The Devil Comes to Dartmoor

by Laura Quigley

  In the letters that mention Tom Robinson, Mary writes with fear and trepidation. On route to Lulworth Castle, it seems, the widowed mother of Theophilus Howard was given a letter from someone called Tom Robinson, which the lady was instructed to pass to Lady Howard. Mary then wrote to Cutteford in great distraction, enclosing the letter from Tom Robinson (which strangely has been lost for centuries, it seems, perhaps deliberately9) and remarking that she is in such a state of terror that she dares not ‘go abroad nor do anything’10 until she has heard back from Cutteford, ‘for he that values not his own life has yours or mine in his keeping. Wherefore, as you love me, take some such course with Tom Robinson, as I may never be troubled with him more.’11

  Her next letter continues in the same ominous tone, asking Cutteford if he has:

  …taken order with Tom Robinson, for I fear that mischievous man, whose.... lies cannot be imagined, will kill one of us: though there be never a true word in his letters, yet I fear he will do you or me some mortal harm, which I desire you to take the best course to avoid.12

  The identity of Tom Robinson is lost to us, but it is intriguing that George Cutteford’s daughter, Anne, married a Thomas Robinson, land agent to the Earl of Dorset. Robinson’s business dealings for the Earl of Dorset meant he spent a great deal of time in the neighbourhood of Lulworth Castle. Cutteford would have found his daughter and her new husband a house near the Walreddon estate, as part of the marriage settlement, and Milemead is an ideal location. Is it possible that George Cutteford’s son-in-law was threatening their lives?

  During the English Civil War, one soldier was fiercely loyal to Sir Richard Grenville, a Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Robinson.13 So loyal to Sir Richard, in fact, that this Thomas Robinson would do all he was bid – including kill for his master. Roger Granville, in his biography of Sir Richard Grenville, published in 190814, describes a Lieutenant-Colonel Robinson who, in the midst of the English Civil War, was ordered by his superiors not to burn Wellington House in Taunton. Lieutenant-Colonel Robinson then sought out his true master, Sir Richard, and subsequently burnt down Wellington House, despite orders to the contrary. Sir Richard commanded a loyalty in his men that overturned the rulings of all other authorities. Perhaps Robinson’s loyalties to Sir Richard were established even before the English Civil War?

  During the Civil War, Anne was separated from her husband, who then died sometime in the 1650s. Although it is feasible neither of these men was the Tom Robinson in Mary’s letters, it is still interesting to conjecture that the source of Mary’s fear was George’s son-in-law, who may have discovered the true nature of George Halse’s birth from his employer, the Earl of Dorset.

  Anne Cutteford’s husband may have disapproved of his father-in-law’s immoral behaviour, and possibly threatened to denounce the pair of them. Perhaps Tom Robinson wanted to blackmail Cutteford and Mary Howard, or possibly he was just a disgruntled tenant, conceivably an ally of Sir Richard Grenville, who went beyond the bounds of proper behaviour and unlawfully threatened them with serious harm. Whoever Tom Robinson was, George Cutteford must have dealt with him – probably paying him off – as no more of the matter is mentioned.15

  Instead, Mary’s letters are subsequently filled with the worrying news of the return of Sir Richard Grenville. In 1638, George Cutteford visited Mary in London, and her letters indicate how thrilled she was to see him there again. Sadly, however, they argued, and he left London without saying farewell. Mary’s subsequent letter chides him, beginning ‘Froward Cutter’. She forgave him for not saying goodbye, describing herself as ‘now and ever his faithfullest friend’16 and asking ‘pray not be angry with me that loves you’. This may have been the last time George and Mary saw each other, though the subsequent records are incomplete. The return of Sir Richard would tear them apart.

  In January 1639, Sir Richard Grenville arrived back in London. Decrees by the Star Chamber had been repealed17 so it seems that Sir Richard was safe from prosecution – although he still owed Theophilus Howard £4,000, and another £4,000 to the King. Sir Richard declared he had returned to serve the King in the impending war between England and Scotland18, and convinced King Charles that access to his old Fitz estates would enable him at last to pay off his fines. All these reasons are valid, and in accordance with Sir Richard’s statements at the time – but in fact, Sir Richard returned primarily because news had reached him of the death of Sir Francis Courtenay.

  In 1638, Sir Francis Courtenay died in mysterious circumstances, at just sixty-two years old. The matter of ownership of the Fitz estates, in particular the ownership of Okehampton Castle – and whether or not Sir Francis had inherited them from his father – had still not been settled, and the executors were faced with having to investigate the matter.19 It seems the Courtenays lost their claim during the investigation.

  Francis Courtenay’s death left his eldest son, Sir William Courtenay, just nine years old20, at the mercy of the Court of Wards. Fortunately for the young boy, his mother was Elizabeth Seymour, from a wealthy family herself, who soon re-married into the equally ancient Ameredith family, and so had the money available to purchase her son’s guardianship.21 This put oversight of Powderham Castle and all the Courtenay estates officially into the hands of Amos Ameredith for the duration of the wardship. The Ameredith family had recently sold their Slapton estates to the infamous Hawkins family, so access to the property and income from the Courtenay’s estates must have been very welcome. The young Sir William, though, was equally fortunate to be able to grow up with his mother and her new relations in comparative safety.

  This sudden departure of his powerful adversaries, the Courtenays, was so much to Sir Richard’s benefit that there could have been suspicions at the time of Grenville’s involvement in the death of Sir Francis. Whatever the cause of death, Grenville took immediate advantage of the changing circumstances.

  On his arrival in London, Sir Richard set about reclaiming the Fitz estates, with the support of his friend Philip Herbert, the 4th Earl of Pembroke, who was then one of the trustees of the Fitz estates. First, Sir Richard sued the Earl of Suffolk, Mary’s brother-in-law, compelling him to pay the widow’s jointure of £600 a year not to Mary Howard but to Sir Richard, still officially her husband.

  Sir Richard wrote a long letter to the King’s Council, outlining in detail how the Earl of Suffolk owed him £12,656, more than enough to pay Sir Richard’s outstanding fines.22 The fortunes of the Howards were still suffering from the downfall of previous Earl of Suffolk, Sir Thomas, with mounting debts at Audley End – a demand for nearly £13,000 was the last thing they needed. Relentlessly, Sir Richard petitioned the King and the Council, vowing ‘never to leave petitioning until he had gained his will’.23 Sir Richard had the Earl of Suffolk in his sights, with vengeance as his sole aim; nothing would distract him.

  The battles in court had taken their toll on Theophilus Howard, 2nd Earl of Suffolk. By the end of June 1640, he was dead, at just fifty-eight years old, his eldest son, James, succeeding him as the 3rd Earl of Suffolk. The Howards would never again be a threat to the ambitions of Sir Richard Grenville.

  Mary had lost her protector in London. She was already writing to George Cutteford of her financial difficulties. She wrote telling him she was struggling to pay for supplies of wood to the house, and the rates which she was charged to aid the sick were overwhelming. It seems the plague had come to London and the surrounding districts, and 183 had died in Mary’s parish just that week. Her neighbourhood seemed full of beggars.24 The letter does not indicate her location – there is no way of knowing where she was living at the time, though she was probably staying at Rushey Green Place, her mansion in Lewisham. It seems strange that all sources of income had been lost to her, and she now relied solely on money being sent by George Cutteford from Devon. The amount she owed to creditors was rising drastically.

  To make matters worse, in November 1640, Sir Richard Grenville had Mary declared an outlaw! She owed money to a man called Rober
t Fearebread25 and the then Sheriff of Devon was required to produce Mary Howard (alias Grenville) in court. When she did not appear, she was declared an outlaw and the Sheriff of Devon was permitted to seize any of her goods or property in Devon to pay off the debt. No one seemed to know where she was. In 1640, Mary Howard went into hiding.

  With his wife outlawed, Sir Richard Grenville re-claimed her property for himself. In December 1640, he went to Fitzford, expelled Mary’s servants and reinstated his aunt, Catherine Abbot, as head of the household. Mary Howard was furious, writing to Cutteford of her desperation26 but there was nothing George Cutteford could do. Cutteford himself was fortunate to avoid Grenville’s wrath at that moment, for worse was soon to come.

  At the same time, Scotland and England were at war, and Sir Richard found himself with a command in the King’s army, marching north to Berwick in the spring of 1639, alongside his brother, Bevil Grenville. Scottish forces had invaded Northumberland as far as Newcastle, demanding freedom from the rulings of the English King and refusing to accept the new Book of Common Prayer. King Charles took his forces north to contest the invasion.

  The Scottish armies were so strong and fiercely motivated, and the English so unprepared for war, that Charles was forced to make peace. The following year, Grenville was engaged again to counter the Scottish army, and achieved distinction. While most of the English troops at the Battle of Newburn fled in panic from the banks of the Tyne, Grenville and just a few other officers continued to oppose the Scottish charge across the river, at great personal risk, and refused to back away until the retreat had officially been called.

  Whilst he found glory on the battlefield, Grenville’s actions otherwise hinted at corruption. A young ensign called Crescy Dymocke complained to the Privy Council that, before the Battle of Newburn, Sir Richard Grenville had stopped his pay for a fortnight and charged him with receiving supplies that Dymocke had never seen. Perhaps Dymocke had some personal grievances, but the truth of his words is corroborated by another man’s accusations that Sir Richard had received money from the King for new saddles, but had bought instead cheaper old saddles and pocketed the difference.27 Wherever Grenville went, there was a hint of some financial misdealing. These charges, however, were ignored by King Charles I, who desperately needed Sir Richard Grenville for a greater, more vicious battle to come – in Ireland.

  In February 1642, Sir Richard set sail for Dublin. During the previous year, thousands of English and Scottish Protestant settlers had been slaughtered there, amidst violent rebellion, and the early days of what would become known as the Confederate Wars or the Eleven Years War.28 Parliament had demanded that the King send forces to Ireland to protect the Protestant settlers there and defend the Protestant cause. By the time Sir Richard arrived, only Dublin and a few nearby towns still remained in English hands, under the forces of the Earl of Ormonde, surrounded and frequently besieged by overwhelming numbers of Irish rebels.

  As always, Sir Richard showed his true colours in battle. In a cavalry skirmish near Waterford, in which thirty-five rebels died, Sir Richard personally captured a relative of a rebel leader. Grenville’s cavalry scored another victory at the Battle of Kilrush, and in April 1642, he went northward from Dublin to County Meath, in an expedition under Sir Charles Coote. In Meath, their actions were brutal – they burned one town, and killed many rebel soldiers, including twenty-four whom they hanged. Charles Coote was notorious for his cruelty, frequently reported to have had children slaughtered ‘so they would not grow up to be rebels like their parents’; even his own men protested.29 The English forces went on to capture Trim on the 2 May 1642, slaying sixty of the enemy there. Grenville assumed command at Trim following the death of Charles Coote, and fought off a major assault, securing the town.

  Trim was a vital location for the defence of Dublin, having an important strategic position in the Pale, the historic area around Dublin that had been the centre of English power in Ireland for centuries. But the defences of Trim were in a poor state, which Sir Richard urgently addressed within limited resources – lacking suitable labourers (then called ‘pioneers’), his soldiers had to perform the menial task of repairing the fortifications themselves, against the threat of siege by the increasing rebel forces.

  Within the town were many who did not support the English cause, but the rebel sympathisers were soon to discover the brutal nature of Sir Richard’s control. At the first hint of unrest, the entire population of Trim were forced to appear before Sir Richard, under threat of execution, and with help from informers, Sir Richard identified about 100 rebel sympathisers, forty of whom he immediately expelled from the town. One woman who was exiled was heard to wish all the English hanged – so Sir Richard had her and her maid hanged in the centre of Trim, as a warning to the remaining inhabitants. Sir Richard was not a man to be crossed.

  The next few months Sir Richard spent harrying the enemy. In May he made a surprise attack on a nearby town, probably Maynooth30; the inhabitants so surprised and terrified that many fled from their beds carrying their clothes. He then besieged Maynooth Castle, which succumbed after just one hour, and he put all 100 defenders to the sword. Ironically, this became known as the Maynooth Pardon.31

  At another castle, the Irish rebels scorned all quarter and hurled stones down upon Sir Richard’s forces. After many days, Grenville’s cannon finally breached the walls, and the Irish forces retreated to the upper levels, setting fire to the ground floors to resist the breach. Finally defeated, the survivors emerged from the castle, about 140 of them, many of them women and children. Of these, sixty of the men were stripped, killed and left unburied, as a warning to any further insurrections.

  The contemporary stories of the Irish rebellions were filled with atrocities, albeit often exaggerated to appeal to the English masses in their cry for forces to defend the Protestant cause in Ireland. This campaign of embellished claims and counter-claims was typical of the seventeenth century, enduring throughout the English Civil War, so it is often difficult to rely on contemporary news stories as facts. However, Sir Richard’s horrific reputation in Ireland is confirmed by personal accounts at the time. Some stories of his cruelty would have been circulated by Sir Richard himself in an attempt to subdue the local population, but many stories from his allies have survived, and are good evidence of Sir Richard’s cruel nature, especially in his treatment of prisoners of war. Grenville’s form of justice became known as ‘Trim Law’, and he himself would boast about his callous actions, and how he was accountable to no one but himself.

  Despite his barbaric methods, Sir Richard’s troops remained fiercely loyal to him. Most admired him as a hard fighting man battling in harsh times, willing to do whatever was necessary to win against often impossible odds. In turn, Sir Richard remained loyal to his men, always taking great pains to see them fed and supplied as well as possible. He had learned a great deal from the mistakes made at the Cadiz expedition of 1625, he demanded discipline from his men, and in return ensured they were adequately supplied – adequately, of course, but perhaps not as well as they could have been, as the story of the saddles shows. To buy the loyalty of his men, Sir Richard was renowned for raising the funds by robbing old women and hanging bedridden old men when they would not tell him where their money was hidden.32 Sir Richard would continue to employ such dishonourable methods for the remainder of his fighting career. But buying loyalty did not bring him the support of all of his men.

  While the area around Dublin was devastated by the English armies, in an attempt to starve out the Irish rebels, and thereby also bringing starvation to the inhabitants of Dublin, Sir Richard, in contrast, made allies of the farmers around Trim, allowing them to hold markets in the town and maintain a flourishing trade. He defended this policy to his superiors, reasonably arguing that his farming allies were now more apt to betray the rebels to him.

  However, the rebels themselves managed to burn all the corn and forage around Trim, forcing Grenville’s men to travel more than
7 miles for food and fuel. The constant drain on manpower, with illness and desertion reducing his forces at one time to less than 500 men, left the town very prone to siege. While rebuilding the fortifications, mutiny became an issue, with frequent battles over food – Grenville had to imprison one of his own captains for stealing some cows.

  While Grenville was visiting his superiors in Dublin, one of his majors and some of the men stole food from Grenville’s quarters, leaving the remaining troops without any supplies, and Grenville on his return had to have the culprits banished. The departing hungry soldiers attacked their armed escort and stole away with cattle, corn and bedding. Meanwhile, other vital supplies were being sold illegally outside the town. Sir Richard’s methods did not ensure absolute loyalty.

  Amidst the calamities, and with the diminishing resources and fighting men, Grenville did manage to maintain his attacks on the rebels, constantly informing his superiors of his victories; however, eventually Grenville’s convoy to supply Dublin was attacked, with twelve of his men killed and 160 cows taken by the rebels. Grenville’s position in Ireland remained precarious.

  Meanwhile, in London, in October 1642, Mary Howard sent her last surviving letter to George Cutteford:

  Honest Guts,

  I pray as ever you love me, send me a bill for 20 pounds, for God knows whether I shall live to have any more. Here is such hurliburly and all commodities are taken up, and this day the city has taken up all the provisions from the country people, that the suburbs can hardly provide themselves. Each man provides, that is able, for a quarter of a year. Mrs G... is going out of town, for her husband sent her a letter so to do. For my part I fear nothing but want of money. The King’s army is a day’s march before his citizens. The King was yesterday five miles this side of Oxford. Mr C.... wearies me to death for money. I pray, as you respect me, send me a bill of exchange for 20 pounds.... All the shops are commanded to be shut up, so in haste I rest.