Volume 1

Letters to the Right Honourable Lord Mansfield. From Andrew Stuart, esq. [On the Douglas Peerage Cause.] / [Andrew Stuart].

  • Andrew Stuart
Date:
[1773]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters to the Right Honourable Lord Mansfield. From Andrew Stuart, esq. [On the Douglas Peerage Cause.] / [Andrew Stuart]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/208 (page 12)
    [ ■* ] but that two Tons fhould be produced at a birth, where they were fo much wanted, and as her firft-fruits, in this advanced period of her age, approached fo much to the marvellous, as to be in a very high degree improbable. A fa£l, fo circumftanced, as that the hiftory of human nature affords very few if any inftances truly fimilar, muff be acknowleged not only to be improbable, but incredi¬ ble, until it be well attefted. If it be true, that a very improbable or extraordinary faft requires to be fupported by evidence unfufpe&ed, and much ffronger than a probable one, it mu ft alfo be true, that when falfe or forged evidence is employed in fupport of that improbable fa£V, the influence of it, upon all the other parts of the evidence produced in fupport of the fame fa£t, ought to be more powerful and deciftve than in the cafe of a probable and natural one. In the Anglefea caufe, neither Lord Anglefea nor his wife were the perl'ons who forged the certificate of the marriage in 1741. It is all in the hand-writing of Laurence Neal the clergyman, who is fuppofed to have married them in 1741 ; and the only parts of the certifi¬ cate thought to be forged, are the fubfcriptions of the two witnelfes to it, particularly the fublcription of Charles Kavanagh : Neither were thefe fubfcriptions fuppofed to be forged either by Lord or Lady Anglefea perfonally, but this forged certificate was found in the cuftody of Lady Anglefea, where it is faid to have remained from the year 1741 to the year 1752, when firft produced, and it remained in the fame hands till it was depolited in the Spiritual Court of Dublin in 1762. In the Douglas caufe, the four forged letters were not forged by indifferent perfons, or third parties, but by Sir John Stewart himfelf, the fuppofed father of the claimant in that caufe. This fa<ft was proved by the moft irrefifti- ble evidence, and in the courfe of the caufe was acknow¬ ledged