State Trials, Political and Social. Volume 2 (of 2)
History
State Trials, Political and Social. Volume 2 (of 2)
Trials -- Great Britain
COWPER--In this: I asked her when she gave evidence, whether
she went out to see for her mistress all that night, and
whether her mistress did not use to stay out at nights, and
whether she herself had not used to say so? If your lordship
pleases to remember, she said no. Pray, Mrs. Mince, what have
you heard Mrs. Stout's maid say concerning her mistress,
particularly as to her staying out all night?
MRS. MINCE--She hath said, that her mistress did not love to
keep company with Quakers; and that she paid for her own board
and her maid's; and that, when she entertained any body, it was
at her own charge. And she hath said, that Mrs. Stout used to
ask, who is with you, child? and she would not tell her; and
that she did entertain her friends in the summer house now and
then with a bottle of wine; and when her mother asked who was
there? her mistress would say, bring it in here, I suppose
there is none but friends; and after the company was gone, she
used to make her mother believe that she went to bed: but she
used to go out and take the key with her, and sometimes she
would go out at the window, and she said particularly, one time
she went out at the garden window, when the garden door was
locked, and that she bid her not sit up for her, for she would
not come in at any time.
HATSELL, BARON--Did ever Sarah Walker tell you that Mrs. Stout
staid out all night?
MRS. MINCE--She hath said, she could not tell what time she
came in, for she went to bed.
_Cowper_ offered to prove that Gurrey, at whose house the other
prisoners had stayed, had said that if he had gone to visit Mrs. Stout,
meaning apparently, if he had gone to visit the mother after the
daughter's death, the prosecution would not have taken place. To this he
would answer that he never had gone to see her in his life.
Now, for a man officiously to make a new visit in the time of
the assizes, one engaged in business as I was, and especially
upon so melancholy an occasion; I say for me to go officiously
to see a woman I never had the least knowledge of, would have
been thought more strange (and justly might have been so) than
the omission of that ceremony. For my part, I cannot conceive
what Mr. Gurrey could mean, this being the case, by saying,
that if I had visited Mrs. Stout, nothing of this could have
happened.
HATSELL, BARON--Mr. Cowper, he is not the prosecutor, I think
it is no matter what he said.
_Sir W. Ashurst, Sir T. Lane, and Mr. Thompson_ were then called to
Cowper's character, and described him as a humane, upright, and capable
man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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