Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 15.pdf/488

 Gleanings From Eighteenth Century Law Reports. last Duke of Douglas, had really been adopted while an infant and was not truly the child of his reputed parents. The proot and arguments founded on it are too exten sive to be outlined in the present paper. Everything connected with the litigation was on a spacious scale. The subject of the liti gation included the famous castles of Doug las and Bothwell, and the valuable farms, mines, and superiorities that went with them; the proof extended to two large printed vol umes each of more than a thousand pages, the hearing on the evidence occupied the House of Lords for days, and the judgment ofLordSanchvich alone required three hours for its delivery. Considering that the Court of Session had found for the Duke of Hamil ton and decided that Lady Jane Douglas had purchased or adopted a child to keep the Duke out of the estates and to add to her own importance as the mother of an heir to great possessions, the confident way in which the House of Lords decided against the Duke and reversed the judgment of the Court of Session is a little surprising. There was certainly much in the evidence to support the decision which the Court of Sessions arrived at, by a majority, against the alleged heir. Lady Jane Douglas at the time of her marriage was forty-eight years of age and her husband fifty-seven. Fellowtravelers with the lady shortly before the date given for the birth had observed no in dication of the impending event. La Marre, who was said to have been the accoucheur in Paris, could not be found, and, more un favorable still, forged letters of this La Marre had been placed among Lady Jane's papers; while it was proved that about the date given for the birth a foreign gentleman had acquired a child through the Sisters of Charity. However, all this did not much impress the House of Lords. Thus Lord Chancellor Camden, after saying that he would give his opinion with "that strictness

AAI

of impartiality to which your lordships have so just and equitable a claim," declared in his peroration, "for my part I am for sus taining the positive proof which I find weak ened by nothing brought against it, and in this mind I lay my hand upon my breast and declare that in my soul and conscience I believe the appellant to be her son." Lord Mansfield spoke in a like rhetorical vein. "I have slept and worked upon the subject, con sidered it upon my pillow to the losing of my natural rest." He concluded in the fol lowing strain: "Nor is it possible to credit the witnesses, some of them of a sacred char acter, when they speak of Lady Jane's vir tues, provided we can believe her to have been a woman of such abandoned principles as to make a mock of religion, a jest of the sacrament, a scoff of the most solemn oaths, and rush with a lie in her mouth and perjurv in her right hand into the presence of the Judge of all who at once sees the whole heart of man and from whose all-discerning eye no secrecy can screen, before whom neither craft nor artifice can avail, nor yet the ingenuity and wit of lawyers can lessen or exculpate, on all which accounts I am for finding the appellant to be the son of Lady Jane Douglas." In spite of the very decided opinion ex pressed by the House of Lords, people now adays lean to the belief that the Court ot Session was right. However that may be, the ultimate decision need not be regretted now, for the successful party to the cause, whether the son of Lady Jane Douglas or, as some suppose, the son of a French baker, filled his distinguished position with success. His descendant, the Earl of Home, pos sesses the estates to this day, and as the land in Scotland is already in too few hands it is well that these estates were not merged in the Dukedom of Hamilton as so nearly hap pened. In the year 1781, Thomas Gladstone of