have perswaded the court to look upon him as a person lunatick". Evidence from other published sources, however, indicates that he further elaborated his claim of self-defence by testifying that she gave me great provocation... and offered to throw a pot in my face... from which I endeavoured to defend myself. Furthermore, in support of the insanity defence, witnesses testified that for two years last past (viz after the death of his poor father) he had been lunatick. His mother told the court, he had been fitter for Bedlam than to walk the streets. Once he had attempted to stab himself with a penknife "only because some Latin was repeated in his company", and another time he put "himself into such violent storms of passion, as once frighted a woman and her family out of the house, without any provocation given". While the gist of the defence case is usually given in the Proceedings , important details like these are often left out. But it should be noted that key prosecution evidence was also occasionally omitted, such as in Stanley's trial the testimony of a witness, Mr Leaf, who said "Mr Stanley declared five or six months before, that he would kill Mrs Maycock for her cruelty", thereby establishing that the killing was the result of premeditated malice, indicating that he should be convicted of murder. The Proceedings contain selective accounts of both sides of the case. On average, however, more material was omitted from the case for the defence.