quiries in the seventeenth century cannot do
better than to peruse the full report of the proceedings, which may be
found in every comprehensive legal library. In this place it is enough
to say that though the accusation was not sustained by a shadow of
legal testimony, the prejudice against the prisoners, both on the part
of a certain section of the Hertford residents and the presiding judge,
Mr. Baron Hatsel, was such that the verdict for acquittal was a
disappointment to many who heard it proclaimed by the foreman of the
jury. Narcissus Luttrell, indeed, says that the verdict was "to the
satisfaction of the auditors;" but in this statement the diarist was
unquestionably wrong, so far as the promoters of the prosecution were
concerned. Instead of accepting the decision without demur, they
attempted to put the prisoners again on their trial by the obsolete
process of "appeal of murder;" but this endeavor proving abortive, the
case was disposed of, and the prisoners' minds set at rest.

The barrister who was thus tried on a capital charge, and narrowly
escaped a sentence that would have consigned him to an ignominious
death, resumed his practice in the law courts, sat in the House of
Commons and rose to be a judge in the Court of Common Pleas. It is said
that he "presided on many trials for murder; ever cautious and
mercifully inclined--remembering the great peril which he himself had
undergone."

The same writer who aspersed Somers with her unchaste thoughts, and
reiterated the charge of bigamy against Lord Chancellor Cowper, did not
omit to give a false and malicious version to the incidents which had
acutely wounded the fine sensibilities of the younger Cowper. But enough
notice has been taken of the 'New Atalantis' in this chapter. To that
repulsive book we refer those readers who may wish to peruse Mrs.
Manley's account of Sarah Stout's death.

A distorted tradition of Sarah Stout's tragic end, and of Lord Cowper's
imputed bigamy, was contributed to an early number of the 'European' by
a clerical authority--the Rev. J. Hinton, Rector of Alderton, in
Northamptonshire. "Mrs. Sarah Stout," says the writer, "whose death was
charged upon Spencer Cowper, was strangled accidentally by drawing the
steenkirk too tight upon her neck, as she, with four or five young
persons, were at a game of romp upon the staircase; but it was not done
by Mr. Cowper, though one of the company. Mrs. Clavering, Lord
Chancellor Cowper's seco