I laughed out loud, and went to kiss Amy on the forehead, but Bressy was already looking at me earnestly. We were still enemies, and now both of us knew exactly where the treasure was buried. All that had to be done was to take a line from the stone pillar in Ridley Field to the most recently dug hole and measure the distance twice more in the same direction.
“I trust you will abide by the terms of our agreement,” said Bressy. “We agreed I would help you locate your housekeeper’s granddaughter in exchange for a free run at the treasure.”
It had not happened exactly as either Bressy or I had intended, but it could not be denied that Amy would have drowned had it not been for the royalist spy’s intervention. I owed him something, and it would have been churlish of me to pretend otherwise.
“You know I cannot agree to that, Bressy,” I said. “I will have to report today’s events to Colonel Croxton, and he will want to recover the treasure himself, but one thing I will say is that Amy is in no fit state to ride back to Nantwich tonight, and I need to recover my mare from the stables and negotiate with Cotton about what is to be done to recompense me for the carthorse he killed and for the loss of my cart and cheese. I can’t see me getting back to Nantwich before tomorrow afternoon.”
I did not need to say anything else. Bressy understood my meaning. He gave me a long, hard look in the eye, nodded curtly, and made off at a run through the fruit trees in the direction of the Grange, just as the sound of Alexander, Wilbraham, and Wade could be heard coming round the corner of the house.
Chapter 31
Nantwich – Monday, August 19th 1644
The soberly dressed young colonel paced up and down in his office in Nantwich’s Booth Hall and sucked his teeth in irritation. He was not a happy man, for the cheese merchant and the chandler he had entrusted with the job of finding Abbot Massey’s hoard of hidden treasure had failed in their task of keeping it from the hands of the King’s agents.
The fledgling intelligencers had returned from Combermere two days earlier, with the kidnapped girl in tow, to inform him that they had not only solved the murders of Henry Hassall, Geffery Crewe, and Adolphus Palyn, but that they also knew the location of the missing treasure, and would go and dig it up at once. What they had failed to realise was that the royalist intelligencer, Bressy, had beaten them to it by a matter of several hours.
That morning, shortly after dawn, guards patrolling the walls had reported seeing a lone horseman digging furiously a few yards from the stone pillar in Ridley Field, extracting a small, wooden chest from the hole he had dug, and then making off at speed across the fields in the direction of Whitchurch. Not one of the sentries had been able to explain why nobody had thought to apprehend the man and bring him in for questioning.
The colonel now faced the uncomfortable prospect of having to explain to Sir William Brereton why Prince Rupert’s campaign in Shropshire and the Welsh Marches was likely to be boosted by this unexpected piece of additional funding. The royalist controlled mint in Shrewsbury was likely to be busy in the coming days, he reflected.
But no matter, they would have to make the best of it, and with Sir Thomas Myddelton already planning to move on Montgomery, there would be plenty of opportunity for Parliament to hit back. And when it did, he knew which two men he would place at the forefront of any covert operation that might be deemed necessary. Make no mistake about it, the cheese merchant and the chandler would have every opportunity to make amends for their failure, and they would find out about it sooner than they realised.
Meanwhile, in Shrewsbury, the young widow stood in the drawing room of her elegant town house and watched her three children playing in the garden outside. They were growing up quickly, she mused. The two boys were chasing each other with wooden swords, the eldest, Hugh, defending an attack by his younger brother, Edward, whilst the youngest child, a girl, every inch a princess, was pretending to cower in a makeshift wooden shack constructed in the middle of the lawn.
How typical, she thought, that Hugh, the very image of his father, had chosen to play the kidnapper rather than the brave rescuing knight, and she wondered whether her eldest would grow up like her dead husband, more suited to operating in the shadows, unlike brave young Edward, who was an outgoing and straightforward child. How, she wondered, would her children have turned out had she chosen her childhood sweetheart for a husband all those years ago rather than the printer who had swept her off her feet?
The young widow was glad to be back in Shrewsbury, but she had been unable to settle since her return. Her trip had achieved its main objective, but she could not shake off a nagging sense of disquiet, as though something were not quite right.
She could not deny a sense of unease that her path had crossed again with the man who was such an integral part of her past. It was as though God were constantly trying to question the choices she had made. She could not deny the pang of pain she had felt at his rejection of her during the brief time they were alone in the murdered groom’s bedchamber, and she now realised how much she had hurt him.
But this was not the end for them, she realised. She knew his paymasters would not allow him to let Bressy return to Shrewsbury unopposed with a chest full of plate and coin. He would be sent to Shrewsbury, she was sure of that, and when he arrived, she would be ready for him.
At the same time, in a country house several miles away, the middle-aged landowner who had taken over the day-to-day control of the Combermere estate sat by a window in his fine library and stared out to the right of the building and across the lake, reflecting on the disasters of the previous few days.
Not only had he enraged his father by arresting and imprisoning that confounded cheese merchant, he would now be forced to compensate the man by buying him a new horse and cart and paying him the value of half a cartload of best Cheshire cheese.
And then there was the issue of Abraham Gorste. The nature of the deputy steward’s murderous deeds had come as a severe shock, but, although the man had doubtless come to a deserved end, it did not alter the fact that the estate was now short of a deputy steward and, despite everything, it could not be denied that Gorste had been a damned fine servant.
The only positive angle he could take from the whole debacle was the fact that the collector sent by Brereton had sheepishly agreed to postpone the assessment of the estate, which was the least he could do, considering he had been responsible for the death of one of his senior employees.
Cotton was under no illusions, though. The collector was no fool. He would be back, and next time assessment would be unavoidable. And as if that were not enough, his carefully negotiated deal to store Lord Herbert’s valuable library had fallen through.
Sir Fulke Hunckes had arrived at Combermere on the previous Friday evening to find that the house was in chaos, and that the location of the secret room under the summerhouse had been compromised and was now known by several of Sir William Brereton’s underlings. Hunckes had explained that it would now be impossible for Combermere to house Lord Herbert’s property, and had left without ceremony the following morning in the company of Mistress Furnival.
Back in Nantwich, the briner’s wife sang gently to her baby son, who gurgled contentedly in her arms, his belly full of milk. Things could not have turned out better, she thought. Her husband had thought it a bit odd that she had insisted that the wich house owner who had employed him when times were hard should be named as a godfather to the child, but she explained it away by pointing out that he had been present when she had gone into labour, and had been most helpful in ensuring that she had been placed in good hands for the birth. The real reason had remained mercifully under wraps.
Eldrid Cripps, however, was free again, all charges against him having been dropped on the agreement that he would leave her alone. But this suited her just fine, as she had no wish to ruin the man, just so long as he kept his side of the bargain. He was even back in his job as constable, which she was not so sure about, but she suspected that this had something to do with the l
ack of available replacements and the desire of his predecessor to avoid being lumbered with the job for a second time.
The wich house owner himself was back where he liked it the best, in the arms of his family. He knew this would not last for long, and he understood the loss of the abbot’s hoard would not be allowed to be forgotten, but for now he was content.
His housekeeper was a changed woman now that her granddaughter was once again safe at home, seemingly none the worse for her experience, other than a reluctance to sleep without a lit candle in the room.
His adopted son was delighted at having his best friend back again and was generally to be found running in and out of the house like a whirlwind, wielding his wooden sword with the kind of innocent exuberance that can only be found in childhood.
The wich house owner’s apprentice was happy too, having been able to make an active contribution to the kidnapped girl’s safe return, an act the like of which, despite his confident outward demeanour, he had never been wholly sure he would be able to perform again. But now he knew for certain that his missing leg would not stop him living his life to the full.
Only the wich house owner’s wife seemed to have mixed feelings. The fact that her husband had been forced to co-operate with the man who had murdered her first husband weighed heavily on her mind. She had the strange feeling that this was not the last she was going to hear of Jem Bressy.
The wich house owner sat in his chair at his home in Beam Street, his legs resting on a footstool, watching the people he loved and who formed his household go about their daily business, all five of them. Yes, he was content, even more so because his wife had just told him that their unusually structured family was soon to become a family of six.
But that was not until next Spring. Plenty of time for things to change. He was just considering that thought when he saw Ezekiel Green walk past his window. He caught the young man’s eye, but the look on the young archivist’s face bore an apologetic expression, one that he had seen on more than one occasion before. The wich house owner sighed and waited for the inevitable knock on the door.
Historical Notes
The murder of Roger Crockett, the landlord of The Crown, Nantwich’s largest coaching inn, which took place on 19 December 1572, has been shown to be of considerable interest to historians, partly because the case is so well-documented, but also because of the remarkable aftermath to the killing. The legal battle between the victim’s widow, Bridgett Crockett, and those she accused continued for several years and eventually ended up in the Star Chamber.
Roger Crockett was a self-made man, who derived the majority of his income from the success and the profitability of The Crown. However, despite his success and his desire to be upwardly mobile, it is likely that Crockett was looked down upon by the town’s elite, which included a number of key families who had owned land in and around the town for generations. These included the Maistersons, the Wilbrahams, and the Hassalls.
The feud which culminated in Crockett’s murder began when Crockett outbid the Hassall family for the lease on Ridley Field, a prime piece of pasture land adjacent to Welsh Row on the opposite side of the River Weaver to the town centre. Crockett and Hassall had clashed over legal issues before, and the town was split over its support for the two protagonists.
The feud between the two camps lasted for several months and got to the point where many of Crockett and Hassall’s supporters were forced to sign declarations to keep the peace. The dispute finally came to a head on the day that Crockett was supposed to take possession of Ridley Field, when one of Crockett’s friends, Thomas Wettenhall, was set upon by a group of Hassall’s supporters and badly injured.
The questions which have never been definitively answered are whether this was a deliberately orchestrated attempt by Hassall’s supporters to lure Crockett across the bridge to attack him, the degree to which Richard Wilbraham was involved in any such collusion, and whether the plan (if it existed) was to kill Crockett or just to frighten him into submission.
In any case, Crockett rose to the bait and crossed the bridge in Welsh Row, where he was viciously assaulted by a crowd of people, among whom was a cordwainer called Edmund Crewe, who dealt Crockett a blow on the head which eventually proved to be fatal.
At the height of the fracas, Richard Wilbraham emerged from his house still dressed in his bedclothes and calmed the situation down. Crockett, mortally wounded, was led first into a house on Little Wood Street and then back to The Crown, where he died later the same evening. At this point, the arguments of the two factions diverge.
Bridgett Crockett’s claim was that the assault on her husband was deliberately planned by Hassall, Wilbraham, and several others, and that he was attacked and killed by multiple blows from a number of people. She even went to the lengths of displaying her husband’s naked body in the street outside The Crown, so that the townsfolk could see the multiple wounds suffered by him. She also engaged a local artist, John Hunter, to paint the corpse as evidence.
The Hassall version of events was that the affray was unplanned, that one man, Edmund Crewe, was responsible for the killing, and, in a manner quite contrary to Bridgett Crockett’s statements, that Richard Wilbraham tried his level best to save Crockett by intervening and stopping the disturbance. Conveniently, by this time, Edmund Crewe had been spirited away, having possibly been persuaded to take the blame for the killing, and he was never seen again.
Crockett’s inquest, carried out three days after the affray, was presided over by John Maisterson, Richard Wilbraham’s brother-in-law, and from the start there were disagreements about the procedure.
Bridgett Crockett tried to produce Hunter’s painting as evidence, but this was pronounced inadmissible. Crockett then tried to have the accused subjected to the so-called ‘ordeal of the bier’, in which they would be brought before the corpse to see if the dead man’s body would start to bleed again. Maisterson, however, refused this too.
The inquest eventually found that Crockett was killed by Edmund Crewe alone, prompting Bridgett Crockett to accuse Maisterson of systematic corruption, of a deliberate attempt to hide the evidence by holding the inquest behind closed doors, and of intimidating key witnesses, in particular John Hunter, the artist.
Following her failure to influence the coroner’s jury, Bridgett Crockett initiated an ‘appeal of murder’, and a commission was assembled to investigate whether the widow had a case. During this period, an extensive collection of witness statements was gathered from well over a hundred Nantwich residents who were present at the time of Crockett’s death.
These were collated in a document called Examinations touching the death of Roger Croket, of Namptwiche, in the County of Chester, Gent. It is this document which my fictional town clerk, Ezekiel Green, uses to help Daniel Cheswis identify potential suspects for his case seventy-two years later.
It is worth pointing out that the document does indeed name John Gorste as the owner of the house into which the dying Roger Crockett was carried, identifies John Brett as one of the two town constables at the time, and lists Thomas Bressy as one of the additional witnesses.
Bridgett Crockett’s ‘appeal of murder’ eventually resulted in proceedings held at Chester assizes in July 1573, at which Edmund Crewe was indicted for the murder of Crockett in his absence. The following February, 21 people were summoned by the chief justice, and six of them, including Wilbraham and three members of the Hassall family, were bailed pending a future appearance. However, at the following Michaelmas assizes, all six were discharged by proclamation. This, however, was not the end of it, and the case rumbled on in the Star Chamber for several years.
This brings us onto the strange case of Thomas Palin (or Palyn), who was a servant at The Crown under the Crocketts. Palin gave evidence in favour of his mistress at the Chester assizes in 1573. However, there are suggestions that both Crockett and the Hassall/Maisterson/Wilbraham faction attempted to bribe the servant to testify in their favour. This may have bee
n a deliberate attempt to cast doubt on Palin’s value as a witness.
In any case, Palin was subsequently accused of perjury, and the story relating to his gallows reprieve is absolutely true. Palin was indicted for theft from a guest at The Crown together with a notorious local thief and sentenced to hang. He was reprieved on the gallows, when John Maisterson showed up at the critical moment and offered to spare his life if he would admit to perjury. Not surprisingly, the servant chose to save his own skin. The question which remains unanswered is whether this whole event was a deliberate ‘set-up’ by Maisterson and his associates.
Although Thomas Palin was a real person, his fictional descendent, Bridgett Palyn, is not. Bridgett makes an appearance in The Winter Siege, and was actually conceived as a character before I started the research for The Crockett Legacy. It was a happy coincidence when I came to write about the Crockett affair that I already had a ready-made character with the same surname as Thomas Palin and a first name that suggested she may have been named after Palin’s employer.
At this point, I should also add a few words about Ridley Field, the site of which sits immediately opposite Mill Island, where the modern day reconstruction of the Battle of Nantwich takes place every January.
At the time of the Civil War, Ridley Field would have been located just outside the earthworks that surrounded Nantwich, and therefore would have been in plain view of soldiers patrolling the walls. The stone pillar I describe, however, did not exist, and is a creation designed for the purpose of the fictional plot.
* * *
Although I have attempted to give an accurate portrayal of the events surrounding the death of Roger Crockett, the plotlines relating to Abbot Massey’s hidden treasure and the suggested connections between the Crockett murder and Combermere Abbey are entirely fictional.
The Combermere Legacy Page 26