Chapter 30

Hacked to Pieces in a Muddy Lane 1602

At just after 8 o’clock in the morning on August 30, 1602, a maid’s screams pierced the morning air in the sleepy little town of Market Rasen in Lincolnshire. She had been making her way to work down a muddy lane on the south side of the town when she was confronted by a horrifying sight in the track ahead of her. A wild looking man was desperately hacking at another with a sword. On hearing her cries, the culprit fled the scene, leaving his victim for dead.

The assault on the Reverend William Storre in the dying days of Elizabeth’s reign was as vicious as any recorded in her forty-five year rule. It was the result of an argument which had broken out in the church where he was officiating. By all accounts Storre, in his early 40s, was a learned and respected man. He had attended Lincoln Grammar School before going up to Oxford University. After getting his MA he went on to become a fellow of Corpus Christi College. Here he spent twelve years in academia before deciding to take a position as curate in the Lincolnshire village of Boothby Graffoe. By 1597 he was vicar at Market Rasen.

During the year of 1602, tensions were running high in the community over the issue of enclosure, a process where wealthier landowners were fencing off common land for their own gain. The practice left many feeling their ancient rights were being trampled upon. Disputes over enclosure had been growing throughout England during the sixteenth century.

At Market Rasen, on one Sunday night in early August, things came to a head after evening prayers had been said in the church. A heated row broke out between several of the wealthier members of the town and some of the other inhabitants. Storre stepped in, suggesting that the church wasn’t the place for such a debate. He recommended that the two sides should pick two or three men and adjourn to discuss the matter in a more civilised manner. However, some of those who had been arguing asked Storre which side he thought was in the right. The vicar was reluctant to be drawn, partly because he’d inevitably fall out with part of the community if he gave a view. But Storre was also worried because he’d previously had some problems with one of the men, Francis Cartwright, the 23-year-old son of a wealthy draper, Anthony Cartwright. A contemporaneous pamphlet published about the case reveals that ‘no small unkindnesse had grown between them’. Francis, who was well known for his ‘hotte stomacke’ was on the side of the enclosing squire. However, repeatedly pressed to give his opinion, Storre eventually agreed. After hearing both the arguments he tended towards the side of the freeholders and against the ‘Lords of the town’.

Storre’s views, no doubt influential if not carrying any legal weight, left Francis Cartwright seething. He shouted out, ‘The priest deserveth a good fee, he speaketh so like a lawyer.’ and then continued to verbally abuse Storre. The next morning, Anthony Cartwright was discussing his son’s behaviour with some neighbours when Francis interrupted them taking up where he left off in ranting abusively about Storre. The vicar, who, it seems, was among those in conversation, retorted to Francis that his derisive words would better describe himself. A furious Francis reached for his dagger and was narrowly restrained from stabbing Storre on the spot. Instead, he stormed into the nearby market place announcing to anyone who would listen that Storre was a ‘scurvie, lowsie, paltrie Priest,’ and that, ‘whosoever said that hee was his friend, or spake in his cause, was a rogue and a rascall that he would … cut his throat, teare out his heart and hang his quarters on the may-pole.’

Storre was now so afraid of what Cartwright might do next that he went to see the local justice of the peace, asking for a ‘recognizance’, a Tudor version of an injuction or court order against Cartwright, which might make him keep his distance. Either reluctant to upset such a leading family, or feeling unable to make the order because Cartwright had not yet committed any actual crime, the JP in question vacillated, merely offering to bring Storre’s complaints before the next quarter sessions in September.

In the meantime, Storre continued preaching sermons in his church while Cartwright sat in his family pew irritably writing down what was said. In the natural course of his sermons Storre delivered some ‘sharpe and nipping reprehensions’ to his flock. Cartwright was convinced that everything negative that Storre said was directed against him personally and his stomach ‘filled with raw humours.’

A week later, Cartwright saw his chance for revenge after spotting Storre out and about on his own. He immediately went to a ‘cutler’s shop’ where he picked up a short sword that he had taken to have sharpened. Rushing back to seek out Storre he caught up with the vicar. Storre turned around to see Cartwright approaching with his sword drawn and a crazed look on his face. Realising that there was no hope of escape, the terrified vicar decided to try and talk Cartwright out of attacking him, or as the pamphlet tells us to, ‘assuage his passions.’

But Cartwright, ‘being double armed, both with Force and Furie, would abide no parly.’ Advancing on Storre he slashed at his target’s left leg cutting deep into the flesh and almost completely severing the limb. As Cartwright delivered more frenzied blows with his weapon the unarmed Storre put up his arms in defence. This time the sword sliced off three of the vicar’s fingers and ‘gave him two grievous woundes on the outside of either arme between the elbow and the hand; the one in the middest of the arme’ and the other cutting into the bone. Storre staggered backwards, falling into a puddle of water. He tried to get up, but as he did so the bones in his left leg snapped leaving his ‘heele doubled backe to the calfe of his legge.’ Even though his victim was no doubt writhing in agony Cartwright wasn’t finished. He continued to hack away at Storre’s body wounding him in the right thigh down to the bone and gashing his left knee.

It was at this point that the unwitting maid suddenly appeared, interupting the onslaught. Cartwright immediately halted his attack and ran off. Hearing the maid’s cries of horror other townsfolk came running and were shocked to find their ‘minister thus wallowed in the mire’ with his blood ‘extremely gushing out’. Some ran back to town crying ‘murder’.

Despite suffering twenty-four separate wounds, Storre was still alive and his mangled body was carried to a nearby house where he was bandaged in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Several surgeons and ‘bone-setters’ were called to asses Storre’s condition but they were in agreement that he was unlikely to survive his injuries, due to the extensive blood loss. Storre finally expired eight days later.

After the attack, Cartwright had run straight to his father’s house, where a crowd assembled. Presumably, the maid had been able to identify Cartwright. In any case, the animosity he felt towards Storre was well known around the town and he was the obvious suspect. The elder Cartwright managed to keep the mob calm until the local constables arrived to arrest his only son. Cartwright was soon brought before a magistrate but, surprisingly, allowed to stay free on bail. He used this opportunity to flee to France before his case could come to trial.

This unsatisfactory state of affairs soon came to the attention of John Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury, perhaps thanks to the efforts of Storre’s widow (pregnant at the time of her husband’s passing) who was determined to see justice done. The Privy Council got to hear of it too. The Lincolnshire JP and constable who had let Cartwright escape from their clutches were subsequently sacked.

Meanwhile, Cartwright turned up in the city of Rouen in Normandy, where he remained for six months, before signing up as a volunteer soldier serving under Sir Francis Vere in the Netherlands, the commander of English troops fighting against the Spanish. It may have been this ‘service’ that somehow enabled Cartwright’s family and influential friends ‘by corrupt dealing about His Majesty’ to gain a pardon from the new monarch, James I, for the killing of Storre. Feeling that his life was no longer in peril, Cartwright was soon back in England.

What he and his allies hadn’t taken into account was the steely character of Storre’s widow. Her husband had been in debt at the time of his death and she and her five children had been forced to depend on the charity of the parish since his passing. She refused to accept the king’s pardon as the final word in the case and travelled to London to ‘sue for appeal’. In fact she spent the next five years trying to get the pardon overturned. A worried Cartwright tried to offer her money to drop the matter, but the widow Storre refused his offers.

The case had stirred up a good deal of feeling both locally and nationally and a whole host of local folk signed testimonies bemoaning Storre’s murder at Cartwright’s hands. Some of his former colleagues at Oxford University joined the clamour against what was perceived as a miscarriage of justice. Indeed, the whole pamphlet about the case that was printed on the anniversary of Storre’s death may have been written at their instigation. Published in Oxford, its campaigning tone was a case for the prosecution including detailed evidence and witness statements.

Cartwright later recalled, ‘Scarce was I entertained at home’ but ‘another affliction arose to endanger mee. The wife of the slaine sueth and appeale against me, notwithstanding my pardon.’ For a time it looked like the widow Storre might be successful, the king himself indicating that if a legal problem was found with the granting of Cartwright’s pardon, he should be hanged for the murder but the appeal was ultimately rejected on a point of law. Cartwright was bound over for five years and forced to make his peace with the Church by making an act of contrition. In effect, he became a free man, though one with a heavily tarnished reputation.

Cartwright returned to live in the village of Nettleton just a few miles from Market Rasen and began courting a gentlewoman. His father now dead, Cartwright found himself with fewer friends. At one point, unhappy at his choice of bride, four men attacked him with halberds, leaving him seriously injured. However, the marriage went ahead and Cartwright became a father to two children.

He seems to have been incapable of staying out of trouble for long. In 1611, he ended up in a confrontation with a Master Riggs at Grantham. According to his own account, Riggs attacked him with a sword and he was forced to kill his assailant in self-defence. This time Cartwright was convicted of manslaughter and imprisoned for a year, a relatively lenient sentence.

On gaining his freedom, Cartwright found himself in debt and left the country once more, this time volunteering to serve as a sailor on the Vanguard with Sir Richard Hawkins on a mission to Algiers to tackle pirates. Unfortunately for Cartwright, his reputation sailed with him and superstitious seafarers soon had him transferred to another ship which itself was then captured by the Algerians. Bad luck seemed to follow Cartwright everywhere and he was eventually forced to give up his life at sea and return to England.

By 1621 Cartwright had obviously achieved some kind of bizarre notoriety. The Storre case had also passed into legend and was still well known enough for Cartwright to decide it was time to make a kind of public confession. In effect The Life, Confession and Heartie Repentance of Francis Cartwright, Gentleman: For his bloudie sinne in killing of one Master Storr was not so much a mea cupla but a memoir. He could not quite bring himself to admit murder. While acknowledging that he had killed the vicar he says that he had only meant to give his adversary a ‘slight wounding’. He goes on to excuse his actions by pleading that if Storre had only moderated his language towards him the incident would not have happened.

Cartwright ends his account by revealing how, when he arrived back in England from his nautical adventures at the port of Deal in Kent, he nearly accidentally killed himself with his own sword while getting out of the coach on his way to Chatham. We do not know when or how Cartwright did finally die, but as he himself admitted that this would have been rather a fitting end to a very odd life.