Mediaeval Leicester/Chapter 12
XII.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE BLUE BOAR.
THE annals of Leicester do not contain any story more curious and interesting than that of the fateful visit paid to the Blue Boar Inn by King Richard the Third, two days before his death, and the legacy of woe which that disastrous event is said to have bequeathed to a future generation. The tale, which is partly true, and partly shrouded in mystery, has something of the sombre fatalism of a Greek Tragedy. Indeed it has not wholly escaped the dramatist, for, on December 4th, 1837, a year after the destruction of the Blue Boar Inn, a play called "Black Anna's Bower, or the Maniac of the Dane Hills," was performed at the Leicester Theatre. The plot of this drama turned upon the murder of Mrs. Clarke, hereinafter related, and Black Anna, who is a local spirit of evil repute, played a part therein somewhat like that of the Three Witches in Macbeth. The story falls naturally into four episodes:—I. The King's Visit. II. The King's Fate. III. The Treasure in the Bedstead; and IV. The Murder.
I. THE KING'S VISIT.
On Saturday, August the 20th, 1485, as we may conclude from the available evidence,[1] King Richard III left Nottingham Castle, which had been his residence for more than two months; and, having ridden all day in the midst of his Army, with only one considerable interval of rest, he entered the North Gate of Leicester just before the setting of the sun. Passing down the ancient High Street on his tall white charger, he is said to have drawn rein, before reaching the High Cross, at the Blue Boar Inn, a beautiful building, with a tall gable front and a projecting balcony of carved oak, which stood on the western side of the street, at the corner of the lane leading to the Hall of the Guild Merchant, and which was demolished about eighty-four years ago.[2] Here, in the large front chamber, according to tradition, Richard spent that night; and a bedstead, on which he is supposed to have slept, became famous at the beginning of the 17th century as one of the curiosities of Leicester. The local tradition is unsupported by any authority, but it is not contrary to known facts. It has been asked why the King did not sleep at Leicester Castle, where he had stayed just two years before; but a campaigner, on the eve of a decisive battle, may have had several reasons for preferring to pass the one night in a less ostentatious place of sojourn. At any rate, there is no evidence of his having slept elsewhere. On this point Kelly made some very just remarks. "Whatever may have been the reason," he wrote, "for the King's sleeping at an Inn, as there is nothing beyond mere supposition to invalidate its truth, we confess that we believe in this, as we would in all local historical traditions not contradicted by positive evidence, from a conviction that no such tradition, although it may in process of time become exaggerated by oral transmission, is without some foundation of truth; and more especially one connected with so tragic an event as the last visit of Richard III, all the particulars connected with which must have made a deep and lasting impression on the minds of the inhabitants of the town, who would naturally transmit them to their descendants."
That the building called the Blue Boar was in existence in 1485 is also known only from tradition, but there is no reason to doubt it; and in the next century it was one of the principal inns of Leicester. Kelly thought it highly probable that the house was originally known as the "White Boar," the cognizance of Richard III, and that it did not receive the name of the Blue Boar until after Richard's death, "when," as Grafton wrote, "the proud, bragging white boar which was his badge was violently rased and plucked down from every sign and place where it might be espied." There is no evidence, however, of any such change of name; and it may be remarked that "a bleue Bore with his tuskis and his cleis and his membres of gold" was one of the badges of Richard, Duke of York, the father of Edward IV, so that the house may have been known by that sign before the reign of Richard the Third, especially in view of the defection of Leicester from the Lancastrians and its adherence to the cause of Edward IV. There is no authority whatever for Nichols' statement, that the inn was afterwards called the Blue Bell. This error was founded on a mistake of Throsby, and has been repeated by James Thompson and by later writers. The hotel which Throsby and Nichols describe by that name as the scene of some riots in the 18th century was the Bell in Humberstone Gate.
On the next morning, Sunday, August 21st, the King left Leicester, with all his Army, in great pomp, preceded by the Royal Standard, and wearing his jewelled crown. But there were voices, which attended his steps, prophecying woe. As he rode through the "South Gate," so we are told (though it was of course through the West Gate that his road lay), a blind beggar proclaimed the coming of his doom. And as he passed over the Bow Bridge, and struck the parapet with his spur, a "wise woman" foretold that where his spur had struck, there should his head be broken.
The fatal battle took place on the following day.
II. THE KING'S FATE.
On the evening of the day on which the Battle of Bosworth Field had been lost and won, both the protagonists of the drama arrived at Leicester; Henry riding in triumph with Richard's crown upon his head, and the body of the fallen King ignominiously thrown naked across a horse, with the feet hanging down on one side and the head and arms on the other. "The dead corps of King Richarde was as shamefully caryed to the Towne of Leycestre," wrote Holinshed, "as he gorgeously the day before with pompe and pryde departed out of the same Towne." It seems certain that the conqueror allowed the corpse to be exposed publicly for two days, in order, probably, to advertise and demonstrate the fact of Richard's death. This exhibition was generally supposed by the historians of Leicester, Throsby, Nichols and Thompson, to have taken place at the old Guild Hall in Blue Boar Lane, but this has been disproved by Kelly, on the strength of a document from the Harleian MSS, published in Hutton's "Bosworth Field," which points to the Collegiate Church of Our Lady of the Newarke as the place of exhibition, "They brought King Richard thither that night as naked as ever he was born, and in the Newarke was he laid that many a man might see." Kelly might also have quoted the popular ballads which were composed after this event, and which may be considered respectable authorities on a point of this kind. In one of these ballads it is said that, after Richard had been "dungen to death with many derfe strokes," he was cast on a "capull," or horse (caballus, cheval), and carried to Leicester, "and naked into Newarke." Or, as the author of the ballad of "Bosworth Field" puts it:—
"Then they rode to Lester that night
With our noble Prince King Henerye ;
They brought King Richard thither with might,
As naked as he borne might be,
And in Newarke Laid was hee,
That many a one might look on him.
Thus ffortunes raignes most marvelouslye
Both with Emperour and with King."
After this public exhibition, the body was buried, without any funeral solemnities, in the Church of the Grey Friars. The account of this miserable episode written by a former rector of Church Langton in Leicestershire, who was a contemporary, is worth quoting. "Interea Ricardi corpus, cuncto nu datum vestitu, ac dorso equi impositum, capite et brachiis et cruribus utrimque pendentibus, Leicestriam ad coenobium Franciscanorum monachorum deportant, spectaculum mehercule miserabile, sed hominis vita dignum, ibique sine ullo funeris honore biduo post terra humatur."
Strange stories grew up out of this singular illustration of the irony of fate. One was told about the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, who afterwards became the wife of Henry VII. She is said by a balladist to have been in Leicester at the time of the battle of Bosworth Field, and there to have welcomed the arrival of the dead body of her enemy with derisive taunts.
"Thé carryed him naked into Leicester,
And buckled his haire under his chin.
Bessye mett him with a merry cheere;
These were the words she sayd to him.
How likest thou slaying of my brethren twaine?
She spake these words to him alowde."
Another tale, not quite so impossible, is told about a son of Richard III, known as Richard Plantagenet, then sixteen years of age. On August 21st, 1485, it is said, this boy was instructed by his father to meet him in London after the battle, and the King promised that he would then and there publicly acknowledge him as his son. When the battle was over, therefore, young Richard set out for London. But before he had gone far, his progress was arrested by a tragic spectacle. "Just as I came into Leicester," he said, "I saw a dead body brought to town upon a horse. And upon looking steadfastly upon it, I found it to be my father."[3]
It was not until after the lapse of ten years that Richard's successor thought well to erect any memorial over his remains. He then caused a tomb to be built "of many-coloured marble," adorned with a statue of the dead King. This tombstone, which Hutton, who had never seen it, called " a scrubby alabaster monument," cost £10 1s. 0d. A Latin epitaph, intended to be inscribed on the tomb, stating that it was put up at King Henry's expense, was never actually placed there. It will be found in Nichols' History, with an English translation.
Two contradictory stories are told about the fate of this tomb. According to one tradition, it was broken open by the crowd, when the church was destroyed after the dissolution of the monastery, and the bones of the dead King, after being carried through the town with jeers and insults, were thrown over the Bow Bridge. A spot near the western end of the Bridge was pointed out as their resting-place, and a watering-trough for horses, which stood at the White Horse Inn in Gallowtreegate, was asserted to have been the coffin which once held Richard's remains. This old trough seems to have been an ancient stone coffin, and certainly not of a kind used in King Richard's time. It was long notorious. John Evelyn, in his Diary, records (9th August, 1654) that he visited the "old and ragged city of Leicester, famous for the tomb of the tyrant Richard III, which is now converted into a cistern, at which (I think) cattle drink." Hutton said that it had disappeared when he went to Leicester in 1758 in order to inspect it. But Crutwell wrote in 1806 : "there is a little part of it still preserved at the White Horse Inn, in which one may observe some appearance of the fitting for retaining the head and shoulders." The trough is said to have been broken up in the time of George I, and used for steps to a cellar.
The supposed connection of Bow Bridge with the Plantagenet King owing to the prophecy of the "wise woman," and the subsequent fate attributed to his marauded bones, caused that structure to become known in later times as "King Richard's Bridge"; and, when the bridge was rebuilt in the year 1863, a tablet was placed over it bearing the legend, "Near this spot lie the remains of Richard III, the last of the Plantagenets."
The other story relating to the King's tomb occurs in the Memoirs of the Wren family, and is contained in some notes written by Christopher Wren, Dean of Windsor (father of Sir Christopher), who was born in the year 1589. "The wicked and tyrannical Prince, King Richard III," he wrote, "being slain at Bosworth, his body was begged by the Nuns of Leicester (sic), and buried in their Chapel there; at the dissolution whereof the place of his burial happened to fall into the bounds of a citizen's garden, which being after purchased by Mr. Robert Herrick (sometime Mayor of Leicester) was by him covered with a handsome stone pillar, three foot high, with this inscription, 'Here lies the body of Richard III, some time King of England.' This he showed me (Chr. Wren) walking in his garden. Anno 1612." The future Dean was at that time 23 years of age, and tutor to the eldest son of Sir William Herrick, of Beaumanor.
The site of the Grey Friars, where Richard was buried, had been sold to Robert Herrick by Sir Robert Catlyn. Samuel Herrick, Robert's great grandson, sold it in 1711 to Thomas Noble, whose devisee, Roger Ruding, of Westcotes, after allotting a piece of ground throughout for a common street now called New Street, sold it to different purchasers. The mansionhouse with its gardens, lying on the eastward side of the Grey Friars Estate, was conveyed in 1752 to Richard Garle, whose heirs, after his death in 1776, sold it to Thomas Pares. Thomas Pares enlarged the house, which was considered "the principal private residence in Leicester"; but in 1824, the year of his own death, he seems to have sold all the property, excepting the site of Pares' Banking House, to Beaumont Burnaby. Beaumont Burnaby, who died there, devised "the messuage or mansion house formerly called "The Grey Friars" to his wife Mary Burnaby. It appears then to have been divided into two separate houses, one of which was occupied by Mrs. Burnaby, who died there on February 7th, 1866, having by her will devised the property to Trustees upon Trust for sale. The Trustees of her Will afterwards conveyed it for the sum of £6,400 to Messrs. Alfred Burgess, George Toller, George Baines, Richard Angrave and Charles R. Crossley. These gentlemen had taken the conveyance as Trustees for the Leicester Corporation, and in January, 1871, it was resolved by the Town Council that Municipal Buildings should be erected upon this site. In the following year, however, this resolution was rescinded, and it was agreed that the new Town Hall and offices should be built on the land where the old Cattle Market used to be held. The Corporation then cleared the ground which they had bought from Mrs. Burnaby's Trustees, and made a street through it named "The Grey Friars." Subsequently, by an Indenture dated the 30th September, 1873, the Corporation took a conveyance of the land from their five Trustees, by the following description:— "All that piece of land situate in the parish of St. Martin's in the Borough of Leicester and lying between two streets there now called Friar Lane and St. Martin's and which said piece of land was lately the site of a messuage or mansionhouse for some years formerly occupied as two messuages with the gardens yards and out-buildings thereto belonging known as 'the Grey Friars,' and one of which said messuages was formerly in the occupation of Mary Burnaby widow deceased and the other of which said messuages was formerly in the occupation of John Henry Davis and which said mansion-house and premises have since the date of the lastly recited deed" (the Conveyance to the Corporation's Trustees), "been pulled down and the ground cleared and a street formed upon the said land by the Corporation." The Corporation of Leicester have since the date of this deed parted with the whole of the land, which is now built on. The site of the old mansion-house and grounds at the present day comprises the Grey Friars Street, with the Leicester Savings Bank and two blocks of offices, extending from St. Martin's to Friar Lane, on the West side of the street, and the London County Westminster and Parr's Bank and blocks of offices, extending from St. Martin's to Friar Lane, on the East side. If then the Grey Friars' Church and the burial place of Richard III were in Robert Herrick's garden, Richard's remains must now lie, if undisturbed, somewhere beneath the Grey Friars Street or the buildings that face it. The exact place cannot be more nearly identified.
The story told by Wren is far the more credible of the two. The popular tale of the desecration of Richard's tomb rests on no good authority, and seems to have grown up in the following manner:—
Very soon after the Battle of Bosworth Field, a report became current that the defeated King had been buried "in a ditch like a dog." Four years after the battle, in the course of some legal proceedings which took place at York, this report was contradicted, and it was stated as a fact that Richard was not buried in a ditch, "for the King's grace had been pleased to bury him in a worshipful place." There is indeed no question about the burial at the Grey Friars' Church, which is quite well established. Nevertheless, the common rumour survived, and seems to have been the basis of a statement made by Bacon, in his life of Henry VII, that, although Henry "of his nobleness gave charge unto the friars of Leicester to see an honourable interment to be given to him, yet the religious people themselves being not far from the humours of the vulgar, neglected it; wherein, nevertheless, they did not incur any man's blame or censure." Holinshed mentions the burial of Richard in the Church of the Grey Friars, and the erection of the alabaster monument, but says not a word about any subsequent disturbance of the tomb, either in the first edition of his Chronicle, published in 1577, or in the enlarged edition of 1587. The tradition of this desecration appears to be mentioned first by John Speed, in his "History of Great Britain," which was published in 1611. He states that, at the suppression of the Grey Friars' monastery, Richard's monument was "pulled down and utterly defaced, since when his grave overgrown with nettles and weeds is very obscure and not to be found. Only the stone chest wherein his corpse lay is now made a drinking-trough for horses at a common inn. His body also (as tradition hath delivered), was borne out of the city, and contemptuously bestowed under the end of Bow Bridge." In the account of Leicestershire contained in his "Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain," Speed omitted the latter part of this statement, mentioning only Richard's burial at the Grey Friars' monastery, "whose suppression hath suppressed the plot-place of his grave, and only the stone-chest wherein he was laid (a drinking-trough now for horses in a common inn), retaineth the memory of that great Monarch's Funeral." The whole of the passage quoted above from Speed's "History" was repeated almost verbatim by Sir Richard Baker in 1643, and was quoted by Nichols from Baker's Chronicle.[4] But Throsby added some embellishments of his own. "At the dissolution of the religious houses in the succeeding reign," he wrote, "about 50 years after his (Richard's) death, it (the monument), was ruinated with the church, the grave ransacked, and his bones taken in triumph through the streets, and at last thrown over the bridge over which he rode to the fatal battle of Bosworth."
In the year 1846 a stone coffin was found, in laying the foundations of a house in Halford Street, which contained some remains. James Thompson conjectured that they were those of Richard the Third, who, he thought, had been hastily re-interred in an old Norman coffin by the Warden and brethren of the Grey Friars, before the dissolution of their Priory. It is, however, very difficult to accept this hypothesis, which is based on the assumption that Richard's body was removed from its resting-place at the Grey Friars. But this, in all probability, is a mere legend.
The destruction of the Grey Friars' monastery took place in the lifetime of Robert Herrick, who was born in 1540; and the events connected with it must have been fresh in the recollection of his contemporaries; yet, in 1612, he does not appear to have been aware of the tradition which had been published for the first time by Speed in the previous year, or, if so, he had evidently no faith in it. We cannot do better than follow his example.
III. THE TREASURE IN THE BEDSTEAD.
The story of the Treasure in the Bedstead was first written down in the middle of the 17th century by Sir Roger Twysden, "who had it," says Throsby, "from persons of undoubted credit, who were not only inhabitants of Leicester, but saw the murderers executed."
Twysden's account of the prevailing local tradition, (which is contained in his "Commonplace Book," and not in his " Decern Scriptores," as Kelly stated in his "Royal Progresses"), runs thus:—
"When King Richard III marched into Leicestershire against Henry, Earl of Richmond, afterwards Henry VII, he lay at the Blue Boar Inn, in the town of Leicester, where was left a large wooden bedstead, gilded in some places, which, after his defeat and death in the battle of Bosworth, was left, either through haste, or as a thing of little value (the bedding being all taken from it) to the people of the house; thenceforward this old bedstead, which was boarded at the bottom (as the manner was in those days), became a piece of standing furniture and passed from tenant to tenant with the inn. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth this house was kept by one Mr. Clark, who put a bed on this bedstead, which his wife going to make hastily, and jumbling the bedstead, a piece of gold dropped out. This excited the woman's curiosity. She narrowly examined this antiquated piece of furniture, and finding it had a double bottom, took off the uppermost with a chisel, upon which she discovered the place between them filled with gold, part of it coined by Richard III, and the rest of it in earlier times. Mr. Clark, her husband, concealed this piece of good fortune, though by degrees the effects of it became known, for he became rich from a low condition, and in the space of a few years Mayor of the town, and then the story of the bedstead came to be rumoured by the servants. At his death he left his estate to his wife, who still continued to keep the Inn, though she was known to be very rich, which put some wicked persons upon engaging the maid-servant to assist in robbing her. These folks, to the number of seven, lodged in the house, plundered it, and carried off some horse-loads of valuable things, and yet left a considerable number of valuables scattered about the floor. As for Mrs. Clark herself, who was very fat, she endeavoured to cry out for help, upon which her maid thrust her fingers down her throat and choked her^ for which fact she was burnt, and the seven men who were her accomplices were hanged at Leicester, some time in 1613."
There are several mistakes in this account, as will appear, but the only material one to notice at present is that the trial took place in 1605 and the sentence was executed soon after, and not in 1613. It appears that soon after the circumstances of the murder had been published abroad, with the romantic story of hidden treasure, a bedstead was being exhibited at Leicester, either at the Blue Boar Inn, or elsewhere, which purported to be the one in which the treasure had been found, and in which King Richard had slept. It did not however figure at the trial, in the course of which nothing whatever was said about King Richard's treasure. But, after the trial, the fame of the bedstead became firmly established, and endured for many generations. Henry Peacham, who afterwards became famous as the author of "The Complete Gentleman," wrote some barbarous hexameters which were prefixed to Tom Coryat's "Crudities," first published in 1611, and in the course of these verses he referred to various sights and exhibitions of his time that might be seen for a penny, including —
" Drakes ship at Detford, King Richards bed-sted i' Leyster,
The White Hall Whale-bones, the silver Bason i' Chester."
In the latter half of the 18th century this bedstead was still regarded as one of the wonders of Leicester. When Samuel Ireland, the father of the Shakesperian forger, visited the town, in the course of an artistic and literary tour, about 1790, he proceeded at once to make enquiries about the "two curious remains" which the town of Leicester boasted, and "which must be admitted to have reference to his (Shakespeare's) works: the house and bed in which Richard the Third slept the night before the battle of Bosworth, or rather Sutton, Field." He was shown over the house, "which is still," he wrote, "in good preservation, and the room in which the King slept is so spacious as to cover the whole premises; it is situated on the first floor agreeable to a style of building at that time very common in most of our ancient inns."
Ireland made a sketch of the building, and another of the bedstead, about which he wrote:— "The bedstead from which the above sketch is made, is now in the possession of Mr. Alderman Drake, who purchased it for about forty shillings of one of the servants of the forementioned inn about twenty years ago. It is of oak, and richly carved with Gothic ornaments suitable to the taste of the time, but at what period it was made is not clearly ascertained, though a date, I am informed, appeared on one of the feet, when it was last taken down, but no person had the curiosity to notice it. When purchased by Mr. Drake much of the old gilding appeared about the ornaments. Some particulars of this bedstead, I also understand, are preserved in the records of the corporation."
Upon the death of Mr. Drake, who was Mayor of Leicester in 1773, the bedstead passed to his grandson, the Rev. Matthew Drake Babington, who gave it, in 1797, to Thomas Babington of Rothley Temple. In 1831, Professor Churchill Babington, to whom it then belonged, offered to sell it for £100 to the Corporation of Leicester, to be placed in the Town Museum. This offer was, however, declined; and the bedstead was afterwards purchased by Mr. Perry Herrick of Beaumanor.
Mr. John Gough Nichols, writing in the Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1845, raised the objection that the bedstead then (and still) at Beaumanor, could not have been King Richard's because it is undoubtedly of Elizabethan workmanship. However, Mr. James Thompson, who examined it in 1872, reported that a distinction must be made between the bedstock or framework and the super-imposed bedstead, and he found that the carved and decorated portions of the bedstead were of the Elizabethan or Jacobean period, but the bed-stock itself he concluded to be of an earlier time. Hutton stated that Richard brought to the Blue Boar Inn his own bedstead, "of wood, large and in some places gilt. It continued there 200 years after he left the place, and its remains are now in the possession of Alderman Drake. It had a wooden bottom, and under that a false one, of the same materials, like a floor and its underceiling. Between these two bottoms was concealed a quantity of gold coin worth about £300 of our present money, but then worth many times that sum. Thus he personally watched his treasure and slept on his military chest." All this is mere assertion, and is to a large extent contradicted by the results of Thompson's investigation, full particulars of which will be found in an article which he contributed to the "Reliquary." (Vol. XII, p. 211, sqq.) There is, however, another statement, made by Throsby, which is worth consideration. He says that, after the murder, the bed came into the possession of a servant of the Blue Boar, "and before it came into the hands of Mr. Alderman Drake it had been many years in the Red Cross Street, where it had been cut to make it fit for a low room. The feet which were cut off were 2 feet 6 inches long, and each square 6 inches. The present feet, as one may see by the engraving, are modern. I have the old feet in my possession and the headboard which were taken from it when it was shortened." If the Elizabethan super-structure was raised on the old oak bed-stock while it was at the Blue Boar in the time of the Clarkes or their predecessors, and afterwards exhibited as King Richard's Bedstead, perhaps by the servant into whose hands it is said to have come, when the legend of the treasure had gone abroad, it would be a relic so well known that, even after the lapse of more than 150 years, Mr. Drake, who is said to have been a furniture broker, might have had no difficulty in identifying it; and as Throsby appears to have been himself cognisant of the circumstances under which it was removed from the Inn to Redcross Street, and cut down to fit into its new quarters, and even to have secured some of the discarded parts, his evidence is of value. But, although there is a strong presumption that the foundation of the bed now at Beaumanor was the one on which King Richard slept, the story of the hidden treasure, which gave it its celebrity, and probably preserved its existence, has little claim upon our belief. The tale was never heard until after the burglary, and was, in all probability, suggested by that event. The thieves certainly did discover a considerable amount of treasure located in the house, but not more than a wrealthy burgess of the period might be expected to hoard out of savings acquired in the ordinary course of business. And Thomas Clarke was a man of exceptional ability. He belonged to the little band of shrewd and enlightened men who governed the destinies of Elizabethan Leicester with singular prudence and foresight. Something of his character may be gathered from the following slight sketch of his municipal career. There were in his time several other persons of the same name who became of some note, especially James Clarke, who was Mayor in 1585-86, and another Thomas Clarke, a shoemaker, who distinguished himself by his philanthropic work; but the landlord of the Blue Boar was a far more important personality than either of these. He was prominently concerned in dealings with land and other property on behalf of the town, and in several negotiations and affairs of great moment. He held the highest municipal offices. His name appears first in the Town Records in the year 1568, when he was elected one of the Borough Chamberlains, and for the next thirty-five years his activity is constantly in evidence. In the following year he was appointed one of the three Meat Testers, and towards the end of his life he became one of the Leather Testers. He was a Collector of Subsidy in 1576, and a Surveyor of Town Lands in 1584. In 1576-77 he was Coroner. He was Steward of the Fair in five years between 1571 and 1600, Mayor in 1583-84, and again in 1598-99, and Alderman between 1574 and 1600 in ten separate years. He was one of four prominent burgesses chosen in 1598 to ride over to Ashby-de-la-Zouch and confer with the Earl of Huntingdon in respect of his demand for soldiers, a matter that required tactful handling; and two years later he was among the six leading townsmen who were charged by the Earl, as Lieutenant of the County, with the furnishing of a good armed man out of Leicester for the Queen's service, "who should be no vagrant or suspected person or likely to run away." On a Subsidy Roll of the year 1590 only four persons living in Leicester were assessed at a higher sum than the landlord of the Blue Boar. He was a Brewer as well as an Innkeeper, and when an enquiry was made in 1585 by the Purveyor of the Queen's Buttery, Thomas Clarke undertook to supply weekly 40 "tune" (i.e., 240 barrels) of ale or beer, "or above if nede bee," at the rate of 2s. the dozen.
He was respected as a man of probity and public spirit, as appears from the high place which he held in the estimation of such worthy men as Robert Herrick and the wise Recorder of Leicester, Richard Parkins, both of whom join in holding him among men "of meet affection to the town." He must have had a reputation among his colleagues for shrewd judgment and knowledge of the value of land and houses, as we may conclude from his appointment as one of the Surveyors of town lands. The circumstances under which he was appointed were these. When the Corporation were about to carry out ambitious schemes of land purchase, they found that, in order to do so, they would be obliged to sell some, if not all, of the land which they already held. They agreed, therefore, that a survey should be made of all the town lands, "and such things as be out of lease to consider what value they be of, and what wood there is upon any land, and to value what every tree is worth and every farm and piece of ground." The report of this Commission is not extant, but a year or two later the Corporation began to speak of the "Twenty Pound Lands," and to declare that they had only £20 worth of land a year, which may indicate some result of the valuation. It is not to be supposed, however, that these "Twenty Pound Lands" were an insignificant amount of property. On the contrary, they comprised a very considerable area of land and extensive house property, both in the town and county of Leicester, the particulars of which are given by Throsby.
About the year 1585 these lands and houses were assigned by the Council to two of their number, George Tatam, who had been Mayor in 1580-1, and was elected Mayor a second time in 1594, and Thomas Clarke, the landlord of the Blue Boar. The arrangement seems to have been that Tatam and Clarke should, in consideration for the lands, advance £600, thirty years' purchase, to be used by the Council in completing their bargain with Francis Hastings for his term in half the Newarke Grange estate; and that Tatam and Clarke should sell all or part of the lands assigned to them, and then pay or release to the Town, either in money or land, whatever surplus might be left, after they had recouped themselves for their loan. Two years later, on a further transaction relating to the Grange, Robert Herrick joined with Thomas Clarke in advancing £160.[5]
All these dealings with the property of the town may have been carried out in a perfectly honest manner, and there can be no doubt that the aims of the Corporation were disinterested, and that their policy was of the greatest benefit to succeeding generations. On the other hand, as everything was done secretly, there was ample room for abuse. At any rate, the townspeople grew suspicious, and began to complain that "such as had the chief dealing for us" sold the land and disposed of the money "at their own pleasures and private contentions among themselves." In 1593 an Order of the Privy Council was made for a Commission to enquire into the matter. This Order was read in the Town Council Chamber, and the Council retaliated by resolving that anyone disclosing the secrets of the Common Hall should forfeit £5. It should, however, be added, that this resolution was only the re-enactment of one passed in 1564. Thenceforth they were more careful to avoid the appearance of evil. Undoubtedly there had been some abuse, the members of the governing body taking the first chances of leasing and buying the town property, and some of the public land actually having been given to Town officials as perquisites; but there is no definite imputation of dishonesty, and none was proved. Tatam and Clarke paid over the surplus due to the town, and conveyed back the unsold land. Their reputation remained unimpaired, and the assistance which they gave to enable the town to carry through their large scheme was of the utmost value. This purchase of the Newarke Grange estate was, indeed, an extremely complicated transaction, and Clarke did not live to see the completion of it. It involved the buying up of several different estates and interests in the property, and actually covered a period of thirty-seven years, the first purchase being made in 1585 and the last in 1622. Moreover, there were difficulties about the title, and towards the end of the 16th century the Corporation became involved in legal proceedings concerning certain closes known as the "Frith Closes." They contained about 60 acres of land, which had been the reputed property of the Newarke College for very many years; but after their bargain with Francis Hastings and the Crown the Leicester Corporation still had difficulties with this part of the estate. In 1598 a petition was sent up by them complaining against a Lease of these closes being granted by the Duchy of Lancaster to one Robert Worship They obtained a general stay of further proceedings, but not without difficulty. About the year 1601 there was a suit with one Lister about the same closes, which cost the town a large sum of money.
The Corporation's case seems to have been that, when Henry VIII disforested the Frith, the Dean and Chapter of the Newarke College produced a Charter proving their common of pasture in the Frith for more than 24 beasts, 7 mares and one stud horse. The King thereupon granted them rights of pasture in common with other tenants, in 120 acres of the land; but afterwards he divided the 120 acres, specially granting one half, being the closes in dispute, to the Newarke College, and the other half to other tenants. The Corporation claimed that these closes, so allotted to the College, passed to them with the rest of the Grange estate. But it appears that the special grant from Henry VIII to the College was missing, and the Corporation were advised that, unless it could be found, their case was "very hard in law," and that they could only rest on "equity and good conscience," although they had given "great sums" for the closes. Search was made for the missing document at the Tower, at the "Old" and the "New" Chanceries of the Duchy of Lancaster, at the Augmentation Office, and at the Savoy and Gray's Inn, but it does not appear to have been found.
Other important services which Thomas Clarke rendered to Leicester were given in connection with the two Charters of Queen Elizabeth, and the grants of land therein contained. James Thompson, in his History of the town, does not give Clarke his due credit in regard to the first charter, the obtaining of which he attributes solely to "the influence at Court possessed by the Earl of Huntingdon, and the active exertions of Mr. Parkins, the Recorder, and of Richard Archer (who was a bailiff and collector, and therefore knew all the particulars relating to the property belonging to the Duchy of Lancaster in Leicester)." But the Recorder and Archer had the assistance of Thomas Clarke, who was appointed to act with them, and he accompanied them on their journeys to York and London, in 1586 and 1587, when the business relating to the reconstruction of the borough was discussed and carried through. He also had a hand in the second charter, which was granted in the year of his second Mayoralty.
The wife of the enterprising landlord of the Blue Boar, whose maiden name was Agnes Davy, and who was married to Thomas Clarke at St. Martin's Church in August, 1567, was not always, it appears, as discreet as her husband, and led him, towards the end of his career, into an undignified imbroglio. In the year 1597, she went one day to the house of Joan Cradock to collect the rent. Mrs. Cradock told her, apparently in good faith, that she did not know to whom she ought to pay the rent, whether to the Queen or to Mrs. Clarke, the house having been previously, one may assume, Crown property. Thereupon Mrs. Clarke is said to have spoken disrespectfully of the Queen. This episode came in time to the persistently pricked-up ears of George Belgrave. This busybody happened to have been engaged as Magistrate in a case in which the husband of Joan Cradock was accused of theft, and Cradock told him what Mrs. Clarke had said, and persuaded him that the Clarkes had persecuted him ever since and driven him out of Leicester. Belgrave then wrote to Clarke, declaring that Mrs. Cradock's accusation against Mrs. Clarke ought to be investigated. On receiving this letter, Clarke seems to have gone to Mrs. Cradock's house. "It is told me," he said, "that Mistress Clarke should say to you — 'The Queen shall have a rope, before she shall have my house.' " He then forced Mrs. Cradock, as she stated, to bring the matter before the Magistrates. No examination took place until October, 1598, more than a year after the event. Mrs. Clarke denied on oath that she had made use of the words complained of, and the case then dropped. It was revived, however, in the following autumn, when another witness appeared against Mrs. Clarke, but there is no record of any conviction and the case does not appear to have been carried any further.
Thomas Clarke died on June 28th, 1603, and was buried in St. Martin's Church in Leicester, on the 30th of the same month.
His Will, which bears date the 15th day of June, 1603, is at Somerset House. It does not contain any reference to the Blue Boar Inn, nor to the famous bedstead. Thomas Clarke "Innholder," gave the bulk of his fortune to his wife during her widowhood, with remainder to his kinswoman, Margaret Fearne, if she should marry with his supervisor's consent, but otherwise to his overseers to be disposed amongst his other kinsfolk. Among other legacies he gave "to my loving friends the Mayor Bailiffs and Burgesses of the Borough of Leicester and to their successors for ever for the Under Usher of the Free School an annuity of 20s. out of the Orchard purchased by me the Testator from the Mayor and Burgesses of Leicester in St. Nicholas' parish near the Soar"; also £5, "whereof they owe me £3" to be yearly thereafter employed "in sea coal for the use of the poor people of Leicester." He also left to the widows of St. John's Hospital, twenty shillings; to the mother of Margaret Fearne, two milch cows; to William Dethick, the Town Clerk, forty shillings; to George Brook, one of the Town Chamberlains, "my best taffata doublett," and to John Wilkinson, his brother-in-law, "my best hat." If this John Wilkinson was the glover of that name who had been "carted" a year or two before with one Mary Smith, he would hardly expect to receive a legacy from his wealthy relative.
The testator appointed his wife sole executrix, and the first-named overseer of his Will was Mr. Thomas Sacheverell, the Confrater of Wigston's Hospital, afterwards Vicar of St. Martin's, who married Robert Herrick's daughter Mary.
IV. THE MURDER.
In the autumn of the year 1604, a certain Thomas Harrison, who had done bodily harm to a man called Phillips, fled out of Staffordshire. He came to Leicester, and lodged for three nights at the Blue Boar Inn. While he was there, he paid his addresses to Alice Grimbold, one of the maid-servants, and Alice told him that her mistress, Mrs. Clarke, then a widow, kept a great deal of money in the house. According to Harrison's evidence, which is of no great value, Grimbold also suggested to him that he should come again with a friend and get some of this money. "The maid," he stated, "was the only setter of the match, for they had not dealt therein but for her procurement."
Harrison went away, and told Adam Bonus, a Lichfield cook, what he had heard, and talked over the proposed robbery. Bonus communicated it to Edward Bradshaw, another Staffordshire man, and the real villain of the piece. On Saturday, February 2nd, 1604-1605, Harrison, Bonus and Bradshaw were to have met at the Blue Boar, and Harrison and Bradshaw arrived there on that day. Bonus did not come to Leicester until the following day, and he then saw Bradshaw, and told him that he had decided to have nothing to do with the robbery. On Sunday evening, February 3rd, Mrs. Clarke was in the house with her two guests, Harrison and Bradshaw, and two maid-servants. About ten o'clock the maids went to the stables to water the horses. While they were doing this, they became temporarily separated, whereupon Bradshaw seized and bound one of them who was in the stables. Then Harrison secured the other, and, in the meantime, Bradshaw, who had returned to the house, seized Mrs. Clarke, and tied her up also. The two malefactors then released Grimbold, and, taking her into the house, made her give them her mistress's keys. All three went to Mrs. Clarke's parlour, where there were three large chests, which they opened. One of these contained only linen, another was full of "writings," but out of the third coffer they took away several bags, full of gold and silver. The robbers carried off six or seven bags containing money, the amount of which was variously estimated at from £200 to £500 or more, and they left one bag for Alice.
It does not appear from the existing evidence why Mrs. Clarke was killed, but the reason given by Twysden, that she was murdered because she began to cry out for help, offers a probable explanation. According to his account, the murder was committed by Alice Grimbold, but there is no evidence of this, and the testimony goes to show that Mrs. Clarke was killed by Bradshaw. Grimbold was tied up in the chimney before the ruffians rode away with their plunder. Harrison's plea that she was the instigator of the plot is hardly borne out by the facts, and she acted throughout the evening under compulsion.
Mrs. Clarke was buried at St. Martin's two days later.
As soon as the robbery and murder were discovered on the morning after the crime, Bonus was arrested and examined on the same day before the Deputy Mayor of Leicester, two Justices and two Coroners. He established his own innocence, and disclosed all that he knew of the plot. The depositions of Alice Grimbold were taken on the same day and on the following Wednesday. Harrison and Bradshaw were committed to the prison at Stafford without bail; but Harrison was brought back to Leicester prison soon afterwards, and there examined on February l0th, and again on March 1st, before Thomas Chettle, then Mayor of Leicester, and other magistrates. Once more he was examined specially, by order of the Judge, on March 22nd, not about the crime itself, but with regard to an attempt which had been made to frustrate the ends of justice. For the clever scoundrel, Edward Bradshaw, had conceived the brilliant idea of using part of the proceeds of the robbery in order to obtain his own release from Stafford gaol. So when his brother-in-law, one Littleton, came to visit him in the prison, Bradshaw told him that the stolen money had been hidden in the bank of a ditch at Pooley Park in Warwickshire, and asked him to fetch it away. Littleton, according to Harrison's evidence, found most of the hidden money, and brought £80, part of it, to procure the prisoner's release. Some of this money was distributed among various agents, and the rest was paid over, directly or indirectly, to Lord Stafford — how much, Bradshaw said he did not know. Lord Stafford thereupon bailed out the prisoner, who took refuge for a time at Bowdisworth Park, in Staffordshire, the residence of Humphrey Chatterton, whose wife, as Harrison attested, "laboured the Lord Stafford for Bradshaw's bail, and had money for her pains." But the Leicestershire magistrates got wind of this shameful transaction, and on February 17th, 1604-05, they despatched an urgent letter to the Lord Chief Justice of England, informing him that Lord Stafford had gone up to London to procure Bradshaw's pardon, and asking him that a warrant might be issued for the apprehension of Bradshaw, "because it is thought he will come to London to the Lord Stafford's lodgings"; and they prayed that, as soon as Bradshaw was arrested, he should be committed to the gaol at Leicester. The arrest was made, and the case was tried at the Spring Assizes which began at Leicester on March 25th, 1605.[6] Bradshaw was examined on March 26th, and was subsequently condemned to be executed for the murder of Mrs. Clarke, while the unfortunate servant, Alice Grimbold, was actually sentenced to be burned at the stake.
The original depositions of the witnesses in this case are still in existence, although partly defective, and they have been transcribed in the Appendix to Kelly's "Royal Progresses." The crime itself is a very sordid one, and would have been forgotten long ago but for its legendary association with the last of the Plantagenets. Nevertheless, the case is interesting, not only as an example of the harsh and unsatisfactory character of the administration of justice three hundred years ago, but also because it illustrates the danger to which justice was then sometimes exposed, owing to the corrupt dealings of powerful men.
- ↑ Different dates have been assigned by Hutton and others, but this is the only one that seems to fit in with all the known facts. Kelly, owing to a curious mistake, wrote of the 20th as a Sunday. He relied upon a passage in the Croyland Chronicle, which he quoted in the following form:— "On the Lord's Day before the Feast of Bartholomew the Apostle (August 24th), the King proceeded on his way"; whence he concluded that it was on a Sunday that Richard came to Leicester. But the passage does not refer to the King's march from Nottingham, but to his departure from Leicester, "opidum Leicestrense egressus." The original passage runs thus:— "Die autem Donunico ante festum Bartholomei Apostoli Rex maxima pompa diadema portans in capite cum Duce Norfolchia: Johanne de Howard ac Henrico Percy comite Northumbrice ceterisque magnificis Dominis Militibus et armigeris populariumque multitudine infinita opidum Leicestrense egressus satis per intercursores edoctus ubi hostes sequenti nocte de verisimili manere volebant ad octo militaria ab eo opido distantia juxta Abbathiam de Mirivall castra metatus est." Historiae Croylandensis Continuatio. Gale. Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores I, 573-4.
- ↑ A very good idea of the appearance presented by this Inn in King Richard's time may be obtained from a restored view, published in the Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society, which was sketched by Mr. Joseph Goddard, and founded upon an architectural examination and measurement of the building made just before its destruction. A detailed account of its architectural features will be found in a paper contributed by James Thompson to the Journal of the British Archaeological Association for the year 1863.
- ↑ On the truth of this story, which has been doubted, see the Gentleman's Magazine, July and August, 1767.
- ↑ Some writers seem to have thought that this quotation came originally from Holinshed. Thus James Thompson repeated the passage in the Midland Counties Historical Collector for December 1st, 1858, and stated that it came from "Holinshed (quoted by Nichols), writing in the reign of Elizabeth (1577)." And, when the new Bow Bridge was being built, those who wished to place near it a tablet, commemorating King Richard's death, adduced, in a local newspaper, the authority of Holinshed. But I have not been able to trace the tradition to an earlier source than Speed, who does not mention where he obtained it. A reference to Holinshed in the margin of his book applies only to the preceding account of the King's burial.
- ↑ On a previous occasion Thomas Clarke had been associated with Robert Herrick in giving a joint bond for £200, in connection with the Corporation's scheme for establishing a cloth-factory.
- ↑ The date given by Thompson and Kelly, March 25th, 1606, must be erroneous. The witnesses were bound over in February, 1604-5, to give evidence at the next assizes.