Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in London's West End

by Geoffrey Howse

  Hurt not the axe, that may hurt me.

  The King resumed his speech and having completed his passage about his political adversaries, he turned to the subject of the people and went on:

  Truly I desire their liberty and freedom as much as anybody whomsoever; but I must tell you their liberty and freedom consists in having of government, those laws by which their life and their goods may be most their own. It is not for having a share in government, Sirs, that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a sovereign are clear different things … Sirs, it was for this that now I am come here. If I would have given way to an arbitrary way, for to have all laws changed according to the power of the sword, I needed not have come here; and therefore I tell you (and I pray God it be not laid to your charge) that I am the Martyr of the people …

  He added that he had so little time to put his thoughts in better order, then at the prompting of Bishop Juxton made reference to his religion and after stating that he had almost forgotten to vindicate himself and his Church from the accusation of Popery, stated:

  … that I die a Christian according to the profession of the Church of England, as I found it left me by my father … I have a good cause and I have a gracious God; I will say no more.

  The King then turned to the strangely disguised figures standing by the block. Perhaps because of the unusual circumstances or simply out of fear, the executioner did not ask the customary forgiveness of his victim. The King said that he would pray briefly, then sign for him to strike. He also asked how he should arrange his hair so as not to impede the axe. This being done, with the help of Juxton, he put on his embroidered linen cap and pushed his hair beneath it. Juxton spoke to the King:

  There is one stage more, which though turbulent and troublesome, yet it is a very short one; you may consider it will soon carry you a very great way; it will carry you from Earth to Heaven; and there you shall find to your great joy, the prize you hasten to, a Crown of Glory.

  To this the King replied,

  I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world.

  The King then removed his ‘George’, the insignia of the Garter and gave it to Juxton with one last word:

  Remember.

  He took off his cloak and doublet, then donned his cloak again and stood for a few moments raising his hands and his eyes as if to heaven, then he removed his cloak once more, and before he submitted himself to the block, said to the executioner:

  You must set it fast.

  The executioner replied:

  It is fast, Sir.

  The King then said:

  It might have been a little higher.

  The executioner assured His Majesty with the words:

  It can be no higher, Sir.

  Then the King lay down and placed his head on the block. His Majesty had now partially disappeared from view, to all but a few onlookers, mostly those who had high vantage points, as the low block and profusion of black drapery obscured the view. The executioner stooped to make sure the King’s hair was not in the way, and as he did so His Majesty clearly thought he was about to strike and called out:

  The execution of Charles I outside the Banqueting House, Whitehall, 30 January 1649. The representation of the scaffold is inaccurate, as it extended to the left of the building and into the recessed portion, where a window had been removed through which the King and execution party stepped. Author’s collection

  Stay for the sign.

  The executioner replied:

  I will, an’ it please Your Majesty.

  A cloak of deathly silence had wrapped itself around Whitehall. Not a sound came from the troops or the crowd. Then, within a few seconds the King stretched out his hands to give the sign and immediately the executioner swung the axe through the still, cold air and the spectators saw the flash of the axe as the executioner brought it down and at one blow severed the King’s head from his body. On the death of Charles I, so perished also the Divine Right of Kings.

  One spectator wrote:

  At the instant when the blow was given there was such a dismal, universal groan among the people as I never heard before and desire I may never hear again.

  Bust of King Charles I, Banqueting House, Whitehall. The plaque below states that it was through a window above (now blocked up) that the King stepped onto the scaffold. The author

  The executioner’s assistant held the King’s head high for all to see. But, contrary to erroneous reports, he did not pronounce the words he had been told to say: ‘Behold the head of a traitor!’ Some believe this was because he was afraid he would be recognized by his voice, I prefer to believe that his sympathies did not lie with the regicides.

  The moment the King was dead, a troop of horse stationed at the north end of King Street and a troop stationed at the south end, advanced to disperse the crowd, who quickly disappeared up various side lanes and alleys. Some of the guards and spectators managed to dip handkerchiefs in the King’s blood and others scraped up earth from beneath the scaffold. Meanwhile, the King’s body was carried with great reverence from the scaffold and into the Banqueting House, where it was placed in a coffin before being conveyed under the watchful eyes of Herbert and Juxton, to a room within the palace where it was to be embalmed by the surgeon Mr Trapham and his assistant. After the body had been embalmed it was then placed in a coffin lined with lead, covered with a black velvet pall and removed to St James’s Palace, where it remained for a week. It was the House of Commons who finally gave the order for the King’s burial. They decided against Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, where his father and mother had been buried. It was too close to home for comfort and they did not want Charles I’s grave to become a place of pilgrimage. They settled upon St. George’s Chapel, Windsor and put the Duke of Richmond in charge of the arrangements, which were to be at a cost of no more than five hundred pounds. The coffin was conveyed to Windsor Castle on 7 February. The following day, it was taken from the King’s bedchamber to St George’s Hall. At a little before three o’clock in the afternoon, the King’s coffin was carried into St George’s chapel. Snow was falling heavily and as the coffin was carried up the steps of the chapel, the black velvet pall was white over. Another sign, some said, of the King’s martyrdom. The coffin of Charles I was placed in a vault beside that of Henry VIII, in a space originally intended for his sixth wife, and surviving widow, Katherine Parr, who remarried and was buried elsewhere. Jane Seymour, Henry’s third wife, occupied the space on the opposite side of the vault.

  A fanciful depiction of General Fairfax holding the severed head of King Charles I. Author’s collection

  It was recorded that executioner Richard Brandon, swore when the King was condemned to death that he would never raise a hand against him. Attempts at bribery and intimidation were unsuccessful. Then, on 30 January 1649, he was ‘fetched out of bed by a troop of horse’ and marched to the scaffold to do his duty. Brandon received £30 for his troubles and a pomander, a clove-studded orange, from the dead King’s pocket. Within five months of the King’s execution Brandon, his supposed executioner, was himself dead. Some say he died of a broken heart. Brandon died on 20 June 1649, his body buried the following day in St Mary’s churchyard, Whitechapel. The entry in the church records was recorded as follows, ‘Rich. Brandon, a man out of Rosemary Lane.’ And in the margin in a different hand was added, ‘This R Brandon is supposed to have cut off the head of Charles the First.’

  The execution of Charles I was entirely unconstitutional. For it was an established principle that no man may be sentenced without the lawful judgment ‘of his peers’, and no court of law may be established without the consent of the King, Lords and Commons; and the court which tried the King was established by the authority of the Rump (the surviving embodiment of the Parliamentary cause) alone, a mere caricature of a representative body. However, in this revolutionary period, one of a suspension of law, pending reconstruction and settlement on a new basi
s, old values were ignored and the law completely disregarded. The legal course would have been to depose the King, on the basis that he had broken his compact with the nation, sworn to at his coronation. Of Charles I, Sir Winston Churchill wrote:

  Contemporary propaganda depicting the ‘Royall Oak of Brittayne’. To Royalists, Cromwell was the barbarian who destroyed the golden age by hacking down the royal tree. Author’s collection

  Statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the Palace of Westminster. The author

  He was not a martyr in the sense of one who dies for a spiritual ideal. His own kingly interests were mingled at every stage with the larger issues. Some have sought to represent him as the champion of the small or humble man against the rising money-power. This is fanciful. He cannot be claimed as the defender of English liberties, nor wholly of the English Church, but none the less he died for them, and by his death preserved them not only to his son and heir, but to our own day.

  CHAPTER 4

  Claude Duval, the Dashing Highwayman 1670

  Here lies Duval: reader, if male thou art,

  Look to thy purse: if female, to thy heart.

  Other parts of London may lay claim to associations with one who might arguably be regarded as the most infamous highwayman England ever had, namely Dick Turpin, but the West End can certainly lay claim to the most dashing. One January night in 1670, Claude Duval (or Du Vall), that most glamorous of gentlemen of the road, as some would have it, more commonly known as highwaymen, was arrested at the Hole-in-the-Wall public house (now The Marquis of Granby), established in 1638, on the corner of Chandos Place and Bedfordbury, a narrow thoroughfare, running south to north and sandwiched between the Strand and New Row, Covent Garden. Unwisely Duval had ventured back to England from France, where he had taken refuge when things became too hot for him. There was still a price on his head, and when he reached London, brimming with over-confidence, he let his guard slip. Prone to heavy indulgence in wine, women and song, on the night of his arrest, he became outrageously drunk and completely incapacitated, which was fortunate for the bailiff and his men who arrested him, for as well as three pistols in his pocket, one of which could shoot twice, he had an ‘excellent sword’ by his side. One commentator wrote:

  … which, managed by such a hand and heart, must without a doubt, have done wonders … I have heard it attested by those that knew how good a marksman he was, and his excellent way of fencing, that had he been sober, it was impossible he could have killed less than ten.

  Born at Domfront in Normandy in 1643, the son of a miller, Claude Duval went to Rouen, when he was fourteen, and found work with a group of exiled English royalists. He came to England at the Restoration in the service of the third Duke of Richmond, as a footman, and he developed a good command of English. However, he did not remain a footman for long. Duval had developed a taste for fine clothes and high living. Following daring robberies in Highgate, Islington and Holloway, and one exploit which led to a road being named Duval Lane, Hampstead (now Platt’s Lane), his name soon became synonymous with highway robbery. He sometimes worked with a gang but many of his legendary exploits seem to have occurred largely when he was working alone. Regarded as a true knight of the road, he was certainly the most charming, to both male and female victims, he dressed fashionably, sometimes flamboyantly, was courteous in both speech and manner and it was said that his Gallic flourish made him particularly attractive to the ladies. Despite his charms, like many other more ruthless highwaymen, Duval was not averse to relieving his victims of large sums of money, jewels and trinkets, whenever the opportunity presented itself, although he conducted the proceedings in his own inimitable way, which endeared him to some of his victims, at least. Duval was also a highly dexterous card-sharp and won considerable sums by ‘slipping a card’. It was said of him at gaming he was so expert that few men in his age were able to play with him. No man living could slip a card more dexterously than he, nor better understood the advantages that could be taken of an adversary; yet to appearance, no man played fairer.

  A seventeenth-century game of cards. Author’s collection

  In 1666 a newsletter carried the following report:

  Last Monday week in Holborn Fields, while several gentlemen were traveling to Newmarket, to the races there, a Highwayman very politely begged their purses, for he said he was advised that he should win a great sum if he adventured some guineas with the competers at Newmarket on a certain horse called “Boopeepe”, which my Lord Excetter [Exeter] was to run a match. He was so pressing that they resigned their money to his keeping (not without sight of his pistols); he telling them that, if he would give him their names and the names of the places where they might be found, he would return to them that [they] had lent, at usary [with interest]. It is thought that his venture was not favourable, for the gentlemen have not received neither principle or interest. It is thought that it was Monsieur Claud [sic] Du Vall, or one of his knot, that ventured the gentlemen’s money for them.

  The Marquis of Granby, formerly the Hole in the Wall, established in 1638, situated at the corner of Bedfordbury and Chandos Place, where Claude Duval was apprehended in January 1670. The author

  One time Duval met with Esquire Roper, master of the buck-hounds to King Charles II, as he was hunting in Windsor Forest. Duval came across Roper in a thicket and took advantage of the cover. He commanded him to stand and deliver his money, or else he would shoot him. Mr Roper, to save his life, gave Duval a purse containing at least fifty guineas. Duval afterwards bound him neck and heels, fastened his horse by him, and rode away. When the squire was unbound he hastened to Windsor, and as he entered the town was met by Sir Stephen Fox who asked him whether or not he had had any sport. The squire replied, with great passion:

  Yes, sir, I have had sport enough from a son of a whore, who made me pay damned dear for it. He bound me neck and heels, contrary to my desire, and then took fifty guineas from me, to pay him for his labour, which I had much rather he had omitted.

  Claude Duval holds up Squire Roper, the King’s master of buck-hounds, in a thicket in Windsor Forest and relieves him of his heavy purse. Author’s collection

  In 1668 Duval’s name headed a list of highwaymen mentioned in a Royal Proclamation, which offered £20 for his capture. Duval’s charming manners and good looks are reputed to have given him many amorous conquests, ranging from serving girls to respectable widows, sometimes whores and often ladies of high rank. Following his arrest he was taken to Newgate, tried, convicted and sentenced to death. During his incarceration in Newgate, he was visited by many noble ladies. Despite their pleas for clemency, at the express command of the King, Duval was not pardoned.

  Claude Duval was twenty-seven-years-old when he was executed at Tyburn on Friday 21 January 1670 and was accompanied to the scaffold by many ladies of high rank, who wore masks to disguise their identities. In Tyburn Tree Its History and Annals, a work which draws on many old documents, Alfred Marks records:

  After he had hanged a convenient time, he was cut down, and, by persons well dressed, carried into a mourning-coach, and so conveyed to the Tangier-tavern in St. Giles, where he lay in state all that night, the room hung with black cloth, the hearse covered with escutcheons, eight wax-tapers burning, and as many tall gentlemen with long black cloakes [sic] attending; mum was the word, great silence expected from all that visited, for fear of disturbing this sleeping lion. And this ceremony had lasted much longer, had not one of the judges (whose name I must not mention here, lest he should incur the displeasure of the ladies) sent to disturb the pageantry.

  King Charles II, who expressly forbade Duval’s reprieve from the gallows. Author’s collection

  Dr William Pope, who wrote the biography Memoirs of Monsieur Du Vall, in 1670 (from which most of what has since been written about Duval seems to derive), claimed that Duval left behind a ‘dying confession’ that he had intended to read at Tyburn, but changed his mind. However, in the Complete Newgate Calender Volume 1, it states:
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  A seventeenth-century execution at Tyburn. Author’s collection

  As they were undressing him, in order to his lying-in-state, one of his friends put his hand into his pocket and found therein the following paper, which as appears by the contents, he intended as a legacy to the ladies. It was written in a very fair hand:

  “I should be very ungrateful to you, fair English ladies, should I not acknowledge the obligations you have laid me under. I could not have hoped that a person of my birth, nation, education and condition could have had charms enough to captivate you all; though the contrary has appeared, by your firm attachment to my interest, which you have not abandoned even in my last distress. You have visited me in prison, and even accompanied me to an ignominious death.

  From my experience of your former loves, I am confident that many among you would be glad to receive me to your arms, even from the gallows.

  How mightily and how generously have you rewarded my former services! Shall I ever forget the universal consternation that appeared upon your faces when I was taken; your chargeable visits to me in Newgate; your shrieks and swoonings when I was condemned, and your zealous intercession and importunity for my pardon! You could not have erected fairer pillars of honour and respect to me had I been Hercules, able to get fifty of you with child in one night.