The Sun.
London, England, 1864-11-07 00:00:00

The Yelverton Marriage Case.

A letter signed " Theresa Yelverton," and dated Tin.-
trim House, October 29, has been addressed to the Limerick
Southern Chroniee, The writer says :—" The Scotch law
form of asserting marriage is by a declarator of the fact ;
and it re quires to be proved by writ or oath of one of the
contracting parties. Marriage in Scotland being a simple
consent, it can be proved like any other contract—by in-
ference, by repute, by circumstantial evidence, and by any
evidence which would be held to prove any other fact. Lord
Brcu;laam states this very clearly in one of his luminous
judgments. He says—' If a contract were made between
two persons to buy a certain articie for a certain price, and
the article and the sum of money should be found to have
changed possessors, it would be proof that the contract had
been accomplished. In a similar manner, if a man and
woman who had been contracting for marriage, or what is
termed courting, are discovered subsequently cohabiting as
man and wife, the conclusive inference is that they have
exchanged the necessary consent, and have accomplished
the contract of marriage. , This is the exact point that
three of the English law lords have failed to comprehend.
They could not see that a fact can be proved otherwise than
by ocular demonstration ; they required more evidence to
prove a marriage than ordinary judges to prove a murder,
Possibly scepticism is the Thomas Didymus of longevity,
and octogenarians, as a rule, may be more hard of belief
from the fact of the senses being less acute ; suffice it to
say, unhappily three law lords failed to discern that the
written proof I had been advised to lay before them bore
sufficient evidence of a consent to marriage having taken
place. This, then, is the present state of the case in
transition between the ltroof by writ and the proof by
oath, which will be attempted when the court meets in
Scotland. The promise of marriage contained in Major
Yelverton's letter of April. 1857, and the acknowledgment
that he had accomplished that promise, in the letter of the
Christmas following, will then have to be explained with
a reasonable explanation other than the one heretofore
offered by his counsel, viz That the solemn promise
meant only " That we were to travel on the continent when
Major Yelverton had leisure I (sous alleluia), and that I
was to pay the expenses and do the translation!" ' (a most
ingenious way of keeping a courier), but far from conclu-
sive as explanatory of the latter. Fortunately, Major Yel-
verton had given a more satisfactory version on his exami-
nation in the witness box in Dublin—and it is to be hoped
that when again asked the question he will prefer throwing
over his counsel's ingenious explanation to coming under
the notice of the Procurator Fiscal this time for perjury. It
is quite a common thing for counsel to make a plausible
case, irrelevant of all truth, if they are paid for it ; but under
the present peculiar circumstances there is every reason to
believe that Major Yelverton will tell the truth, and admit
that the promise alluded to an engagement of marriage
with me, and not to an engagement as courier and paymas-
ter combined. That the public should imagine that any
case could be positively terminated by any other cause than
the total dearth of funds shows the bliss of ignorance. We
see litigation, like heirlooms, passing from generation to
generation, where the estate c )ntinues to sustain its cost ;
and the brightest prestige which has appeared on the hori-
zon of my legal prospects for some time was the application
made the other day to the House of Lords by my husband's
agent, to compel me to solace his pain for the trouble he has
had with me, by giving him £5Ol They surely must be in
dire necessity before they could ask for money from me
under such auspices. The Lord Chancellor evidently neither
pitied his pains, nor his pauperism, and refused his appli-
cation. He was dismissed like any other importunate
vagrant to the refuge of the alias which the Court Journal
of September last assures us he still assumes. Far from
being put to silence, I claim, at least, a little credit for
bearing and maintaining in respectability, and free from
dunsl the once honoured name of Yelverton, which the
only scion of that noble house has abandoned for an
alias I

THE SUNNINGHALL MURDER.—Since the murder
of Mrs Butler in the lodge at Zunninghall Park, the seat of
Mr Crutchley, one of the county magistrates, the Berks
police, uuder'Mr Superintendent Iremonger, in whose dis-
trict the crime was committed, have been unremitting in
their search after the perpetratara of this cold-blooded crime.
Not a day has been lost since the inquest, and no trouble has
been spared to find some clue, if ever so slight, which might
lead to
net, b,,,n
to theoeapi, rewftrapd l
u,nreotthemur, Doomsder that it Saturday
s,andthese exertions
have
week Superintendent Iremonger went into Buckingham-
shire and visited Great Marlow Fair, in the hope of hearing
some intelligence as to two tramps, a man and woman with
a dog, who were seen by Kentish, the Windier carrier, but
a short distance from the lodge a few minutes previous to
I the discovery of the murder, While prosecuting his inqui-

ries in a low beerhouse frequented by travellers, he ascer--
tained that two tramps, ono of whom had ju,t been left by
the woman in whose company he had been seen, the woman
being accompanied by a dog, had been arrested the previous
Wednesday for sleeping under a rick and imprisoned in the
gaol at Aylesbury for vagrancy. The men's names are Wm.
Smith and Thomas Guest, and both, it is understood, were
formerly in the Coldstzeam Guards. Superintendent Ire-
monger ascertained that Smith at the time of his apprehen-
iion wore a blue guernsey with a white smock over it, and
that the woman had gone on to Abingdon, having left

_ .
Smith on account of his illtreatment. Furnished with this
information, the superintendent last Monday proceeded to
Winkfield, the parish in which the murder was committed,
to see if any one could be found who could identify Smith,
but without success. On Tuesday he proceeded to Abing-
don, whither, it was stated, the woman had gone, and
searched the lodginghouse, but without result. On Wed-
nesday Mr Iremonger again went over to Winkfield, and
this time was successful in finding some one who could
identify the tramp imprisoned in Aylesbury Gaol, This
person was Frederick Smith, coachman to Lady Wiltshire,
at whose residence Wm, Smith (the tramp) had called for
the purpose of begging, and had been turned off the pre-
mises by the coachman, who declared at once that he could
pick Smith out from among any number of persons. Ao •
companied by Superintendent Iremonger, the coachman
proceeded to Aylesbury Gaol on Thursday morning at an
early hour for the purpose of identifying Smith. Guest
was first called in, but the coachman at once said he was
not the man, and he was then shown Win. Smith, who,
dressed in prison clothes, was at the time of the visit pick-
ing oakum. The coachman immediately identified the latter
prisoner, and stated that when he saw Smith at Winkfield
he wore a blue guernsey with a white smock over it, either
a billycock or cap, trousers, and old leather shoes. The
clothes worn by Smith on his admission into the gaol were
then produc3d and found to coincide with the coachman's
previous description of his apparel, but the blue gurensey
was missing. The clothes were examined, and one spot of
blood was found on the sraockfrock, while the shirt was
clean, having lately been washed. The ricks at Marlow and
a pigstye at Littlewick-green, where the two men slept on the
night previous to their apprehension, have been searched,
bat the missing guernsey and stick, with which the murder
is supposed to have been committed, have not been found.

Smith will, on the expiration of his month's imprisonment,
be brought before the magistrate on this more serious
charge. He is a man of forbidding appearance, with dark
hair and whiskers. In the meantime Colonel Blandy, the
Wel of the Berks constabulary, has sent out parties in the
hope of finding the woman, and should they be successfu
in apprehending her, it is very likely the real perpetrator of
this up to the present time mysterious murder will shortly
be disclosed.
DISCOVERY NEAR EDINBURQII.—A few months
,ago we reported the exhumation of a large number

of stone coffins in .he vicinity of the " Cat.stano," about six
miles from Edinburgh, by Mr Hutchison, of Carlowrle. We
have now to notice a discovery of much greater antiquarian
interest, made chiefly through the instrumentality of the
same gentleman—viz., the remains of an ancient British
town on the western side of Craigiehill, which is about a
mile distant from the former relics, on the Linlithgow side
of the Almond river. Many years ago, when cutting a road
through Craigiehill, between Kirkliston and Cramond, the
workman came upon a stone kist, the end of which is still to
be seen projecting from the bank over the carriage way.
Several attempts have been made by archasologiets to unra-
vel the mystery of this memento of bygone ages, but with-
out effect. Some time ago Prof. Simpson, in one of his wan-
deringe, thought ho had observed on the hill indications of
an ancient British city, and recently he wrote to Mr Hut-
chison on the matter, requesting him to obtain permission
from the proprietor of the hill, Mr Hope Vere,to make ex-
plorations. This permission was at once cordially granted,
and on Friday the 22d ult, Mr Hutchison examined the
hill ; and his men, after some search, came upon traces of
three walls or ramparts enclosing a space near the westera
top of the hill, upon which were numerous raised circular
rings of stones, apparently the foundations of such dwellings
as our rude forefathers are known to have occupied. On
the following day Professor Simpson, accompanied by Dr
Macbean and Mr Hutchison, made a much more exten-
sive and systematic investigation, the result of which
was that they exposed portions of the faces of the three
lines of walls, and one of the raised circles inside. The}
also were fortunate enough to discover a gate which bad
formed one of the entrances to the encampment. Tho ram-
parts are arranged in a fortified manner as parallels, and to-
wards that part of the hill from which alone any attack
could be made, the other sides presenting natural barriers
which, in those times, no invading force could have hoped
to overcome. Excavations were made behind the old stone
kist, which would seem to have been placed just outside the
city walls, but nothing of interest was found there, We
understand that Professor Simpson is preparing an elabos
rate paper on the whole sutject, which is to be submitted
to a meeting of the Antiquarian Society during the ensuing
seesion,—Scoismaii.