st October, 1817. Under that writ Thornton was again
arrested by the Sheriff of Warwick. On the first day of Michaelmas Term,
in the same year, William Ashford appeared in the Court of King's Bench
at Westminster, as _appellant_, and Abraham Thornton, brought up on writ
of _habeas corpus_, appeared as _appellee_. The charge of murder was
formally made by the appellant; and time to plead to this charge was
granted to the appellee until Monday, 16th November.--It must have been
a strange and startling scene, on the morning of that Monday, 16th
November, 1817, when Abraham Thornton stood at the bar of the Court of
King's Bench in Westminster Hall; a scene which that ancient Hall had
not witnessed within the memory of any living man, but which must have
then roused the attention of even its drowsiest haunter. "The appellee
being brought into Court and placed at the bar" (I am quoting the
original dry technical record of the transaction), "and the appellant
being also in court, the count [charge] was again read over to him, and
he [Thornton] was called upon to plead. He pleaded as follows;--'Not
Guilty; and I am ready to defend the same by my body.' And thereupon,
taking his glove off, he threw it on the floor of the Court." That is to
say, Ashford having "appealed" Thornton of the murder, Thornton claimed
the right to maintain his own innocence by "Trial of Battel;" and so his
answer to the charge was a "Wager of Battel." And now the din of fight
seemed near, with the Court of King's Bench at Westminster for the
arena, and the grave Judges of that Court for the umpires. But the case
was destined to add but another illustration to what Cicero tells us of
how, oftentimes, arms yield to argument, and the swordsman's looked-for
laurel vanishes before the pleader's tongue. William Ashford, of course,
acting under the advice of those who really promoted the appeal,
declined to accept Thornton's wager of battel. Instead of accepting it,
his counsel disputed the right of Thornton to wage his battel in this
case; alleging, in a very long plea, that there were presumptions of
guilt so strong as to deprive him of that right. Thornton answered this
plea by another, in which all the facts that had been proved on the
trial at Warwick were set forth at great length. And then the case was
very elaborately argued, for three days, by two eminent and able
counsel, one of whom will be well remembered by most readers as the late
Chief-Justice Tin