The Sun.
London, England, 1860-11-24 00:00:00

COURT OF DIVORCE.

Before the Judge Ordinary, Mr. Justice Wight
man, and Mr. Justice Williams.)

SHEDDEN AND SHEDDEN 7. PATRICK AND PATRICK
AND THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL.

The hearing of this petition for a declaration of
legitimacy was resumed.
Mr. Collier, Q.C., Mr. Couch, and Mr. Phear ap-
peared for the petitioners ; Mr. Rolt, Q.C., Mr..
Bovill, Q.C., Dr. Deane, Q.C., and Mr. Powell for
the respondents ; and Mr. Bourke for the Attorney-
General.
Some correspondence which passed between the
petitioner and William Patrick in 1823, 1824, 1839,
and 1841, was put in evidence for the purpose of
explaining and corroborating the petitioner's state-
ment with respect to the documents said to have
been delivered to him by William Patrick in 1823.
A deposition was also read, made by an old man
named Robert Stevenson, who said that he remem-
bered the arrival in Ayrshire of the boy William
Shedden from America, and that one of the servants
spoke of him as "the young laird of Roughwood."
Mr. Collier tendered Lloyd's List for the purpose
of showing what vessels had arrived at Greenock
from New York in the beginning of 1799, in order
to controvert the account given by Mr. Patrick as
to the transmission of the letter of the 12th Nov.,
1798, and of its duplicate and triplicate.
A clerk from Lloyd's proved that the list pur-
ported to contain the names of all vessels arriving
at different ports in Great Britain. It was made
up from letters received from agents at the ports
announcing the arrivals. The agent would in every
case keep a book of entries. The letters of 1798
were among the documents destroyed when the
Royal Exchange was burnt down.
Their lordships rejected the evidence.
This being the close of the evidence in support of
the petition,
Mr. Rolt proceeded to open the respondents' case.
He said that the lady who had opened the peti-
tioners' case with such remarkable skill had com-
plained of the difficulty she was under in conducting
it without professional assistance, but the petitioner
had deliberately chosen to conduct it in the way in
which it had been conducted.
The Judge-Ordinary—You need not enter into
that question.
Mr. Rolt said he would give .the Court a simple
statement of facts which would admit of no doubt
or dispute upon the evidence in any reasonable
mind. After recapitulating the relationship of the
different members of the Patrick and Shedden
families who were in America between 1790 and
1798, he admitted that the law of marriage in New
York was, as stated by the petitioner's witnesses—
namely, that no official or ecclesiastical ceremony
was necessary to create a marriage, but that the
fact of a marriage which might be proved by habit
and repute was sufficient. The case to which the
petitioners pledged themselves was this :—A gen-
tleman of character and position equal to that of
Mr. Shedden lived near New York, and had a
daughter, who in 1790 was about 16 years of age.
Mr. Shedden paid his addresses to her in the way
of honourable courtship, and the only objection
that could be raised to the match was that of her
youth. Time and reflection removed the difficulty,
the lady and her father consented, and the
marriage took place. Could any human being be-
lieve that in 1798 all evidence of the fact of such
a marriage, openly contracted in 1790, had com-
pletely disappeared, the lady herself, her father,
and, of course, most of their acquaintance being
then alive? This was not represented as the case
of en illicit amour gradually ripening into a fixed
cohabitation, but as a contract openly entered into,
with no attempt at concealment. The death-bed
marriage was quite irreconcileable with this case.
It could not have been thought necessary for the
purpose of preserving the testimony of a marriage
which had been contracted only a few years earlier.
The respondents' case was, that in 1789 a woman
named Ann Wilson was living in New York, in a
house of her own ; that she received the visits of
William Shedden in the first place at that house;
that they gradually became more and more ac-
quainted; that she occesionally visited at Ms house,
and at last during the latter part of his life took
up her residence there altogether; that there was
no pretence for saying there was any marriage
previous to the death-bed marriage, and that the
evidence of habit and repute was utterly opposed
to the idea of such a marriage. A respectable
merchant in New York would prove that, in 1794,
when he was 20 years old, he was intimately ac-
quainted with society in New York, and knew
William Shedden, and that he was an unmarried
man. Another witness who was in the house when
William Shedden died, and had known him for
several years, would prove that Ann Wilson was
openly and notoriously a woman of very light cha-
racter, that she insinuated herself into his house
and resided there as his mistress, but that he never
introduced her as his wife into decent society. The
whole of the documentary evidence supported this
view of the case, and proved that the death-bed
marriage was merely contracted for the purpose
of legitimatizing the children and making an
honest woman of Ann Wilson. The will, which was
executed on the 7th of November, 1798, the same
day when the deathbed marriage was contracted,
was, in some respects, remarkable. This wealthy
merchant, as he was represented, left only 400 dols.,
£BO or £9O a year, to the virtuous and excellent
woman to whom he had been married for years, and
the only one of the children, the girl, who was left
under her care, was to remain under it only as long
as the executors thought proper, and as long as she
followed their advice as to its education. The
letters of John Patrick and of the two other mem-
bers of the family in America, William Shedden
of Virginia, and Robert Patrick of New York, con-
tained declaration upon declaration that there was
no marriage previous to the deathbed marriage.
But the most important declaration, and one which,
in his opinion, put an end to the case, was that of
William Shedden himself, contained in his letter to
Mr. Patrick, of the 12th of November, the day before
his death; the original of this letter was written
and signed by him, and he also made two copies, all
of which were sent to this country. Had it not been
for the winked conduct of the male petitioner that
original would have been produced, for it was either
in the petitioner's possession or had been destroyed
by him. But fortunately a duplicate and triplicate
had been made, and had been produced. His answer
to the suggestions which had been offered as to the
improbability of this duplicate and triplicate having
been transmitted in the manner stated by Mr.
Patrick was, that the original had been sent by
one ship, and that the duplicate and triplicate
had both been sent by another ship soon after-
wards. The learned counsel read extracts from
the letters of the members of the family in America
to the different members of the family in Eng-
land and Scotland from 1798 down to June, 1799,
all of them assuming that the persons to whom
they were written were ignorant that William
Shedden had ever been married. If he bad been
openly married for eight years, how was it that none
of the family in this country had ever heard
of it ? He placed great stress upon Mrs. Vincent's
letter to William Patrick of the 3d of Sept., 1799,
as proving both that Mrs. Vincent had no idea that
there had ever been more than one marriage, and
that the letter of the 12th.of Nov. had been written
and sent by William Shedden. (Both these letters
have already been published in our report of this
trial.) As to the affidavits which she sent home
from a needlewoman and a nurse in the family, he
submitted that they were evidence against a prior
marriage, because, if there had been such a mar-
riage, she would have been able to adduce much
more satisfactory proof of it. They also proved that
she was then desirous of establishing a prior mar-
riage. The petitioners had endeavoured to get rid
of the death-bed letter and the other documentary
evidence. They had accused the Patricks, and all
connected with them, of forgery and perjury, spolia-
tion, and fabrication and destruction of documents,
and even the unfortunate deaths of two distant re-
lations had been represented as visitations of a mys
terious Providence. The only motive suggested for
all these crimes was that Robert Patrick might ob-
tain possession of the Ayrshire property. What
possible interest could William Patrick of Virginia
and the Sheddens of London, have in taking part
in such a conspiracy ? The correspondence of 1800
between the American executors and William
Patrick proved that William Patrick was anxious
to discharge his duty to the boy, because he gave
the executors notice that he could not attend to his
interests in opposition to those of his brother
Robert, and asked them to appoint some one to re-
present him in Scotland, accompanying thisrequest
by a clear and candid statement of his brother's

case, of the state of the law, and of the boy's chance

• _ _
of success. His advice was, that a suit should be in-

stituted to try the question of law bet Ween Robert
and the boy, so as to decide the question of the title to
the lands at once, the expense to be borne by the win-
ning party. The learned counsel called their lordships
attention to the endorsement on the duplicate, tripli-
cate of the letter of Nov. 12—" original per ship
Fanny, Capt. Brain ;" to an entry in one of Mr.
Patrick's books, under the date of Jan. 8, 1799—
"post, G. Thompson, letters from New York ; and
to a further endorsement upon the duplicate and tri
plicate, " Received at Edinburgh the 15th of
January, 1799"—both having probably arrived by,
the same vessel, the Amsterdam. There were also{
entries showing the receipt of the bills of exchange