Every now and then you uncover a source which propels you back into history, showing its brutal nature, in a first-hand account related by someone who lived through it. Just recently I found one of these, in the story of Silas Told, who served as an apprentice on ships sailing between England and the Caribbean in the 1700s. Spoiler: it was not all about singing sea shanties and swigging rum.

A Ship at Sea, Ludolf Backhuysen 1650-1708, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Public Domain

Aged around thirteen, Silas was appointed to serve on Captain Moses Lilly's ship The Prince of Wales in 1725. In July of that year, Told and Lilly's crew sailed from Bristol to Cork in Ireland and then to Jamaica. Told's account, given in his An Account of the Life and Dealings With God published in 1786, makes uncomfortable reading for us today. There are regular references to slaves onboard, with Told later responsible for organising them onto the ship. He suffered beatings, too. On one occasion the chief mate called for the cabin boy, but not finding him, told Silas to fetch him a plate of food. Not having had experience on a ship before, Silas misunderstood the command, believing he had been told to go and get food to eat for himself. He 'got a plateful, carried it and ate it in the cabin.' When the chief mate realised Silas had eaten his food he 'knocked me down and began cursing and damning me at a horrible rate'.

He also suffered with sea sickness, a lack of provisions onboard and illness. When food and fresh water was available it was 'full of mud and maggots', wrote Silas. They also encountered rats on various voyages and ships. One sailor, anchored in Blue Fields Bay in Jamaica, was so thirsty that on finding water he 'fell flat upon his belly and drank so immoderately that a few hours after he came on board he expired'. Whenever crew members died onboard the ship, they were sewn up in a hammock and thrown overboard. Silas reacted with horror when on one occasion a 'large shark descended after him [the deceased person] and we suppose, swallowed the whole body'.

Hurricanes and voyaging also took their toll on the ship, which had to be constantly maintained, or in the worst case, abandoned altogether. At the Bay of Campeachy in the Spanish West Indies, Silas remembered the ship laying at anchor 'twelve miles from land, where with her bottom beating the ground every swell of the sea, she was exceedingly damaged'. At Kingston Harbour in Jamaica, the crew suffered a hurricane which started at 8pm in the evening and continued relentlessly until 6am the following morning. The devastation was clear when they gingerly emerged from their cabins that morning. Coconut trees had been torn up by their roots, 75 vessels in the harbour were destroyed and the shoreline was littered with bodies. 

During one bout of illness, which Silas blamed on the effects of the hurricane, he believed himself to be near death, having had a fever which lasted eleven months. He was nursed back to health by a black native 'who brought me every day a dose of jesuits bark to the warehouse, where I was laid in a hammock.' Silas relates his gratitude for the man's care, eventually recovering enough to be taken to a public house in the bay run by a Mrs Hutchinson, who was paid 40 shillings a week by Captain Lilly for Silas' board. Unable to work, and Captain Lilly heading back to England, Silas later came across another seafarer, Captain David Jones, for his next service.

Jones offered Silas a role on his ship, bound for England. From Bristol, Silas then sailed with Jones to Bermuda. Soon afterwards Silas had another opportunity and this time sailed under the command of Captain Timothy Tucker on the Royal George. He wrote that Tucker was a villain, and violent with the crew and women. He also accuses him of engaging in human trafficking. Tucker, says Silas, sold a woman to the Black Prince of Bonny on the African coast, and once accused Silas of taking more bread from the kitchen than his rations permitted. Silas tried to tell him that he was fetching provisions for the crew, but Tucker whipped him so hard that the crew told him that they could see bone through the remaining flesh on his back. During his voyages on the Royal George, Silas witnessed Tucker relentlessly bullying the crew and threatening the slaves onboard with loaded pistols. After Tucker's deplorable actions resulted in the death of one of the slaves, the others rebelled and tried to kill the rest of the crew. The captain, once he reached the island of Barbados, then tried to pacify them with 'large quantities of rum and sugar'. Unsurprisingly, Silas soon found himself on board another ship, in the service of Captain Roach, who was poisoned by a man named Tom Ancora after the men had a disagreement over a woman, another slave Roach had purchased and kept onboard. The Captain died on his ship, where he was sewn up in his hammock. Like so many sailors of the time, he was then 'committed to the great deep'. 

Attacks from pirate ships were also common, and Silas experienced a frightening episode when they were boarded by Spanish pirates. The pirate ship, he wrote, was 'exceedingly large, full of guns and men'. Despite the captain trying to save the ship, the men were reluctant to fight and so he announced a surrender, considering it his best chance of saving the crew. On boarding, the pirates took everything including the ship's tools and working compasses along with the clothes on the crew's backs. They kept the captain captive and told the crew that they would all be hanged at 8am the following morning. Luckily though, a gold watch had been stashed in a pile of coals. It was retrieved by Silas and used to barter the pirates off the ship. The two captains then came to a truce and were told by the Spanish to sail away out of the waters, and towards England. After years of beatings, difficult conditions and undertaking questionable duties, Silas Told ended his sea career in 1736, and became a preacher, offering support and spiritual guidance to those in gaol or awaiting execution. 

Reports like Silas' are valuable in that they give us a no holds barred representation of what life was like on an eighteenth-century ship. Told had no reason to lie - he looked back at his early years serving on ships as traumatic but personally formative. There were beatings, debilitating bouts of disease and life-threatening weather systems that took their toll on the crew and captain. Watching crew members fall ill and then be sewn into hammocks and carelessly dropped over the side of the deck must have been difficult to watch, as well as the brutal treatment dished out by tyrannic power-hungry captains towards crew members and the slaves onboard. It is possible to see that Told struggled with his conscience when carrying out duties relating to slaves; he writes of them fondly, remembering each of them as individuals and has compassion for their fate. He also shows gratitude for the man in Jamaica who nursed him back to health. He was an apprentice and a lower-status crew member, and followed orders from the captains he served under. However, this by no means diminishes his responsibility for the slave men and women that were on board. Not only recruited for their labour, Silas tells us of the slave woman brought onboard for companionship and likely sexual services for the captain. Instead of shying away from these stories, it is important to share them so that we can learn from the mistakes and errors of those in the past and work to make sure history is not repeated. It is interesting that after all these experiences Silas chose to follow a career as a preacher, providing support and spiritual assistance to those in trouble or condemned to die. His choosing to retell the story of his actions at sea in the context of his chosen career suggest that the suffering and trauma he saw in his earlier years may have triggered his move towards a more compassionate job in the community, as he turned away from hate and violence.

You might also like The Death and Burial of George II, LGBTQ Georgian Britain: Mary East, and Mary Edmonson, Accused Georgian Murderess.

Source:

An Account of the Life and Dealings of God with Silas Told, Late Preacher of the Gospel, Gilbert and Plummer, London. 1786 

We all know the character of Fagin from Oliver - who recruits young men and women to go out into London and pickpocket valuables from unsuspecting members of the public. But did you know that there was a real-life Fagan that ran a 'cut-purse school' in Elizabethan London? 

In the summer of 1585, while Elizabeth I ruled England, officials ventured into the city's streets and taverns to seize 'masterless men and cutpurses, whose practice was to rob Gentlemen's chambers, and Artificiers shops in and about London'. Focusing on the areas of Southwark and Westminster, they captured and interrogated a number of thieves and not only obtained 45 names of offenders in the same business but the identity of a man that was teaching and grooming many of them in their trade: Mr Wotton. 

Thomas Rowlandson, 1756–1827, Billingsgate Market, 1808. Yale Center for British Art, Public Domain.

Wotton is described as a 'gentleman born', and so was of some financial means and status by birth. He was once a successful merchant, but somehow lost his income, opening an alehouse at Smarts Key near Billingsgate, just west from Tower Hill near the Thames. It was while managing this premises that Wotton turned to a life of crime, using the building as a 'school-house set up to learn young boys to cut purses'. 

Wotton's set up is described in a letter from the Recorder of London, Fleetwood, to Lord Burghley, informing him of the unfolding events. It gives us incredible detail as to how a cutpurse was taught and how they practiced being able to remove purses from men and women without them realising. Purses were suspended by a piece of leather or cord and attached to the person's clothing, so cash was easily reached while they were shopping. However this also meant that it was accessible to someone who was light-fingered with a sharp blade. Wotton set up an induction test, which determined whether a thief could work for him as a cutpurse or as the more intimate and risky pick-pocket. It went like this: 

"There were hung up two devices, the one was a pocket, the other was a purse. The pocket had in it certain counters and was hung about with hawk's bells, and over the top did hang a little sacring bell; and he that could take out a counter without any noise, was allowed to be a public foister. And he that could take a piece of silver out of the purse without the noise of any of the bells, he was adjudged a judicial nypper. Note that a foister is a pick-pocket, and a nypper is termed a pick-purse, or a cutpurse."

Wotton was not the only cut-purse teacher in London. Fleetwood's letter of 7 July 1585 ends with a list of offenders and their 'harbouring houses... such as live by theft'. They included Richard Waterward at the Falcon in Grace Street, the owner of the Bear and Ragged Staff at Charing, and that of the Black Lion in Shoreditch. There were others at Westminster, Southwark, Newington Butts and Turnmill Street, showing that there was indeed organised crime of this description in Tudor London. They even had their own language, so that they could discuss different types of theft without being discovered. 'Nyppe', as we have seen, was to cut a purse, while to 'lyfte' was to rob a shop or gentleman's chamber. We still use the word 'shoplift' today to describe a theft from a shop. Other words used included 'shave', which meant to steal an item like a cloak, sword or silver spoon and 'mylken ken' was to rob a home in the night while the residents were sleeping or out.

It is fascinating too to discover the names of some of those that were apprehended in the warm July of 1585 by Fleetwood and his officials. He names John Blewate, by trade a locksmith and Thomas Croe, a barber. Many of the other names don't mention an occupation, and they may have been unemployed, turning to crime to survive. Another man was known by his nickname, 'Welche Dyck', as well as the compelling and slightly unsettling 'Staringe Robin'. There are no women's names in the list.

The idea of a gang of instructors teaching boys and men to steal items from people, their businesses, homes and chambers and bring back their valuables is set in legend, thanks to the Oliver Twist novel by Charles Dickens. But, judging from the account sent to Lord Burghley it was a common occurrence in sixteenth century Tudor London too.

Liked this? You might also like Richard and Elizabeth Cholmely of the Tower of London, Exploring Tudor Power Couple's Contributions to History and Why was Henry VIII Obsessed with Producing a Male Heir? 

Interested in Tudor history? You might also like my second book, Power Couples of the Tudor Era, published by Pen and Sword Books, which explores the contributions couples made to their own times as well as how they influenced our own. Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester are one of the duos explored in depth. Order your copy here. 

Source:

Henry Ellis, Original Letters, Illustrative of English History, Volume 2, London. 1825, p295-303 

John Flamsteed was born in Denby in Derbyshire on the evening of 19 August 1646. Brought up by his father following the death of his mother when he was three years old, he became an enthusiastic reader from a young age. Starting off with romances, he moved on to histories and tragedies and began to absorb even more of the world around him, reading geography and classical books. At the age of 14, when his school friends made their next step to university, John became ill, and his father thought it best not to send him. During this time he managed to get hold of a copy of Sacrobosco's De Sphcera, a mathematical work written in Latin. Naturally curious about the night sky and encouraged by his father, John watched the stars and applied everything he had learned up to that point in attempting to understand the growing academic discipline of astronomy. 

John Flamsteed, Wellcome Collection. Public Domain

Gradually, he made links with other like-minded men, such as George Linacre and William Litchford. In 1665 a comet raced above London, and Charles II and his queen Catherine of Braganza stayed up to watch it. Samuel Pepys tried to see it too but grumbled that he could see only cloud. But Flamsteed in Derbyshire was watching too. He soon calculated timings of the year, the distance of the Earth from the Sun and catalogued 70 different stars. In his first paper for the Royal Society, established by Charles II on his accession, he apologised in advance for his ‘juvenile heat’ and published it under an alias. The Society loved it so much that they tracked him down and praised his work, Flamsteed travelling to London, where he was gifted a micrometer and ordered some telescope lenses. 

Flamsteed was quickly noticed by other eminent scientists of the era, such as Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Jonas Moore and completed the university education at Cambridge that had, as a teenager, been stalled. It was through his links with Moore, as well as his precise calculations concerning the stars and the moon, that Flamsteed was put in charge of the new Royal Observatory in Greenwich at the age of 29.

By 1675, Flamsteed was Astronomer Royal with a salary of £100 a year and lodging rooms within the observatory itself, built by Sir Christopher Wren. He worked incessantly. In 1683 he built a mural quadrant, privately instructed students on mathematics and astronomy and stared for long hours at the night sky. Between 1677 and 1689 he made 20,000 observations and in 1688 had an assistant to help him, called Abraham Sharp. Sharp also made instruments to assist Flamsteed in his observations and calculations, all which Flamsteed paid for, perhaps explaining why after his death, his widow hurried to the Observatory and took them all away.

In 1694 Sir Isaac Newton visited Flamsteed at the Observatory to discuss his recent theory of gravity and ask for help applying its findings to that of the moon. Newton calculated, while Flamsteed provided him with new observations. Newton urged his colleague to publish his findings on the stars, even though Flamsteed insisted his lists were not complete. They were eventually printed in 1707, although Flamsteed was not happy with them, considering them full of errors. By 1712 he was in ill-health, suffering from headaches and pain in the joints. In a letter, he wrote of finding himself so tired when travelling to church that he bought a sedan chair ‘and am carried thither in state on Sunday mornings and back’. He died on 31 December 1719 and was buried in Burstow Church in Surrey. He was 73 years old.

Not only had Flamsteed documented dozens of stars, made thousands of observations and assisted Newton with his work on gravity, he worked on the lunar cycles and the axis of the Sun. He worked at a time of great excitement in science and networked with some of the most well-known scientists and astronomers, and was known too to Charles II, William and Mary and Queen Anne. 

You might also like Oxford's Oldest Coffee Houses and How Charles II Dealt with the Plague Outbreak of 1665

Sources

Maunder, Edward Walter. The Royal Observatory, Greenwich; a glance at its history and work. The Religious Tract Society, London, 1900. 

Mary I, Queen of England, is often cast by historians and writers of period dramas as severe and serious, wearing dark colours and avoiding displays of excess. But the sources show a different woman who danced, wore costumes at masques and showed off a startling collection of jewels. 

An inventory of Mary's jewellery survives from her time as princess and it reveals something of her personality and tastes, along with her generosity to others and relationships within the court. Beginning in 1542, when Mary was around 26 years old, the inventory details items wrought in interesting shapes and with religious messages that may have resonated with her personally. Some are simply dazzling. The first item, a 'balas with one emerald, one ruby and one diamond crowned, with a great pearl pendant at the same, with three small stones on the backside' show the intricacy of Tudor jewellery and the skills of the craftsman that made them. A balas is a pink gemstone often likened to a ruby that was also favoured by her father Henry VIII earlier in his reign. There are a variety of other balas stones with ornaments and tablets. Another, 'one other balas set in a dolphin with one diamond table and a great pearl pendant at the same', shows more Tudor craftsmanship. 

Cropped image from Queen Mary blessing cramp rings. Oil painting by H. Hayman, 1916. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Mary also liked flowers, and had jewels set in the shape of various floral designs, some unsurprisingly featuring roses and rubies and pearls to mark the red and white of the Tudor Rose symbol. She also owned 'a flower with five great diamonds, two rubies, one emerald and a great pearl pendant', and another 'with five diamonds, one ruby in the midst and three pearls pendant at the same'. These 'three pearls pendant' bring to mind the famous necklace of Anne Boleyn, the 'B' with the three pearls dangling below it, showing that Mary owned something similar but representing a flower instead of an initial. In any case these jewels would have sparkled and shone in the candlelight of the Tudor court. 

She also owned a diamond cross set with pearls and with a pearl pendant which was given to her as a diplomatic gift by 'Duke Philipe', which Henry VIII requested she pass on to him, which she did. There were also gold chains in her possession, one with pearls and diamonds, along with brooches and tablets. Many of these had religious depictions, such as a 'brooch of gold of the History of Moses set with two little diamonds'. Others depicted St John the Evangelist, the History of Suzanne and the Story of Solomon, among others. One of these, a brooch of gold 'enamelled black with an agate, of the Story of Abraham with four small rubies' was given by the princess to Sir Anthony Browne as a gift after he drew her as his Valentine. An especially touching depiction is recorded in a 'book of gold with the king's face and her grace mother's' showing that even after Katherine of Aragon died, she kept her likeness to wear. She also owned a similar depiction in enamel of the king and his third wife, Jane Seymour. 

Some of these jewels Mary gifted to courtiers, but her half-sister and half-brother Elizabeth and Edward also received some. A 'pomander of gold with a dial in it' was gifted to Elizabeth, while Edward, while king, received a ring. After Mary became queen, she gifted Elizabeth on 21 September 1553 with 'a brooch of the history of Pyramus and Thisbe with a fair table diamond garnished with four rubies'. On the same day she also gave her a string of beads of white coral, trimmed with gold. The message behind Pyramus and Thisbe's love story may be significant. An ancient story later used by Shakespeare in modelling his play Romeo and Juliet, the tale revolves around a forbidden love between the children of two warring families and the eventual demise of both partners for love's sake. Is it possible that Mary gave Elizabeth the gift in recognition of her friendship (sometimes believed to have been more than this) with Robert Dudley, son of the disgraced Duke of Northumberland who Mary had executed just four weeks before she gave her sister the gift. The execution and the downfall of the Dudleys would have been fresh in Elizabeth's mind, and it's possible that, regardless of Mary's intention, she perceived the gift as a hidden message to be wary of involvement with the family. At the time, Robert Dudley was languishing in the Tower of London awaiting judgement. Mary was her father's daughter and suspicious of Elizabeth's influence and support, the timing of this gift being just right to give her sister a gentle and subtle warning to stay in line. She would imprison Elizabeth six months later after suspecting her plotting against her.

Other recipients of Mary's generosity included Margaret Lennox, Frances Brandon, Anne Seymour (Stanhope) and various courtiers to mark weddings. Mary also received some of her jewellery as gifts. Katherine Parr gave her a 'pair of bracelets of gold set with diamond and rubies and in either of them one emerald, given by the Queen's grace shortly after her marriage'. Katherine married Henry VIII in July 1543. 

She also owned girdles, which were secured around the waist, and habiliments, strips of jewels (often including pearls) which decorated the border of a headdress or neckline. Among some of the more unusual jewels owned by Mary included agate, crystal, coral and lapiz lazuli. One in particular, a string of lapiz lazuli beads trimmed with gold must have been especially eye-catching and colourful. 

The inventories end in July 1546, the year Mary turned thirty, and five months before the death of her father. Although I'm not aware that any other inventories of Mary's jewels survive for her later years, this one is fascinating as it demonstrates that Mary did in fact love jewels - something that was also remarked on later by an ambassador when she was queen - and was not the dowdy, frumpy princess of Tudor history. 

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Interested in Tudor history? You might also like my second book, Power Couples of the Tudor Era, published by Pen and Sword Books, which explores the contributions couples made to their own times as well as how they influenced our own. Katherine of Aragon and Henry VIII as well as Mary I and Philip of Spain are explored in their own dedicated chapters. Order your copy here. 

Source: Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary, Daughter of King Henry the Eighth and Afterwards Queen Mary. Frederick Madden. William Pickering, London. 1831. 

In 1759 London was busy with merchants, businesspeople and trades, along with those going to work, visiting loved ones and attending church. As they all retreated into their homes on a late February evening they would have passed taverns lit with the flickering amber glow of candles and muffled laughter trickling from within. They would not have known, as they walked past Mrs Walker's house in Rotherhithe, South London, that there was anything wrong. But inside, she lay dead, killed by a single cut to her throat. 

The Annual Register, a volume published each year in the mid-eighteenth century and also into the nineteenth, contained a summary of the main news events from each year. It highlighted military action, reports from overseas and the movements of the royal family. But it also told the tale of Mrs Walker, a Southwark resident who was allegedly murdered by her niece.

unknown artist, A View of the Thames from Rotherhithe Stairs, 1789, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1977.14.15308. Public Domain.

Mrs Walker was the widow of a timber merchant, Leonard Walker, who lived in Rotherhithe near the Thames, in the Southwark area of London. Finding herself lonely after the death of her husband, and remembering that she had a young niece in Yorkshire, she suggested the girl come and stay in London with her. It's likely that in return for her companionship, Walker could offer the girl - a twenty-year old named Mary Edmonson - opportunities within the community for work or social elevation. Later evidence suggests that she came to London to gain experience of running a house before she was to be married, as she would soon have to oversee one of her own. However shortly after Mary's arrival Mrs Walker and Edmonson were reported to have encountered difficulties. The Register states that they clashed, with Mary 'not answering her aunt's expectation', probably an eighteenth century way of saying that her behaviour was not as she had expected and she perhaps engaged in crime or regularly argued with her aunt. Frustrated, the account records that Walker told Mary she should 'go to some service as soon as the spring came on'. This would have involved living in another family, perhaps as a servant. What happened next is a 300 year old mystery.

In early February 1759, the Register stated that Mary, one evening, 'went into the yard, and made a noise by throwing down the washing tubs, and then ran in and told her aunt that four men broke into the yard'. Walker and Mary made enquiries among their neighbours whether anyone saw the scuffle, but , perplexed, they told them they saw nothing. Two weeks later, on or shortly before 23 February between 7pm and 8pm, Mary was alleged to have once again gone into the yard of the house, making the same noises as before. Thinking the band of 'men' had returned and now unable to find her niece, Walker crept out into the darkness of the yard to make sure Mary was safe. As she did so, Mary allegedly lunged at her with a knife and cut her throat. She then dragged her aunt's body back into the house and into the parlour, where she took Walker's watch and some silver spoons. She hid them, with the murder weapon and her bloody clothes, under the water tub inside the wash house and in the yard.

Soon afterwards, Walker's neighbours found Mary with a cut on her hand, stumbling into the street and asking for help as her 'aunt was murdered by four men, who gagged her, and in endeavouring to save her aunt, they cut her across their wrist'. The neighbours however suspected not only that Mary had cut her own hand to back up her false story but that the murder was also committed by her. Detaining Mary, they questioned her and she was reported to have confessed to the whole crime. Promptly taken to a gaol in Southwark, she awaited her trial.

Next, however, the facts take a swing in the opposite direction. At the trial, Mary's brother-in-law testified that Mary 'had never behaved amiss, that she was soon to have been married to one Mr King, a clergyman, at Calverley, [in West Yorkshire], and that she was sent to London with her aunt to learn a little experience before she became his wife'. It emerged that Mary had never confessed to Walker's murder, as her neighbours had reported, but strongly denied any involvement in it. The cuts on her fingers, she argued, were made when she tried to open the door to her aunt's attackers and they forced it shut against her, jamming her fingers in the opening. The court however, made up their mind. Mary Edmonson was taken from the Stockhouse prison in Kingston to a place outside The Peacock in Kennington Lane, just before 10am on 2 April 1759. Carried to Kennington Common in a cart with the hangman's halter around her neck, she was said to have fiercely 'denied the murder, and died very unconcerned, never shedding a tear'. 

The writer and preacher Silas Told was present at Mary's execution and described the scene that she would have witnessed. He was shocked to see a 'turbulent mob... throwing out the most vile, terrible and blasphemous curses and oaths' at the young woman as he made his way to Mary, who was waiting in a nearby room. He urged her to confess to the crime before her death so that she would be 'clear before God', but Mary told him that she had already spoken the truth and would 'persevere in the same spirit to her last moment'. 

After spending some time in prayer she told the crowd 'it is now too late with God and you to trifle, and I assure you, I am innocent of the crime laid to my charge. I am very easy in my mind, and suffer with as much pleasure as if I was going to sleep.' She forgave her prosecutors and asked them to pray for her soul, mounting the steps to the gallows where Thomas Tollis, the executioner, was ready. He placed a handkerchief over her eyes, but she pushed it away. She was pronounced dead 12 minutes before 10am.

The justices of Georgian London certainly believed Mary was guilty of her aunt's murder, but looking at the case from a modern point of view there seem to be real and considerable doubt of her guilt. First, Mary's motive is not clear. She may have believed in the chance of some financial gain after the death of her aunt, but she was soon to be married in Yorkshire to a clergyman anyway, to begin a new life as a newlywed housewife. Silas Told noted that Mary would have inherited £200, a considerable sum in 1759, on her aunt's death. However, Mary's future was already secure. The alleged fight over their differences and Walker's statement that she should seek experience elsewhere was also a minor challenge and setback. And finally, just because the four men Mary said had attacked the home were never found, does not mean they never existed. In addition, Mary's calm demeanour at the time of her death, where she denied involvement in the murder as she stood at the gallows also casts doubt on her guilt. With death coming anyway, she had no reason to lie. In fact, it would have been the perfect opportunity to clap back at her accusers if she had carried out the crime. 

Mary's supporter Silas Told, who pointed out in his An Account of the Life, and Dealings with God in 1785 that Judge Dennison, who ruled over her case, had previously made an error in judgement and that 'no positive evidence against her could be produced'. Dennison, said Told, questioned Mary intensely during the proceedings, calling her a 'wretch' and telling her that her soul would be damned if she did not admit to the crime. Despite this, she still refused to confess, which angered Dennison further. Told wrote that the only evidence against her was that her bloodied apron and cap was found in the home, where she was alleged to have hidden it. The writer was also with Mary at her execution, and later insisted that based on his interactions with her, he had 'every reason to believe she was condemned innocent of the charge', especially as he argues that her cousin, who lived in Charing Cross, later admitted to murdering their aunt after he inherited £100 following her death. Afterwards, the cousin denied the confession, became a highway robber and was eventually deported.

Was Mary a calculating and premeditated murderer? Or the scapegoat of a horrific crime which ended in the death of a widow of the Rotherhithe community? Without further evidence it is almost impossible to say for sure.

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Charles I, anointed King of England and Scotland, stood at the scaffold at Whitehall. Although it was January, he didn’t shiver, wearing a double layer of clothing so that the crowd would not perceive any trembling from the wintry cold as fear. Before kneeling to place his head on the wooden block, he is said to have uttered, ‘I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world’, referring to the Civil War which in 1649 claimed his life. But there is another, more cryptic last word, a parting shot, that he uttered to his minister standing alongside him. The weary king, passing his medal of St George to William Juxon, Bishop of London, spoke the single word, ‘Remember’. Kneeling, his head was severed from his neck with an axe, and the monarchy's rule, which had existed for more than a thousand years, came to a bloody end.

Charles I, Metropolitan Museum, Public Domain

But what did Charles mean? He may have been referring to the solemnity of the event – a nation beheading its rightful king on charges of treason and for inciting war and dissension in the realm. It was unprecedented. Queens had been executed on the scaffold, two on charges of adultery and two for treason, but up until 1649 no king had suffered in this way. Alternatively, Charles may have been bidding a last goodbye, telling Juxon to remember this moment and any consequences that might follow. Charles was a stubborn and righteous king, who believed he ruled via Divine Right granted to him only by God. Answerable only to Him, the king angered his subjects and triggered increasingly hostile sanctions from Parliament. It is entirely logical that Charles considered his legal murder an affront to God, and believed that divine punishment would follow. 

By the end of the seventeenth century though, there was another explanation. The writer John Aubrey, who was twenty-three years of age at the time of Charles’ death, claimed that the king predicted that his son would come to the throne despite the Civil War’s abolishment of the monarchy and his own death sentence. ‘After King Charles the First was condemned’, wrote Aubrey, ‘he did tell Colonel Tomlinson that he 'believed the English Monarchy was now at an end.' About half an hour after, with a radiant countenance, and as if with a preternaturally assured manner, he affirmed to the Colonel, positively, that his son should reign after him. This information I had from Fabian Phillips, Esq., of the Inner Temple, who had the best authority for the truth of it.’ Was Juxon supposed to remember the occasion's futility, Charles believing that the monarchy would be once again restored under his son Charles II, which happened in 1660? 

A spooky prediction or significance given by Aubrey and others long after the event? What do you think? 

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