Bowditch said, " The child would be a
fool if the godmothers were not kissed."
The whole party then kissed Miss Glenn
and Elizabeth; James Bowditch was jealous,
but Miss Glenn went up to him and
said, " Oh, never mind, that's nothing."
It was also proved that Mary Whitby was
there all that evening.

About this most important matter of
the christening—which, if proved, at once
stamped Miss Glenn as perjured—there was
hard fighting. Mr. Tuckett swore that on
the very day of the christening, the 27th
of August, he went over to Holway Farm,
and remained with Miss Glenn from eleven
till four. He remembered that he saw
none of the Bowditches, and was struck with
the peculiar stillness of the house. Mrs.
Bowditch had often remarked to him Miss
Glenn's pretty, modest behaviour. On being
cross-examined, however, Mr. Tuckett confessed
that it was not till two months afterwards
at Bath, that he remembered and
mentioned that special visit to Holway.

James Woodford a carpenter, deposed
that he was in Magdalene Church repairing
a pew, when the christening took place.
He particularly remembered Susan Bowditch,
one of the godmothers, because she
had a defect in one eye. Miss Glenn was
not there. The day was that on which a
funeral took place of a young man who
had been drowned. Mr. Scarlett, however,
called witnesses to show that the christening
seen by the carpenter was of a Mr. Scarlett's
child, and the man's own wages book
showed that on the day of the Mulraine
christening he had been working at home.
A rebuke for ignorance he remembered to
have been administered to the godfather
James Bowditch was proved to have happened
at the Scarlett christening. But the
most conclusive and fatal evidence was
that of Mrs. Atkinson, at whose house Mr.
Tuckett lodged at Bath. She deposed
seeing Whitby the servant in great distress
at Miss Glenn's arrival. She said she
had done that which would never let her
be happy again. She then confessed that
Miss Glenn had been to the christening of
Mrs. Mulraine's child.

The evidence of Jane Marke, one of Mr.
Tuckett's servants, was conclusive as to
Miss Glenn's elopement being voluntary.
Miss Glenn confessed to witness that she had
been at the christening. Miss Glenn threattened
to poison herself if witness told her
uncle of the intended elopement.

Many highly respectable witnesses unacquainted
with the Bowditches, and unprejudiced
in the case, then swore to having
seen Miss Glenn and James Bowditch together
several times in French Weir-fields
and East Reach the week before the elopement.
A servant of the Bowditches was also
called and deposed to having frequently
seen Miss Glenn in the Bowditches' kitchen,
playing with them at blind-man's buff.

That was the case: Mr. Scarlett, in an
eloquent speech, said that Mr. Serjeant
Pell had told the jury that Miss Glenn
would undergo the strictest examination
at his hands; "but," said the learned
counsel, " I should be sorry to become an
instrument in causing that unhappy young
lady to add any more sin to a conscience
already overloaded with guilt. I feel more
for her future state, when she will have to
appear before a higher tribunal, than I can
possibly feel for my clients." The conduct
of Mr. Tuckett had disgraced the profession
to which he belonged. The Bowditches
up to the period of the Dorchester
trial had borne irreproachable characters,
and had been an established and respectable
family in the neighbourhood of Taunton
for upwards of a century. As to James.
Bowditch obtaining a marriage licence, he
was prepared to prove that Miss Glenn had
imposed upon him as to her age, and that
on his discovering the fact, he had refused
to have the marriage solemnised, and had
intended to wait until banns had been
published.

The jury immediately returned a verdict
of Guilty. That same night Mr. Tuckett.
and Miss Glenn fled together and embarked
in the first West Indian steamer
that started from Bristol. So much for
Miss Glenn's timid modesty. The Examiner
at once took up the case of the ill-used
Bowditches, and started a subscription
to defray the two thousand five hundred
pounds they had incurred as the cost of
legal proceedings.

At the next assizes all the Bar went in
a body to see Mr. Tuckett's house; they
found it very small, and without the gallery
and French windows alluded to by Miss
Glenn, in her romantic version of the
elopement.

The astounding wonder of the trial is
that the courts of those days did not insist
on measurements. Models were not then
in fashion. Miss Glenn was taken out of
her uncle's house, she said, by force, in the
middle of the night, yet without waking the
family. And no wonder; for the evidence
given about the " corridor," and the "gallery,"
and the "hall," made the house appear
like a duke's mansion. The thing was
wonderful, even on the mansion theory;