Priam's departure greatly prejudiced the cause of Mr.Oxford, especially when the bloodhounds failed and Priam persisted in his invisibility.

If a man was an honest man, why should he flee the public gaze, and in the night?
There was but a step from the posing of this question to the inevitable inference that Mr.Oxford's line of defence was really too fantastic for credence.
Certainly organs of vast circulation, while repeating that, as the action was _sub judice_, they could say nothing about it, had already tried the action several times in their impartial columns, and they now tried it again, with the entire public as jury.

And in three days Priam had definitely become a criminal in the public eye, a criminal flying from justice.

Useless to assert that he was simply a witness subpoenaed to give evidence at the trial! He had transgressed the unwritten law of the English constitution that a person prominent in a _cause celebre_ belongs for the time being, not to himself, but to the nation at large.
He had no claim to privacy.

In surreptitiously obtaining seclusion he was merely robbing the public and the public's press of their inalienable right.
Who could deny now the reiterated statement that _he_ was a bigamist?
It came to be said that he must be on his way to South America.