a noise. They stayed there about an hour, and then came out of the
cave, and told him that Clark was gone off. Observing a bag they had
along with them, he took it in his hand, and saw that it contained
plate. On asking why Daniel did not take the plate along with him,
Terry and Houseman replied that they had bought it of him, as well as
the watches, and had given him money for it, that being more convenient
for him to go off with, as less cumbersome and dangerous. After which
they all three went into Houseman’s warehouse, and concealed the
watches, with the small plate, there; but that Terry carried away with
him the great plate; that, afterwards, Terry told him he carried it to
How Hill, and hid it there, and then went into Scotland and disposed of
it; but as to Clark, he could not tell whether he was murdered or not,
he knew nothing of him, only they told him he was gone off.’
Terry, being thus implicated, was arrested and committed to gaol; but
the prosecutors for the crown, after the bills of indictment were
preferred against all three, finding their proof insufficient to obtain
a conviction at the coming assizes, prevailed on the judge to hold
the case over until the Lammas Assizes. There was not enough outside
evidence to convict them all; evidence, if any, could only be furnished
by the criminals themselves. There was sufficient to convict either
Aram or Houseman singly, if one or other would tell the truth, and all
he knew; so after many consultations as to the person whom it was most
advisable and just to punish, it was unanimously agreed that Aram,
who from his education and position was the worst of the lot, should
be punished, and in order to do so it was necessary to try to acquit
Houseman, who would then be available as evidence against Aram. The
case against Terry was so slight, that he was, perforce, let go.
On Friday, 3rd of August, 1759, the trials took place, and Houseman
was first arraigned, but there being no evidence against him he was
acquitted, to the great surprise and regret of everyone who was not
behind the scenes.
Then Aram was put in the dock to stand his trial, and deep, indeed,
must have been his disgust, when he found his accomplice, Houseman,
step into the witness-box and tell his version (undoubtedly perjured)
of the murder. His evidence was, except in a few minor particulars,
similar to his previous statement. Sweet innocent! When he saw Aram
strike Clark, he made haste home, and knew nothing of the disposal of
the body until the next morning, when Aram called on him, and told him
he had left it in the cave, and dire were his threats of vengeance
should Houseman ever disclose the dread secret of that eventful night.
After this sensational evidence the other witnesses must have seemed
very tame. Clark’s servant proved that his master had just received
his wife’s little portion, and that Aram was perfectly cognizant
thereof. Another witness deposed to seeing Houseman come out of Aram’s
house about one o’clock in the morning of the 8th of February. A
third deposed to the recovery of some of his own goods of which Clark
had defrauded him, and which were found buried in Aram’s garden. The
constable who arrested him had a few words to say, and the skull was
produced in Court, when a surgical expert declared that the fractures
must have been produced by blows from some blunt instrument, and could
not possibly proceed from natural decay.
Aram was then called upon for his defence, and he produced a manuscript
of which the following is a copy. It is, as will be perceived, a
laboured and casuistical defence, not having a true ring about it, and
not at all like the utterance of a perfectly innocent man.
* * * * *
‘MY LORD,
I know not whether it is of right or through some indulgence of your
Lordship that I am allowed the liberty at this Bar and at this time to
attempt a defence, incapable, and uninstructed as I am to speak. Since,
while I see so many eyes upon me, so numerous and awful a concourse,
fixed with attention, and filled with I know not what expectancy, I
labour, not with guilt, my Lord, but with perplexity. For having never
seen a Court but this, being wholly unacquainted with law, the customs
of the Bar, and all judiciary proceedings, I fear I shall be so little
capable of speaking with propriety in this place, that it exceeds my
hope, if I shall be able to speak at all.
I have heard, my Lord, the indictment read, wherein I find myself
charged with the highest crime, with an enormity I am altogether
incapable of, a fact to the commission of which there goes far more
insensibility of heart, more profligacy of morals, than ever fell to my
lot. And nothing, possibly, could have admitted a presumption of this
nature, but a depravity not inferior to that imputed to me. However, as
I stand indicted at your Lordship’s Bar, and have heard what is called
evidence induced in support of such a charge, I very humbly solicit
your Lordship’s patience, and beg the hearing of this respectable
audience, while I, single and unskilful, destitute of friends, and
unassisted by counsel, say something, perhaps like an argument, in my
defence. I shall consume but little of your Lordship’s time; what I
have to say will be short, and this brevity, probably, will be the best
part of it. However, it is offered with all possible regard, and the
greatest submission to your Lordship’s consideration, and that of this
honourable Court.
_First._ My Lord, the whole tenor of my conduct in life contradicts
every particular of this indictment. Yet I had never said this, did
not my present circumstances extort it from me, and seem to make it
necessary. Permit me here, my Lord, to call upon malignity itself,
so long and cruelly busied in this prosecution, to charge upon me
any immorality, of which prejudice was not the author. No, my Lord,
I concerted not schemes of fraud, projected no violence, injured no
man’s person or property. My days were honestly laborious, my nights
intensely studious. And I humbly conceive my notice of this, especially
at this time, will not be thought impertinent or unreasonable, but, at
least, deserving some attention. Because, my Lord, that any person,
after a temperate use of life, a series of thinking and acting
regularly, and without one single deviation from sobriety, should
plunge into the very depth of profligacy, precipitately, and at once,
is altogether improbable and unprecedented, and absolutely inconsistent
with the course of things. Mankind is never corrupted at once; villainy
is always progressive, and declines from right, step after step, till
every regard of probity is lost, and all moral obligation totally
perishes.
Again, my Lord, a suspicion of this kind, which nothing but malevolence
could entertain, and ignorance propagate, is violently opposed by my
very situation at that time, with respect to health. For, but a little
space before, I had been confined to my bed, and suffered under a very
long and severe disorder, and was not able, for half a year together,
so much as to walk. The distemper left me, indeed, yet slowly, and in
part; but so macerated, so enfeebled, that I was reduced to crutches,
and was so far from being well about the time I am charged with this
fact, that I never to this day perfectly recovered. Could, then, a
person in this condition take anything into his head so unlikely, so
extravagant? I, past the vigour of my age, feeble and valetudinary,
with no inducement to engage, no ability to accomplish, no weapon
wherewith to perpetrate such a fact; without interest, without power,
without motive, without means.
Besides, it must needs occur to everyone that an action of this
atrocious nature is never heard of, but, when its springs are laid
open, it appears that it was to support some indolence or supply some
luxury, to satisfy some avarice or oblige some malice, to prevent some
real, or some imaginary want; yet I lay not under the influence of any
one of these. Surely, my Lord, I may, consistent with both truth and
modesty, affirm thus much; and none who have any veracity, and knew me,
will ever question this.
In the second plea, the disappearance of Clark is suggested as an
argument of his being dead; but the uncertainty of such an inference
from that, and the fallibility of all conclusions of such a sort, from
such a circumstance, are too obvious and too notorious to require
instances; yet, superseding many, permit me to produce a very recent
one, and that afforded by this castle.
In June, 1757, William Thompson, for all the vigilance of this
place, in open daylight, and double-ironed, made his escape, and,
notwithstanding an immediate inquiry set on foot, the strictest search,
and all advertisements, was never seen or heard of since. If, then,
Thompson got off unseen, through all these difficulties, how very
easy was it for Clark, when none of them opposed him? But what would
be thought of a prosecution commenced against any one seen last with
Thompson?
Permit me next, my Lord, to observe a little upon the bones which have
been discovered. It is said, which, perhaps, is saying very far, that
these are the skeleton of a man. It is possible, indeed it may; but is
there any certain known criterion which incontestably distinguishes
the sex in human bones? Let it be considered, my Lord, whether the
ascertaining of this point ought not to precede any attempt to identify
them.
The place of their deposition, too, claims much more attention than is
commonly bestowed upon it. For, of all places in the world, none could
have mentioned anyone wherein there was greater certainty of finding
human bones than an hermitage, except he should point out a churchyard.
Hermitages, in times past, being not only places of religious
retirement, but of burial, too, and it has scarce or never been heard
of, but that every cell now known, contains, or contained, these relics
of humanity, some mutilated and some entire. I do not inform, but give
me leave to remind, your Lordship, that here sat solitary sanctity, and
here the hermit, or the anchoress, hoped that repose for their bones,
when dead, they here enjoyed when living.
All this while, my Lord, I am sensible this is known to your Lordship,
and many in this Court, better than I. But it seems necessary to my
case, that others, who have not at all, perhaps, adverted to things
of this nature, and may have concern in my trial, should be made
acquainted with it. Suffer me, then, my Lord, to produce a few of many
evidences that these cells were used as repositories of the dead,
and to enumerate a few, in which human bones have been found, as it
happened in this in question, lest, to some, that accident might seem
extraordinary, and, consequently, occasion prejudice.
1. The bones, as was supposed, of the Saxon, St. Dubritius, were
discovered buried in his cell at Guy’s Cliff near Warwick, as appears
from the authority of Sir William Dugdale.
2. The bones, thought to be those of the anchoress Rosia, were but
lately discovered in a cell at Royston, entire, fair, and undecayed,
though they must have lain interred for several centuries, as is proved
by Dr. Stukeley.
3. But our own country, nay, almost this neighbourhood, supplies
another instance; for in January, 1747, was found by Mr. Stovin,
accompanied by a reverend gentleman, the bones in part of some recluse,
in the cell at Lindholm, near Hatfield. They were believed to be those
of William of Lindholm, a hermit, who had long made this cave his
habitation.
4. In February, 1744, part of Woburn Abbey being pulled down, a large
portion of a corpse appeared, even with the flesh on, and which bore
cutting with a knife, though it is certain this had lain above two
hundred years, and how much longer is doubtful, for this abbey was
founded in 1145, and dissolved in 1558 or 1559.
What would have been said, what believed, if this had been an accident
to the bones in question?
Further, my Lord, it is not yet out of living memory that a little
distance from Knaresborough, in a field, part of the manor of the
worthy and patriotic baronet who does that borough the honour to
represent it in Parliament, were found, in digging for gravel, not one
human skeleton alone, but five or six, deposited side by side, with
each an urn placed at its head, as your Lordship knows was usual in
ancient interments.
About the same time, and in another field, almost close to this
borough, was discovered also, in searching for gravel, another human
skeleton; but the piety of the same worthy gentleman ordered both pits
to be filled up again, commendably unwilling to disturb the dead.
Is the invention[25] of these bones forgotten, then, or industriously
concealed, that the discovery of those in question may appear the
more singular and extraordinary? whereas, in fact, there is nothing
extraordinary in it. My Lord, almost every place conceals such remains.
In fields, in hills, in highway sides, and in commons lie frequent
and unsuspected bones. And our present allotments for rest for the
departed, is but of some centuries.
Another particular seems not to claim a little of your Lordship’s
notice, and that of the gentlemen of the jury; which is, that perhaps
no example occurs of more than _one_ skeleton being found in _one_
cell, and in the cell in question was found but _one_; agreeable, in
this, to the peculiarity of every other known cell in Britain. Not
the invention of one skeleton, then, but of two, would have appeared
suspicious and uncommon.
But then, my Lord, to attempt to identify these, when even to identify
living men sometimes has proved so difficult--as in the case of Perkin
Warbeck and Lambert Symnel at home, and of Don Sebastian abroad--will
be looked upon, perhaps, as an attempt to determine what is
indeterminable. And I hope, too, it will not pass unconsidered here,
where gentlemen believe with caution, think with reason, and decide
with humanity, what interest the endeavour to do this is calculated to
serve, in assigning proper personality to those bones, whose particular
appropriation can only appear to eternal omniscience.
Permit me, my Lord, also, very humbly to remonstrate that, as human
bones appear to have been the inseparable adjuncts of every cell, even
any person’s naming such a place at random as containing them, in this
case, shows him rather unfortunate, than conscious prescient, and that
these attendants on every hermitage only accidentally concurred with
this conjecture. A mere casual coincidence of _words_ and _things_.
But it seems another skeleton has been discovered by some labourer,
which was full as confidently averred to be Clark’s as this. My
Lord, must some of the living, if it promotes some interest, be made
answerable for all the bones that earth has concealed, and chance
exposed! and might not a place where bones lay, be mentioned by a
person by chance, as well as found by a labourer by chance? Or, is it
more criminal accidentally to _name_ where bones lie, than accidentally
to _find_ where they lie?
Here, too, is a human skull produced, which is fractured; but was
this the _cause_ or was it the consequence of death--was it owing to
violence, or was it the effect of natural decay? If it was violence,
was that violence before or after death? My Lord, in May, 1732, the
remains of William, Lord Archbishop of this province, were taken up by
permission, in this cathedral, and the bones of the skull were found
broken; yet certainly he died by no violence offered to him alive, that
could occasion that fracture there.
Let it be considered, my Lord, that upon the dissolution of religious
houses, and the commencement of the Reformation, the ravages of those
times affected the living and the dead. In search after imaginary
treasures, coffins were broken up, graves and vaults broken open,
monuments ransacked, and shrines demolished; your Lordship knows
that these violations proceeded so far, as to occasion parliamentary
authority to restrain them; and it did, about the beginning of the
reign of Queen Elizabeth. I entreat your Lordship, suffer not the
violence, the depredations, and the iniquities of these times to be
imputed to this.
Moreover, what gentleman here is ignorant that Knaresborough had a
castle, which, though How a ruin, was once considerable, both for its
strength and garrison. All know it was vigorously besieged by the arms
of the Parliament. At which siege, in sallies, conflicts, flights,
pursuits, many fell in all the places around it; and where they fell
were buried. For every place, my Lord, is burial-earth in war; and
many, questionless, of these yet rest unknown, whose bones futurity
shall discover.
I hope, with all imaginable submission, that what has been said will
not be thought impertinent to this indictment, and that it will be
far from the wisdom, the learning, and the integrity of this place to
impute to the living what zeal, in its fury, may have done; what nature
may have taken off, and piety interred; or what war alone may have
destroyed, alone deposited.
As to the circumstances that have been raked together, I have nothing
to observe; but that all circumstances whatsoever are precarious,
and have been but too frequently found lamentably fallible; even
the strongest have failed. They may rise to the utmost degree of
probability, yet they are but probability still. Why should I name
to your Lordship the two Harrisons, recorded in Dr. Howel, who both
suffered upon circumstances, because of the sudden disappearance of
their lodger, who was in credit, had contracted debts, borrowed money,
and went off unseen, and returned again a great many years after their
execution. Why name the intricate affair of Jaques du Moulin under King
Charles II., related by a gentleman who was counsel for the Crown.
And why the unhappy Coleman, who suffered innocent, though convicted
upon positive evidence, and whose children perished for want, because
the world uncharitably believed the father guilty. Why mention the
perjury of Smith, incautiously admitted king’s evidence; who, to screen
himself, equally accused Fainlotte and Loveday of the murder of Dunn;
the first of whom, in 1749, was executed at Winchester; and Loveday was
about to suffer at Reading, had not Smith been proved perjured, to the
satisfaction of the court, by the surgeon of Gosport Hospital.
Now, my Lord, having endeavoured to show that the whole of this
process is altogether repugnant to every part of my life; that it is
inconsistent with my condition of health about that time; that no
rational inference can be drawn that a person is dead who suddenly
disappears; that hermitages were the constant repositories of the bones
of the recluse; that the proofs of this are well authenticated; that
the revolution in religion, or the fortunes of war, has mangled, or
buried, the dead; the conclusion remains, perhaps no less reasonably,
than impatiently, wished for. I, last, after a year’s confinement,
equal to either fortune, put myself upon the candour, the justice, and
the humanity of your Lordship, and upon yours, my countrymen, gentlemen
of the jury.’
It will be seen from this elaborate defence that it must have been
written long before his trial, and before his hopes of acquittal were
crushed by the appearance of Houseman in the witness-box to give
evidence against him; for he did not attempt to discredit his evidence,
nor did he attempt to shake his testimony by cross-examination, and
he must have anticipated the result. The judge summed up carefully;
he recapitulated the evidence, and showed how Houseman’s testimony
was confirmed by the other witnesses; and, taking Aram’s defence, he
pointed out that he had alleged nothing that could invalidate the
positive evidence against him. The jury, without leaving the court,
returned a verdict of ‘Guilty,’ and the judge pronounced the awful
sentence of the law. Aram had behaved with great firmness and dignity
during the whole of his trial, and he heard his conviction, and his
doom, with profound composure, leaving the bar with a smile upon his
countenance.
In those days the law allowed but little time for appeal. Aram was
tried, convicted, and sentenced on Friday, the 3rd of August, 1759,
and he had to die on the following Monday--only two whole days of
life being allowed him. Those days must have been days of exquisite
torture to him, when he thought of the upturned faces of the mob, all
fixing their gaze upon him, yelling at, and execrating him, and we can
scarcely wonder at his attempting to commit suicide. On the Monday
morning, when the clergyman came to visit him, and at his request
to administer the Sacrament to him, he was astonished to find Aram
stretched on the floor of his cell in a pool of blood. He had managed
to secrete a razor, and had cut the veins of his arms in two places.
Surgeons were sent for, and they brought him back to life, when he was
put into the cart and led to execution. Arrived at the gallows, he was
asked if he had any speech to make, and he replied in the negative. He
was then hanged, and, when dead, his body was cut down, put in a cart,
taken to Knaresborough, and there suspended in chains, on a gibbet
which was erected on Knaresborough forest, south or south-east of the
Low Bridge, on the right hand side going thence to Plumpton. It was
taken down in 1778, when the forest was enclosed.
He left his latest thoughts in writing, for, on the table in his cell,
was found a paper on which was written,
‘What am I better than my fathers? To die is natural and necessary.
Perfectly sensible of this, I fear no more to die than I did to be
born. But the manner of it is something which should, in my opinion, be
decent and manly. I think I have regarded both these points. Certainly
nobody has a better right to dispose of man’s life than himself; and
he, not others, should determine how. As for any indignities offered to
anybody, or silly reflections on my faith and morals, they are (as they
were) things indifferent to me. I think, though, contrary to the common
way of thinking; I wrong no man by this, and I hope it is not offensive
to that eternal being who formed me and the world; and as by this I
injure no man, no man can be reasonably offended. I solicitously
recommend myself to the eternal and almighty Being, the God of Nature,
if I have done amiss. But perhaps I have not, and I hope this thing
will never be imputed to me. Though I am now stained by malevolence,
and suffer by prejudice, I hope to rise fair and unblemished. My life
was not polluted, my morals irreproachable, and my opinions orthodox.
‘I slept soundly till three o’clock, awak’d, and then writ these lines.
‘“Come, pleasing Rest, eternal Slumber fall;
Seal mine, that once must seal the eyes of all;
Calm and compos’d my soul her journey takes,
No guilt that troubles, and no heart that aches.
Adieu! thou sun, all bright like her arise;
Adieu! fair friends, and all that’s good and wise.”’
Aram never made any regular confession of his guilt--but in a
letter he wrote to the vicar of Knaresborough, in which he gives
his autobiography, he says, ‘Something is expected as to the affair
upon which I was committed, to which I say, as I mentioned in my
examination, that all the plate of Knaresborough, except the watches
and rings, were in Houseman’s possession; as for me, I had nothing at
all. My wife knows that Terry had the large plate, and that Houseman
himself took both that and the watches, at my house, from Clark’s own
hands; and, if she will not give this in evidence for the town, she
wrongs both that and her own conscience; and, if it is not done soon,
Houseman will prevent her. She likewise knows that Terry’s wife had
some velvet, and, if she will, can testify it. She deserves not the
regard of the town, if she will not. That part of Houseman’s evidence,
wherein he said I threatened him, was absolutely false; for what
hindered him, when I was so long absent and far distant? I must need
observe another thing to be perjury in Houseman’s evidence, in which he
said he went home from Clark; whereas he went straight to my house, as
my wife can also testify, if I be not believed.’
The contemporary accounts of his trial, whether published in York or
London, have the following: