tenants of the Tichborne family, and numerous other persons.  With the exception of two remote connexions, however, no members of the numerous families of Tichborne and Seymour presented themselves to support the plaintiffs claims; and even the two gentlemen referred to admitted that their acquaintance with Roger was slight, and that it was in his youth; and finally, that they had not recognised the features of the Claimant, but had merely inferred his identity from some circumstances he had been able to mention.  The plaintiffs case was almost entirely unsupported by documentary evidence, and rested chiefly on the impressions or the memory of witnesses, or on their conclusions drawn from circumstances, which often, when they were inquired into in cross-examination, proved to be altogether insufficient.

But the cross-examination of the Claimant himself was really the turning-point of the trial.  It extended over twenty-seven days, and embraced the whole history of Roger Tichborne’s life, his alleged rescue, the life in Australia, and all subsequent proceedings.  Besides this, matters connected with the Orton case were inquired into.  Much that was calculated to alarm supporters of the Claimant was elicited.  He was compelled to admit that he had no confirmation to offer of his strange story of the rescue, and that he could produce no survivor of the “Osprey,” nor any one of the crew of the “Bella” alleged to have been rescued with him.  The mere existence of such a vessel was not evidenced by any shipping register or gazette, or custom-house record.  It was moreover admitted that he had changed his story—­had for a whole year given up the “Osprey,” and said the vessel was the “Themis,” and finally returned to the “Osprey” again.  All the strange circumstances of the Wagga-Wagga will, the Gibbes and Cubitt correspondence, the furtive transactions with the Orton family, the curious revelations of the commissions in South America and Australia, were acknowledged, and either left unexplained or explained in a way which was evasive, inconsistent, and contradictory.  His accounts of his relations with Arthur Orton were also vague, and his attempts to support his assertion that Castro and Orton were not one and the same, but different persons, were unsatisfactory, while by his own confession his habitual associates in Australia had been highway robbers and other persons of the vilest class.  With regard to his life in Paris he admitted that his mind was “a blank,” and he confessed that he could not read a line of Roger Tichborne’s letters in French.  He gave answers which evidenced gross ignorance on all the matters which Roger’s letters and other evidence showed that he had studied.  He said he did not think Euclid was connected with mathematics, though Roger had passed an examination in Euclid; and that he believed that a copy of Virgil handed to him was “Greek,” which it doubtless was to him.  He was compelled again and again to admit that statements he had deliberately made were absolutely