Murder in the Tower
About the volume:
The title of this book is derived from two murders committed in the Tower of London: the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury at the instance of the Duke and Duchess of Somerset in 1613 is notorious; the death of the Earl of Essex in 1683, on the other hand, has usually been treated as suicide, in spite of the thorough investigation carried out at the time by Laurence Braddon, a barrister turned detective, and the whistle-blower par excellence.
The book also contains a miscellany of other cases from the 1730 edition of the State Trials: the Rye House Plot and the outrageous conduct of 'Judge Jeffreys' in his determination to ensure that justice was not done; murders and alleged murders including one where a leading barrister found himself in the dock; a three-a-side duel; an elopement and the attempted abduction of Anne Bracegirdle, one of the leading actresses of her time; piracy and murder at sea; and one of the last cases of witchcraft in which the Church and the law combined to defeat the persecution of the unfortunate woman.
Altogether the book presents a vivid picture of the law and forensic medicine and life in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
About the author:
Alan Wharam was born in 1928, the son of a clergyman in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Educated at Denstone College and Christ's College Cambridge, he was called to the Bar by Inner Temple in 1953 and practised for some years on the North Eastern Circuit. He then lectured at the Leeds College of Commerce and the Leeds Polytechnic Law School until he retired in 1988. His previous books are The Treason Trials, 1794 (Leicester University Press, 1992) and Treason - Famous English Treason Trials (Alan Sutton, 1995).
Murder in the Tower
and Other Tales from the State Trials
Alan Wharam
First published 2001 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
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Copyright Alan Wharam, 2001
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Wharam, Alan.
Murder in the Tower and Other Tales from the State Trials.
1.TrialsEnglandHistory17th century. 2.TrialsEnglandHistory18th century.
I. Title.
347.4'2'07'09032
Library of Congress Control Number: 2001091567
ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-0470-9 (hbk)
To Dorothy
I am grateful to Margaret Clay, the Librarian of Inner Temple, for supplying me with a copy of Laurence Braddon's letter from the State Trials; to the late Jane Edgell, the Librarian of Middle Temple, and Stuart Adams, the Reader Services Librarian, for their assistance relating to Thomas West's chamber in the Inn; to Liza Picard for her permission to quote a passage from her book, Restoration London; and to her and Professor James Sharpe for their advice relating to the significance of wearing 'bands and cuffs'; to A. Fiddes, the Archivist of the Tower of London, and to Dr Geoffrey Parnell, the Keeper of the History of the Tower, for their advice relating to the Earl of Essex and Lord Allington; and to Serena Williams, of the Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, for her assistance relating to Sarah Stout.
I am grateful to the Leeds Private Library for giving me access to their collection, and to the Library of the Leeds Metropolitan University and the Library of the Law Faculty of Leeds University. I also wish to thank the staff of Ashgate, and in particular Caroline Cornish and Helen Hodge, for their assistance; and finally my agent, John Welch, for his continued assistance and support.
- Bl. Comm. The Commentaries of the Laws of England, in four volumes, by Sir William Blackstone, 1765. This work went into many editions and was for over a century the standard students' text book, both in England and the United States of America.
- DNB Dictionary of National Biography
- Enc. Brit. Encyclopaedia Britannica (facsimile first edition), in three volumes, by a Society of Gentlemen of Scotland, published in Edinburgh in 1771
- Macaulay The History of England, in five volumes, by Lord Tho mas Babington Macaulay, 1848-61 (the final volume being published posthumously after Macaulay's death in 1859). Page references in this book are to the three volume Everyman edition, 1906.
- SOD Shorter Oxford Dictionary
In 1730 a set of State Trials was published, containing reports, usually verbatim, of many criminal and other important trials, along with related material. The series consists of six volumes; they each run to several hundred pages, and weigh, on average, about seven pounds.
There were over 400 subscribers to the series, several of whom ordered more than one set; so probably there was a print run of about 500, one of which came into my possession some 265 years later.
The subscribers are grouped alphabetically, but each group is listed in order of rank: royalty, peers of the realm, baronets, esquires, and others, concluding with booksellers (if any - Messrs Smith & Bruce, Booksellers of Dublin, ordered six sets).
The list contains five Dukes
It appears that only three English judges subscribed: the Right Honourable Sir Robert Eyre, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas; the Honourable Sir John Fortescue Aland, one of the Justices of the Court of Common Pleas; and the Honourable Sir Edmond Probyn, one of the Justices of the Court of King's Bench; but the Attorney-General, the Honourable John Verney of Lincoln's Inn Esq., and the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Right Honourable Arthur Onslow Esq. were also subscribers.
Many subscribers were members of the Inns of Court, including in particular Sollom Emlyn of Lincoln's Inn, or attorneys; and there were several clergymen There were several merchants, two apothecaries, one chymist, one goldsmith and one scrivener; but many subscribers had no description. The Right Honourable Lady Bulkeley, Mrs Elizabeth Cuper, and Mrs Sarah Hyde (the latter a bookseller in Dublin) were the only female subscribers.
Libraries which subscribed included Middle and Inner Temple, Doctors Commons, Merton College, Oxford, King's, Pembroke, St John's, Trinity and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and the library of Doctor Daniel Williams, in Red-cross Street, London.
Sollom Emlyn
The Preface to the State Trials is signed by the initials M.N., but it is well known that it was written, and the series edited, by Sollom Emlyn, who was born in Dublin in 1697 and educated at Leiden before coming to England, where he became a member of Lincoln's Inn.
