After the question had been argued at great length, for
several days successively, the Court of Exchequer found,
as the two other courts had done, that the appeal from
the Court of Arches was to the Judicial Committee of
the Privy Council, and refused the bishop's application,
with costs.

At the Central Criminal Court on the 9th, two men
named Bayley and Lawler, were convicted of Conspiring
to Cheat Thomas Bland, a butcher, of £58. The prisoners
are what is called "skittle-sharpers." They got into
conversation with their dupe at a public-house, and
induced him to go to a skittle-ground. Lawler and
Bayley began to play for money; Bayley seemed quite
drunk and ignorant of the game. He lost every game,
and eventually Bland was tempted to bet against him.
Bayley then began to improve amazingly, and won
from the butcher; but the spirit of gambling was roused
within him. He lost all his money, and when he had
no more, went to a friend and borrowed £45, which he
lost also. He then began to find that he had been
cheated, and gave his fellow-gamblers into custody.
They were sentenced to a year's imprisonment.

The Court of Exchequer, after a trial of several days,
decided on the 9th an action on a Policy of Insurance
effected with the Albion Company on the life of a
Captain Clayton. The claim for the sum insured was
resisted on the ground that Captain Clayton was of
drunken and intemperate habits, while he had been
represented when the policy was obtained as being of
sober and temperate habits. The case turned entirely
upon the question, what constituted intemperate habits.
An enormous quantity of evidence on this point, of the
most contradictory kind, was taken; the most opposite
accounts of Captain Clayton's habits being given by
different witnesses. The result was a verdict against the
assurance company for £539, the amount of the sum in
the policy, with interest. In charging the jury, the Lord
Chief Baron said that it would have been far better for
the Albion Company to have lost the sum at stake than
to have contested the point in a court of justice. On
this trial the Times made the important remark,
that "the only mode in which absolute security can
be obtained by the public must lie in the general
adoption by assurance offices of the plan of protecting
themselves in every case by due inquiries before the
granting of the policy, and of afterwards assuming the
full responsibility for the completeness of such inquiries
by holding themselves precluded from raising any future
question."

At the Westminster Police Court on the 9th, Eliza
Medland, a woman with half a dozen aliases, was charged
with endeavouring to Obtain Money by Fake Pretences,
from Prince Albert. She had written to the Prince as
"M. A. Purkess," setting forth that she had a child
suffering from a disease of the spine, for which sea-bathing
was ordered, and soliciting £5, on the score of
having been wet nurse to the Princess Alice Maude.
The name of the wet nurse was Perkins, not Purkess,
and Col. Phipps, the Prince's Secretary, detected the
applicant as an impostor. She was remanded, there
being other charges against her, and brought up again on
the 13th, when it was proved that she had endeavoured
to extract money from the Marchioness of Londonderry,
by representing herself as Mrs. Macbride, a poor woman
with a husband out of work, a dead child, and no means
to bury it. She tried to get off by promising amendment
for the future, but the magistrate sent her to the
House of Correction for three months, remarking, "if
you have formed any resolution of amendment, you can
carry it into effect when you come out."

Henry Page and Emma Clarke, whose case was
mentioned in last month's Narrative, were tried on the 10th
at the Central Criminal Court, for Bigamy. The evidence,
however, failed to substantiate the charge, and they
were both acquitted.

At Devizes Assizes on the 10th, Abraham Hicks was
tried for Cutting and Wounding Elizabeth Henley with
intent to murder or do her grievous bodily harm. The
woman, who is married and has a family, was walking
homewards when she came up with Hicks, a married
man, and offered him a pint of beer to give her a lift in
his cart. He took her in, and began to take improper
liberties with her; she resisted, and his brutal passions
being aroused, he abused her frightfully, kicking and
beating her almost to death, and then throwing her out
of the cart. She was found lying insensible on the road,
and had suffered injuries from which she can never
recover. The man was convicted, and sentenced to
transportation for life.

Robert Pate, late lieutenant in the 10th hussars, was
tried in the Central Criminal Court on the 11th, for
Striking the Queen on the Face With a Cane. The
assault (the circumstances of which were adverted to in
our last number) was fully proved, and the prisoner
was defended only on the plea of insanity. This was sought
to be established by a variety of evidence. Several of
his brother officers proved that his character became
changed in 1844, after the loss of three favourite horses,
which were destroyed in consequence of having been
bitten by a mad dog. He had previously been an
exemplary officer; but he then became subject to strange
delusions, forsook the mess, neglected his person and his duty,
and at length left the regiment without leave and went
home to his father, by whom he was sent back. He was
allowed to resume duty without punishment in consideration
of the weakess of his mind, but ultimately a
communication was made to his father advising his
retirement from the regiment, and he sold his commission.
His habits were proved to be eccentric in the
extreme. He rose at seven and bathed in water containing
whiskey and camphor, shouting and singing all the
while; he never received company, and always had his
blinds down. A cab-driver stated that he attended him
every day, in all kinds of weather, for eighteen months,
and drove him exactly the same drive, over Putney
Heath and Barnes Common; he always alighted at a
particular spot near a pond, and after looking into the pond
for some minutes, returned to the cab. In the cab he
sat flourishing his stick as if he were repelling an attack,
and people used to ask the cabman if the gentleman
was right in his mind. He regularly paid a fare of
nine shillings, every shilling turned with the face up and
looking one way; for the turnpikes he always had a
sixpence and a large penny-piece, which his servant had
regularly to provide. Mr. James Starten, surgeon, of
Savill Row, had formerly noticed the prisoner in
Kensington Gardens, and cautioned his wife not to
attract his attention, as he was obviously a '"poor lunatic"—
"dangerous." Afterwards he casually became
acquainted with the prisoner, and communicated with
his father on the state of his mind. Mr. Pate, the
prisoner's father, stated many facts proving that he had
always felt that his son must go into an asylum; but
under Dr. Conolly's advice, he had postponed taking
measures, because in London his son had not been so
bad as when first he left Ireland. The O'Gorman
Mahon, M.P., avowed his belief that the prisoner would
be the last man in the world to do a dishonourable or
disloyal act. Inspector Squire stated, that the police
had long observed the prisoner's eccentric gait and wild
gestures in the street; he was known to them by the
name of  "Cut-and-thrust," from his mode of flourishing
his cane as he rushed along. The Reverend Charles
Driscoll saw him on the afternoon of the assault on the
queen; he stood near Cambridge House for a short
time, and then started off in a more excited manner than
usual to him, so as to induce Mr. Driscoll to notice him
more attentively. Dr. Conolly and Dr. Munro gave
their opinions distinctly, that the piisoner was now
insane; not under any specific delusion, and knowing
right from wrong in conversation, but liable to act under
sudden and uncontrollable impulses, which he might
even know to be wrong. Dr. Munro concluded his
evidence by saying that from all he had heard to-day,
and from his own personal examination, he was satisfied
that the prisoner was of unsound mind. The learned
doctor was sharply taken up by the judge, Baron
Alderson. "If you can give us," he said, "the results
of your scientific knowledge on the point, we shall be
glad to hear you; but I will not permit any medical
witness to usurp the functions of the judge and the
jury." Dr. Monro apologised, and said he considered
that he had only answered the question put to him.
Baron Alderson, "in summing up, corrected a grievous
delusion in the minds of medical men, that a man is
unpunishable because he is insane. The only insanity