Note 550 — Chapter II
Reading edition
This however was considered rather unfair at the time. See the case of Atkins. 6 State Trials 1491. The action of the government and the judges in Colledge’s case (8 State Trials 570–587) in depriving the prisoner of papers which leave had been given him to write, that the crown case might be managed accordingly, strained this practice still further, and is justly termed by Sir J. F. Stephen “one of the most wholly inexcusable transactions that ever occurred in an English court.” Hist. Crim. Law i. 406.