He, singling out his
lordship, studied to do something particular that the mayor might
remember him, and then took occasion to ask him what o'clock it was. The
mayor, pulling out his watch, told him the time, which was a quarter
before, or a quarter after eight at night. Upon a prosecution for this
robbery, the whole merit of the case turned upon this single point:--the
person robbed, swore to the man, to the place, and to the time, in which
the robbery was committed; but Nicks, proving by the Lord Mayor of
York, that he was as far off as _Yorkshire_ at that time, the jury
acquitted him on the bare supposition, that the man could not be at two
places so remote on one and the same day.
[9] Fenny, or Fen Stanton, not Stratford, must be here meant, as
the former is in the direct road from Cambridge to Huntingdon.
I need not remind your numerous readers that the roads in 1676 were in a
very different plight to those of 1831; at the former period it would
not have been possible for Tom Thumb to have trotted sixteen miles an
hour on any turnpike road in England. Even my friend, the respected
driver of the Old Union Cambridge Coach to London, can remember, in his
time, the coach being two days on the road, and occasionally being
indebted to farmers for the loan of horses to drag the coach wheels out
of their sloughy tracks.
Pages:
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66