The Express. — 1863-12-16 (London, England)

ARNEIEI.II, Dzc. 12.  A criminal charge which has excited great sensation throughout the country, has just been heard by the chief criminal court of the province of Guelderland. The accused, George Hornidge, alias Henry Charles Somerset Lee, aged 71, a British subject, was charged with having maliciously and wilfully murdered his neighbour, Captain Van Dongen Franke, of the Netherlands army. From the evidence it appeared that the prisoner, who had been an officer in the British army, had fought, in 1824, a duel, in the pariah of Bleesington county of Wicklow, with one William Wallace, and had killed his antagonist under circumstances which induced him to fly his country. During several years he led a roving life, and at last settled in this quiet town of Arubeini, entering himself in the town-registry as Henry Charles Somerset Lee. Here he lived quietly for many years, seldom visiting, seldom visited by his neighbours. His next door neighbour, Captain Van Dongen Fraucke, had at first been on terms of friendliness with him ; but owing to a misunderstanding arising, in a great measure from idle gossipings, a sort of cat-and-dog feeling had gradually arises between them. ?rendre and his wife weft, it would seem, aware of the irritable temperament of their neighbour, and taxed their inventive faculties in finding out means of annoying him. This effort was not unretaliated by Hornidge. When the one wanted to take his nap the other would knock at the partition wall, or work at a pump, so as to shake the very house in which he lived. When people study to be disagreeable there is no limit to the means they can employ, and these two neighbours seem to have availed themselves of every opportunity to annoy and exasperate each other. At length, on tbe 20thof last duly, Franck% it seems, irritated at the abuse Hornidge had lavished upon him a short time before, disturbed his neighbour in such a way as made his blood boil with fury. Arming himself with deadly weapons, be went into his garden, and, forcing his way intothat lof his neighbour, whom be found near the pump, he inflicted upon him, such severe wounds as in a short time after caused his death. The prisoner pleaded in extenuation of his crime that his passion had overpowered him—that he had been so exasperated by the petty annoyances inflicted on him, more especially by the wife of the murdered man, that he had lost all control over himself. Twentytwo witnesses were beard for the prosecution, and three for the defence. In a speech of three hours the Advocate-General detailed the past history of the accusal, and worked up into • painfully interesting narrative the circumstances which preceded the murder. At the conclusion of his speech,which is said to have been one of the most magnificent efforts of forensic eloquence ever heard in a Dutch court of justice, he demanded that the court should pass upon the prisoner 'lectern* of death,and further inflict on him the—of course formal—fine of 50 guilders. The counsel for the defence pleaded in mitigation of the charge that the crime had been committed in a tit of exasperation, and that justice would be satisfied by a verdict of manslaughter. The court has deferred sentence till the 18th December.  Throughout the trial the court was crowded ; while the aged prisoner seemed bowed down with a grief which won for him the commiseration even of those who felt most strongly the condemnatory character of the evidence elicited by the prosecution. The opinion generally entertained is that the evidence is not of a character that will permit the court to be influenced by the counsel for the defence, and that sentence of death will accordingly be recorded. The King, however, almost invariably remits the extreme sentence into imprisonment for life. A few years ago, too, an aged Dutch officer was convicted of poisoning his mistress, but his sentence was remitted into a life-long imprisonment, and therefore it is not probable that a petition to his Majesty in this case will be made in vain.