Catching and Convicting Murderers

In Sundry Strange and Inhumane Murders, a pamphlet detailing some of the worst crimes of the 1590s, the anonymous author wrote, ‘Horror and fear always accompanieth the murderer … he standeth in dread of every beast bush and bird … God seldom or never leaveth murder unpunished’ compelling the culprit to ‘lay open the truth to the world’. There had been a belief, at least since the time of Geoffrey Chaucer, who first coined the phrase in his Canterbury Tales, that one way or another ‘murder will out’.

This conviction was a useful one, given that in the sixteenth century there was no organised police force and arresting a murderer could be an extremely tricky business. This did not mean, however, that urgent action was not taken when a murder occurred or was suspected. In fact, the whole local community was expected to chip in and help bring the killer to justice. If a recent murder was discovered, assuming the suspect was not immediately apprehended, the ‘hue and cry’ would be raised. This practice dated back to the thirteenth century and required all able bodied men to down tools and join in the pursuit of the suspect. A whole community could be fined for not taking part.

The role of the humble parish constable, unpaid and appointed for a year by local aldermen, was important at this stage. William Harrison described how, after getting a warrant, it was his ‘duty to raise the parish about him, and to search woods, groves, and all suspected houses and places, where the trespasser may be, or is supposed to lurk; and not finding him there, he is to give warning unto the next constable, and so one constable, after search made, to advertise another from parish to parish, till they come to the same where the offender is harboured and found.’

The hue and cry could be effective. In 1595, William Randolph, a grazier from Cardiff, was murdered near Aylesbury. Descriptions of the suspects, who had been seen acting suspiciously before Randolph’s dead body was found in a thicket, helped track one of the culprits down to as far away as Wales.

Often, however, the burden of bringing a murder to the attention of the authorities fell on victims’ families themselves. In 1580, Nicholas Turberville was murdered at Wells in Somerset by his brother-in-law, John Morgan, a ‘lewd and wicked liver’. Despite ‘lying in childebed’ Turberville’s wife ‘arose and went to have law and justice pronounced on that cruel malefactor.’ Morgan was hanged at Ilchester on 14 March.

Investigations

Constables and neighbours, mayors and other officials including the local sheriff, whose job was to oversee law and order in the county, could all become involved in initial murder enquiries. However, if a murder suspect was apprehended or suspected, sooner or later the matter would come before the local justices of the peace. These were magistrates usually chosen from among the ranks of the local gentry. Their main job was to hear lesser crimes at quarter sessions. While they would not usually try cases of murder, they were regularly involved in the job of ordering the search of properties, interrogating suspects, checking alibis and backgrounds, encouraging confessions and taking depositions from witnesses as well as ensuring that arrested suspects were delivered to gaol awaiting court proceedings. There was even advice issued to JPs advising them on what body language to look for in a guilty person.

In cases of suspicious death, the coroner would also be called for. The office of coroner had been established in the twelfth century and by the Tudor era, coroners had become very important in identifying murder suspects. Along with the justices of the peace they were, in effect, the nearest thing to a modern day detective. The coroner would first open an inquisition with a jury of at least twelve men, summoned by the sheriff or bailiff. He and his jury would then typically inspect the body of the victim, noting any wounds and trying to establish just how the victim had died. The coroner might be obliged to put their thumb into a wound to ascertain its nature and depth.

As well as identifying if the person had been murdered, the job of the coroner was to seek out the murder weapon and even give it a monetary value. Coroners could also examine witnesses, family members and suspects. In the case of the murdered hosier Abel Bourn, for example, the coroner was able to establish that the chief suspect, a man called Wood, could not come up with an alibi for what he had been doing on the day of the murder. Finally, the coroner would ask the jury to reach a verdict as to who might be responsible for a murder. Their findings would then be passed to court officials preparing indictments.

In the course of enquiries into a murder, supernatural forces could be called upon to help. Very common was the curious practice of bringing suspects in front of the corpse of the person they were alleged to have killed. If the dead body was observed to ‘bleed afresh’ in their presence then this was taken as a sign from God that they were responsible. For instance, when Thomas Hil of Faversham killed his own mother and had her buried before his brother could attend the funeral, his suspicious sibling insisted on the body being exhumed. Discovering no sign of the plague, from which the woman was supposed to have died, Hil was brought before the body where the corpse ‘bled both at the nose and at the mouth; whereupon hee confessed.’

This is not to suggest that educated medical expertise was never sought during investigations. In December 1597, when the body of a barrister was found floating in the Thames, a group of learned surgeons gave their opinion that the dead man had met his end not by drowning but by suffocation. Suspicion fell upon Richard Aungier, his son, who was hanged for the murder a month later. In the case of Thomas Robinson (see page 168) a kind of post mortem was undertaken in which physicians were apparently able to identify that the victim had died through poisoning.

Examination of witnesses could be very thorough. In January 1577, Alice Neate, of Colchester in Essex, slit her sister in law’s throat while she lay in bed. At first Alice’s own daughter Abigail denied that her mother had anything to do with the crime but under ‘straight examination’ she was persuaded to reveal the truth – that Alice had done it. She knew because she was lying in bed awake in the same room and watched the whole thing. Alice was duly hanged.

Despite many thorough investigations, murderers were not always caught. Arrests were haphazard and, in practice, many constables, coroners and JPs were corrupted or dragged their feet if they had any personal interest in seeing a murder hushed up. Many murderers could simply not be found, even where their identities were known, with the suspects made outlaws.

Prisons and trials

While a murder suspect awaited trial he would usually languish, clamped in irons, in a local gaol. This might be sentence enough; many prisoners died of disease, thanks to insanitary conditions. Some of the bigger prisons, particularly in London, became infamous. Here, murderers could find themselves awaiting justice at the King’s Bench prison, the Fleet, Marshalsea, Newgate and just occasionally in the Tower of London itself. Here, although not officially sanctioned, confessions could be obtained by torture using the rack, a device that stretched out the victims’ limbs inflicting extraordinary pain. According to Sir Walter Raleigh, the rack was ‘used nowhere as in England’. Prisons were also places where condemned men would return after a conviction to await their execution. Here they might be visited by family or clergy encouraging them to repent.

The rack. A popular method of torture employed in Tudor times. Illustration from The Comprehensive History of England, 1902. (Copyright Look and Learn)

Tudor trials, even for murder, were over in as little as half an hour and almost never lasted longer than a day. They were usually heard in front of crown-appointed judges at the twice-yearly travelling courts known as the assizes or in more regular sessions in London. Murder cases could also be heard or transferred to the superior court of the King’s Bench at Westminster Hall in London, with members of the nobility tried by their peers.

Before a trial began a grand jury would study indictments prepared by a coroner or JP to see if there was a case to hear. If a bill of indictment was found to be ‘true’, the arraignment process would get under way, where the indictment would be read out and the prisoner would have the chance to plead. If the plea was guilty their case would be set aside for sentencing. If they pleaded not guilty they had the right to tried by ‘God and the country’ which in effect meant a jury of twelve men, comprised of gentlemen and yeomen.

The shackles of the prisoner were removed and the prosecution’s case would be put forward with witnesses, including children, testifying under oath. Evidence would be presented, including the depositions made to justices of the peace, as well as any confession or statements made by the accused. The accused was not allowed legal representation but could speak on their own behalf and was sometimes allowed to present witnesses in their defence.

Juries were supposed to decide the case on its merits but were often given heavy direction by the judge and usually came up with a verdict in a matter of minutes. There’s no doubt that if you had enough influence, juries, coroners and justices could all be leaned on to bring in lesser verdicts or acquittals.

This did not mean that trials were a mere formality. Indictments for murder might turn into convictions for manslaughter instead. Courts sometimes found defendants insane or, finding they had the wrong suspect, ascribed fictitious names to the unknown real culprits like ‘John at Death’. Conviction rates varied wildly, from forty-nine per cent in Sussex to sixty-eight per cent in Kent, according to calculations by the historian John Bellamy.

If the prisoner was found guilty he could make a plea of leniency, perhaps claiming benefit of clergy (see below). If not, sentencing would proceed. Along with being executed, murderers could be subject to forfeiture of their goods, which would be seized by the crown, while the gentry could be stripped of their titles and lands. In some cases these might be redistributed or eventually given back to the families in question. Forfeiture ensured that the sins of the fathers were revisited on their heirs.

If an indictment had not led to a conviction, or if a murder suspect had evaded the law, there was another way for a murderer to be brought to justice and that was to make an ‘appeal’ of murder. This was usually done by the victim’s next of kin, often in cases where they felt justice might be obstructed by local bias. This was the case when John Pauncefote, a justice of the peace from Gloucestershire, was shot and murdered in 1516. He had been on his way to quarter sessions in Cirencester when attacked by a group of men including Sir John Savage, who was actually sheriff of Worcestershire. Pauncefote’s widow made an appeal to the King’s Bench. After much wrangling, Savage got a royal pardon but not before he had been ordered to pay Pauncefote’s family considerable compensation. Thus ‘appeal of felony’ wasn’t simply a path to justice but important financially for those who had lost a breadwinner.

Getting away with murder

If you wanted to get away with murder, or at least escape capital punishment, it helped to have God, or rather the Church, on your side. It also helped to be a man. Claiming ‘benefit of clergy’ meant that those in holy orders could be punished more leniently by the separate church courts. This privilege wasn’t just for priests but effectively any man who could claim some link to the Church and demonstrate that they could read a portion of text in Latin.

Over time the right to benefit of clergy was restricted. In 1489, just four years into Henry VII’s reign, a new statute stated that laymen could only claim the privilege once and must have the letter M branded on their thumb. Further interventions through the sixteenth century meant that benefit of clergy eventually stopped being used in murder cases. Women condemned to die for murder could avoid death temporarily, by claiming to be pregnant. If this was found to be true they were remanded until they gave birth and could sometimes escape the noose.

An individual who had committed murder could also flee to a church, or specific consecrated place and claim the ancient right of sanctuary - places deemed to be outside the jurisdiction of the secular law. There were a few monasteries where permanent sanctuary might be possible, but in most places the protection of the clergy lasted for forty days, after which time the criminal would usually have to face normal legal procedure.

In 1527, Thomas Parker fled to a Leicester church admitting: ‘I have strykyn Thomas Otfield and gaff hym the wound wherof he died.’ He claimed sanctuary in the hope of saving his life. Murderers like Parker could escape the noose if they admitted their crime to the coroner and agreed to ‘abjure the realm’ – leaving the country for good. They would be accompanied by the coroner to the nearest port, wearing no shoes and carrying a cross. Parker left England from Boston in Lincolnshire. From 1529, a letter ‘A’ was branded on to the abjurer’s thumb in case they tried to come back. As Church and state tussled during the Reformation, attempts were made to curb criminal sanctuary and it was finally abolished under James I.

Royal pardons could often help murderers avoid the gallows, perhaps issued because the legal process was found to be lacking, new evidence had emerged or to an accessory who had provided information to help convict others. A person of high standing whose friends had the ear of the monarch might get a pardon or it could simply be granted because the sovereign wished to bestow favour on a high ranking individual he considered useful. One of those pardoned was Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, who found himself arraigned at the King’s Bench for murder in 1498 after he killed a man in a brawl.

In cases of feuding families, tit for tat murders could go unprosecuted. Others could get away with it simply by virtue of their social standing. Sir Thomas Salisbury, a JP in Denbighshire paid off a victim’s relatives when one of his servants killed two men. In Scotland, when James Stewart, the 2nd Earl of Moray was murdered in Edinburgh his killer, the Earl of Huntly, was given merely a week’s house arrest. Murderers could sometimes escape hanging if they made an arrangement with their victim’s family. In 1599, a man agreed to forgive his brother’s killer as long as the culprit was given twenty years’ banishment.