Cornish Characters and Strange Events. Baring-Gould Sabine

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СКАЧАТЬ left the Earl's room. When he met the footman with the knife he returned, but not finding Lord Essex in his chamber, he tried to open the closet door, when he found that there was an obstruction. Somewhat alarmed, he ran to Russell, the warder, whose door was almost opposite on the same staircase, and both went to the closet, and found Lord Essex lying in it with his throat cut and his feet against the door.

      Russell corroborated this evidence, and added that no one could possibly ascend the stair and enter Lord Essex's chamber without his knowledge. The soldier, Lloyd, who acted as sentinel at the entrance to the Earl's quarters, testified that there was no truth in the children's tale about the razor, and that no maid had issued from the door to pick one up.

      It was further established that the closet window did not look into the main yard, and was so arranged that a hand could not be passed out of it.

      Judge Jeffreys conducted the investigation, and that in a most unseemly manner. Apparently he was drunk at the time, and was so confused that he was not able to follow the evidence. He browbeat the witnesses in the most offensive way.

      On November 6th, 1684, a French Protestant refugee, named Borleau, was indicted for selling a scandalous book called L'Esprit de Monsieur Arnaud, in which he declared that the Earl of Essex had not cut his own throat, but had been foully murdered. He pleaded guilty, and the King graciously allowed him to be fined only 6s. 8d., and to be discharged without paying his fees. There was most certainly fish made of one and fowl of another.

      Again, in December of the same year a book appeared entitled An Enquiry about the Barbarous Murder of the Earl of Essex, that was vended surreptitiously, and a broadside written by Colonel Danvers, giving the evidence that he was murdered, was thrown in at open doors and distributed in the streets of London. A hundred pounds was offered for the apprehension of Danvers. As to the book, it was from the pen of Laurence Braddon, and was later, when it could be done safely, acknowledged by him. On January 23rd, 1684-5, a Mr. Henry Baker pleaded guilty to an information for using scandalous words about the Duke of York, and at the same time a printer, Norden, did the same to an indictment for publishing the "scandalous libell in vindication of the lord of Essex." And on February 3rd one of the jury at the inquest, Launcelot Colston by name, was had up before King's Bench on a charge of having said that he did not believe that the Earl had cut his throat, for he could not have done so himself in the way in which he was found. Norden was sentenced to pay 200 marks, and to stand in the pillory at Ratcliffe, and to be bound to his good behaviour for seven years, and be committed to prison till this was done.

      In 1685, on the landing of the Duke of Monmouth, in the Proclamation he published, he charged King James with the murder of Essex, with his own hand.

      In January, 1689, a Captain Hawley, Major Whitley, and some two or three more were imprisoned for maintaining that Essex had not committed suicide. But this was at the moment when all power was slipping out of the hands of King James II; the Prince of Orange came to the throne, and on February 23rd a Captain Holland was arrested and thrown into prison on the charge of having been concerned in the murder of the Earl, and this was followed by numerous other arrests. But the prison-doors were thrown open for Laurence Braddon to issue forth and recommence his accusations of murder. He republished the "Enquiry into and Detection of the Barbarous Murther of the late Earl of Essex; or a Vindication of that Noble Person from the Guilt and Infamy of having Destroyed himself."

      Even before the throne, vacated by King James, had been filled by the Prince of Orange, the Lords had appointed a committee to examine into the truth of the frightful stories circulated relative to the death of Essex. The committee, which consisted wholly of zealous Whigs, continued its inquiries till all reasonable men were convinced that he had fallen by his own hand, and till Lady Essex, his brother, and his most intimate friends requested that the investigation might be pursued no further. That under Judge Jeffreys had been open to suspicion, this could not. But nothing would alter the persuasion of Braddon that this was a case of murder.

      Next year, 1690, he came out with a fresh pamphlet, "Essex's Innocency and Honour Vindicated, or Murther, Subornation, Perjury, and Oppression, justly charged on the Murtherers of that Noble and True Patriot Arthur (late) Earl of Essex," etc.

      It had become a matter of party feeling, and it was held by all true Protestants to be their duty to believe in the murder, so as to blacken the character of James II. The evidence, however, was too poor to convince a cool-minded man like Bishop Burnet, and in his History of His Own Times he spoke of Essex having cut his own throat. Thereupon Laurence Braddon resumed his pen and published an attack on the Bishop: "Bishop Burnet's History charged with great partiality and misrepresentations, to make the present and future ages believe that Arthur, Earl of Essex, in 1683, murdered himselfe, with observations upon the suppos'd poysoning of King Charles the Second," 1724.

      In 1695 Braddon was appointed solicitor to the wine-licensing office, with a salary of £100 per annum.

      In one point Braddon showed great perspicuity and good feeling. In 1717 he published a pamphlet entitled "The Miseries of the Poor, a National Sin and Shame"; and when his scheme for the relief of the poor had been animadverted upon unfavourably, in 1722, he answered these objections in another tractate: "Particular answers to the most material objections made to the proposal humbly presented to His Majesty for relieving, reforming, and employing all the poor of Great Britain," 1722.

      Laurence Braddon died on Sunday, 29th November, 1724.

      The Braddons must have been a family of some consequence in S. Gennys, although their arms and pedigree are not recorded in the Heralds' Visitations. At the trial of Laurence, it was stated that his father's income from his property was fully £800 per annum. Laurence derived his fiery Protestantism from his father, who had been a Parliamentarian officer of some distinction in the Civil War. His father is buried in the chancel of S. Gennys, and some verses are inscribed on the ledgerstone, beginning: —

      In war and peace I bore command,

      Both gun and sword I wore.

      The arms borne by the family are: Sable, a bend lozengy, arg.– arms that in their beautiful simplicity proclaim their antiquity.

      The old mansion of the Braddons in S. Gennys has been pulled down and a modern farm-house erected on the site.

      THOMASINE BONAVENTURA

      Week S. Mary stands in a treeless wind-swept situation, 530 feet above the sea, near the source of two small streams rising in the desolate downs to the south, which unite their waters at Langford, and have sawn for themselves deep clefts that are well wooded. At a remote period this district must have been the scene of contests, for it is studded with earthworks. There was a castle at Week, but camps also crowning a height in Westwood and in Swannacott Wood; and Week S. Mary with its castle stood aloft, defended by one of these on each side. Formerly there was not so much enclosed land as there is at present; but it was precisely the moorland that extended over so large a portion of the parish that constituted its wealth, for on this waste pastured vast flocks of sheep, whose fleeces were in request at a time when wool was the staple industry in the West of England.

      The ridge of bare, uplifted, carboniferous rock and clay, cold and bleak, was formerly scantily provided with roads, and with homesteads few and far between; and to guide the traveller through the waste, certain churches with lofty towers were erected on high ground – Pancrasweek, Holsworthy, Bridgerule, Week S. Mary – to enable him to make his way across country from one to the other. A farm or a manor-house nestled in a combe, sheltered from the wind, from the sea, and the driving rain; but farmer and squire drew their wealth from the sheep on the uplands, which were moreover strewn, as they still are, with barrows, under which lie the dead of the Bronze and Stone ages.

      Davies Gilbert absurdly derives the name of the place from the Cornish, and makes it signify "sweet." No more unsuitable СКАЧАТЬ