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desiring that visit, making no scruple of acknowledging the uneasi-
ness he was under, and conjuring his visitor frankly to discover his
reasons for acquitting the prisoner. The juryman returned for an an-
swer, that he had sufficient reasons to justify his conduct, and that
he was neither afraid nor ashamed to reveal them, but that as be had
hitherto locked them up in his own breast, and was under no compul-
sion to disclose them, he expected his lordship would engage upon his
honor to keep what he was about to unfold as secret as he himself
had done; which his lordship having promised to do, the juryman
then proceeded to give his lordship the following account : That the
deceased being titheman of the parish where he (the juryman) lived,
he bad, the morning of his decease, been in his (the juryman's)
grounds amongst his corn, and had done him great injustice, by taking
more than his due, and acting otherwise in a most arbitrary manner.
That when be complained of this treatment, he bad not only been
abused with scurrilous language, but that the deceased had likewise
struck at him several times with his fork, and had actually wounded
him in two places, the scars of which wounds be then showed to his
lordship ; that the deceased seeming bent on mischief, and he (the
juryman) having no weapon to defend himself, had no other way to
preserve his own life but by closing with the deceased and wrench-
ing the fork out of his hands, which having effected, the deceased at-
tempted to recover the fork, and in the scufe received the two
wounds which had occasioned his death; that he was inexpressibly
concerned at the accident, and especially when the prisoner was taken
up on the suspicion of the murder; that the former assizes being but
just over, he was unwilling to surrender himself and to confess the
matter, because his farm and affairs would have been ruined by his
lying in jail so long; that he was sure to have been acquitted on his
trial, for that he bad consulted the ablest lawyers upon the case, who
bad all agreed, that as the deceased had been the aggressor, he would
only have been guilty of manslaughter at the most; that it was true
he had suffered greatly in, his own mind on the prisoner's account, but
being well assured that imprisonment would be of less ill consequence
to the prisoner than to himself, he had suffered the law to take its
course; that in order to render the prisoner's confinement as easy to
him as possible, he had given him every kind of assistance, and had
wholly supported his family ever since; that in order to get him
cleared of the charge laid against him, he could think of no other ex-
pedient than that of procuring himself to be summoned on the jury,
and set at the head of them, which with great labor and expense he
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