Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wilson, Edward (d.1694)
WILSON, EDWARD (d. 1694), ‘Beau Wilson,’ was the fifth son of Thomas Wilson (d. 1699) of Keythorpe in Leicestershire, by Anne (d. 1722), eldest daughter, by his second wife, of Sir Christopher Packe [q. v.] The Wilson family was of old standing at Didlington in West Norfolk, but had become somewhat impoverished (for pedigree, see Nichols, Leicestershire, iii. 523). About 1693 Edward, or, as he was styled, ‘Beau’ Wilson, became the talk of London on account of the expensive style in which he lived; the younger son of one who had not above 200l. a year estate, it was remarked that ‘he lived in the garb and equipage of the richest nobleman for house, furniture, coaches, saddle horses, and kept a table and all things accordingly, redeemed his father's estate, and gave portions to his sisters.’ ‘The mystery is,’ wrote Evelyn, ‘how this so young a gentleman, very sober and of good fame, could live in such an expensive manner; it could not be discovered by all possible industry or intreaty of his friend to make him reveal it. It did not appear that he was kept by women, play, coining, padding, or dealing in chemistry; but he would sometimes say that should he live ever so long, he had wherewith to maintain himself in the same manner. He was very civil and well natur'd, but of no great force of understanding. This was a subject of much discourse’ (Diary, 22 April 1694). Some people said that he was supplied by the Jews, others that he had discovered the philosopher's stone, while certain good-natured folk averred that he had robbed the Holland mail of a quantity of jewellery, an exploit for which another man had suffered death.
On 9 April 1694 Wilson and his friend, Captain Wightman, were in the Fountain Inn in the Strand when John Law, afterwards the celebrated financier, came in and fixed a quarrel upon Wilson. They proceeded to Bloomsbury Square, where after one pass the Beau fell wounded in the stomach, and died without speaking a single word. The quarrel arose, it was said, from Wilson removing his sister from a lodging-house where Law had a mistress (one Mrs. Lawrence). Law was arrested and tried at the Old Bailey on 18 to 20 April 1694. The prisoner declared that the meeting was accidental, but some threatening letters from him to Wilson were produced at the trial, and the jury, believing (with Evelyn) that the duel was unfairly conducted, held Law guilty of murder, and on 21 April he and ‘four other criminals only,’ says Luttrell, were condemned to death. Law pleaded benefit of clergy, on the ground that his offence amounted only to manslaughter, and his punishment was commuted to a fine. Against this commutation Wilson's family used all their influence, and on 10 May Law was ‘charged with an appeal of murther at the king's bench bar;’ he escaped from the clutches of the Wilsons only by filing through the bars of the king's bench prison. ‘Beau’ Wilson left only a few pounds behind him, and not a scrap of evidence to enlighten public curiosity as to the origin of his extraordinary resources. An ‘Epitaph on Beau Wilson’ by Edmund Killingworth appeared in the ‘Gentleman's Journal’ for May 1694.
In 1695 appeared ‘Some Letters between a certain late Nobleman (the Earl of Sunderland) and the famous Mr. Wilson, discovering the True History and Surpassing Grandeur of that celebrated Beau,’ printed for A. Moore, near St. Paul's. The work is curious, but the solution of the mystery is only hinted at in the rumoured scandal of the day.
In 1708, as an appendix to the second edition of the English translation of Mme. de La Mothe's (D'Aulnoy) ‘Memoirs of the Court of England in the Reign of Charles II,’ entitled ‘The Unknown Lady's Pacquet of Letters’ (and possibly emanating from Mrs. Manley), the first letter is described as ‘A Discovery and Account of Beau Wilson's secret support of his public manner of living and the occasion of his Death.’ According to the improbable story here related at great length, the secret financier of Wilson was no other than Elizabeth Villiers [q. v.], the mistress of William III, and afterwards Countess of Orkney. Her arrangements for assignations with the Beau were made with such extreme care, according to this narrative, as to reduce the chance of detection to a minimum. The lady supplied Wilson lavishly with money, stipulating only that the meetings should always take place in darkness, qualified with the light of but one candle, and that her identity should be perfectly concealed. When at length Wilson became incurably inquisitive, the lady arranged for his euthanasia, and finally supplied John Law with the means of escape and a large sum of money.
Whether this story was a mere invention by an enemy of Lady Orkney (as seems most probable), or whether it be founded upon fact, it is impossible to determine. Beau Wilson's mysterious life and death are woven with considerable skill into the early chapters of Harrison Ainsworth's ‘John Law, the Projector’ (1864).
[Wood's Memoirs of John Law, 1824, p. 6; Wood's Hist. of Cramond, 1794, p. 164; London Journal, 3 Dec. 1721; Nichols's Leicestershire, iii. 487; Cochut's The Financier Law, 1856; Evelyn's Diary, ed. Wheatley; Luttrell's Brief Hist. Relation, iii. 291, 296; Chambers's Book of Days, ii. 680; Burke's Vicissitudes of Noble Families, 2nd ser. p. 384; Timbs's Romance of London, i. 420; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. ii. 400, iv. 96, 219, 3rd ser. v. 150, 284, vi. 459.]