sequent order for
two such seals. On one of these seals the family motto, "_Qui capit
capitur_" had been transformed, through an error of the engraver, into
"_Qui capit capitor_," but he said he did not receive it until the 7th
of June, and that consequently he could not have placed it on the deed
in which Sir Hugh Smyth so distinctly acknowledged the existence of a
son by a first marriage--a deed which he declared he had never seen
till the 17th of March. A letter was then put into court, dated the
13th of March, which he admitted was in his handwriting, and which
bore the impress of the mis-spelled seal. Thus confronted with this
damning testimony, the plaintiff turned pale, and requested permission
to leave the court to recover from a sudden indisposition which had
overtaken him, when, just at this juncture, the cross-examining
counsel received a telegram from London, in consequence of which he
asked, "Did you, in January last, apply to a person at 361 Oxford
Street, to engrave for you the Bandon crest upon the rings produced,
and also to engrave 'Gookin' on the brooch?" The answer, very
hesitatingly given, was, "Yes, I did." The whole conspiracy was
exposed; the plot was at an end. The plaintiff's counsel threw up
their briefs, a verdict for the defendants was returned, and the
plaintiff himself was committed by the judge on a charge of perjury,
to which a charge of forgery was subsequently added.

The second trial took place at the following spring assizes at
Gloucester. The evidence for the crown showed the utter hollowness of
the plaintiff's claim. The attorney's clerk, from whom the impostor
had stated he received the formal declaration of Sir Hugh Smyth, was
called, and declared that he had written the letter which was said to
have accompanied the deed, from the prisoner's dictation; the deed was
produced at the time, and the witness took a memorandum of the name of
the attesting witnesses on the back of a copy of his letter. This
copy, with the endorsement, was produced in court. The brown paper
which the prisoner had sworn formed the wrapper of the deed when he
received it, was proved to be the same in which Mr. Moring, the
engraver, had wrapped up a seal which he had sent to the prisoner--the
very seal in which the engraver had made the unlucky blunder. It was
also clearly proved that the parchment on which the forgery had been
written was prepared by a process which had only been discovered about
ten years