transactions thereby attributed to them. If this
writer were to put into a private note-book a pleasant but unauthorized
anecdote imputing _kleptomania_ to Chief Justice Wiles (who died in
1761), and fifty years hence the note-book should be discovered in a
dirty corner of a forgotten closet and published to the world--would
readers in the twentieth century be justified in holding that Sir John
Willes was an eccentric thief?

But Aubrey tells a still stranger story concerning Popham, when he sets
forth the means by which the judge made himself lord of Littlecote Hall
in Wiltshire. The case must be given in the narrator's own words.

"Sir Richard Dayrell of Littlecot in com. Wilts. having got his lady's
waiting-woman with child, when her travell came sent a servant with a
horse for a midwife, whom he was to bring hoodwinked. She was brought,
and layd the woman; but as soon as the child was born, she saw the
knight take the child and murther it, and burn it in the fire in the
chamber. She having done her business was extraordinarily rewarded for
her paines, and went blindfold away. This horrid action did much run in
her mind, and she had a desire to discover it, but knew not where 'twas.
She considered with herself the time she was riding, and how many miles
she might have rode at that rate in that time, and that it must be some
great person's house, for the roome was twelve foot high: and she
should know the chamber if she sawe it. She went to a justice of peace,
and search was made. The very chamber found. The knight was brought to
his tryall; and, to be short, this judge had this noble house, park, and
manor, and (I think) more, for a bribe to save his life. Sir John Popham
gave sentence according to lawe, but being a great person and a
favorite, he procured a _nolle prosequi_."

This ghastly tale of crime following upon crime has been reproduced by
later writers with various exaggerations and modifications. Dramas and
novels have been founded upon it; and a volume might be made of the
ballads and songs to which it has given birth. In some versions the
corrupt judge does not even go through the form of passing sentence, but
secures an acquittal from the jury; according to one account, the
mother, instead of the infant, was put to death; according to another,
the erring woman was the murderer's daughter, instead of his wife's
waiting-woman; another writer, assuming credit as a conscientious
narrator of facts, places t