"Your servant, Mr. Mountford. I have a great respect for you, Mr. Mountford, and would have no difference between us; but there is a thing fallen out between Mr. Hill and Mrs. Bracegirdle."
"My lord, has my wife disobliged your lordship? if she has, she shall ask your pardon. But Mrs. Bracegirdle is no concern of mine: I know nothing of this matter; I come here by accident. But I hope your lordship will not vindicate Hill in such actions as these are."
Upon this, according to Mrs. Browne's statement, Hill bade Mountford draw; which the other said he would; but whether he received his wound before or after she could not tell, owing to its being night-time.
Another female witness, who lived next door, gives the dialogue as follows. Lord Mohun begins:--
"Mr. Mountford, your humble servant. I am glad to see you" (embracing him).
"What bringeth your lordship here at this time of night?"
"I suppose you were sent for, Mr. Mountford?"
"You have heard of the business of Mrs. Bracegirdle?"
_Hill_ (interfering). "Pray, my lord, hold your tongue, This is not a convenient time to discuss this business." (On saying which, the witness adds, that he would have drawn Mohun away.)
_Mountford._ "I am very sorry, my lord, to see that your lordship should assist Captain Hill in so ill an action as this: pray let me desire your lordship to forbear."
As soon as he had uttered these words Hill, according to the witness, came up and struck Mountford a box on the ear; upon which the latter demanded with an oath, "what that was for;" and then she gives a confused account of the result, which was the receipt of a mortal wound by the poor actor. It was agreed that Mountford's sword was not drawn in the first instance, and that Hill's was; and the question was settled by the dying deposition of Mountford, who stated several times over, that Lord Mohun offered him no violence, but that Hill struck him with his left hand, and then ran him through the body, before he had time to draw in defence.
Mountford died next day. Hill fled at the time, and we hear no more of him. Mohun was tried for his life, but acquitted, for want of evidence, of malice prepense. The truth is, he was a great fool, and Hill appears to have been another. The captain himself, probably, did not know what he intended, though his words would have hung him had he been caught. They were a couple of box-lobby swaggerers, who had heated themselves with wine; and Hill, who told the constables "they might knock him down if they liked," and was for drawing Mohun away on Mountford's appearance, was most likely overcome with rage and jealousy at hearing the latter speak of him with rebuke. Mohun was at that time very young. He never ceased, however, hankering after this sort of excitement to his dulness, till he got killed in a duel about an estate with the Duke of Hamilton, who was at the same time mortally wounded. Swift, in a letter about it, calls Mohun a "dog." Pennant says, that when his body was taken home bleeding (to his house in Gerrard Street), "Lady Mohun was very angry at its being flung upon the best bed."[155]