Chapter 18

Murder Behind Bars 1581

Unlike many of those who were hanged for murder in the Tudor age, William Sherwood did not go to the gallows meekly or full of remorse. According to an account written shortly afterwards called A True Report of the Late Horrible Murther Committed by William Sherwood, he had not only perpetrated the crime of making speeches in defence of Popery, but had also shocked onlookers with his cowardice when he attempted to escape down the ladder and ‘flye from the Butcher.’ The hangman finally despatched him in the midst of treasonably reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Latin.

Sherwood had fallen very far from the ‘gentleman’ who had originally hailed from the village of Walkington, a sleepy village near Beverley in Yorkshire. At some point he had fallen foul of the increasingly tough line taken against Catholics as Elizabeth’s government looked to shore up the position of the still relatively infant Church of England. The recusancy laws meant those that did not confirm to the Protestant religion could be fined or put in prison and in 1581 these were tightened. Another law of praemunire made it an offence to assert the supremacy of a foreign power, which in practice meant the Pope. Sherwood, not uncommon for a Northerner, was a Catholic and it was for the offence of praemunire that, by the summer of 1581, he found himself incarcerated at the Queen’s Bench, a prison in Southwark, London. He was also, the contemporary account tells us a, ‘derider of God’s ministers, a disturber of preachers,’ and ‘a contemner of the service confirmed by her majestie’.

There’s a suggestion in the records that he had been there since 1577 and had later been ordered to serve perpetual imprisonment. Alongside him in the prison was another, apparently younger, man, of ‘good parentage’, called Richard Hobson. He came from the Isle of Wight and was also behind bars thanks to his alleged Papist leanings. From what we can tell of the way both were housed in the jail, their status meant that, rather than being simply thrown in a dank cell, they enjoyed reasonable comfort. But, a few weeks before being accused of murder, Sherwood had been moved to the ‘common’ part of the jail after finding himself in debt.

Money is often a motive for murder, but here the quarrel that led to Hobson’s death certainly seemed trivial. It is likely that there was more to it than the surviving records show, but in the True Report Sherwood’s urge to kill is put down to an unnatural thirst for blood brought on by popery. His vocal Catholicism was linked to the fact that he ‘itched to commit murder.’

The well-meaning Hobson had struck up a friendship with Sherwood while in prison and now felt sorry for his indebted companion. He told Sherwood’s creditors that he would cover the amount owing. When a friend sent Sherwood five pounds to cover the debts, Hobson got his hands on it (presumably because he was still in the better part of the prison). He then paid Sherwood’s creditors with the cash directly, settling an outstanding sum from his own purse. Presumably this meant that Sherwood had been saved from languishing ‘well shackled’ in the incommodious section of the jail. Yet rather than take this courteous gesture in the spirit it was meant, Sherwood was furious with Hobson, feeling that he should have paid the five pounds to him directly on receipt. He began loudly sounding off about Hobson, protesting that he could not ‘abide him’. Hobson tried to sort things out with Sherwood to no avail.

In fact Sherwood decided to take matters further. First, on the night before committing his crime, he made sure that Hobson wouldn not have anything about his person that could be used as a weapon with which to defend himself. Then, on 28 June, 1581, at about 8’o clock in the morning, Sherwood laid in wait for Hobson who had just finished his morning prayers. Sherwood, ‘shutting his chamber door, assailed him with a knife and a stoole tressell, astonishing him,’ and ‘afterwardes gave him a large wound, keeping him downe and struggling till he bled to death.’ Hobson had managed to cry out for aid from Master Throckmorton, one of the jailors. Hearing his pleas, Throckmorton and some others soon arrived to help. They broke down the door but were only in time to find Hobson ‘soused in his own blood’ and gasping for breath while uttering a few last, faint words. In the commotion Sherwood tried to make a dash for it, but he was quickly collared and brought before the marshal in charge of the prison, still covered in Hobson’s blood. ‘Being examined he denied the manifest murder, which by witness was proved’.

The case against Sherwood was heard at the assizes in Croydon, Surrey, where he pleaded not guilty to murder. He ‘continued still obstinately denying the fact,’ hoping for some ‘helpe by pardon but a just judge prevented any ungracious hope.’

On 12 July, Sherwood was returned to Southwark, south of London, manacled during the journey to another condemned man who had been found guilty of rape. Sherwood’s execution was scheduled for the following day and that night he was kept in the White Lion, a former inn situated on what is now Borough High Street which had been converted into a jail.

In his final hours, the pamphlet tells us, Sherwood’s behaviour was ‘resolute in opinion, driving off his Christian brethren that exhorted him, with dry scoffs’. As he climbed the ladder of the scaffold the next morning, which had been set up next to the Queen’s Bench prison where the murder had been committed, Sherwood was determined not to renounce his Catholic faith or admit his crime despite being pressed to confess and make his peace with God. Instead he told onlookers, ‘I beseech all Romish Catholicks to helpe me in this my extremetie with their vertuous and godly prayers for others which are of a contrary profession as I abhore their religion so I will none of their prayers. But if there shall be here present anyone of the true Catholic Romish faith, I beseech them of theyr prayers of my behalf.’

A cry rang out from the crowd: ‘Hang him, hang him, there be none here by his profession.’

Of course, if there had been any present who shared his religious proclivities, they would have no doubt stayed sensibly quiet given the prevailing climate. Official records show that Sherwood was hanged for Hobson’s murder, on July 13, 1581.