AN INTERESTING CASE OF DISPUTED IDENTITY, WITH A PRACTICAL SUGGESTION FOR ITS SOLUTION. BY BAXTER BORRET. IN the ninth century of the Christian era there lived in England a pious king named Edmund, afterwards canonized and known as St. Edmund, King of East Anglia. In the year 870 he was taken prisoner by the Danes, and on his refusal to abjure the Christian faith he was pierced through with many arrows, and gained the Martyrs' Crown. He was buried at the place which memorializes his name to all ages, Bury St. Edmunds, in the County of Suffolk; and, a little later on, King Canute caused a most magnificent abbey church to be erected at the spot, and the remains of the martyred king were translated to this abbey with every circumstance of pomp and ceremonial. So far we are on the safe-ground of un doubted English history, but from this point everything is disputed. The next undoubted fact has occurred in the last three months, when a case containing the alleged body of the martyred king has found its way from the French city of Toulouse to the private chapel of Arundel Castle in the English County of Sussex, en route for the Roman Catholic Cathedral, which is fast approach ing completion, almost within the shadow of Westminster Abbey, with the pious in tention of the alleged sacred relic finding a last resting-place under the high altar of the new cathedral. These are the facts, and the question at issue is the identity of the relics. The case set up by the promoters, if we may so call the parties who allege that they are the veritable remains of the martyred king, may be cast in the language of plead ings as follows: Averment. That during the first quarter of the thirteenth century a marauding raid was made by certain French men, headed by Prince Louis, who after wards became King Louis VIII. of France, who ransacked the Abbey Church of Bury
St. Edmunds and carried off the body of the martyred king to France, where it has ever remained in the custody of the Holy Church, within the walls of the Cathedral of Tou louse, till the present year. Plea of the respondent. I. Denial of the truth of the Averment of the promoter. 2. Responsive allegation: That there were two St. Edmunds buried in the said Abbey Church, one being the King of East Anglia, the other being Archbishop Edmund of saintly rank, and that the body which was feloniously stolen from the said Abbey Church was that of the Archbishop. 3. And for a point of law by way of de murrer upon the pleadings, that the Holy Roman Church, upon their own admission, are in the position of receivers of goods knowing them to have been feloniously stolen, and that the true owner thereof is the British nation and not the Holy Roman Church. These are the issues of fact and of law. We are only concerned with the issues of fact. It is not known what evidence it is in tended by the promoters to adduce in proof of the identity of the relic with the body of the martyred King of East Anglia. On the other side it is believed that the evidence of records, of sufficient age and worthy of all credit, will be forthcoming to prove that several decades after the death of King Louis VIII. of France the coffin of King Edmund was opened in the said Abbey Church of Bury by the orders of Samson, the Abbot thereof, in the presence of (amongst other persons) one Jocelyn de Pirakeland, a monk of the said Abbey, and chaplain to the said Abbot, who on the spot at the time aforesaid caused a record to be made, which record will be produced from
