een conducted
by Mr. Hawkins in Chancery, the case would have been crushed at the
outset. It is not my task to show how, but to state what it all came
to when the learned counsel left it to the jury to say whether the
claimant _was_ the Roger Tichborne he had sworn himself to be, or
whether he was Arthur Orton, the butcher of Wapping, whom he swore he
was not.

This document forms the subject of the "sealed packet" left with Mr.
Gosford, and contained in effect these words: "If God spares me to
return and marry my beloved Kate within a year, I promise to build a
church and dedicate it to my patron saint."

Till his cross-examination in Chancery he had never heard of this
packet, and when he was informed of it his solicitor naturally
demanded a copy. Gosford had destroyed the original, and of course
there was no end of capital out of it; a concocted original was made,
which was to the effect that this gentleman, "so like Roger," _had
seduced his cousin_, and that if she proved to be _enceinte_, Gosford
was to take care of her. Luckily "Kate Doughty" had her original
preserved with sacred affection. But such was the memory of this man's
early life, contrasted with what _would_ have been the memory of Sir
Roger Tichborne.

He did not recollect being "at Stonyhurst, but said positively he was
at Winchester, where certainly Roger never was. He did not remember
his mother's Christian names, and could not write his own.

He came to England to see his mother, and then would not go to her;
she went to see him, and he got on to the bed and turned his face to
the wall. She did not see his face, but recognized him by his ears,
because they were like his uncle's, then ordered the servant to undo
his braces for fear he should choke.

Such a piece as this on the stage would not have lasted one night;
in real life it had a run for many years. But then there never was a
rogue that some fool would not believe in. How else was it possible
that millions believed in this man, who had forgotten the religion he
had been brought up in, and was married by a Wesleyan minister at a
Wesleyan church, he being, as his mother informed him, a strict Roman
Catholic from his birth? However, he did his best to reform his error
by getting married again by a Roman priest, although he made another
blunder, and forgetting he was Sir Roger Tichborne, married as Arthur
Orton, the son of the Wapping butcher. When his dear mother reminded
him of his being