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34 BYGONE SUSSEX.
glut after my blood, and if it will pleasure you, you shall have it." He imagined from the Recorder's bold statement that Glasier had made an avowal and that further denial would be unavailing, and therefore in the words of our chronicler "openly declared the whole manner aforesaid, how and in what manner he had done it, and for what cause, and who was his Counsellor. Which they hearing, greatly marvelled, and committed him to prison, where he remained till the Sessions Day, when he was arraigned and condemned, and according to the law he there was adjudged to be hanged, which was performed."
It is not at all probable that in the absence of Glasier, Robson could have been convicted but for the confession which the Recorder tricked him into making. The words so graphically reported by the pamphleteer read more like those of a French juge cC instruction than of an English magistrate as the duty of the latter would now be interpreted. Even the humblest instruments of the law are to-day expected to warn their prisoner that he need not make any incriminating statement. No accused person is expected to aid in his own conviction. But our forensic annals show that in the past judges did not always so |
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