to visit a Mr. Evans, of the Custom House, at his country house at
Wanstead, in Essex, where was also a Mr. Halstead, and Evans was
telling Halstead that he had heard from a kinsman of his named
Edwards, also in the Customs, that his boy had been in the Tower yard
on the morning of the death of Lord Essex, and that he had seen a hand
thrust out of that nobleman's window, and a razor stained with blood
thrown down on the pavement of the yard. Next moment a maid-servant
wearing a white hood had run out, secured the razor and carried it
within, and that he had heard cries from within of "Murder! Murder!"
Braddon listened, walking up and down the room, as Evans told this
story. He was greatly excited by it, and thought that it pointed to a
murder having been committed, and that probably at the instigation of
the Duke of York.
Accordingly Braddon went next day to the quay and got Evans and
Edwards to meet him at the "Star" public-house and repeat the story.
It seemed that Edwards had two boys who were in Merchant Taylors'
School, and that one of their sisters was married and living in the
Tower. On the morning of the death of Lord Essex the lads were on
their way to school, when, passing the Tower, they heard that the King
and the Duke of York were in it, whereupon the younger, an urchin of
twelve or thirteen, gave his brother the slip, and ran in to see the
King and the Duke. After they had departed he remained in the yard
playing chuck-farthing with other boys, when he saw a hand thrust
forth from a window and throw a bloody razor into the court, and after
that a maid or woman in a white hood and stuff coat took it up and
went in, and then he heard a noise as of "Murder!" cried out. Braddon
then went to the house of Edwards to question the boy, who
prevaricated. Braddon believed that the child's mother and sister had
been at him, telling him that he was likely to get them all into
trouble if he persisted in his tale, and urged by them, professed that
he had told a lie.
The matter became common talk on the quay and the purlieus of the Tower.
Braddon had no great difficulty in finding a little girl named Jane
Lodeman, aged thirteen, who was in the same tale. This is what he took
down:--
"Jane Lodeman was in the Tower on Friday morning, 13th July last, and
standing almost over against the late Earl of Essex's lodging window,
she saw a hand cast a razor out of my lord's window, and immediately
upon this she heard shrieks, and that there was a soldier by my lord's
door, who cried out to those within the house that somebody should
come and take up a razor which was thrown out of the window, whereupon
there came a maid with a white hood out of the house, but who took up
the razor she can't tell."
Dated 8th August, 1683.
On July 20th Braddon had gone to Whitehall before he had obtained this
corroborative evidence, and had laid information before the King and
Council, and produced a written deposition as to what the boy Edwards
had said he had seen; but the boy's sister deposed that Mr. Laurence
Braddon had forced her brother to sign it. Soon after Braddon had
taken this step, he heard a rumour that the fact of the violent death
of the Earl of Essex had been known and discussed in Frome Selwood the
same day, and he hurried off to make inquiries into this. But on
reaching Salisbury he was arrested, thrown into prison, and brought
back to London. Another gentleman, a Mr. Speeke, had also been
spreading the report that Lord Essex had been foully murdered, and it
was hinted that the Duke of York, if not the King, had ordered the
assassination. Speeke also was arrested.
Narcissus Luttrell's account of the death of Essex is as follows:--
1683, 13th July.--"About nine in the morning, the Earl of Essex,
prisoner in the Tower of London, upon account of this new plott, did
most barbarously cut his own throat from one ear to the other with a
razor. What occasioned it is doubtfull: some say, the sense of his
guilt; others, the shame for being accused of such a crime, when his
father, the Lord Capell, died for his loyalty to the late King; however,
the coroner's jury have satt on his body, and found him _felo de se_,
tho' some stick not to say 'tis impossible he should murther himself in
so barbarous a manner; and his Majesty hath been pleased to give his
goods, which were forfeited by his killing himself, to his son."
On November 6th he says: "Mr. Speak was brought to the Court of King's
Bench, and charged with two informations: the 1st, for saying the King
was as great a Papist as the Duke of York; that the Duke durst not doe
what he did but that the King did animate him; that what Pilkington
had formerly said of the Duke of York was true; with much other such
scandalous stuff; and 2nd was for sayeing that the Earl of Essex was
killed and murdered by those that attended on him in the Tower; to
both these he pleaded Not Guilty."
1683-4, February 7th.--"Mr. Lawrence Braddon and Mr. Hugh Speke were
tried at the Court of King's Bench, by a jury of Middlesex, upon an
information reciting the commitment of the late Earl of Essex to the
Tower for treason in conspiring the death of the King, etc., and that
the 13th July last he cut his own throat, and was found _felo de se_
by the coroner's inquisition; the said Braddon and Speke did conspire
by writing and otherwise, to spread a false and scandalous report,
that the said Earl was murdered by some persons about him, and
endeavoured to suborn witnesses to testifye the same. The evidence for
the King, was first, the warder of the Tower, who testified as to his
Lordship's commitment; then the coroner, and the inquisition taken
before him, whereby his Lordship was found _felo de se_, was read;
then the particular evidence against Mr. Braddon was, by severall
persons, how busy and sollicitous he was to take persons'
informations, and to examine a little child about ten years old, about
a discourse that ran through the town that a bloody razor was thrown
out of his Lordship's window; and that the cry of Murder was heard;
and that a servant maid came presently out of the house of the Lord of
Essex, and took up the razor, and carried it in; and that then it was
said the Lord of Essex had killed himself. Then the severall
informations Braddon had taken in writing relating to this matter were
read, and some of the informants themselves examined, whose testimony
much differ'd from their informations, then severall testified the
confident and strange discourse this Braddon frequently us'd
concerning the matter. The evidence against Mr. Speke was only a
letter writt by him to Sir Robert Atkins th' elder, and carried by Mr.
Braddon, but was seized about him when he was going thither, which
contained severall expressions in commendation of Mr. Braddon and his
zeale, with reflexions on this matter; then the evidence was given of
his Lordship's cutting his own throat with a razor, which was proved
by his own servant, a Frenchman; by the warder, by the centinell, and
by Capt. Hawley. The defendants' proof was, first, Braddon pretended
he did nothing but out of zeale to have the truth come out: then he
call'd some witnesses to prove that there was a discourse of the Lord
of Essex's being killed, and a razor thrown out, before he concern'd
himself in it. Speke had little to say against the letter, but own'd
it to be his hand; so that the jury, after a little while, agreed of
their verdict, and found the defendant Braddon guilty of all that was
laid in the information, and the defendant Speke guilty of all except
the conspiring to suborn witnesses.
"'Twas strange any man should concern himself in an affair of this
moment on the information of a boy ten years old, who had denied all
after he had confess'd it, and did at his tryall, and make all this
rent that was about it."
April 21st, 1684.--"Mr. Laurence Braddon and Mr. Hugh Speke, convicted
last term upon an endeavour to lay the murder of the late Earl of
Essex upon the Government, were brought to the Court of King's Bench
to receive their judgments; which was, that Braddon should pay a fine
of £2000, and Speke £1000 to the King; that they find sureties for
their good behaviour during their lives, and be committed to the
King's Bench prison till they doe so."
Hugh Speke, who was tried along with Laurence Braddon, was an
inveterate plotter. Macaulay thus describes him: "Hugh Speke (was) a
young man of good family, but of a singularly base and depraved
nature. His love of mischief and of dark and crooked ways amounted
almost to madness. To cause confusion without being found out was his
business and his pastime; and he had a rare skill in using honest
enthusiasts as the instruments of his cold-blooded malice."
Referring to the case of Braddon, Macaulay adds: "He had attempted, by
means of one of his puppets, to fasten on Charles and James the crime
of murdering Essex in the Tower. On this occasion the agency of Speke
had been traced; and though he succeeded in throwing the greater part
of the blame on his dupe, he had not escaped with impunity."
He was certainly a clever scoundrel, for he managed to cover up most
of his traces in the affair of the charge of the murder of Essex.
Braddon was sincere, while Speke was not. Braddon was convinced that a
murder had been committed, and he had not a well-balanced mind to
weigh evidence. Speke cared nothing whether crime had been committed
or not so long as he could disturb men's minds with a suspicion that
one had been committed, and that by the King's brother and heir
presumptive to the Crown.
The evidence produced by Laurence Braddon was practically worthless. He
had but the word of two little children, and the boy had retracted and
acknowledged that he had told lies. As to the fact of the death of Lord
Essex being known at Frome on the 13th, showing that the murder had been
premeditated and was part of a widely ramified scheme of the Papists, it
was shown that nothing was known there of it till many days later.
The evidence for the King was Bomeny, the valet de chambre of Lord
Essex. He stated that the Earl had long nails, and that morning had
asked for a penknife so as to pare them. Bomeny had commissioned a
footman, William Turner, to get one, and bring it along with some
provisions ordered for the Earl's breakfast. Turner brought the
provisions, but had forgotten about the penknife, whereupon Lord Essex
began to cut his nails with his razor, and the footman was again
despatched for a penknife. Just then the King and the Duke of York
arrived at the Tower, and there was great bustle in the yard, and Bomeny
left the Earl's room. When he met the footman with the knife he
returned, but not finding Lord Essex in his chamber, he tried to open
the closet door, when he found that there was an obstruction. Somewhat
alarmed, he ran to Russell, the warder, whose door was almost opposite
on the same staircase, and both went to the closet, and found Lord Essex
lying in it with his throat cut and his feet against the door.
Russell corroborated this evidence, and added that no one could
possibly ascend the stair and enter Lord Essex's chamber without his
knowledge. The soldier, Lloyd, who acted as sentinel at the entrance
to the Earl's quarters, testified that there was no truth in the
children's tale about the razor, and that no maid had issued from the
door to pick one up.
It was further established that the closet window did not look into
the main yard, and was so arranged that a hand could not be passed out
of it.
Judge Jeffreys conducted the investigation, and that in a most
unseemly manner. Apparently he was drunk at the time, and was so
confused that he was not able to follow the evidence. He browbeat the
witnesses in the most offensive way.
On November 6th, 1684, a French Protestant refugee, named Borleau, was
indicted for selling a scandalous book called _L'Esprit de Monsieur
Arnaud_, in which he declared that the Earl of Essex had not cut his
own throat, but had been foully murdered. He pleaded guilty, and the
King graciously allowed him to be fined only 6s. 8d., and to be
discharged without paying his fees. There was most certainly fish made
of one and fowl of another.
Again, in December of the same year a book appeared entitled _An
Enquiry about the Barbarous Murder of the Earl of Essex_, that was
vended surreptitiously, and a broadside written by Colonel Danvers,
giving the evidence that he was murdered, was thrown in at open doors
and distributed in the streets of London. A hundred pounds was offered
for the apprehension of Danvers. As to the book, it was from the pen
of Laurence Braddon, and was later, when it could be done safely,
acknowledged by him. On January 23rd, 1684-5, a Mr. Henry Baker
pleaded guilty to an information for using scandalous words about the
Duke of York, and at the same time a printer, Norden, did the same to
an indictment for publishing the "scandalous libell in vindication of
the lord of Essex." And on February 3rd one of the jury at the
inquest, Launcelot Colston by name, was had up before King's Bench on
a charge of having said that he did not believe that the Earl had cut
his throat, for he could not have done so himself in the way in which
he was found. Norden was sentenced to pay 200 marks, and to stand in
the pillory at Ratcliffe, and to be bound to his good behaviour for
seven years, and be committed to prison till this was done.
In 1685, on the landing of the Duke of Monmouth, in the Proclamation
he published, he charged King James with the murder of Essex, with his
own hand.
In January, 1689, a Captain Hawley, Major Whitley, and some two or
three more were imprisoned for maintaining that Essex had not
committed suicide. But this was at the moment when all power was
slipping out of the hands of King James II; the Prince of Orange came
to the throne, and on February 23rd a Captain Holland was arrested and
thrown into prison on the charge of having been concerned in the
murder of the Earl, and this was followed by numerous other arrests.
But the prison-doors were thrown open for Laurence Braddon to issue
forth and recommence his accusations of murder. He republished the
"Enquiry into and Detection of the Barbarous Murther of the late Earl
of Essex; or a Vindication of that Noble Person from the Guilt and
Infamy of having Destroyed himself."
Even before the throne, vacated by King James, had been filled by the
Prince of Orange, the Lords had appointed a committee to examine into
the truth of the frightful stories circulated relative to the death of
Essex. The committee, which consisted wholly of zealous Whigs,
continued its inquiries till all reasonable men were convinced that he
had fallen by his own hand, and till Lady Essex, his brother, and his
most intimate friends requested that the investigation might be
pursued no further. That under Judge Jeffreys had been open to
suspicion, this could not. But nothing would alter the persuasion of
Braddon that this was a case of murder.
Next year, 1690, he came out with a fresh pamphlet, "Essex's Innocency
and Honour Vindicated, or Murther, Subornation, Perjury, and
Oppression, justly charged on the Murtherers of that Noble and True
Patriot Arthur (late) Earl of Essex," etc.
It had become a matter of party feeling, and it was held by all true
Protestants to be their duty to believe in the murder, so as to
blacken the character of James II. The evidence, however, was too poor
to convince a cool-minded man like Bishop Burnet, and in his _History
of His Own Times_ he spoke of Essex having cut his own throat.
Thereupon Laurence Braddon resumed his pen and published an attack on
the Bishop: "Bishop Burnet's History charged with great partiality and
misrepresentations, to make the present and future ages believe that
Arthur, Earl of Essex, in 1683, murdered himselfe, with observations
upon the suppos'd poysoning of King Charles the Second," 1724.
In 1695 Braddon was appointed solicitor to the wine-licensing office,
with a salary of £100 per annum.
In one point Braddon showed great perspicuity and good feeling. In 1717
he published a pamphlet entitled "The Miseries of the Poor, a National
Sin and Shame"; and when his scheme for the relief of the poor had been
animadverted upon unfavourably, in 1722, he answered these objections in
another tractate: "Particular answers to the most material objections
made to the proposal humbly presented to His Majesty for relieving,
reforming, and employing all the poor of Great Britain," 1722.
Laurence Braddon died on Sunday, 29th November, 1724.
The Braddons must have been a family of some consequence in S. Gennys,
although their arms and pedigree are not recorded in the Heralds'
Visitations. At the trial of Laurence, it was stated that his father's
income from his property was fully £800 per annum. Laurence derived
his fiery Protestantism from his father, who had been a
Parliamentarian officer of some distinction in the Civil War. His
father is buried in the chancel of S. Gennys, and some verses are
inscribed on the ledgerstone, beginning:--
In war and peace I bore command,
Both gun and sword I wore.
The arms borne by the family are: _Sable_, a bend lozengy, _arg._--arms
that in their beautiful simplicity proclaim their antiquity.
The old mansion of the Braddons in S. Gennys has been pulled down and
a modern farm-house erected on the site.
THOMASINE BONAVENTURA
Week S. Mary stands in a treeless wind-swept situation, 530 feet above
the sea, near the source of two small streams rising in the desolate
downs to the south, which unite their waters at Langford, and have
sawn for themselves deep clefts that are well wooded. At a remote
period this district must have been the scene of contests, for it is
studded with earthworks. There was a castle at Week, but camps also
crowning a height in Westwood and in Swannacott Wood; and Week S. Mary
with its castle stood aloft, defended by one of these on each side.
Formerly there was not so much enclosed land as there is at present;
but it was precisely the moorland that extended over so large a
portion of the parish that constituted its wealth, for on this waste
pastured vast flocks of sheep, whose fleeces were in request at a time
when wool was the staple industry in the West of England.
The ridge of bare, uplifted, carboniferous rock and clay, cold and
bleak, was formerly scantily provided with roads, and with homesteads
few and far between; and to guide the traveller through the waste,
certain churches with lofty towers were erected on high
ground--Pancrasweek, Holsworthy, Bridgerule, Week S. Mary--to enable him
to make his way across country from one to the other. A farm or a
manor-house nestled in a combe, sheltered from the wind, from the sea,
and the driving rain; but farmer and squire drew their wealth from the
sheep on the uplands, which were moreover strewn, as they still are,
with barrows, under which lie the dead of the Bronze and Stone ages.
Davies Gilbert absurdly derives the name of the place from the
Cornish, and makes it signify "sweet." No more unsuitable epithet
could have been applied. It signifies _vicus_, a village or hamlet,
and is found also at Pancrasweek, Germansweek, and elsewhere.
In the village are still to be seen the remains of the old school and
chantry founded by Thomasine Bonaventura, a shepherd girl, native of
the place, whose story is told by Carew and by Hall; and from them we
take it.
Thomasine was born about the year 1450, in the reign of Henry VI, and
her father was a small farmer who had his flock of sheep pasturing on
the wild waste common-lands. Thomasine watched it, and spun from her
distaff. Above the desolate moors to the south-west stood up blue
against the sky the rugged height of Brown Willy, crowned by its
mighty cairns; to the west and south-west stretched the Atlantic, into
which the evening sun went down in a blaze of glory.
One day a London merchant, a dealer in wool, came riding over the
moor; probably from Tintagel or Forrabury, and making direct for Week
S. Mary tower, when he passed a barrow on which sat the shepherd girl
spinning, the breeze from the sea blowing her dark hair about, singing
some old ballad, but ever keeping her eye on her father's sheep.
Behind him trailed a line of horses laden with the packs of wool that
he had purchased, led by his men. He halted to speak to the girl,
probably to learn from her where he might best ford the stream in the
valley below. She answered, and he was pleased with her intelligence,
and not less with her beauty. He inquired who she was, what was her
name, and what the circumstances of her parents. To all these
questions she gave prompt and direct answers. Then, still more taken
with her, he asked Thomasine whether she would accompany him to
London, to be servant to his wife, and he offered her good wages and
kind treatment. She replied, with caution, that she was under the
guardianship of her father and mother, and that she could not accept
his proposal without their consent.
Thereupon the merchant rode on, and upon reaching Week S. Mary
inquired for the house of the parents of Thomasine and laid his offer
before them. When they hesitated, he referred them to his customers.
The parents, no doubt, were highly elated at being able to get their
daughter into a situation in London, where all the streets were paved
with gold. But it may well be doubted whether they dreamt of what was
in store for her.
So she parted from her parents, certainly with many tears on her part,
and earnest injunctions from father and mother to conduct herself in a
modest and obedient manner.
Now these wool merchants and clothiers were men of mighty repute and
good substance in the land. In Thomas Deloney's delightful _Pleasant
Historie of Thomas of Reading_, 1600, we read: "Among all crafts this
was the onely chiefe, for that it was the chiefest merchandize, by the
which our Country became famous throwout all Nations. And it was
verily thought that the one halfe of the people in the land lived in
those dayes thereby, and in such good sort, that in the Commonwealth
there were few or no beggars at all: poore people, whom God lightly
blessed with most children, did by meanes of this occupation so order
them, that by the time that they were come to be sixe or seven yeares
of age, they were able to get their owne bread. Idlenesse was then
banished our coast, so that it was a rare thing to heare of a thiefe
in those dayes. Therefore it was not without cause that Clothiers were
then both honoured and loved."