or, the Story of the Marlborough Pin-Maker. 375 
[ Lewis’s testimony then simply declared that as he was riding up 
Husband’s Hill, four miles from Andover, and fifty-two from 
London, though he could remember neither the day of the month 
nor the name of the month, and only knew it was on a Friday 
during the summer, a stranger asked him if he had heard of the 
Earl of Essex’s death. On the next day he went home to Marl- 
borough, and on recounting to his neighbours the report of the 
previous day, they remarked “why, how could you have heard of 
it yesterday, when the deed was done but yesterday ?” | 
Mr. Williams: By the best conjecture you can make, was it that 
very day the Earl of Essex cut his throat ? 
Lewis : I do not know that ever any such man cut his throat, 
but this I heard, and I tell you the time as well as I can. 
Mr. Wiiliams : Then, pray, let us have our money again. 
Lord Chief Justice : Thou art well paid, I will say that for thee. 
The result of the trial has been already stated above. It only 
remains to notice what was the belief which finally prevailed out 
of Court as to the real cause of Essex’s death. 
The testimony of children in a court of Justice, so long as they 
are really children, always carries great consideration. So it was 
in the present case, with reference to the story of the razor thrown 
from the Tower window. Not only were the public much in doubt 
about the matter, but Lady Essex very naturally was induced to 
collect all the facts which had been sworn to, and to lay them 
before her confidential adviser, Gilbert Burnet. But the sagacious 
Doctor, haying given the affair his best attention, could not re- 
commend her ladyship to prosecute the enquiry ; and it was pro- 
bably through his means that the Earl’s surviving relatives generally 
came to acquiesce in the verdict of a felo-de-se. In the Bishop’s 
History of his own times he adds sundry reasons for his decision ; 
attributing the fatal event, in fact, to temporary derangement as 
the result of excitement operating upon a diseased frame ; and the 
Bishop’s well-known political bias naturally tending to a conclusion 
opposite to that which he expressed, secures his opinion from the 
charge of prejudice. 
