Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 20.pdf/708

 The Green Bag VOL. XX.

No. ii

BOSTON

NOVEMBER, 1908

MR. JUSTICE HAWKINS (LORD BRAMPTON)1 BY A PRACTICING LAWYER IN the trial of Edward Gould for murder in 1768 the following piece of crossexamination is said to have taken place : — Prisoner's Counsel — " How can you be sure that the man on the horse was Mr. Gould, when as you say it was past mid night?" Witness for the Prosecution —- " Sir, the full moon shone on him." Counsel — " The full moon was shining you assert?" Witness — " Yes, your honor. I saw his face by the clear moonlight." "Pass me a calendar," said the Judge. Almanacs were not plentiful one hundred and thirty years ago, and no one present possessed one. Then prisoner's counsel addressed the Judge — "I had one yesterday, and put it, I believe, in my overcoat po:ket — if your Lordship will send the apparitor for it." The calendar was produced. There was no moon on the night of the murder. The evidence against the prisoner broke down, and he was acquitted. The prisoner's counsel the previous day had purchased an almanac, removed the sheets containing the month (in which the murder was committed) and those preced ing and following it, and had had the calen dar reprinted, altering the moons, so that there might be none on the night in question. The story rests entirely on tradition, but the tradition lived both at Lew Trenchard and at Ashburton. The Rev. Baring Gould, 1 The Reminiscences of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton), edited by Richard Harris, K.C. Two volumes. Edward Arnold.

the Rector of Lew Trenchard, tells us this striking anecdote in his Devonshire Charac ters (p. 622). The well-known author is connected in his own person with both pris oner and counsel. The counsel was John Dunning, the first Lord Ashburton, a title which was subsequently taken by his brotherin-law Baring, the negotiator of the Ashbur ton Treaty with the United States. There is no inherent improbability in the story. Prisoners were so severely dealt with in the eighteenth century that humane judges strictly observed every rule of the game that gave the accused a chance of escape. Judex damnatur, cum nocens absolvitur did not apply to the Old Bailey. Lord Shelburne, the Prime Minister (whose Solicitor General John Dunning was) writes of him — "All parties allowed him to be at the head of the Bar." It is, therefore, no disparagement to Sir Henry Hawkins to say that the tradition about John Dunning reminds us of many stories that passed current about him when at the Bar. Henry Hawkins, to whom so many prisoners owed their acquittal, was a cousin of Anthony Hope Hawkins, whose charming Prisoner of Zenda has made the name of Anthony Hope a household word. The Judge and the novelist each attained the goal, in golfing phrase, from a very different "approach." The Judge had benefited little by his education, when in 1843 he was called to the Bar. If the Judge was not the fine classical scholar that the novelist is, he at least rivaled him in his powers of observa tion and expression. Seventy years ago the Common Law Bar was no place for retiring merit, nor were Common Law Counsel in those days, in general culture, the equals of