The lord high steward then desired the lady to give attention while she was arraigned on an indictment for bigamy; and proclamation for silence having been again made, the duchess (who had been permitted to sit) arose, and read a paper, representing to the Court that she was advised by her counsel to plead the sentence of the Ecclesiastical Court in the year 1769 as a bar to her being tried on the present indictment. The lord high steward informed her that, she must plead to the indictment; in consequence of which she was arraigned; and being asked by the clerk of the crown whether she was guilty of the felony with which she stood charged, she answered, with great firmness, “Not guilty, my lords.” The clerk of the crown then asking her how she would be tried, she said, “By God and my peers;” on which the clerk said, “God send your ladyship a good deliverance.”
Four days were occupied in arguments of counsel respecting the admission or rejection of a sentence of the Spiritual Court; but the peers having decided that it could not be admitted, the trial proceeded. The first witness examined was
Anne Cradock, whose testimony was as follows:—I have known her grace the Duchess of Kingston ever since the year 1742, at which time she came on a visit to the house of Mr. Merrill, at Lainston, in Hampshire, during the Winchester races. At that time I lived in the service of Mrs. Hanmer, Miss Chudleigh’s aunt, who was then on a visit at Mr. Merrill’s, where Mr. Hervey and Miss Chudleigh first met, and soon conceived a mutual attachment for each other. They were privately married one evening at about eleven o’clock in Lainston church, in the presence of Mr. Mountney, Mrs. Hanmer, the Rev. Mr. Ames, the rector, who performed the ceremony, and myself. I was ordered out of the church to entice Mr. Merrill’s servants out of the way. I saw the bride and bridegroom put to bed together, and Mrs. Hanmer obliged them to rise again; they went to bed together the following night. In a few days Mr. Hervey was under the necessity of going to Portsmouth in order to join Sir John Danvers’s fleet, in which he was then a lieutenant; and being ordered to call him at five o’clock in the morning, I went into the bedchamber at the appointed hour, and found him and his lady sleeping in bed together. I was unwilling to disturb them, as I thought that the delay of an hour or two would make no difference, but they afterwards parted. My husband, to whom I was not then married, accompanied Mr. Hervey in the capacity of servant. When Mr. Hervey returned from the Mediterranean, he and his lady lived together, and I then thought that she was pregnant. Some months after, Mr. Hervey went again to sea, and during his absence I was informed that the lady was brought to bed; and I was afterwards confirmed in the information by the lady herself, who said that she had a little boy at nurse, whose features greatly resembled those of Mr. Hervey.
In answer to questions put by the Duke of Grafton, the witness said that she had never seen the child; that it was dark when the marriage took place in the church, and that Mr. Mountney carried a wax light attached to the crown of his hat. Upon being asked by the Earl of Hilsborough whether she had not received a letter containing some offer to induce her to appear now as a witness, she admitted that Mr. Fossard of Piccadilly had written to her, offering her a sinecure place on condition of her coming forward to give evidence against her grace, and stating that she might, if she pleased, exhibit the letter to the Earl of Bristol. The cross-examination of the witness on this point was continued during the remainder of the sitting of their lordships; and on the following day (the 20th of April) it was resumed, the Earls of Derby, Hilsborough, and Buckinghamshire questioning her with considerable acumen. She at length confessed that pecuniary offers had been made to her to induce her to appear, and that she had acceded to the terms proposed.
Mrs. Sophia Pettiplace was examined as to the facts deposed to by Mrs. Cradock; but she was able to afford no positive information upon the subject. She lived with her grace at the time of the supposed marriage, but was not present at the ceremony, and only believed that the duchess had mentioned the circumstance to her.
Cæsar Hawkins, Esq. deposed that he had been acquainted with the duchess several years, he believed not less than thirty. He had heard of a marriage between Mr. Hervey and the lady at the bar, which circumstance was afterwards mentioned to him by both parties, previous to Mr. Hervey’s last going to sea. By the desire of her grace, he was in the room when the issue of the marriage was born, and once saw the child. He was sent for by Mr. Hervey soon after his return from sea, and desired by him to wait upon the lady, with proposals for procuring a divorce, which he accordingly did; when her grace declared herself absolutely determined against listening to such terms; and he knew that many messages passed on the subject. Her grace some time after informed him, at his own house, that she had instituted a jactitation suit against Mr. Hervey in Doctors’ Commons. On another visit she appeared very grave, and desiring him to retire into another apartment, said she was exceedingly unhappy, in consequence of an oath, which she had long dreaded, having been tendered to her at Doctors’ Commons to disavow her marriage, which she would not do for ten thousand worlds. Upon another visit, a short time after, she informed him that a sentence had passed in her favour at Doctors’ Commons, which would be irrevocable unless Mr. Hervey pursued certain measures within a limited time, which she did not apprehend he would do. Hereupon he inquired how she got over the oath; and her reply was, that the circumstance of her marriage was so blended with falsities, that she could easily reconcile the matter to her conscience; since the ceremony was a business of so scrambling and shabby a nature, that she could as safely swear she was not as that she was married.
Judith Philips, being called, swore that she was the widow of the Rev. Mr. Ames; that she remembered when her late husband performed the marriage ceremony between Mr. Hervey and the prisoner; that she was not present, but derived her information from her husband; that some time after the marriage the lady desired her to prevail upon her husband to grant a certificate, which she said she believed her husband would not refuse; that Mr. Merrill, who accompanied the lady, advised her to consult his attorney from Worcester; that in compliance with the attorney’s advice, a register-book was purchased, and the marriage inserted therein, with some late burials in the parish. The book was here produced, and the witness swore to the writing of her late husband.
The writing of the Rev. Mr. Ames was also proved by the Rev. Mr. Inchin and the Rev. Mr. Dennis; and the entry of a caveat to the duke’s will was proved by a clerk from Doctors’ Commons. The book in which the marriage of the Duke of Kingston with the lady at the bar was registered on the 8th of March, 1769, was produced by the Rev. Mr. Trebeck, of St. Margaret’s, Westminster; and the Rev. Mr. Samuel Harpur, of the British Museum, swore that he performed the marriage ceremony between the parties on the day mentioned in the books produced by Mr. Trebeck.
Monday, the 22nd of April, after the attorney-general had declared the evidence on behalf of the prosecution to be concluded, the lord high steward called upon the prisoner for her defence, which she read; and the following are the most material arguments it contained to invalidate the evidence adduced for the prosecutor:—She appealed to the Searcher of all hearts, that she never considered herself as legally married to Mr. Hervey; she said that she considered herself as a single woman, and as such was addressed by the late Duke of Kingston; and that, influenced by a legitimate attachment to his grace, she instituted a suit in the Ecclesiastical Court, when her supposed marriage with Mr. Hervey was declared null and void; but, anxious for every conscientious as well as legal sanction, she submitted an authentic statement of her case to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, in the most decisive and unreserved manner, declared that she was at liberty to marry, and afterwards granted, and delivered to Dr. Collier, a special licence for her marriage with the late Duke of Kingston. She said that on her marriage she experienced every mark of gracious esteem from