The Jacobite Murders

by G. M. Best

  ‘Aye, miss,’ he replied, ‘but it is better that you cannot see him because he has been most cruelly murdered. He hangs upside down and his throat has been cut.’

  As more people began to voice their feelings, the question that went repeatedly round was ‘Who is he?’ but none appeared to be able to answer that. Jones remained silent, surprised to discover that he alone knew who the man was. One bald-headed man, whose few remaining sparse locks clung to the back of his neck as if reluctant to lose their hold, suggested in a stentorian voice that the man was a warning sent by God to condemn the city’s devotion to gambling and whoring, but this proclamation was met with hoots of derision.

  ‘It is not the hand of God we see at work here,’ shouted out Jones. ‘It’s the hands of men – and evil hands at that!’ Most of those present murmured their assent and gazed in the direction of the speaker. They were at once struck by the fact that all his features bore the signs of having been in a fight of great severity. There scarce seemed an inch of his face that did not still bear the signs of having been recently cut or scratched or bruised. Only those closer could see that beneath the bruising and blackening he had all the features of a strikingly handsome man.

  The bald man refused to be silenced by Jones’s outburst and snapped back in response. ‘Believe me, sir, God would not have permitted a good man to have suffered such a fate. The man hangs there as a sign of the fate that will befall all sinners.’ He smiled grimly and, raising a cup that he held in his hand, drank from it as if relishing the prospect of such an event.

  ‘Have you no humanity, sir, to savour such an ill deed?’ declared Jones, refusing to be silenced. ‘I am relatively new to this city but I know no man deserves such barbaric treatment and certainly not the old man who hangs there.’

  ‘Do you not despise the pomp and vanities of this wicked world? Do you not wish to bruise the serpent’s head?’

  ‘Ignore his harangue,’ said the man next to Jones. ‘You will only encourage him and then he will go through his full range of godly discourses. He thinks he is an evangelist and that few can resist the power of his words. If you are not careful he will bombard us all with his tub-thumping nonsense!’

  ‘I thought the fruits of faith were supposed to be brotherly love and Christian charity,’ muttered Jones in reply.

  What more might have been said was lost because all the crowd went silent at the sight of a man in a striking white hat making his way to the scene of the crime. ‘What’s happening?’ whispered the blind girl.

  ‘It’s Beau Nash, the Master of Ceremonies,’ explained Jones. ‘He’s talking to a cleric about what has happened. I suspect that he will get the constables to disperse the crowd so the dead man can be brought down.’

  At that moment Nash spotted Jones in the crowd and beckoned him to join him. ‘I need your help to get Graves down. He has suffered enough for his lies without letting him remain a public spectacle. I am sure that this is the handiwork of those Jacobite agents whose names he foolishly feared to tell us. Once you have helped cut him down, go and tell Lady Overbury and Mr Fielding that I must see them urgently.’ Jones grimly gave his assent.

  Two hours later everyone was gathered together in the drawing room in the house in Queen Square. It was Nash who spoke first.

  ‘We must revisit all the events that have happened in this house in the light of Graves’s deceitfulness. Agreed?’ Nods indicated acceptance of this.

  ‘Let me begin, and correct me if you disagree with anything I say. Miss Grey was acting as an agent for Lord Kearsley and began copying a document that contained the names of all those traitors who are prepared to join the rebellion against our lawful king. Unfortunately, she was discovered in the act of doing this and, as we read in her letter to Lord Kearsley, she accidentally killed the priest who was the main agent of the Jacobites in the resulting struggle. She hid the priest’s body and the all-important documents. Whether she burnt the copy she had made or placed it with the original documents is not clear. She then wrote to Lord Kearsley, urging him to return here as soon as he could. As the days passed and Lady Overbury’s arrival became imminent, she decided the corpse would have to be moved. For that purpose she used Joseph Graves, who was already blackmailing her over the priest’s use of the house for secret meetings. Unfortunately he did not dispose of the body in the way that Miss Grey had envisaged. Instead, he carried the corpse to some of those traitors who had been involved in the meetings. Understandably they were frightened of discovery and so they determined to get their hands on the hidden documents.

  He paused and the others nodded to show they all agreed with what he had so far said. ‘Now I enter less sure territory,’ he continued. ‘There was an attempt by someone to get the information from Miss Grey. In that process she was killed. The fact that she held in her hand the button that was supposedly the pass sign between her and Lord Kearsley may well indicate how her murderer gained admittance.

  ‘It is possible that Miss Grey told Joseph Graves to let in anyone who had a button with a fleur-de-lis on it and that he foolishly passed on this information to her enemies,’ ventured Fielding and the others concurred.

  ‘We can also surmise that Miss Grey did not reveal where the documents were because the next night there was another attempt to get them. Hence the fact that Mr Burnett was knocked unconscious. However, this second attempt coincided with the arrival of Lord Kearsley and as a result he was murdered.’

  ‘All that you say makes sense, Mr Nash,’ interrupted Lady Overbury, ‘but what can it tell us about more recent events?’

  ‘Simply this, your ladyship. Graves told Mr Jones that he had prevented the traitors obtaining the documents that would incriminate them. He has obviously hidden them somewhere and time for them is running out. The Young Pretender’s army is now on its way south and our enemies want to convey to him the names of those who are prepared to join his cause. Already they grow bolder. Look at the way they have ruthlessly chosen to murder first their own assassin in the baths and now Joseph Graves on the west front of the abbey. They are making a public example of these men so as to let others know what will be their fate if they do not remain true to the Jacobite cause.’

  ‘I suspect there are other messages too in those actions,’ added Fielding.

  Lady Overbury looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Humphrey Watson was stabbed to death in the King’s Bath. It was in that very place that James II’s wife was supposedly made fertile and so gave birth to the child who is now known as the Old Pretender. Joseph Graves was strung up alongside Jacob’s ladder or, perhaps I should call it a Jacobite ladder. They are deliberately bringing the name of this city into disrepute. Earlier today, Tom, you were speaking of joining the army. The best thing you can do for your country is to help us find the documents that will name these monsters and help us crush the traitors.’

  Tom Jones stood up with all the immediacy and vigour of youth. ‘Then let us search this house again! This very instant, sir.’

  ‘What if Graves took the documents away from here?’ answered Lady Overbury. ‘That would explain why both our searches and those of our enemies have proved a waste of time! Perhaps he took them to his own home after Miss Grey’s murder. He would have known that they had a value if sold to the right person.’

  ‘I think Lady Overbury has got something here!’ said Fielding in an excited voice.

  ‘Then it is there that we must search and not here,’ replied Nash. ‘I suggest you stay here with Mr Burnett to protect you. Mr Jones and Mr Fielding can join me in going to Joseph Graves’s house. It is not in an area of the city to which I can take a respectable woman.’

  For once Lady Overbury did not demur. Even she accepted that she could not possibly go into the slum areas of Bath. ‘I will pray for your success, gentlemen,’ she said, ‘and whilst you are gone I will question my maid to see if Graves said anything to her that might be useful.’ While the men discussed precisely what they should do next
, she rang the bell for her servant, but Darr did not appear. ‘Damn it, where has she gone?’ she muttered. She suppressed her irritation only because she saw that the men were about to depart. She knew how much hung on their expedition. ‘May God go with you,’ she exclaimed.

  The route to Graves’s house took the three men through an area of the city through which no visitor ever passed. Here there was none of the open grandeur of Queen Square. Instead a man was hard pressed to stretch out his arms without touching the houses on either side of the street and the ramshackle buildings bore every sign of their antiquity. Wood blackened with age, plaster smeared with unhealthy-looking mould, and mortar crumbling from years of damp and neglect. It was difficult to walk without stepping into the indescribable filth that covered most of the cobbled streets and at intervals mounds of half-decomposed debris almost entirely blocked the way. The air was filled with the stench from the unwashed masses who lived there and from a strange mix of slaughterhouses, breweries, tanneries, and other businesses. As they made their way through the streets some of the inhabitants looked at them with undisguised hostility. Others seemed indifferent, as if their mean lifestyle had robbed them of any human feeling bar an instinct for survival.

  When they reached the house where Graves lived they discovered he only rented a small garret. It only took a small coin to persuade the skeletal-looking landlord to show them to this. The room matched its surroundings to perfection. It had nothing to commend it. Its walls were bare plaster begrimed with the filth of many years. Their only decoration was that provided by damp patches or by those sections where holes displayed what lay behind. The low-slung ceiling was cracked and almost as dirty and it was only possible for a man to stand up in the room’s centre. The floor appeared to be little better than the alleyways through which they had walked. The only furniture in the room was a small worm-eaten table, an odd-looking chair that had been much repaired, an upturned ancient sailor’s chest on top of a few garments, and a simple wooden bed, covered with an unattractive mix of dirty blankets. On the table were the remnants of the man’s last meal and an empty flagon.

  ‘At least it will not take us long to search the place,’ commented Nash.

  Fielding pointed to the upturned chest. ‘I think the place has already been searched.’ He picked it up and exposed the pathetic clothes that constituted Graves’s few possessions. These he proceeded to look through. ‘Nothing here,’ he said, ‘but there may have been. The chest could have contained the documents we seek.’

  Nash struggled to keep his normal equanimity. ‘Zounds! We are always one step behind!’

  ‘Should we not ask the landlord who else has been up here?’ queried Jones. ‘We may yet get the lead we need.’

  This they proceeded to do, but either the man knew nothing or he had been bribed or frightened into pretending that was the case. Frustrated and disillusioned the three men returned to the house in Queen Square. They were greeted by a very anxious-looking Lady Overbury. Before they could speak of their failure, she dropped her own bombshell. ‘My maid has been abducted. Once you left I went upstairs to find out why she had not answered my summons. There was no trace of her. With the assistance of Mrs Fleeting and Mr Burnett, I have now had the whole house searched. All we have found is this.’ She held out Sarah Darr’s apron. It was streaked with blood. ‘My God, gentlemen, why have they taken her and, if she is not dead already, what will they do to her?’

  11

  RESOLVING A MYSTERY

  When Sophia Westbrook arrived in Gloucester from Stroud on the afternoon of 8 November it was immediately apparent that the city had not really recovered from the damage it had sustained in the English Civil War. She thought the place had little to recommend it other than its impressive Norman cathedral with its ancient grey stone tower. She hired a room for herself and Mrs Newton in the Bell Inn, mainly because the coach driver had told her that the mother of George Whitefield had once run it. Although the inn had seen better days it was still a hub of activity and boasted extensive facilities. These included a number of attached shops, one selling wine, and the others a variety of goods because they were hired for use by travelling merchants and pedlars. Sophia lost no time in booking places for her and her maid on a coach that would leave early the next day for London. She then ordered Mrs Newton to mingle among the many men who were loitering in the inn’s courtyard in the hope of discovering where they should go to find the Methodists once they reached the capital. Lacking a male escort to protect her, Sophia was loath to risk making enquiries herself. To her sensitive eye too many of the inn’s customers were unsavoury characters.

  The task did not prove an easy one, but eventually Mrs Newton obtained the information her mistress wanted and so, four days later, Sophia found herself standing with her maid outside an old foundry in Windmill Street in London, quite near to the north-west corner of Finsbury Square. The foundry had been built very close to the open fields on the edge of the city and so was within an area that was a popular place to visit, especially in the summer months. Sophia could see that some of the nearby fields were laid out as pleasure grounds and so contained shrub-lined walks and tree-shaded promenades, though the winter weather meant they were not then in use. The Wesleyan Methodists had decided to use the foundry, which had become derelict, as a centre for their work. The largest building within it had been converted into a galleried preaching place, which held benches that were easily capable of holding over a thousand people. A notice informed any passer-by that there were daily services held at around six in the morning and six at night. As far as Sophia could tell one building was being used as a schoolroom while some others were obviously being used for accommodation and as a stable block for a coach and horses.

  Sophia was slightly fearful what to do next despite her urgent desire to find Jenny Jones. The vitriolic diatribes that she had heard against the Methodists made her cautious of venturing among them. According to her vicar, they were presumptious and opinionated troublemakers out not only to break the peace and unity of the Church but also to disturb and divide the nation in such a way that the Jacobites could take over. He had constantly warned his congregation that the Methodists were full of wild religious fancies and dangerous enthusiastic nonsense. On the road to Stroud the old woman’s son had presented her with a very different picture and more favourable report of their activities, but how reliable was his version? As she deliberated what should be her next step it became increasingly apparent to her that a crowd was collecting in the nearby fields, despite the cold weather. A simple enquiry to a passer‑by brought the answer that the people were gathering to hear Charles Wesley preach. Curious to hear him, Sophia joined the crowd, despite a vociferous series of protests from Mrs Newton, who feared for their safety.

  The two women soon found themselves surrounded by people of every description and class. Some appeared to come from a merchant or trading background, but the overwhelming majority of those present were ordinary working people of the kind who were never to be found within a church. While a few were already trembling over their sinfulness and bursting into tears on account of their damnation, most had obviously come to jeer and poke fun at the preacher. Mrs Newton told Sophia in no uncertain terms that many of these were thieves, prostitutes, or worse. Not surprisingly her mistress noted with some relief that there were also scattered among the crowd several gentlemen and a few ladies who appeared to come from a similar social order to her own. As she surveyed the scene, Sophia began to realize that there were at least a couple of thousand people in the fields. There was an almost instantaneous jeering among the more rowdy element when the preacher made his appearance and climbed onto a cart so that he could easily be seen. A man of only middling height, he was dressed in a plain coat and wig and, to Sophia’s eyes, he looked surprisingly frail.

  Charles Wesley lifted his hands up heavenwards and in a clear voice commenced with a prayer. He then opened his Bible and, choosing as his text ‘Come unto me, all that are weary,’
started to preach without the use of any notes: ‘Look at mankind and you soon see that the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot to the crown of the head there is no soundness in us, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. Our understanding is darkened, our will perverse, our affections set on earthly things. If you take away the spark of God from our soul, then there remains nothing but pure beast and devil. That is why there is not one person here who can earn their salvation. I know that from my own experience. I tried for years to lead a holy life and failed. Believe me when I say that your salvation can only come from the cleansing blood of Christ. I know some of you may feel that you are so sinful that God could never love you, but you are wrong. God’s love is far greater than we deserve. Christ is the friend and saviour of all sinners.’

  He preached in a similar vein for almost an hour and revealed a remarkable talent for expressing the most important truths with simplicity and energy. Shouts of ‘Hallelujah!’ began echoing round the crowd. Even the normally cynical Mrs Newton seemed affected. Those who were already Methodists began to sing as if the words and melody were engraved on their hearts and Sophia was deeply moved. She could not help but wonder if the clergy’s opposition to Wesley stemmed from envy of his superior preaching talent. When he called on those who felt their heart awakened to come to the front a significant number did. ‘Madam, this man is truly sent by God,’ muttered Mrs Newton. I’ll not believe anymore those that damn these Methodists as being a wicked people!’

  The two women approached the preacher once the initial throng of people around him had thinned down. On closer inspection he proved to have a kind and attractive face – his eyes were soft and gentle, his arched nose well-shaped, and his mouth soft-lipped. There was a natural warmth to him that made them both feel instantly at ease in his company. Sophia introduced herself and her maid, who for once was unusually subdued in her manner, and then added, ‘I confess, sir, that I did not think I would approve of this field preaching but you are a powerful preacher. I am surprised that you do not advertise yourself more.’