The prisoners agreed that Cowper's challenges should be taken to be the challenges of all of them; and enough jurors were then challenged to exhaust the panel. Accordingly, after some discussion, Jones was called upon to show cause for his challenges.
Clerk of Arraigns—Call Daniel Clarke.
Hatsell, Baron—Mr. Jones, if you can say any juryman hath said anything concerning the cause, and given his verdict by way of discourse, or showed his affection one way or the other, that would be good cause of challenge.
Jones—My lord, then we should keep you here till to-morrow morning.
Hatsell, Baron—If there hath been any great friendship between any juryman and the party, it will look ill if it is insisted upon.
Cowper—My lord, I do not insist upon it, but I profess I know of no friendship, only that Mr. Clarke in elections hath taken our interest in town; I know I have a just cause, and I am ready to be tried before your lordship and any fair jury of the county; therefore I do not insist upon it.
A jury was then sworn, and Jones opened the case for the prosecution.
Jones—May it please your lordship, and you gentlemen that are sworn, I am of counsel for the king in this cause, and it is upon an indictment by which the gentlemen at the bar stand accused for one of the foulest and most wicked crimes almost that any age can remember; I believe in your county you never knew a fact of this nature; for here is a young gentlewoman of this county strangled and murdered in the night time. The thing was done in the dark, therefore the evidence cannot be so plain as otherwise might be.
After she was strangled and murdered, she was carried down into a river to stifle the fact, and to make it supposed she had murdered herself; so that it was indeed, if it prove otherwise, a double murder, a murder accompanied with all the circumstances of wickedness and villainy that I remember in all my practice or ever read of.
This fact, as it was committed in the night time, so it was carried very secret, and it was very well we have had so much light as we have to give so much satisfaction; for we have here, in a manner, two trials; one to acquit the party that is dead, and to satisfy the world, and vindicate her reputation, that she did not murder herself, but was murdered by other hands. For my part, I shall never, as counsel in the case of blood, aggravate; I will not improve or enlarge the evidence at all; it shall be only my business to set the fact as it is, and to give the evidence, and state it as it stands here in my instructions.