by Peter Moore
fn1 Undergarments worn traditionally by clergymen.
CHAPTER 7
Dead and Gone
Church Farm, Oddingley, Evening, 24 June 1806
ODDINGLEY’S LANES WERE far busier than usual on Midsummer evening. They were not only filled with the villagers who gathered at the top of Church Lane and beside the rectory gate, where they awaited orders from Pyndar or a dramatic appearance of the captured murderer, but with farmers, traders and artisans riding or walking home from Bromsgrove Fair. Among the travellers were Thomas Green,1 a tailor from Upton Snodsbury, a nearby village, and his son William. According to Green’s later account, they had met John Perkins just north of Oddingley, near Newland Common at between half past five and six o’clock. Green was acquainted with several of the villagers, and Perkins told him that Parker had been shot. At this, Green and his son turned their horses towards the glebe, where they saw Parker’s body lying where it had fallen. Shortly after, they formed part of the macabre procession to the rectory. Green recalled that he had ‘staid [sic] some time’ in the village before deciding, at between seven and eight o’clock, to visit Captain Evans at Church Farm.
Nothing had been heard of Captain Evans in the hours that immediately followed Parker’s murder. He had not joined Thomas Clewes, Hardcourt, Marshall and William Barnett at Bromsgrove Fair, so it was natural for Green to suppose he might be found at Church Farm. It was just a few minutes’ ride down Church Lane, which twisted sharply left around the borders of a pear orchard, from the rectory to the Captain’s home. Green fastened his horse to the fold-yard gate and knocked at the farmhouse door. The tailor must have been well known to the household as he was instantly invited in by one of the servants. Green entered the parlour. There he saw Captain Evans and John Barnett sat at the table. ‘They were drinking something out of a black bottle.’
Thomas Green, imagining the two men knew nothing of what had happened, told them of the murder, to which ‘both seemed surprised as if they had never heard of it before’. The Captain, by way of an explanation, took up a scrap of paper from the table, telling Green that they had just been settling the income tax together. Barnett remained as silent as he had been for much of the past two hours.
Green’s testimony was corroborated by Clement Churchill, a labourer who had worked at Church Farm several years earlier and had stood in for George Banks at the drawing of the militia. Churchill continued to be a frequent visitor to the property. He had spent the late afternoon at Church Farm and had heard two people who he supposed were the Captain and John Barnett talking in the parlour. He recalled that Green arrived later, and was admitted to the room. The door was then shut. At this point Churchill got up to begin his journey home. But as he left he heard Catherine Banks, the housekeeper, cry out, ‘Lord have mercy upon me! He seems no more concerned than if a dog was shot.’ Who he was, the Captain or John Barnett, remained ambiguous.
The news of Parker’s murder arrived at Netherwood Farm at about seven o’clock. John Clewes recalled, ‘Some men who were riding past my brother’s house [along Netherwood Lane towards Crowle] shouted out the parson had been shot: I did not know who they were and I did not go in pursuit of the murderer as I did not think the report was true.’
Thomas Arden, one of the farmhands, was waiting for Thomas Clewes, who had been out all day. Arden saw him return to the fold-yard at about seven o’clock. He noticed that Clewes ‘put the horse in the stable himself’, that he was wearing his day clothes and ‘the horse did not seem to have been ridden a great deal’. Clewes then disappeared, and Arden did not see him again until an hour or so later, between eight and nine o’clock, when they all gathered for supper. Not a word was said about the murder, Arden recalled, as they ate.
An explanation of Clewes’ movements that evening was later provided by William Chance, a 27-year-old labourer who was employed at the time by Captain Evans at Church Farm. Chance had spent the afternoon mowing clover in the Church Field with his father. At around six o’clock they had seen George Banks coming down the meadows where they were working. Once Banks was within earshot he called down to them, ‘By God boys! The parson is shot!’ Chance noticed that, as he spoke, Banks ‘laughed … and seemed glad it was done’. A little later William Chance set down his tools and made for the farmhouse ‘for some drink’. At harvest time the workforce on any farm was nourished with a steady stream of weak local ale or – especially in the counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and in the West Country – an equivalent drawn in late summer direct from the cider presses or earlier in the year from cider casks or barrels. By half past seven Chance and his father would have been at the scythe for more than twelve hours, and with their supplies of drink exhausted he set off for the kitchen to fetch more.
The sunlight was waning but darkness would not fall for two hours yet. Chance arrived at the farmhouse and paused for a moment in the kitchen. He could hear men laughing from the parlour, voices that he instantly recognised. Leaving the farmhouse a second later carrying the drink, he passed the parlour window. He glanced inside. Captain Evans, John Barnett and Thomas Clewes were all sat around the table. There was drink of some kind and glasses on the table. Chance ‘dared not wait long as he knew that if he had been loitering and the Captain had discovered it he would have sworn at him’. The vivid picture, though, impressed itself strongly upon Chance’s mind. There was a distinct light in the faces of the men and a warmth and sparkle in their voices. Everything was caught in a snapshot imprinted upon his imagination: the oak table, the dark bottle filled with wine or cider, the glasses and men, all captured in the glow of the fading sun. It was ‘as though they were rejoicing’, William Chance would later say, ‘as though something had happened’.
CHAPTER 8
The Man in the Long Blue Coat
24, 25 June 1806
NOT A SINGLE villager had seen the man who had passed through Oddingley that afternoon, murdering the clergyman in his own meadows before vanishing almost as soon as he had arrived, for many of them as indistinct and silent as a soft summer breeze. The only description of him came from Thomas Giles and John Lench, who were strangers in Oddingley, unfamiliar with its lanes and most of its people. When questioned, they repeated the description that was soon to be circulated across Worcestershire and beyond: that the suspect stood about five foot five inches tall, that he had a round ruddy face and thick hanging lantern jaw;1 that he wore a round old-fashioned hat and – most strikingly of all – a dark blue greatcoat with white metal buttons.
This description was sufficient to supply most villagers with a theory. This theory went that Reverend Parker had not been killed by a stranger unknown to the parish, but by someone who visited it frequently and whose face and figure were a common feature of its lanes. At around seven o’clock the hypothesis that had been developing was all but confirmed with the appearance of Thomas Colwell, a carpenter from Tibberton. Colwell called at the rectory, where he found John Perkins comforting Mary Parker. Colwell told them both that he thought Richard Heming was Reverend Parker’s murderer.
An hour before, the carpenter had been walking along a lane in the parish of Hindlip – just three miles west of Oddingley and a short distance from where Giles had given up his pursuit. He was passing the home of a farmer called Brookes when he had heard a thrashing noise, and Heming, whom he knew reasonably well, had come tumbling over the top of a high hedge ‘although a gate was just by’. Colwell was taken by complete surprise. ‘Heming looked very pale and confused,2 and he seemed as if fatigued.’
Richard Heming had not properly explained himself to Colwell, but did stop for a moment to beg him not to mention their meeting to a soul. ‘Two men were after him,’ he said. At this, Heming had turned on his heels. Colwell had not had the temerity to challenge him further. He had gone away ‘at a good fast step, but was no way hurrysome’, Colwell said. He was wearing ‘a long blue greatcoat which appeared rather too long for him’ and an old-fashioned hat with a low crown. As he disappea
red along the lane in the direction of Tibberton, Heming had lifted the skirts of his coat up over his arms. Colwell knew Heming well. He was sure of his story.
This evidence, which was quickly relayed to Reverend Pyndar, marked an important milestone in his fledgling investigation. Until now the afternoon’s events had comprised the fractured stories of various witnesses and had lacked a common thread to bind them together. But now, with a chief suspect identified, the case could begin to take shape and a narrative be formed. There were many implications of Colwell’s evidence, but the first – and the most pressing – was that Heming had escaped the parish and was travelling in a south-westerly direction. It seemed plausible that he could have covered the three miles from Parker’s glebe across country – wading through the long grass, vaulting fences and hedgerows – in approximately an hour. Once he reached Hindlip he could travel far more swiftly along the lanes that snaked down for two further miles to the outskirts of Worcester.
Unbeknown to those in Oddingley there were more sightings of Heming, which wouldn’t be reported until later. Richard Page, the landlord of the Virgin Tavern, a public house in Newtown just outside Worcester, served Heming a pint of ale that evening, which he drank ‘off as quick as he could’ then ‘went away directly’. Page noticed that Heming had ‘a blue coat hanging on his arm’ and that ‘he seemed in a hurry and very much confused’.3 Some minutes later, outside the inn, Heming opened a gate for Thomas Hill, a farmer on his way home from Bromsgrove Fair. But by the time George Day called at the inn around 20 minutes later, Heming was gone.
Plotting the precise sequence of the sightings which marked Heming’s flight from Oddingley is difficult. In 1806 few houses contained clocks, and most people, especially in rural areas, did not carry watches, therefore most times stated in later testimony were approximations which in themselves became even less accurate with the passing of time. Before the introduction of factory discipline those in rural areas for the most part worked and lived by the sun, listened for the chime of the church clock and estimated as best they could. Such processes worked tolerably well on a daily basis but were aggravating in criminal cases. For example, Page and Hill stated that Heming was at the Virgin Tavern at about six o’clock, whereas Thomas Colwell claimed to have seen him four miles to the north at precisely the same time. Richard Heming’s exact whereabouts on Midsummer evening, then, is blurred by the contradictory voices. What can be assumed with some degree of certainty is that by around half past six or seven o’clock he was on the very edges of Worcester. He had evidently decided that his best mode of escape lay with one of the city’s coaches. And the London Stage Coach would leave Angel Street in just three hours’ time.
Richard Heming’s identification as chief suspect would have surprised few in Oddingley. For around two months villagers had been growing increasingly conscious of the labourer’s erratic behaviour. He would appear abruptly in certain lanes and fields – greeting labourers, posing questions and bothering dairymaids – before vanishing completely without either trace or explanation. Much of Heming’s strange activity centred on the north of the village, about the coarse grass and thick furze bushes of Oddingley Common and Wash Pool Lane, and the hedgerows which ringed Pound Farm’s meadows and Parker’s glebe. Here he was a familiar sight in May and June, as the early-summer birds sang in the trees and dragonflies skimmed across the surface of Barnett’s pool.
In mid-May John Perkins had noticed Heming pacing back and forth in Barnett’s fields, where a faggot of thorns and a bolting of straw had been thrown down into the ditch adjoining the glebe meadows. Parker had also seen Heming nearby and had asked Perkins if he knew what the man was doing. The farmer had been unable to supply an answer.
Joseph Colley, a 55-year-old farmhand, had been more suspicious. During May and June he had been labouring near the Wash Pool Fields and had frequently seen Heming ‘skulking’ about the lanes and Parker’s glebe. Colley was on friendly terms with his clergyman (according to his later account, he knew him ‘as well as all who lived in the parish’), and one day Parker had told him that ‘he could not think what Heming wanted’ lurking in the lanes. Colley, who was evidently a straightforward man, had told the clergyman, ‘Heming wanted to shoot him and knock him on the head’.
After Parker’s murder Colley’s pithy analysis of the situation appeared suspiciously prophetic, but the elderly labourer had reasons for making such a claim. Colley was a regular drinker at the Red Lion, a spacious brick hostelry just south of Droitwich on the Worcester road. On several occasions Colley had seen Heming and Thomas Clewes in the taproom. Each time ‘Clewes was treating and urging Heming to drink.’ One early June evening Clewes had proposed a toast in full view of the whole bar ‘to the death of the Bonaparte of Oddingley’. Heming had said that ‘he had a nasty job to do at Oddingley, but it was then too late to go as it was past five o’clock’.
Richard Heming was a curious slippery character. All sources agree that he came from Bredon’s Norton, a beautiful village of handsome half-timbered cottages which sprawled languidly at the foot of Bredon Hill in the south-east corner of Worcestershire. But in the parish records he is as difficult to pin down as he would later prove to be in Oddingley. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries there was just one family in Bredon’s Norton with the surname Heming. It was headed by a Mrs Mary Heming, who had been supported by the parish for many years and was the mother of five children. She had been born Mary Barrow in 1751 and had become Mary Heming at the age of 22 when she married William Heming of Earl’s Croome, a few parishes to the northeast. Over the next 15 years Mary Heming had busily applied herself to family life, producing a steady succession of children until her husband died in 1787 leaving her a widow at the age of 36. None of these children was called Richard.
But these records leave one child unaccounted for. When Mary married in 1773 she was already mother of a boy named Richard. This Richard was illegitimate, baptised on 23 April 1766 while Mary was just fifteen. Children born out of wedlock were usually glibly recorded as ‘bastard’ or ‘base-born’ in the local rolls, but Reverend William Davenport, Bredon’s clergyman at the time, was an exceptionally careful chronicler. For this illegitimate child he entered the name Richard Jeynes into the register. It is one of just two sets of surviving evidence about the child. The other is a legal bond dated 22 April 1766 from Richard Joines, a yeoman from the parish of Beckford, who agreed to pay £30 towards the upkeep of a bastard child born to Mary Barrow of Bredon.
In all probability this was the Richard Heming5 who appeared to murderous effect in Parker’s glebe field 40 years later. Whether he suffered in childhood from the stigma of being illegitimate it is hard to know. Perhaps it left his character scarred and unsettled? Perhaps Richard Heming never knew who his real father was. It does seem clear, however, that there was distance between the child and his supposed father. Young Richard adopted his stepfather’s surname and most probably spent his youth under his mother’s roof in Bredon’s Norton with his half-brothers and -sisters.
Around the turn of the century Richard Heming left his family home and relocated to Droitwich at the opposite end of the county. This was an unusual move. Only rarely did villagers uproot in the middle years of their life, leaving behind their immediate family, contacts and the security that they offered. By 1800 Richard Heming was in his mid-thirties and his relocation probably reflected a change of circumstances. The most likely explanation is that Heming moved north to be with a woman, as around the turn of the century he had met Elizabeth Burton, the daughter of a successful carpenter. She was around ten years younger than Heming and, it seems, they fell for one another. Though they did not marry, in just a few years Elizabeth Heming – as she was now styling herself – had given birth to three daughters, whom she christened with unusual and romantic names: Mary-Agnes, July Ann and Harriet. Whether the couple’s union was simply one of deep mutual affection, it is impossible to say. Perhaps Heming had been tempted north by love and
the draw of family life. Or perhaps Elizabeth Burton had been – just like Richard’s mother before – unlucky to fall pregnant with an illegitimate child. Or it may have been that Heming’s swift departure from Bredon was forced: that he left the village of his birth because he was no longer welcome. Given his future conduct, this was a possibility.
In Droitwich Heming soon gained a reputation as the local rogue. He toured the nearby villages begging cider from farmhouse kitchens, fishing for part-time work and selling goods on the black market. Earlier in 1806 Heming had even knocked at the door of Oddingley rectory, desperate for a mug of cider. Mrs Parker remembered the little man who greeted her at the door much like a modern-day door-to-door salesman. He went on to tempt her husband with an offer on a quantity of malt at the rate of ‘6d. a strike under the regular price’6 and at the far more generous ‘Tewkesbury measure’.
The profits Heming made from selling black market goods proved to be an important supplement to his more steady income as a skilled carpenter and wheelwright. One account of Heming had him, just a few months before Parker’s murder, assisting Mr Smith, a brush maker from Worcester, to fell a good-sized coppice near Droitwich. However, before the job was satisfactorily completed Smith had received a letter informing him that Heming was selling a number of the harvested poles to Captain Evans, which he had no authority to do. Smith had instantly sought Richard Heming out at the Red Lion in Droitwich and threatened to have him sent to gaol. Only after Heming claimed that he had intended to settle for the poles separately did Mr Smith let the matter drop. And the evidence suggests that this was not an isolated incident. In Droitwich it was rumoured that Heming had begun a second career as a thief,7 with local gossip fixing his name to a number of unsolved robberies.