390 



lEiftr gawll d Jittiecote. 



(No. 3.) 

 By C. E. Long, Esq,. 



Y the kind permission of the Master of the Rolls I have, for 

 some time, had free access to all documents in the Record 

 in any degree connected with the county of Wilts ; and my 

 attention, as the readers of this Magazine are aware, has been, on 

 two previous occasions, especially directed to the unravelling of 

 those entangled threads by which the story of Darell, and the sup- 

 posed Littlecote child murder, has been so long enveloped. With 

 the assistance of my friend, Mr. DufFus Hardy of the Record Office, 

 I am enabled to place before the public an accidental, and most 

 interesting discovery. This consists, not indeed of the testimony 

 long asserted to have been given by the midwife on the imaginary 

 trial of Darell at Salisbury, because she, being, as it now appears, 

 already dead, could never have attended it; nor before "Judge 

 Popham," who as Aubrey solemnly tells us, "gave sentence ac- 

 cording to law;" because he was then no Judge at all; but it is 

 the deposition made by her, just previous to her death, at Great 

 ShefFord in Berkshire, where she lived, a place some six miles 

 distant from Littlecote, and taken by Mr. Anthony Bridges, the 

 principal magistrate and landowner there, confirming, in nearly 

 every particular, excepting the most important particulars, viz. 

 the ingenious embellishment of the bed curtain — her counting the 

 steps of the staircase — her second visit to, and recognition of the 

 house — and the crimination of Darell, the tale, as told on tradition- 

 ary information, by Lord Webb Seymour to Sir Walter Scott. 



This deposition, together with other papers, all at one time 

 evidently in Darell's possession, were found, during some recent 

 repairs, at the Rolls' Chapel. They were confusedly mixed up with 

 other documents with which they had no connexion. All these 

 Darell papers, however, appear, from holes at the top of each folio, 



