Will you do me the favour to insert the following attempt to set right and disentangle the thread {447} of my narrative respecting the death of young Allen.  Certain it is that I was not “an actor nor spectator,” in the riots of 1768, for they occurred some little time before I was born!  It is equally certain that a man well remembered by me as our servant, whose name was “Mac,” was a soldier concerned in the affair of Allen’s death.  As all the three soldiers had the prefix of “Mac” to their names, I cannot tell which of them it was, but it was not the man who really shot Allen, and was never again heard of; for “Mac,” whom I so well remember, must have lived with my father after the affair of 1768, or I could not have known him.  In my youthful remembrance, I have blended the story about him with the riots which I had witnessed in 1780:  this is the best and only explanation I can give.  Sure I am, that all my father related to me of that man was true.  I presume the “Mac” I knew must have been Maclane, as your correspondent E.B.  PRICE thinks probable, because of his trial and acquittal, which agrees with my father’s statement; and especially as he was singled out and erroneously accused of the crime—­as the quotation above referred to states.  All I can say is, I can relate no more; I have told the story as I remember it, and for myself can only apologise that (though not so old as to witness the riots of 1768) I am old enough to experience that Time has laid his hand not only on my head to whiten my locks, but in this instance compels me to acknowledge that even the memories of my early days are, like the present, imperfect.  The failure is with me, not with my father.

This vindication of my honourable parent’s undoubted veracity reminds me of a circumstance that I have read or heard in a trial with regard to a right of way across an inclosure.  Several aged men had given their evidence, when one said, “I remember that a public footpath for more than 100 years.”  “How old are you?” said the counsel.  “Somewhere about eighty,” was as the reply.  “How then do you remember the path for 100 years?” “I remember (said the old man firmly), when a boy, sitting on my father’s knee, and he told me of a robbery that took place on that footpath; and so I know it existed then, for my father never told a lie.”  The point was carried, and the footpath remains open to this day, to tell to all generations the beauty of truth.

SENEX.

In Malcolm’s Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the eighteenth Century, 4to. 1808, there is a

    “Summary of the Trial of Donald Maclane, on Tuesday last, at Guildford
    Assizes, for the murder of William Allen Jun. on the 10th of May last
    in St. George’s Fields.”

Upon the trial mention was made of the paper stuck up against the walls of the King’s Bench Prison, from which it appears that it contained the following: