1844—At the Michaelmas Quarter Sessions a singular trial took place of two farmers, named Swan and Patrick, who were charged with killing deer belonging to W. L. Childe, Esq., in Kyre Parva park. The witness against them was a boy named Passey, who said he saw the parties accused chase a fine buck into one corner of the inclosure and then shoot it; but there were some discrepancies in his testimony. Both these farmers lived close to Mr. Child, and as the fences were not in the best possible condition, the deer used frequently to get on their land and eat their corn. Mr. Lee made an ingenious speech for the defence, and called many witnesses to character; after which the jury returned a verdict of not guilty, amid the applause of the court. 1845—At the Lent Assizes, eleven poachers were put on their trial for the murder of Thomas Staite, one of the Earl of Coventry’s watchers, who was killed in a very desperate affray which took place between the keepers and the prisoners on the 19th of the previous December. One of them, however, named George Lippett, was admitted as Queen’s evidence; and another, Francis Dingley, while in prison made a full confession of the whole transaction. The keepers and watchers were nine in number, and they encountered the party of poachers at the gate leading into Park Farm, Pirton. A fight with bludgeons took place, in which the keepers were altogether worsted, and one or two of them left for dead. The poachers also fired off two guns, but the shots did not take effect. The unfortunate man, Staite, was found by his comrades, after the affray was over, in a ditch close by the Park Farm house, so badly used that he could not speak; and, indeed, he never uttered a word from that hour. He was taken first to a neighbouring cottage, and then to the Worcester Infirmary, where he died in six days. The identity of all the prisoners, and the part they had each taken in the affray, was very clearly made out by the evidence of four of the watchers and the statement of the approver Lippett. Mr. Godson, in a very able speech for the prisoners, contended that the case was not made out by the evidence of the keepers, and that Lippett was not to be believed; ending with a protest against the game laws generally, as the cause of much injustice and innumerable crimes. The Lord Chief Baron Pollock, before whom the case was tried, told the jury that they might find the prisoners guilty of manslaughter; and, acting upon this hint, the jury returned a general verdict against all the prisoners of “Guilty of manslaughter.” Witnesses to character were then called on behalf of some of the prisoners, and his lordship sentenced them to different terms of transportation as they seemed to have taken an active part or otherwise in the attack upon the keepers. Francis Dingley, Samuel Turvey, Joseph Turvey, and Joseph Tandy were transported for life; Thomas Hooper, William Broomfield, and John Cook