Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/467

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12 s. vm. MAY H, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 381 LONDON, MAY 14, 1921. CONTENTS. No. 161. NOTES : Court-Martial on a Duellist, Newfoundland. 381 Legay of Southampton and London, 385 " Gog and Magog," 383 Aldeburgh Chamberlains' Accounts 387 Captain Robert Wyard ' Martin Chuzzlewit ' Elijah Pogram, 389 Crucifixion of Dogs Deaths, 390. QUERIES : King of England, Lord of Baux Lives of Venetian Painters Menzel's ' German Literature,' 390 Napoleon as a Cliild Arms of Ellingham ' Letters from Galilee ' John Winthrop : Inner Temple, 1628 Francis and John Gallini Wiche James William Unwin Foxhounds ' Stirbitch Fair ' Rayner of Woodhan Walter " Cicero " Cook the Learned " Scout " Rice,391 Van Der Does The ' Exerdtia Spiritualia ' of St. Ignatius Loyola Oorsiean War-Dogs : Island of Fowls Early Stage-Coaches The Monument : ' Ingoldsby Legends ' Statues of Geor?e IV. at Brighton " Common or Garden "-Norfolk Cheeses in the Fourteenth Century 392 G. A. Cooke and his County Itineraries Authors Wanted, 393. REPLIES : " Cor ad cor loquitur " Mary Russei Mit- ford's Lottery Prize, 393 " Amtmann " Thackeray : ' The Newcomes ' Book Borrowers " Geen " Whisky, 394 A Seventeenth- Century Surveyors' Compass " Britisher ' v. " Briton " " The Haven under the Hill " Smallest Pig of a Litter Political Verses by Charles Lamb ? Capt. Cook's Crew : Coco-nut Cup, 395 Cream-coloured Horses Pastorini's Prophecies Carew Family of Bed- dington, Surrey, Bart. Double Firsts at Oxford, 396 Publications of Frederick Locker-Lampson ' The Tomahawk ' William Congreve Ghost Stories con- nected with Old London Bridge, 397 ' The Mermaid at her Toilet ' Hunger Strike in the Fourteenth Century John Pym Wine Names Paul Lucas : His ' Journey through Asia Minor 'Collet Family, 398. NOTES ON BOOKS: 'Moliere The Gild of St. Mary, Lichfield' ' The West Riding of Yorkshire 'Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology Cornhill. Notices to Correspondents. TRIAL BY COURT-MARTIAL OF A DUELLIST. NEWFOUNDLAND, 1826. CAPTAIN MARK RUDKIN, the duellist here in question, belonged to a family which has been traced as owning property in Norfolk and Rutland from the thirteenth century onwards, and a branch of which had been settled in Ireland, in Co. Carlow, since the middle of the seventeenth century. He was the second son of William Rudkin of Corris, Co. Carlow, born June 4, 1786. A Captain in the 50th and 100th Regiments, and afterwards in the Royal Newfoundland Veteran Company, he served in the Penin- sular War from 1808 to 1813, being engaged in the disastrous Walcheren Expedition in 1809. He was present at nearly all the great battles in the Peninsular War, being several times wounded, and received a medal with five clasps. He was finally placed on half -pay in May, 1828, and died, unmarried, Dec. 15, 1869, at Blackrock, Dublin. The following account of his trial by court-martial for shooting John Philpot in a duel is taken, somewhat abbreviated, from The Public Ledger and Newfoundland General Advertiser of Friday, April 28, 1826 : SUPREME COURT. April 17, 1826. THE KING vs. MARK RUDKIN, GEORGE FARQUHAR MORICE, and JAMES STRACHAN, for the wilful murder of JOHN PHILPOT, by shooting him with a pistol-ball, in a duel on the 30th March last. (Mark Rudkin, Capt. Royal Veteran Com- panies, as principal ; and James Strachan, Surgeon of the same, and G. F. Morice, Capt. R.N., as accomplices-principals in the second degree.) The ATTORNEY-GENERAL opened the pro- ceedings, and gave an outline of the case intended to be proved. In whatever point of view it was regarded, he said' whether as it respected the individual whose death was the cause of the present inquiry, who had been suddenly cut off, in the vigour of health from all the endearments of social life whether considered in reference to the violated laws of the country- or as affect- ing the personal safety of the prisoners, it was one of the most serious with which he had ever had to do ; but he exhorted the jury to dismiss from their minds whatever they might have heard out of doors ; or, if they could not entirely divest themselves of those recollections, it were better to set upon them the seal of falsehood and cast them from them. They were bound upon their oaths to be governed in their decision by the evidence which would now be brought before them. The principles of law upon which the prosecution was founded were then laid down ; first, in order to enable the jury with more facility to embrace the principles of the case ; and, secondly, he felt it due to the defendants to facilitate their defence in the perilous situation in which they were placed. The following citations were then made : " The fact of killing being first proved, all the circumstances of accident, necessity, or infirmity are to be satisfactorily proved by the prisoners, unless they should arise out of the evidence pro- duced against them ; for the law presumeth the fact to have been founded in malice until the contrary shall have been made apparent . . ." et scqq. (Foster, p. 255). The same learned writer (Mr. Justice Foster), whose high authority he (the Attorney- Gen era!) had just cited, speaking of duelling, says that :

  • ' If death ensueth from deliberate duelling,

such death is, in the eye of the law, murder. And though a person should be drawn into a duel, not upon a motive so criminal, but merely on the punctilio of what swordsmen falsely call tionour, that will not excuse ; for he that deliber- ately taketh the blood of another, upon a piivate quarrel, acteth in defiance of all laws human and divine . . ." ct seqq. (ibid., p. 297).