se. He asked for
further time, but this the judges refused.

One of the chief witnesses for the Crown was Goodenough, who had a
personal spite against Cornish for his having objected to him (Goodenough)
serving as under-sheriff in 1680-1, the year when Bethell and Cornish were
sheriffs.(1569) Goodenough had risked his neck in Monmouth's late
rebellion, but he had succeeded in obtaining a pardon by promises of
valuable information against others. With the king's pardon in his pocket
he unblushingly declared before the judges that he, as well as Cornish and
some others, had determined upon a general rising in the city at the time
of the Rye House Plot. "We designed," said he, "to divide it (_i.e._, the
city) into twenty parts, and out of each part to raise five hundred men,
if it might be done, to make an insurrection."(1570) The Tower was to be
seized and the guard expelled.

Cornish had been afforded no opportunity for instructing counsel in his
defence. He was therefore obliged to act as his own counsel, with the
result usual in such cases. He rested his main defence upon the
improbability of his having acted as the prosecution endeavoured to make
out. This he so persistently urged that the judges lost patience.
Improbability was not enough, they declared; let him call his witnesses.
When, however, Cornish desired an adjournment in order that he might bring
a witness up from Lancashire, his request was refused. His chief witness
he omitted to call until after the lord chief justice had summed up. This
man was a vintner of the city, named Shephard, at whose house Cornish was
charged with having met and held consultation with Monmouth and the rest
of the conspirators. The bench after some demur assented to the prisoner's
earnest prayer that Shephard's evidence might be taken. He showed that he
had been in the habit of having commercial transactions with Cornish and
was at that moment in his debt; that on the occasion in question Cornish
had come to his house, but whether he came to speak with the Duke of
Monmouth or not the witness could not say for certain; that he only
remained a few minutes, and that no paper or declaration (on which so much
stress had been laid) in connection with the conspiracy was read in
Cornish's presence; that in fact Cornish was not considered at the time as
being in the plot. Such evidence, if not conclusive, ought to have gone
far towards obtaining a verdict of acquittal for the prisoner. Thi