property. He learned that about a week before the marriage she had, with the knowl edge and approval of Mr. Grey, her then intended husband, executed a settlement of a considerable part of her estate to her own use and that of her children. He began a course of most abusive treatment, and finally, four months later, by threats of personal violence and by the most cruel restraint, he compelled her to execute a revocation of this deed of settlement. Then the love-lorn lieutenant led the poor woman a weary race. She had jilted Mr. Grey, disgusted her relatives, and made such a conspicuous fool of herself, that she tried to live it out. She endured this life for seven years, and the brute treated her worse than a slave. He wasted the estate; he would not allow her to see her friends, forced her to make such conveyances as he desired, and finally carried her away to Sheatham Castle in Durham County, and kept her there a close prisoner. Then she made a bold push for liberty, improved an opportunity to escape from the castle, went before a magistrate, swore the peace against her husband (who after his marriage assumed the name of Bowes), and filed a bill for a separation and to set aside the deed which he had forced her to sign revoking the settlement. Bowes filed a cross-bill to set aside the settlement as having been made upon the eve of marriage in fraud of his marital rights. The suit
dragged on from 1785 to 1797, when the opinion of Mr. Justice Buller, sitting for the Lord Chancellor, was given that her deed of settlement should stand, and the deeds which her husband had by duress compelled her to execute should be set aside. The bills of costs were snug sums, however. One was taxed at £1,742 and more, another at
£1,161. The case went to the House of Lords, and was there decided in her favor. She got justice at last, and her husband died. But the estate had been sadly wasted by him and reduced by the litigation. One amusing aspect in the case is the solemnity with which Sir John Mitford, as counsel for the husband, argued that if this deed of settlement, executed by this woman were not set aside, "a precedent would exist destructive of confidence in every matri monial engagement, and leading to conse quences subversive of all the grounds on which the law of England, with respect to the obligations of husbands, by force of the contract of marriage, is founded." This is one of many stories to be found in the dry reports of the law reminding us that " truth is stranger than fiction," and that the legal profession meet in real life with more of the rascality, love, romance, foolishness, virtue, and nobility that make up the chapter of human life than has ever been told in novels, from the Book of Esther down to the story of Trilby.
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