visit him in prison. She had been the best, the bravest, the most
devoted of women. If she had reason for jealousy of the Princess,
which is by no means certain, she had forgiven all. She had moved
heaven and earth to save her husband. In the Dominican church, at high
mass, she had thrown herself upon the King's confessor, demanding
before that awful Presence on the altar that the priest should refuse
to absolve the King unless he set Perez free.
Admitted to her husband's prison, she played the trick that saved Lord
Ogilvy from the dungeon of the Covenanters, that saved Argyle,
Nithsdale, and James Mòr Macgregor. Perez walked out of gaol in the
dress of his wife. We may suppose that the guards were bribed: there
is _always_ collusion in these cases. One of the murderers had horses
round the corner, and Perez, who cannot have been badly injured by the
rack, rode thirty leagues, and crossed the frontier of Aragon.
We have not to follow his later adventures. The refusal of the
Aragonese to give him up to Castile, their rescue of him from the
Inquisition, cost them their constitution, and about seventy of them
were burned as heretics. But Perez got clear away. He visited France,
where Henry IV. befriended him; he visited England, where Bacon was
his host. In 1594 (?) he published his _Relaciones_ and told the world
the story of Philip's conscience. That story must not be relied on, of
course, and the autograph letters of Philip as to the murder of
Escovedo are lost. But the copies of them at the Hague are regarded as
authentic, and the convincing passages are underlined in red ink.
Supposing it possible that Philip after all secured the whole of the
autograph correspondence, and that Perez only succeeded in preserving
the copies now at the Hague, we should understand why Perez would not
confess the King's crime: he had only copies of his proofs to show;
and copies were valueless as evidence. But it is certain that Perez
really had the letters.
'Bloody Perez,' as Bacon's mother called him, died at Paris in
November 1611, outliving the wretched master whom he had served so
faithfully. Queen Elizabeth tried to induce Amyas Paulet to murder
Mary Stuart. Paulet, as a man of honour, refused; he knew, too, that
Elizabeth would abandon him to the vengeance of the Scots. Perez ought
to have known that Philip would desert him: his folly was rewarded by
prison, torture, and confiscation, which were not more than the man
deserved, who betrayed and murdered the servant of Don John of
Austria.
NOTE.--This essay was written when I was unaware that Major
Martin Hume had treated the problem in _Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society_, 1894, pp. 71-107, and in
_Españoles é Ingleses_ (1903). The latter work doubtless
represents Major Hume's final views. He has found among the
Additional MSS. of the British Museum (28,269) a quantity of
the contemporary letters of Perez, which supplement the
copies, at the Hague, of other letters destroyed after the
death of Perez. From these MSS. and other original sources
unknown to Mr. Froude, and to Monsieur Mignet (see the
second edition of his _Antonio Perez_; Paris, 1846), Major
Hume's theory is that, for _political_ reasons, Philip gave
orders that Escovedo should be assassinated. This was in
late October or early November, 1577. The order was not then
carried out; the reason of the delay I do not clearly
understand. The months passed, and Escovedo's death ceased,
in altered circumstances, to be politically desirable, but
he became a serious nuisance to Perez and his mistress, the
Princess d'Eboli. Philip had never countermanded the murder,
but Perez, according to Major Hume, falsely alleges that the
King was still bent on the murder, and that other statesmen
were consulted and approved of it, _shortly before the
actual deed_.[4] Perez gives this impression by a crafty
manipulation of dates in his narrative. When he had Escovedo
slain, he was fighting for his own hand; but Philip, who had
never countermanded the murder, was indifferent, till, in
1582, when he was with Alva in Portugal. The King now
learned that Perez had behaved abominably, had poisoned his
mind against his brother Don Juan, had communicated State
secrets to the Princess d'Eboli, and had killed Escovedo,
not in obedience to the royal order, but using that order as
the shield of his private vengeance. Hence Philip's
severities to Perez; hence his final command that Perez
should disclose the royal motives for the destruction of
Escovedo. They would be found to have become obsolete at the
date when the crime was committed, and on Perez would fall
the blame.
[Footnote 4: See p. 38, _supra_.]
Such is Major Hume's theory, if I correctly apprehend it.
The hypothesis leaves the moral character of Philip as black
as ever: he ordered an assassination which he never even
countermanded. His confessor might applaud him, but he knew
that the doctors of the Inquisition, like the common
sentiment of mankind, rejected the theory that kings had the
right to condemn and execute, by the dagger, men who had
been put to no public trial.
III
_THE CAMPDEN MYSTERY_
I
The ordinary historical mystery is at least so far clear that one or
other of two solutions must be right, if we only knew which. Perkin
Warbeck was the rightful King, or he was an impostor. Giacopo Stuardo
at Naples (1669) was the eldest son of Charles II., or he was a
humbug. The Man in the Iron Mask was _certainly_ either Mattioli or
Eustache Dauger. James VI. conspired against Gowrie, or Gowrie
conspired against James VI., and so on. There is reason and human
nature at the back of these puzzles. But at the back of the Campden
mystery there is not a glimmer of reason or of sane human nature,
except on one hypothesis, which I shall offer. The occurrences are, to
all appearance, motiveless as the events in a feverish dream. 'The
whole Matter is dark and mysterious; which we must therefore leave
unto Him who alone knoweth all Things, in His due Time, to reveal and
to bring to Light.'
So says the author of 'A True and Perfect Account of the Examination,
Confession, Trial, and Execution of _Joan Perry_, and her two Sons,
_John_ and _Richard Perry_, for the Supposed Murder of _Will
Harrison_, Gent., Being One of the most remarkable Occurrences which
hath happened in the Memory of Man. Sent in a Letter (by _Sir Thomas
Overbury_, of _Burton_, in the County of _Gloucester_, Knt., and one
of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace) to _Thomas Shirly_, Doctor of
Physick, in London. Also Mr. _Harrison's_ Own account,' &c. (London.
Printed for John Atkinson, near the Chapter House, in _St. Paul's
Church-Yard_. No date, but apparently of 1676.)
Such is the vast and breathless title of a pamphlet which, by
undeserved good luck, I have just purchased. The writer, Sir Thomas
Overbury, 'the nephew and heir,' says Mr. John Paget, 'of the unhappy
victim of the infamous Countess of Somerset' (who had the elder Overbury
poisoned in the Tower), was the Justice of the Peace who acted
as _Juge d'Instruction_ in the case of Harrison's disappearance.[5]
[Footnote 5: Paget, _Paradoxes and Puzzles_, p. 342. Blackwoods,
1874.]
To come to the story. In 1660, William Harrison, Gent., was steward or
'factor' to the Viscountess Campden, in Chipping Campden,
Gloucestershire, a single-streeted town among the Cotswold hills. The
lady did not live in Campden House, whose owner burned it in the Great
Rebellion, to spite the rebels; as Castle Tirrim was burned by its
Jacobite lord in the '15. Harrison inhabited a portion of the building
which had escaped destruction. He had been for fifty years a servant
of the Hickeses and Campdens, his age was seventy (which deepens the
mystery), he was married, and had offspring, including Edward, his
eldest son.
On a market day, in 1659, Mr. Harrison's house was broken into, at
high noon, while he and his whole family were 'at the Lecture,' in
church, a Puritan form of edification. A ladder had been placed
against the wall, the bars of a window on the second story had been
wrenched away with a ploughshare (which was left in the room), and
140_l._ of Lady Campden's money were stolen. The robber was never
discovered--a curious fact in a small and lonely village. The times,
however, were disturbed, and a wandering Cavalier or Roundhead soldier
may have 'cracked the crib.' Not many weeks later, Harrison's servant,
Perry, was heard crying for help in the garden. He showed a
'sheep-pick,' with a hacked handle, and declared that he had been set
upon by two men in white, with naked swords, and had defended himself
with his rustic tool. It is curious that Mr. John Paget, a writer of
great acuteness, and for many years police magistrate at Hammersmith,
says nothing of the robbery of 1659, and of Perry's crazy conduct in
the garden.[6] Perry's behaviour there, and his hysterical invention
of the two armed men in white, give the key to his character. The two
men in white were never traced of course, but, later, we meet three
men not less flagitious, and even more mysterious. They appear to have
been three 'men in buckram.'
[Footnote 6: See his _Paradoxes and Puzzles_, pp. 337-370, and, for
good reading, see the book _passim_.]
At all events, in quiet Campden, adventures obviously occurred to the
unadventurous. They culminated in the following year, on August 16,
1660. Harrison left his house in the morning (?) and walked the two
miles to Charringworth to collect his lady's rents. The autumn day
closed in, and between eight and nine o'clock old Mrs. Harrison sent
the servant, John Perry, to meet his master on the way home. Lights
were also left burning in Harrison's window. That night neither master
nor man returned, and it is odd that the younger Harrison, Edward, did
not seek for his father till very early next morning: he had the
convenience, for nocturnal search, of a moon which rose late. In the
morning, Edward went out and met Perry, returning alone: he had not
found his master. The pair walked to Ebrington, a village half way
between Campden and Charringworth, and learned that Harrison had
called, on the previous evening, as he moved home through Ebrington,
at the house of one Daniel. The hour is not given, but Harrison
certainly disappeared when just beyond Ebrington, within less than a
mile from Campden. Edward and Perry next heard that a poor woman had
picked up on the highway, beyond Ebrington, near some whins or furze,
a hat, band, and comb, which were Harrison's; they were found within
about half a mile of his own house. The band was bloody, the hat and
comb were hacked and cut. Please observe the precise words of Sir
Thomas Overbury, the justice who took the preliminary examinations:
'The Hat and Comb being hacked and cut, and the Band bloody, but
nothing more could there be found.' Therefore the hat and comb were
not on Harrison's head when they were hacked and cut: otherwise they
must have been blood-stained; the band worn about the throat was
bloody, but there was no trace of blood on the road. This passage
contains the key to the puzzle.
On hearing of the discovery of these objects all the people rushed to
hunt for Harrison's corpse, which they did not find.
An old man like Harrison was not likely to stay at Charringworth very
late, but it seems that whatever occurred on the highway happened
after twilight.
Suspicion fell on John Perry, who was haled before the narrator, Sir
Thomas Overbury, J.P. Perry said that after starting for Charringworth
to seek his master on the previous evening, about 8.45 P.M., he met by
the way William Reed of Campden, and explained to him that as he was
timid in the dark he would go back and take Edward Harrison's horse
and return. Perry did as he had said, and Reed left him 'at Mr.
Harrison's Court gate.' Perry dallied there till one Pierce came
past, and with Pierce (he did not say why) 'he went a bow's shot into
the fields,' and so back once more to Harrison's gate. He now lay for
an hour in a hen house, he rose at midnight, and again--the moon
having now risen and dispelled his fears--he started for
Charringworth. He lost his way in a mist, slept by the road-side,
proceeded in the dawn to Charringworth, and found that Harrison had
been there on the previous day. Then he came back and met Edward
Harrison on his way to seek his father at Charringworth.
Perry's story is like a tale told by an idiot, but Reed, Pierce, and
two men at Charringworth corroborated as far as their knowledge went.
Certainly Perry had been in company with Reed and Pierce, say between
nine and ten on the previous night. Now, if evil had befallen Harrison
it must have been before ten at night; he would not stay so late, if
sober, at Charringworth. Was he usually sober? The cool way in which
his wife and son took his absence suggests that he was a
late-wandering old boy. They may have expected Perry to find him in
his cups and tuck him up comfortably at Charringworth or at Ebrington.
Till August 24 Perry was detained in prison, or, odd to say, at the
inn! He told various tales; a tinker or a servant had murdered his
master and hidden him in a bean-rick, where, on search being made,
_non est inventus_. Harrison, and the rents he had collected, were
vanished in the azure. Perry now declared that he would tell all to
Overbury, and to no other man. To him Perry averred that his mother
and brother, Joan and Richard Perry, had murdered Harrison! It was his
brother who, by John Perry's advice and connivance, had robbed the
house in the previous year, while John 'had a Halibi,' being at
church. The brother, said John, buried the money in the garden. It was
sought for, but was not found. His story of the 'two men in white,'
who had previously attacked him in the garden, was a lie, he said. I
may add that it was not the lie of a sane man. Perry was conspicuously
crazy.
He went on with his fables. His mother and brother, he declared, had
often asked him to tell them when his master went to collect rents. He
had done so after Harrison started for Charringworth on the morning of
August 16. John Perry next gave an account of his expedition with his
brother in the evening of the fatal day, an account which was
incompatible with his previous tale of his doings and with the
authentic evidence of Reed and Pierce. Their honest version destroyed
Perry's new falsehood. He declared that Richard Perry and he had
dogged Harrison, as he came home at night, into Lady Campden's
grounds; Harrison had used a key to the private gate. Richard followed
him into the grounds; John Perry, after a brief stroll, joined him
there and found his mother (how did she come thither?) and Richard
standing over the prostrate Harrison, whom Richard incontinently
strangled. They seized Harrison's money and meant to put his body 'in
the great sink by Wallington's Mill.' John Perry left them, and knew
not whether the body was actually thrown into the sink. In fact, _non
est inventus_ in the sink, any more than in the bean-rick. John next
introduced his meeting with Pierce, but quite forgot that he had also
met Reed, and did not account for that part of his first story, which
Reed and Pierce had both corroborated. The hat, comb, and band John
said that he himself had carried away from Harrison's body, had cut
them with his knife, and thrown them into the highway. Whence the
blood on the band came he neglected to say.
On the strength of this impossible farrago of insane falsehoods, Joan
and Richard Perry were arrested and brought before Overbury. Not only
the 'sink' but the Campden fish-pools and the ruinous parts of the
house were vainly searched in quest of Harrison's body. On August 25
the three Perrys were examined by Overbury, and Richard and the mother
denied all that John laid to their charge. John persisted in his
story, and Richard admitted that he and John had spoken together on
the morning of the day when Harrison vanished, 'but nothing passed
between them to that purpose.'
As the three were being brought back from Overbury's house to Campden
an unfortunate thing happened. John was going foremost when Richard, a
good way behind, dropped 'a ball of inkle from his pocket.' One of his
guards picked it up, and Richard said that it 'was only his wife's
hair-lace.' At one end, however, was a slip-knot. The finder took it
to John, who, being a good way in front, had not seen his brother drop
it. On being shown the string John shook his head, and said that 'to
his sorrow he knew it, for that was the string his brother strangled
his master with.' To this circumstance John swore at the ensuing
trial.
The Assizes were held in September, and the Perrys were indicted both
for the robbery in 1659 and the murder in 1660. They pleaded 'Guilty'
to the first charge, as some one in court whispered to them to do, for
the crime was covered by the Act of Pardon and Oblivion passed by
Charles II. at his happy Restoration. If they were innocent of the
robbery, as probably they were, they acted foolishly in pleading
guilty. We hear of no evidence against them for the robbery, except
John's confession, which was evidence perhaps against John, but was
none against _them_. They thus damaged their case, for if they were
really guilty of the robbery from Harrison's house, they were the most
likely people in the neighbourhood to have robbed him again and
murdered him. Very probably they tied the rope round their own necks
by taking advantage of the good King's indemnity. They later withdrew
their confession, and probably were innocent of the theft in 1659.
[Transcriber's Note: original has 1559.]
On the charge of murder they were not tried in September. Sir
Christopher Turner would not proceed 'because the body of Harrison was
not found.' There was no _corpus delicti_, no evidence that Harrison
was really dead. Meanwhile John Perry, as if to demonstrate his
lunacy, declared that his mother and brother had tried to poison him
in prison! At the Spring Assizes in 1661, Sir B. Hyde, less legal than
Sir Christopher Turner, did try the Perrys on the charge of murder.
How he could do this does not appear, for the account of the trial is
not in the Record House, and I am unable at present to trace it. In
the _Arminian Magazine_, John Wesley publishes a story of a man who
was hanged for murdering another man, whom he afterwards met in one of
the Spanish colonies of South America. I shall not here interrupt the
tale of the Perrys by explaining how a hanged man met a murdered man,
but the anecdote proves that to inflict capital punishment for murder
without proof that murder has been committed is not only an illegal
but an injudicious proceeding. Probably it was assumed that Harrison,
if alive, would have given signs of life in the course of nine or ten
months.
At the trial in spring all three Perrys pleaded 'not guilty.' John's
confession being proved against him, 'he told them he was then mad and
knew not what he said.' There must have been _some_ evidence against
Richard. He declared that his brother had accused others besides him.
Being asked to prove this, he answered 'that most of those that had
given evidence against him knew it,' but named none. So evidence had
been given (perhaps to the effect that Richard had been flush of
money), but by whom, and to what effect, we do not know.
The Perrys were probably not of the best repute. The mother, Joan, was
supposed to be a witch. This charge was seldom brought against popular
well-living people. How intense was the fear of witches, at that date,
we know from the stories and accounts of trials in Glanvil's
_Sadducismus Triumphatus_. The neighbours probably held that Joan
Perry would, as a witch, be 'nane the waur o' a hanging.' She was put
to death first, under the belief that any hypnotic or other unholy
influence of hers, which prevented her sons from confessing, would be
destroyed by her death. We are not aware that post-hypnotic suggestion
is removed by the death of the suggester; the experiment has not been
tried. The experiment failed in Joan's case. Poor Richard, who was
hanged next, could not induce the 'dogged and surly' John to clear his
character by a dying declaration. Such declarations were then held
irrefragable evidence, at least in Scotland, except when (as in the
case of George Sprot, hanged for the Gowrie conspiracy) it did not
suit the Presbyterians to believe the dying man. When John was being
turned off, he said that 'he knew nothing of his master's death, nor
what was become of him, but they might hereafter (possibly) hear.' Did
John know something? It would not surprise me if he had an inkling of
the real state of the case.
II
They _did_ hear; but what they heard, and what I have now to tell, was
perfectly incredible. When 'some' years (two apparently) had passed,
Will Harrison, Gent., like the three silly ewes in the folk-rhyme,
'came hirpling hame.' Where had the old man been? He explained in a
letter to Sir Thomas Overbury, but his tale is as hard to believe as
that of John Perry.
He states that he left his house in the afternoon (not the morning) of
Thursday, August 16, 1660. He went to Charringworth to collect rents,
but Lady Campden's tenants were all out harvesting. August seems an
odd month for rent-collecting when one thinks of it. They came home
late, which delayed Harrison 'till the close of the evening.' He only
received 23 _l._, which John Perry said, at his first examination in
1660, had been paid by one Edward Plaisterer, and Plaisterer
corroborated. Harrison then walked homeward, in the dusk probably,
and, near Ebrington, where the road was narrow, and bordered by whins,
'there met me one horseman who said "_Art thou there?_"' Afraid of
being ridden over, Harrison struck the horse on the nose, and the
rider, with a sword, struck at him and stabbed him in the side. (It
was at this point of the road, where the whins grew, that the cut hat
and bloody band were found, but a thrust in the side would not make a
neck-band bloody.) Two other horsemen here came up, one of them
wounded Harrison in the thigh. They did not now take his 23_l._, but
placed him behind one of them on horseback, handcuffed him, and threw
a great cloak over him.
Now, is it likely that highwaymen would carry handcuffs which closed,
says Harrison, with a spring and a snap? The story is pure fiction,
and bad at that. Suppose that kidnapping, not robbery, was the motive
(which would account for the handcuffs), what had any mortal to gain
by kidnapping, for the purpose of selling him into slavery, a 'gent.'
of seventy years of age?
In the night they took Harrison's money and 'tumbled me down a
stone-pit.' In an hour they dragged him out again, and he naturally
asked what they wanted with him, as they had his money already. One of
these miscreants wounded Harrison again, and--stuffed his pockets full
of 'a great quantity of money.' If they had a great quantity of money,
what did they want with 23_l._? We hear of no other robberies in the
neighbourhood, of which misdeeds the money might have been the
profits. And why must Harrison carry the money? (It has been suggested
that, to win popular favour, they represented themselves as
smugglers, and Harrison, with the money, as their gallant purser,
wounded in some heroic adventure.)
They next rode till late on August 17, and then put Harrison down,
bleeding and 'sorely bruised with the carriage of the money,' at a
lonely house. Here they gave their victim broth and brandy. On
Saturday they rode all day to a house, where they slept, and on Sunday
they brought Harrison to Deal, and laid him down on the ground. This
was about three in the afternoon. Had they wanted to make for the sea,
they would naturally have gone to the _west_ coast. While one fellow
watched Harrison, two met a man, and 'I heard them mention seven
pounds.' The man to whom seven pounds were mentioned (Wrenshaw was his
name, as Harrison afterwards heard--where?) said that he thought
Harrison would die before he could be put on board a ship. _Que diable
allait-il faire dans cette galère?_ Harrison was, however, put on
board a casual vessel, and remained in the ship for six weeks.
Where was the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead is all the sailors know!
Harrison does not say into what 'foam of perilous seas, in faery lands
forlorn' the ship went wandering for six mortal weeks. Like Lord
Bateman:
He sailéd East, and he sailéd West,
Until he came to famed Turkee,
Where he was taken and put in prison,
Till of his life he was wear--ee!