Elizabeth was absent
to conceal 'a misfortune'; her cunning mother was her accomplice.
There was no proof of Elizabeth's unchastity; nay, she had an
excellent character, 'but there is a time, gentlemen, when people
begin to be wicked.' If engaged for the other side Mr. Davy would have
placed his '_Nemo repente fuit turpissimus_'--no person of unblemished
character wades straight into 'innocent blood,' to use his own phrase.

The Recorder summed up against Elizabeth. He steadily assumed that
Nash was always right, and the neighbours always wrong, as to the
girl's original story. He said nothing of Bennet; the tanner's dog had
done for Bennet. He said that, if the Enfield witnesses were right,
the Dorset witnesses were wilfully perjured. He did not add that, if
the Dorset witnesses were right, the Enfield testifiers were perjured.

The jury brought in a verdict of 'Guilty of perjury, but not wilful
and corrupt.' This was an acquittal, but, the Recorder refusing the
verdict, they did what they were desired to do, and sentence was
passed. Two jurors made affidavit that they never intended a
conviction. The whole point had turned, in the minds of the jury, on
a discrepancy as to when Elizabeth finished the water in the broken
pitcher--on Wednesday, January 27, or on Friday, January 29. Both
accounts could not be true. Here, then, was 'perjury,' thought the
jury, but not 'wilful and corrupt,' not purposeful. But the jury had
learned that 'the court was impatient;' they had already brought
Elizabeth in guilty of perjury, by which they meant guilty of a casual
discrepancy not unnatural in a person hovering between life and death.
They thought that they could not go back on their 'Guilty,' and so
they went all the way to 'corrupt and wilful perjury'--murder by false
oath--and consistently added 'an earnest recommendation to mercy'!

By a majority of one out of seventeen judges, Elizabeth was banished
for seven years to New England. She was accused in the Press of being
an 'enthusiast,' but the Rev. William Reyner, who attended her in
prison, publicly proclaimed her a good Churchwoman and a good girl
(June 7, 1754). Elizabeth (June 24) stuck to her guns in a
manifesto--she had not once 'knowingly deviated from the truth.'

Mr. Davy had promised the jury that when Elizabeth was once condemned
all would come out--the whole secret. But though the most careful
attempts were made to discover her whereabouts from January 1 to
Janua