of which was to excite the
public mind still further, appeared; and the newspapers contained long
lists of subscribers to the Tichborne defence fund. This unexampled
system of creating prejudice with regard to a great trial still
pending was permitted to continue long after the criminal trial had
commenced. There had been proceedings, it is true, for contempt
against the Claimant and his supporters, Mr. Onslow, Mr. Whalley, and Mr.
Skipworth, and fine and imprisonment were inflicted; but the agitation
continued, violent attacks were made upon witnesses, and even upon the
judges then engaged in trying the case, and at length the Court was
compelled peremptorily to forbid all appearances of the Claimant at
public meetings.

The great "Trial at Bar," presided over by Sir Alexander Cockburn,
Lord Chief-Justice of the Queen's Bench, Mr. Justice Mellor, and Mr.
Justice Lush, commenced on the 23d of April, 1873, and ended on the
28th of February 1874--a period of a little over ten months. On the
side of the prosecution 212 witnesses gave their testimony; but the
documentary evidence, including the enormous mass of Roger Tichborne's
letters, so valuable as exhibiting the character, the pursuits, the
thoughts, and feelings of the writer, were scarcely less important.
The entire Tichborne and Seymour families may be said to have given
their testimony against the defendant. Lady Doughty had passed away
from the troubled scene since the date of the last trial; but she had
been examined and cross-examined on her death bed, and had then
repeated the evidence which she gave on the previous occasion, and
declared that the Claimant was an impostor. Lady Radcliffe again
appeared in the witness-box, and told her simple story, confirmed as
it was in all important particulars by the correspondence and other
records. Old Paris friends and acquaintances were unanimous. Father
Lefevre and the venerable Abbe Salis, Chatillon the tutor and his
wife, and numerous others, declared this man was not Roger Tichborne,
and exposed his ignorance both of them and their past transactions.
When questioned, the defendant had sworn that his father never had a
servant named Gossein; but the letters of Sir James were shown to
contain numerous allusions to "my faithful Gossein," and Gossein
himself came into the witness-box and told how he had known Roger
Tichborne from the cradle to his boyhood, and from his boyhood to the
very hour of his going on his travel