Roger had been engaged to a
young lady, his cousin, Kate Doughty; this man had been engaged to a
young woman of Wapping, of the name of Mary Ann Loader, a respectable
girl in his own sphere of life.
Roger's engagement to this young lady, his cousin, was disapproved of
by the Tichborne family, and was the cause of his leaving England. But
before he went he gave her a writing, and deposited a copy of it with
Mr. Gosford, the legal adviser of the family.
This document was one of the most important incidents in the history
of the case, and upon it, if the cross-examination had been conducted
by Mr. Hawkins in Chancery, the case would have been crushed at the
outset. It is not my task to show how, but to state what it all came
to when the learned counsel left it to the jury to say whether the
claimant _was_ the Roger Tichborne he had sworn himself to be, or
whether he was Arthur Orton, the butcher of Wapping, whom he swore he
was not.
This document forms the subject of the "sealed packet" left with Mr.
Gosford, and contained in effect these words: "If God spares me to
return and marry my beloved Kate within a year, I promise to build a
church and dedicate it to my patron saint."
Till his cross-examination in Chancery he had never heard of this
packet, and when he was informed of it his solicitor naturally
demanded a copy.
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