Celebrations
When any calamity has been suffered, the first thing to be remembered is how much has been escaped.
Samuel Johnson (1770)
News of Maria’s conviction reached Taunton the next day. Church bells rang ‘a merry peal not only in Taunton but in all the adjoining parishes’ and they continued for three days. Cider was supplied by farmers and there were festivities ‘not equalled before on any public occasion’. When the prosecution witnesses arrived back on the coach from London they found that the turnpike gate had been decorated with blue ribbons and a crowd several hundred strong was ready to fete them. By contrast, the carpenter William Woodford, who had tried hard to help the defence, disembarked from the coach before it reached town and made his way home using the back streets to avoid running the gauntlet of boos and hisses.151
One thing that may have given Maria and her family small comfort was that the case was not extensively reported in the national newspapers. At the time, the attention of the country was fixed on another gripping legal proceeding – the trial in the House of Lords of Queen Caroline, the rejected wife of the Regent (now King).152 The Observer’s report on the reading of the bill, which was in effect George’s petition for divorce, filled the entire issue, excluding all other news.
Maria was not entirely ignored, however. Her name came up when Mr Denman, defending Caroline, cited her in a long list of false witnesses that included Elizabeth Canning and Titus Oates, the perjurer who fabricated a Catholic plot against King Charles II.153
It was different in Taunton. The Taunton Courier published a report on the perjury trials that stretched over nearly two pages and afterwards republished the story as a pamphlet. The article ended by comparing Maria’s lies to Elizabeth Canning’s ‘wicked imposture’.154
The account which Miss Glenn gave at the trial at Dorchester, about a deed being presented to her, written in characters resembling Greek – her being so much terrified, on quitting Mr Tuckett’s house, as to be unable to make the slightest alarm, although she necessarily passed the door of the room in which her uncle slept – her drinking a black potion on the morning of her departure from the farm at Holway – and all the other romantic and highly improbable tales with which she embellished and sought to extenuate the impropriety of her elopement, are now reduced to their proper value. So resolute and audacious a course of Perjury has, perhaps, not transpired since the celebrated case in the year 1753…
The Examiner, ever the friend to the Bowditch party, reported on the trials briefly (it too was preoccupied with the trial of the Queen) but two weeks later it commented at length on the subject of Tuckett and Leigh’s behaviour.155 Tuckett ‘displayed a most unbecoming and intolerant spirit.’ He allowed no discussion; he bullied and threatened newspapers, defamed individuals and instituted prosecutions. He was ‘insolent and intemperate.’ As for Leigh, he was ‘one of the most unbelieving believers ever possessed by a country town,’ a hint perhaps at the solicitor’s slow-growing misgivings.
The Examiner vehemently denied that there was any political element to its opposition to Maria: ‘All ranks and sexes in Taunton – old and young, rich and poor, Whigs and Tories and Reformers, Churchmen and Dissenters – all agree to doubt or disbelieve the marvellous Miss Glenn – all except this irrefragable Solicitor.’156 It singled out Justice Park, who had heard the case at Dorchester (‘perhaps not the most temperate and discriminating of our judges’) and Judge Best at the Westminster Hall judgment (‘more like a hired advocate than a sober judge’) for special criticism.157
Two days after Maria’s conviction, Lord Chief Justice Abbott wrote to Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, requesting freedom for Mrs Mulraine who, like Joan and William Bowditch, was still incarcerated in the King’s Bench Prison.158 He gave as his reason ‘the circumstances of aggravation in this particular case of Mulraine are found only in the evidence given by Maria Glenn.’ On the outside of Abbott’s letter Sidmouth or one of his clerks wrote ‘To be pardon’d’ and a week later she was free.159 When she emerged from prison, however, she was in a miserable state. She had been bereaved three times over. Her brother and son had died as well as her estranged father, who had been worth ‘considerable property’ but in fury at her behaviour he had left her nothing. She was destitute.
Through the advertisement pages of newspapers, including The Times and the Morning Post, her friends began to solicit donations for ‘this injured and unfortunate person’ who had ‘suffered unmerited disgrace and imprisonment.’160
To the Bowditches’ supporters in Taunton, it seemed as if all their wishes were being granted. The townspeople had vociferously supported Queen Caroline (3,000 people had signed a petition which was taken to London) and after they heard that the Bill of Pains and Penalties, the instrument Parliament had used to prosecute the Queen, had been dropped on 10 November they erupted in another orgy of jubilation, complete with bell-ringing, fireworks and flower displays. On 27 November, at a meeting at the Taunton Guildhall, James Bunter and Dr Robert Kinglake’s proposal for an address of congratulation to the Queen was unanimously passed.
On the day this meeting took place, Mary Ann was due at the Court of King’s Bench in London for sentencing. The Morning Chronicle gave a brief report:
Mr Scarlett prayed the judgment of the Court against this defendant, convicted of perjury in the prosecution of the Bowditches of Taunton, for the alleged abduction of Miss Glenn. The defendant did not appear when called.161
She and Maria had fled. Tuckett’s account makes it clear that he, Maria and Mary Ann were in London after the trials, for a few days at least. On the following Sunday, he and Maria went to church, Maria looking for spiritual support in accepting her fate. Tuckett found the sermon especially appropriate: ‘Let not the calumnies of thy perjured accusers overwhelm thee with despair.’ Earlier and in secret, however, Tuckett had decided that the young women would flee the country if the trial verdicts went against them. He told Mrs Whitby of his plans for her daughter: ‘I owe it to her noble conduct towards Miss Glenn that if she would consent, she should accompany Miss Glenn’s fortune, and that I would for ever treat her as one of my own family.’ On these terms, Mrs Whitby agreed to entrust Mary Ann to Tuckett’s care and the party left London shortly afterwards.
It was assumed by many that Tuckett had sent Maria and Mary Ann to the West Indies162 and he may have deliberately tried to leave that impression. The Taunton Courier eventually discovered their true whereabouts.163 Tuckett had hired a boat from Dover to Boulogne, where the party remained for two weeks and then moved further inland, coming to rest at the Hôtel de France at Montreuil.
Tuckett later explained his thinking behind the decision to flee in terms that modern readers might find difficult to accept. ‘Had Miss Glenn been my own child, I would not have hesitated to have yielded her up to those Judges, who had pronounced her innocence [the four judges who had delivered the judgment against a rule at Westminster Hall], to have dealt with her as in their wisdom they might have deemed proper – and though I was assured that her gentle nature would have sunk under her sufferings, it would have been my consolation to have believed that God had taken her to his mercy in her innocence, and had released her from all her wrongs.’ In other words, had she been his daughter, he would have surrendered her, even if she had died under the strain of her punishment. As it was, she was not his to sacrifice.
Little is known of Maria and Mary Ann in the months after their flight, except that they settled in Boulogne. It is likely that Tuckett visited them regularly, possibly occasionally with Martha and some of his children. The girls would have had servants, probably also paid chaperones, but their days must have been lonely, with plenty of time for bitter reflection. Maria was soon said to be in a ‘state of ill health’.164 It is not difficult to imagine her mental decline; over the past five years she had been the victim of an abduction, endured five court hearings, become the target of a vicious campaign of denigration and been forced to flee from the law.
Perhaps it was her fragility that prompted her mother and grandmother finally to make the journey from St Vincent to be with her. We do not know why they had not come earlier when she was bearing the brunt of Taunton’s fury, but now they chose to make their home permanently in France. No doubt it helped that they were familiar with French culture (many of their neighbours on St Vincent were French, having settled there when the island was a French possession) and spoke the language.
Boulogne was known for its many English exiles. Between fifteen and thirty per cent of the 20,000 inhabitants were English or of English origin. In many ways it was a home from home. London tradesmen sold English wares and food, and the town supported English libraries and reading rooms, a Protestant church, and a theatre whose performers were alternately French and English. There was a daily postal service to England and by 1820 steam packets were crossing regularly to Dover. But Boulogne also had a louche reputation. Many of the English residents were respectable people merely trying to live decent lives on reduced incomes (the cost of living was about half of that in England) or to educate large families (even better value, at a quarter of the cost) but the presence of debtors, fraudsters, bigamists and fugitives (of course, Maria and Mary came into this bracket) dragged down the reputation of the town and of its English community and gave them both a bad name.165 The local prison was nicknamed L’Hôtel d’Angleterre.
As Maria and Mary Ann languished in France, more trouble was brewing in England. While Tuckett was visiting them, he received a letter from his wife Martha, who told him that Joshua Whitby, Mary Ann’s uncle, was making a nuisance of himself, pressing her to get Mary Ann back to England and alleging that before her trial Tuckett had made her sign a document, the contents of which were withheld from her, remarkably similar allegations to Maria’s against John Oxenham.
Martha also reported that Mary Ann’s parents were saying that Tuckett had removed their daughter without their permission and they were threatening legal action if she were not instantly sent back to them. There was nothing for it but to return Mary Ann to England. Tuckett understood the reason for the Whitbys’ desire to retrieve their daughter. ‘Inhuman persecutors’ (Woodforde, Oxenham and other Bowditch supporters in Taunton) had taken advantage of their poverty, offering them cash and assurances that they would not push for her imprisonment. He could not keep Mary Ann from her parents but knew that once she was back in England the Bowditch party would try to turn her once more. ‘Severely as I have felt this ungenerous treatment, I can still pity the parents whose bread depends on the wickedness of their child,’ he wrote.
Mary Ann, however, was deeply attached to Maria, with whom she had been through so much, and when the time came for her to leave she was overcome. According to Tuckett, she kissed Maria and said, ‘Oh, Miss, this makes me most unhappy, to think that after the kindness I have received from Mr Tuckett and yourself, my friends should have acted so but I assure you that whatever I may have to go through nothing shall ever make me say anything but what could prove your innocence or make me forget what I owe you for your goodness to me.’
She knew what she would be returning to – judgment in the Court of King’s Bench and pressure to change her story. Tuckett impressed on her that she should stand firm: ‘You and Miss Glenn are about to part, and it is not probable that you will ever meet again in this world, but remember you will meet in the next!’ he told her. ‘I know perfectly well what a trial your virtue will have to undergo, but you have it still in your power of carrying your reparation further, and your firmness in adhering to the truth may at length convince the world of Miss Glenn’s innocence, and the injustice with which both of you have been treated.’ Mary Ann replied that she was aware of what awaited her and thanked him for his kindness ‘which she said was greater than she could have had shown her by her own parents, and that it had been such as she never could have expected after her treatment to my family.’
The behaviour of Mary Ann’s family worried Tuckett so much that he sent a friend, a ‘gentleman of the highest respectability’ to interview Mary Ann in London. He put a series of questions to her. Had she known the contents of the affidavit she swore in Bath? Yes. Did she make the affidavit voluntarily? Yes. Was Miss Glenn at the christening? No. Was Miss Glenn taken away of her own accord? No. Had she been told by James Bowditch to tell Tuckett that Miss Glenn had been at the christening and taken part in the christening party? Yes. Was Miss Glenn ever fond of James Bowditch? No. Was the story related by Mrs Bowditch and her family true or false? False.
The Bowditches’ defence and incarceration and their prosecution of Maria and Mary Ann had cost over £2,500, more than the value of their farm.166 Some of their expenses may have been covered by their friends and by the fundraising campaign but it was not enough and, once again, the people of Taunton came to their aid. On 6 December 1820, the Committee of the defence of the Bowditches reconvened at Market House to formulate a plan.
It was also an opportunity to register the public’s ‘indignation and horror’ at the lies of Maria and Mary Ann.167 Their ‘unabated commission of perjury’ had achieved new lows in the annals of false swearing. Their lies, ‘so insidious and contriving’, ate at the very foundations of society. The Bowditches, by contrast, were ‘not only entitled to public approbation, but also to such a pecuniary indemnity for the expense to which they have been subjected, as a liberal and humane community may think proper to bestow.’ Tom Woodforde’s ‘unremitting zeal’ in support of the Bowditches was picked out for special praise.
The emotion of the meeting was whipped up by an address from the Reverend Henry Cresswell, vicar of the nearby parish of Creech St Michael. Cresswell, known for his forceful and eccentric style, admitted that he had come late to the Bowditch cause, having previously been one of Maria’s few supporters. ‘Who might not be deceived under similar circumstances?’ he asked. ‘For who amongst us, without repugnance to his better feelings, can suspect youth of guile?’ Now he had accepted that what had happened to James Bowditch could have happened to any young man faced with Maria’s womanly wiles: ‘Not a youth in this town possessing gallantry (and I trust they all possess it in a qualified degree) but might unwarily be led by the smiles of a Siren to the glooms of a dungeon.’168
He painted a vivid picture of Maria’s motivations:
A female, placed in a better situation of life, above the temptation of filthy lucre, fixes her affections on a rustic lover, gives him encouragement, and finally elopes with him, nay, stays with him contented for a certain time – at least so it is asserted; then, on a sudden changes her conduct altogether, as it were by magic, caprice – call it what you will – the fear of her uncle, or mayhap, Gentlemen, from some cause which has not yet transpired; and then, by a chain of falsehood, by lie upon lie, oath upon oath, perjury heaped on perjury, to a vast and accumulated height, and thus in the face of an open court, she coolly and deliberately consigns that lover to a jail, and not only him, but his aged mother and her connexions.
He exhorted the meeting to give generously to the Bowditches. Nearly £65 in cash was raised, with Cresswell, William Kinglake and his brother Robert Kinglake each giving £5, Tom Woodforde £2 and 6 shillings and James Bowditch (the draper) £1.
Cresswell made Tuckett’s solicitor Henry James Leigh his particular target. He accused Leigh of purposely misleading people into supporting his client and his accusations provoked an ill-tempered spat between the two men. Later, in a letter to the Taunton Courier, Leigh complained of the ‘system of private detraction’ and ‘private malice’ directed at him by two or three ‘dastardly individuals.’169 As for the conspiracy: ‘I believe Mr Cresswell is the first person, even of the friends of the Bowditches, who has ever ventured to assert that there was not a conspiracy on the part of that family.’
Nevertheless, his tone was defensive. He was merely discharging his professional duty in looking after the interests of his clients, he said, and while doing so he had regularly and repeatedly tested Maria and Mary Ann’s evidence. ‘Their uniform consistency, their calm and natural demeanour, added to the extraordinary corroborations of material parts of their narratives by the evidence not only of persons but of facts, and some most extraordinary, and as it then appeared, providential coincidences, their unexceptional manner under an arduous public examination, and severe cross-examination at the trial at Dorchester, and not least of all the strikingly weak and defective case adduced on the part of the Bowditches, added to the self-detected inconsistencies (to use the lightest term) of several of their witnesses on that occasion – all the circumstances rivetted in my mind that confidence in Miss Glenn’s evidence which my earliest communications had inspired, and which my subsequent frequent opportunities of observing the conduct and manner of herself and Mary Whitby had irresistibly confirmed.’
This merely added fuel to Cresswell’s fire.170 He insisted that the Bowditches were innocent of ‘forcible’ abduction and challenged Leigh to answer a string of questions: Did Maria show a reluctance to leave the parsonage at Thornford? Did she throw her bonnet to the ground? Did she threaten to poison herself if forced back to Tuckett’s house? When Susan Bowditch told Miss Glenn to collect her things did Leigh say: ‘How can you expect that I will let her (Maria Glenn) out of my sight after the rash vow she has just made? Did Maria say, ‘Can’t I see James?’ as she left the parsonage? Why were the sheriff’s officers involved in the rescue never called to give evidence? Will Leigh explain why he included ‘almost’ in this sentence in his letter to the Taunton Courier after Maria was rescued: ‘Almost from the moment of my gaining possession of her, she rejoiced in her deliverance’?
Eventually, the unedifying sniping was too much even for the editor. J.W. Marriott called a halt to it and Cresswell was forced to rant in a pamphlet published at his own expense.171 (Typical sentence: ‘Fair DORSET, yes, I hail thee! – with step elastic do I tread thy genial soil; here will I meet, and conquer too, this recreant, dull, slow fighting cock! Linked with thee, proud Dorset, shall the name of Cresswell quickly uncharm the bastard name of Leigh!’)172
Leigh was the subject of Cresswell’s attacks but it was open season on Tuckett and Maria. Although the main drama appeared to be over, The Examiner kept up the offensive, claiming that Maria had been ‘well tutored and tricked off’ for the Dorchester trial, that the Bowditches’ witnesses were ‘listened to with contempt, or dismissed with rebuke,’ and that Justice Park, the deluded judge at Dorchester, was shocked at the idea of a labouring man presuming to marry ‘so accomplished, so modest, so amiable and so rich (at least in expectations) as Miss Maria Glenn!’173 Maria was the chief conspirator. She had issued coarse invitations to seduce James Bowditch from his work. Mrs Bowditch’s only error was not to tell Mr Tuckett about his niece’s disreputable behaviour. It was, in any case, understandable that she should feel pleased that her son had attracted the attentions of a young lady of fortune.
Tom Woodforde’s efforts earned special praise from The Examiner. ‘From the beginning, this gentleman warmly interested himself, sparing neither his person nor his purse, in advocating the cause of that oppressed family. His industry, his perseverance, and his disinterestedness are equally remarkable and honourable to him.’ He had zealously exerted himself simply because he was satisfied that they had been wronged. The Examiner had itself made a ‘humble contribution’ to the fund for the Bowditches (‘we wish we could have made it larger’) and urged its readers to do likewise.
James Scarlett, printer and son-in-law to Mrs Bowditch, now pressed home the family’s advantage. Writing to the Taunton Courier on behalf of the Committee, he asserted that the only reason James Bowditch had not married Maria (to her ‘great mortification’) was that the brothers had discovered that she was not twenty-one – she herself had told them that she was. The perjury they had committed on the marriage bond was nothing compared to that of ‘Glenn and Whitby’. Over a hundred people had contradicted Glenn’s assertions that she had not been at the christening, that she had not walked in French Weir Fields with James Bowditch, and that she had left Tuckett’s house in a state of terror and that she had been given a sleeping draught at Holway. Glenn and Whitby’s lies were the work of the devil – ‘base, foul, fiend-like’ – and they had left the Bowditches penniless and wretched.174
In February 1821, the petition on behalf of the Bowditches was presented to the House of Commons by John Ashley Warre, the independent MP for Taunton.175 He asked why Joan and William Bowditch had been allowed to languish in jail to finish their sentences (James had previously been released) when Glenn and Whitby had been found guilty of perjury. He expected the Crown to be merciful and believed that the family should be compensated.
William Clive, MP for Styche Hall, replied that the guilty verdicts against Glenn and Whitby had no bearing on their convictions and Lord Castlereagh pointed out that an application for release for one prisoner (Mrs Mulraine) did not automatically apply to the others. One MP said that Joan and William Bowditch had been branded conspirators by ‘the most gross systematic perjury ever exposed in a court of justice’ and did not deserve any of the punishment they had suffered.176
Maria’s reputation was now utterly destroyed. She had no means of reply and was stuck in exile. Tuckett’s rage, meanwhile, was huge and growing. Unable to bring the case back to court, he took the only course available to him.