In times past, the
hermitage was a place, not only of religious retirement, but of burial.
And it has scarce, or never been heard of, but that every cell
now known, contains, or contained these relics of humanity; some
mutilated--some entire! Give me leave to remind your Lordship, that here
sat SOLITARY SANCTITY, and here the hermit and the anchorite hoped
that repose for their bones when dead, they here enjoyed when living.
I glance over a few of the many evidences that these cells were used as
repositories of the dead, and enumerate a few of the many caves similar
in origin to St. Robert's, in which human bones have been found." Here
the prisoner instanced, with remarkable felicity, several places, in
which bones had been found, under circumstances, and in spots analogous
to those in point. [Note: See his published defence.] And the reader,
who will remember that it is the great principle of the law, that no man
can be condemned for murder unless the body of the deceased be found,
will perceive at once how important this point was to the prisoner's
defence. After concluding his instances with two facts of skeletons
found in fields in the vicinity of Knaresbro', he burst forth--"Is then
the invention of those bones forgotten or industriously concealed, that
the discovery of these in question may appear the more extraordinary?
Extraordinary--yet how common an event! Every place conceals such
remains. In fields--in hills--in high-way sides--on wastes--on commons,
lie frequent and unsuspected bones. And mark,--no example perhaps occurs
of more than one skeleton being found in one cell. Here you find but
one, agreeable to the peculiarity of every known cell in Britain. Had
two skeletons been discovered, then alone might the fact have seemed
suspicious and uncommon. What! Have we forgotten how difficult, as in
the case of Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Symnell, it has been sometimes to
identify the living; and shall we now assign personality to bones--bones
which may belong to either sex? How know you that this is even the
skeleton of a man? But another skeleton was discovered by some labourer!
Was not that skeleton averred to be Clarke's full as confidently as
this?

"My Lord, my Lord--must some of the living be made answerable for all
the bones that earth has concealed and chance exposed? The skull that
has been produced, has been declared fractured. But who can surely tell
whether it was the cause or the consequence of deat