Recollections of a Diplomatist (Volume 2) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XVII EN DISPONIBILITE: 1861-1862 In this year (1861) it was that my brother Arthur, who had recently returned from the West Indies, where he had held a Colonial appointment, and was now living with his wife in lodgings in my neighbourhood, took it into his head that there was a good chance of upsetting our uncle Rancliffe's will on the score of its having been made under the undue influence of Mrs., to whom the estate at Bunney had been left absolutely, to the exclusion of Lord Rancliffe's three sisters and their descendants. Arthur had got into the hands of a low, scheming attorney, to whom his impetuous, over- sanguine temper made him an easy prey, and this fellow presented the matter in so hopeful a light that I consented against my better judgment to find the money requisite to bring the case to trial. It came on in the form of an action of ejectment at Nottingham on the 1 1th of March 1861. I joined my brother there the night before at the " Flying Horse" inn, going down in the same train as our leading counsel, Mr. Edwin James (specially retained to the tune of 300 guineas), whose last big case it very nearly was, for he wasexposed for certain discreditable transactions, and disrobed shortly afterwards. We had some of our leading witnesses up after dinner, foremost of all the old lord's medical man, a Doctor Hutchinson, whose evidence, as related to us, was certainly of a character to upset any will made under such circumstances as those which had attended this one. He and the rest of them all stuck to their affidavits, and it really looked like winning the next day. What took place in the interval it is of course impossible to say, but, considering that the power of the purse lay with the actual possessor of Bunney, and judging, as regards Edwin James, by ...