Like all other popular entertainers, the fair Margaret Caroline had rivals in the public favour. On the nineteenth of August, “one of the prettiest young women in England,” Jane Butterfield by name, was tried for her life at Croydon on a charge of poisoning a foully-diseased old man for whom she kept house. Paramour also to this rotten William Scawen was Miss Jane, debauched by him when a child. Although the poor girl was acquitted amidst tears and huzzas, she lost the fortune that should have come to her, for her protector, who had listened to the accusations of his Dr Sanxy--the instigator of all the proceedings against the innocent Jane--lived long enough, unhappily, to cross her out of his will. For a while all England forgot Margaret Rudd in its generous sympathy for the beautiful heroine of Croydon. Soon also the ubiquitous Elizabeth Chudleigh monopolised public attention, to the exclusion of everyone else, under her new rôle as Her Grace of Kingston; while the sex of the mysterious Chevalier D’Eon continued to be the subject of many wagers. For six months Mrs Rudd remained a prisoner in Newgate--from the day of Robert Perreau’s condemnation on the 1st of June until the morning of her own trial on the 8th of December--using every endeavour so that she should not be brought to the judgment-seat. A few weeks after the close of the summer sessions--on the fourth day of July--she was summoned to Westminster Hall to listen to the ruling of Chief-Justice Mansfield, an unrivalled exponent of amazing decisions, with regard to her status as king’s evidence. Superfine, indeed, was the quality of Mansfield’s red tape:--“The woman did not confess that she was an accomplice, but an assistant by compulsion, therefore she may be presumed to be innocent, consequently there is no reason why she should not be tried! Only a _guilty_ person can be admitted as a witness for the Crown!” Yet the great Chief-Justice had a more cogent reason still--one that is irrefutable: “Since the lady did not disclose _all_ she knew, she has forfeited indulgence!” Quite proper, no doubt, in a legal sense, but foreign to the eternal ethics of British equity, that has permitted ‘burker’ Hare to escape the halter, believing that it is monstrous to ask a jury to try a prisoner from whom a confession has been extorted under promise of pardon. There was no false delicacy about the learned Mansfield’s interpretation of the law.