As was inevitable, the Viscount and his son were arrested on a charge of murder. Colonel King was tried at the Cork Assizes, and acquitted to a salvo of deafening cheers, as there was no prosecution. For Lord Kingsborough a different escape was reserved. Before he could be brought to trial at Cork, his father, the Earl of Kingston, died, and the Viscount became an Earl, with all the privileges of his rank—including that of trial by his Peers.
In May 1798, a month after his son's acquittal, Lord Kingston's trial took place in the House of Lords, with all the state and ceremony appropriate to this exalted tribunal. Preceded by the Masters in Chancery, the judges in scarlet and ermine, by the minor lords and a small army of eldest sons, the Peers filed in long and stately procession into the House, followed by the Lord High Steward, the Earl of Clare, walking alone in solitary dignity.
Then began the trial, with all its quaint and dignified ceremonial; and Robert, Earl of Kingston, pleaded "Not Guilty," and claimed to be tried "by God and my Peers." But the trial, which drew thousands to Westminster, was of short duration. To the demand that "all manner of persons who will give evidence against the accused should come forth," no response was given. Not a solitary witness for the Crown appeared. One by one the Peers pronounced their verdict, "Not Guilty, upon my honour"; the Lord Steward broke his white staff; and amid a crowd of congratulating friends, the Earl walked out a free man.
And what was the fate of Mary King, the cause, however innocent, of all this tragedy? For her own sake, and for obvious reasons, it was important that she should disappear for a time until the scandal had subsided; and with this object she was sent, under an assumed name, to join the family of a Welsh clergyman, not one of whom knew anything of her story. Here, secluded from the world, and in a happy environment, she soon recovered her old health and gaiety. She was young; and youth is quick to find healing and forgetfulness. In the Welsh parsonage she made herself beloved by her amiability and admired for her gifts of mind.
Among the latter was a talent for story-telling, with which she beguiled many a long, winter evening. On one such evening she told the story of her late tragic experiences, disguising it only by giving fictitious names to the characters. And she told the story with such power and pathos that, at its conclusion, her auditors were reduced to tears for the maiden and execrations for her betrayer.
Carried away by the excitement of the moment and the effect she had produced, she exclaimed: "I, myself, am the person for whom you express such sorrow." Then, horrified by her indiscretion, she added: "And now, I suppose, you will drive me from your home." But such was not to be Mary King's fate. The clergyman, who was a widower, had already almost lost his heart to her charms; and her sufferings made his conquest complete. A few weeks later the bells rang merrily out when Mary King became the wife of her kindly host; and for many a long year there was no one more beloved or happy in all Wales than the parson's wife, who had thus romantically come through the storm into a haven of peace.
CHAPTER XI
A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ELOPEMENT
In the latter days of Queen Elizabeth there was no merchant in England better known or held in higher repute than Sir John Spencer, the Rothschild or Rockefeller of his day, whose shrewdness and industry had raised him to the Chief Magistrateship of the City of London.