On Friday, March 23, at Lancaster Lent assizes 1827, before Mr. baron
Hullock, came on the trial of an indictment against Edward Gibbon
Wakefield and William Wakefield, (brothers,) Edward Thevenot, (their
servant,) and Frances the wife of Edward Wakefield, (father of the
brothers,) for conspiring by subtle stratagems and false representations
to take and carry away Ellen Turner, a maid, unmarried, and within the
age of sixteen years, the only child and heiress of William Turner, from
the care of the Misses Daulby, who had the education and governance of
Miss Turner, and causing her to contract matrimony with the said Edward
Gibbon Wakefield, without the knowledge and consent of her father, to
her great disparagement, to her father’s discomfort, and against the
king’s peace. Thevenot was acquitted; the other defendants were found
“guilty,” and the brothers stood committed to Lancaster-castle.
To a second indictment, under the statute of 4 and 5 Philip and Mary,
against the brothers, for the abduction of Miss Turner, they withdrew
their plea of “not guilty,” and pleaded “guilty” to the fifth count.
In the course of the defence to the first indictment, David Laing, the
celebrated blacksmith of Gretna-green, was examined; and, indeed, the
trial is only mentioned in these pages, for the purpose of sketching
this anomalous character as he appeared in the witness-box, and
represented his own proceedings, according to _The Times’_ report:--viz.
In appearance this old man was made to assume a superiority over his
usual companions. Somebody had dressed him in a black coat, and velvet
waistcoat and breeches of the same colour, with a shining pair of top
boots--the shape of his hat, too, resembled the clerical fashion. He
seemed a vulgar fellow, though not without shrewdness and that air of
familiarity, which he might be supposed to have acquired by the freedom
necessarily permitted by persons of a better rank of life, to one who
was conscious he had the power of performing for them a guilty, but
important ceremony.
On entering the witness-box, he leaned forward towards the counsel
employed to examine him, with a ludicrous expression of gravity upon his
features, and accompanied every answer with a knitting of his wrinkled
brow, and significant nodding of his head, which gave peculiar force to
his quaintness of phraseology, and occasionally convulsed the court
with laughter.
He was interrogated both by Mr. Scarlett and Mr. Coltman in succession.
Who are you, Laing?
Why, I live in Springfield.
Well, what did you do in this affair?
Why, I was sent for to Linton’s, where I found two gentlemen, as it may
be, and one lady.
Did you know them?