The Tinner's Corpse

by Bernard Knight

  ‘For years, the County, manor or burgess courts dealt with most offences, but now, especially since old King Henry’s reforms, the royal justices want to try all serious offences. Last September, the Chief Justiciar appointed these coroners, partly to sweep as much business into the King’s courts as possible. It’s all grist to the Treasury and King Richard never misses a chance to screw more money out of the people.’

  Smithson ignored his host’s mildly treasonable remarks but continued to look doubtful. ‘So what’s that got to do with this coroner fellow?’ Along with the majority of the population, he was vague as to the function of John de Wolfe and his counterparts in every county.

  ‘As far as I can make out – and it’s only from gossip in the Great Court – he has to record every legal event and present them to the justices when they come around at the Eyre of Assize. Dead bodies, rapes, serious assaults, fires, burglaries – even wrecks and catches of the royal fish. He has to attend every execution, mutilation, sanctuary, abjuration and trial by ordeal or battle in case there’s any money or chattels to be picked up for the King.’

  ‘Must be a damned busy man, then, in a county the size of Devon,’ grunted the priest, hacking some more flesh from the fowl to lay on the widow’s side of the trencher.

  The sharp eyes of his mother-in-law turned to Knapman. ‘What’s he like, this new crowner? I heard he’s a man of war, an old Crusader.’

  After another uneasy sideways look at his silent wife, Knapman took a mouthful of wine before replying. ‘I’ve not met him, but they say he’s fair-minded, not like the bloody sheriff, who I’d trust no further than I could throw my horse. De Wolfe’s a real King’s man, I hear. He was part of Richard’s bodyguard both in the Holy Land and when he was captured in Vienna.’

  ‘Not a very good bodyguard, then,’ sniggered the fat priest.

  Walter frowned. ‘You’d better not say that in his hearing. I’m told he’s not well endowed with either patience or good humour.’

  After this mild rebuke they carried on eating in silence, Knapman covertly watching his wife. Of late she had become more withdrawn and these long silences were becoming too common for his liking. He was no fool and knew well enough that when a man of forty-three took on a much younger woman, especially one so attractive, he did so at his peril.

  Knapman was rich, and he was handsome enough, in his way, a big, powerful man with a clean-shaven, square face topped by rather springy hair of a dark yellow that as yet showed no sign of grey. Yet there was no denying that the age difference between them was an ever-present threat. The old bull was as virile as ever, but he had to be constantly wary of younger ones trying to displace him.

  For this past month, he had seen Joan’s mind receding from him, and though she denied any problem or unhappiness, he sensed that the first flush of their new marriage had rapidly faded. When he first wooed her, then made her his bride, she was warm and passionate enough, though she had always been publicly reserved and undemonstrative. Behind their hands other wives said about her that ‘still waters run deep’. But in the past weeks, though she submitted easily enough to him in the bed upstairs in the glazed solar, she gave a passive performance, with none of her previous enthusiasm – although he suspected that even that might often have been feigned. He sighed as he looked at her now, her eyes resolutely downcast. There was nothing he could do either to improve her mood or to squash the wriggling worm of suspicion that increasingly nibbled away at him.

  As the silent meal progressed, the possible causes of her disaffection came unbidden to his mind. He over-indulged her, he knew, like a typical older husband with more money than sense. She lacked for nothing in the way of clothes, trinkets or servants, and he had more than enough insight to know that his affluence and generosity had won her to him, not his dashing good looks or noble blood: he had worked his way up from being a mere tinner. The answer that stared him in the face was another man and, for the hundredth time, he went through the possible candidates.

  There could not be many, for although Chagford was a busy town, with hundreds of tinners coming for the coinage and merchants from all over England and even the Continent, it was more likely to be some local resident who would have had the opportunity to steal her heart – and her body. Joan was a keen horsewoman and, with her maid and one of their grooms, spent much of her time riding, with the opportunity to meet and visit other people. Her chaperones could undoubtedly be tricked or bribed, and he determined to interrogate his grooms as to whom she met on her many excursions. Though Chagford was small, Exeter was less than three hours away and sometimes she went to stay there for a few days with his twin brother Matthew, who handled the disposal and export of his finished tin.

  Sometimes she went back to her old home town of Ashburton, to stay with her aunt and cousins. Even though these places offered the possibility of assignations for her, an inner voice kept insinuating that the problem was likely to be nearer home, and the name of Stephen Acland kept sliding into his mind unbidden.

  ‘Have you really no idea who may have killed your man?’

  The sudden question from the priest jerked Walter back to the present, but before he could marshal his thoughts, his mother-in-law spoke, her head stuck out on her thin neck like an angry gander. ‘That mad Saxon, that’s who it was! I saw him once, here in the town square, at the last coinage, ranting and raving. He’s not fit to be let loose on decent folk.’

  ‘He wasn’t loose after that, Mother. We had him locked in Lydford gaol for a couple of months, after he threw over the weighing-scales and tried to kick the assay clerk off his stool.’

  ‘Is he crazy enough to kill?’ asked the priest.

  ‘Who knows? A maniac like Aethelfrith is unpredictable. He hates all those with Norman blood in their veins, which is a goodly proportion of us even after a century or more. And he especially hates Norman tinners – but apart from that episode at the coinage, he’s never been violent.’

  At that moment Harold came in looking troubled, and went to speak softly in his master’s ear. ‘There’s a stranger come to the kitchen door, a huge wild fellow with ginger hair who looks as if he’s just walked through a haystack. Says he has a message for you from the King’s coroner.’

  ‘Does he want to speak with me?’

  ‘He says he’ll not disturb you at your table, sir, but wishes to leave a message that Sir John de Wolfe is holding an inquest on Henry of Tunnaford in the morning. He wishes your attendance, as you were the dead man’s master.’

  Knapman nodded. ‘Tell him I know of it already, as the parish priest is with me. He can tell the crowner that I will be there without fail.’

  As the steward left the room, Walter thought wryly that at least it would take his mind off his wife for a few hours.

  Telling the time in a place without a monastic house was an exercise in reading the sun, moon and stars, and was often hampered by the weather. Livestock seemed to have a better appreciation of the hours: the first cock-crow, the restlessness of cows at milking time and the roosting of fowls towards dusk. Cathedrals and abbeys marked off nine Holy Offices by ringing their bells from midnight until evening, but a parish church gave fewer signals. Often irregular and certainly unreliable, they depended on the conscientiousness or even sobriety of the local priest.

  However, Chagford’s Paul Smithson was a dependable man. He would not have held his post if it had been otherwise; both Walter Knapman and Hugh Wibbery, who funded much of the local church’s activities, were too astute to have some deadbeat foisted on them by Bishop Marshal in Exeter. Five years ago, the ancient wooden church, dating from Saxon times, had partly collapsed in a storm. Rather than patch it up yet again, Knapman and the lord of the manor had donated sufficient silver to rebuild it in stone and had persuaded most of the tinners in their district to contribute. The result was a larger but still modest building with a low castellated tower over the junction of nave and choir.

  Though he was but a paid vicar, employed by an a
bsentee prebendary to look after the living for him, Smithson was conscientious and saw to it that his sexton tolled the bell in Knapman’s new tower. He rang it before morning Mass soon after dawn and for Vespers in the mid-afternoon. On Sundays, there were more services and more bells, but on workdays the population had to make their best guess as to other hours. The nearest clock was in Germany, and the only other timepieces were the graduated candles and sand-glass in the church.

  Early on this Thursday morning, within an hour of the sexton’s heaving on his bell-rope, those who had attended the service emerged to join a crowd of people who were thronging into the churchyard, a large corner site just along the high street from the square. Two alehouses and an inn sat on the opposite side of the street to the church, which was in the angle of a bend in one of the tracks leading down towards Moretonhampstead. A few stalls sat along the edge of the street, their owners blessing the new coroner for an unexpected increase in trade, as the jurors, witnesses and curious spectators flocked past and bought fresh bread, pasties and winter-withered apples to sustain them during the coming entertainment.

  Chagford was not a typical town in that its prosperity depended more on the minerals dug from the moor than the ubiquitous agriculture that sustained most other hamlets and vills. The metal was mostly tin, but there was also a little silver and lead. Most of its population were freemen and although there were the usual strip-fields around the town and girdling every nearby village, many families owed no fee-service to the various lords. Instead they were employed and paid by the tin-masters, or worked their own solitary claims.

  Thus it was that on this early morning, many men and some of their wives and children were able to attend the inquest more easily than if they had been bondsmen. Jurors were primarily witnesses, rather than a judging panel, so theoretically every male over the age of twelve years from the four nearest villages was supposed to join the jury with the aim of increasing the chances of finding someone who had personal knowledge of the event. This law was soon found to be impracticable: the summons could not be circulated quickly enough, and it would have denuded the fields of workers and left the animals untended. A compromise was soon reached whereby a score was considered an acceptable quorum.

  This number, and many more besides, now trooped through the gap in the drystone wall around the churchyard and formed a large circle centred on the old Saxon altar that sat in the grass a few yards north of the church itself. This ancient stone table had been moved out of the church at the rebuilding because a new one with a marble slab had been given by the tinners. The crowd was scattered among the many low grassy mounds that marked grave sites, a few bearing small wooden crosses, usually bereft of any inscription. This was the background to the first inquest ever held in Chagford and the size of the crowd was more an index of curiosity than any burning desire to assist the course of justice.

  Some of the older men, who had survived service in the Irish or French wars – and even one or two who had taken the Cross – knew of Sir John de Wolfe by repute; there had been few campaigns over the past twenty years in which he had not been involved. As they shuffled and stamped in the cold morning air, they regaled their neighbours with tales of Black John’s prowess, with the constant theme that he was to be trusted, but not trifled with – and that he was, first and foremost, King Richard’s man, through hell and high water.

  Soon, a small procession appeared around the further corner of the church where a lean-to shed acted as the mortuary. First came Gwyn of Polruan, whose huge, untidy figure marched cheerfully ahead of the coroner, who loped along behind, his hawk-like face as impassive as usual. De Wolfe was followed by the sexton and a gravedigger, who between them carried the handles of a wooden bier on which lay an ominously shortened shape covered with a shroud. Behind the corpse walked what at first sight seemed to be a pair of priests: beside the plump Smithson was a smaller figure, dressed in a similar long black tunic of clerical appearance. Thomas de Peyne carried his breviary in his clasped hands and his peaky face wore a suitably doleful expression. To those who did not know him, he was just another priest, which was exactly the impression he strove to give. The main difference between him and Smithson was that Thomas also carried a sagging shoulder pouch containing his writing materials. As soon as the bier had been slid on top of the old altar, he scuttled to sit on a nearby grave mound and pulled out parchment, pens and ink.

  De Wolfe’s large henchman now stood alongside the cadaver, with one hand resting on the bier, and opened the proceedings by bellowing the coroner’s summons at the top of his voice: ‘All persons who have anything to do before the King’s coroner for the county of Devon, draw near and give your attendance!’ Gwyn always enjoyed this duty as, a militant Cornishman, he relished being able to command Normans and Saxons to do his bidding, however fleeting the opportunity. Then he stepped forward and jostled about twenty-five men and boys into a ragged line.

  ‘These here are the jurors, Crowner,’ he growled in his deep bass voice. ‘All the rest are those with an interest or just sightseers,’ he added dismissively.

  The persons with an interest, whom Gwyn had indicated with a stab of his finger, were a well-dressed group with the air of burgesses or merchants, and John guessed correctly that they were the tin-masters. The previous evening, after he had arrived at his lodging in the manor house and paid his respects to the lord of Chagford, it had been too late to call on Knapman, the dead man’s employer.

  De Wolfe stood at the other end of the old altar to begin the inquisition. ‘As you all know, this is an inquest into the death of Henry of Tunnaford. First, there is the matter of identity. In spite of the loss of his head, which has not been recovered, I am satisfied from clothing and the depositions of his work-fellows that this corpse is indeed that of Henry. Does anyone here dispute that?’ He glared around the jury, as if defying anyone to disagree with him.

  The men all nodded hastily, the late Henry’s gang amongst them.

  ‘Next, we need to settle any presentment of Englishry,’ barked the coroner, the fringe of black hair swinging across his forehead as he raked his gaze along the line of jurors. ‘We all know that Henry was of Norman lineage, so I presume that no one here is going to claim that he was anything else.’ Again he glowered at the crowd, giving the impression that he would personally fell anyone who had the temerity to dispute his opinion.

  This time, a more sullen silence indicated that no one was going to object, but the ill-grace of their acceptance was almost palpable in the churchyard. Everyone was afraid that this was going to cost them dear: a failure to ‘present Englishry’ exposed them to the murdrum fine, established by the Norman conquerors over a century ago when the few thousand invaders had to keep several million Saxons under subjugation. Repeated rebellions and many covert assassinations had led to the introduction of a law that any violent death was assumed to be that of a Norman, unless the community could prove that the corpse had been Saxon or Celt. If this failed, the village, town or Hundred was penalised by the ‘murdrum’ fine, levied on the whole community. While it had been a valid deterrent in the early years after the Conquest, it had now become a cynical means of extra taxation, for racial boundaries were blurred by intermarriage.

  Although John de Wolfe was still bound by the law to require presentment, he interpreted the application of the murdrum in a reasonable way: ‘I therefore declare the decedent to have been Norman and that the Hundred is amerced in the sum of twenty marks. However, this stands in abeyance until the matter is heard before the Justices in Eyre. If the culprit is found before then, I doubt the fine will be levied.’

  A collective sigh of relief whispered around the churchyard and the birds seemed to sing again in the dark branches of the yew trees that encircled them. De Wolfe made a sign with his forefinger to Gwyn, who stepped forward to jerk a young man from the line of jurors.

  ‘You were the First Finder, boy?’

  It was the youth who had shown de Wolfe where the corpse had la
in under the trestles of the sluice. Awed by the proceedings, and with one eye on the still shape under the shroud, the young man told again of how he had found the body. After he had stepped back thankfully into the line, Yeo, the acting overman, came to report what little he knew of the matter.

  De Wolfe was somewhat at a loss to fit this case into the usual routine of a suspicious death. The law prescribed that when a body was found, the First Finder must raise the hue and cry by rousing the four nearest households and starting a hunt for the killer. Most murders were impulsive acts, arising out of sudden, often drunken fights, where in the closed communities of village or town, they were often witnessed. Here though, the body had been discovered the next day, in a remote spot at least a mile from the nearest habitation. Theoretically, he could amerce the Hundred yet again for failing to carry out the letter of the law, but it would be ridiculous to expect the tinners to have careered around the moor a day later, seeking the slayer.

  ‘We sent down for the bailiff straight away, Crowner. He came up and had a look, then went off to tell Walter Knapman, our master. Then he rode off to Exeter to report it to the sheriff and yourself.’

  This was eminently reasonable, de Wolfe decided, and after hearing from one or two of the other gangers, who confirmed the finding of the body but could add nothing else, he turned to the group of town worthies, who stood a little to one side, with a respectful space between them and the common throng.

  As well as several men, including the parish priest, there were two women, one young and beautiful, the other old enough to be her mother. One of the men was Hugh Wibbery, lord of Chagford, with whom he had lodged overnight, but the others were strangers to John.

  ‘Walter Knapman?’ he hazarded, guessing that the tall, fair man standing next to the doe-eyed siren was Yeo’s master.

  Knapman stepped forward and nodded perfunctorily. Alhough he had no knight’s spurs like the coroner, he could probably have bought him out ten times over and felt in no particularawe of de Wolfe’s ennoblement. ‘Yes, this poor fellow was one of my men, Sir John,’ he said, before de Wolfe could open his mouth. ‘He worked faithfully for me over a dozen years. His widow will not go short, I promise you.’