The hanging of Dr Dodd

There were two sides to the character of the Reverend Dr William Dodd. Born in 1729 he became an Anglican clergyman, a scholar, a Cambridge academic and an excellent preacher. He was active in a number of charities, some of which he instigated, such as the Society for the Relief of Poor Debtors and the Humane Society for the Recovery of Persons Drowned at Sea. He was at one time a royal chaplain to King George III.

However, he also had a taste for the high life and for living beyond his means. It was this side of him that would eventually lead to his downfall.

One of his ventures forced him to flee to Switzerland, where he stayed with his friend and former pupil Philip Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield. On returning to England he lost large sums of money in gambling and had no choice but to borrow heavily.

In February 1777 he got the notion that he could relieve himself of debt by committing a fraud that involved Lord Chesterfield. He forged a bond for £4,200 – an absolutely massive sum at that time – in Chesterfield’s name. He pretended to be Chesterfield’s agent in raising a loan, the money to be forwarded via himself. However this was never going to work, because the forged bond was always going to be sent to Chesterfield on completion, and when this happened it was immediately disowned because Chesterfield recognized the handwriting of his old tutor.

Dodd’s defence was that the bond was only going to be temporary arrangement and he always intended to repay it, but this did not convince the jury at his trial for forgery at the Old Bailey. The guilty verdict came back after only ten minutes.

During the 18^th century there were 350 offences on the statute book that carried the death penalty, and forgery was quite high on the list. This was therefore to be Dr Dodd’s fate.

This now proved to be a “cause celebre”, with much public sympathy being aroused for Dr Dodd. It was generally thought to set a bad example for such a respected clergyman to be hanged in public. His most eminent supporter was Dr Samuel Johnson, who wrote a number of speeches for Dr Dodd to use in his appeal for a royal pardon.

However, the appeal came to naught and Dr William Dodd was duly hanged at Tyburn on 27^th June 1777. There was a considerable outcry after the event, with calls being made for a lessening in the severity of the penal code, but this probably had much to do with the fact that the protesters came from the same high social class as the late Dr Dodd.

A 15-year-old orphan named John Harris was hanged on the same day as Dr Dodd, his offence being the theft of two and a half guineas. There was no outpouring of concern for his fate, least of all from Dr Johnson.


© John Welford

The death of King Charles IX of France

King Charles IX of France died on 30^th May 1574 at the age of 23, probably from tuberculosis. However, the stories that arose shortly after that time painted a much more sinister picture, with his death being attributed, one way or another, to his mother, the scheming regent Catherine de Medici.

Charles was born on 27^th June 1550, the third son of King Henry II. Henry died in 1559, leaving the throne to his eldest son Francis, who died the following year at the age of 16. With Henry’s second son having died in infancy, this left Charles as the new king, aged only 10.

The real power behind the throne right through Charles’s reign was Queen Catherine, who used her position to further the cause of Catholicism in France, at the expense of the Protestants who were generally known as Huguenots.

Things came to a head on 1572 when Charles agreed to his mother’s plan to wreak terrible vengeance on the Huguenots in what became known as the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, resulting in the deaths of thousands of people – the exact number is not known – throughout France over a 7-day period.

Charles felt intense guilt at what happened, especially after he saw a flock of crows perch on the roof of the Louvre in Paris and imagined their cawing to be the cries of dying Huguenots. He started to have terrible nightmares and his health began a terminal decline.

A Poisoned Book?

One story concerning Charles’s death was that he was accidentally poisoned by Catherine de Medici. She was supposed to have presented her Protestant son-in-law Henry of Navarre with a book on falconry, but to have sprinkled arsenic on its pages.

However, before the book could be presented to Henry, Charles inadvertently handled it and got arsenic on his fingers, which then touched his lips. He was seized with nausea and a burning sensation in his mouth and throat, and he died within a few hours.

This story does seem to be unlikely, not least because a small amount of arsenic touching the lips would not have had such a dramatic effect. It is generally thought that the story was put about by Huguenots as part of a campaign of hatred against Catherine.

A Black Mass?

A far more dramatic tale, and one that is even less likely to be true, suggests that Charles died of terror after Catherine had instituted a ceremony that involved black magic.

According to the story, when Charles was tormented by guilt and apparently close to death, Catherine decided that the only way to save him was by means of a black magic rite known as the Oracle of the Bleeding Head.

At midnight, Catherine and her chaplain brought a young child into Charles’s room, gave him Communion then beheaded him on an improvised altar. The chaplain called on the Devil to speak through the dead child’s mouth, and this he did, crying out “Vim patior”, meaning “I suffer violence”.

This terrified Charles so much that he shouted out “Take the head away! What streams of blood, how many murders! What wicked counsel I have had!” He continued to scream until he gave a final groan and died.

Apart from the huge improbability of such an event ever having happened – who, for one thing, would have reported it? – it is hard to imagine how Catherine could have supposed that this was a method that would save the life of her son.

The only element of the story that has a ring of truth to it is that Charles did suffer huge pangs of conscience over the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, for which he had given the order at his mother’s behest. His final years were indeed sombre ones, given that his sensitive and unstable character was completely at odds with that of Catherine de Medici.

As for Catherine, she continued to wield a dominating influence over the monarchy of France. With Charles dead, the throne now passed to his younger brother Henry, who ruled as Henry III until his own early death – by assassination – in 1589. Catherine had died earlier that year at the age of 69.

© John Welford

The capture of the Duke of Monmouth

James Fitzroy 1^st Duke of Monmouth was born on 9^th April 1649 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His father was King Charles II of England and his mother was Lucy Walter, the King’s mistress. The couple had fled to The Netherlands after the execution of the King’s father, King Charles I.

England became a republic for 11 years, with Charles only able to regain his throne in 1660. He reigned until his death in 1685, when his brother James became the monarch as King James II.

Charles had many mistresses and produced a large number of illegitimate children, of whom James Fitzroy was the oldest. However, Charles’s marriage to Catherine of Braganza was childless, which was why he was succeeded by his brother.

James Fitzroy was created Duke of Monmouth in 1663, when aged 13, and he was married at the age of 14, his wife being Anne Scott, the Countess of Buccleuch – he took his wife’s surname at this point.

James believed that he should have succeeded his father as king, claiming that his parents had in fact been married, although this was never proved. In any case, he saw himself as the chief Protestant challenger to his uncle James, who made no secret of his Roman Catholicism.

The Monmouth Rebellion

Monmouth was confident that he would be supported if he mounted an armed rebellion against King James and, on 11th June 1685, duly landed from The Netherlands at Lyme Regis, Dorset, with a small band of supporters. He gathered more support as he moved inland, but these recruits were poorly armed and completely untrained, many being farmworkers wielding pitchforks.

His army met that of King James at Sedgmoor, near Bridgwater in Somerset, on 6^th July 1685, in what was to prove to be the last pitched battle to be fought on English soil. The battle was a short and bloody affair, with around 1,300 of Monmouth’s 4,000 men being killed. Monmouth fled from the battlefield, accompanied by a small band of supporters.

Their plan was to head for the port of Poole, in Dorset, from where they hoped to be able to escape by ship. They crossed into Dorset near Woodyates where they stopped at an inn, the landlord of which was Robert Browning, an ancestor of the poet of the same name. They split up at this point, leaving their horses behind.

Monmouth’s Ash

Monmouth disguised himself as a shepherd and continued across country on foot. He had reached the village of Horton when he was spotted climbing over a hedge by a woman in a nearby cottage. A search was organized by local militiamen, one of whom spotted what he thought was a pile of old clothes in a ditch beneath an ash tree.

This was the Duke of Monmouth, scruffy and haggard. When searched, his pockets contained nothing but a few raw peas and the badge of the Order of the Garter that he had been given by his father back in 1663.

The spot where the Duke of Monmouth was captured has had the name “Monmouth’s Ash” ever since, and there is an ash tree growing there, although it is not the same one that Monmouth sheltered underneath.

The Duke was taken to Ringwood and from there to the Tower of London where he was beheaded on 15^th July 1685.

King James took a savage revenge on the West Country yokels who had dared to rebel against his rule. After the “Bloody Assizes” at various locations in Dorset and Somerset more than 300 people were executed and many more were transported to the colonies.

An interesting outcome

One supporter of the Duke of Monmouth who escaped capture was the novelist Daniel Defoe, who had been one of the original people who landed with the Duke at Lyme Regis. He hid in a churchyard after fleeing from Sedgemoor and happened to notice a name on a gravestone that he thought was unusual and appealing. This was “Robinson Crusoe” – well worth mentally filing away for later use!

© John Welford

Frederick II tries to capture a soul

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, was a strange chap who was given to doing strange things. Born in 1194, he became Holy Roman Emperor (a very odd institution that was neither holy nor Roman, and hardly an empire either) in 1220. He was already the King of Sicily (since 1198) and King of Germany (since 1212). He would also gain the title of King of Jerusalem in 1225, as part of a deal to get him to go on a crusade to the Holy Land – he eventually set sail on the Sixth Crusade in 1228 but soon turned back on claiming to be unwell.

During his reign as Emperor (which lasted until his death in 1250) Frederick managed to get himself excommunicated by the Pope on three occasions – for perjury, blasphemy and heresy. He was considered by some people to be the Antichrist. He was given this accolade by none other than Pope Gregory IX.

However, he also had his supporters, and was variously termed “The Wonder of the World”, “The Emperor of the Last Days” and the “Warrior Saviour of the Sybelline Oracles”. On his death legends arose that he would sleep for a thousand years and then awaken when his people needed him. This legend was so pervasive in popular thinking that it gave birth to Adolf Hitler’s notion of creating a thousand-year Reich.

A Science-Loving Emperor

So what could give rise to such diverse views? The answer was Frederick’s all-consuming interest in scientific research. Today, we tend to think of science as being a perfectly ordinary field of study, but back in the early 13^th century, particularly in Sicily where Frederick grew up, religious belief was so strong that anything that looked as though it might challenge the deeply ingrained concepts of reality that people gained from listening to their priests in church was always going to be suspect.

Sicily was also the most cosmopolitan place in the Mediterranean region, where scholars and artists from Muslim and Jewish backgrounds mixed freely with local Christians. Frederick found free enquiry to be greatly to his liking and he developed a great dislike of dogma when it contradicted with what he was told by scientists and what he could discover for himself. This got him into trouble not only with the Catholic Church but other religious groups such as the Muslims.

The Soul in the Barrel

Frederick’s refusal to take the word of priests and Popes at face value led him to conduct some unusual experiments, none of them more so than his enquiry into what happened to the soul after death. The religious dogma of the Church stated that the soul flew from the body at the moment of death. Frederick wanted to see if this was true.

His method of enquiry was to take a man who was condemned to death and seal him into an airtight barrel. He then waited for the man to die by suffocation, his reasoning being that when he did so, according to what the Church taught, his soul would fly out of his body but – according to Frederick - be trapped inside the barrel. All the intrepid experimenter had to do was knock a hole in the barrel and watch as the unfortunate man’s soul made its escape. Needless to say, nothing of the sort took place.

So might this experiment really have taken place? Frederick made many enemies during his lifetime, and it does not sound improbable that somebody might make up a tall tale with the intention of discrediting the mad scientist. On the other hand, the idea would not have been out of character for Frederick so it is also entirely possible that he did indeed devise a particularly cruel and unusual punishment purely for the sake of scientific research – although in the hope that the experiment would fail as it did, as a means of gaining another cudgel with which to clobber the Catholic Church.

© John Welford

Cardinal Mazarin

Cardinal Mazarin was a fascinating figure from the history of France in the 17^th century. Despite not being French, he was that country’s most powerful politician for 19 years, and the fact that he became a cardinal was itself bizarre given that he was never ordained as a priest!

His original name was Giulio Mazzarino. He was born on 14^th July 1602 in the Abruzzi region of Italy but was raised in Rome. He went to Madrid University and then enrolled in the Papal army, fighting as a captain in the War of the Mantuan Succession between France and Spain who were fighting over the domination of northern Italy. During the conflict he made a name for himself for his courage and quick thinking.

Mazzarino joined the Papal diplomatic service and was part of the delegation that met at Lyon in January 1630 to discuss peace terms. At that event he caught the attention of Cardinal Richelieu, second only to King Louis XIII in the government of France, and Richelieu took an instant liking to the young man.

The two men found themselves in further contact over the coming years, with Mazzarino spending an increasing amount of time in Paris.

He made another important contact in Paris that had nothing to do with diplomacy. Mazzarino made a name for himself as a successful gambler. On one occasion he attracted attention at the gaming table by winning a large sum, one of the spectators being Anne of Austria, the French Queen. Mazzarino placed all his winnings on a single bet, which he won. Claiming that the Queen’s presence had brought him luck, he made her a gift of 50,000 ecus.

In 1639 Mazzarino decide to move permanently to Paris and he changed his name to Mazarin in order to appear to be French, although he never became a French citizen. He worked closely with Richelieu and became his right-hand man, even to the extent of Richelieu petitioning Pope Urban VIII to make Mazarin a cardinal, despite him never having taken holy orders.

Richelieu died in December 1641, having implored King Louis to appoint Mazarin as his successor, which Louis promptly did. Louis himself died five months later, leaving Queen Anne as regent for the 4-year-old King Louis XIV. Mazarin had no problem in remaining as first minister, given his earlier acquaintance with the Queen and the fact that he spoke fluent Spanish, based on his previous sojourn in Madrid. Despite her title, Anne of Austria was actually Spanish. It would appear that Mazarin’s friendship with the Queen was a deep one and may have gone much further than just friendship.

As First Minister of France, Mazarin proved to be a worthy successor to Cardinal Richelieu. In 1648 he was largely responsible for ending the Thirty Years War and by 1659 he had brought the conflict with Spain to a peaceful conclusion.

Mazarin helped to create the absolute monarchy that was enjoyed by King Louis XIV, who had a long and magnificent reign in which all the reins of power were in his hands. Mazarin was not popular in all quarters for furthering this trend and was twice forced into exile before he was able to overcome the opposition of a groups of nobles who had revolted.

Cardinal Mazarin became extremely wealthy and amassed a valuable art collection that included works by Raphael and Titian. His own grand mansion in Paris is now the home of France’s National Library.

Mazarin died on 9^th March 1661 at the age of 59, having served his adopted homeland at the highest level with great distinction for 19 years.


© John Welford