a plantain, to put under their heads that night, "and they should dream who would be their husbands."

But there is stronger evidence of this superstition in association. A legendary story of the period of the Duke of Monmouth's Rebellion relates a mortal conflict here between two brothers, on account of a lady, who sat by; the combatants fought so ferociously as to destroy each other; after which, their footsteps, imprinted on the ground in the vengeful struggle, were said to remain, with the indentations produced by their advancing and receding; nor would any grass or vegetation ever grow over these forty footsteps. Miss Porter and her sister, upon this fiction, founded their ingenions romance, Coming Out, or the Field of Forty Footsteps; but they entirely depart from the local tradition. At the Tottenham Street Theatre was produced, many years since, an effective melodrama, founded upon the same incident, entitled the Field of Forty Footsteps.

Southey records this strange story in his Commonplace Book (Second Series, p. 21). After quoting a letter from a friend, recommending him to "take a view of those wonderful marks of the Lord's hatred to