The Description she gave of the Room in which she had been confined, is urged by you to justify; but, Sir, that Circumstance alone ought to condemn her. Let me not be understood to speak of that Description, which she gave after she had seen it: That Subterfuge may serve for the Excuse of those who will be found to want it. But let us now enquire with better Judgment: Let us, Sir, appeal to that Account she gave before the sitting Alderman, by whom she was first examined; and we shall find it countenance the worst that can be thought against her. Observe the Articles.
She described it to be a dark Room; in which she lay upon the Boards; in which there was nothing except a Grate with a Gown in it; and a few Pictures over the Chimney; from which she made her Escape by forcing down some Boards, and out of which she had before discovered the Face of a Coachman, through certain Cracks in the Side.
Let those who have seen the Room speak whether this was a Description of it. They will answer No. No, not in
any one Particular. Far from being dark, there are two Windows in it. These have Casements which were unfastened, out at which she might have escaped, had she been confined in it; so that pulling down of Boards to that Purpose could not be necessary: Out at these also, I suppose, the might have seen this Coachman, so that she needed not to peep through Cracks. There was no Grate in the Chimney: so that no body could have been guilty of this most housewifely Trick of putting a Gown in one: Nor were there any Pictures over it. Of the latter there was no Probability to be any, because the House had no Profusion of Furniture, and this was a Room of Lumber: And it is palpable there could have been no Grate in the Chimney of a long Time; for the whole Expanse of it was found covered and overspread with Cobwebs, the Work of many Generations of unmolested Spiders. Oh Providence that assists in these Discoveries!
But though there was not what she said she saw in the Chimney, there was about it, Sir, that which she must have seen, had she been there, and which, had she been there twenty-eight Days, she must have seen often enough to have remembered it; there
was a Casement, put up over the Chimney to be out of the Way: and this not newly laid there, for it was also fixed to the Wall by Cobwebs of long Standing.
If this were all, Sir, is not this enough to prove she never was in the Place? But this is little to the rest. There was a Quantity of Hay, near half a Load, there: Surely too large a Matter to have been overlooked, and too important to have been forgotten: And there were a multitude of Things besides; some if not all of which she must have remembered; but not any one of all which she mentioned.
Some who went first down, Neighbours and Men of Credit, who went to countenance and to support her, had heard her Account of the Room, and when they saw it, were convinced that her Description did not at all belong to it: they gave her up, and they are to be found to say so. Some who were too officious, eager to have the Story true, because themselves believed it, got there before her also; these, when they had heard the Objections, rode back Part of the Way to meet her, and after some Conversation with her; after, for, if I may have
Leave to conjecture from the Circumstance, that is the least that can be supposed, asking her if there was not Hay there; that is, in Effect, after telling her there was, and that she should have said so; rode back, and, with Huzza's of Triumph, cried they were all right yet; for she said now there was Hay in the Room. Was this or could it be an Evidence of Weight with the Impartial? The best Way to determine is to ask one's self the Question. What would it have been to you who are now reading of it?