Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	hear_v	speak_v	word_n	7,138	5	4.4441	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41167	An enquiry into and detection of the barbarous murther of the late Earl of Essex, or, A vindication of that noble person from the guilt and infamy of having destroy'd himself	Ferguson, Robert, d. 1714.; Braddon, Laurence, d. 1724.; Speke, Hugh, 1656-1724?	1684 (1684)	Wing F737; ESTC R25398	79,560	81

desire the world should know who I am yet I judg it absolutely needful that they should understand who I am not least others come into trouble for that which ought not to be charged upon them and which none but my self can with any equity or justice be made accountable for And seeing Mr. Braddon hath been singled forth as the object of some men's indignation for the service he was willing to have done his Majesty in the detection of this Murder I reckon my self bound to publish to all the world that I know not the Gentleman and that to the best of my remembrance I never saw him much less have ever conversed or had any communication with him I will not deny but that he is a person whom I do infinitely esteem for his integrity zeal and courage in this matter yet I will not be so far injurious to him as to commence an acquaintance with him during the transaction and dependence of this affair and while he is under the power of those that will be ready to declare him criminal for the least intercourse with a person that is likely to become so obnoxious to the rage of St. Jame's and Westminster-Hall as I may come to be for this service to the King and Kingdom But besides the common tyes which I lye under equally with the rest of mankind for endeavouring to detect so horrid and barbarous a Murder there are some special obligations upon me by which I esteem my self more particularly bound than others are to do all the right and justice I can to the memory of this massacred Lord and to redeem his Name from the infamy with which they have aspersed him of being Felo de se. For I had not only the honour to be known to him which Mr. Braddon pretends not unto but besides the favouring me with diverse Testimonies of his respect he did me the kindness to own and befriend me at a juncture when I was in no small hazard from the malice of very Powerful as well as considerable persons And seeing that honourable Peer has been so unhappy as to find nothing but ingratitude as well as injustice from those of the highest and sublimest quality whom he had most effectually served and infinitely obliged it is not amiss that the world should understand there are some remains of vertue and gratitude among the mean and little people and that tho their condition does not inable them to recompence favours conferred upon them by great persons yet they have that ingenuity which others want viz. to sense and acknowledg them And as I reckon it no small honour to have been known to the deccased Peer so I thereby enjoyed an advantage which others wanted namely an opportunity of learning the principles and observing the Temper of that excellent person Whom as I found to be one imbu'd with the most vertuous and religious as well as heroick and generous principles of any Noble Man in the Kingdom so I observed him to be a Gentleman of the greatest sedateness of mind least subject to the undue agitation of unruly passions and most under the conduct of a calm steady strong clear and well poised Reason of any Man of Quality I ever had the happiness of access unto And if either the succors of Nature Education or Grace were sufficient to fortifie and preserve a person from such an enormity and crime then must the Earl of Essex above all men be acquitted from the guilt of so execrable a fact as being contrary to the Frame and constitution of his Nature as well as to all the intellectual and moral habits of his Mind So villanous a Deed was inconsistent with his Temper as well as repugnant to his vertue As he was an excellent Christian he durst not allow a thought that might give encouragement to so heynous a sin and as he was a well accomplisht Gentleman he scorned to render himself guilty of a thing that was so mean and base Nor was the folly of the Assassinates less in hoping to obtain credit to a report that the Earl of Essex cut his own throat than their wickedness was in contriving and perpetrating themselves that bloody murder upon him Yea as if it had not been enough to have first cut the throat of this innocent tho unfortunate Earl and then to have fastned the guilt and infamy of their own Fact upon his untainted vertue and spotless Soul they have sought to gain credit to their calumnious accusation and to reconcile unthinking people to their opinion by assuming that he used to commend and justifie self Murder in case there remained no other way to escape a capital punishment and the being made a spectacle to the little and gazing part of mankind And to give the better gloss to this malicious fiction they report that he used to extol the action of his Ladies Grandfather the Duke of Northumberland who being prisoner in the Tower for Treason shot himself in the head with a Pistol Put as the Earl of Essex had he entertained so ungedly and corrupt a sentiment was more prudent and discreet than to publish and avow an opinion so contrary to the Rules of Religion the principles of honor and the common sense and persuasion of mankind so it is enough to detect the falsehood as well as the malice that is in this report that the Authors and dispersers of it either dare not declare the persons to whom the Earl should have discovered and revealed his mind in this matter or else such as they have named for vouchers of the truth of this story have not only denyed their having at any time heard him express the least word in favour of self murder but do affirm with all the sacredness imaginable that he used to speak always of it with the utmost abhor●ency and to brand it as the greatest and most heynous sin For whereas they have had the impudence to affirm that this report either proceeded originally from his own Lady or was at least assented unto and attested by her she hath upon application to her La●●ship for the knowledge of the truth or falsehood of this Story not only with all the solemnity requisite in a matter of this importance vindicated my Lord from having ever spoken a word that might induce the Lawfulness of self murder or give countenance to a person's being Felo de se but she hath further assirmed that he used to speak against it with an emotion beyond what was customary to him and that he hath often declaned that no circumstances whatsoever could extenuate the guilt or lessen the infamy of so unnatural and wicked a Fact So that this Story which hath been so maliciously and industriously spread to gain belief to the Report of my Lords having murthered himself may upon this detection of its Falshood be very justly improved for the establishing an Assurance that he was assassinated by others For it is impossible to imagine upon what other

my Lord lodged And as this Girl had no acquaintance with or knowledge of the former Boy and consequently they could not agree together to form and invent a Romantick and fabulous Story nor to concert the particulars which they were to report so it is observable that their Relations do harmonise and accord in all the main heads and only seem to differ in one thing which the Girls unacquaintedness with the several parts of the house where my Lord lodged led her into a mistake about For they both agree that there was a Razor thrown out of the Chamber window before Murder cryed out and that this Razor was bloody and that immediately there came a short Maid or Woman out of the house with a white hood upon her head who went towards the place where the Razor fell which as they are all the material things requisite to the confirmation of the Fact so being wholly strangers to one another they could not before-hand concert them nor agree the things they should report Had one said it was a Knife that was thrown out of the window while the other had affirmed that it was a Razor or had one denyed it to be bloody while the other had reported that it was so or had the one mentioned a Man as having come out of the house towards it while the other spake of a Woman there would have been then some reason for the Ridiculing it as a Fiction seeing the contradicting one another in the essential circumstances of the Report would have detected the falshood of the Reporters And it must argue great perverseness as well as strange prepossession of Mind to pretend to disbelieve the Story because the Children seem to vary one from another in a little and minute thing when in the mean time there is the greatest harmony imaginable between them in all that is of moment for the establishment and assurance of he realty of the Fact And therefore whereas towards invalidating the Girls Testimony it was objected by my L. Chief Justice Jeffreys that she should say the Razor was thrown out of the Closet window when the Boy had said that it was thrown out at the Chamber window this pretended inconsistency between the two may be easily removed to the satisfaction of all rational men and the eternal reproach and infamy of Sir George Jeffreys For indeed she said no such thing nor did she know the Closet window from the Chamber window nor so much as which was my Lord's Chamber but as she heard declared by the Standers by All that the Girl did affirm was that she saw a hand throw a bloody Razor out of a window which as the people discoursed belonged to the house where the E. of Essex lodged Nor did the objection arise from what the Child her self deposed in Court but it was started from the Deposition of one Glasbrook who informed of the Girls having told her Aunt that the E. of Essex had cut his Throat and that she was sure of it because she saw him throw the Razor out of the window and that it was all bloody Now because the Closet was the place where my Lord was found dead they would infer that she meant the Closet window and thereupon conclude the Story to be false both because of the impossibility that himself should throw the Razor out and the contrariety which they would have supposed to be in this expression to what the Boy had reported Whereas the phrase does only shew the simplicity of the Child but does no ways argue the falsity of the Report And the account which She gave of the place where She stood namely in that part of the Tower called the Mount plainly shews that she could not mean the Closet window but the window of the Chamber And had the Court of the Kings Bench had but the justice and integrity which became men in their places one Question of the Judges and the Childs Answer to it would have clearly decided whether she meant the Closet window or that of the Chamber For had they but ask'd her whether the window out of which the Razor was thrown stood towards the Forestreet or the Back yard the Objection would have immediately vanished seeing considering the place where the Child was then standing she must have answered that it look'd towards the Fore-street nor was it possible for her to see any thing thrown out of the Closet window unless she had stood in the Back-yard which she neither did nor was so much as ever there But by the asking such a question Sir George Jeffreys would have lost the advantage not only of ridiculing the whole matter about the Razor and of devolving the murder of the Earl of Essex upon himself but of skreening the Malefactors from Justice and possibly of ruining Mr. Braddon which were things of too great concernment to St. James's to let an occasion and pretence of compassing them escape him especially at the cost of a little Meekness Patience and Justice in his Lordship in receiving a Deposition and examining a Witness Now this Objection advanced by my Lord Chief Justice against the Truth of the Girls Testimony being fully and to the satisfaction of all impartial men removed and taken off all that absurd and nonsensical stuff which through his having wrested the Childs words he superstructs upon his own Dreams and Fictions does of its own accord and without its being needful for me to interpose any thing by way of remark upon it fall to the ground Nor will any man of common sense henceforth imagine that the Coach which the Child says she saw at the Door must therefore have been in the Back-yard and consequently been droven through the narrow Entry and Door of the House seeing it is evident from what hath been here discoursed that she meant the Fore-door and not the Back and to that there was no difficulty of access And with the same ease may all that Captain Hawley and my Lord Chief Justice declare about the height of the Pales and the impossibility of throwing any thing out of the Closet window over them and especially of seeing it when thrown over and lying upon the ground be dissipated and blown away because it was not the Pales encompassing the Back-yard which the Girl 's Testimony referred unto but those to which her Deposition related are the Pales which face and sence the forepart and front of the House O the Chicanery and fraudulency of a mercenary Lawyer instead of the uprightness and integrity of a just and impartial Judge Nor could my L. C. Justice have taken a more expeditious and effectual course to proclaim his own Villany than he hath done by endeavouring to ridicule and expose this poor Child's Testimony in the foregoing particular And whereas Mr. Justice Holloway was pleased to except against the De●o●tion of the Girl in another particular namely that whilst she swore the Razor fell within the Pales the Boy