Stirling peerage

xeiv AI'PENUIX Tu INTRODUCTION.
A difficulty had occurred in the defender's case from the
pursuers having proved that a certain John Alexander, who
was married to the daughter and heiress of Graham of Gart-
more, and whose son the defender claimed as an ancestor, had
no son by that marriage. The defender had not discovered
nor alleged any other marriage : but in the argument at the
bar, he took it for granted that John Alexander was twice
married, as the only solution of the difficulty.
The present documents furnish the name of John Alex-
ander's second wife, the date of the marriage, and all other
necessary particulars.
The Lord Ordinary had set aside as inadmissible or impro-
bative, an alleged copy of a tomb-stone inscription.
The same inscription, copied word for word, is among the
documents furnished by Mademoiselle Le Normand, and it
has the advantage of an attestation by an unknown TV. C.
Gordon, junr.
These extraordinary coincidences, and the singularity of
such important evidence coming to light from two quarters,
exactly in time to stay the advising of the action, require ex-
planation.
It is unnecessai-y to point out how much importance attaches
X.0 the custody oi AocumenXs, thus tendered in evidence more
than a century after their apparent date. That is felt in all
cases of this nature, and certainly not less forcibly felt, when,
as in the present case, the documents appear recently to have
passed through the hands of an unknown thief — his anonymous
relatives — an undiscovered lady of Staffordshire — and a French
juggling intriguante. In seeking for some information of their
previous custody and history, the pursuers are met by diffi-
culties at the outset, which only the defender can remove — not
by the guarded statements of his law advisers, but by under-
going a full and searching personal examination.
The pursuers submit, that they might in strict law go to
issue with the defender, on the admissibility of the documents
he tenders. They do not, however, demand that they be
withdrawn. On the contrary, they hold it of great impor-
tance, that they should be detained in the hands of the Court,
and they submit, that it is not only necessary for the proper
investigation of this important case, but also essential to the
ends of justice, that the defender should be examined judi-
cially, in the presence or under the authority of the Court,
with regard to the whole circumstances of the alleged disco-
very of the documents tendered by him in evidence.