The Devil Comes to Dartmoor

by Laura Quigley

  In 1605, when the Gunpowder Plot – an attempt by Catholic sympathisers to blow up the Protestant King James and Parliament – failed, James I sanctioned harsh measures against non-conformists. When James died, he left the country in severe financial difficulties and heading into war with Spain, yet James’s twenty-two year reign was considered by his contemporaries as one of relative peace. Perhaps, as Charles’s reign headed for the disasters of the English Civil War, they looked back on his father’s time with some nostalgia.

  * * *

  In 1605, the children of Nicholas Slanning reached adulthood and decided to sue John Fitz for compensation for causing their father’s death. Fitz was summoned to appear in court in London to answer the charges. While travelling to London with a servant, John’s guilt weighted heavily upon him, but more so his concern at the retribution Sir William Courtenay would exact upon him if he lost substantial amounts of the estate in the court case. He firmly believed that Sir William Courtenay’s agents were after him and would kill him on the road before he could reach the court; his fears were wholly justified.

  After a long journey, John and his servant arrived at Kingston-on-Thames and spent the night. John Fitz was so deranged by this time that he could not sleep, and, hearing noises, he rose from his bed, summoned his horse and rode off, refusing the company of his servant who he believed might be there to kill him. He was never to return.

  At midnight, he drew up at the Anchor, a small tavern in Twickenham, and hammered at the door, raising the publican, Daniel Alley, and the poor man’s wife out of bed. Fitz demanded shelter for the rest of the night, but Daniel’s tavern was small, not really a suitable place for a man like Sir John Fitz to stay – and anyway, as Daniel protested, there were no beds left. John’s response was so loud and abusive that, worried there would be complaints from the neighbours, Daniel let the man in, and gave John his own bed, which meant Daniel’s wife sleeping with the children.

  John was an unruly guest, and his shouting and tossing in the bed kept the whole household awake. At dawn, Daniel decided he may as well leave the tavern early to help a neighbour mowing a meadow, though his wife begged him not to leave her alone with the strange man. The neighbour arrived at the door and spoke with Daniel, and their voices reached Sir John who, in his disordered sleep, thought his enemies had arrived at the tavern to kill him. John Fitz rushed out in his nightgown, drew his sword and killed Daniel Alley. When Daniel’s wife screamed in horror, John turned and stabbed her too.

  As the sun rose, John was faced with the horror of his actions. In a fit of despair, he stabbed himself. The neighbour was joined by others who had heard the noise, and together they carried the badly wounded John Fitz back into the bed he had just vacated to kill its owner. A surgeon was called for, and his wounds bound up, but John feverishly tore away the bandage and bled to death.

  Despite the terrible tragedy for Daniel Alley and his family, there were many who rejoiced at John Fitz’s bloody end – not least Sir William Courtenay, whose grand-daughter Mary, just nine years old, now inherited the estate. However, Sir William’s plans had not counted on the vagaries of the Court of Wards.

  Near Twickenham, the 9th Earl of Northumberland, Sir Henry Percy, was one of the first to hear of John Fitz’s death5 and quickly realised the implications for the Fitz estate. The Earl put in a substantial offer for the guardianship of Mary, declaring it was out of concern for his good friend, her father. Of course, the wealth of the Fitz estates would also have been a significant incentive.

  Sir William Courtenay may have put forward a competing bid, but his own finances were in a state of disarray following the collapse of the Munster plantations. Sir William Courtenay accumulated a substantial empire during his lifetime, but still the Courtenays’ were struggling with creditors. The Courtenay household was unable to raise sufficient monies to counter the Earl of Northumberland’s bid.

  And so Mary Fitz was purchased from her family, at just nine years old. Mary was at that time staying with her mother, Bridget, and her grandmother at the Radford estates near Plympton.6 In 1605, soon after her father’s death, Mary was torn from the arms of her mother and grandmother. She would never see either of them again. Through the Court of Wards, Mary was placed under the guardianship of the Earl and taken to live with him at Syon House. It would be many years before George Cutteford would see Mary again, and when she returned at last to Fitzford she was a very damaged and misused young woman.

  THE WIZARD EARL

  Sir Henry Percy was an unusual character. Renowned for his interests in the sciences and rumoured to practise the occult, he was often referred to as the ‘Wizard Earl’. Much of his research was done at Syon House in Richmond, next to what is now Kew Botanical Gardens, just north of Twickenham. In the British Museum, in the centre of the museum’s top gallery, stands Sir Percy’s armillary sphere, a model of the universe according to the ancient astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, with the Earth at the centre, and the sun positioned amidst the heavenly spheres rotating around the Earth. Probably made in Italy, it has Sir Percy’s coat of arms engraved on the base, supported by three cast-iron lions. The sphere would have been very expensive even in the seventeenth century. Sir Percy’s fascination with Renaissance science often led him to forget his duties as a landowner, and he frequently quarrelled with his tenants in his demands for money to support his research. During the reign of Elizabeth I, his family had prospered, but as a Catholic sympathiser, he was now distrusted by the new King James I and in 1605, his fortunes were suffering.

  His fortunes declined still further when the Earl’s close relation, Thomas Percy, was caught and killed as one of the plotters who had famously attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. The night before the failed Gunpowder Plot was discovered, on 4 November 1605, the plotter Thomas had spent the evening at Syon House, with the Earl of Northumberland and probably his ward Mary. Association brought condemnation and the Earl was subsequently tried, found guilty of treasonable behaviour and sent to the Tower.

  * * *

  Sir William Courtenay had personal experience of the Court of Wards. When he was just four years old, his own father had died at the Battle of St Quinton in northern France, and Sir William had been taken into the care of his great grandfather William Paulet, who received some of the Courtenay lands and the wardship as a gift for his service to the Crown whilst fighting in France. Sir William’s own father had been a ward of Thomas Cromwell in 1535, so the Courtenays were accustomed to the process. But Mary’s wardship and the subsequent loss of the vast Fitz estates would have devastated their financial situation.

  Mary’s stay at Syon house with the Earl of Northumberland would not last long however. Just a few months later, the Earl was implicated in the Gunpowder Plot against James I and, prosecuted by Sir Edmund Coke, ended up imprisoned for many years in the Tower of London.

  By coincidence, Sir Edmund Coke also presided over the Court of Wards, and Mary soon found herself taken to the London home of Lady Hatton, the wife of Sir Edmund Coke, while her guardian languished in the Tower.

  THE LEGEND OF LADY HATTON

  Lady Elizabeth Hatton, a society beauty, had married Sir Edmund Coke in 1597. She kept her own house, Hatton House in London, having inherited a great wealth from her former husband who had been the heir to Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord Chancellor to Queen Elizabeth I.

  Lady Hatton’s marriage to Edmund Coke was difficult from the start – first, she retained her former husband’s name, much to the embarrassment of her new husband, and second, she was a formidable personality with strong views, which made her, in seventeenth-century terms, a troublesome wife.7

  Lady Hatton’s name is linked to the legend of the Bleeding Heart Yard.8 The body of one Elizabeth Hatton – wrongly thought to be that of Lady Hatton of Hatton House – was found on the morning of 27 January 1626 in the courtyard that would become known as the Bleeding Heart Yard. Lady Hatton, it is said, had spent the evening of 26 January in the company of the Bis
hop of Ely, at a ball in Hatton House. Late in the evening, the Spanish Ambassador, Senor Gondomar, arrived, had just one dance with the beautiful Lady Hatton – and then they both disappeared into the night. The following morning, her body was discovered in the courtyard behind the stables of Hatton House. When they found her, she had been torn limb from limb, with her heart still pumping blood onto the cobblestones.

  In truth, however, Lady Hatton died quietly in her seventies, in 1646. The urban legend of the Bleeding Heart Yard is a wonderful illustration of how names from the seventeenth century get confused; there were, after all, many women called Elizabeth Hatton – Elizabeth being a very popular name at the time. Over the years, the legend became linked to the wife of Sir Edmund Coke simply because she was a forthright, ‘troublesome’ wife, not the passive spouse so idealised at the time. Sir Edmund’s involvement in the Court of Wards – and the court’s appalling treatment of the young Mary Fitz – would have a marked effect on the real Lady Hatton, and the future of her own daughter, Frances Coke.

  * * *

  Though still in the Tower, the 9th Earl of Northumberland arranged a marriage between Mary and his younger brother Sir Alan Percy. On their wedding day, Mary was just twelve; Sir Alan was thirty-two. The disparate ages of the bride and groom caused quite a scandal, even in the seventeenth century. Twelve was the age of consent for women, but any mention of the girl being ‘unripe’ would delay the nuptials, so Mary was required to stay with Lady Hatton in London for the first few years of her marriage.

  Lady Hatton’s strong personality had a significant effect on Mary’s own response to her situation, as time would tell. Mary would never be one to allow herself to be beaten into submission. Mary soon learned to be submissive when it suited her, manipulative when she wanted to be, and to turn a violent situation to her own advantage.

  WOMEN AND MARRIAGE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

  Women of the lower classes in seventeenth-century England were expected to marry young, but most worked until they were in their twenties before choosing to marry and have children. Although their lives were hard, it is strange to think that the same freedom was not permitted for women of the upper classes. Where money and land was at stake, and there was an urgent need for a male heir, young women in the upper classes were frequently married before they were fourteen and expected to start having children as soon as physically possible.9

  Fourteen was the legal age for young girls to come into their inheritance – from this age, they officially had a say over who they would marry, in principle if not in fact, so it was in the guardian’s best interest to get the marriage arranged before their female ward turned fourteen. (Boys did not come into their inheritance until they were twenty-one, so their guardians had a little longer to formulate their marriage arrangements.)

  Twelve years after Mary moved into Hatton House, King James I would preside over a spectacular wedding ceremony and give away Lady Hatton’s daughter, Frances Coke, as a fourteen-year-old bride. Sir Edmund Coke saw the arranged marriage as a means of getting into favour with the flamboyant King. The young bride was beautiful and a very wealthy heiress. The husband was the maniacally insane Sir John Villiers, twenty-six, the younger brother of the King’s favourite courtier, the Duke of Buckingham. Sir Edmund Coke needed the King’s favour; the Villiers family needed the money. Lady Hatton was horrified.

  Lady Hatton attempted to steal away the bride-to-be and find her a more suitable match, but Sir Edmund battered down the door, and after a physical battle over the girl, dragged poor Frances away screaming. Lady Hatton then armed herself with men and pistols, but this second attempt failed and Lady Hatton was charged with attempted kidnapping. The Courts tried to settle the matter by allowing Sir John Villiers to woo the child Frances, but she would not be wooed. Mother and daughter shared their hatred of Sir John – and with good reason. Sir Edmund had Lady Hatton placed under house arrest, and his daughter Frances tied to the bedposts and whipped, more than once, until she consented to the match.

  So King James gave away the battered bride, the King happily drinking everyone’s health and the next morning visiting the ‘happy couple’ eager for details of the wedding night. (James was renowned for his vulgar interest in the intimacies of wedding nights, frequently visiting young couples in their wedding beds.)

  Lady Hatton was at first refused permission to attend the wedding; then her husband changed his mind, and she was ordered to attend – at which point she declined, declaring she was sick. She was probably haunted by memories of what had happened to her ward Mary Fitz just nine years earlier, and horrified that the same had happened to her own daughter.

  * * *

  Mary, at twelve, was an unusually young bride. The arrangement was seen as distasteful, but the motives of the groom were clear. Sir Alan was in some financial embarrassment – he was struggling to repay a loan to his brother – and easy access to the Fitz estates was an ideal solution. He arranged to pay the wardship by instalments10, raising the money by selling off parts of the Fitz estate. Sir Alan describes the arrangement in a remarkable letter to his friend Dudley Carleton in October 1606, when Mary Fitz was just ten years old:

  My lord [his brother, the Earl of Northumberland] and I have met without any repetition of what was past, and has promised to pay that money for me, which I was a suitor to the King conditionally that I marry the ward. If I sell her, I must pay it back...11

  Sir Alan’s motives for the marriage were all too clear. Sir William Courtenay could do nothing to prevent large portions of land on the old Fitz estates, including Drake’s Wood, being sold off by Sir Alan Percy to pay off his gambling debts. As Sir Alan rode around his new Devon estates, evaluating and considering what next to sell, the estate’s stewards, Richard Halse and George Cutteford, were in a difficult position. Halse, still at nearby Walreddon Manor, must have been under considerable pressure to try to prevent any sales, but there was nothing he could do – the land belonged to Percy by his marriage to a twelve-year-old girl still in London, and he and George Cutteford were there merely to offer advice and prepare the appropriate papers.

  However, the Percy family did not have long to enjoy their good fortune. In November 1611, whilst back in London, Alan Percy went out hunting, caught a cold and died. Death by common cold was not unusual at that time, and epidemics of influenza frequently killed hundreds. But it is strange that a wealthy man like Sir Alan did not recover. Perhaps the medicines in London were less effective than those in Tavistock. Certainly, Halse and Cutteford would have been delighted by the work of Sir Alan’s physicians.

  Sir Alan’s death is curious, though. He caught something of a chill lying on the ground while hunting, but seemed well enough to everyone when he went to bed. Early the following morning, the 7 November, his friend Epsley was finally released from the Gatehouse prison, having been locked up on suspicion of some involvement with the Gunpowder Plot. Epsley immediately made for his brother’s hunting lodge near Hackney, where Sir Alan was staying. Once there, Epsley was told his friend was still asleep, but on entering Sir Alan’s chambers, Epsley found the poor man dead.12

  Whatever the true cause of Sir Alan’s passing, Mary, barely fifteen and now a widow, found herself immediately back on the market at the Court of Wards, with suitors lining up at Lady Hatton’s house. Sadly, that same month, news of her mother’s death reached Mary. The young girl must have been devastated, left so alone and acutely aware of the horror of her situation.

  Some historians claim Mary then fell in love and escaped from Lady Hatton’s house, in midwinter and in the dead of night, to elope with a young man called Thomas Darcy, who was then but sixteen. This would be a delightfully romantic tale if it were true. Mary was considered a great beauty, and a lively companion. Her running off into the night with a handsome young man is a lovely fairytale, but the story of the elopement has a disturbing twist. It seems that Mary may have been deliberately married off to a dying man.

  Thomas Darcy’s father wa
s the 3rd Baron Darcy of Chichester. The Baron was faced with a dilemma. He had many daughters, but only one son, Thomas, who possibly became ill at fifteen years old, sometime in 1611 or 1612. Baron Darcy was already separated from his troublesome wife (or long-suffering, depending on whose side you were on). His wife was Mary Kytson, daughter and heir of Sir Thomas Kytson of Hengrave, and amongst her many daughters she gave Baron Darcy just one son. The hostile separation meant that the prospect of another legitimate son to replace Thomas as heir was limited. If Thomas died, the Baron and his family would lose not only his title, but all his property, including the grand manor and family home at St Osyth’s, in Suffolk.13 Baron Darcy urgently needed a healthy male heir, which meant finding a bride for Thomas.

  At the moment Sir Alan Percy died, Mary became an ideal target for the Baron’s attentions, now she was of marriageable and child-bearing age. How Baron Darcy procured Mary from Lady Hatton’s house is still uncertain. It could be that he arranged an elopement, if that isn’t a contradiction, or that he paid Sir Edmund Coke an appropriate fee to steal the girl away. Either way, Mary soon found herself in St Osyth’s, under formidable pressure to have a child in a hurry.