original claimant.

Lord Chelmsford next delivered a long judgment, agreeing with that of
the Lord Chancellor, and in the course of it remarked that it was
impossible to disbelieve the story of the alleged birth, as he did,
without coming to the conclusion that certain of the witnesses had
been guilty of the grave crimes of conspiracy and perjury. With
reference to the Liverpool story, he said he was satisfied that the
child brought into the workhouse by Mary Best, and taken by her to
Yorkshire, was not that of which she had been confined, although he
did not believe her statement of the way in which she had become
possessed of the child which she had subsequently passed off as her
own.

Lords Colonsay and Redesdale concurred; and the Earl of Winchelsea, as
a lay lord, and one of the public, gave it as his opinion that the
story told by Mrs. Howard was utterly incredible, being only worthy to
form the plot of a sensational novel. He regretted that Mr. Baudenave,
the principal mover in this conspiracy, would escape unscathed.

Their lordships, therefore, resolved that Mrs. Howard's child had no
claim to the earldom; but that Charles Francis Arnold Howard, the son
of the Hon. Rev. Francis Howard, by his second marriage, had made out
his right to vote at the election of representative peers for Ireland
as Earl of Wicklow.

AMELIA RADCLIFFE--THE SO-CALLED COUNTESS OF DERWENTWATER.

The unhappy fate of James, the last Earl of Derwentwater, has been so
often recounted, both in prose and verse, that it is almost
unnecessary to repeat the story; but lest any difficulty should be
found in understanding the grounds on which the so-called countess now
bases her pretensions, the following short summary may be found
useful:--

James Radcliffe, the third and last Earl of Derwentwater, suffered
death on Tower Hill, in the prime of his youth, for his devotion to
the cause of the pretender. He is described as having been brave,
chivalrous, and generous; his name has been handed down from
generation to generation as that of a martyr; and his memory even yet
remains green among the descendants of those amongst whom he used to
dwell, and to whom he was at once patron and friend.

When he was twenty-three years of age he espoused Anna Maria, eldest
daughter of Sir John Webb of Cauford, in the county of Dorset, and had
by her an only son, the Hon. John Radcliffe, and a daughter, who
afterwards married the eighth Lord Petre.