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HISTORICAL MYSTERIES
BY
ANDREW LANG
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
_SECOND EDITION_
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1905
[All rights reserved]
[Illustration: William Smith 1754 Pinx. Mac Ardell. Mezzo.
Elizabeth Canning.
London: Smith, Elder & Co., 15 Waterloo Place, S.W.]
PREFACE
These Essays, which appeared, with two exceptions, in _The Cornhill
Magazine_, 1904, have been revised, and some alterations, corrections,
and additions have been made in them. 'Queen Oglethorpe,' in which
Miss Alice Shield collaborated, doing most of the research, is
reprinted by the courteous permission of the editor, from _Blackwood's
Magazine_. A note on 'The End of Jeanne de la Motte,' has been added
as a sequel to 'The Cardinal's Necklace:' it appeared in _The Morning
Post_, the Editor kindly granting leave to republish.
The author wishes to acknowledge the able assistance of Miss E.M.
Thompson, who made researches for him in the British Museum and at the
Record Office.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE CASE OF ELIZABETH CANNING 1
II. THE MURDER OF ESCOVEDO 32
III. THE CAMPDEN MYSTERY 55
IV. THE CASE OF ALLAN BRECK 75
V. THE CARDINAL'S NECKLACE 99
VI. THE MYSTERY OF KASPAR HAUSER: THE CHILD OF EUROPE 118
VII. THE GOWRIE CONSPIRACY 143
VIII. THE STRANGE CASE OF DANIEL DUNGLAS HOME 170
IX. THE CASE OF CAPTAIN GREEN 193
X. QUEEN OGLETHORPE (_in collaboration with Miss
Alice Shield_) 214
XI. THE CHEVALIER D'ÉON 238
XII. SAINT-GERMAIN THE DEATHLESS 256
XIII. THE MYSTERY OF THE KIRKS 277
XIV. THE END OF JEANNE DE LA MOTTE 297
PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH CANNING. _Frontispiece._
HISTORICAL MYSTERIES
I
_THE CASE OF ELIZABETH CANNING_
Don't let your poor little
Lizzie be blamed!
THACKERAY.
'Everyone has heard of the case of Elizabeth Canning,' writes Mr. John
Paget; and till recently I agreed with him. But five or six years ago
the case of Elizabeth Canning repeated itself in a marvellous way, and
then but few persons of my acquaintance had ever heard of that
mysterious girl.
The recent case, so strange a parallel to that of 1753, was this: In
Cheshire lived a young woman whose business in life was that of a
daily governess. One Sunday her family went to church in the morning,
but she set off to skate, by herself, on a lonely pond. She was never
seen of or heard of again till, in the dusk of the following Thursday,
her hat was found outside of the door of her father's farmyard. Her
friend discovered her further off in a most miserable condition,
weak, emaciated, and with her skull fractured. Her explanation was
that a man had seized her on the ice, or as she left it, had dragged
her across the fields, and had shut her up in a house, from which she
escaped, crawled to her father's home, and, when she found herself
unable to go further, tossed her hat towards the farm door. Neither
such a man as she described, nor the house in which she had been
imprisoned, was ever found. The girl's character was excellent,
nothing pointed to her condition being the result _d'une orgie
échevelée_; but the neighbours, of course, made insinuations, and a
lady of my acquaintance, who visited the girl's mother, found herself
almost alone in placing a charitable construction on the adventure.
My theory was that the girl had fractured her skull by a fall on the
ice, had crawled to and lain in an unvisited outhouse of the farm, and
on that Thursday night was wandering out, in a distraught state, not
wandering in. Her story would be the result of her cerebral
condition--concussion of the brain.
It was while people were discussing this affair, a second edition of
Elizabeth Canning's, that one found out how forgotten was Elizabeth.
On January 1, 1753, Elizabeth was in her eighteenth year. She was the
daughter of a carpenter in Aldermanbury; her mother, who had four
younger children, was a widow, very poor, and of the best character.
Elizabeth was short of stature, ruddy of complexion, and, owing to an
accident in childhood--the falling of a garret ceiling on her
head--was subject to fits of unconsciousness on any alarm. On learning
this, the mind flies to hysteria, with its accompaniment of diabolical
falseness, for an explanation of her adventure. But hysteria does not
serve the turn. The girl had been for years in service with a Mr.
Wintlebury, a publican. He gave her the highest character for honesty
and reserve; she did not attend to the customers at the bar, she kept
to herself, she had no young man, and she only left Wintlebury's for a
better place--at a Mr. Lyon's, a near neighbour of her mother. Lyon, a
carpenter, corroborated, as did all the neighbours, on the points of
modesty and honesty.
On New Year's Day, 1753, Elizabeth wore her holiday best--'a purple
masquerade stuff gown, a white handkerchief and apron, a black quilted
petticoat, a green undercoat, black shoes, blue stockings, a white
shaving hat with green ribbons,' and 'a very ruddy colour.' She had
her wages, or Christmas-box, in her pocket--a golden half guinea in a
little box, with three shillings and a few coppers, including a
farthing. The pence she gave to three of her little brothers and
sisters. One boy, however, 'had huffed her,' and got no penny. But she
relented, and, when she went out, bought for him a mince-pie. Her
visit of New Year's Day was to her maternal aunt, Mrs. Colley, living
at Saltpetre Bank (Dock Street, behind the London Dock). She meant to
return in time to buy, with her mother, a cloak, but the Colleys had a
cold early dinner, and kept her till about 9 P.M. for a hot supper.
Already, at 9 P.M., Mr. Lyon had sent to Mrs. Canning's to make
inquiries; the girl was not wont to stay out so late on a holiday.
About 9 P.M., in fact, the two Colleys were escorting Elizabeth as far
as Houndsditch.
The rest is mystery!
On Elizabeth's non-arrival Mrs. Canning sent her lad, a little after
ten, to the Colleys, who were in bed. The night was passed in anxious
search, to no avail; by six in the morning inquiries were vainly
renewed. Weeks went by. Mrs. Canning, aided by the neighbours,
advertised in the papers, mentioning a report of shrieks heard from a
coach in Bishopsgate Street in the small morning hours of January 2.
The mother, a Churchwoman, had prayers put up at several churches, and
at Mr. Wesley's chapel. She also consulted a cheap 'wise man,' whose
aspect alarmed her, but whose wisdom took the form of advising her to
go on advertising. It was later rumoured that he said the girl was in
the hands of 'an old black woman,' and would return; but Mrs. Canning
admitted nothing of all this. Sceptics, with their usual acuteness,
maintained that the disappearance was meant to stimulate charity, and
that the mother knew where the daughter was; or, on the other hand,
the daughter had fled to give birth to a child in secret, or for
another reason incident to 'the young and gay,' as one of the counsel
employed euphemistically put the case. The medical evidence did not
confirm these suggestions. Details are needless, but these theories
were certainly improbable. The character of La Pucelle was not more
stainless than Elizabeth's.
About 10.15 P.M. on January 29, on the Eve of the Martyrdom of King
Charles--as the poor women dated it--Mrs. Canning was on her knees,
praying--so said her apprentice--that she might behold even if it were
but an apparition of her daughter; such was her daily prayer. It was
as in Wordsworth's _Affliction of Margaret_:
I look for ghosts, but none will force
Their way to me; 'tis falsely said
That ever there was intercourse
Between the living and the dead!
At that moment there was a sound at the door. The 'prentice opened it,
and was aghast; the mother's prayer seemed to be answered, for there,
bleeding, bowed double, livid, ragged, with a cloth about her head,
and clad in a dirty dressing-jacket and a filthy draggled petticoat,
was Elizabeth Canning. She had neglected her little brother that
'huffed her' on New Year's Day, but she had been thinking of him, and
now she gave her mother for him all that she had--the farthing!
You see that I am on Elizabeth's side: that farthing touch, and
another, with the piety, honesty, loyalty, and even the superstition
of her people, have made me her partisan, as was Mr. Henry Fielding,
the well-known magistrate.
Some friends were sent for, Mrs. Myers, Miss Polly Lyon, daughter of
her master, and others; while busybodies flocked in, among them one
Robert Scarrat, a toiler, who had no personal knowledge of Elizabeth.
A little wine was mulled; the girl could not swallow it, emaciated as
she was. Her condition need not be described in detail, but she was
very near her death, as the medical evidence, and that of a midwife
(who consoled Mrs. Canning on one point), proves beyond possibility of
cavil.
The girl told her story; but what did she tell? Mr. Austin Dobson, in
_The Dictionary of National Biography_, says that her tale 'gradually
took shape under the questions of sympathising neighbours,' and
certainly, on some points, she gave affirmative answers to leading
questions asked by Robert Scarrat. The difficulty is that the
neighbours' accounts of what Elizabeth said in her woful condition
were given when the girl was tried for perjury in April-May 1754. We
must therefore make allowance for friendly bias and mythopoeic
memory. On January 31, 1753, Elizabeth made her statement before
Alderman Chitty, and the chief count against her is that what she told
Chitty did not tally with what the neighbours, in May 1754, swore that
she told them when she came home on January 29, 1753. This point is
overlooked by Mr. Paget in his essay on the subject.[1]
[Footnote 1: _Puzzles and Paradoxes_, pp. 317-336, Blackwoods, 1874.]
On the other hand, by 1754 the town was divided into two factions,
believers and disbelievers in Elizabeth; and Chitty was then a
disbeliever. Chitty took but a few notes on January 31, 1753. 'I did
not make it so distinct as I could wish, not thinking it could be the
subject of so much inquiry,' he admitted in 1754. Moreover, the notes
which he then produced were _not_ the notes which he made at the time,
'but what I took since from that paper I took then' (January 31, 1753)
'of hers and other persons that were brought before me.' This is not
intelligible, and is not satisfactory. If Elizabeth handed in a paper,
Chitty should have produced it in 1754. If he took notes of the
evidence, why did he not produce the original notes?
These notes, made when, and from what source, is vague, bear that
Elizabeth's tale was this: At a dead wall by Bedlam, in Moorfields,
about ten P.M., on January 1, 1753, two men stripped her of gown,
apron, and hat, robbed her of thirteen shillings and sixpence, 'struck
her, stunned her, and pushed her along Bishopsgate Street.' She lost
consciousness--one of her 'fits'--and recovered herself (near Enfield
Wash). Here she was taken to a house, later said to be 'Mother
Wells's,' where 'several persons' were. Chitty, unluckily, does not
say what sort of persons, and on that point all turns. She was asked
'to do as they did,' 'a woman forced her upstairs into a room, and cut
the lace of her stays,' told her there were bread and water in the
room, and that her throat would be cut if she came out. The door was
locked on her. (There was no lock; the door was merely bolted.) She
lived on fragments of a quartern loaf and water '_in a pitcher_,' with
the mince-pie bought for her naughty little brother. She escaped about
four in the afternoon of January 29. In the room were 'an old stool or
two, _an old picture_ over the chimney,' two windows, an old table,
and so on. She forced a pane in a window, 'and got out on a small shed
of boards or penthouse,' and so slid to the ground. She did not say,
the alderman added, that there was any hay in the room. Of bread there
were 'four or five' or 'five or six pieces.' '_She never mentioned the
name of Wells._' Some one else did that at a venture. 'She said she
could tell nothing of the woman's name.' The alderman issued a warrant
against this Mrs. Wells, apparently on newspaper suggestion.
The chief points against Elizabeth were that, when Wells's place was
examined, there was no penthouse to aid an escape, and no old picture.
But, under a wretched kind of bed, supporting the thing, was a
picture, on wood, of a Crown. Madam Wells had at one time used this
loyal emblem as a sign, she keeping a very ill-famed house of call.
But, in December 1745, when certain Highland and Lowland gentlemen
were accompanying bonny Prince Charlie towards the metropolis, Mrs.
Wells removed into a room the picture of the Crown, as being apt to
cause political emotions. This sign may have been 'the old picture.'
As to hay, there _was_ hay in the room later searched; but penthouse
there was none.
That is the worst point in the alderman's notes, of whatever value
these enigmatic documents may be held.
One Nash, butler to the Goldsmiths' Company, was present at the
examination before Chitty on January 31, 1753. He averred, in May
1754, what Chitty did not, that Elizabeth spoke of the place of her
imprisonment as 'a little, square, darkish room,' with 'a few old
pictures.' Here the _one_ old picture of the notes is better evidence,
if the notes are evidence, than Nash's memory. But I find that he was
harping on 'a few old pictures' as early as March 1753. Elizabeth said
she hurt her ear in getting out of the window, and, in fact, it was
freshly cut and bleeding when she arrived at home.
All this of Nash is, so far, the better evidence, as next day,
February 1, 1753, when a most tumultuous popular investigation of the
supposed house of captivity was made, he says that he and others,
finding the dungeon not to be square, small, and darkish, but a long,
narrow slit of a loft, half full of hay, expressed disbelief. Yet it
was proved that he went on suggesting to Lyon, Elizabeth's master,
that people should give money to Elizabeth, and 'wished him success.'
The proof was a letter of his, dated February 10, 1753. Also, Nash,
and two like-minded friends, hearing Elizabeth perjure herself, as
they thought, at the trial of Mrs. Wells (whom Elizabeth never
mentioned to Chitty), did not give evidence against her--on the most
absurdly flimsy excuses. One man was so horrified that, in place of
denouncing the perjury, he fled incontinent! Another went to a dinner,
and Nash to Goldsmiths' Hall, to his duties as butler. Such was then
the vigour of their scepticism.
On the other hand, at the trial in 1754 the neighbours reported
Elizabeth's tale as told on the night when she came home, more dead
than alive. Mrs. Myers had known Elizabeth for eleven years, 'a very
sober, honest girl as any in England.' Mrs. Myers found her livid, her
fingers 'stood crooked;' Mrs. Canning, Mrs. Woodward, and Polly Lyon
were then present, and Mrs. Myers knelt beside Elizabeth to hear her
story. It was as Chitty gave it, till the point where she was carried
into a house. The 'several persons' there, she said, were 'an elderly
woman and two young ones.' Her stays were cut by the old woman. She
was then thrust upstairs into a room, wherein was _hay_, _a pitcher of
water_, and bread in pieces. Bread may have been brought in, water
too, while she slept, a point never noted in the trials. She 'heard
the name of Mother Wills, or Wells, mentioned.'
Now Scarrat, in 1754, said that he, being present on January 29, 1753,
and hearing of the house, 'offered to bet a guinea to a farthing that
it was Mother Wells's.' But Mrs. Myers believed that Elizabeth had
mentioned hearing that name earlier; and Mrs. Myers must have heard
Scarrat, if he suggested it, before Elizabeth named it. The point is
uncertain.
Mrs. Woodward was in Mrs. Canning's room a quarter of an hour after
Elizabeth's arrival. The girl said she was almost starved to death in
a house on the Hertfordshire road, which she knew by seeing the
Hertford coach, with which she was familiar, go by. The woman who cut
her stays was 'a tall, black, swarthy woman.' Scarrat said 'that was
not Mrs. Wells,' which was fair on Scarrat's part. Elizabeth described
the two young women as being one fair, the other dark; so Scarrat
swore. Wintlebury, her old master, and several others corroborated.
If these accounts by Mrs. Myers, Mrs. Woodward, Scarrat, Wintlebury,
and others are trustworthy, then Elizabeth Canning's narrative is
true, for she found the two girls, the tall, swarthy woman, the hay,
and the broken water-pitcher, and almost everything else that she had
mentioned on January 29, at Mother Wells's house when it was visited
on February 1. But we must remember that most accounts of what
Elizabeth said on January 29 and on January 31 are fifteen months
after date, and are biassed on both sides.
To Mother Wells's the girl was taken on February 1, in what a company!
The coach, or cab, was crammed full, some friends walked, several
curious citizens rode, and, when Elizabeth arrived at the house, Nash,
the butler, and other busybodies had made a descent on it. The officer
with the warrant was already there. Lyon, Aldridge, and Hague were
with Nash in a cab, and were met by others 'riding hard,' who had
seized the people found at Mrs. Wells's. There was a rabble of persons
on foot and on horse about the door.
On entering the doorway the parlour was to your left, the house
staircase in front of you, on your right the kitchen, at the further
end thereof was a door, and, when that was opened, a flight of stairs
led to a long slit of a loft which, Nash later declared, did not
answer to Elizabeth's description, especially as there was hay, and,
before Chitty, Elizabeth had mentioned none. There was a filthy kind
of bed, on which now slept a labourer and his wife, Fortune and Judith
Natus. Nash kept talking about the hay, and one Adamson rode to meet
Elizabeth, and came back saying that she said there _was_ hay. By
Adamson's account he only asked her, 'What kind of place was it?' and
she said, 'A wild kind of place with hay in it,' as in the neighbours'
version of her first narrative. Mrs. Myers, who was in the coach,
corroborated Adamson.
The point of the sceptics was that till Adamson rode back to her on
her way to Wells's house she had never mentioned hay. They argued that
Adamson had asked her, 'Was there hay in the room?' and that she,
taking the hint, had said 'Yes!' By May 1754 Adamson and Mrs. Myers,
who was in the cab with Elizabeth, would believe that Adamson had
asked 'What kind of place is it?' and that Elizabeth then spoke,
without suggestion, of the hay. The point would be crucial, but nobody
in 1754 appears to have remembered that on February 21, three weeks
after the event, at the trial of Mother Wells, Adamson had given
exactly the same evidence as in May 1754. 'I returned to meet her, and
asked her about the room. She described the room with some hay in it
... an odd sort of an empty room.'
Arriving at Mother Wells's, Elizabeth, very faint, was borne in and
set on a dresser in the kitchen. Why did she not at once say, 'My room
was up the stairs, beyond the door at the further end of the room'? I
know not, unless she was dazed, as she well might be. Next she, with a
mob of the curious, was carried into the parlour, where were all the
inmates of the house. She paid no attention to Mrs. Wells, but at once
picked out a tall old woman huddled over the fire smoking a pipe. She
did this, by the sceptical Nash's evidence, instantly and without
hesitation. The old woman rose. She was 'tall and swarthy,' a gipsy,
and according to all witnesses inconceivably hideous, her underlip was
'the size of a small child's arm,' and she was marked with some
disease. 'Pray look at this face,' she said; 'I think God never made
such another.' She was named Mary Squires. She added that on January 1
she was in Dorset--'at Abbotsbury,' said her son George, who was
present.
In 1754 thirty-six people testified to Mary Squires's presence in
Dorset, or to meeting her on her way to London, while twenty-seven, at
Enfield alone, swore as positively that they had seen her and her
daughter at or near Mrs. Wells's, and had conversed with her, between
December 18, 1752, and the middle of January. Some of the Enfield
witnesses were of a more prosperous and educated class than the
witnesses for the gipsy. Many, on both sides, had been eager to swear,
indeed, many had made affidavits as early as March 1753.
This business of the cross-swearing is absolutely inexplicable; on
both sides the same entire certainty was exhibited, as a rule, yet the
woman was unmistakable, as she justly remarked. The gipsy, at all
events, had her _alibi_ ready at once; her denial was as prompt and
unhesitating as Elizabeth's accusation. But, if guilty, she had
enjoyed plenty of time since the girl's escape to think out her line
of defence. If guilty, it was wiser to allege an _alibi_ than to
decamp when Elizabeth made off, for she could not hope to escape
pursuit. George Squires, her son, so prompt with his 'at Abbotsbury on
January 1,' could not tell, in May 1754, where he had passed the
Christmas Day before that New Year's Day, and Christmas is a notable
day. Elizabeth also recognised in Lucy Squires, the gipsy's daughter,
and in Virtue Hall, the two girls, dark and fair, who were present
when her stays were cut.
After the recognition, Elizabeth was carried through the house, and,
according to Nash, in the loft up the stairs from the kitchen she
said, in answer to his question, 'This is the room, for here is the
hay I lay upon, but I think there is more of it.' She also identified
the pitcher with the broken mouth, which she certainly mentioned to
Chitty, as that which held her allowance of water. A chest, or nest,
of drawers she declared that she did not remember. An attempt was made
to suggest that one of her party brought the pitcher in with him to
confirm her account. This attempt failed; but that she had mentioned
the pitcher was admitted. Mrs. Myers, in May 1754, quoted Elizabeth's
words as to there being more hay exactly in the terms of Nash. Mrs.
Myers was present in the loft, and added that Elizabeth 'took her
foot, and put the hay away, and showed the gentlemen two holes, and
said they were in the room when she was in it before.'
On February 7, Elizabeth swore to her narrative, formally made out by
her solicitor, before the author of _Tom Jones_, and Mr. Fielding, by
threats of prosecution if she kept on shuffling, induced Virtue Hall
to corroborate, after she had vexed his kind heart by endless
prevarications. But as Virtue Hall was later 'got at' by the other
side and recanted, we leave her evidence on one side.
On February 21-26 Mary Squires was tried at the Old Bailey and
condemned to death, Virtue Hall corroborating Elizabeth. Mrs. Wells
was branded on the hand. Three Dorset witnesses to the gipsy's _alibi_
were not credited, and Fortune and Judith Natus did not appear in
court, though subpoenaed. In 1754 they accounted for this by their
fear of the mob. The three sceptics, Nash, Hague, and Aldridge, held
their peace. The Lord Mayor, Sir Crispin Gascoyne, who was on the
bench at the trial of Squires and Wells, was dissatisfied. He secured
many affidavits which seem unimpeachable, for the gipsy's _alibi_, and
so did the other side for her presence at Enfield. He also got at
Virtue Hall, or rather a sceptical Dr. Hill got at her and handed her
over to Gascoyne. She, as we saw, recanted. George Squires, the
gipsy's son, with an attorney, worked up the evidence for the gipsy's
_alibi_; she received a free pardon, and on April 29, 1754, there
began the trial of Elizabeth Canning for 'wilful and corrupt perjury.'
Mr. Davy, opening for the Crown, charitably suggested that Elizabeth
had absconded 'to preserve her character,' and had told a romantic
story to raise money! 'And, having by this time subdued all remains of
virtue, she preferred the offer of money, though she must wade through
innocent blood'--that of the gipsy--'to attain it.'
These hypotheses are absurd; her character certainly needed no saving.
Mr. Davy then remarked on the gross improbabilities of the story of
Elizabeth. They are glaring, but, as Fielding said, so are the
improbabilities of the facts. Somebody had stripped and starved and
imprisoned the girl; that is absolutely certain. She was brought
'within an inch of her life.' She did not suffer all these things to
excite compassion; that is out of the question. Had she plunged into
'gaiety' on New Year's night, the consequences would be other than
instant starvation. They might have been 'guilty splendour.' She had
been most abominably misused, and it was to the last degree improbable
that any mortal should so misuse an honest quiet lass. But the grossly
improbable had certainly occurred. It was next to impossible that, in
1856, a respectable-looking man should offer to take a little boy for
a drive, and that, six weeks later, the naked body of the boy, who had
been starved to death, should be found in a ditch near Acton. But the
facts occurred.[2] To Squires and Wells a rosy girl might prove more
valuable than a little boy to anybody.
[Footnote 2: Paget, p. 332.]
That Elizabeth could live for a month on a loaf did not surprise Mrs.
Canning. 'When things were very hard with her,' said Mrs. Canning,
'the child had lived on half a roll a day.' This is that other touch
which, with the story of the farthing, helps to make me a partisan of
Elizabeth.
Mr. Davy said that on January 31, before Chitty, Elizabeth 'did not
pretend to certainty' about Mrs. Wells. She never did at any time; she
neither knew, nor affected to know, anything about Mrs. Wells. She had
only seen a tall, swarthy woman, a dark girl, and a fair girl, whom
she recognised in the gipsy, her daughter, and Virtue Hall. Mr. Davy
preferred Nash's evidence to that of all the neighbours, and even to
Chitty's notes, when Nash and Chitty varied. Mr. Davy said that Nash
'withdrew his assistance' after the visit to the house. It was proved,
we saw, by his letter of February 10, that he did not withdraw his
assistance, which, like that of Mr. Tracy Tupman, took the form of
hoping that other people would subscribe money.
Certain varieties of statement as to the time when Elizabeth finished
the water proved fatal, and the penthouse of Chitty's notes was played
for all that it was worth. It was alleged, as matter of fact, that
Adamson brought the broken pitcher into the house--this by Mr. Willes,
later Solicitor-General. Now, for three months before February 1,
Adamson had not seen Elizabeth Canning, nor had he heard her
description of the room. He was riding, and could not carry a gallon
pitcher in his coat pocket. He could not carry it in John Gilpin's
fashion; and, whatever else was denied, it was admitted that from the
first Elizabeth mentioned the pitcher. The statement of Mr. Willes,
that Adamson brought in the pitcher, was one that no barrister should
have made.
The Natus pair were now brought in to say that they slept in the loft
during the time that Elizabeth said she was there. As a reason for not
giving evidence at the gipsy's trial, they alleged fear of the mob, as
we saw.
The witnesses for the gipsy's _alibi_ were called. Mrs. Hopkins, of
South Parrot, Dorset, was not very confident that she had seen the
gipsy at her inn on December 29, 1752. She, if Mary Squires she was,
told Mrs. Hopkins that they 'sold hardware'; in fact they sold soft
ware, smuggled nankin and other stuffs. Alice Farnham recognised the
gipsies, whom she had seen after New Christmas (new style). 'They said
they would come to see me after the Old Christmas holidays'--which is
unlikely!
Lucy Squires, the daughter, was clean, well dressed, and, _teste_ Mr.
Davy, she was pretty. She was not called.
George Squires was next examined. He had been well tutored as to what
he did _after_ December 29, but could not tell where he was on
Christmas Day, four days earlier! His memory only existed from the
hour when he arrived at Mrs. Hopkins's inn, at South Parrot (December
29, 1752). His own counsel must have been amazed; but in
cross-examination Mr. Morton showed that, for all time up to December
29, 1752, George's memory was an utter blank. On January 1, George
dined, he said, at Abbotsbury, with one Clarke, a sweetheart of his
sister. They had two boiled fowls. But Clarke said they had only 'a
part of a fowl between them.' There was such a discrepancy of evidence
here as to time on the part of one of the gipsy's witnesses that Mr.
Davy told him he was drunk. Yet he persisted that he kissed Lucy
Squires, at an hour when Lucy, to suit the case, could not have been
present.
There was documentary evidence--a letter of Lucy to Clarke, from
Basingstoke. It was dated January 18, 1753, but the figure after 175
was torn off the postmark; that was the only injury to the letter. Had
there not been a battalion of as hard swearers to the presence of the
gipsies at Enfield in December-January 1752-1753 as there was to their
absence from Enfield and to their presence in Dorset, the gipsy party
would have proved their case. As matters stand, we must remember that
the Dorset evidence had been organised by a solicitor, that the route
was one which the Squires party habitually used; that by the
confession of Mr. Davy, the prosecuting counsel, the Squires family
'stood in' with the smuggling interest, compact and unscrupulous. They
were 'gipsies dealing in smuggled goods,' said Mr. Davy. Again, while
George Squires had been taught his lesson like a parrot, the
prosecution dared not call his sister, pretty Lucy, as a witness.
They said that George was 'stupid,' but that Lucy was much more dull.
The more stupid was George, the less unlikely was he to kidnap
Elizabeth Canning as prize of war after robbing her. But she did not
swear to him.
As to the presence of the gipsies at Mrs. Wells's, at Enfield, as
early as January 19, Mrs. Howard swore. Her husband lived on his own
property, and her house, with a well, which she allowed the villagers
to use, was opposite Mrs. Wells's. Mrs. Howard had seen the gipsy girl
at the well, and been curtsied to by her, at a distance of three or
four yards. She had heard earlier from her servants of the arrival of
the gipsies, and had 'looked wishfully,' or earnestly, at them. She
was not so positive as to Mary Squires, whom she had seen at a greater
distance.
William Headland swore to seeing Mary Squires on January 9; he fixed
the date by a market-day. Also, on the 12th, he saw her in Mrs.
Wells's house. He picked up a blood-stained piece of thin lead under
the window from which Elizabeth escaped, and took it to his mother,
who corroborated. Samuel Story, who knew Mary Squires from of old, saw
her on December 22 in White Webs Lane, so called from the old house
noted as a meeting-place of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. Story was
a retired clockmaker. Mr. Smith, a tenant of the Duke of Portland, saw
Mary Squires in his cowhouse on December 15, 1752. She wanted leave
to camp there, as she had done in other years. The gipsies then lost a
pony. Several witnesses swore to this, and one swore to conversations
with Mary Squires about the pony. She gave her name, and said that it
was on the clog by which the beast was tethered.
Loomworth Dane swore to Mary Squires, whom he had observed so closely
as to note a great hole in the heel of her stocking. The date was Old
Christmas Day, 1752. Dane was landlord of the Bell, at Enfield, and a
maker of horse-collars. Sarah Star, whose house was next to Mrs.
Wells's, saw Mary Squires in her own house on January 18 or 19; Mary
wanted to buy pork, and hung about for three-quarters of an hour,
offering to tell fortunes. Mrs. Star got rid of her by a present of
some pig's flesh. She fixed the date by a document which she had given
to Miles, a solicitor; it was not in court. James Pratt swore to talk
with Mary Squires before Christmas as to her lost pony; she had then a
man with her. He was asked to look round the court to see if the man
was present, whereon George Squires ducked his head, and was rebuked
by the prosecuting counsel, Mr. Davy, who said 'It does not look
well.' It was hardly the demeanour of conscious innocence. But Pratt
would not swear to him. Mary Squires told Pratt that she would consult
'a cunning-man about the lost pony,' and Mr. Nares foolishly asked why
a cunning woman should consult a cunning man? 'One black fellow will
often tell you that he can and does something magical, whilst all the
time he is perfectly aware that he cannot, and yet firmly believes
that some other man can really do it.' So write Messrs. Spencer and
Gillen in their excellent book on _The Native Tribes of Central
Australia_ (p. 130); and so it was with the gipsy, who, though a 'wise
woman,' believed in a 'wise man.'
This witness (Pratt) said, with great emphasis: 'Upon my oath, that is
the woman.... I am positive in my conscience, and I am sure that it
was no other woman; this is the woman I saw at that blessed time.'
Moreover, she gave him her name as the name on the clog of the lost
pony. The affair of the pony was just what would impress a man like
Pratt, and, on the gipsies' own version, they had no pony with them in
their march from Dorset.
All this occurred _before_ Pratt left his house, which was on December
22, 'three days before New Christmas.' He then left Enfield for
Cheshunt, and his evidence carries conviction.
In some other cases witnesses were very stupid--could not tell in what
month Christmas fell. One witness, an old woman, made an error,
confusing January 16 with January 23. A document on which she relied
gave the later date.
If witnesses on either side were a year out in their reckoning, the
discrepancies would be accountable; but Pratt, for example, could not
forget when he left Enfield for Cheshunt, and Farmer Smith and Mrs.
Howard could be under no such confusion of memory. It may be
prejudice, but I rather prefer the Enfield evidence in some ways, as
did Mr. Paget. In others, the Dorset evidence seems better.
Elizabeth had sworn to having asked a man to point out the way to
London after she escaped into the lane beside Mrs. Wells's house. A
man, Thomas Bennet, swore that on January 29, 1753, he met 'a
miserable, poor wretch, about half-past four,' 'near the ten-mile
stone,' in a lane. She asked her way to London; 'she said she was
affrighted by the tanner's dog.' The tanner's house was about two
hundred yards nearer London, and the prosecution made much of this, as
if a dog, with plenty of leisure and a feud against tramps, could not
move two hundred yards, or much more, if he were taking a walk abroad,
to combat the object of his dislike. Bennet knew that the dog was the
tanner's; probably he saw the dog when he met the wayfarer, and it
does not follow that the wayfarer herself called it 'the tanner's
dog.' Bennet fixed the date with precision. Four days later, hearing
of the trouble at Mrs. Wells's, Bennet said, 'I will be hanged if I
did not meet the young woman near this place and told her the way to
London.' Mr. Davy could only combat Bennet by laying stress on the
wayfarer's talking of 'the tanner's dog.' But the dog, at the moment
of the meeting, was probably well in view. Bennet knew him, and Bennet
was not asked, 'Did the woman call the dog "the tanner's dog," or do
you say this of your own knowledge?' Moreover, the tannery was well in
view, and the hound may have conspicuously started from that base of
operations. Mr. Davy's reply was a quibble.
His closing speech merely took up the old line: Elizabeth was absent
to conceal 'a misfortune'; her cunning mother was her accomplice.
There was no proof of Elizabeth's unchastity; nay, she had an
excellent character, 'but there is a time, gentlemen, when people
begin to be wicked.' If engaged for the other side Mr. Davy would have
placed his '_Nemo repente fuit turpissimus_'--no person of unblemished
character wades straight into 'innocent blood,' to use his own phrase.
The Recorder summed up against Elizabeth. He steadily assumed that
Nash was always right, and the neighbours always wrong, as to the
girl's original story. He said nothing of Bennet; the tanner's dog had
done for Bennet. He said that, if the Enfield witnesses were right,
the Dorset witnesses were wilfully perjured. He did not add that, if
the Dorset witnesses were right, the Enfield testifiers were perjured.
The jury brought in a verdict of 'Guilty of perjury, but not wilful
and corrupt.' This was an acquittal, but, the Recorder refusing the
verdict, they did what they were desired to do, and sentence was
passed. Two jurors made affidavit that they never intended a
conviction. The whole point had turned, in the minds of the jury, on
a discrepancy as to when Elizabeth finished the water in the broken
pitcher--on Wednesday, January 27, or on Friday, January 29. Both
accounts could not be true. Here, then, was 'perjury,' thought the
jury, but not 'wilful and corrupt,' not purposeful. But the jury had
learned that 'the court was impatient;' they had already brought
Elizabeth in guilty of perjury, by which they meant guilty of a casual
discrepancy not unnatural in a person hovering between life and death.
They thought that they could not go back on their 'Guilty,' and so
they went all the way to 'corrupt and wilful perjury'--murder by false
oath--and consistently added 'an earnest recommendation to mercy'!
By a majority of one out of seventeen judges, Elizabeth was banished
for seven years to New England. She was accused in the Press of being
an 'enthusiast,' but the Rev. William Reyner, who attended her in
prison, publicly proclaimed her a good Churchwoman and a good girl
(June 7, 1754). Elizabeth (June 24) stuck to her guns in a
manifesto--she had not once 'knowingly deviated from the truth.'
Mr. Davy had promised the jury that when Elizabeth was once condemned
all would come out--the whole secret. But though the most careful
attempts were made to discover her whereabouts from January 1 to
January 29, 1753, nothing was ever found out--a fact most easily
explained by the hypothesis that she was where she said she was, at
Mother Wells's.
As to Elizabeth's later fortunes, accounts differ, but she quite
certainly married, in Connecticut, a Mr. Treat, a respectable yeoman,
said to have been opulent. She died in Connecticut in June 1773,
leaving a family.
In my opinion Elizabeth Canning was a victim of the common sense of
the eighteenth century. She told a very strange tale, and common-sense
holds that what is strange cannot be true. Yet something strange had
undeniably occurred. It was very strange if Elizabeth on the night of
January 1, retired to become a mother, of which there was no
appearance, while of an amour even gossip could not furnish a hint. It
was very strange if, having thus retired, she was robbed, starved,
stripped and brought to death's door, bleeding and broken down. It was
very strange that no vestige of evidence as to her real place of
concealment could ever be discovered. It was amazingly strange that a
girl, previously and afterwards of golden character, should in a
moment aim by perjury at 'innocent blood.' But the eighteenth century,
as represented by Mr. Davy, Mr. Willes, the barrister who fabled in
court, and the Recorder, found none of these things one half so
strange as Elizabeth Canning's story. Mr. Henry Fielding, who had some
knowledge of human nature, was of the same opinion as the present
candid inquirer. 'In this case,' writes the author of _Tom Jones_,
'one of the most simple girls I ever saw, if she be a wicked one,
hath been too hard for me. I am firmly persuaded that Elizabeth
Canning is a poor, honest, simple, innocent girl.'
_Moi aussi_, but--I would not have condemned the gipsy!
* * * * *
In this case the most perplexing thing of all is to be found in the
conflicting unpublished affidavits sworn in March 1753, when memories
as to the whereabouts of the gipsies were fresh. They form a great
mass of papers in State Papers Domestic, at the Record Office. I owe
to Mr. Courtney Kenny my knowledge of the two unpublished letters of
Fielding to the Duke of Newcastle which follow:
'My Lord Duke,--I received an order from my Lord Chancellor
immediately after the breaking up of the Council to lay before your
Grace all the Affidavits I had taken since the Gipsy Trial which
related to that Affair. I then told the Messenger that I had taken
none, as indeed the fact is the Affidavits of which I gave my Lord
Chancellor an Abstract having been all sworn before Justices of the
Peace in the Neighbourhood of Endfield, and remain I believe in the
Possession of an Attorney in the City.
'However in Consequence of the Commands with which your Grace was
pleased to honour me yesterday, I sent my Clerk immediately to the
Attorney to acquaint him with the Commands, which I doubt not he will
instantly obey. This I did from my great Duty to your Grace, for I
have long had no Concern in this Affair, nor have I seen any of the
Parties lately unless once when I was desired to send for the Girl
(Canning) to my House that a great number of Noblemen and Gentlemen
might see her and ask her what Questions they pleased. I am, with the
highest Duty,
'My Lord,
'Your Grace's most obedient
and most humble Servant,
'HENRY FIELDING.
'Ealing; April 14, 1753.
'His Grace the Duke of Newcastle.'
'_Endorsed_: Ealing, April 14th, 1753
Mr. Fielding.
R. 16th.'
'My Lord Duke,--I am extremely concerned to see by a Letter which I
have just received from Mr. Jones by Command of your Grace that the
Persons concerned for the Prosecution have not yet attended your Grace
with the Affidavits in Canning's Affair. I do assure you upon my
Honour that I sent to them the moment I first received your Grace's
Commands, and having after three Messages prevailed with them to come
to me I desired them to fetch the Affidavits that I might send them to
your Grace, being not able to wait on you in Person. This they said
they could not do, but would go to Mr. Hume Campbell their Council,
and prevail with him to attend your Grace with all their Affidavits,
many of which I found were sworn after the Day mentioned in the Order
of Council. I told them I apprehended the latter could not be admitted
but insisted in the strongest Terms on their laying the others
immediately before your Grace, and they at last promised me they
would, nor have I ever seen them since.
'I have now again ordered my Clerk to go to them to inform them of the
last Commands I have received, but as I have no Compulsory Power over
them I cannot answer for their Behaviour, which _indeed I have long
disliked_, and have therefore long ago declined giving them any
advice, nor would I _unless in Obedience to your Grace have anything
to say to a set of the most obstinate fools I ever saw, and who seem
to me rather to act from a Spleen against my Lord Mayor, than from any
motive of Protecting Innocence, tho' that was certainly their motive
at first_.[3] In Truth, if I am not deceived, I suspect that they
desire that the Gipsey should be pardoned, and then to convince the
World that she was guilty in order to cast the greater Reflection on
him who was principally instrumental in obtaining such Pardon. I
conclude with assuring your Grace that I have acted in this Affair, as
I shall on all Occasions, with the most dutiful Regard to your
Commands, and that if my Life had been at Stake, as many know, I
could have done no more. I am, with the highest Respect,
'My Lord Duke,
'Yr. Grace's most obedient
and most humble Servant,
'HENRY FIELDING.
'Ealing; April 27, 1753.
'His Grace the Duke of Newcastle.'
_Endorsed_: 'Ealing: April 27th, 1753.
Mr. Fielding.'
[Footnote 3: My italics. Did Fielding abandon his belief in
Elizabeth?]
II
_THE MURDER OF ESCOVEDO_
'Many a man,' says De Quincey, 'can trace his ruin to a murder, of
which, perhaps, he thought little enough at the time.' This remark
applies with peculiar force to Philip II. of Spain, to his secretary,
Antonio Perez, to the steward of Perez, to his page, and to a number
of professional ruffians. All of these, from the King to his own
scullion, were concerned in the slaying of Juan de Escovedo, secretary
of Philip's famous natural brother, Don John of Austria. All of them,
in different degrees, had bitter reason to regret a deed which, at the
moment, seemed a commonplace political incident.
The puzzle in the case of Escovedo does not concern the manner of his
taking off, or the identity of his murderers. These things are
perfectly well known; the names of the guilty, from the King to the
bravo, are ascertained. The mystery clouds the motives for the deed.
_Why_ was Escovedo done to death? Did the King have him assassinated
for purely political reasons, really inadequate, but magnified by the
suspicious royal fancy? Or were the secretary of Philip II. and the
monarch of Spain rivals in the affections of a one-eyed widow of rank?
and did the secretary, Perez, induce Philip to give orders for
Escovedo's death, because Escovedo threatened to reveal to the King
their guilty intrigue? Sir William Stirling-Maxwell and Monsieur
Mignet accepted, with shades of difference, this explanation. Mr.
Froude, on the other hand, held that Philip acted for political
reasons, and with the full approval of his very ill-informed
conscience. There was no lady as a motive in the case, in Mr. Froude's
opinion. A third solution is possible: Philip, perhaps, wished to
murder Escovedo for political reasons, and without reference to the
tender passion; but Philip was slow and irresolute, while Perez, who
dreaded Escovedo's interference with his love affair, urged his royal
master on to the crime which he was shirking. We may never know the
exact truth, but at least we can study a state of morals and manners
at Madrid, compared with which the blundering tragedies of Holyrood,
in Queen Mary's time, seem mere child's play. The 'lambs' of Bothwell
are lambs playful and gentle when set beside the instruments of Philip
II.
The murdered man, Escovedo, and the 'first murderer,' as Shakespeare
says, Antonio Perez, had both been trained in the service of Ruy
Gomez, Philip's famous minister. Gomez had a wife, Aña de Mendoza,
who, being born in 1546, was aged thirty-two, not thirty-eight (as M.
Mignet says), in 1578, when Escovedo was killed. But 1546 may be a
misprint for 1540. She was blind in one eye in 1578, but probably both
her eyes were brilliant in 1567, when she really seems to have been
Philip's mistress, or was generally believed so to be. Eleven years
later, at the date of the murder, there is no obvious reason to
suppose that Philip was constant to her charms. Her husband, created
Prince d'Eboli, had died in 1573 (or as Mr. Froude says in 1567); the
Princess was now a widow, and really, if she chose to distinguish her
husband's old secretary, at this date the King's secretary, Antonio
Perez, there seems no reason to suppose that Philip would have
troubled himself about the matter. That he still loved Aña with a
constancy far from royal, that she loved Perez, that Perez and she
feared that Escovedo would denounce them to the King, is M. Mignet's
theory of the efficient cause of Escovedo's murder. Yet M. Mignet
holds, and rightly, that Philip had made up his mind, as far as he
ever did make up his mind, to kill Escovedo, long before that
diplomatist became an inconvenient spy on the supposed lovers.
To raise matters to the tragic height of the _Phædra_ of Euripides,
Perez was said to be the natural son of his late employer, Gomez, the
husband of his alleged mistress. Probably Perez was nothing of the
sort; he was the bastard of a man of his own name, and his alleged
mistress, the widow of Gomez, may even have circulated the other
story to prove that her relations with Perez, though intimate, were
innocent. They are a pretty set of people!