"Francois Benjamin Courvoisier, you are indicted for that.....upon William Russell Esquire, commonly called Lord William Russell, feloniously, wilfully, and of your malice aforethought you did make assault, and that with a certain ife held in your right hand, the aid William Russell in and upon his neck and throat feloniously. and maliciously did strike. These words, read by the Clerk of the Arraigns at the Old Bailey in June, 1840. marked the opening of a trial of "the utmost public interest and importance'—and during the week beginning June 11 they will be spoken again when M. H. Allen produces from Daventry an abridged version, by Hartley Kemball Cook, he famous trial, Regina v. Courvoisier.
Russell's link with the Bedford family drew to the Old Bailey a most distinguished audience, and counsel's display of oratory wa:
y of the occasion. The calm, for the Crown, was countered by the flamboyant attack of Phillips, for the prisoner, and the jury was absent nearly an hour and a half before it reached a decision.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.