TRIAL AT NISI PRIUS.

MISS MARY FITZGERALD V. REV. THOMAS HAWKESWORTH,

FOR A BREACH OF MARRIAGE CONTRACT.

COURT OF KING'S BENCH.

TUESDAY, MAY 15, 1804.

THIS interesting trial came on before Lord Chief Justice Downes and a special jury-it continued three days.

Mr. Penefather opened the case, by explaining that it was an action brought by the plaintiff, Mary Fitzgerald, against the defendant, the Rev. Thomas Hawkesworth, for a breach of promise of marriage. The damages were laid at 5,000l. and the defendant pleaded, 1st. The general issue; 2dly. That he was under age when the promise was made; and, lastly, The statute of limitation. The plaintiff joined issue, particularly in the two last pleas.

Mr. Serjeant Moore stated the plaintiff's case at great length, and with great ability. He commenced by observing that the present was a case calculated to interest manly sensibility, and engage the serious attention and sympathy of every man wishing to maintain the moral and social obligations. The

question with the jury was not, as in ordinary actions, to recover damages; but they were to admeasure the compensation due to wounded feelings and a broken heart. They were called upon to give what atonement could be given to mental agony, to repose for ever lost, and, by their verdict, to check an offence peculiarly reproachful to human nature. They would find the case before them, one in which the duplicity and art of the defendant was commensurate with his professions of affection, and that at the moment he pretended love, he determined to deceive. They would find hypocrisy and love in the same man; enthusiasm and dissimulation, cunning and candour, in the same letters; and in those letters, and under his own hand, they would be able to trace the arts and wiles of the deceitful lover. On the other hand, they would see in the plaintiff, long constancy, continued affection, and undeviating virtue, up to the present moment. They would behold an affecting picture of patience and long suffering, the lady slow to promise, but having promised, most faithful to perform.

This being the general prospectus of the merits of the case, the learned counsel said it became his duty to lay the facts before the jury. The plaintiff was a young lady, now about 26 years of age, living with her family; her father, a most respectable old gentleman, had been a military officer; her brother was now a captain in his majesty's service. The family had been settled for some years back in Castletown, in the Queen's county. Of five children the plaintiff was the eldest. The father of the defendant, Mr. Hawkesworth, inferior to Mr. Fitzgerald in the claims of ancient genealogy, was, however, superior in worldly circumstances, and acted as the manager of Lord Castle-Coote's estates in that county. The defendant, his son, was ordained in the year 1795, and had acquired a considerable share of celebrity as a preacher, and was well known in the pulpits of this metropolis. But whether his practical morality accorded with his precepts would be for the jury to determine. Before the year 1794,

there was naturally an intimacy between the two families, from the proximity of their residences. The defendant was then a student in Trinity College, and was nearly about to take his degrees. He was about 20 years of age, the lady 16. An affection was mutually conceived, and after some difficulty on his part to engage the lady to such a procedure, they became contracted by a solenm vow to end in marriage. Their affection becoming obvious to the surrounding country, then began the defendant's duplicity. He told the young lady that they must keep their sentiments for each other secret; that he wished to be out of college before their marriage took place, for that by and by he would be ordained-and he was ordained the following year, a strong presumption against his nonage. In the year 1794 the defendant wrote three letters to Miss Fitzgerald-the first recommending the renewal of their vows, &c. from whence an intended matrimonial engagement and previous contract were evidently to be inferred. Here the learned counsel quoted from the first letter passages which were nearly as follows:

"My dearest Maria!

"I will not say I was disappointed in not receiving an answer to my letter of yesterday, for, certainly, nothing that you would have written could have added to my affectionate confidence, but I did expect a line or two; they would have been a comfort to me, and would have imposed no trouble upon you. Dearest girl! I hope you are by this time convinced of the sincerity of my love: then why this unaccountable reserve? Perhaps you have yielded to suspicion-but no! your heart is too good to entertain any doubts of one who doats upon you! You must be confident of my intentions; you must, cre now, have discerned, from my actions and letters, the sincerity of my attachment; you must have seen that my happiness depends on you, and that the gilded object which my hopes pursue, is the enrapturing prospect of calling you, mine! Let us, then, my Angel, mutually promise never to

depart from our engagement!-Let us, since our love is mutual, agree to unite our families-It would be impru dent to unite them now, but a time will come when it will not be so. As for me I have made sufficient promises and professions before, but now again, in the most solemn manner, I call the ALMIGHTY to witness, that if you consent to engage in the same manner, that I will never be united to any mortal but you !—All the powers on earth shall never separate my affections from my, Maria, but I will continue her's for ever!-Maria, my Angel! without such mutual promises we can never be happy. Though we love ever so sincerely, without such solemn agreement our happiness may be interrupted, but afterwards, not all the powers on earth can separate us. I think I gave you sufficient proofs of the sincerity of my love-give me such, and then, one day or other, our happiness will be out of the power of the world. Say what I say, and convince me of your love. Oh! my Angel!* once thus engaged, we shall not mind what the world can do to separate us, and we shall be happy. I send you a pocketbook. Keep it for my sake. It can be of use to no one else, as your name is upon it.

P. S. Maria-my Angel!-make the promise I require, and you shall see how prudently I will behave-this brings things to the proof. You may depend upon the bearer."

This, continued Mr. Moore, was to prove the constancy of the lady-but you, gentlemen of the jury, will find that constancy proved to this very hour; while the defendant has been seeking, by baseness and hypocrisy, to break off the match at the same time, and imposing upon her gallant brother and respectable father, and disarranging the whole fami ly. Two other letters were written by the defendant to the plaintiff the same year-one of them contains the following passage:

* The word Angel caused a general laugh in court-even the judge's features were moved.

"Our love being mutual, my Maria! then why not our declaration? You said I might depend on the sincerity of your love, but this brings it to the proof. Engage solemnly as I did, and it will not be in the power of the world to prevent our union. You must have considered this subject, and plainly see that I can have no view in wishing this solemn declaration, but that we may defy the world. I shall say no more, but that if you make the same declaration, and engage in the same solemn agreement, I call the Almighty to witness, that not all the powers on earth, nor any consideration whatsoever, shall separate us, and that I will never be united to mortal but you."

It will appear by inference, that the young lady could not resist the effect of this letter, and that the defendant procured from her the engagement he sought for. He writes a third letter, dated 27th Feb. 1794, from which this inference is to be made, and in which his deception is perceptible.

"To endeavour to express the pleasure which your charming letter gave me, would be vain as it would be unnecessary. I should be miserable if I thought my Maria was not convinced that she had made me the happiest of mortals. Now, my own Maria, now that the engagement is made, all the powers on earth cannot separate us, and the day will come at last which shall make us for ever happy. You know I promised in my last to give you an account of the plan of con-` duct I mean to adopt, until the day arrives which is to make my lovely girl mine for ever! This I would have done before, but considered it indelicate to have entered into any circumstances concerning my future expectations in life, until you had made me the promise."

Future expectations were no bar until the promise was made, and then were advanced as an excuse for postponement! The engagement made, some explanation took place, and the defendant wrote on the 17th March, 1794, another, letter:

"I would have written yesterday, but you were from home,