Note 805 — Chapter XII · (continued 2)

This is pointed out, perhaps for the first time, in an excellent modern law-book, Phillipps's Law of Evidence. Yet the act for the reversal of Sidney's attainder declares in the preamble, that "the paper, supposed to be in his handwriting, was not proved by the testimony of any one witness to be written by him, but the jury was directed to believe it by comparing it with other writings of the said Algernon." State Trials, 997. This does not appear to have been the case; and though Jefferies is said to have garbled the manuscript trial before it was printed (for all the trials, at this time, were published by authority, which makes them much better evidence against the judges than for them), yet he can hardly have substituted so much testimony without its attracting the notice of Atkins and Hawles, who wrote after the revolution. However, in Hayes's case, State Trials, x. 312, though the prisoner's handwriting to a letter was proved in the usual way by persons who had seen him write, yet this letter was also shown to the jury, along with some of his acknowledged writing, for the purpose of their comparison. It is possible, therefore, that the same may have been done on Sidney's trial, though the circumstance does not appear. Jefferies indeed says, "comparison of hands was allowed for good proof in Sidney's case." Id. 313. But I do not believe that the expression was used in that age so precisely as it is at present; and it is well known to lawyers that the rules of evidence on this subject have only been distinctly laid down within the memory of the present generation.