4 most romantic and interesting ease of frau. i. wow being disclosed at Bow Street Police Court. A few years ago a certain Colonel Shipway was anxious to trace his pedigree and establish his right to bear arms. His vaquities at Herald's College proving unsuccessful—his ancestors probably being honest yeomen, none of whom had ever received a grant of arms, he employed a young man named Herbert Davies at a small fixed salary plus expenses, to make investigations for him. According to the statement of the counsel who is appearing for the Public Prosecutor against Davies, the young man, being of an ingenious turn of mind, conceived the idea of manufacturing. evidence of the distinction achieved by Col. Shipway's ancestors in order to extract considerable sums of money in expenses and travel from his client. With this purpose he went to the little Church of Mangotsfield in Gloucestershire, forged entries in the parish register, dug up graves, put bogus inscriptions on a lead coffin and the names of bygone Shipways about the church, and generally ewried out a game which it is almost incredible should have been played so long without discovery. He is moreover accused of having stolen wills from local will offices and, having removed nearly all traces of the writing on them, forged other wills of supposed Ship-wage' of the Sfteoath and sixteenth centuries on them, Poor Colonel Shipway, who on the strength of these discoveries caused a screen setting them forth to he erected in Mangotsfield Church, has been made to look very foolish. Whether he would have forced publicity by taking proceedings against Davies is doubtful but the Public Prosecutor has taken the matter out of his hands, tampering with historical documents and desecrating jsraveyards and churches being too serious an offence against the public generally to be passed over as a matter only concerning the person defrauded, 30th September.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.