count [charge] was again read over to him, and he [Thornton] was called upon to plead.  He pleaded as follows;—­’Not Guilty; and I am ready to defend the same by my body.’  And thereupon, taking his glove off, he threw it on the floor of the Court.”  That is to say, Ashford having “appealed” Thornton of the murder, Thornton claimed the right to maintain his own innocence by “Trial of Battel;” and so his answer to the charge was a “Wager of Battel.”  And now the din of fight seemed near, with the Court of King’s Bench at Westminster for the arena, and the grave Judges of that Court for the umpires.  But the case was destined to add but another illustration to what Cicero tells us of how, oftentimes, arms yield to argument, and the swordsman’s looked-for laurel vanishes before the pleader’s tongue.  William Ashford, of course, acting under the advice of those who really promoted the appeal, declined to accept Thornton’s wager of battel.  Instead of accepting it, his counsel disputed the right of Thornton to wage his battel in this case; alleging, in a very long plea, that there were presumptions of guilt so strong as to deprive him of that right.  Thornton answered this plea by another, in which all the facts that had been proved on the trial at Warwick were set forth at great length.  And then the case was very elaborately argued, for three days, by two eminent and able counsel, one of whom will be well remembered by most readers as the late Chief-Justice Tindal.  Tindal was Thornton’s counsel.  Of course I cannot go here into the argument.  The result was, that, on 16th April, 1881, the full Court (Lord Ellenborough, and Justices Bayley, Abbott, and Holroyd) declared themselves unanimously of opinion that the appellee (Thornton) was entitled to, wage his battel, no presumptions of guilt having been shown clear enough or strong enough to deprive him of that right.  Upon this, Ashford, not having accepted the wager of battel, the “appeal” was stayed, and Thornton was discharged.  Thus no reversal took place of the previous acquittal of Thornton by the Jury at Warwick Assizes.  But that acquittal had nothing whatever to do with any “trial by battel;” for I have shown that the “wager of battel” arose out of a proceeding later than and consequent upon that acquittal, and that this “wager of battel” never reached the stage of a “trial by battel.”

What became of Thornton is unknown, but he is supposed to have died in America, where he fled to escape the obloquoy showered upon him by an unforgiving public.  The adage that “murder will out” has frequently proved correct, but in this case it has not, and the charge against Thornton is reiterated in every account of this celebrated trial that has been published, though his innocence cannot now be doubted.

Ashted, now a populous part of the town, takes its name from Dr. Ash, whose residence was transformed into Ashted Church, the estate being laid out for building in 1788.