The story so far:
Archive fever I outlined the document that interested me and its list of murders that had supposedly been covered up by the Salusbury family during the 1590s, and my plan to trace as many of these cases as possible in the court records to see if they could throw light on the validity or otherwise of those allegations. Then I complained extensively about how hard it is to track down the cases in the files.
In fact, I found traces of quite a lot of them. (I’ve edited the first post in this series to insert anchor links to each of the listed cases. Click on the links and it will take you to the right spot in the original post.)
I haven’t yet been through the files for the first half of the 1590s, so I left Case 1 to Case 5 out of the investigation for now. Of the rest, most left some kind of trail, despite all the problems with lost documents and even missing files.
Case 6 (victim: John Parry) was extremely elusive, even though the document mentioned that some people had been indicted (albeit ‘for a show’). But there was one entry in the calendar of prisoners of May 1596: a William Fulke of Llansannan had been bound by recognizance to appear concerning the killing of John Parry, gent. (There is also a recognizance for William’s appearance, but it does not specify the crime and – as we’ll see – this may not be William Fulke’s only appearance in these records.)
Case 7 (victim: Robert ap Hugh Lloyd) turned up a number of documents in both the files for 1596 and later files: depositions, a coroner’s inquest, recognizances to appear and to prosecute, and entries in calendars. The accused were John Foulk ap Robert, William Foulk ap Robert, Robert Foulk ap Robert and others, of Llansanan. The coroner’s inquest verdict was of self defence (cf. the Chirk document, which said that the inquest found it murder). There is no sign of an indictment or any jury verdict. I don’t know with absolutely certainty that ‘William Fulke’ of Llansannan (see above) and ‘William Foulke ap Robert’ of Llansannan are the same man (the spelling variation is irrelevant in this period), but I think it’s a strong probability, don’t you?
Case 8 (victim: William ap Richard) produced a jury verdict of not guilty (the Chirk document said that no one was indicted) against a Robert Vaughan ap Lewis in a 1597 file (also in the calendar), but no surviving indictment and no other documents.
Case 9 (victim: John Piers Nicholas) turned up in the Flintshire records (depositions and coroners inquest). Why? Probably because although the original incident in which John was wounded took place in Denbigh, he did not die until some months later at his home in Flintshire. That is probably also why the inquest verdict was ‘divine visitation’ rather than criminal homicide. Juries in general did not like cases where there was a long interval between the violence and the death; there simply wasn’t the medical expertise in that period to allow certainty of a causal link after so long. Of several witnesses, John’s wife was the only one to express certainty that his injuries had caused his death. (The law would in fact only allow a prosecution if the death took place within – I think, but I will need to check this one – a year.) And the legal system was not particularly well equipped to deal with crimes that crossed county borders in this way.
Case 10 (victim: the wife of John Piers Nicholas, an assault causing her to miscarry) is not mentioned anywhere in the files. (She does not mention having been assaulted in her deposition about her husband’s death.)
Case 11 (victim: Richard Griffith) has a coroner’s inquest (verdict felonious killing, ie manslaughter), indictment and calendar entry. The allegation is that John Salusbury “provyded a quest of traverse to cleere” the defendant, and I’m not quite sure what that might mean in this context. But I can report that the trial jury found him guilty of manslaughter and he was granted benefit of clergy.
Case 12 (victim: Foulk ap Thomas ap Llewelyn) – nothing. But there is a file missing for 1598, and the surviving one is very scrappy – some of the documents including indictments and coroners inquests are mere fragments.
Case 13 (victim: Hugh Lloyd) – nothing.
Case 14 (victim: Owen ap John Lewis, named Owen Lewis in documents) – depositions in two separate files (1596 and 1597), including examinations specifically ordered by the Council in the Marches of Wales (and addressed to John Salusbury, Thomas Salusbury and another JP and the county coroner; so the Council was presumably not too disturbed by the Salusburys’ activities). A coroners inquest gives a verdict of self-defence (hmm). There is no indictment. But there probably shouldn’t be. Again, this case crosses county boundaries: the fight (and it was a fight) in which Owen Lewis was fatally wounded took place in Caernarvonshire, and he returned to his home not far over the Denbighshire border where he died. So I am pretty sure – but will need to check the law books – that if there were any trial it should have been in the Caernarvonshire Great Sessions… and there are no surviving records for that court.
Case 15: the court files filled in the gaps: the accused was George Bostocke and the victim John Roden. However, this actually took place in 1593 (I was just lucky that there happened to be some depositions in a later file).
Case 16 (victim: Cadwallader ap Grono) – no records. But again, this almost certainly fell into the gaps in the 1598 files.
Not numbered (victim: Maurice William) – no records found in the 1596-1599 files.
All of this left me with plenty to chew over, and I’ll do some more of that in at least one more post. But a few observations to be going on with:
The Chirk document in each case speaks of ‘wilful murder’. That is misleading. In every case for which there were depositions, it emerged that the circumstances were those that contemporaries – society and the law – classified as unpremeditated homicides, not murder with malice aforethought. Unless every witness before a wide range of magistrates and coroners was lying or was misrepresented. In a number of cases, the outcome was pretty much consistent with what I’ve found in my previous research: a verdict of manslaughter, an acquittal (or an ignoramus bill), or self-defence.
However, in the later period (after 1660) on which I previously worked, self-defence verdicts were much, much rarer than they seem to have been in the late 16th century and early 17th century. And juries were finding this verdict in cases that simply did not match the legal definition of self-defence at the time.
And, finally, it is quite true that a number of these cases do not end at all satisfactorily. As I’ve said, the absence of a record of a trial does not mean that no trial took place, but very few of these cases have a record of a trial. Something really is odd, I think. It contrasts quite strongly with the records of the post-Restoration period. (There is also a noticeable contrast with the efficiency with which people accused of theft were brought to trial during the 1590s.) But I do not think this is simply down to the nefarious activities of the Salusburys. There are quite a few more violent deaths in these 1590s files, and they all tend to peter out in the same way.
Early Modern Notes 