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.

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    % L so ] This Delamarre continued to refide at Paris front his firft eftablifhment there, in 1734, to the day of his death, which was not till 15th May 1753. It has been fhewn in the plaintiff’s Cafe to the Houfe of Lords, that the fuppofed letters were forged by Sir John Stewart with the participation of Lady Jane Douglas, and that the laid of them was forged in the year 1752 at lateff ; It was impoffibie indeed that thefe letters, found in Lady jane’s cabinet at her death, could at any rate have been forged much later than Summer 1752, as Lady Jane herfelf died in Auguft 1753 ; and when the forged letters were produced to Sir John Stew¬ art at his examination, he folemnly declared, that he had not feen them from a long time before Lady Jane’? death till that day. The evidence referred to in the plaintiff’s Cafe clear¬ ly afcertains it, that the laff of them was forged at lateff: in Summer 1752, before Lady Jane’s vifit to her bro¬ ther the Duke of Douglas, at his caftle of Douglas ; confequently many months before the death of Louis Pierre Delamarre, . * Is it pofiible then to conceive, if this man, who was then alive, and refided at Paris, had been the perfon that affifted at the birth, that Sir John Stewart and Lady jane Douglas, to fave themfelves the trouble of writing to Paris, and getting genuine letters from him, would have deliberately fet about the crime of forgery, and have expofed themfelves, not only to the infa¬ my ariiing from a detection of that crime, but run the rifk of making the whole ftory of the delivery difbelieyed, by transferring it to a different perfon, one who in every refpecl was inconfiftent with Dela- marre of Paris?-1 fay, my Lord, that when the attention to this circumftance is fufficiently excited, it exceeds the powers of eloquence tq perfuade any mail in his fenfes that thefe things could have happened, if Lady