Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur OrtonAnonymous
History
Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton
Anonymous
Impostors and imposture -- Biography
Street, to engrave for you the Bandon crest upon the rings produced,
and also to engrave 'Gookin' on the brooch?" The answer, very
hesitatingly given, was, "Yes, I did." The whole conspiracy was
exposed; the plot was at an end. The plaintiff's counsel threw up
their briefs, a verdict for the defendants was returned, and the
plaintiff himself was committed by the judge on a charge of perjury,
to which a charge of forgery was subsequently added.
The second trial took place at the following spring assizes at
Gloucester. The evidence for the crown showed the utter hollowness of
the plaintiff's claim. The attorney's clerk, from whom the impostor
had stated he received the formal declaration of Sir Hugh Smyth, was
called, and declared that he had written the letter which was said to
have accompanied the deed, from the prisoner's dictation; the deed was
produced at the time, and the witness took a memorandum of the name of
the attesting witnesses on the back of a copy of his letter. This
copy, with the endorsement, was produced in court. The brown paper
which the prisoner had sworn formed the wrapper of the deed when he
received it, was proved to be the same in which Mr. Moring, the
engraver, had wrapped up a seal which he had sent to the prisoner--the
very seal in which the engraver had made the unlucky blunder. It was
also clearly proved that the parchment on which the forgery had been
written was prepared by a process which had only been discovered about
ten years, and chemical experts were decidedly of opinion that the ink
had received its antique appearance by artificial means, and that the
wax was undoubtedly modern. Various startling errors and discrepancies
were pointed out in the document itself, the most noteworthy being a
reference made to Sir Hugh's wife, as "the late Elizabeth Howell,"
whereas that lady was alive and in good health at the time the deed
was supposed to have been drawn up, and having been previously married
to Sir Hugh, was known as Lady Smyth up to her death in 1841, she
having survived her husband seventeen years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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