the Confrater of Wigston's Hospital, afterwards Vicar of St. Martin's, who married Robert Herrick's daughter Mary.
IV. THE MURDER.
In the autumn of the year 1604, a certain Thomas Harrison, who had done bodily harm to a man called Phillips, fled out of Staffordshire. He came to Leicester, and lodged for three nights at the Blue Boar Inn. While he was there, he paid his addresses to Alice Grimbold, one of the maid-servants, and Alice told him that her mistress, Mrs. Clarke, then a widow, kept a great deal of money in the house. According to Harrison's evidence, which is of no great value, Grimbold also suggested to him that he should come again with a friend and get some of this money. "The maid," he stated, "was the only setter of the match, for they had not dealt therein but for her procurement."
Harrison went away, and told Adam Bonus, a Lichfield cook, what he had heard, and talked over the proposed robbery. Bonus communicated it to Edward Bradshaw, another Staffordshire man, and the real villain of the piece. On Saturday, February 2nd, 1604-1605, Harrison, Bonus and Bradshaw were to have met at the Blue Boar, and Harrison and Bradshaw arrived there on that day. Bonus did not come to Leicester until the following day, and he then saw Bradshaw, and told him that he had decided to have nothing to do with the robbery. On Sunday evening, February 3rd, Mrs. Clarke was in the house with her two guests, Harrison and Bradshaw, and two maid-servants. About ten o'clock the maids went to the stables to water the horses. While they were doing this, they became temporarily separated, whereupon Bradshaw seized and bound one of them who was in the stables. Then Harrison secured the other, and, in the meantime, Bradshaw, who had returned to the house, seized Mrs. Clarke, and tied her up also. The two malefactors then released Grimbold, and, taking her into the house, made her give them her mistress's keys. All
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