APPENDIX TO CHRONICLE. 



197 



assizes was prosecuted for the of- 

 fence, but was acquitted. To this 

 indictment the defendants pleaded 

 Not guilty. 



Mr. Serjeant Blossett addressed 

 tlie Jury. The case denmnded 

 serious attention, not alone from its 

 peculiarity, but froni its import- 

 ance, because it involved tlie cha- 

 racter of a clergyman of the 

 Church of England, and of his 

 two daughters, who stood charged 

 with having conspired to take the 

 life of an innocent man, for a rape 

 alleged to have been committed 

 on one of them. The defendant, 

 Mr. Woodward, was the vicar of the 

 parish of Harrold, in this county, 

 and his daughters lived with him in 

 the vicarage-house. The preseiit 

 prosecutor, James Harris, was the 

 son of a respectable saddler in the 

 same town ; and thechargeimputed 

 to him by the defendants was such, 

 that it only required to be stated 

 to convince every man that it was 

 fabe. In fact, such was the na- 

 ture of the evidence given by the 

 young woman who represented 

 herself to have been violated, that 

 the jury before whom the trial 

 took place, upon her testimony 

 alone, pronounced young Harris 

 Not guilty. That Mias Susannah 

 Woodward had had intercourse 

 with some one, whereby she was 

 likely to become a mother, waf 

 beyond a doubt : but why it was 

 thought proper to fix upon the 

 present prosecutor must remain a 

 mystery. In the testimony given 

 by the proseciitiix on the indict- 

 ment against Mr. Harris, slie 

 stated, that he had, in the month 

 of July iai4, attempted some vio- 

 lence on her person : but that she 

 had resistei! him, and on his pro- 

 mise never to repeat similar con- 

 duct, undertook not to mention 



the circumstance to her father. 

 The more formidable part of the 

 charge, however, she did not fix. 

 till the iSth of October, in the 

 same year ; when, according to 

 her statement, she was coming 

 from the privy in her father's gar- 

 den, within a few yards of the 

 house, the gaiden being overlook- 

 ed by cottages, ajid her sister au«l 

 a servant being at home, this very 

 man, who attacked her in the 

 July preceding, again assailed her^ 

 and at an early hour of the even- 

 ing, in spite of all her resistance 

 and cries, again violated her per- 

 son. Her sister Sarah at length 

 came to her assistance, when the 

 ravisher got up, and after threat- 

 ening both their lives if they at- 

 tempted to disclose what had hap- 

 pened, went away. Whether it 

 was {)ossible to have committed a 

 violation xuider such circumstan€«s 

 the jury would, after a disclosure 

 of the other facts, be able to deter- 

 mine. From that period down to 

 July in the following year, this 

 )oung lady, according to her own 

 tale, never disclosed to any person, 

 except to her sister, what had hap- 

 pened, and then the disclosure 

 came of necessity, for she proved 

 to be eight months gone with 

 chihl. Dvuing all this period she 

 lived in her father's house, and 

 und»r her father's eye. She, how- 

 ever, kept herself excluded from 

 })ublic vitw, and when she did go 

 abroad, always wore a large cloak. 

 He believe<l it was barely possible, 

 under the (lescription which she had 

 given of the violence committed, 

 that she should have pro\ed preg- 

 nant ; but tfen allowing, the pos- 

 sibility, it was not a little extraor- 

 dinary, that, living in her father's 

 liouse 8o many months, she had 

 not made a disclosure of the viola- 



lation, 



