By the way dining with my most excellent friend Freeling a few days since I put Yr Letters about - Waite - the Commandant c 'The Queen asked me if Lord Byron was coming over.'3 As we know, to both the Queen's and Hobhouse's great disappointment Byron did not come over - not only because he felt he could be of little service to her, but because the first thing his honour (and inclination) would oblige him to do would be to challenge her principal defence lawyer, Henry Brougham, to a duel. However, he was not idle in her behalf in Italy: he attempted to muster up Italian witnesses to come to England to speak in her defence, and supplied Hobhouse with 'some intelligence' which has, until now, eluded investigation. That intelligence, as will become clear in the course of this writing, relates to the testimony of one of the prosecution's witnesses, which arose in the early stages of the proceedings and of which I give a sketch here. Giving evidence for the prosecution in its examination of witnesses before the House of Lords on Tuesday 29 August, one Giuseppe Bianchi, porter at the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Venice where the Princess had stayed for three days before moving into her own house, testified that, one day during dinner, a jeweller had called at the house and that the Princess had bought a gold chain from him; that as the party was getting up from dinner she took it from her neck and put it round that of her courier, Bartolemeo Pergami, who then removed it and put it round hers, after which they parted with a squeeze of the hand. Cross-examined by Mr Denman, Bianchi said that the jeweller's name was Fana [sic], a merchant who lived in Venice and had a shop in the Old City near San Marco.4 Neither then nor during the subsequent proceedings did the defence offer any evidence to counter Bianchi's testimony - a point the prosecution took pains to exploit in their summing up at the end of October.5 In the interim, however, the following letter 'To the Editor of The Times', discrediting Bianchi and disproving his testimony, appeared in The Times for Monday 16 October 1820: Sir, - I take the liberty of informing you that I have received from Venice notice to the following effect: - Bianchi, the porter at the Grande Bretagne, swore that the Princess of Wales bought a chain of one Fanna [sic], at Venice, and disposed of it in a certain way which appeared to help out the charge against her Majesty. Now Fanna has given a certificate that he never sold any chain to her Royal Highness, or to any of her suite. My informant adds, that it can be proved that one fellow at Venice received a considerable sum (he believes 1,000 francs) for putting his name to a paper which he never read. He subjoins that Bianchi, besides being an habitual drunkard, has so bad a character that his fellow-servants would not believe him on his oath. Now, Sir, what are we to think of the Milan commission?6 They had means of knowing and inquiring into the truth of many of the assertions, from having been on the spot: take Bianchi's case, for instance: but they would not know, they would not inquire - their object was to make a charge - to fill a green bag - to satisfy their employers. Lord Melville had the Admiralty records to refer to, in order to confound or rebut one of the Queen's witnesses. …