The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 230: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE COMMITTEE OF PRIVILEGES 205 of his days. But inasmuch as his evidence was needed before the committee of privileges in respect to the Marchmont peerage, he was retained a prisoner in Newgate instead of being immediately sent out of the country. He now there- fore appeared, in the custody of turnkeys, in the presence of that committee. The testimony of John Smedley was to the following effect. Some time back he had at his house in Lambeth a lodger who passed by the name of Smith. This lodger de- sired that a letter might be taken to the address which ap- peared upon the envelope. It was directed to Mr. Ashton, at Mrs. Macaulay’s, Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square. Smedley, his wife, and mother opened the letter instead of taking it to its address. They found by its contents that their lodger’s real name was Joseph Preston, that he had lived on Cambridge Terrace, that he had sorely wronged Christian and Christina Ashton, and that under a plank in one of the rooms which he specified at his house in Cambridge Terrace they would find documents which might be of more or less importance to themselves. In consequence of pe- rusing this letter, Smedley and his wife went to the house in Cambridge Terrace and possessed themselves of the docu- ments, in the hope that their deliverance into the hands of Mr. and Miss Ashton might be productive of a reward. But on inquiring at Mrs. Macaulay’s house, Barbara Smedley found that the twins had left, that they had fallen into poverty, and that there was no chance of obtaining a rec- ompense at their hands. The Smedleys, however, kept the papers with the idea that they would some day prove lucra- tive, and these were the documents, together with Joseph Preston’s letter, which Lord Clandon had found in the sealed packet upon the person of Barbara Smedley. The documents were now produced before the committee, and Christian, be it recollected, had already proclaimed his conviction that those which bore the signature of the deceased Mr. Ashton were really in that gentleman’s hand- writing. One document consisted of a will which Mr. Ashton had left in favour of the twins, bequeathing them the sum of six thousand pounds, with Joseph Preston as the guardian and executor. Another document was an affectionate letter to the twins, penned by Mr. Ashton in case he should die © before he considered that they had reached an age when they CORnNICLOOKS (S©)