Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents, and Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents, and Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Legends -- England -- Yorkshire; Yorkshire (England) -- Miscellanea
"However, in spite of all her threats and rage, I was speedily conveyed
before the justice who granted the warrant, and on the oath of a person,
who swore that he was going along a road near my house and towards the
farm-house in question, about two o'clock in the morning, that he saw a
horse and two men returning from it, and that he was quite sure I was
one of them, my commitment was made out for the House of Correction at
Beverley.
"All this took so short a time that I scarcely attempted to defend
myself; and indeed I scarcely even know now how I could effectually have
done so. For I could only bring the members of my own family to prove
that I had not been out of my cottage, and of course they would not have
been believed against the positive evidence of the witness who swore to
my person, though he was, according to his own statement, fifty yards
distant from me--in addition to this, at two o'clock in the morning."
The prosecutor of Snowden Dunhill was Mr. Barnard Clarkson, of Holme, at
that time a partner in the Howden Bank.
The consciousness that her husband was ignorant of the robbery imputed
to him caused Sally Dunhill to regard him as a martyr. Her Ranting
enthusiasm was excited, and she wrote a long letter to the prosecutor,
denouncing him, in Biblical terms, as one who "compassed about" the
righteous man "with words of hatred, and fought against him without a
cause"; and announced to him that she had given herself up to prayer
against him (Clarkson), and invoked the malediction of heaven upon his
head--"Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generations following
let their name be blotted out." And she concluded this strange epistle
with the words of the Psalmist: "Let them curse, but bless thou: when
they arise, let them be ashamed; but let thy servant rejoice. Let mine
enemies be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their
own confusion as with a mantle. I will greatly praise the Lord with my
mouth; yea, I will praise him among the multitude, for he shall stand at
the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his
soul."
Snowden Dunhill continues in his Autobiography:--
"I now, for the first time, became an inmate of a prison, an event I had
always held in the greatest horror. As it was well known that I had
plenty of money, I had very soon the proffered and apparently
disinterested assistance of an attorney. My situation was maturely
considered, and it was soon determined that a writ of habeas corpus
should be put in, for the purpose of taking my trial at the approaching
Assizes at York, in preference to Beverley.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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