Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/Queer doings at Oddingley
QUEER DOINGS AT ODDINGLEY.
Did the London reader, let loose for awhile from the din and smoke of the great city, ever pause, towards the close, say, of a summer day’s march, to gaze from the hill-top he had just reached at some picturesque little village lying below him? From the hearths of the houses scattered along “the street,” and glowing in the red light of the setting sun, rises the curling smoke which tells of the gathering of the household for the evening meal; birds are carolling in the wood hard by, and over its trees rises the tower of the old church, around which, under the yew trees where laughing urchins climb for berries, slumber the quiet dead, who lay down to die scarce knowing of a wider world than their own little one. How calm and peaceful it looks, after the uproar he has left behind! Here surely, if anywhere, men must dwell together in goodwill, free from the strifes and rancours of cities. And thus he moralises as long as his pipe lasts, and then, buckling on his knapsack again, descends the hill, and almost with regret passes through the little hamlet, and leaves it behind him. And yet, had he entered the inn, pointed out by its long trough, and its swinging, creaking signboard, promising wonders to travelling man and beast, he might perhaps have learnt from the gossip of the cronies over their ale, how deceitful was this calm; he might have heard how the squire was going to “take the law” of the parson at the next assizes; and how Farmer This was at war with Farmer That, the only discoverable reason being that one of them had, years ago, kept back his wheat longer than the other, and had had, after all, to sell it at a lower price; and how from the squabbles of a little village, “Lawyer” Grabham earned a respectable income; how, in a word, the same evil passions would break out here as elsewhere, and perhaps even more often, from lack of the outlets for men’s surplus energies which the life of towns affords.
Any chance stranger who happened to stumble on the little village of Oddingley in the summer of 1806, would certainly have been favourably impressed by it. There it lay, six miles from Worcester, out of the great roads, and shut in by its wood-clad hills from the turmoil of the world. But its whole population, of some hundred and seventy souls, was divided into two parties which hated one another. The rector had been presented with the living in return for electioneering services rendered to a great man, and during the thirteen years he had now held it, disputes with his parishioners had been constant. Whose was the first wrong? Well, no doubt there were faults on both sides, for rectors are but men, and Mr. Parker does not seem to have shown the same aptitude for leading men to heaven, that he had displayed in driving them to the polling-booth. At all events, in 1806 he and a few dependents were ranged on one side, against the rest of the village on the other. At the head of the opposing faction was a Captain Evans, an old, choleric soldier, “full of strange oaths,” who had served in the American war, and had come to this village to wear out the rest of his days in semi-idleness and on half-pay. Some four or five of the principal farmers about were his most zealous abettors. Matters had got gradually from bad to worse, till at last the captain, in order to cheat the parson of his dues, had his cows milked in another parish, so that he might avoid tithes, which were paid in kind; but he couldn’t move his hedges, so the rector had them clipped, and claimed his tithe of the croppings. In his comments on this business, the captain made no secret of his opinion that there would be no more harm in shooting the parson than a mad dog, or a crow that flew in the air; more than this, he openly stated that a hundred pounds had been collected in the village, and would be paid “for a dead parson,” while to tempt men to undertake the job, they were plied with drink, which they quaffed “to the death of the Oddingley Buonaparte” (with the u, and a full-sounding e, reader, when you will have what was a synonym at this time for Satan,—or something worse). Mr. Parker was by no means unaware of the length to which the animosity of his parishioners had gone; he had already gained an action for assault brought against one of the chief disturbers of his peace, and he now declared that he would swear his life against them all, for he knew not what they wanted, unless it were his life; for two or three weeks past he had noticed a fellow hovering about his steps wherever he went, with what seemed a gun in a bag under his arm, and he calmly met the assurance of his servant that the skulker sought his life with—“Do you think he does, Joe?” And when on two different occasions little stones were, during the night, thrown up at his bedroom window, he prudently refrained from showing himself, more than suspecting what was in store for him outside.
The final act soon came. One June evening a shot was fired at him from a hedge bordering a meadow in which he happened to be. It took effect, and he fell, crying “Murder!” on which the assassin made up to him, and beat him over the head with his gun. Two men passing at the time had heard the cries, and ran in their direction. They found the lifeless body of the clergyman, and his murderer standing by, pale and trembling.
“Villain!” they asked him, “do you know what you have done?”
“Nothing!” he answered, and throwing down a bag in which was part of a gun, broken by the violence of the blows he had dealt to his victim, made off, pursued by the two men, who, however, being strangers, and not knowing the ground, failed to come up with him, and, giving up the chase, returned to the body.
The murderer was not known to these two, who alone had seen him at his horrible work; but the description they gave of him tallied exactly with that of Heming, a wheelwright, and the very man whom the rector had noticed following him about. Heming’s house was, therefore, immediately searched, but neither there nor elsewhere could he be found. Night put a stop to the search: the morrow brought the inquest, with the verdict of murder, and a reward of 100l. was offered for the apprehension of Heming, with a free pardon to accomplices. Still no tidings of him. Day after day passed away thus, and it was reported that he had fled abroad, but it was generally believed that he still lay concealed somewhere in the neighbourhood, and a woman even affirmed that, on the day after the murder, she had seen him leaving a wood near the village.
As the principal had eluded pursuit for the present, at all events, efforts were made to bring to justice those at whose instigation it was thought he had committed the crime; but though the state of affairs in Oddingley had been so notorious that people on hearing of the murder exclaimed that “all Oddingley would swing for this;” and though offers had been made, openly enough, to several persons to undertake the murder of the rector, no sufficient grounds were discovered for any serious steps. In Heming’s house had been found an account of his day-work up to within a fortnight of the murder, and the last fortnight of this time, during which it was notorious that he had done nothing but dog the rector, with a gun under his arm, was charged to Captain Evans—a grave presumption against him when taken in connection with other facts. He was indeed arrested, but was soon released, owing possibly to the zeal he had shown in the affair, since we find him a few days after the murder, collecting a subscription to increase the reward offered for Heming’s apprehension. But whether justice was inactive or not, it was powerless against the whole parish, bound together by the tie of a common hatred; a few arrests were made and afterwards countermanded, without further steps being taken. Nor were other agencies more successful; in vain did the new clergyman, standing beside the tomb of his murdered predecessor, erected within the altar-rails, solemnly read the command to do no murder; back from the guilty flock came, unfalteringly, the responsive prayer, that their hearts might be inclined to keep the law; nor when he mounted the pulpit, and preached to them on the awfulness of the sin, did one repentant wretch avow his crime and pray for mercy.
Years rolled on. A letter had been received from America, which stated that Heming had been seen there, and which gave an account of the means by which he had escaped from England; but who could tell? The captain had been in America, and had perhaps found means to get this letter sent over. At all events the wife of Heming still believed that her husband had been made away with, and in 1816, ten years after the murder, she induced the magistrates to order the search of a clover-rick which had been put up a few days after Mr. Parker’s murder, and had not been disturbed since. The search brought nothing to light; the widow could give no ground for her suspicions, and the whole thing was beginning to assume a traditional aspect, when at last a discovery was made, which showed that the widow was right in her suspicions after all.
In January, l830, twenty-three years and more from the time of Mr. Parker’s murder, a carpenter was employed in taking down an old barn on a farm which, in 1806, had been occupied by a farmer named Clewes. In the course of his work he was removing the earth near the foundation, when he came upon a pair of shoes and a carpenter’s rule. Without proceeding any further, he at once gave information, and the earth about the spot was carefully searched. At the depth of two or three feet was found the complete skeleton of a man, who must have been considerably under the middle height. The upper and lower jaws, and the skull, had been beaten into many pieces, and the surgeon who examined the remains declared that these injuries had preceded the burial of the body, and had in all probability been the cause of death. With the bones thus found were portions of a woollen waistcoat and of corduroy breeches, a whetstone, and a pocket-knife. Heming’s widow, now re-married, identified these objects as having belonged to her former husband; and no doubt could be entertained that here was evidence of a second murder committed on the assassin so long sought for in vain.
The lapse of a quarter of a century had loosened the old ties which had formerly bound the parish together, tongues were untied, and at the inquest which was held, all the evidence that could be collected was gone into minutely, with the object of discovering the accomplices of Heming. But the chief of them had before this been called to another tribunal to account for his share in the murder: four years previously Captain Evans had removed to Droitwich, and there he had died without confessing his guilt.
The inquiry lasted for five days. Before its termination, Clewes, the former occupant of the farm on which the skeleton had been found, was committed to prison. While here he stated that he was anxious to make a communication to the jury, and persisting in his design after he had been informed that his revelations might be used against him, he was heard. He said, that about seven o’clock in the morning, on the day after Mr. Parker’s murder, George Bankes came down to him, saying that Heming was up at Captain Evans’s, and that they did not know what to do with him. Clewes refused to let him come down to his house, and Bankes went away, saying that he was lurking about the meadows. About eleven o’clock Clewes went up to Oddingley, and Captain Evans then called him, and told him that Heming was lurking about his (Clewes’s) farm, and that something must be done to get him off; he would try to get into Clewes’s buildings during the day, and at night they could meet there and give him some money, and contrive some plan to get him out of the way. Clewes at last agreed to meet the captain at eleven o’clock that night. He did so, and found with the Captain, James Taylor, a farrier (since dead), and a third man, whom he believed to be George Bankes. They had met at the door of Clewes’s barn, which they now entered, the Captain calling softly, “Holloa, Heming, where beest?” Heming answered from under a heap of straw, and Taylor and the Captain, who had pulled out a lantern, stepped up to the place where Heming was, and the Captain told him to get up—he had something for him. Heming, who seemed to have been lying on his back, then rose, and as he did so, Taylor hit him two or three blows over the head with a stick. Clewes declared that he protested, but the Captain said, “He has got enough;” and Taylor asked what was to be done with the body. It was a light night, and to avoid the risk of being seen, it was determined to bury the body in the barn. A place was found full of rat-holes; a little earth was shovelled out; the Captain called to Taylor to catch hold of him; the two dragged the body into the hole, and Taylor then covered it up. The whole thing was over in half-an-hour. The Captain promised Taylor another glass or two of brandy, enjoined Clewes, with oaths, not to “split,” and the men then separated and went home. Clewes had afterwards received twenty-seven pounds, which was at first intended for Heming’s passage-money, and the Captain told him that he should never want for five pounds, if he held his peace. He had bought a mare of the Captain, and had never been asked for payment, and a hundred pounds had been lent to him by a Mr. Barnett, a wealthy farmer, who was only second to the Captain in his hatred of the rector. Some days after the murder of Heming, several loads of marl were brought into the barn and spread over the floor. Clewes had refused to be bound by an oath not to give information, although the Captain reminded him, with a curious appreciation of his functions as J.P., that he himself could administer it, as he was a magistrate!
Clewes, Bankes, and Barnett were put upon their trial at Worcester, in March, 1830. The verdict of the coroner’s inquest on Heming was one of murder against Clewes and Bankes, while Barnett was found to have been an accessory before the fact. The grand jury had also found three bills of indictment; one charging Clewes alone with the murder of Heming, both as a principal and as an abettor; a second against all three prisoners, as accessories before the fact to the murder of Mr. Parker, alleged to have been committed by Heming; and a third against Clewes alone, as an accessory after the fact to the same murder, by harbouring Heming. The indictments relative to the murder of Mr. Parker were, however, abandoned, on the ground that the principal had not been convicted, and Clewes was then arraigned for the murder of Heming. The jury, hopelessly bewildered by the maze of indictments, found him guilty as accessory after the fact, a finding that could not be received, as he was indicted as principal only. They again withdrew, and almost immediately acquitted him. The prosecution declined to offer any evidence on the coroner’s inquisition, and the three prisoners who had been placed at the bar were then acquitted; and thus ended a case as remarkable for the crime brought to light, as for the singular complication caused by the circumstances of the double murder.