The Crown’s next witness was a gentleman named Joseph Pickles, who had been a common soldier in the British Army, now retired to the town of Chester, north of London by, he testified, “about three days’ journey if the weather be good.”
He served in America and claimed to have seen Washington on a white horse, leading his “rebel troops” in battle against Pickles’s British infantry unit “somewhere in New Jersey” late in 1778, which would have put the action well within the three-year statute of limitations. To prepare to cross-examine him, Hobhouse reminded himself what he had been taught about cross-examination in his first year as a pupil in Fletcher Chambers—question the witness’s ability to perceive, question the quality of his recollection and try to show his bias. Fortunately, Mr. Pickles, however he had appeared earlier in his life, by then looked old and doddering, which should, Hobhouse thought, make for a fine, if delicate, cross-examination.
“It is your witness, Mr. Hobhouse,” the Chief Justice said.
“Thank you, my Lord. Mr. Pickles, were you on the front lines during the battle you described?”
“No, my Lord. As I said earlier, I was a cook. Well behind the lines.”
“I am not a lord, Mr. Pickles. Addressing me as ‘mister’ will do quite fine.”
“All right.”
“Mr. Pickles, how far from the man on the horse were you when you say you saw General Washington astride that horse, leading troops in battle?”
“Well, he might have been two hundred yards away.”
“That is quite a long distance, would you not agree?”
“Yes, my... Mr. Hobhouse. It is. But I saw what I saw.”
“Could you see his face clearly?”
“Maybe not so clearly. But he is a big man—” he gestured at Washington “—and the man on the horse—a white horse—was very big.”
“Are there any big men in the British Army?”
“A few, yes.”
“Did you ever see any other big men in the American army?”
“Well, probably I did.”
“Did the man you saw have on the same uniform as General Washington does today?”
Pickles looked again at Washington. “I...am not sure. He was far away.” And then, realizing how he had just damaged his own testimony, said, “But not so far away I could not see who it was.”
Washington leaned over and whispered to Hobhouse, “I did lead my troops in battle like that at times. It helped inspire them. But he is no doubt remembering a battle in New Jersey in late 1776, not 1778.”
Hobhouse glanced over at the jury. They seemed attentive, and he wished there was a way to prove to them—and to the court—that the battle in question had taken place in 1776. But Hobhouse had no witness from whose mouth he could elicit that testimony. Certainly, it would not be worth having Washington testify for that point alone. There was too much risk he’d be asked whether he was at the time leading the American army there, no matter what the date. So he tried the “are you sure” approach. Once in a while it worked.
“Mr. Pickles, are you sure the battle you remember was in 1778?”
“Yes.”
“You never confuse dates?”
“Not usually.”
And then Hobhouse decided to take a risk. “Mr. Pickles, what year is it right now?”
“1780. I’m sorry—I mean 1781.”
Hobhouse glanced over at the jury. None looked impressed at Pickles mistaking the year when the old year was less than four months behind them. It was a common mistake. If only he’d said it was 1779. Hobhouse moved on.
“Mr. Pickles, how far away from London is Chester, did you say?”
“It is about a three-day trip by coach.”
“Did you pay your own way here?”
“No. The government gave me a stipend.”
“To cover the coach, meals and lodging along the way and your meals and lodging here in London?”
“Yes.”
“Do you expect to have any left over by the time you get back to Chester? And let me remind you that you have taken a solemn oath.”
“Well, yes.”
“Quite a lot?”
“Maybe not by the standards of a high-placed man like you, Mr. Hobhouse, but by mine, yes, certainly.”
“Did your wife come with you?”
“Yes.”
“I have no further questions, my Lord.”
The Attorney General asked only one question and it was, Hobhouse thought, the only one really open to him.
“Mr. Pickles, are you certain you saw Mr. Washington on a horse leading his troops in battle in 1778?”
“He was a general, not a mister, but yes.”
After that, the Crown produced two more retired witnesses, who were also retired army cooks and who, like Mr. Pickles, purported to have seen Washington on his horse in the exact same battle, from the same distance away, but also placing it in 1778, and not 1776. Of the last witness he had asked as his final question, “Were you all cooking together?”
“Yes, sir,” the man had said. “We was all cooking up a very big pot of beans.”
“Were you not, then, looking into the pot instead of at the battle?”
That got a laugh from the jury, but the witness was clever enough to respond, “No, sir. The battle was getting close to us, and we was watching it and talking whether we should pack up and move back. That’s when we saw that man—” he pointed to Washington “—on his horse.”
In the end Hobhouse judged he had managed to cast at least some doubt on the testimony of each of the cooks. Unfortunately, it was not much. Also unfortunately, they were all old soldiers, which had made them risky to attack aggressively. In truth, he had kind of liked them himself, and that was a bad sign.
Finally, the Crown attempted to introduce a series of captured battle plans and orders, purportedly written in Washington’s own hand and dated 1779. But Hobhouse managed to show that while Major Temple, the Crown witness who proffered the documents, could say from whom he had gotten the documents (a clerk at the War Department), he could not say where the clerk first obtained them or where the documents had been in the two years since they’d been written if the dates were to be believed. Nor could the Crown produce a witness to persuasively authenticate Washington’s signature or handwriting. The court, as a result, excluded all of the orders from evidence. Of course, the jury had heard the whole thing, and when Hobhouse looked over at them, a couple of them were whispering to one another. But it was hard to tell if it meant anything. On the other hand, the exclusion of the documents by the court might mean he’d be able to win the case on legal arguments alone.
The Crown rested its case, and the Chief Justice said, “Mr. Hobhouse, I assume you have motions you want to make before you put on your own witnesses.”
“I do, my Lord.”
“Let us hear them.”