“On the morrow morning after the parson was shot (I mean the Rev. Mr. Parker, Rector of Oddingley), it was on Bromsgrove fair day—I cannot recollect exactly the year—about seven o’clock, George Bankes came down to me, and says, ‘We have got Hemming, who shot the parson, at our house (meaning Captain Evans’s) this morning, and I do not know what to do with him—will you let him come down here?’ I said, ‘I will not have him here, nor have nothing to do with him.’ Bankes then went off. Bankes said, ‘he is lurking down in the meadows.’ I went up to Oddingley about eleven o’clock in the day to Mr. Jones’s; Mr. Jones is dead, and Mr. Nash lives in the farm now. As I went up the road side, I suppose he (meaning Captain Evans) kept sight of me all the way. The Captain called to me; he was in his garden, close by the road side; he followed me out of the garden into the field, and said he wanted to speak with me. He said, ‘I’ve had Hemming at our house this morning, and something must be done by him; he is lurking down towards your house now; I ordered him to get into your buildings by day-time, if possible, or at the edge of night, that you (meaning witness) might not see him, or any of your family, and somewhat must be done by him. I shall come down to your house at night, and bring somebody with me, and we must give the poor devil some money, or do something with him, and send him off; will you get up and come to the barn? it won’t detain you a minute.’ I refused coming, and said, ‘I did not like to come.’ The Captain said, ‘it can make no odds to you—you need not be afraid to come at eleven o’clock; just come out, it will make no difference to you at all; if you don’t come I shall be afraid of your dogs.’ I went out at the back door and down to the barn door, as the clock struck eleven. There was the Captain and James Taylor, and a third, whom I thought and believed to be George Bankes. They went into the barn (I mean the Captain, Taylor, and George Bankes), and I with them; I believed it to be Bankes; he had on a smock-frock; as soon as the Captain came into the barn, he calls, ‘Holloa, Hemming, where be’est?’ not very loud; Hemming spoke, and said ‘Yes, Sir;’ Taylor and the Captain then stepped on the mow, where Hemming was lying, which was not higher than my knee; the Captain pulled a lantern from under his coat, or out of his pocket; myself and George Bankes were then on the thrashing-floor; the Captain said, ‘Get up, Hemming, I have got something for thee;’ Hemming was at the time covered up with straw; he was rising up on end, as if he had been lying on his back; as he rose up, Taylor up with a blood-stick, and hit him on the head two or three blows; I (witness) said, ‘This is bad work—if I had known you should not have had me here;’ the Captain said, ‘He has got enough;’ Taylor and the Captain came down off the mow directly; Taylor said, ‘What is to be done with him now?’ the Captain said, ‘D—n his body, we must not take him out of doors, somebody will see us, mayhap.’ It was not very dark. Taylor went out of doors, and fetched a spade from somewhere; it was no spade of mine; and Taylor and the Captain said, ‘We will soon put him safe.’ Taylor then searched round the bay of the barn on the contrary side where it was done, and found holes which dogs and rats had scratched; he threw out a spadeful or two, and cleared away from the foundation side of the wall. ‘This will do for him,’ Taylor said to the Captain, who stood by and lighted him the while. Bankes and myself were still on the floor of the barn. Then the Captain and Taylor got upon the mow, and pulled Hemming down to the front of the mow. The Captain said to Taylor, ‘Catch hold of him,’ and they dragged him across the floor, and into the hole they had dug for him in the opposite bay, and Taylor soon covered it up. I cannot tell whether he was put in on his back or not; I never stepped into the bay from the floor; I thought I should have died where I was; the Captain said to Taylor, ‘Well done, boy, I’ll give thee another glass or two of brandy.’ The Captain said to me on the floor when we went out, ‘I’ll give you anything; d—n your body, don’t ever split.’ All four were present at this; we then parted; the Captain darkened his lantern; the Captain, Bankes, and Taylor, went away towards Oddingley; I went to bed; the whole did not occupy half an hour; Hemming had his clothes on; Hemming never moaned nor groaned after he was first struck; there was no blood—not a spot on the floor; nothing else was done that night. On the 26th of June I was at Pershore fair; George Bankes came to me in the afternoon, between four and five; he called me up an entry at the Plough, and said, ‘Here is some money for you that Hemming was to have had.’ Mr. John Barnett was with Bankes then, Bankes and Barnett each of them gave me money, but I do not recollect how much I had from each; I did not count it until I got home. They said when they gave it me, ‘Be sure you don’t split.’ There was no more said about it that night. It was in two parcels, in all between £26 and £27, and all in bills; there was no silver. I put it all in one pocket. This was to have taken Hemming off, as Bankes and Barnett informed me. A few days after, I was at the Captain’s; he sent for me by my own son, John Clewes, then about seven years old. When I got to the Captain’s, I found him alone; he said to me, if I kept my peace, and did not split, I should never want for £5. I never received any money from him afterwards. On the same day, in the parlour of the Captain’s house, Catherine Bankes came to me, and went down on her knees, in great distress, and begged and prayed of me not to say anything, as she feared the Captain had done a bad job, and that they would all come to be hanged if I spoke. I promised her I never would say anything.”
[Bankes was a farm bailiff; Taylor died about 1816, having lived some time in infamous notoriety at Droitwich. Barnett, at the time of the murder, was only bailiff for his mother, but had since become an opulent farmer. Clewes himself failed three or four years after the murder, and had since been engaged as a labourer or woodman.]
A great many witnesses were examined at the inquest, who spoke to expressions of hatred and malice used by Captain Evans, Barnett, Bankes, and Clewes, with regard to Mr. Parker, and many trifling circumstances which tended to implicate them in the disappearance of Hemming, and corroborate Clewes’s confession. The jury, after five days of most elaborate investigation, returned a verdict of wilful murder against Thomas Clewes and George Bankes; and further found that John Barnett, late of the parish of Oddingley, farmer, was an accessary to such murder before the fact.
These three persons were accordingly put upon their trial at the ensuing March Assizes, before Mr. Justice Littledale. A true bill was found against Clewes as principal in the second degree, and against Barnett and Bankes as accessaries before the fact to the murder of the Rev. George Parker, by Richard Hemming. Mr. Curwood was the leading counsel for the prosecution, Mr. Sergeant Ludlow for Clewes, Mr. Campbell, K.C., for Bankes, and Mr. Taunton, K.C., for Barnett. An objection was taken to the prisoners pleading as accessaries to a murder, the principal in which had not been found guilty; and this objection being allowed, Clewes and Bankes were arraigned as principals, and Barnett as accessary before the fact to the murder of Richard Hemming. Clewes was first put upon his trial alone. The evidence of the finding of the body of Hemming having been given, and its identification completed, many witnesses were examined to speak to expressions of the prisoner, tending to show that he had been anxious to procure the death of Mr. Parker; and expressions used by Hemming, showing that he had been employed to do some foul deed at Oddingley. It was proved, too, that Clewes and Hemming had been frequently in one another’s company prior to the murder. Last of all, after a sharp struggle on the part of the prisoner’s counsel to prevent it, Clewes’s confession was put in and read. Sergeant Ludlow briefly addressed the learned judge, urging that Clewes was entitled to his acquittal, as his confession stood uncontradicted, and that did not prove him to have been a principal in the crime. The court decided that the matter must be left to the jury, and to them the prisoner declined saying anything; nor did the law then admit of counsel addressing the jury in defence. The jury, after a short summing up, returned a verdict of “Guilty as an accessary after the fact;” but Mr. Justice Littledale observing that they had only to inquire whether he was guilty of aiding and abetting in the murder, they returned a general verdict of “Not guilty.” The crown refused to call any evidence on the coroner’s inquisition, or against Barnett and Bankes, so they were all discharged. The expenses attending the prosecution amounted to between £700 and £800.
1830—At the Lent Assizes, before Mr. Baron Bolland, was tried the cause of The King v. Dineley, in which Mr. Francis Dineley, solicitor, practising at Pershore, was found guilty of conspiring with one William Loxley, deceased, to defraud Nicholas Marshall of £2,000. The transaction took place so far back as 1804, when Loxley and Dineley induced Mr. Nicholas Marshall to advance the sum of £2,000 on what it was alleged they knew to be defective security, and he lost the whole of it. Mr. Campbell made a long speech in defence, alleging that the defect in the security might not have been known to his client, and remarking strongly on the long time which had elapsed. The case for the prosecution rested mainly on letters written by Dineley to Loxley.
1830—May 21—In the Arches Court, judgment was delivered in the suit of Barnett v. Rev. William Baldwin Bonaker, being a complaint on the part of some of the inhabitants of Church Honeybourne against their clergyman for neglect of duty, such as continued absence from the parish. Sir J. Nicholl, the judge, declared the evidence insufficient, and condemned the promoters of the suit in full costs.
1830—October 20—At the Michaelmas Sessions were tried the Kidderminster rioters. True bills were found for riot and assault against ten carpet weavers, and the case for the prosecution was conducted by Mr. Evans and Mr. Lea; Mr. Godson and Mr. Lumley appearing for the prisoners. Three of them, named Lamsdale, Green, and Stephens, were first tried for being concerned in an attack on the prison, on the second day of the disturbances, and with assaulting William Hopkins, a constable; but they were acquitted, to the great surprise of the court. Six men were next tried for the attack on Mr. Cooper’s factory, and for very ill-treatment of a man named Edwards, working there at low prices. He was left by the mob, thrust into the ashpit of one of the furnaces, more than half dead. Phaizy and Hopkins, the men principally concerned in this assault, were sentenced to six months’ imprisonment—Lamsdale to three months, and Price to two months’ imprisonment; and all to enter into sureties to keep the peace. Other two were acquitted. In three other cases verdicts were taken by consent, and almost nominal punishments inflicted. Mr. Godson’s strenuous exertions in these cases laid the foundation for his subsequent popularity in the borough of Kidderminster.
1830—October 18—At the trial of one of the prisoners at the City Michaelmas Sessions, Mr. Curwood, his barrister, handed in a protest against the jurisdiction of the court, because it was not constituted according to the charter of James I, which required that the recorder—“one learned and discreet man, learned in the laws”—should always preside at gaol deliveries. Earl Coventry and his ancestors had long been recorders of Worcester, and seldom (or never) present at Quarter Sessions. The magistrates refused to receive the protest.
1831—The cause list at the Midsummer Assizes this year contained thirty-one cases for trial, and two of them excited much interest. The first was an action brought by the Rev. Edward Herbert against a Mr. Heath, for an assault, in which Mr. Campbell and Mr. Whateley were for plaintiff, and Mr. Charles Phillips for defendant. For the prosecution it was merely proved that Heath struck Herbert some dozen blows with a horsewhip in Broad Street, Worcester, on the 23rd of the previous February. One witness heard Heath say the words, “that — my father, and you consider yourself well horsewhipped for it.” Mr. Charles Phillips made a very long and powerful speech for the defence, stating to the jury that if the prosecutor had dared himself to come into the box, he would have forced him to confess that he had not only broken his pledge to Mr. Heath’s sister, but had slandered his buried father in the most outrageous and unbearable manner. Mr. Justice Patteson told the jury that all they had to do was to say whether Heath had committed the assault, and so they returned a verdict of “Guilty;” but no sentence was passed, though the affidavits of defendant were ready, and Mr. Justice Patteson himself pointed out to Mr. Phillips an error in the record, no doubt with a view of getting rid of the case.
The other case was a charge against Mr. Francis Hill, of Stourbridge, of having committed wilful perjury, by swearing that he had not adopted certain royalty mines, while he had, in fact, signed a document to do so. Mr. Campbell, for the defence, urged that many a man signed deeds which he did not understand; and a host of witnesses appeared to give Mr. Hill the best of characters. He was honourably acquitted.