The prisoner was next indicted for having, in October 1839, married Mary Ann Wilson, daughter of George Wilson, a tobacconist, of Newcastle. The marriage to Miss Skidmore was again proved by the certificate, which bore his lordship’s mark. The prisoner, it appeared, had advertised for a wife in the Newcastle papers. In that town he appears to have attached himself to the Wesleyan Methodists. By his professions of religion and his teetotal pledges, he obtained a high character for morality and sanctity. Miss Wilson said she first saw the prisoner in October at a Methodist chapel in Newcastle. On the same day she met him at a class-meeting. On the 16th of October she was introduced to him by a friend, when he promised to call upon her at three o’clock that afternoon. He did so, and as soon as he sat down, he pulled out a tin case which was marked “Robert Taylor, otherwise Lord Kenedy.” He said he was entitled to 60,000l. a year, and other hereditaments. The following day he made her an offer of marriage, and she accepted him. He said if he could get the loan of some money, they would be married the next morning. Her father lent him 4l.; a licence was bought; and they were married the day but one after she had accepted him, and three days after her introduction to him. Eighteen days after this he deserted her, and she heard no more of him till he was in custody.
By the prisoner: “He spoke of putting in the bans. She did not say ‘she would rather be married off-hand.’ ”
Prisoner: “Oh, yes, Mary, you did. I consented to take you immediately if the money was raised, and you raised it.”
The jury returned a verdict of “Guilty.”
The court having spent some time in deliberation,
The chairman said: “You have for some time been going about the country in a most unprincipled way, marrying weak and unsuspecting girls, and bringing misery upon them and their friends. We have seriously considered whether it is not imperative upon us to visit you with the severest penalty that the law allows. We have determined, however, to stop short of this; but you must be punished with great severity for your wicked conduct. For the first offence of which you have been convicted, you are sentenced to be imprisoned one year to hard labour; and for the second, to be imprisoned eighteen months to hard labour, making altogether two years and a half.”
Prisoner: “Gentlemen, when I come out again, will any of my wives have a claim upon me?”
The court declined to answer the question, and he then requested that his “dockyments” might be restored to him.
The court thought it better to make no order; they might be placed in the hands of the governor of the jail.
The mother of the prisoner, on quitting the court, finding herself an object of some attraction, became somewhat communicative on her family history. Among other things, she stated that her son was one of General Evans’s “Legion;” and that she had sent a letter into Spain, which had the effect of procuring his return to England. She had come from Workington, in Cumberland, a distance of one hundred and fifteen miles, to attend the trial; for “her son was her son,” and she could not rest without coming. One thing she would not allow curiosity to penetrate—and that was, the mystery which hung over the prisoner’s birth. She had “kept the secret” nineteen years, and was not going to reveal it in the twentieth. All that she would say was, that “she had him to a real gentleman.”