Early Modern Notes

A most rare, strange and wonderfull accident, which by gods just judgement was brought to passe, not farre from Rithin in Wales, and showne upon three most wicked persons, who had secretly and cunningly murdered a young Gentleman named David Williams, that by no meanes it could be knowne, and how in the end it was revenged by a childe of five yeeres old, which was in his mothers wombe and unborne when the deed was done.

The murder ballad was a hugely popular early modern genre, both to be sung (this one to the tune of ‘Wigmore’s Galliard’, whatever that might have been) and as print artefacts; they were illustrated with gruesome woodcut prints, and might be pasted on walls. This is unusual in having a Welsh setting; but it really could be from anywhere.

They contained a familar, ‘providentialist’ moral message, which they shared with the prose murder pamphlets of the time: no matter how murderers try to hide their heinous crimes, God will bring them to light.

Ballads online (not all ballads, you might be relieved to know, are about murder)
Bodleian Broadside Ballads; Sixteenth-century Ballads; Black-letter Ballads
Extracts from a 1670 murder pamphlet (if you have access to Early English Books Online you can find many more)

Providentialism
Providence in early modern England (book review)
Malcolm Gaskill’s book Crime and mentalities in early modern England (and a number of his articles) discusses the providentialist theme of murder ballads and pamphlets.

Warning: this really is not for the squeamish.

In this example, the three unnamed murderers were consumed with jealousy of their uncle’s son (David Williams) for his estates, especially when his young wife became pregnant.

Then did the Divell intice them straight
to murder, death, and blood,
Thereby to purchase to themselves
their long desired good.

They acquired ‘strange garments’ to perform their ‘wicked deed’; meanwhile their proposed victim was having strange fears and bad dreams, and to try to cheer himself up, suggested to his wife that they go for a quiet walk together. But they were spotted by their enemies, who seized their opportunity.

At length three sturdy men they met,
in Souldiers tattered ragges,
With swords fast girt unto their sides,
which tangled in their jagges:
Their faces smear’d with durt and soote,
in lothsome beastly wise,
With black thrumb’d hats upon their heads
as is the Germanes guise.

And when they saw no persons nie,
those helpelesse couple there,
they wounded sore in cruell sort,
like most accursed men,
And in the thickest of the corne,
which in that place was bie,
The drag’d the murdred bodies then,
and so away did hie.

The Williams’ servants eventually started searching for their master and mistress, and coming near the place, heard a terrible groan. And there they found

Their Master dead their Mistris stab’d,
yet living there they found,
In bitter pangs in travell then
this woefull woman lay,
And was delivered of a Sonne,
before the breake of day.

(‘In travail’ is a common early modern term for ‘in labour’.) After which she died without any memory of the attack; the orphan was put to nurse and thrived.

But now behold Gods judgement just:
the truth I shall you tell,
Ere this child was seven quarters old,
this strange event befell:
One of the murtherers being set
at Tables on a day,
The Nurse did chance to bring this child
within that place to play.

The child under the Table got,
unthought of anyone,
And bit his Cousin by the legge,
hard at the ankle bone,
Which by no helpe nor Art of man
could ever healed be,
But sweld and rotted in such sort,
that thereof dyed he.

Not full a twelve-month after this,
this child did chance to be,
Whereas the second murdere
was drinking merrily:
He tooke one of the biggest pinnes
that stuck about his brest,
And thrust in in his Kinsmans thigh,
where then the signe did rest.

The bleeding couldn’t be stopped, and the man bled to death; for which the child ‘with rods was swing’d full sore’, but would never ask forgiveness. And now the last surviving murderer, unsurprisingly enough, is pretty terrified.

He never after saw the child,
but he would shun the place,
The child did never looke on him,
but with a frowning face:
And stones at him still would he fling,
where ere he did him meete:
Which made the neighbours wonder much
that oftentimes did see’t.

Eventually, the five-year-old boy is out with his playmates in the fields where they see the criminal fast asleep with his mouth wide open:

The childe having a bramble sticke,
within his hand to play,
Did thrust it downe his Cousins throat,
a sleeping as he lay.

The man therewith being soone awak’t,
did strive to pull it out:
And he thereby did rent and teare
his wind-pipe round about:
Which being found incurable,
as he lay in his bed,
His murderous deed he did confesse,
as you before have read.

And that was light entertainment, early modern style.

.
(From the British Library’s Roxburgh Ballads, vol. I, 484-5; the BL catalogue dates it 1635)