The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 355: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

324 THE COURT OF LONDON this deed contained the terms and evidences of a final com- promise effected between the litigant families, — a compro- mise which quashed the Montgomerys’ rights and claims for ever. On behalf of Fernanda — or rather Lady Holder- ness — it was urged that her family had been no parties to the compromise at all, they at the time being actually igno- rant of the circumstance that they had any claims or pre- tensions whatsoever to a single acre of the Bellenden property. Lastly, on behalf of the Montgomerys it was at first alleged that their predecessor had no power to make any such compromise in a matter where, if the claims were good at all, the estates were all partitioned and entailed in a particular manner and upon specific conditions; and within the last three months of the suit, Eugene Montgomery had advanced another and more formidable plea, which was to the effect that the conveyance deed was a forgery, although he did not charge the Marchioness of Bellenden with having fabri- cated it. _ The conveyance deed bore the date of 1795; but it was alleged, on behalf of Hugene Montgomery, that the Marquis of Bellenden (the father of Lady Bellenden’s late husband), whose name was alleged to be affixed to that document, had died in the year 1793, consequently that he had been dead two years at the time when he was represented to have signed the deed. In proof of these statements Earl Montgomery advanced the facts that the plate upon the coffin of the Marquis of Bellenden alluded to bore the date of 1793; and that the parish register of deaths, containing the entry of the said marquis’s demise, furnished the same date. Such was the position of the lawsuit on the 31st of May, — the period fixed by the Master in Chancery for delivering his report upon the various points at issue. Nor did the legal functionary fail to keep his engagement, — an occurrence in Chancery proceedings which deserves special mention. The report was ready, and its tendency was precisely as Mr. Rigden had foreseen, namely, in favour of his clients and hostile to Lady Bellenden. In short, the Master admitted the validity of Fernanda’s plea that her family were no parties to the alleged compromise, even if any such compro- mise had taken place at all; and therefore, whether the conveyance deed were a forgery or a genuine document, the lady’s claims were pronounced valid. With regard to the Gomicbooks co