Chapter 20

‘Pressed to Death’ for a Cunning Crime 1589

In 1579 Sir John Conway was walking down a London street when a fellow Warwickshire landowner, Lodowick Greville, sneaked up from behind and, without warning, set about him with a cudgel. Conway fell to the ground but Greville wasn’t finished. He drew a sword and began slashing at Conway with that weapon too. It was only because one of Conway’s servants intervened to ward off the blows that his master’s legs were not sliced clean off. Yet in the scuffle Greville did manage to ‘hurte him sumwhat on bothes his shynnes.’ Greville was subsequently arrested for the attack on Conway, who was actually a former friend and kinsman through marriage and he soon appeared before the Star Chamber. We do not know what motive Greville had for targeting Conway but he was ordered to spend several months inside Marshalsea prison in Southwark for the misdemeanour.

There is another, more shocking story, told of Greville in which he appeared to joke about his own son’s death. In 1560 Greville had married Thomasine Petre, daughter of Sir William Petre, the high flying secretary of state to four Tudor monarchs. At first the couple and their subsequent children lived in Essex. While they were there, according to the tale, their son Edward had been taking part in archery practice one day when, by mistake, he fired an arrow straight up into the air. When it came down the arrow pierced the body of his elder brother, killing him instantly. Archery was one of the Tudor era’s most dangerous pastimes; indeed, an examination of coroners’ records by historian Dr Steven Gunn, found that it was to blame in at least fifty-six documented cases of accidental death. Nevertheless, Greville’s reaction was startling. It is alleged that he made light of the matter, sarcastically taunting Edward by telling him it was ‘the best shot he had ever shot in his life’. While the tale may be apocryphal there seems little doubt that Greville was a man possessed of a twisted mind and violent temper and years later, plagued by financial worries, his flawed character would lead him to plan a cunning murder.

Greville was from a wealthy family who owned estates in Gloucestershire and Warwickshire which he inherited at the age of just twenty-two. Vain as well as hot-tempered, he lavished huge sums of money on building a new house at his manor of Milcote near Stratford-on-Avon. Granted a licence in 1567, the pile was to be called grandly, Mountgrevell. In fact the house was never completed though the ruins of it were still visible as late as 1730.

In 1588, as the Spanish Armada threatened English shores, Greville managed to raise a body of cavalry to send to Tilbury where Elizabeth was raising an army to deal with any invasion. He almost certainly felt obliged to do so in order not to lose face because, well before this, Greville had been running seriously short of cash. He had already been in trouble with the courts for fraud and was in constant dispute with neighbours over property matters. Greville’s answer to his money worries was to devise a dastardly plan to do away with one of his wealthy tenants.

According to the William Dugdale’s seventeenth century account in The Antiquities of Warwickshire, Greville’s chosen prey was a wealthy bachelor named Webb who was a tenant of one of his properties at Drayton in Oxfordshire. Making a show of generosity, Greville invited Webb to visit his residence at Sezincote in Gloucestershire for Christmas. During the stay, Greville selected two of his servants, Thomas Smith and Thomas Brock, to strangle his guest in his own bed, a task which they duly carried out. Brock was then persuaded to take Webb’s place in the bed, impersonating him and pretending to be unwell by ‘dolefully groaning’. Meanwhile, Greville called the local parson to attend on the patient and unwittingly witness the imposter agreeing to the details of a hastily drawn up will from his bed, complete with ‘counterfeit voice’. The document granted much of the murdered man’s lands to Greville. The ‘sick’ man was then allowed some rest and everyone was ushered out of the room. The corpse of Webb was reinstated and Dugdale says, ‘News of his death was soon spread in the house, whereupon people were called up, who finding him dead in the bed took order for his burial.’

For some time it looked as if Greville would get away with the murder, but Brock could not keep the secret. After a heavy tavern session he boasted about what he’d done. As a contemporary account put it, ‘One of the assassinates, being in his cups at Stratford, dropped out some words among his pot companions, that it lay within his power to hang his master.’

Hearing about Brock’s indiscretion from Smith, the other murderer, Greville now took desperate measures. Dugdale says that ‘to prevent the danger of any further such babling advised that he should be closely made away.’ Smith did his bidding by drowning his fellow killer in a pit of water. But he was careless. Brock’s body floated to the surface and was discovered. The local authorities soon identified Brock and found out that the person he had last been seen with was Smith, who was arrested. Smith spilled the beans on the whole conspiracy, naming Greville as the mastermind behind it.

Official records indicate that the victim was called Thomas Webb and that his will was made in 1585. He was not, as Dugdale asserted, a bachelor. In fact he had a wife by the name of Katherine. It was true, however, that he did make suspiciously large bequests to Greville. Dugdale is hazy on the timeframe of the murders, so it may be that Brock had kept quiet for a number of years before his loose lipped revelation that Greville was behind the killing. Interestingly, an alternative account of the case, related by Sir Thomas Coventry, suggests that Webb was poisoned rather than strangled but equally puts Greville in the frame.

Greville, along with Smith, was thrown in prison in January 1589. Because of his rank, Greville languished in the Tower of London for ten months before his trial as an accessory to murder. The case was to be heard at the superior court of the King’s Bench instead of the local Warwick assizes. It was the murder of Brock, not Webb, for which Greville and Smith were to be prosecuted but this was probably merely because of a lack of evidence or concrete proof that Webb’s will had been forged. When the proceedings were finally held on 6 November 1589, Greville endeavoured to exploit the law by refusing to enter a plea. He ‘stood mute’. This meant that even though he might be found guilty Greville’s lands could not be confiscated by the crown as was the usual custom. So, in saying nothing, Greville’s son Edward would inherit, whatever his own fate. The punishment for not entering a plea was, however, grave. The court ordered that Greville should be executed using another ancient custom, ‘peine forte et dure’. In other words he was to be ‘pressed to death’. This involved the condemned individual having large rocks placed upon his body until the life had been crushed out of him (see page 19). It was certainly a much more painful way to go than death by hanging and showed that while Greville might be an unsavoury character he cared deeply about the future of his family line.

Accounts conflict as to where Greville’s execution took place. Dugdale has it in Warwick, but in his Annales of England, written just three years afterwards, John Stow says it took place in London which seems more likely. Stow describes Greville being taken from the Tower of London on 1 November to Westminster for the trial, then to King’s Bench prison in Southwark to be pressed to death on 14 November. According to Stow, Smith was hanged the same day at the Palace Court at Westminster.

Despite his sacrifice, Greville’s direct descendants fared little better than the loathsome Lodowick. His son Edward may have retained his lands and was knighted, becoming an MP, but he was far from a popular man in Warwickshire. As lord of the manor at Stratford he regularly enraged locals especially over his attempts to enclose common land around the town. As such he carried on a protracted feud with Stratford’s bailiff Richard Quiney, an acquaintance of the playwright William Shakespeare. It’s believed that Edward Greville may even have orchestrated Quiney’s murder in 1602. This upstanding local official was killed after doing his public duty one night by intervening to try and stop a drunken brawl. The affray was started by some of Greville’s men, with the convenient outcome that one of the squire’s biggest local enemies perished. Another local, Thomas Greene, wrote that Greville had ‘his head grievously broken’ by one of Greville’s men.

However Edward Greville would go on to squander his fortune and ended up having to sell much of his land. His only son, John, died before him and this branch of the family died out. Some spoke of a curse on the Grevilles. In 1628, another related member of the family, Fulke Greville, seems to have fallen victim too. He was a famous poet and statesman elevated to the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. But, in 1628, he was stabbed to death in Warwick Castle by one of his own servants, Ralph Heywood. The motive? A dispute over his master’s will.