mediately agreed to go before the Honourable Sir William Thompson,[77]
in order to procure a warrant. There they made an affidavit of the
several circumstances attending their discovery, and Sir William upon
the examination also of a lady (who produced a piece of lace before she
had seen the ruffle, and declared that if it were Mr. Darby's it must
tally therewith, which on a comparison it did exactly) granted a
warrant. It appeared also at the same time, upon the oath of Mr.
Willoughby, that the day Mr. Darby was murdered, Fisher borrowed
half-a-crown of him to pay his washerwoman, and was in the utmost
necessity for money.

A woman swore that a person very like Fisher was hovering about Mr.
Darby's chambers the night the murder was committed, and it was proved
by the oath of another person that Fisher came not to his lodgings till
two o'clock on Tuesday morning, on which Mr. Darby was murdered. About
eight o'clock a porter came and informed Fisher of Mr. Darby's being
murdered, at which he shewed little concern and locked himself up for
some hours.

Things being thus over at Sir William Thompson's, Mr. Willoughby, Mr.
York, and Mr. Moody, returned to Fisher's lodgings. About two o'clock
in the morning he came in, and they seized him, having a constable and
proper assistance for that purpose. On Sunday noon, he was carried
before Sir William Thompson in order to be examined, where he said:

That about the latter end of the week in which Mr. Darby was murdered,
as he was passing through Lincoln's Inn Fields, about four in the
afternoon, be took up under the wall of Lincoln's Inn Gardens, a white
paper parcel in which were contained several things of great value
belonging to the deceased; some of the diamonds he acknowledged he sold
to a jeweller in Paternoster Row for ten guineas, the watch he pawned
for nine guineas to a person at a brazier's in Bond Street, and sold the
gold chain and swivels to a person in Lombard Street. He absolutely
denied all knowledge of the murder, and said that at the time it
happened he was at a billiard table in Duke Street, by St. James's. When
taken there was found upon him two of Mr. Darby's rings with the stones
taken out, wrapped up in a paper, with his seal the arms of which were
taken out, and in these circumstances he was committed to Newgate.

Soon after this the coroner granted his warrant, and an order being
thereupon obtained from the Commons, Mr. Darby's body was taken up and