The dead body of Mary Ashford was found in a pit of water in Sutton Coldfield, on the 27th of May, 1817, she having been seen alive on the morning of the same day.  Circumstances instantly, and most naturally, fastened suspicion of foul play upon Abraham Thornton.  He was tried at Warwick, at the Autumn Assizes of the same year, and acquitted.  The trial was a very remarkable one.  Facts were proved with unusual clearness and precision, which put it beyond the bounds of physical possibility that he could have murdered Mary Ashford.  Those facts hinged on the time shown by several different clocks, compared with the standard time kept at Birmingham.  But the public feeling on the matter was intense.  An engraving of the scene of the alleged murder, with a stimulating letter-press description, was published at the time, and the general sense undoubtedly was, that the perpetrator of a very foul murder had escaped his just doom.  Hoping to do away with this impression, a well-known local lawyer bethought himself of the long-forgotten “Appeal of Murder,” trusting that by a second acquittal Thornton’s innocence would be acknowledged by all.  Though the condition of all the parties was but humble, friends soon came forward with funds and good advice, so that within the year and a day which the law allowed, proceedings were taken in the name of William Ashford (Mary’s brother, who, as next heir, according to the old law, had the sole power of pardon in such a case) for an “Appeal of Murder” against Abraham Thornton.  What followed is here given in Mr. Toulmin Smith’s own words:—­“I have seen it stated, hot indignation colouring imagination, that here was a weak stripling nobly aroused to avenge the death of his sister, by tendering himself to do battle against the tall strong man who was charged with her murder.  The facts, as they stand are truly striking enough; but this melodramatic spectacle does not formally true part of them.”  A writ of “Appeal of Murder” was soon issued.  It bears the date of 1st October, 1817.  Under that writ Thornton was again arrested by the Sheriff of Warwick.  On the first day of Michaelmas Term, in the same year, William Ashford appeared in the Court of King’s Bench at Westminster, as appellant, and Abraham Thornton, brought up on writ of habeas corpus, appeared as appellee.  The charge of murder was formally made by the appellant; and time to plead to this charge was granted to the appellee until Monday, 16th November.—­It must have been a strange and startling scene, on the morning of that Monday, 16th November, 1817, when Abraham Thornton stood at the bar of the Court of King’s Bench in Westminster Hall; a scene which that ancient Hall had not witnessed within the memory of any living man, but which must have then roused the attention of even its drowsiest haunter.  “The appellee being brought into Court and placed at the bar” (I am quoting the original dry technical record of the transaction), “and the appellant being also in court, the