[107] A local term for a strip of furrowed land.
[108] A kind of broad linen tape.
[109] Passed at the Restoration, in 1660, granting "free
general pardon, indemnity, and oblivion for all treasons and
state offences" committed between 1 Jan., 1637, and 24 June,
1660. The regicides and certain Irish priests were excepted.
[110] That is, the silver-gilt one his master had given him.
A Relation of the Surprising Discovery of the Murder of MARY BARWICK,
committed by WILLIAM BARWICK, her husband, on the 14th of April, 1690,
upon which he was convicted, at the Lent Assizes at York, before the
Honourable Sir John Powell, Knight, then one of the Judges of Assize
In the following relation, I have kept strictly up to the motives which
I have mentioned in the beginning of this Appendix, and I hope that will
atone for the inserting of this story, which I confess can be of no
other use than to gratify the curiosity of the reader.
As murder is one of the greatest crimes that man can be guilty of, so it
is no less strangely and providentially discovered when secretly
committed. The foul criminal believes himself secure, because there was
no witness of the fact. Not considering that the all-seeing eye of
Heaven beholds his iniquity, and by some means or other bringing it to
light, never permits it to go unpunished. Indeed, so certainly does the
revenge of God pursue the abominated murderer, that when witnesses are
wanting of the fact, the very ghosts of the murdered parties cannot rest
quiet in their graves until they have made the detection themselves. Of
this we are now to give the reader two remarkable examples that lately
happened in Yorkshire, and no less signal for the truth of both
tragedies, as being confirmed by the trial of the offenders at the last
assizes held for that county.
The first of these murders was committed by William Barwick, upon the
body of Mary Barwick his wife, at the same time big with child. What
were the motives that induced the man to do this horrid fact does not
appear by the examination of the evidence, or the confession of the
party; only it appeared upon his trial that he had got her with child
before he married her, that being then constrained to marry her, he grew
weary of her, which was the reason he was so willing to be rid of her,
though he ventured body and soul to accomplish his design.
The murder was committed on Palm Monday, being then the fourteenth of
April, about two o'clock in the afternoon, at which time the said
Barwick drilled his wife along until he came to a certain close, within
sight of Cawood Castle, where he found the conveniency of a pond. He
threw her by force into the water, and when she was drowned and drawn
forth again by himself upon the bank of the pond, he had the cruelty to
behold the motion of the infant, yet warm in her womb. This done, he
concealed the body, as it may readily be supposed, among the bushes that
usually encompass a pond, and the next night when it grew dusk, fetching
a hay spade from a rick that stood in the close, he made a hole by the
side of the pond, and there slightly buried the woman in her clothes.
Having thus despatched two at once, and thinking himself secure, because
unseen, he went the same day to his brother-in-law, one Thomas Lofthouse
of Rusforth, within three miles of York, who had married his drowned
wife's sister, and told him he had carried his wife to one Richard
Harrison's house in Selby, who was his uncle, and would take care of
her.
But Heaven would not be so deluded, but raised up the ghost of the
murdered woman to make the discovery. It was Easter Tuesday following,
about two-o'clock in the afternoon, that the afore-mentioned Lofthouse,
having occasion to water a quickset hedge not far from his house, as he
was going for the second pailful, an apparition went before him in the
shape of a woman, and soon after set down against a rising green grass
plot, right over against the pond. He walked by her as he went to the
pond, and as he returned with the pail from the pond, looking sideways
to see whether she continued in the same place, he found she did, and
that she seemed to dandle something in her lap that looked like a white
bag, as he thought, which he did not observe before. So soon as he had
emptied his pail, he went into his yard and stood still to turn whether
he could see her again, but she was vanished. In this information he
says that the woman seemed to be habited in a brown-coloured petticoat,
waistcoat and a white hood, such a one as his wife's sister usually
wore, and that her countenance looked extremely pale and wan, with her
teeth in sight, but no gums appearing, and that her physiognomy was like
that of his wife's sister, who was wife to William Barwick.
But notwithstanding the ghastliness of the apparition, it seems it made
so little impression on Lofthouse's mind that he thought no more of it,
neither did he speak to anybody concerning it until the same night, as
he was at family duty of prayers, when that apparition returned again to
his thoughts, and discomposed his devotion; so that after he had made an
end of his prayers, he told the whole story of what he had seen to his
wife, who laying circumstances together, immediately inferred that her
sister was either drowned or otherwise murdered, and desired her husband
to look after her the next day, which was the Wednesday in Easter week.
Upon this, Lofthouse, recollecting what Barwick had told him of his
carrying his wife to his uncle at Selby, repaired to Harrison
before-mentioned, but found all that Barwick had said to be false, for
Harrison had neither heard of Barwick nor his wife, neither did he know
anything of them. Which notable circumstance, together with that other
of the apparition, increased his suspicion to that degree that now
concluding his wife's sister was murdered, he went to the Lord Mayor of
York. And having obtained his warrant, he got Barwick apprehended; who
was no sooner brought before the Lord Mayor, but his own conscience then
accusing him, he acknowledged the whole matter, as it has been already
related, and as it appears by the examination and confession herewith
printed.
On Wednesday, the 16th of September, 1690, the criminal, William
Barwick, was brought to his trial before the Honourable Sir John Powel,
Knight, one of the judges of the Northern Circuit, at the assizes held
at York, where the prisoner pleaded not guilty to his indictment. But
upon the evidence of Thomas Lofthouse and his wife, and a third person,
that the woman was found buried in her clothes, close by the pond side,
agreeable to the prisoner's confession, and that she had several
bruises on her head, occasioned by the blows the murderer had given her
to keep her under water, and upon reading the prisoner's confession
before the Lord Mayor of York, attested by the clerk who wrote the
confession, and who swore the prisoner's owning and signing it for
truth, he was found guilty and sentenced to death, and afterwards
ordered to be hanged in chains.
All the defence that the prisoner made was only this, that he was
threatened into the confession that he had made, and was in such a
consternation that he did not know what he said or did; but then it was
sworn to by two witnesses that there was no such thing as any
threatening made use of, but that he made a free and voluntary
confession, only with this addition at first, that he told the Lord
Mayor he had sold his wife for five shillings, but not being able to
name either the person or the place, where she might be produced, that
was looked upon as too frivolous to outweigh circumstances that were too
apparent.