288 The Merchant's Clerk; [MARCH, 



and hoiror, rushed forward, screaming " Murder ! murder !" and fell, 

 swooning, within a few paces of the body. 



When she recovered, she found several of her neighbours and of the 

 watch standing round, and among them her alarmed husband. She 

 looked round wildly for a moment, fixed her eyes on him for another, 

 then shrieked wildly <( Ah ! I see I see him him ! Seize him the 

 murderer/' and again fell senseless. 



Edwards was accordingly seized, though few could understand why 

 or wherefore ; but when he protested he knew nothing about the matter, 

 people began to think him guilty, especially as some declared the mur- 

 dered man was the same youth with whom his wife had been often seen 

 walking under the tall elms in Goodman's Fields ; and, upon her second 

 recovery, Mistress Edwards confirmed this declaration by clinging round 

 the young man's body, and calling for vengeance on the murderer of 

 her Love. 



Edwards was carried before a justice of the peace, and after a short 

 examination, committed to Newgate to take his trial in the Court-house 

 there at the next sessions, which were to take place within a week. 



The day came, and the trial commenced. At the very outset an argu- 

 ment arose between the counsel for the prosecution and the defence, 

 whether the exclamations used by the wife on the night of the murder, 

 accusing her husband, could be given as evidence by those who had 

 heard them. For the defence it was urged, that as a wife could not 

 appear as a witness either against or for her husband, so neither could 

 any expression of hers, tending to criminate him, be admissible ; on the 

 other hand, it was contended that as confessions were admissible in evi- 

 dence against a party, so a husband and wife , being as one in the eye of 

 the law, such expressions as these were in the nature of confessions by 

 the party himself, and therefore should be admitted and so the 

 Recorder decided they should be. In addition to this, other circum- 

 stantial evidence was produced against the prisoner ; the poniard, with 

 which Lambert had been stabbed, and which in falling he had borne 

 down out of his slayer's hand, was a jewelled Turkish one, known by 

 many to be the property of the prisoner, and to have been in his pos- 

 session many years ; he having brought it home with him from one of 

 his voyages to the Morea ; the watch also was produced, which, witli 

 part of the chain, the deceased had held in his clenched hands ; it was 

 a small silver one, shaped like a tulip, and chequered in alternate squares 

 of dead and bright metal ; its dial-plate of dead silver, figured, with 

 a bright circle, containing black Roman figures ; in the interior, on the 

 works, it bore the inscription " Thomas Hooke, in Pope's-head- 

 alley," the brother to the celebrated Robert Hooke, who had recently 

 invented the spring-pocket-watches. This watch w T as proved to have 

 also been the property of the prisoner, to have been given by him 

 to his wife, and lately to have been returned by her to him in order 

 to be repaired. These circumstances, together with the natural impu- 

 tation that was cast upon him by the consideration of who the mur- 

 dered man was, were all that were adduced against Edwards ; and lie 

 was called on for his defence in person, being, by the mild mercy of the 

 English law, denied the assistance of counsel for that purpose : it being 

 wisely considered, that though a man in the nice intricacies of a civil 

 cause may need technical aid, he cannot possibly do so in a case where 

 the fact of his life being dependant on the success of his pleading, must 

 necessarily induce and assist him to have all his wits about him. The 



