In the disputation with the jesuit William Hart, who was executed at York 15 March 1583 (Dodd, iii. 162), Palmer was associated with Hutton on account of his logical powers. Bridgewater (Aquepontanus), the catholic historian, represents Palmer as worsted. Palmer sat in the convocation of the province of York in March 1586, which granted a subsidy and benevolence to the queen (Strype, Whitgift, i. 499). In 1598 he was made D.D. at Cambridge, and in 1599 was a member of the ‘commissio specialis de schismate supprimendo’ (24 Nov. 1579; Rymer, Fœdera, xvi. 386; Pat. 42 Eliz. 31 M. 24, 302). He was also rector of Kirk Deighton, York, 5 March 1570, to some time before 8 June 1577, and of Wheldrake, Yorkshire, from 7 Feb. 1576–1577 to his death in 1605. He died at Wheldrake on 23 Oct. 1605, and was buried in York minster. In the south aisle of the choir there is a mural tablet bearing an inscription (Francis Drake, Eboracum, p. 508), which speaks of his wife, Anna, the daughter of the memorable Dr. Rowland Taylor [q. v.], the martyr parson of Hadley. Seven of Palmer's children by her survived him. In the Tanner MSS. at the Bodleian Library, No. 50, are notes of a sermon preached by Palmer at Paul's Cross 11 Aug. 1566, on 1 Cor. x. 12.
[Cooper's Ath. Cant.; Willis's Cathedrals, i. 80; John Bridgewater's (Aquepontanus) Concertatio Eccl. Cath. in Anglia adversus Calvino-papistas et Puritanos, 1588, pp. 48, 106b; Hutton Corresp. (Surtees Soc.), pp. 57, 66; Hawes's Hist. of Framlingham, p. 331; Drake's Eboracum, pp. 232, 359, 508, 567; Coxe's Cat. of Tanner MSS.; Strype's Grindal, p. 279; Annals, II. ii. 42, Whitgift, i. 499; Newcourt Repert. i. 181, 386; Dodd's Church Hist. ed. Tierney, iii. 152; Taylor's Ecclesia Leodiensis; information kindly furnished by Rev. J. W. Geldart, rector of Kirk Deighton, and by Rev. Sidney Smith, rector of Wheldrake.]
PALMER, WILLIAM (1824–1856), the Rugeley poisoner, second son of Joseph Palmer of Rugeley, Staffordshire, a timber merchant and sawyer, by Sarah Bentley, his wife, was born at Rugeley, where he was baptised on 21 Oct. 1824. After receiving his education at the grammar school of his native town he was apprenticed to a firm of wholesale druggists at Liverpool, from which he was dismissed for embezzlement. He was then apprenticed to a surgeon at Heywood, near Rugeley, where he misconducted himself, and ultimately ran away. He afterwards became a pupil at the Stafford Infirmary, and subsequently came up to London to complete his medical studies, and was admitted a student of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons on 10 Aug. 1846, and was appointed house-surgeon to Mr. Stanley at St. Bartholomew's on 8 Sept. 1846. Resigning this post in the following month, he started as a general practitioner at Rugeley, and on 7 Oct. 1847 married Ann, an illegitimate daughter of Colonel Brookes of Stafford, by whom he had five children, all of whom, except the eldest, died in infancy. After carrying on a very limited practice for several years he took to the turf, and became both the owner and breeder of racehorses. Falling into pecuniary difficulties, he got involved in a number of bill transactions, which appear to have begun in 1853. On 29 Sept. 1854 his wife died of ‘bilious cholera.’ At her death he received 13,000l. on policies which he had effected on her life, though he only possessed a life interest in his wife's property to the extent of 3,000l. Nearly the whole of this insurance money was applied to the discharge of his liabilities, and he subsequently raised other large sums, amounting together to 13,500l., on what purported to be acceptances of his mother's.
Palmer's brother Walter died suddenly in his presence on 16 Aug. 1855. Owing to the suspicious circumstances of Walter's death the insurance office refused to pay Palmer a policy of 13,000l. which he held on his brother's life, and he was thus deprived of the only means by which the bills could be provided for. On 15 Dec. 1855 Palmer was arrested on the charge of poisoning his friend John Parsons Cook, a betting man, who had died at the Talbot Arms, Rugeley, in the previous month. In consequence of the suspicions which were aroused by the evidence given at Cook's inquest the bodies of Palmer's wife and brother were exhumed, and at the inquests verdicts of wilful murder were found against Palmer in both cases. It was also commonly reported that he had murdered several other persons by means of poison. The excitement became so great in the immediate neighbourhood that it was considered unadvisable that Palmer should be tried at Stafford assizes. The lord chancellor accordingly introduced into the House of Lords, on 5 Feb. 1856, a bill empowering the queen's bench to order certain offenders to be tried at the Central Criminal Court, which received the royal assent on 11 April following (19 & 20 Vict. cap. 16). Palmer was tried at the Old Bailey on 14 May 1856 before Lord-chief-justice Campbell. The attorney-general (Sir Alexander Cockburn) and Edwin James, Q.C., assisted by W. H. Bodkin, W. N. Welsby, and J. W. Huddleston, conducted the prosecution; while Mr. Serjeant Shee, W. R. Grove, Q.C., with J. Gray and E. V. H. Kenealy, were retained
