Chapter 16

The Curious Case of the Corpse in a Cask 1572

In the early morning of 29 April, 1572, a mysterious large vat, which had arrived by boat, was opened on the harbourside in the town of Rye in Sussex. As the lid was prised off in the gloom, the body of a dead man spilled out. He had been badly mutilated and it was clear that the death was suspicious. But who was this stranger and who had killed him?

In Elizabethan England investigations of crime could be slapdash, depending on the sometimes unreliable efforts of parish constables, coroners and justices of the peace. But in the case of Rye’s ‘corpse in a cask’ there is an example of careful detective work and effective cooperation between the authorities in different localities leading to a successful prosecution for murder. It reveals that Tudor justice could not only be swift but that a dangerous criminal could be pursued and caught with a level of skill which would be impressive even for modern professional law enforcement organisations.

The body in the vat had been brought to Rye by a local mariner, John Julians, but it was quickly clear that he had no knowledge of the dead body he had been unwittingly transporting from London. The corpse had been found at 4am, suggesting that Julians and his boat had only recently arrived in the town and also that there had been some kind of tip-off. An inquest was quickly convened and on 30 May the body was formally examined by the coroner. It was found to have three shallow wounds on the skull. There was lots of bruising too. The injuries were consistent with having been hit over the head. The man’s throat had also been cut and he had a wound in the left side of his body which was judged to have been inflicted by a dagger or sword. Revealing just how gruesomely thorough these inquests could be the official record notes that the inquirers could not find the ‘bottom of it’. Adding to the list of injuries, one of the victim’s legs had been severed below the knee, cutting it almost clean off.

The jurors, led by George Raynoldes, deputy mayor and coroner, testified that they could not identify the man. He was not, it seemed, local. However there was one man present who did know him. He was a ‘messenger’ who had recently arrived from London and was no doubt the person who had raised the alarm with the local authorities about the presence of the dead body in the innocuous-looking vat. He was able to quickly tell the coroner that the dead man was Arthur Hall, a successful London merchant who had been cruelly murdered earlier that year. The inquest’s verdict was as follows: ‘We fynd that Artar Hall, that John Jyllyns broght home frome London ded in a drye pype, was mordred in the hed wyth three wounds, hys throt koot and throst in the left syde, hys left leg koot of bye the kne and hong bye the scyne the last daye of Apryl.’

A letter in the archives, dated 1 May, from the recorder William Fleetwood (the most senior judge in London) and the city sheriff John Branch, thanked the Rye mayor and his men for their efforts in the matter and told them that after Hall’s wounds had been meticulously logged they were free to bury the body. On the morning of 2 May, Hall’s remains were placed in a coffin and buried in one of the chancels of St Mary’s, the 900-year old parish church. The same letter from Fleetwood told the mayor of Rye that he could also release the messenger who had been told by its burghers not to leave the town.

It turned out that by the time Julians’ boat had divulged its bloody cargo, the authorities in London already had their prime suspect for Hall’s murder in custody – a man called Martin Bullocke. Indeed he had, according to Fleetwood and Branch, already confessed to the crime. Bullocke had been arrested at the Red Lion inn, at High Holborn, which would then have been just outside the city walls. Before that he had been on the run.

Bullocke had been born at ‘Barwike’, which could have been Berwick-upon-Tweed, but there are several other places called Barwick scattered across the country and so his exact origins remain unknown. Nor do we know what Bullocke’s profession was as such. But we do know that during 1572 he had access to the parsonage of St Martin’s Outwich, a church which was located in the city of London on the corner of today’s Threadneedle Street and Bishopsgate. In the sixteenth century it was already 200 years old and known as St Martin With the Well And Two Buckets, for its location near an important urban water source.

Bullocke was evidently something of a wheeler dealer and in his 1577 account Holinshed tells us that he arranged to meet Hall at the parsonage with the promise of buying from him ‘certeine plate.’ In the Tudor era gold and silver plate was highly prized and a marker of someone’s wealth and status. Hall arrived to view the wares but was suspicious of the provenance, finally saying to Bullocke: ‘This is none of your plate, it hath Doctor Gardeners marke and I know it to be his.’ Bullocke retorted that indeed Hall was correct but that Dr Gardener, ‘hath appointed me to sell it.’ This was obviously a lie and it seems that Bullocke was now worried that Hall would bring his theft to light.

Holinshed picks up the story: ‘After this talke, whilest the said Arthur was weieng the plate, the same Martine fetcht out of the kitchin a thicke washing beetle and comming behind him stroke the said Arthur on the head, that he felled him with the first stroke; and then strake him againe, and after tooke the said Arthurs dagger, and sticked him, and with his knife cut his throte.’ A washing beetle was a kind of wooden bat used to beat laundry and would have made a formidable weapon, being heavy enough to inflict the serious wounds to Hall’s skull.

Following his savage and sudden attack Bullocke had the problem of what to do with the body. He needed to come up with a plan to dispose of his victim’s body fast, before the crime was discovered. At first he found a chest and tried to bundle the body inside. It was too short. Bullocke decided to try and bury Hall in the building’s cellar but the winding stairs made it impossible for him to get the body down.

Bulllocke then grabbed a hatchet and proceeded to try and cut Hall’s legs off, finally thrusting his body into a ‘drie vat’ and trussing it up with straw. Bullocke now planned to get the evidence as far away from him as possible. He arranged for the vat to be collected and taken to a ship, saying that it contained merely his ‘apparell and bookes.’ We have no idea why Bullocke paid for it to be sent to Rye, but perhaps he hoped that by the time the body was found it would be so far away that it could not be connected back to him.

Despite his attempts to dispose of the body after Hall’s disappearance suspicion soon fell on Bullocke, presumably as people knew Hall had been on his way to see him. Bullocke was questioned by the alderman and Branch. But Bullocke was obviously clever enough not to incriminate himself. Branch could find no firm evidence against him, or as Holinshed puts it: ‘so small likelihood appeared that he should be guiltie.’ In fact, Bullocke was so good at feigning innocence that a local clothworker called Robert Gee, living in the parish of St Laurence Pountney, took pity on him and gave him surety. Gee, ‘supposing the offendor to be cleere in the matter, undertooke for his foorth coming.’

But Bullocke didn’t hang around, fearing that the law might catch up with him if he stayed in London. Holinshed says that Bullocke ‘slipt awaie, first to Westminster’, then on to Kingston finally holding up at Wokingham near Windsor’

Meanwhile, the suspect having absconded, poor Gee had been put in gaol. However, from captivity, with the sanction of Branch, he was allowed to send out servants looking for Bullocke. One of these was sent to Rye. It was, we assume, the messenger referred to in the recorder’s letter. What neither Holinshed, nor any of the other records show, is how Gee knew about the vat aboard the ship and how it had arrived in Rye. It seems as if Branch and Fleetwood had been canny in getting a man like Gee, who now had the motivation that his own freedom was in peril, to do their detective work for them. More ‘police’ work, based on information and rumour, must have been involved in tracking Bullocke down to the Red Lion. He’d no doubt returned to the capital thinking enough time had passed for him to be able to reappear in the city.

Bullocke was found guilty of murder at the Newgate sessions on 22 May with the help of the information supplied from the inquest at Rye. He was hanged on a gibbet, at the ‘well with two buckets’ in Bishopsgate on 24 May. It was, Holinshed says, ‘due punishment for his heinous and most wicked offense.’