The Sun.
London, England, 1826-08-05 00:00:00

ASSIZE INTELLIGENCE.

BODMIN, TannAr, Aua. I.

The commissions were opened lihre yesterday by Mr.
Justice Gaselee alone; Mr. Justice Littledale being de-
tainea al Exeter by the cause " Rowe v.Brenton."

CIVIL 51DE....-WILLS V. ItITCHINS.

This was an action to recover damages for the loss sus-
tained by the plaintiff-in the seduction of his daughter by
the defendant, and consequently in the loss of her service.
The plaintiff is a small farmer, having several sons and
daughters. The 'defendant is a tallow-chandler at St.
Austel, in which town the plaintiff's daughter recently
carried on the business of a milliner with one of her sisters,
paying occasional visits at her father's. The legal case
was clearly proved by the daughter, Elizabeth Wells, ap-
parently about 30 years of age; and although it was em-
bellished by an able address from Mr. Erskine, for the plain-
tiff, and by another from. Mr. Sergeant Wilde, for the de-
fendant, it was very bare of any circumstance of aggrava-
tion, or of any one fitet which could give it any interest.
The former was indeed noticed by the Learned Judge
in his charge to the Jury. There was no witness but
the daughter herself; and from her-statement it of course
appeared that the defendant had not prevailed until he'
had promised marriage. She could give no date to the
first act of intercourse between herself and the defendant,
though she was very specific as to the last, which she fixed
to the 4th of June, 1825. It was certainly, she'admitted,
a long time since the first act, though she could give no
clue whatever to the date. The places were fixed upon
with some tolerable certainty ; ffor they were the fields
round the town of St. Austel: in one of which the de-
fendant succeeded in his object, after having given (as the
witness declared) a solemn promise of marriage. No
interruption took place as to these excursions in the fields
of St. Anstel until she became pregnant. She informed
the defendant of this, and never saw him afterwards.

The Jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff, with 801.
damages, at which the learned Judge himself showed some
surprise; for he asked them "if they said 80/. ?" They
replied they did ; and this verdict was of course recorded.

HOBBS V. HILL.

This was an action, by one inhabitant of the truly inde-
pendent borough of Fowey, against another inhabitant of
the same, to recover 2/. 13s. 3d., the amount of damages
done to the plaintiff's windows by the defendant, who
broke them, stick in hand ; indignant, as it was sug-
gested, at some caricature which, it was said, he had seen
in the shop-window; and which, it was supposed, re-
flected either upon himself or his party. But there was
no evidence in support of either suggestion or supposi-
tion; though, of course, the proof, even of both, would
have no answer to the action. The plaintiff therefore had
a verdict.

MAIDSTONE, TuunsuAir, AUG, S.
CROWN SIDIS.—FOACIEUY.

John Peek alias George Watson, described in the ca-
lendar as a merchant, who pleaded Guilty yesterday to
four several indictments, charging him with having, forged
and uttered, in this county, four different bills of exchange,
purporting to be respectively drawn by certain foreign
houses, and accepted and endorsed by trading firms in this
country, having been humanely allowed by the Learned
Judge time to consider until this morning, whether he
would abide by his plea, or retract it, and take the chances
of a trial, was, at the sitting of the Court, placed at the
bar, when

Mr. Adolphus stated, on his behalf, that since yesterday
some friends of the prisoner had arrived in the town, and
having adVised him, in so serious a case, to stand an ihves-
tigation of the various charges against him, he now respect-
fully claimed .the liberty of availing himself of thnindul-
gence which the Learned Judge ha 4 so tenderly allowed
him permiSsion to seek, if he should be so minded. The
prisoner now wished to withdraw his plea of " guilty,"
and take his trial on the plea of " not guilty."
Mr. Andrews and Mr. Brodrick, counsel for the prose-
cution,
said, they had no resistance to offer to the pri-
Boners. request; but they were placed in this d i faculty, that
in consequence of the prisoner's pertinacious determina-

tion, expresied yesterdaY, of abiding by his plea of guilty,
the witnesses for the Crown had gone away, and.perhaps
it Might be impossible to procure their attendance again,
pending the present assizes, in which case there might be
a failure of justice. A message could lie sent after the
witnesses, and if possible they should be brought back by
Saturday morning. If this were found .impracticable, the
prisoner must consent that the trial should be postponed
until the next assizes.
The matter was ordered to stand over for an hour, at
the end of which time an affidavit was ,produced, stet-.
ing, that one of the most material witnesses far the Crown,
a gentleman near eighty years of age, had been taken,sud-
denly ill on WI way home, and that it was impossible his
attendance could be obtained during these sesizes. Under
these circumstances, it was moved to postpone the trial
until the next gaol delivery.
. No objection was offered on the part of the prisoner,
and it was accordingly ordered that the trial should stand
over until the next winter assizes.

MA NSLAUo !ITER.

Robert Renton, a person of most respectable appear-
ance, was placed at the bar for the purpose of being ar-
raigned on the coroner's charging him, with
feloniously killing and slayingßobert 'Beaton, the younger,
his son, a child of . tender years, by striking him on the
bead with a leather strap, armed with a buckle, at Brom-
ley, in July last. A bill of indictment had been preferred
against him for the same homicide, but it was ignored by
the Grand Jury. Before he was put to plead to the in-
quisition, a conference took place between Mr. Adolphus,
for the Crown, and the Learned Judge, as to the sta.
ciency of the record. It seemed that the inquisition
omitted to state any venue, either in the margin or in the
body of the record, and consequently the Learned Judge
being of, opinion that this was a fatal objection, directed
the inquisition to be quashed. There was another objec-
tion to the inquisition, which would also have been fatal—
namely, as to the mode by which the death of the child
was stated to have been occasioned. Before the prisoner
was removed from the bar,
Mr. Adolphus, with the permission of the Learned

Judge, said a few words to the jury upon the subject of the
lase which had thus so satisfactorily terminated. Some
nterest was no • doubt excited in their minds by the na-
Lure of the offence, from which the unhappy gentleman at
[he bar had been discharged—an offence at which human
nature recoiled. As Counsel for tilt prosecution, it would

have been his painful duty to state the circumstancts of
the case, had not the Learned Judge, with that pAspi-
cuity for which his mind was so much distinguished,
discerned in the outset, a fatal objection to the frame
of the record, which had happily spared the jury the
misery of at, most melancholy inquiry, and the prisoner the
heart-rending recital of a calamity with which, at this mo-
ment, . his soul was absorbed in unutterable grief. In the
determination, of the Learned Judge, upon the objection
alluded to, he Most respectfully and heartily .concurred ;
and he was happy to state, that a heart-broken parent
wiui not doomed to the torture of. baying it made the
subject of deliberate inquiry, whether he had pr had not
caused the death of his own child. No man could an-
swer for the efTects of an accident, which had brought
upon him so great a calamity as the loss of a child, upon
whomhe dilated with parental tenderness. It was due to
the gentleman at
the bar to say publicly, that by accident
icilimp he bad been bereft of the solace—the stay of his de-
fl J s. tad gone abroad
,11112" g Years ; that he had lost a promising and beautiful
4PnYt' ni)-Idr eirettmstancoi of the greatest affliction. Re-
death, It had been. 4 '
of the most unjust and cruel des-
riPti"i tui tiny respeeted the inner of the child's
beaten his son with 4.l*e .
dithat the father bud barbarously
his ~,k,lll. He otr.
.4t-, V of a chair, and bed fractured
. , " I us
from a careful eonsmeratiorlht ) w"
Coroner, authorised to say,
Imid upon subsequeoli:ill that appeared before the
not the most remote shadow of piquiry, that there was
The fact wag, that the child,
.having nth in such a statement.
t. of disobediunce, tiw filth
ac
• tr• 1.44 he lawful y welt? hod