Who sayeth and confesseth that he carried his wife over a certain
wainbridge, called Bishop Dyke Bridge, between Cawood and Sherburn;
and within a lane about one hundred yards from the said bridge, and
on the left hand of the said bridge, he and his wife went over a
stile, on the left hand of a certain gate, entering into a certain
close, on the left hand of the said lane; and in a pond in the said
close, adjoining to a quick-wood hedge, he did drown his wife and
upon a bank of the said pond did bury her, and further, that he was
within sight of Cawood Castle, on the left hand, and there was but
one hedge betwixt the said close where he drowned his wife, and the
Bishops Slates, belonging to the said castle.
William Barwick
_Exam, capt. did etc.
anno super dict.
coram me._
_S. Dawson, Mayor_
An Account of the Conviction and Execution of Mr. WALKER, and MARK
SHARP, for the Murder of ANN WALKER
I am conscious that my collecting these relations may expose me to the
railery and ridicule of a very numerous tribe of wits in this age, who
value themselves extremely on their contempt of supernatural stories,
and their disbelief of all things which relate to apparitions or returns
from that state in which souls go when they depart from the body. Yet
the following story is so remarkable, the proofs so exceedingly cogent,
and the mistakes made in the relation of it by various authors so
likely, notwithstanding, to bring it in the course of time into
discredit, that I thought I could not do a greater service to the public
than to preserve it in its genuine purity, which I have had occasion to
retrieve from the sight of some papers which related thereto, and from
which the following account is written verbatim, without any alteration
so much as in a letter.
About the year 1631, there lived in a place called
Chester-in-the-Street, in the County Palatine of Durham, one Mr. Walker,
a yeoman of good fortune and credit. He was a widower and kept a young
woman, one Ann Walker, a relation of his, in his house as housekeeper.
It was suspected, it seems, by some of the neighbours, that she was with
child, immediately upon which she was removed to one Dame Cair's an aunt
of hers in the town of Lumley, hard by. The old woman treated her with
much kindness and civility, but was exceedingly earnest to know of her
who was the father of the child with which she went, but the young woman
constantly avoided answering that question. But at last, perceiving how
uneasy the old woman was because she could get no knowledge how the poor
babe was to be provided for, this Ann Walker at last said that he who
got her with child would take care of both her and it, with which answer
her aunt was tolerably satisfied.
Some time after, of an evening, her old master Walker, and one Mark
Sharp, with whom he was extraordinarily intimate, came to her aunt's
house and took the said Anne Walker away. About a fortnight passed
without her being seen or heard of, and without much talk of the
neighbourhood concerning her, supposing she had been carried somewhere
to be privately brought to bed, in order to escape her shame. But one
James Graham, a miller, who lived two miles from the place where
Walker's house was, being one night between the hours of twelve and one,
grinding corn in his mill, and the mill door shut, as he came downstairs
from putting corn into the hopper, he saw a woman standing in the
middle of the floor, with her hair all bloody, hanging about her ears,
and five large wounds in her head. Graham, though he was a bold man, was
exceedingly shocked at this spectacle. At last after calling upon God to
protect him, he, in a low voice, demanded who she was, and what she
wanted of him. To which the woman made answer, _I am the spirit of Anne
Walker, who lived with Walker at Chester-in-the-Street, and being got
with child by him, he promised to send me to a private place, where I
should be well looked to until I was brought to bed, and well again, and
then I should come to him again and keep his house. And I was
accordingly, late one night, sent away with Mark Sharp, who upon the
moor, just by the Yellow Bank Head, slew me with a pick, an instrument
wherewith they dig coals, and gave me these five wounds, and afterwards
threw me into a coalpit hard by, and hid the pick under the bank. His
shoes and stockings also being bloody he endeavoured to wash them, but
seeing the blood would not go forth, he hid them there too. And now
James Grime_ (so the country people pronounce Graham) _I am come to you,
that by revealing this bloody act my murderers may be brought to
justice; which unless you do, I will continually pursue and haunt you._
The miller returned home to his house very melancholy, and much
astonished at this sight, yet he held his peace, hoping that if he did
not reveal it she would go to somebody else. He was fearful of blasting
the character of Mr. Walker, who was a man of substance, by telling such
a tale concerning him to a Justice of Peace. However, he avoided as much
as he was able being in the mill alone, especially at nights, but
notwithstanding all his care, and though other persons were not far off,
she appeared to him there again, and in a harsh tone demanded why he had
not made known what she had spoken of to him. He made her no answer, but
fled to the other end of the place where the people were. Yet some
little time after, just after sunset, she met him in his own garden, and
spoke to him with such a cruel aspect and with such fearful threats that
he promised to go the next morning to a magistrate, which he accordingly
did.
On the morrow, being St. Thomas's Day, he applied to a justice of the
peace and told him the story. The justice having tendered him his oath,
and taking his information in writing, forthwith issued his warrant, and
apprehended Mr. Walker and Mark Sharp, who by trade was a collier, i.e.,
dug coals out of a mine. They made light of the thing before the
justice, although he in the meanwhile had caused a place which Graham
said the apparition had spoken of, to be searched, and there found the
dead body, wounded in place and manner as before described, with the
pick, the shoes and the stockings. However, Walker and Sharp were
admitted to bail, and at the next assizes appeared upon their trial.
Judge Davenport heard the several circumstances of the woman's being
carried out by Sharp, her being suspected to be with child by her
master, Walker, and the story which Graham repeated exactly upon oath,
as he had done before the justice. The foreman of the jury did depose
that he saw a child standing upon the shoulders of the prisoner Walker,
at the Bar, and the judge himself was under such a concern and
uneasiness that as soon as the jury had found the prisoners guilty, he
immediately rose up and passed sentence of death upon them, a thing
never known before nor since in Durham, the custom being not to pass
sentence until the close of the assizes.